One of the most satisfying things about having a flip phone back in the day was being able to snap it shut when you were done with a call. You didn’t even have to be hanging up in anger — it was just a cool move.1
One aspect of the iPhone Duo that I am enjoying is akin to this. If I’m working on the inside screen, I want to shut the phone and have it lock, ready to go back in my pocket. This move says, “I’ve done the thing I needed to do, and now it’s time to move on.”
Mark Gurman, in his Power On newsletter, writing about the new MacBook Pro and how Apple launched it:
Adding touch to that should have been treated as the biggest change to the Mac in more than half a decade. Instead, Apple presented it as more of a routine upgrade — rather than an opportunity to build something new. The updated models are significantly lighter and slightly thinner, with better heat management and a redesigned cooling system. Yet they look much like the tried-and-true 2021 versions and run the same M5 Pro and M5 Max chips introduced this past spring.
The HomeView’s OS — which doesn’t really seem to have a name — was explored over the weekend by several folks. It looks like an interesting mashup of iOS and watchOS, complete with a bunch of fun wallpapers. I’m partial to this one:
Federico Viticci, in the smartest article I’ve read about the new MacBook Pro:
I’d argue that the Mac’s lack of touch is a liability at this point. Its omission has turned from a deliberate design decision that made sense for its time to a choice dictated by inertia and, perhaps, an unwillingness to challenge the status quo. Which is especially funny since the “status quo” of Apple is that of a company that sells millions of touch-enabled devices every year and considerably fewer trackpad-only ones. The lack of touch on the Mac feels like a self-inflicted problem that has no reason to exist anymore, and which John Ternus is rightfully rectifying for the modern age.
Steven Levy got to speak to Apple’s CEO (and others) about the new MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display for Wired (Apple News):
I ask if Apple is about to break a long-imposed taboo and introduce a Macintosh with a touch screen.
Ternus beams. “Who knew?”
We are referring to the new MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display that Apple is releasing today at an event in Los Angeles. It’s got a mighty M5 Pro or M5 Max chip and a show-stopping tandem OLED screen. (A tandem screen has multiple light-emitting layers, producing more dramatic contrasts.) But its most conspicuous feature is one that’s been deeply woven into iPhones, iPads, and even Apple Watches for years but not Apple’s laptops: a touch display. After years of resistance, a Mac screen has finally gone digital.
Apple just unveiled its new high-end notebook, the MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display. The name is a mouthful, but it makes a lot of sense, as the normal MacBook Pro is still alive and well.1
The most important thing about this laptop is that the Apple logo lights up on the lid. I will never forgive Jony Ive and Tim Cook for taking that away ten years ago. I understood it on the 12-inch MacBook in 2015, but taking it off the MacBook Pros was in poor taste.
If you are looking for a Duo, you may get lucky at your local Apple Store. I was at mine half an hour before opening, was the first person in line, and one of just three folks who were able to buy one.
I have like 90 minutes of time with it, but uhhhh this phone is weird.
Same designs as before, now just a good bit faster.
No ProMotion feels like a miss, but the water and dust resistance is pretty cool.
A post from November 2021 titled The 14-inch MacBook Pro Resets the Timeline is one of my favorite things I’ve written in the 18-year history of 512 Pixels. In it, I reviewed the first 14-inch MacBook Pro as if the 2016-era MacBook Pros never existed.
But of course, they did exist, and were announced ten years ago this week. Here’s a bit from Apple Newsroom back on October 27, 2016:
Apple today introduced the thinnest and lightest MacBook Pro ever, along with a breakthrough interface that replaces the traditional row of function keys with a brilliant, Retina-quality Multi-Touch display called the Touch Bar. The new MacBook Pro features Apple’s brightest and most colorful Retina display yet, the security and convenience of Touch ID, a more responsive keyboard, a larger Force Touch trackpad and an audio system with double the dynamic range. It’s also the most powerful MacBook Pro ever, featuring sixth-generation quad-core and dual-core processors, up to 2.3 times the graphics performance over the previous generation, super-fast SSDs and up to four Thunderbolt 3 ports.
This link — which you gotta manually open in your browser — is the best thing I’ve seen on the Internet in a long time.
Other than the lack of color in the app icon, I like a lot about this. IT IS LITERALLY LIQUID AND GLASS.