Category: Apple

iFixit Tears Down 2019 MacBook Pro⇢

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The crew at iFixit has taken apart one of the new MacBook Pros, complete with its revised keyboards. The material that makes up the membrane over the switches is new, now made of nylon, as opposed to polyacetylene on the 2018 models.

Whatever that means.

The metal dome under each key is also tweaked slightly.

Time will tell if these keyboards hold up any better than their predecessors. I think that Apple has made improvements here over the years, but the company has a long way to go before users will fully trust these machines again.

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Apple Introduces Updated MacBook Pros, Extends Keyboard Service Program⇢

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Apple has updated the MacBook Pro today, just two weeks before WWDC. Jason Snell has details:

These updates don’t bring any changes to the exterior of the MacBook Pro—it’s the same base design introduced in late 2016—but they do bring 9th-generation Intel processors with up to eight cores to the MacBook Pro for the first time. There’s also been yet another tweak to the controversial butterfly keyboard Apple first introduced in 2015.

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Beyond the Tablet⇢

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After months of work, Federico has published a manifesto of sorts about the working on the iPad Pro:

Seven years after I started (slowly) replacing my MacBook Air with an iPad, my life is different, but one principle still holds true: I never want to find myself forced to work on a computer that’s only effective at home, that can’t be held in my hands, or that can’t be customized for different setups. For this reason, the iPad Pro is the best computer for the kind of lifestyle I want.

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Bitcode May Be Key to x86/ARM Developer Transition⇢

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Steven Troughton-Smith has spent some time testing one route to get from x86 to ARM for Mac apps:

Of course, the specter of macOS on ARM has been in the public psyche for many years now, and many have pondered whether Bitcode will make this transition more straightforward. The commonly held belief is that Bitcode is not suited to massive architectural changes like moving between Intel and ARM.

I was unconvinced, so I decided to test the theory!

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Marzipan Apps and the Mac App Store⇢

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Dave Mark, writing at The Loop:

Interesting difference between the Mac and iOS is the ability to download and run a Mac app without any involvement from Apple. While you can sideload an iOS app using Apple’s Mobile Device Management, Test Flight, or by building the app yourself, none of those offer the freedom the Mac brings.

Will Marzipan change that, even a bit? Will I be able to download a Marzipan app from a developer’s site and just run it on my Mac? Or will Marzipan restrict apps to the Mac App Store?

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Considering the Next iPhone XR

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This year’s colorful, cheaper-but-still-more-expensive-than-any-other-entry-level-model iPhone XR is a fascinating phone. It delivers iPhone XS performance in a nice enclosure, with just enough corners rounded cut to be more in line with previous iPhone prices.

I spent a couple of weeks with a blue model in January, and fell in love with it. The LCD is great, battery life is incredible and the colors are a lot of fun. At the end of the day, I found myself missing the second camera on the back of the XS, however:

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Downlink⇢

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Anthony Colangelo of the space blog and podcast Main Engine Cut Off has a new Mac app out, named Downlink:

While browsing the GOES Image Viewer a few months ago, I had an idea: with the data frequency that these new GOES satellites provide, I could build a Mac app that pulls the newest image every 20 minutes and sets it as your desktop background.

What resulted was a simple little menu bar app that gives you a near real-time view of Earth all day long. I’ve been using it for a few weeks as I’ve built it, and it is an absolute joy to have a window to Earth all day.

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