The Power Mac G4 Line »

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Yours truly, over on MacStories:

For almost five years, the heart of the Power Mac was the PowerPC G4 chip. Starting in 1999 it clocked at just 350 MHz, but by the time the Power Mac G4 line was retired, a tower with dual 1.42 GHz CPUs could be ordered. In that time frame, things like Gigabit Ethernet, SuperDrives, and Wi-Fi became mainstream.

The Power Mac G4 came in three distinct cases over the years it was available. Each style of machine saw several revisions while in service, bringing the total number of models to 10. That’s a lot of computers to cover, so let’s get started.

Come for the nerdy info about the Power Mac G4 line of towers, stay for this photo:

Castro 3 »

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There’s a new version of the podcast player Castro out today, with lots of goodies.

Ryan Christoffel at MacStories has more:

If an absent feature ever kept you from sticking with Castro 2, that almost certainly won’t be a problem anymore. Castro 3 addresses nearly all of those “one missing feature” requests in a single release. Trim Silence is Castro’s take on Overcast’s Smart Speed; full chapter support is now present, as is a new Apple Watch app; the player screen has been fully redesigned; Mix to Mono improves stereo mixes that are hard to hear; and finally, there are excellent new per-podcast controls in a variety of areas. Perhaps the only thing still missing is an iPad app.

Castro 3 is everything Castro already was, but better. It’s the app that Castro fans have always wanted.

The app is free, with a $2.99 per quarter or $8.99 per year subscription to unlock advanced features.

Unboxing an Original Macintosh »

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A user on r/VintageApple has posted a real treat:

A retiree in my area sold me his original 1984 Macintosh – with unused transport bag! – for $200. I’ve always wanted to own one, so I was thrilled to learn that he took excellent care of his Mac and kept pretty much everything that came in the original box… except the manuals. (“It’s a Mac, who needs the manuals?“). I decided to document the unboxing, because I have never seen an original Mac unboxing posted online. I also took some shots of product and packaging details that I found particularly striking.

AirPorts Starting to Sell Out »

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Joe Rossignol, MacRumors:

AirPort base stations are beginning to sell out or disappear entirely from Apple’s online and retail stores in select countries, a few weeks after Apple announced it has discontinued the lineup of routers.

The first casualty is the AirPort Extreme, now listed as “sold out” on Apple’s online store in the United States, and unavailable for pickup at Apple’s retail stores across the country. The base station remains available in limited quantities in select other countries, including Australia, Canada, Japan, and Singapore.

Goodbye, friend.

Connected #193: They Belong to the World Now »

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This week on the show:

The future of third-party Twitter apps looks grim, but is it the end of the road? What makes an upgrade worthy of a price tag? Do class action lawsuits even matter? Should you use AirPods on planes? Does anyone like show descriptions written as hypothetical questions?

My thanks to our sponsors:

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  • Layers: A conference about design and technology. June 4-6, 2018 – San Jose, CA. Get $50 off with the code ‘relay’.

Twitter’s API Change Has a Date Again: August 16 »

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Sarah Perez at TechCrunch:

Twitter is giving developers more time to adjust to its API platform overhaul, which has affected some apps‘ ability to continue operating in the same fashion. The company clarified this morning, along with news of the general availability of its Account Activity API, that it will be delaying the shutdown of some of its legacy APIs by three months’ time. That is, APIs originally slated for a June 19, 2018 shutdown – including Site Streams, User Streams, and legacy Direct Message Endpoints – will now be deprecated on Wednesday, August 16, 2018.

This is the API removal that led to the “Apps of a Feather” open letter. All it seems that bought was a little more time1 before the third-party Twitter experience gets worse.

As far as what we can expect in Tweetbot and Twitterrific after August 16, Perez asked Tweetbot creator Paul Haddad that just yesterday:

“Twitter has a replacement API that – if we’re given access to – we’ll be able to use to replace almost all of the functionality that they are deprecating,” he explains. “On Mac, the worst case scenario is that we won’t be able to show notifications for Likes and Retweets. Notifications for Tweets, Mentions, Quotes, DMs and Follows will be delayed one to two minutes,” Haddad adds.

He also says that Tweets wouldn’t stream in as they get posted, but instead would come in one to two minutes later as the app would automatically poll for them. (This is the same as how the iOS app works now when connected to LTE – it uses the polling API.)

None of that is great, but I doubt it will be enough of a pain to pry Tweetbot out of my hands.

  1. But not the aforementioned full three months. ↩

Video: iPod mini History »

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The iPod mini marked a giant turning point in Apple’s music business. With its smaller size and colorful design, it turned the iPod from a tech product to a piece of fashion: