Category: Reviews

We’d all like to forget the 2016-era MacBook Pros, so in this review, I’m just going to pretend they didn’t happen.

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I’m typing this on a new 14-inch MacBook Pro, powered by Apple’s new M1 Pro system on a chip. This is a huge speed increase over my old MacBook Pro, an original Retina MacBook Pro from 2012.

For the nearly nine years between the two machines, the keyboard’s feel isn’t radically different. The new keys seem slightly larger, have less space between them and feel more stable, somehow. The sound is a little deeper, but I’ve gotten used to the new keyboard pretty quickly. Apple has shipped good keyboards on their Macs for a long time, and this one is a real winner. I even dig the black well it sits in.

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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.

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I’ve used CARROT Weather for several years. I love weather apps, and I love apps that take advantage of everything Apple has to offer on its platforms, and CARROT sits right at the intersection.

The design is all-new, and more liking to my tastes than before, with less artwork and better data density. It comes with several themes, any of which you can customize. Here is how I have my CARROT Weather set up:

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Walnut, round and smooth,

keep my MagSafe puck in place

and my phone alive.

Your grabby pad means

no more chasing it around

my desk and my life.

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macOS Big Sur is bringing with a sweeping overhaul of the Mac user interface — perhaps the biggest change since Aqua was first introduced two decades ago.

As different as the new interface is, it does build on the shoulders of what came before it. Big Sur still feels like macOS, and that is more important than any given detail Apple may have gotten right or wrong in the next version of macOS. The Dock, Menu Bar and other major elements of the UI are still present. Even things like sidebars — which now extend all the way up the side of their parent window — are immediately recognizable.

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I received a Magic Keyboard for my 2018 11-inch iPad Pro yesterday, so this is not a full review, but rather a series of impressions.

The first thing I noticed is how much more solid this thing is then the Smart Keyboard Folio I’ve used for years. Of course, that includes the weight, but the overall build quality feels much, much better. This thing is stiff and exact, whereas the old style always felt a bit flimsy at times.

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It’s fall again, so it is time to consider yet another new version of macOS. This year, it is macOS Catalina, named for a small island off the coast of California.

Apple has pretty much dropped version numbers from its marketing materials, but Catalina is macOS version 10.15, the 16th major release since Mac OS X 10.0 Cheetah shipped way back in March 2001.

Like Mojave before it, Catalina support both Light and Dark Modes, but Apple has added an “Auto” appearance that changes the desktop wallpaper, mode and Night Shift white balance as the day progresses. There are actually eight variants of the default wallpaper, which you can see here.

To see a lot more of macOS Catalina, be sure to check out its page in my Aqua Screenshot Library. Over on Mac Power Users, David and I have published a bonus episode all about Catalina, so be sure to check that out, too.

Catalina is an important version of macOS, both in what it adds, but also in what it leaves behind.

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2019 has brought a lot of changes to my workload. I joined Mac Power Users, which radically changed how my work week looks, bringing to an end to a couple of projects and requiring changes to others.

I knew that to make informed decisions about my time as an indie, I needed data. Your gut will always be wrong about how you think you spend your time, but raw numbers don’t lie.

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At its “Back to the Mac” event in the fall of 2010, Apple took the wraps of the second-generation MacBook Air. In one keynote, the MacBook Air went from a too-expensive, underpowered notebook¹ to the computer that would define an entire generation of laptops.

For the next five years, the MacBook Air was the clear “default” Mac notebook for the masses, and the machine that Apple’s competitors aimed to beat in terms of power and design.

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A Little Background

I’ve been a member of the Big Phone Club since Myke Hurley talked everyone into buying an iPhone 6 Plus back in 2014 and early 2015. After that, I used the 6S Plus and 7 Plus, before moving to the iPhone X.

The iPhone X was an incredible phone, and will go down in history as bringing the future into the present, just as the iPhone 4 did, as I wrote a year ago:

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I’ll just come out and say it. I’ve always wanted to carry a more minimal wallet than the Costanza-inspired beast I’ve used for years. When you’re a dad and own two companies, there’s no end to the cards you end up carrying around.

I’ve tried a couple of slim wallets over the years, but I couldn’t whittle my life down to three or four cards, no matter how hard I tried.

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macOS Mojave is here, and can be downloaded directly via the Mac App Store.

Making the Mac More Mac-Like

The release is a bit of a weird one. In some ways, Mojave doubles down on what makes the Mac the Mac, with a lot of new features for those who want more out of the Finder, such as Desktop Stacks, which is a new way to keep things tidy on the Desktop, by arranging them by file type, creation date and more:

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