Category: Apple

I hit a wall yesterday with my MacBook Pro.

Time Machine is just utterly broken on my MacBook Pro running Yosemite. Just going to use this black MacBook from now on, I think.

— Stephen Hackett (@ismh) August 23, 2015

Why do you lie, liar? http://t.co/hZ4JnNkQb8

— Stephen Hackett (@ismh) August 23, 2015

(My tweeting went downhill from there.)

In short, Time Machine would start, but get stuck after just a few moments. Sometimes, it would stall on Preparing Backup… and other times, it’d get a couple of hundred megabytes done (out of several gigabytes it needed to do) then stop.

Continue reading ⇢

Mark Gurman:

Typically reserved for accessories like Apple Watch bands, headphones, and iPhone cases, Apple Store accessory walls will now be home to the recently-updated iPod line. Apple products, ranging from iPods to iPads to Macs, have typically been stored in the back of Apple Stores and brought to a customer upon the point of sale. Now, when a customer wants to buy an iPod, she or he can simply pull it off a shelf without needing to wait for the product to be brought from the back room.

Continue reading ⇢

Mark Harris at The Guardian:

Apple is building a self-driving car in Silicon Valley, and is scouting for secure locations in the San Francisco Bay area to test it, the Guardian has learned. Documents show the oft-rumoured Apple car project appears to be further along than many suspected.

In May, engineers from Apple’s secretive Special Project group met with officials from GoMentum Station, a 2,100-acre former naval base near San Francisco that is being turned into a high-security testing ground for autonomous vehicles.

Continue reading ⇢

Joseph Keller:

Apple has introduced a new feature for iCloud on the web that allows you to restore deleted items. Not only can you recover files that you’ve deleted, but also restore contacts, calendars, and reminders. This new feature also shows you how long it will be until those items are permanently deleted if you choose not to restore them.

This is a huge addition to iCloud. While this still doesn’t seem as robust as Dropbox’s versioning system, it’s nice to know what I do keep in iCloud has an extra layer of protection.

Continue reading ⇢

Apple:

You can use Boot Camp to install Windows 10 on supported Mac models that have OS X Yosemite installed.

Finally.

Continue reading ⇢

Mitchel Broussard at MacRumors:

Apple yesterday began contacting some customers who recently purchased third-generation Apple TVs, informing them that their devices had shipped with an unspecified faulty part and offering an exchange for a brand-new unit shipped from the company.

As Broussard points out, this is a highly irregular way for the company to be dealing with this, leading many to believe (myself included) that this affects a very small number of units.

Continue reading ⇢

IDG’s Jeremy Kirk:

Customers of the oft-criticized security and performance program MacKeeper have until Nov. 30 to file a claim for reimbursement, the result of a proposed class-action suit settlement.

Those who bought MacKeeper before July 8 are eligible, according to the settlement website where claims can be filed.

I wonder if this would cover the hours of my life spent uninstalling this junk for customers.

Continue reading ⇢

An off-cycle release pushed at the end of the day? My guess is Beta 4 had something nasty going on somewhere. I wonder if the Public Beta will get revved tomorrow, or if this was an issue just with the development branch.

Continue reading ⇢

I’ve thought about doing this with mine, and Jason may have just talked me into it.

Continue reading ⇢

There’s no way around it: iPad sales continue to slow. That’s not to say the numbers aren’t incredible and that many companies would kill for a product that performed at the level of Apple’s tablet, but the graph doesn’t lie.

iPad sales by quarter

Here’s what Tim Cook said about the device on yesterday’s earning call.

I am still bullish on iPad, with iOS 9 there’s some incredible productivity enhancements coming in with Split View and Slide Over and Picture in Picture, these things are incredible features. The enterprise business is picking up and more and more companies are either contracting for or writing apps themselves.

Continue reading ⇢

As usual, Federico Viticci has the best coverage in town. The iPhone and Mac are up, but the iPad continues to slow down. Continuing with recent trends, Apple is still killing it in China, with the country making up 26% of the company’s revenue for the quarter — more than all of Europe.

Continue reading ⇢

David Kravets at Ars Technica:

A federal judge has ruled that Apple must defend a class-action trial, to begin in January, representing thousands of Apple store workers. The employees claim they had to spend as much as 20 minutes off the clock having their bags searched to combat employee theft—known as “shrinkage”—every time they left the premises.

A version of this policy reaches back to my time as an Apple retail employee from 2006-2008. Pre-iPhone, we weren’t allowed to bring in any portable Apple products, and cell phones had to remain locked in the break room. Once the iPhone was out, we had to still lock them up, but had to register our devices with the store. While it certainly was a pain to look for a manager before being able to leave, I don’t remember having them need to do cross-reference the serial numbers with our personal technology cards. As this entire process had to take place after clocking out, it could very often eat into a break.

Continue reading ⇢