Category: Apple

Christina Warren:

Hulu recreated nearly every aspect of the Season 8-era Seinfeld apartment with great attention to detail.

Except for one thing. They gave Jerry an old PC.

After Carrie Bradshaw, Jerry Seinfeld might be the most visible Mac user in 1990s television. Over the course of Seinfeld’s 9 seasons, Jerry’s apartment frequently showed off various models of the Macintosh. Everything from the Mac SE/30 to a PowerBook Duo with Duo Dock, to the 20th Anniversary Macintosh were featured on the show.

In addition to the compact Mac shown in Christina’s post, I too remember Jerry having a 20th Anniversary Macintosh as well as a PowerBook Duo.

image via PC Mag

Well, someone has way too much time on their hands, but this is cool:

This morning, Apple quietly removed the original iPad mini from its online store, as noted by 9to5Mac:

Apple’s discontinuation of the iPad mini leaves the remaining iPads as a completely 64-bit family, all using either A7 and A8X processors rather than the iPad mini’s aging A5. It also means that all remaining iPads have Retina displays and unified Wi-Fi + Cellular models.

While the A5 is still around in a couple of very sad devices, I know a lot of developers are glad to see Apple finally moving forward. iOS 9 will run on a lot of older devices, but I do think it may be the last iOS release to hold that line.

The original iPad mini was perhaps the first example of Tim Cook’s approach to products. It was the iPad 2 — in a smaller, cheaper form — and it sold like crazy.

I’m currently using an iPad Air 2, but I loved my original iPad mini. Sure, it didn’t have enough RAM or even a Retina display, but it made iPad apps far more mobile, and it marked the first time I wasn’t embarrassed or annoyed to use an iPad someplace public like a coffeeshop or park.

All that aside, Apple let this device linger too long. It’s the downside of Cook’s operations brain that brought us the device in the first place. Now I just hope the device will get a nicer update than last year.

Rene Ritchie:

As Snow Leopard refined and advanced Leopard, as Mountain Lion refined and advanced Lion, so too is OS X El Capitan intended to refine and advance last year’s OS X Yosemite. That means the focus isn’t on major redesigns or profound system-level changes, though there is a little of both to be found. Instead, Apple is making OS X smarter, and giving it considerably more polish.

For El Cap, that means new window management options, including an improved Mission Control and new Split View. The company has made Spotlight smarter and improved stock OS X apps like Notes, Safari, Mail, Maps, and Photos. They’ve enhanced performance, stability, and security—including bringing iOS graphics framework Metal to the Mac. They’ve even added new system fonts: San Francisco for alphabetic languages; Ping Fang for Chinese; tweaks to the Japanese system font, Hiragino Sans; and improved input methods for both Chinese and Japanese.

I for one welcome our new polish and stability overlords. The rest is just gravy.

On the whole, WWDC 2015 brought less news and less change than its two immediate predecessors. Apple is still on top of the world, but this year, it’s about refining and polishing, not wide-reaching changes.

That’s not to say there isn’t news to be talk about. As someone whose tablet is basically a Netflix machine most weeks, I’m excited Apple finally realized they can do cool things with it. Unshackling the iPad from the iPhone’s feature set is a huge change with tradition, and one I welcome.

watchOS (sigh) 2 is bringing all sorts of new functionality to Apple Watch, including native applications, third-party complications and more. While I’m academically excited about this news, I’m holding my breath to see how these chips fall. My guess is that while the apps will be far better than they are today, I won’t suddenly be using my Watch for far more than I do today.

OS X El Capitan looks like a Snow Leopard moment for the Mac. There’s good stuff in 10.11 — and I’ll be reviewing it again this year — but for the average user, I’m not sure there’s a ton to get worked up about. I don’t think that’s a problem, however. Some stability and some breathing room will be welcomed by many.

There’s no doubt that the thousands of developers flying home this weekend have a lot of work to do to get ready for iOS 9 and OS X El Capitan. There’s no doubt that users will welcome the changes coming to their iOS devices, Macs and Watches, but from those I’ve spoken to this week in San Francisco, everyone’s less stressed than in the last couple of years. That’s a good thing, and I’m looking forward to an exciting — but not overwhelming — year on Apple’s platforms.

For years, Apple has relied on videos to help tell the story of their products, but this year’s WWDC keynote videos were especially well-done. The entire keynote — including the hilarious intro video — can be seen over on Apple’s website.

The App Effect

In this film, Phil Schiller, Neil deGrasse Tyson and others talk about the importance of apps, not only to Apple’s platform, but to the way people work, play and live.

Apple Music – Music needed a home . . . so we built it one.

This video discusses that music shouldn’t be treated as data, but as art. Apple Music’s pillars of streaming, curation and artist communication are paired with Apple’s new worldwide radio station, Beats 1. This video does the best job explaining the full breadth of the offering — “one complete thought around music.”

Apple Music – Worldwide

This video focuses on Beats 1, Apple’s upcoming worldwide radio station. It bring back the joy that radio once had, before we could each build our own, isolated playlists. Radio can connect people, and this video tries to re-ignite that romanticism.

Apple Music – History of Sound

In many ways, this is my favorite of the four films. Starting in 1888, it builds a narrative saying that while the technology has changed, the medium of music remains special and powerful. I award bonus points not only for some sweet Walkman shots, but the inclusion of several old iPods and an iMac G4.

Dr. Drang, on the history of multitasking on Apple products:

When the iPad came out, it was deja vu all over again. One screen, one app. Before the end of 2010, iOS 4 provided the Switcher-like multitasking bar and the ability to quickly shift from one app to another. Still only one app on the screen at a time, though. And while the multitasking bar has grown from a strip of icons into a set of screenshots, it’s still more like the Switcher than the MultiFinder.

Until iOS 9.

Yesterday on stage, Drake joked that he had purchased a vintage Apple jacket for the occasion. It can be seen in this photo, from The Verge:

Of course, eBay is full of fun examples of such merchandise. There is one seller attempting to capitalize on Drake’s purchasing decision, but there’s a lot more where that jacket came from:

I’m looking forward to digging into this to see how I can pipe 512 content into News.