512 Pixels

Andrew Cunningham has put together a great article looking at the history of Hackintoshing, and the reasons many decide to build their own macOS-running computers:

It’s 2017. The desktop computer market is a little boring. Apple needs to find the courage to let its desktops be a little boring. It would serve the company’s pro users better, and the non-pro users are unlikely to care. They’re mostly buying laptops anyway.

I’ve been thinking a lot about why Apple has said it’s going to take at least the rest of this year to ship a new Mac Pro. I’m worried that Apple can’t help itself, and is going to try too hard to make something clever and beautiful.

Real pros don’t care as much about those things as other users do, and Apple should strive to build something simple and straight-forward. Surely that could shave some time off the project, as a bonus.

This thing will still run macOS Sierra, despite Apple washing its hands of any obligation to repair these machines.

If you do have one of these MacBooks, upgrading the drive and RAM for Sierra is pretty simple.

One of my favorite conferences is back for 2017:

For the third year in a row, Release Notes will gather together the best and brightest in the iOS and Mac development community to share our experiences, our struggles, and our victories in the face of an ever-changing software market. Whether you work for yourself, a small team, or a large company, if you’re the type of person who is interested in learning how a technology business is built and maintained, you’ll want to spend time in Chicago with us this fall.

Federico is speaking, and on Sunday, October 15, we will be doing a live Connected. Tickets are available when you buy a ticket to the conference, so get moving.

May is National Brain Tumor Awareness Month. To mark the occasion, 512 Pixels has donned an all-gray theme for the month.

Personally, I’ve struggled with awareness campaigns in the past. Too often, I think I get handed a flyer or see a blog post just to think “That’s terrible” before moving on with my day.

Maybe this blog post will be like that for you, but I’m hoping it won’t be.

As I’m sure many of you know, my wife and I’s oldest child has brain cancer. He was diagnosed when he as just a baby, back on Mother’s Day in 2009.

Every September, during National Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, I raise money for St. Jude, the hospital that has — quite literally — saved Josiah’s life, without charging my family a dime for his care.

This month, I’m not asking you to donate to St. Jude, but rather consider this terrible disease on the whole. Cancer is a sick bastard. It turns kids into orphans, rips spouses away from each other, and leaves parents burying their children. It attacks infants, children, teenagers, adults and the elderly. It doesn’t give a shit about where you went to school or how much money you make; any person who crosses its path will suffer. We are all made equal in light of its strength.

Brain cancer is a particularly nasty brand. Because of the brain’s privileged position, cancer there can strip almost anything from a person. With it often comes impaired senses, physical disability, mental hardship, personality changes and emotional turmoil. Its reach extends far beyond boundaries on a MRI screen; it can do damage in any nook and cranny of the human body without ever leaving the skull.

It doesn’t have to be like this. We can beat this thing and wrestle back control. Beyond giving to some place like St. Jude, there are many ways to be involved. Things like federal research funding and healthcare that protects those with pre-exsisting conditions matter. Things like local fundraisers and volunteering matter.

I know 2017 is a big mess. There are lots of things to get worked up about in our current climate, but cancer has been taking our family, friends, neighbors and co-workers far too long.

It’s time we punch that son of a bitch right in the teeth.

iStumbler is the leading wireless discovery tool for Mac OS X, providing plugins for finding Wi-Fi networks, Bluetooth devices, Bonjour services, Location information, and now 2.4 & 5 GHz Spectrum analysis with your Mac.

Release 102 adds a new Spectrum plug-in, with support for Oscium’s Award Winning WiPry 5x 2.4 & 5 GHz Wi-Fi Spectrum Analyzer for iOS, Android, Windows and (Finally!) macOS.

iStumbler is now just $9.99 for all the computers that you own.

Oscium’s WiPry 5x hardware is available at the Oscium Store for $499.

I know crowd-funded movies often fall apart, I can’t help but link to this one:

This is a film about a little green computer and the people who love it.

Newton was the first mass-produced touchscreen handheld computer made by Apple. It only lasted a few years on the market (1993 to 1998), but that wasn’t because it sucked! A large community of people still love Newton, and this film is an homage to the little device(s) by the people who still remember and even still use one.

It’s a 90-minute documentary about the Newton and the community that is still in love with it today.

magnetic wonder

keep my laptop safe and sound

MagSafe, you’re the best

your small LED

shone brightly in the darkness

showing charge and hope

today, you are gone

replaced by USB-C

hashtag dongle life

In August 2016, Myke Hurley and Jason Snell spent several days with me here in Memphis. We had many conversations about our work and the future of Relay FM.

One late afternoon, we had drinks at the top of a metal pyramid that is now a Bass Pro Shop to talk through an idea for a new show.

While most of our tech podcasts are about a certain company or a specific corner of tech, we’ve wanted to do something broader for a while. We sketched out a panel-driven show about the week’s most important technology stories.

Today, we’re launching that show. It’s called Download, and the first episode is available now.

Jason Snell is the host. Each week, he and two guests will talk through the biggest three tech topics of the week, plus one or two you may have missed. This format gives us another show we where we can work on bringing new and diverse voices to the network.

I’m working behind the scenes as the producer to help keep the wheels of the machine turning. The first episode was a lot of fun to put together, and I think you’re going to enjoy it.

Here’s how to subscribe:

• Apple Podcasts
• RSS
• Overcast
• Pocket Casts

Jason Del Ray:

Apple’s on-again, off-again flirtation with building its own money-transfer service appears to be back on.

The company has recently held discussions with payments industry partners about introducing its own Venmo competitor, according to multiple sources familiar with the talks. The service would allow iPhone owners to send money digitally to other iPhone owners, these people said.

I’d love to see this. I currently use Square Cash for stuff like this, but something better-integrated into iOS would be a big win.

On this week’s Liftoff:

We discuss Cassini’s daring death dives inside Saturn’s rings before the end of its mission, exciting news from our solar system’s ocean moons and hints of a change in planning for future exploration of Mars.

My thanks to our sponsors:

• Blue Apron: A better way to cook. Get three meals free with your first purchase, and free shipping.
• Casper: Because everyone deserves a great night sleep. Get $50 off with the code ‘LIFTOFF’

Amazon has a new Echo out today, as Dan Moren explains:

In addition to all the usual Alexa features, you can tell the Echo Look to take a photo or a video, and the result will pop up in the Echo Look companion app on your phone, letting you tell whether the outfit you’ve got on works. A depth of field effect—à la the iPhone 7 Plus’s Portrait Mode—blurs the background and brings you and your outfit into the foreground. Short videos let you spin around to see yourself from all angles.

There are a couple other related features in the Look: one is the ability to build a lookbook that lets you scroll back through a log of all the outfits you’ve worn and snapped pictures of, letting you find favorites, dispose of ones you don’t wear much, and, I guess help make sure you don’t wear the same thing every day? The other is a more interactive Style Check, which Amazon says combines machine learning with advice from fashion specialists: snap photos of yourself in two different outfits, submit them, and you’ll get advice as to which works better based on fit, current trends, and more. (As with many machine learning algorithms, it supposedly gets better the more you use it.)

I wear jeans, podcast t-shirts and Chuck Taylors every day of my life,¹ so this $199 Echo isn’t for me.

However, I find it super interesting that Amazon has launched an assistant product with a very specific set of tools onboard. Up until this point, Siri, Google Assistant and Alexa have been extremely broad in their use cases.

Apple:

If you suspect the Apple Remote is not working properly, point the remote at iPod Hi-Fi and press the Play/Pause button. The status light on iPod Hi-Fi should blink. If the light does blink, see iPod Hi-Fi: Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) for a description of the status light messages.