Category: Apple

…including orange, the best color of HomePod mini.

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Joe Rossignol at MacRumors:

Apple today reported Mac revenue of $9.17 billion in the fourth quarter of its 2021 fiscal year, which is an all-time quarterly revenue record for Macs. Apple CEO Tim Cook said there was “strong demand” for the M1 MacBook Air in particular.

Jason Snell’s transcript contains the exact quote from Apple CFO Luca Maestri:

For Mac, we set an all-time revenue record of $9.2 billion, despite supply constraints, driven by strong demand for our M1-powered MacBook Air. In fact, our last five quarters for Mac have been the best five quarters ever for the category. iPad performance was also strong with a September quarter revenue record of $8.3 billion, up 21%, in spite of significant supply constraints, as customer demand for the iPad Pro, also powered by M1, was very strong. For both Mac and iPad, we continue to see a combination of high levels of customer satisfaction and first-time buyers. Around half of the customers purchasing Mac and iPad during the quarter were new to that product. And in the most recent surveys of U.S. Consumers from 451 Research, customer satisfaction was 97% for both Mac and iPad.

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Native Union has made something amazing¹ — tiny little knit beanies for AirPods cases, in the spirit of iPod socks.

I mean, just look at these things!

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Andrei Frumusanu:

The new M1 Pro and M1 Max chips are designs that we’ve been waiting for over a year now, ever since Apple had announced the M1 and M1-powered devices. The M1 was a very straightforward jump from a mobile platform to a laptop/desktop platform, but it was undeniably a chip that was oriented towards much lower power devices, with thermal limits. The M1 impressed in single-threaded performance, but still clearly lagged behind the competition in overall performance.

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Speaking of Monterey, I’ve added macOS 12 to my macOS Screenshot Library for your viewing pleasure:

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John Voorhees is back with his annual macOS review, and always, he’s done a great job with it. Monterey is a bit of a sleepy release in and of itself, but it’s full of promise about the future of the Mac.

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Cabel Sasser has blown my mind:

The iPod was really good.

To celebrate, I want to show you something you’ve never seen before. Now, there are a lot of mysteries in the Panic Archives (it’s a closet) but by far one of the most mysterious is what you’re seeing for the first time today: an original early iPod prototype.

We don’t know much about where it came from. But we’ve been waiting 20 years to share it with you.

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Apple Support:

If your Mac has a Touch Bar, you can use familiar gestures—like tap, swipe, or slide—directly on the Touch Bar to adjust settings, use Siri, access function keys, and do tasks in different apps.

I would love to know what happened here. It really seems like Apple abandoned the Touch Bar pretty quickly after it launched, and now it’s all but gone.

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Apple has an updated chart showing how the new $4.99/month plan differs from a regular Apple Music plan:

From reading the press release, it seems that the Music app will offer a stripped-down experience for these users:

Apple Music Voice Plan subscribers will get a customized in-app experience with suggestions based on the listener’s music preferences and a queue of recently played music through Siri. Within the app there will also be a dedicated section called “Just Ask Siri” where subscribers can learn tips to optimize Siri for Apple Music.

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The intro video for today’s event really spoke to me:

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Next week is going to be busy; the next day is when the new MacBook Pros arrive. It looks like Safari 15 is going to be good again, and Universal Control is coming later this fall.

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There’s a lot to unpack in today’s news, but here are some details I’ve noticed already:

• The Touch Bar is dead and the display has a notch that the macOS menu bar will wrap around.
• MagSafe 3 isn’t a new charger; it’s a USB-C cable with the new magnetic attachment at one end. A spare 2 meter one will run you $49, but one comes in the box.
• One of the new models are thicker than the machines it replaces. The Intel 16-inch MacBook Pro was .64 inches thick, and the new one is .66 inches. The 14-inch MacBook Pro is .61 inches thick, just like the previous 4-port 13-inch Intel MacBook Pro
• The 14-inch MacBook Pro can be outfitted with a 8 or 10-core CPU with the M1 Pro. The 8-core machine comes with a 14-core GPU and 67W USB-C power adapter, while the 10-core comes with a 96W model charger and a 16-core GPU. The larger MacBook Pro requires a 140W charger. Fast charging requires the 96W or 140W adaptor. Neither come in fun new colors.
• The 140W charger has some cool tricks.
• The 14-inch can be equipped with a M1 Max with 10-core CPU and 32-core GPU and 32 GB of unified memory, same as the 16-inch. Both top out at 8 TB of storage.
• The smaller notebook comes with a 70-watt-hour lithium-polymer battery; the 16-inch has a 100-watt-hour unit.
• The new design features more prominent feet than before. The sides make me think of the old polycarbonate unibody MacBook in a weird way.
• The 14-inch is (as expected) slightly larger in area than the 13-inch MacBook Pro. The old machine is 11.97 inches (30.41 cm) wide and 8.36 inches (21.24 cm) deep. The new 14-inch MacBook Pro is 12.31 inches (31.26 cm) wide and 8.71 inches (22.12 cm) deep. If you use a form-fitting case of bag, you may need to made adjustments for this new notebook.
• The new thermal system can move 50% more air than before, but Apple says the fans will remain motionless for most daily tasks.
• As foretold, the new displays will run at a native 2x resolution by default at 254 pixels per inch. The 13-inch model clocks in at 227 pixels per inch.

I ordered a 14-inch model with these specs:

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