This week on Mac Power Users, David and I are joined by Chris Christensen. He is a web developer, writer and traveler with roots in 90s Apple. We discuss his work, navigating the world and a lot more.
On More Power Users — the longer and ad-free version of the show — we talk about Chris’ time working on the Newton and eWorld. I loved it.
My thanks to TextExpander for sponsoring 512 Pixels again this week.
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Network Locations is a feature of macOS that, ever since version 10.0, has allowed users to switch between different sets of network configuration preferences in different environments and situations. It’s not visible in the redesigned System Preferences app of macOS Ventura — and Tyler Loch discovered that the disappearance is not an accident. Loch’s Feedback submission to Apple has been marked as “works as currently designed.”
Length of service in macOS is not reason enough to keep any feature around, but I’ve heard from several people who say they still use this feature and are upset that it’s seemingly been terminated. It’s useful in business situations where different networks have different properties. One colleague of mine says he uses the feature to debug network problems without messing up existing settings and to connect to specific devices when visiting a relative’s house.
At first I thought maybe this had just been misplaced in the switch to System Settings,1 but if it really is gone, I agree with Jason that it’s a good opportunity for a third-party utility to shine.
Which is a disaster, as this Twitter thread by Niki Tonsky highlights. ↩︎
A public beta for full support of macOS will be available in early Q4. For now, you can still double-click to open files in Finder. Everything else is working as usual.
The “full support” language is in regard to a change Apple made in macOS 12.3 that deprecated the type of kernel extensions used by both Dropbox, Microsoft OneDrive and others. This extension allowed Mac applications to open online-only files from Dropbox as if they were stored locally. For users running macOS 12.3 or later, a workaround is available, but the experience is less than ideal.
When this change was made earlier in the year, Dropbox announced a beta due out in March that would restore the functionality, but according to today’s news, that full public beta won’t be here until the final quarter of 2022.
…at which point macOS Ventura will be out.
This week on Connected, Myke and I revisit sleep tracking and discuss the original iPad Keyboard Dock. We also cover changes in iOS 16 Beta 5, the Opal C1 webcam and Amazon’s purchase of iRobot.
This week, we are launching a new Home experience that includes feeds for both Music and Podcasts & Shows. The feature is currently rolling out to Android users and will soon be available on iOS. By creating these feeds, Spotify will help listeners to easily scroll through the type of content they’re looking for at that moment. The updated interface will make the experience more personalized while allowing users to dig even deeper into their recommendations.
In the Music feed, listeners will have quick access to suggestions based on their music taste, making discovering new favorites easier than ever. There will also be album and playlist recommendations as well as buttons that make it easy to share, like, and instantly play music.
In the Podcast & Shows feed, listeners will be able to head straight to new episodes of their favorite shows. They’ll also find personalized podcast recommendations. What’s more, listeners will be able to read episode descriptions, save to Your Episodes or start playing podcasts without leaving the page, so the experience all starts from one place.
I never understand Spotify wanting to mix music and podcasts so clearly. Music and podcasts are just fundamentally different things.
Learn about the power consumption and thermal output (BTU) of iMac computers.
Sadly the list only goes back to 2009, even on the Wayback Machine. I really wanted to see how the G5 faired.
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Today I read a story about an Apple I that is reported to have been built by Woz. That may or may not be true, according to some experts. Ethan Baron, writing at The Mercury News, has more:
Mike Graff, spokesman for Boston-based RR Auction, said Jobs gave the Apple-1 to its current owner, who wants to remain anonymous, around 1990. The device had languished for years in a drawer “with things on top of it and below it” in the famed “Apple Garage” where Jobs and Wozniak did their early work in Jobs’ childhood home in Los Altos, said Corey Cohen, a board member of the Vintage Computer Federation and a prominent Apple-1 expert.
Cohen and the auction house say Jobs used this prototype to demonstrate the Apple-1 to Paul Terrell, owner of the Byte Shop in Mountain View, one of the world’s first personal computer stores.
However, Terrell told the Bay Area News Group this week that he isn’t convinced it’s the same device.
Apple refers to the iPad as a magical pane of glass that becomes whatever you need of it. David and Stephen discuss some apps and accessories that help the iPad reach that potential.
My thanks to Magic Lasso Adblock for sponsoring 512 Pixels this week.
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It’s hard to believe that it’s been ten years since Curiosity landed on Mars. I remember watching the news come in, sitting on the edge of my seat. In the decade since, the rover has done some amazing work.