512 Pixels

Zac Bowden at Windows Central:

Microsoft today confirmed plans to rebuild its Edge browser using Chromium, in a move designed to improve web performance and app availability across platforms. Windows Central reported earlier about the shift in strategy and now it is official.

The new version of Edge is expected to start shipping as a beta in the coming months, and will run on Windows 7, 8, 10 as well as macOS. With Chromium under the hood, users should can expect a better and faster browsing experience than Edge or IE before it could ever offer.

Microsoft Edge coming to the Mac will be the first time Microsoft’s flagship browser has been on the platform since Internet Explorer 5.2.3, 15 years ago

— Steve Troughton-Smith (@stroughtonsmith) December 6, 2018

This week on Connected, we’re all back together:

Myke, Federico and Stephen talk about their use of Shortcuts, Apple Music heading to the Amazon Echo and a bit of BREAKING NEWS.

My thanks to our sponsors:

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It costs $39 and looks pretty good, but why wasn’t it available at launch?

Update: John Gruber has one and has reviewed it:

Feel-wise it’s sort of half plastic-y, half rubbery. Plastic-y enough that it doesn’t stretch from the edges of the phone. Rubbery enough that it feels nice and grippy without being too grippy — it slides in and out of a jeans pocket easier than an Apple silicone case. Unlike any of Apple’s other iPhone cases, there is a very slight lip around the camera cutout on this case. I don’t know why, but it means the phone doesn’t quite sit flush back-down on a flat surface. My best guess is that the case is so thin it needs the lip lest the camera bump jut out.

He closes with this:

It’s so good it makes me wonder why Apple doesn’t make clear cases like this one for the iPhone XS and XS Max.

Myke said the same thing on Connected yesterday. I think a clear case on the gold iPhone XS would look sweet.

This week on Query:

Mikah talks about the benefits of the Hue Bridge, and walks through his desk setup before he and Stephen dive into iMessage syncing, Apple’s Podcasts app and more.

As the title gives away, we are announcing today that we are winding down this podcast. I have loved making the show with both Serenity and Mikah, but it is time to move onto other things.

My thanks to our sponsors for this episode:

• Pingdom: Start monitoring your websites and servers today. Use offer code QUERY to get 30% off.
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This week on Liftoff, Jason Snell and I cover a lot of ground:

The end of 2018 is proving to be busy: InSight has landed, OSIRIS-REx has rendezvoused with Bennu, SpaceX is breaking records and the CLPS program is here, for what that’s worth.

My thanks to our sponsors:

• Squarespace: Make your next move. Enter offer code LIFTOFF at checkout to get 10% off your first purchase.
• StoryWorth: The easiest way to share your story.

On this week’s Mac Power Users, Katie and David spoke about subscriptions, including those through the iOS App Store. These can be managed from a central location, but it is buried in the App Store. I made this handy Shortcut to quickly jump right to them.

Apple Support:

If you try to open a PowerPC-based application, you might see a message that you can’t open the application because PowerPC applications are no longer supported. You might also see a prohibitory sign over the icon of the application in the Finder.

Contact the maker of the application for a version that is compatible with your macOS version.

In a few years, we can just swap all instances of “PowerPC” in this document with “Intel.”

As far as Apple press events, this one wasn’t a huge deal: the Mac mini got an Intel CPU, the iPod got some leather cases and the iPod Hi-Fi was introduced.

However, as I came across the video today while researching another topic, I couldn’t help but watch it. Jobs sounds a little under the weather here, but he’s loose and relaxed. I especially enjoyed the segment when he shows Front Row working on the Mac mini.

Big news today in the smart home assistant world: Apple Music will soon become a source for the Amazon Echo devices. Here’s a bit from Amazon’s blog post about the move:

“Music is one of the most popular features on Alexa—since we launched Alexa four years ago, customers are listening to more music in their homes than ever before,” said Dave Limp, senior vice president, Amazon Devices. “We are committed to offering great music providers to our customers and since launching the Music Skill API to developers just last month, we’ve expanded the music selection on Alexa to include even more top tier services. We’re thrilled to bring Apple Music – one of the most popular music services in the US – to Echo customers this holiday.”

My household is in a slow transition away from the Echo and to the HomePod, but I still want to see how this works when it rolls out on December 17. I assume there will be some limitations to the integration when compared to the HomePod itself, as does Federico:

I expect the Music/Echo integration to be more limited than HomePod (no word on lyrics search, for example), and of course HomePod will work with HomeKit/iCloud/iOS apps, but this is a major shift for Apple regardless (and a good move to grow Music) https://t.co/teMpta77SW

— Federico Viticci (@viticci) November 30, 2018

However the details shake out, this is a huge move. It signals that Apple is interested in expanding its services beyond its hardware, something unthinkable just a few years ago. My guess is that this will make a lot of Apple Music users quite happy.

This week on a very fun episode of Connected:

Stephen and Federico walk through their new Mac mini setups, then Federico fights with iCloud in Radar #46282145. Please help.

My thanks to our sponsors:

• Linode: High performance SSD Linux servers for all of your infrastructure needs. Get a $20 credit with promo code ‘connected2018’
• Luna Display: The only hardware solution that turns your iPad into a wireless display for your Mac. Use promo code CONNECTED at checkout for 10% off.
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Shara Tibken at CNET:

Apple’s iPhone XR has been outselling the iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max every day since the cheaper, colorful phone hit the market last month.

Greg Joswiak, Apple vice president of product marketing, told CNET in an interview Wednesday that the device has “been our most popular iPhone each and every day since the day it became available.”

Daniel Knight at LowEndMac has taken on quite the project:

A couple weeks ago I picked up 12 used Power Mac G5s for free, and I already had five at home, including one dual-core machine. One of these has no power supply (I bought a single CPU model for less than a used power supply for my dual processor G5 would have cost me). Some of the newly acquired ones have no RAM, no video cards, and/or no hard drives. But except for the three 1.6 GHz machines and the dual-core model, they all take the same memory. Further, I can readily swap drives and video cards, giving the fastest machines better configurations.

This article really made me miss the old Mac towers. I hope the upcoming Mac Pro is a return to form in terms of upgradability over time.