This week on a Very Normal Episode of Connected:
The boys celebrate the holidays with their annual gift exchange, and then it’s time to make predictions for what will happen in 2023–but first, it’s time to score our picks from the past year and crown a new champion.
The team over at MacStories has announced their annual MacStories Selects awards and it’s hard to disagree with any of the choices.
The program now covers the M1 iMac, M1 Mac mini, Mac Studio and Studio Display.
With this comes a new batch of Repair Manuals, which I naturally downloaded and looked through. I love this exploded view of my beloved Mac Studio:
Here’s what all of those parts are:
Compared to this thing, the inside of the Mac mini is downright simple.
This firmware update addresses possible intermittent flickering and compatibility issues. In some cases those issues may include no video on some external monitors when using the Mini DisplayPort to VGA adapter with your Mini DisplayPort-enabled Mac.
MarsEdit 5 is a major upgrade to the preeminent Mac app for editing WordPress, Micro.blog, Tumblr, and many other types of blogs.
The new Microposting feature makes it “as easy to post to your own blog as it is to post to Twitter.” When MarsEdit 5 is running on your Mac, just press a configurable global keyboard shortcut, write out your latest thoughts, and instantly publish to your blog.
MarsEdit supports editing posts in rich or plain text, and the latest update is especially great for Markdown fans. Now when you’re writing Markdown in plain text mode, MarsEdit applies live, beautiful syntax highlighting to make it easier to focus separately on the content and style of your posts.
MarsEdit is used by top bloggers to maximize their productivity and enjoyment of blogging. It’s great for pros like John Gruber of Daring Fireball and yours truly, while also being simple enough to remove the mystery of blogging for everyday folks who just want to share their thoughts with the world.
Download MarsEdit 5 today, and see what all the hype is about. It’ll make you a better blogger!
Twitter is where the public conversation is happening, and where people from all over the globe come to promote their businesses, art, ideas, and more. We know that many of our users may be active on other social media platforms; however, going forward, Twitter will no longer allow free promotion of specific social media platforms on Twitter.
At both the Tweet level and the account level, we will remove any free promotion of prohibited 3rd-party social media platforms, such as linking out (i.e. using URLs) to any of the below platforms on Twitter, or providing your handle without a URL.
Offenders include:
Seems about right.
Update: And a day later, the rule is gone, after Twitter Safety ran a poll on the issue. What a joke.
On this feedback episode of MPU, David and I reflect on the first year of the MacSparky Labs, discuss the recent Eufy camera news and answer a bunch of listener questions.
Ford’s raising the price of its F-150 Lightning pickup yet again — this time, by about $4,000 (via CNBC). The increase affects both the entry-level Pro model for business customers and the consumer-focused XLT trim with no added options, which now start at $55,974 and $63,474, respectively.
For comparison, the Pro work truck initially started at $39,974 when it launched back in April, but subsequent price hikes brought the price up to $46,974 in August and $51,974 in October. The base XLT, on the other hand, launched with a sticker price of $52,974 before that increased to $59,474 several months later.
I would still love a Lightning, but Ford is pricing me right into the arms of my 8-year-old-and-already-paid-for Tacoma.
I recently sat down with Martin Feld to talk about the history of Connected and Relay FM, as well as my story as an indie content person on the web. Go check it out.
I’ve been saying this for a long time now, but this computer makes a ton of sense. Having two notebook familes — each with two sizes — would be nice and clean:
As a nice bonus, I think this arrangment would let Apple finally put the 13-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar out to pasture.
I recently asked ChatGPT a complicated question:
Which Performa was the best?
Here’s what it replied:
It is difficult to say which Performa model was the best, as it ultimately depends on individual preferences and needs.
The Performa line of computers was introduced by Apple in 1992 and included a range of models with varying specifications and features. Some of the most popular Performa models included the Performa 600, which featured a 66 MHz PowerPC processor and 8 MB of RAM, and the Performa 6116CD, which featured a 120 MHz PowerPC processor and 16 MB of RAM. These models were popular among home users and were known for their speed and reliability.
As no human — not even yours truly — can keep up with every Performa model, I decided to look up on the two systems mentioned.1 The Performa 600 was a desktop Mac with a 32 MHz 68030 CPU, and came stock with 4 MB of memory. As confident as it sounded, ChatGPT got this one wrong.
(Here’s a little trick when it comes to all Performas. If it has a 3-digit model name, it’s powered by a Motorola 680x0. If it’s got a 4-digit designation, then it’s a PowerPC model.)
The Performa 6116CD came in a low-profile desktop case and ran at 60 MHz and came with 8 MB of RAM by default, so once again ChatGPT doubled its specs.
As far as the line about these computers being “popular among home users and were known for their speed and reliability,” I’ve got mixed feelings.
Here’s a bit from LowEndMac about the Performa 600:
The Performa 600 was an okay computer, but a big “Huh?” for Mac IIci users. Where the LC and LC II had been compromised by using a 32-bit processor on a 16-bit data bus, the Performa 600 ran a 32 MHz CPU on a 16 MHz bus. This gave it slower performance than the 25 MHz IIci, which was still available. In fact, the old 16 MHz Mac IIx outperformed the Performa 600 on some benchmarks!
Worse yet, the Performa 600, doesn’t support a level 2 cache in the Processor Direct Slot, although it will accept accelerators.
The 600 did have some things going for it, as it was the first Mac available with a built-in CD-ROM drive, but overall, it was a bit of a dud.
Then there’s the 6116CD, which was bundled with a package of software aimed at small businesses. Being a later model, it also had Mac OS 8.0 support, which the 600 never got. The 6116CD also got a price cut in February 1996, seven months after its introduction in July 1995. Like other Performa models, it didn’t come with discrete video memory, instead pulling from system RAM for video output. Thankfully, the PDS slot meant users had an upgrade path on that front.
As it tunrs out, ChatGPT is a terrible Apple historian. AI won’t be taking that part of my job over any time soon … probably.
I did remember that the first Performas were launched in September 1992. I don’t know if Apple pre-announced them in April, however. ↩︎