Category: Apple

Lil Finder is a Star ⇢

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Our buddy is back! Juli Clover:

Apple has continued posting short videos featuring its new Little Finder Guy mascot on TikTok and YouTube Shorts, taking advantage of the popularity of the anthropomorphized Mac Finder icon.

The short videos promote the MacBook Neo through a series of Mac tips, all of which include Little Finder Guy in cute poses. A video about journaling features the character with a book and a pen, while another about the Passwords app has Little Finder Guy with a magnifying glass.

Searching

I love that Apple is having fun with this, and think it’s some of their best marketing in ages, even if some folks are cranky about it. Anything that makes the Mac more fun and relevant to young users is a win in my book.

How Apple Could Have (Maybe) Saved the Mac Pro ⇢

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D. Griffin Jones, writing about yesterday’s news:

Apple decided to start caring about the Mac Pro again at the worst possible time. The Intel Mac Pro, while excellent, arrived just six months before the announcement that the Mac would transition to Apple silicon. After which, the Mac Pro didn’t offer any better performance than the Mac Studio. Just the card slots — which you couldn’t put a GPU in.

Due to Apple silicon’s all-in-one architecture, the Ultra-tier chip pushes the limits of what Apple can fabricate at a reasonable price. The bigger the chip is on the die, the lower the yield of good chips will be made, raising the cost further.

Apple reportedly experimented with making a higher-tier chip than the Ultra — often referred to as the “Extreme” chip, though the name is just speculation. It was canceled for being too expensive.

I’ve thought a lot about the bad timing Jones mentions. Had Apple stuck to the original timeline, and killed off the 2013 Mac Pro in favor of an iMac “specifically targeted at large segments of the pro market,” back in 2017, Apple could have avoided putting out the best Intel Mac ever, less than a year before the transition to Apple silicon.

Did Apple know in 2017 that 2020 was the year the M1 would make it out of the lab? Probably not, but it doesn’t make the timing any less painful.

Jones goes on to explore how an “Extreme” chip could be built, and offers some advice for the Mac Studio team:

Apple should design a custom enclosure for PCI card slots that can plug into the Mac Studio. It would have a custom connector so that it could work (nearly) as fast as internal slots in a Mac Pro.

Maybe this custom connector is on the bottom of the Mac Studio, so installation is as simple as plugging it into a Mac Studio-sized port in the top of the box.

I do not see any future in which Apple goes down this road.

Apple sees the Mac Studio and its industry-standard Thunderbolt ports as the way forward for adding hardware. Doing anything custom at this point just adds uncertainty to a market that has been repeatedly damaged by Apple’s flip-flopping.

The company yanked the pro market around for over a decade. The Mac Pro was old, then it was new! It did not support internal expansion, then it did! With every change of its mind, Apple lost more and more trust of would-be Mac Pro buyers.

The Mac Pro is Dead

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It has happened: the Mac Pro is gone, and Apple will not be replacing it.

Chance Miller, at 9to5Mac:

It’s the end of an era: Apple has confirmed to 9to5Mac that the Mac Pro is being discontinued. It has been removed from Apple’s website as of Thursday afternoon. The “buy” page on Apple’s website for the Mac Pro now redirects to the Mac’s homepage, where all references have been removed.

Apple has also confirmed to 9to5Mac that it has no plans to offer future Mac Pro hardware.

Mac Pro

The Mac Pro was introduced way back in 2006 as a replacement for the outgoing Power Mac G5. It had a good few years, then languished until the 2013 model was announced.

That machine was a dud, and it languished until the 2019 model was announced.1

It came out in December 2019, which was less than a year before Apple silicon was announced and the M1 shipped.

The Mac Pro got one last update in June 2023, when Apple dropped the Intel version for one with an M2 Ultra inside. It’s been languishing again ever since.

It is clear that Apple sees the Mac Studio as the way forward for high-end desktop computing. Apple silicon did away with the graphics expansion that made the 2019 Intel machine so interesting, leaving all of those slots with far less to do for most users.

This news shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone, even if it is a sad ending to what was once an amazing computer.

  1. I loved mine. ↩

AgentBridge ⇢

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If you want your classic Mac to interact with Claude, Sean Lavigne has the project for you:

AgentBridge is a native Classic Mac OS application that lets AI agents (like Claude) interact with Mac OS 7–9 through structured commands and responses. It works on real hardware and emulators — no modifications to your Mac required.

Drop AgentBridge into a shared folder, launch it on your Mac, and an AI agent can list windows, open apps, type text, read the clipboard, browse files, and more — all through a simple text-based protocol.

This image in the Github documentation cracked me up:

Claude on Mac SE

WWDC26: June 8-12 ⇢

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Apple has announced dates for this year’s WWDC:

Apple today announced it will host its annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) online from June 8-12, bringing developers together from around the world for a week of connection, exploration, and innovation. In addition to the online experience, developers and students will also have the opportunity to celebrate in person during a special event at Apple Park on June 8.

WWDC26 will spotlight incredible updates for Apple platforms, including AI advancements and exciting new software and developer tools. As part of the company’s ongoing commitment to supporting developers, WWDC will also provide unique access to Apple engineers and designers, and insight into new tools, frameworks, and features.

WWDC kicks off with the Keynote and Platforms State of the Union on Monday, June 8. The conference continues online all week with over 100 video sessions and interactive group labs and appointments, where developers can connect directly with Apple engineers and designers to explore the latest announcements. The conference will take place on the Apple Developer app, website, and YouTube channel; and on the Apple Developer bilibili channel in China.

See you there.

Hide macOS Tahoe’s Menu Icons With This One Simple Trick ⇢

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I really dislike Apple’s choice to clutter macOS Tahoe’s menus with icons. It makes menus hard to scan, and a bunch of the icons Apple has chosen make no sense and are inconsistent between system applications.

Steve Troughton-Smith is my hero for finding a Terminal command to disable them:

Here’s one for the icons-in-menus haters on macOS Tahoe:

defaults write -g NSMenuEnableActionImages -bool NO

It even preserves the couple of instances you do want icons, like for window zoom/resize.

Your apps will respect this change after relaunching. I ran this a few minutes ago and already appreciate the change. I really think Apple should roll this change back in macOS 27, or offer a proper setting to disable these icons for those of us who find them distracting.

The Case for an Ultralight Mac ⇢

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David Sparks is a fan of the MacBook Neo, but it’s not the Mac notebook his heart truly desires:

Think about it. Apple has covered the pro market with the MacBook Pro lineup. The Neo is about to cover the mainstream and budget-conscious buyer.

But there’s a gap at the top. A premium ultralight for people who travel constantly, who want the absolute minimum weight and footprint, and who are willing to pay for it. A MacBook that weighs two pounds or less, with a stunning display and all-day battery life. Not a compromise machine. A showcase.

The technology is ready. Apple silicon was basically designed for this. The question is whether Apple sees the market opportunity, or whether they think the Air (or whatever it becomes post-Neo) already fills that slot.

I don’t think it does. There’s a difference between a laptop that happens to be light and a laptop that’s built from the ground up to be as light as physically possible. Apple used to understand that distinction. The original Air proved it.

With the Neo handling the mainstream, there’s room in the lineup for Apple to go back to that idea.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this since the Neo was announced. In many ways, it frees the MacBook Air up to return to its thin-and-light roots, but I think that would be a mistake.

Among the many sins Apple committed with the 12-inch MacBook is that it was priced like a mid-range laptop, confusing the product line. If Apple were to return to this market, slotting in an ultra-portable machine in a more premium price point would avoid that confusion and let Apple go wild with what it could do with such a machine.

I’m not sure Apple wants to sell four laptop models1 but if they do, I think Sparks is on to something.

  1. What’s really wild is that until a couple of weeks ago, Apple sold just two notebook models and four-ish desktops. I love that the company remains committed to desktop Macs, but if Apple were starting from scratch in 2026, that would not be the case. ↩

Inside the MacBook Neo

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I’m putting my thoughts together for a review of the MacBook Neo, but I think a huge part of this laptop’s story is its repairability. Unlike Apple’s other products, the Neo is put together with screws only — no adhesive. Some of these screws are pentalobes, but if you’re taking apart a computer, you’re probably the kind of person to have that sort of bit on hand, or are willing to get one.

This means the battery can be replaced without pull tabs, and for the first time in years, this notebook’s keyboard is not permanently installed into the top case. There is some tape involved there (and 41 screws to remove) but it’s a move in the right direction.

The USB-C ports, headphone jack, and speakers are all modular and come out with a handful of screws and simple connectors.

The result of all of this is a machine that should be easier and cheaper to repair.

I love this shot from iFixit’s teardown:

Neo

iPhone Repair Guru took apart a Citrus example on their YouTube channel:

The former Mac Genius in me wasn’t thrilled that they didn’t disconnect the battery first — the machine was on until six minutes into the video!