512 Pixels

Ben Zotto:

Apple’s second computer — its first to have a case — launched in 1977, and that boxy beige Apple II was soon everywhere: in classrooms, living rooms and offices. At the vanguard of a generation of personal computers to come, it featured a particular and carefully-chosen beige. But what did that look like? Those first machines — the ones that have escaped landfills anyway — have shifted in color over 40 years. The documented public record is sketchy and confused. But I stumbled upon a way to investigate what Apple Beige was like.

I love this.

via kottke.org

This week on the show, we plan the WWDC Olympics, talk about what’s inside the AirPods Max and what the future of the Mac Pro may look like. Lastly, a report about folding iPhones is considered.

On Connected Pro, we reflect on the Inauguration, Ticci talks about TIDAL and I give an update on my foot.

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John Hendrickson, writing at The Atlantic:

Maybe you’ve heard Biden talk about his boyhood stutter. A non-stutterer might not notice when he appears to get caught on words as an adult, because he usually maneuvers out of those moments quickly and expertly. But on other occasions, like that night in Detroit, Biden’s lingering stutter is hard to miss. He stutters— if slightly—on several sounds as we sit across from each other in his office. Before addressing the debate specifically, I mention what I’ve just heard. “I want to ask you, as, you know, a … stutterer to, uh, to a … stutterer. When you were … talking a couple minutes ago, it, it seemed to … my ear, my eye … did you have … trouble on s? Or on … m?”

Biden looks down. He pivots to the distant past, telling me that the letter s was hard when he was a kid. “But, you know, I haven’t stuttered in so long that it’s hhhhard for me to remember the specific—” He pauses. “What I do remember is the feeling.”

This is a powerful piece about something a lot of people deal with, including one of my children.

While I didn’t stutter, I spent over a decade in speech therapy as a child, and while my former struggles don’t often show their hand, I’m always thinking about what words or combinations of sounds may give me trouble. It’s exhausting, and I’m not speaking to the entire nation.

This post by David Sparks reminded me that I haven’t written about my backup strategy in some time.

The basic tools I use are unchanged from the last time I wrote about the topic. Time Machine is still my first line of defense, with Carbon Copy Cloner and Backblaze handling off-site backups.

However, the Drobo outlined in that 2018 post has been decommissioned, with its files now residing on my Mac Pro.

Thanks to the tower’s expandability, I’ve been able to add an internal clone, which updates nightly via Carbon Copy Cloner as well. That clone, the Time Machine drive and the Archives volume are all internal to the tower:

As far as my notebook, nothing has changed. I have a Time Machine drive that gets plugged in pretty often, and it’s also backed up to Backblaze and an off-site drive:

Every time I write an update about this, I share my thoughts on backups in general:

1. Be redundant. Having a single backup is good, but what happens if it gets killed by the same power outage that cooks your computer.
2. Be easy to manage. Time Machine is popular because it’s easy to setup and doesn’t need on-going care. Anything past the built-in backup will take more work, but it’s good to minimize it.
3. Be testable. Every once in a while, restore data from a backup to make sure everything’s going well. This doesn’t have to be some big, drawn out thing. For me, a small recovery can put my mind at ease every quarter or so.

Apple Support:

If you add a track from an audio CD into your iMovie HD project, you may be unable to eject that CD while iMovie HD is running.

This can happen if you’re using iMovie HD in Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger.

To eject your CD, save your project and quit iMovie HD. You will then be able to eject your CD normally. After the CD is ejected, open iMovie again and resume work on your project.

If you have a number of CD tracks that you wish to add to an iMovie project, you can avoid this issue by first importing the tracks into iTunes. Once they are in your iTunes Library, they will be available for use in iMovie HD without needing to have the CD in your computer.

This time on Flashback, Quinn and I look back — in 3D! — at the Amazon Fire Phone. Between its operating system, unusual gesture system and a price that was way too high, it was dead on arrival. After that, we went shopping for each other, picking out some unusual products that bear Amazon’s name today.

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This week on Mac Power Users:

Writer and lawyer Jeff Richardson returns to the show to update Stephen and David on how he’s working at a 12.9-inch iPad Pro most of the time, even when needing to use Windows.

In More Power Users, we spoke about Project Titan, Apple’s heavily-rumored car project.

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Michael, writing on the Panic blog:

Once upon a time, we made one of the earliest MP3 players for the Mac, Audion. We’ve come to appreciate that Audion captured a special moment in time, and we’ve been trying to preserve its history. Back in March, we revealed that we were working on converting Audion faces to a more modern format so they could be preserved.

Since then, we’ve succeeded in converting 867 faces, and are currently working on a further 15 faces, representing every Audion face we know of.

Today, we’d like to give you the chance to experience these faces yourself on any Mac running 10.12 or later. We’re releasing a stripped-down version of Audion for modern macOS to view these faces.

I can’t tell you how much self control it has taken not to spend a day fiddling with this.

My thanks to Backblaze for sponsoring 512 Pixels this week. Get peace of mind knowing your files are backed up securely in the cloud. You can a free 15-day trial with Backblaze and get unlimited computer backup for your Mac or PC.

The current iMac design hails from 2012, so it’s no big surprise that Apple is readying a new, modern iMac, but Gurman has two other interesting things in his report:

Apple is also working on a pair of new Mac Pro desktop computers, its priciest Mac machines that don’t come with a screen included, the people said. One version is a direct update to the current Mac Pro and will continue to use the same design as the version launched in 2019. Apple has discussed continuing to use Intel processors for that model rather than moving to its own chips.

The second version, however, will use Apple’s own processors and be less than half the size of the current Mac Pro. The design will feature a mostly aluminum exterior and could invoke nostalgia for the Power Mac G4 Cube, a short-lived smaller version of the Power Mac, an earlier iteration of the Mac Pro.

Updating the 2019 Mac Pro with new Intel chips would indicate to me a couple of things. First, that Apple knows not all high-end users are ready to switch to Apple silicon, and secondly, that Apple’s chips that could rival the Xeons currently in use aren’t going to be ready super soon.

I would be really surprised if Apple ships both of these concepts at the same time, so maybe the full-sized Mac Pro comes out, then is replaced with the smaller one.

Every time the company has made a small pro desktop, things have gone terribly wrong. The Cube was a real miss, and we all know how the 2013 Mac Pro turned out. Hopefully the third time is the charm.

Also in his report is a bit on a new external display geared to normal humans. I’m all for it.

It is no secret that more Apple silicon Macs are on their way. For the first three models, the new versions are more or less the same as their Intel counterparts, just way faster and better. The Mac mini, MacBook Air and 13-inch MacBook Pro with M1 all look just like the older models.

That may be changing soon, and for the better.

Juli Clover, writing at MacRumors:

According to Kuo, Apple is developing two models in 14 and 16-inch size options. The new MacBook Pro machines will feature a flat-edged design, which Kuo describes as “similar to the iPhone 12” with no curves like current models. It will be the most significant design update to the MacBook Pro in the last five years.

There will be no OLED Touch Bar included, with Apple instead returning to physical function keys. Kuo says the MagSafe charging connector design will be restored, though it’s not quite clear what that means as Apple has transitioned to USB-C. The refreshed MacBook Pro models will have additional ports, and Kuo says that Most people may not need to purchase dongles to supplement the available ports on the new machines. Since 2016, Apple’s MacBook Pro models have been limited to USB-C ports with no other ports available.

Mark Gurman has more:

A major change to the new computers will be how they charge. Over the past five years, Apple has relied on USB-C ports for both power and data transfer on its laptops, making them compatible with other manufacturers’ chargers. But the company is now bringing back MagSafe, the magnetic power adapter that means any accidental yanking of the power cable would simply detach it from the laptop rather than pull down the entire computer. It was a favorite feature of the company’s portable PC lineup that was first introduced in 2006 and most recently revived for its latest lineup of iPhones.

The return of MagSafe with the next MacBook Pros will also allow those laptops to charge at a faster rate, the person said. The connector will be similar to the elongated pill-shape design of the older MagSafe port.

Any time I plug in a laptop with MagSafe, I get sad that Apple dropped the connector. It was just so damn clever I still can’t believe the company killed it off. But the news keeps getting better, as Gurman and Kuo both report that the Touch Bar may be removed from these new models.

People are all over the place on how they think and feel about the Touch Bar, but Apple’s lack of meaningful updates to how it interacts with macOS makes me think it hasn’t been the hit the company wanted it to be. That said, if Apple was going to fully drop the Touch Bar, the M1 MacBook Pro I am typing this one sure seems like an outlier, as it has a Touch Bar. I could see a world where it becomes optional.

Additionally, Kuo writes that these new machines — due sometime in Q3 2021 — will come with additional ports that would mean users would need fewer dongles. While this could just be more USB-C ports, the return of USB A would be welcome. I’m not holding my breath for much more.

I love that these rumors are so exciting again. 2021 is going to be a fun year to be a Mac nerd.