By all accounts, we’ll be seeing overhauled MacBook Pros during tomorrow’s event. These will be powered by the M1’s larger sibling. While its name is unknown, this system on a chip should propel the new MacBook Pro to new heights of performance.
After all, we’ve already seen what the M1 can do. The current MacBook Air, Mac mini and two-port MacBook Pro are amazing machines compared to their Intel predecessors. They’re fast, enjoy great battery life and are nearly (or always) silent.
I think reading into invite artwork is mostly silly, but I assume this graphic is showing how quickly an M1X Mac will look zipping past my Mac Pro.
Yours truly writing for Six Colors members:
Back in August, we passed the 10th anniversary of Tim Cook being named CEO of Apple, and of course, this week marks ten years since the passing of Steve Jobs.
A lot of water has gone under the bridge in the decade since, and in my mind, there are three major inflection points when it comes to Apple under Tim Cook.
Andrei Frumusanu at AnandTech:
Overall, while the A15 isn’t the brute force iteration we’ve become used to from Apple in recent years, it very much comes with substantial generational gains that allow it to be a notably better SoC than the A14. In the end, it seems like Apple’s SoC team has executed well after all.
Steve’s last words to me were that he would miss talking together. I was sitting on the floor next to his bed, my back against the wall.
After he died, I walked out into the garden. I remember the sound of the latch on the wooden door as I gently pulled it closed.
In the garden, I sat and thought how talking often gets in the way of listening and thinking. Perhaps that is why so much of our time together was spent quietly.
Apple Watch Series 7, featuring the largest and most advanced Apple Watch display ever — and a reengineered Always-On Retina display with significantly more screen area and thinner borders — will be available to order beginning Friday, October 8, at 5 a.m. PDT and available in stores starting Friday, October 15.
Currently, the Series 7 isn’t in the Apple Store app at all. I hope I can save a pre-order like I did with my iPhone.
Nine years ago, I reviewed the original iPad mini and wrote:
The iPad mini doesn’t add anything to the iOS experience feature-wise, but it does make using iPad apps out in the real world far more likely. I never felt comfortable using my iPad outside the office or house, but I think I’ll be taking this smaller, lighter iPad with me more often.
In the years since, the iPad line has expanded into multiple models, all slowly filling in a continuum of sizes and prices. Somewhere along the way, the iPad mini got left behind by most of us as iPadOS grew more capable.
Federico Viticci has published his annual iOS and iPadOS review. I got to read much of it over the last few days, and it’s Federico at the top of his game. Grab an iPad and get to reading!
As someone who has crashed more than one bicycle,1 I’m excited to see this feature.
Wear a helmet, kids. ↩︎
There’s a lot of news to digest, but I’m a little sad the new Apple Watch doesn’t have the rumored flat sides and that we didn’t get new AirPods.
However, the new iPad mini and iPhone 13 Pro Max will keep me warm (and broke) at night.
Jonathan Zeller, writing at McSweeny’s about Ted Lasso:
Ted Lasso was the most surprising show of 2020. In its debut season, the plucky underdog sitcom delighted an audience tired of pandemic fears, political conflicts, and natural disasters. They retreated into a comforting world in which a single good person—Ted Lasso, an American football coach played by the charming Jason Sudeikis—overcomes the doubts and malign intentions of strangers not by destroying them, but by transforming them into better versions of themselves. As viewers, we felt a similar process take place in our own living rooms. Well, most of us did. Some detractors revealed their true nature as vessels for unadulterated evil who deserve pain because they can’t let us enjoy one thing on this awful planet, which got that way thanks to monsters like them.
John Voorhees has an epic look at last week’s injunction. It’ll take a long time to sort all of this out.