Since publishing my article about tech that should come to the Mac this morning, I’ve gotten a lot of feedback about Fusion Drives.

For the uninitiated, the Fusion Drive is a storage solution Apple ships with the Mac mini and iMac that uses a small SSD mated to a larger spinning hard drive. To vastly oversimplify what’s going behind the scenes, the system sees these two devices as one volume. OS X, core apps and the user’s most-used files are on the SSD, while apps and data accessed less frequently live on the hard drive.

This system is designed to give the user the best of both worlds: SSD performance with the large capacity offered by cheap spinning disks. In practice, most users will see speeds much closer to what an SSD can provide than users without a Fusion Drive.

It’s not all great news, though. Fusion Drives generally work well, but there is a level of complication to them not found in single-device storage systems.

Then there’s the penny-pinching. In late 2015, Apple adjusted the Fusion Drive to include much less Flash storage space on some models:

In previous versions of the Fusion Drive, Apple has included 128 GB of flash storage—enough to store a lot of large apps and files that you use frequently. In the new iMacs with 1 TB Fusion Drives, however, that number has been cut to an insanely small 24 GB.

This means that less can be on the SSD at any given time. While OS X and many core apps will still fit there, more users will have more files on the spinning hard drive more of the time, making the overall experience slower than it may have been previously.

SSD costs are still higher than hard drives, so the Fusion Drive continues to exist as a stop-gap. Many users need bigger capacities than Apple offers in their all-SSD models. Other users simply can’t — or don’t want to — pay for a 1 TB SSD at Apple’s prices.

I wish we could move past the Fusion Drive and live in all-SSD world, but I fully realize why we aren’t there yet. But hey, it’s fun to talk about goals.

When Apple introduced OS X Lion, it was at the “Back to the Mac” event, and rightfully so. Lion was the first OS X release to really incorporate — for better and for worse — features from Apple’s mobile operating system.

These days, iOS and OS X’s development tracks are closer than ever, with features like Handoff and AirDrop tying the two systems together in new ways.

With a new version of Mac OS X — or MacOS — assumedly around the corner, I think there’s more Apple could take from iOS’ cookie jar.

Picture in Picture

While the official YouTube app still doesn’t support it, Picture in Picture has changed the way I use my iPad in a significant way.

For example, in the past, preparing for an Apple history article or writing a video script had to be done at my Mac, as I couldn’t have a video, a bunch of browser tabs and a text document set up in any useful way. Now, I can open a video and have it float above my document and browser as I take notes and collect links to relevant articles.

In the short time since iOS 9 has been out, I already feel like video is stifled and trapped on the Mac. Needing an entire browser window open to watch something on YouTube feels incredibly old-fashioned and inflexible. I’d like to see Picture in Picture show up on the Mac to solve this.

UIKit

I’m not a developer, so I’m unable to fully explain this, but in talking with friends who make apps, it’s clear that there’s a frustration on the part of many when it comes to developing on the Mac.

This is especially true in terms of taking an iOS codebase and making a desktop version of an existing app. Mac OS X’s AppKit is far older then UIKit, and is full of differences. The tools and technologies available don’t go far enough in bridging the gap.

There’s no doubt that iOS is where all the action is these days for developers, but I believe the Mac is a longterm, stable platform where people are willing to spend money for software. If Apple could make porting iOS apps to OS X easier, it’d be better for everyone. Bringing UIKit to the Mac would allow developers to re-use much more of their work, lowering the bar required for cross-platform development. That could breathe new life into the Mac software ecosystem and lead to more sales for developers who are seeing prices continue to plummet on the iOS App Store.

All Flash Storage

That 2010 event closed with the introduction of the second-generation MacBook Air. The new design, with its great battery life, thin enclosure and instant sleep/wake ability was only possible through the magic of Flash storage.

Indeed, the MacBook Air is the notebook that brought SSD technology to the masses.

But here in 2016 — a full 6 years later — the Mac lineup still includes numerous models with spinning hard drives (or Fusion Drives) as the default configuration.

• Mac mini
• 21.5-inch iMac
• 21.5-inch iMac with Retina 4K display
• 27-inch iMac with Retina 5K display
• 13-inch MacBook Pro

These computers can be upgraded to ship with an SSD from the factory, but many people won’t see or understand the need for it, and have a subpar experience.

While I can understand this on the MacBook Pro and Mac mini, the Retina iMac is perhaps the flagship Mac. It’s dissapointing that Apple cripples it by putting a slow 5400 RPM drive in the thing.

2016 should be the last year this is true. It’s time that Apple finish this transition and leave the spinning hard drive behind.

This little gadget sets out to solve one of the most annoying things about being a MacBook Pro user.

Jim Dalrymple:

Apple on Thursday sent out invites for an event to be held at its Cupertino headquarters on Monday, March 21, 2016. The event will take place at 10:00 am—I’ll be there covering the news.

Here we go. I’m keeping my fingers crossed for some Mac news.

Serenity Caldwell at iMore, talking about the possibilities of handwriting recognition on something the iPad Pro:

Much as I hated longform writing and as terrible as my penmanship was, there was still something pretty magical and otherworldly about writing block or cursive letters and having them transform into digital text. By the year 2000, I had convinced most of my teachers that I could turn in typed work, but I probably saved future Serenity’s penmanship from becoming truly atrocious because I had that Newton MessagePad. I was constantly writing and doodling with it.

I’ve got a couple of Newtons laying around[1] and I recently was playing with the handwriting engine on one of them. It’s nowhere near perfect, but Serenity is right. There is something nice about writing — as opposed to typing — for some types of work.

It’s easy to thing that if Apple were to roll this out, it’d be far better than the Newton ever was. However, while the iPad Pro is hilariously more powerful than the Newtons, the underlying technology probably hasn’t been getting a lot of love from Apple. If the company were to revisit this, Apple’s tech would have to work far better than it did in the 90s. Here’s Ren again:

If nothing else, Apple has some pretty good handwriting recognition software lying around: The company’s aging Inkwell technology is based off the original Newton Rosetta framework, and lets people with a connected tablet transcribe letters and draw pictures. It hasn’t been officially updated in an age, but it’s still supported as of OS X El Capitan, and the recognition engine is halfway decent.

Still, I’d like to see this be an option for Pencil-powered input. I still use physical notebooks, and while this wouldn’t change that, I think a lot of people would like something in between handwriting and typing on a sheet of glass.

Mashable has a photo gallery up of progress being made on Apple’s new campus in Cupertino. At the center of the piece is an update on the company’s new theatre:

The 120,000-square-foot Theatre, with a capacity of 1,000 seats, is a subterranean auditorium, but that’s not to say it doesn’t make a statement from the outside.

Designed by U.K.-based architect firm Foster+Partner, the cylinder-shaped lobby can be seen at ground level and doesn’t have any columns. Instead, the space is open, encased by glass and will have stairs down to the event hall.

But perhaps the most stunning addition is its roof, which Apple believes is the largest freestanding carbon-fiber roof ever made. Created by Dubai-based Premier Composite Technologies, it’s a massive statement piece, in addition to a design feat. But please, Apple doesn’t want you to call it a UFO. The roof was added to the Theatre last month.

Apple’s SVP of software engineering, in The Washington Post:

Security is an endless race — one that you can lead but never decisively win. Yesterday’s best defenses cannot fend off the attacks of today or tomorrow. Software innovations of the future will depend on the foundation of strong device security. We cannot afford to fall behind those who would exploit technology in order to cause chaos. To slow our pace, or reverse our progress, puts everyone at risk.