Category: Apple

Paul Gallagher:

One of this year’s hottest Christmas presents is no longer available in the shops. Two months after Apple announced the demise of its iPod Classic MP3 player, the model is selling secondhand for up to four times its original price as aficionados clamour to get their hands on one.

With a storage capacity double the size of any current iPods still being made, versions of the 160GB Classic – which can hold around 40,000 songs – are being sold as new via Amazon for up to £670. More than 3,000 of the models – the seventh, final version came out in 2010 – have been sold on eBay since the Classic was retired in October, most for between £350 and £500.Even refurbished older models now cost far more than the £229 for which the later generations retailed.

Continue reading ⇢

For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been wearing a Pebble smartwatch to evaluate the usefulness of notifications on my wrist.

The promise of a wrist-based notification system is one of glanceable information. “There’s no need to be rude and pull your phone out,” the wearable market says. “Just discretely look at your wrist!”

What I’ve discovered is that there are lots of situations that looking at your watch is also considered rude.

Continue reading ⇢

Leo Bodnar has a great look at the interconnect board on the Mac mini G4:

I have noticed a missing unpopulated connector on a vertical CD/HDD interconnect board. There are also a few components that were left out during assembly. There is surprisingly big (by mini standards) empty space around that area inside the mini case.

Connector has a full Firewire bus and extra control signals on it. What could it be? Integrated iPod dock at the top of Mac mini case? Interface to some other external device? Missing internal module? Extra row of external connectors on the back?

Continue reading ⇢

Jonathan Hoover breaks down what has to be one of the weirder Apple hardware prototypes that has ever leaked.

Continue reading ⇢

Earlier today, Greg Pierce, the developer of Drafts tweeted:

Welp. Enjoy the Drafts Today widget while it lasts. Apple has required me to re-submit w/o the buttons to create drafts or open the app…

— Greg Pierce (@agiletortoise) December 2, 2014

@johnvoorhees No buttons. I was told the Today view is for information presentation only, essentially.

— Greg Pierce (@agiletortoise) December 2, 2014

If this is true, it would mean Today widgets from apps like Evernote and the just-re-blessed PCalc are in trouble.

Continue reading ⇢

This is my new favorite Yosemite bug.

Continue reading ⇢

I thought the App Store was broken. Jason Snell explains it’s just dumber than it used to be.

Continue reading ⇢

Nilay Patel:

One of the best things about the iPod when it first came out was explaining how it worked — it was so simple, and people figured it out so fast. Same with the iPhone and iPad. You get the feeling that won’t be the case with the Apple Watch.

I have the same concerns, honestly.

Continue reading ⇢

Developers can get started on Glances and Actionable Notifications now; it looks like “fully native app” support is coming until later next year. Looks like the Watch will require iOS 8.2 on the iPhone.

Continue reading ⇢

File this away for the complaining we’ll all hear later this month.

Continue reading ⇢

Tim Cook’s essay in Businessweek is too important and too well-written to block quote just part of it.

Continue reading ⇢

Benedict Evans:

Tim Cook: iPod Classic was discontinued because they couldn’t get the parts. And not worth designing a whole new one.

Clearly if Apple had wanted to keep the iconic music player alive, it could have, but I believe Cook when he said the demand just wasn’t there. RIP, little spinning disk buddy.

Continue reading ⇢