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‘An Act of Desperation’⇢

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Jason Snell at Macworld:

So when we celebrate the 20th anniversary of Mac OS X, it’s important to realize what we’re celebrating. We’re celebrating a software release that was the culmination of Steve Jobs’s return to Apple. We’re celebrating the operating system we still use, two decades later. But we’re also celebrating the foundation of iOS, iPadOS, tvOS, and watchOS.

In that way, this isn’t just the 20th anniversary of Mac OS X 10.0. It’s the 20th anniversary of modern Apple, and the end of the dark days when Apple couldn’t fix its own operating system.

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Twenty Years Ago Today, Apple Shipped Mac OS X

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It’s hard to believe that Mac OS X macOS is two decades old, but it’s true. On March 24, 2001, Apple released the first non-beta version of Mac OS X 10.0:

Mac OS X 10.0

The release followed years of development that took NeXT’s technology and molded it into an operating system for the Mac. That process took longer than Apple had predicted, and included a false start known as Rhapsody. That’s really a story for a different time, but in short, that operating system strategy left classic Mac OS developers without a way forward for their applications that didn’t require rewriting them, and the community soundly rejected the entire thing.

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Liftoff #146: Reverse Origami⇢

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This week on Liftoff, as always, things are busy:

The SLS has completed a full-length hot fire test and NASA is on the verge of having a new administrator, all while SpaceX continue to move ahead with its Starship testing.

I am fascinated to see what happens with this big rocket drama.

My thanks to our sponsors this week:

  • Squarespace: Make your next move. Enter offer code LIFTOFF at checkout to get 10% off your first purchase.
  • Fortnite, from Epic Games: Embrace your wild side in Fortnite Chapter 2 Season 6: Primal.

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Patents Aren’t Products, Thankfully

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There are a couple of doozies floating around today. The first is a radically different Apple Watch, as reported by MacRumors:

In one application, embodiments of the invention describe a wearable electronic device, such as a smartwatch, including a flexible display panel and flexible display module. In this manner, the display area of the smartwatch is not limited to a rigid watch face area. In an embodiment, a smartwatch includes a flexible display panel that is integrated into a flexible watch band. Accordingly, curvature of the flexible display panel in both the watch face area and band may be adjusted to conform to the wrist size of the user… the display area of the flexible display panel can cover more available space on the watch face area and band of the smartwatch.

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Kbase Article of the Week: Enabling Spoken Menus on iPod nano⇢

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Apple Support:

iPod nano (5th generation) and iPod nano (4th generation) include the ability to speak the name of selected menus in iPod software using the text-to-speech capability built into or installed into Mac OS X or Windows.

Note: Spoken menus may not be available for all menu items or synced content. Spoken menus will be generated in the language of the system voice that users have installed and configured on their computer. Some voices may not support this feature. Overall sync times will increase when spoken menus are enabled in iTunes. Audio clips for spoken menus will reduce the available capacity for audio and video content on iPod nano.

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Sponsor: Work Smarter — Not Harder — with TextExpander⇢

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TextExpander helps you work faster and smarter so you can focus your time on your most important work. With just a few keystrokes, TextExpander keeps you consistent, accurate, and working efficiently.

  • Speed through emails: expand forms with fill-in-the-blank fields using a quick abbreviation

  • Time saving power: Use TextExpander’s powerful shortcuts and abbreviations to streamline and speed up everything you type.

  • Get your message right every time: expand content that corrects your spelling and keeps your language consistent with just a few keystrokes

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Mac Power Users #580: Twenty Years of OS X⇢

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This week’s MPU is a little unusual but a lot of fun:

After several years of development, Apple launched Mac OS X to the world in March 2001. The new operating system was vastly different from what it replaced, and ushered in a new era for Apple. This episode, Stephen and David reflect on two decades of their beloved platform.

For More Power Users, we talked about the initial reactions to OS X we had back in the day.

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Apple Discontinues 512 GB and 1 TB SSD 4K iMac Models⇢

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Over the last couple of days, Apple has removed the 512 GB and 1 TB SSD options from the 4K iMac configurator. Now, all 21.5-inch iMacs, including the non-Retina entry model come with a 256 GB SSD as standard, and can only be upgraded to a 1 TB Fusion Drive from the factory.

Apple has let the smaller iMac stagnate for a while now, as it didn’t see an update when the 5K models were updated last year. No one should be buying an iMac right now, but especially a 21.5-inch model.

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Unread⇢

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Unread is an RSS reader for iOS with beautiful typography, comfortable gesture-based navigation, and a variety of color themes. When displaying articles from summary-only feeds, Unread retrieves full article content from the website. You get the full article in Unread without needing to open the website.

Unread syncs with Feed Wrangler, Feedbin, Feedly, Fever, Inoreader, and NewsBlur. Its core functionality is free. To get started, simply download Unread from the App Store.

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