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My thanks to Thord D. Hedengren and his newsletter, Switch to Glass, for sponsoring the site this week. Switch to iPad isn’t just for those who have made the switch from a traditional computer to a more versatile one. It’s a newsletter — and a website! — about getting the most out of your iPad.

Supporting Switch to iPad costs $5/month or $50/year, but 512 Pixels readers can try it free for 14 days, no strings attached, using this link. The site, however, is completely free, so do check that out too.

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Last week, I wrote about the first email sent from space, and how there was a discrepancy in what date has been reported for the event:

So where’s the mystery in all of this? Well, according to NASA, Apple, and Guinness Book of World Records this message was sent on August 9, 1991. STS-43 took place from August 2 to 11 that year, so I feel confident the date the message was sent is indeed August 9.

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This week on Connected:

September is here, and that means iPhone and Apple Watch rumors are heating up. Stephen and Myke go through what’s new on that front, cover some cool new Mac accessories, share regrets about Nest and kick off National Childhood Cancer Awareness Month.

My thanks to our sponsors:

• Squarespace: Make your next move. Enter offer code CONNECTED at checkout to get 10% off your first purchase.
• Pingdom: Start monitoring your website performance and availability today, and get instant alerts when an outage occurs or a site transaction fails. Use offer code CONNECTED to get 30% off. Offer expires on January 31, 2022, and can be used only once.
• Hullo: A simple, natural pillow designed for comfort. Try it for 60 days.

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If you’ve followed me for any amount of time, you already know that St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital holds an important place in my heart. My oldest son Josiah is the reason:

In a couple of months, he’ll be turning 13. Many parents of pre-teens will tell you that’s probably a miracle in and of itself, but Josiah is special. When he was just six months old, he was diagnosed with a brain tumor.

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This week, an old Q&A-style Apple Support document:

Are there problems with connecting an external SCSI hard drive to the Macintosh Portable? I have a Macintosh Portable with an internal 40MB drive. When I tried to connect a 45MB external drive, the Macintosh Portable refused to boot. The “Sad Mac” icon came up with the error code: 0000000F 00000002.

The Macintosh Portable can access and use any external SCSI device that a Macintosh Plus can access. There may be an issue with the SCSI driver on the hard drive and compatibility with the Portable boot ROMs, but we do not have any information on this problem.

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Ron Amadeo has written a real tale of woe for Ars Technica:

Google Talk, Google’s first-ever instant messaging platform, launched on August 24, 2005. This company has been in the messaging business for 16 years, meaning Google has been making messaging clients for longer than some of its rivals have existed. But thanks to a decade and a half of nearly constant strategy changes, competing product launches, and internal sabotage, you can’t say Google has a dominant or even stable instant messaging platform today.

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The iPad is a truly magical piece of glass. It’s the primary computer for many. That’s why Thord D. Hedengren started Switch to iPad, a weekly newsletter about making the switch to a better computing life.

Switch to iPad isn’t just for those who have made the switch from a traditional computer to a more versatile one. It’s a newsletter about getting the most out of your iPad.

It isn’t just a newsletter anymore either; Switch to iPad now has a new home on the web. The website is free and updated by Thord several times a week.

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Starting with a pet project for Steve Jobs, all the way to a modern, web-infused set of applications across multiple platforms, iWork has expanded into a suite of tools more than capable of meeting almost anyone’s needs. This week on MPU, David and I talk through Keynote, Pages and Numbers, giving tips and comparing them to office suites offered by other companies.

My thanks to our sponsors:

• TextExpander from Smile: Get 20% off with this link and type more with less effort! Expand short abbreviations into longer bits of text, even fill-ins, with TextExpander from Smile.
• Pingdom: Start monitoring your website performance and availability today, and get instant alerts when an outage occurs or a site transaction fails. Use offer code MPU to get 30% off. Offer expires on January 31, 2022, and can be used only once.
• Electric: Stop stressing over scattered devices. Get a free pair of Beats Solo3 Wireless Headphones when you schedule a meeting.

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My thanks to Black Ink from Red Sweater for sponsoring 512 Pixels this week. Black Ink celebrates the art of crosswords by offering a beautiful solving experience on your Mac. Download and solve right in the app, or print the puzzles with your preferred layout to solve with a pen or pencil.

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Thirty years ago, a Macintosh Portable was used to send an email from aboard the space shuttle Atlantis as part of the STS-43 mission.

The email in question was sent to Marsha Ivins at Johnson Space Center and said:

Hello Earth! Greetings from the STS-43 Crew. This is the first AppleLink from space. Having a GREAT time, wish you were here,…send cryo and RCS! Hasta la vista, baby,…we’ll be back!

The message was sent via AppleLink, an online service created for use between Apple, its customers, and its various dealers and partners. (It was replaced by eWorld in 1994.)

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Steve at Mac84 has launched a new series talking about which Macs are good choices for burgeoning collectors. If you’re looking for a new pandemic hobby, this video is for you.

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Apple’s constant reworking of Safari 15 this summer has been one of the most interesting software stories to come out of the company in a long time. It’s not very often that we see Apple rework something so thoroughly in public.

I’m a fan of the changes Apple has made to Safari 15 so far. The iPhone version was a big mess, and the “compact” tab designed that debuted on the Mac and the iPad made little sense on devices with larger screens. As the time of this writing, we’re still in the beta cycle, but I suspect the options to move the iPhone’s browser UI to the top or bottom of the screen will ship, as will the ability to go back to the compact view on the iPad and Mac. Combined with the option to show color in the tab bar, it’s hard to believe these are all the same browser:

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