Category: Apple

Today, Apple has updated the iMac. While the design remains the same, it’s a meaningful update here in the twilight of the Intel era.

Here’s Apple:

“Now more than ever, our customers are relying on the Mac. And many of them need the most powerful and capable iMac we’ve ever made,” said Tom Boger, Apple’s senior director of Mac and iPad Product Marketing. “With blazing performance, double the memory, SSDs across the line with quadruple the storage, an even more stunning Retina 5K display, a better camera, higher fidelity speakers, and studio-quality mics, the 27-inch iMac is loaded with new features at the same price. It’s the ultimate desktop, to work, create, and communicate.”

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Apple PR:

Apple today announced financial results for its fiscal 2020 third quarter ended June 27, 2020. The Company posted quarterly revenue of $59.7 billion, an increase of 11 percent from the year-ago quarter, and quarterly earnings per diluted share of $2.58, up 18 percent. International sales accounted for 60 percent of the quarter’s revenue.

“Apple’s record June quarter was driven by double-digit growth in both Products and Services and growth in each of our geographic segments,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “In uncertain times, this performance is a testament to the important role our products play in our customers’ lives and to Apple’s relentless innovation. This is a challenging moment for our communities, and, from Apple’s new $100 million Racial Equity and Justice Initiative to a new commitment to be carbon neutral by 2030, we’re living the principle that what we make and do should create opportunity and leave the world better than we found it.”

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Word on the street is that the iMac is due for a spec bump any time.¹ A 10-core model has been spotted on Geekbench, and with Apple saying more Intel Macs are in the pipeline, it makes sense that this iMac could come out before the end of the year.

The current iMac isn’t all that … modern. The design reaches back to 2012, all standard models come with a Fusion Drive at best and all but the top-of-the-line model comes with an 8th-gen Intel processor or older.

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Apple Support:

To communicate with a Wi-Fi network, a device must identify itself to the network using a unique network address called a media access control (MAC) address. If the device always uses the same Wi-Fi MAC address, network operators and other network observers can more easily relate that address to the device’s network activity and location over time. This allows a kind of user tracking or profiling, and it applies to all devices on all Wi-Fi networks.

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I’ve been running the iOS 14 beta for a little while on both my iPad Pro and iPhone 11 Pro, and wanted to highlight some of my favorite features:

• Widgets: I am loving having my calendar, weather and Shortcuts out on my home screen. This will only get better when third-party applications start adding support for them later this year. While they take up spots I used to have apps in, being able to ditch an app’s icon is a nice side effect.
• Folders in Shortcuts: One of the first things I did was organize my shortcuts into several folders. These folders can then be turned into widgets. Organization bliss!
• Changes in Mail: Nah, JK. Apple never adds features to Mail.
• Pinned threads in Messages: I love that this feature works both with individuals and groups, and as a bonus, they sync across devices, including Macs running Big Sur. My only wish is that the layout was a little more dense; I’d like to have four across, not just three.
• Compact UI elements: No phone call can take over the screen now!

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It’s in Software Update now. Here’s what is new:

Apple News:

• Local news in your Today feed provides extensive coverage of San Francisco, the Bay Area, Los Angeles, Houston, and New York City
• More stories available from local news providers with a subscription to Apple News+
• our daily newsletter from Apple News can now be personalized with stories that reflect your interests

This update also includes bug fixes and other improvements:

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Yours truly, writing for Six Colors members:

Any time there is a big set of UI changes in macOS, I like to see what Apple has done to the System Preferences app.

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Jean-Louis Gassée, writing about the fallout coming with Apple silicon Macs:

This leaves Microsoft with a choice: Either forget Windows on ARM and concede modern PCs to Apple, or forge ahead, fix app compatibility problems and offer an ARM-based alternative to Apple’s new Macs. It’s a false dilemma, of course. Microsoft will forge ahead…with repercussions for the rest of the Windows PC industry.

Specifically, what are Dell, HP, Asus, and others going to do if Apple offers materially better laptops and desktops and Microsoft continues to improve Windows on ARM Surface devices? In order to compete, PC manufacturers will have to follow suit, they’ll “go ARM” because, all defensive rhetoric aside, Apple and Microsoft will have made the x86 architecture feel like what it actually is: old.

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John Voorhees:

Apple has opened its public beta program for iOS 14, iPadOS 14, macOS Big Sur, tvOS 14, and watchOS 7 on the Apple Beta Software Program website. One notable difference between this year’s public betas and those of past years is that this is the first time watchOS has been included in the program.

Developers, who can access betas of Apple’s OS releases before the general public, received the first developer betas on June 22nd, the first day of WWDC and a second version earlier this week. If past practice is a guide, the public beta released today should be identical to the second developer beta released on Tuesday.

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In a statement to Rene Ritchie:

Over a decade ago, Apple partnered with Intel to design and develop Thunderbolt, and today our customers enjoy the speed and flexibility it brings to every Mac. We remain committed to the future of Thunderbolt and will support it in Macs with Apple silicon.

Not a shock, but it’s good to see this.

Also, I guess we’re going with “Apple silicon” with the s lowercase…?

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This time on Liftoff:

Black holes doing weird black hole things, a progress report on the SLS and a discussion of how some of NASA’s facilities should be renamed.

My thanks to our sponsor:

• Tuparev Technologies: Introducing StarBrush: Modern astronomical imaging tool for everyone.

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People will complain which will be annoying, but’s it’s a good move from the environmental perspective.

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