Today’s Apple event brought two new hardware products, in addition to several accessories.
While neither the new iPhone or iPad are something I’m personally about to run out and buy, I think both show that the company knows that there’s value to be found in having variety, and a good product at several different price/size points. In short, both the new iPad and iPhone take the latest technology Apple has to offer and put them in smaller and cheaper products.
I really wish I had thought to make this video.
Today’s Apple event was oddly paced, with a long time spent discussing topics that weren’t new hardware products. While unusual, I liked what I saw.
Tim Cook opened today’s event by talking about the on-going FBI case concerning weakening the iPhone’s encryption. “We need to decide, as a nation, how much power the government should have over our data and our privacy,” Cook said. “We did not expect to be in this position, at odds with our own government,” he continued, “but we believe strongly that we have a responsibility to help you protect your data and your privacy.”
Of all the brilliant tricks Steve Jobs pulled during his second stint at Apple, maybe the most clever was his transformation of the technology product announcement.
I’m not normally one to link to Apple ads, but this new Siri one is pretty dang funny. Don’t miss the Easter egg at the very end.
Since publishing my article about tech that should come to the Mac this morning, I’ve gotten a lot of feedback about Fusion Drives.
For the uninitiated, the Fusion Drive is a storage solution Apple ships with the Mac mini and iMac that uses a small SSD mated to a larger spinning hard drive. To vastly oversimplify what’s going behind the scenes, the system sees these two devices as one volume. OS X, core apps and the user’s most-used files are on the SSD, while apps and data accessed less frequently live on the hard drive.
When Apple introduced OS X Lion, it was at the “Back to the Mac” event, and rightfully so. Lion was the first OS X release to really incorporate — for better and for worse — features from Apple’s mobile operating system.
These days, iOS and OS X’s development tracks are closer than ever, with features like Handoff and AirDrop tying the two systems together in new ways.
With a new version of Mac OS X — or MacOS — assumedly around the corner, I think there’s more Apple could take from iOS’ cookie jar.
While Obama didn’t speak directly about the Apple/FBI case in his appearance at SXSW, I sure don’t like his comments. Michael Shear at The New York Times:
“If, technologically, it is possible to make an impenetrable device or system, where the encryption is so strong that there is no key, there is no door at all, then how do we apprehend the child pornographer?” Mr. Obama said. “How do we disrupt a terrorist plot?”
This little gadget sets out to solve one of the most annoying things about being a MacBook Pro user.
Apple on Thursday sent out invites for an event to be held at its Cupertino headquarters on Monday, March 21, 2016. The event will take place at 10:00 am—I’ll be there covering the news.
Here we go. I’m keeping my fingers crossed for some Mac news.
Serenity Caldwell at iMore, talking about the possibilities of handwriting recognition on something the iPad Pro:
Much as I hated longform writing and as terrible as my penmanship was, there was still something pretty magical and otherworldly about writing block or cursive letters and having them transform into digital text. By the year 2000, I had convinced most of my teachers that I could turn in typed work, but I probably saved future Serenity’s penmanship from becoming truly atrocious because I had that Newton MessagePad. I was constantly writing and doodling with it.
Mashable has a photo gallery up of progress being made on Apple’s new campus in Cupertino. At the center of the piece is an update on the company’s new theatre:
The 120,000-square-foot Theatre, with a capacity of 1,000 seats, is a subterranean auditorium, but that’s not to say it doesn’t make a statement from the outside.
Designed by U.K.-based architect firm Foster+Partner, the cylinder-shaped lobby can be seen at ground level and doesn’t have any columns. Instead, the space is open, encased by glass and will have stairs down to the event hall.