It’s beta season, and David and Stephen have reported for duty with reports of new features and general thoughts on macOS Big Sur, iOS and iPadOS 14 as well as watchOS 7. Plus, a brief announcement about something coming in July.
Don’t be like David.
My thanks to our sponsors this week:
People will complain which will be annoying, but’s it’s a good move from the environmental perspective.
My thanks to TextExpander for sponsoring 512 Pixels this week and making working across my devices way, way faster.
It is available for Mac, Windows, Chrome, iPhone and iPad. 5 12 Pixels readers get 20% off their first year.
I chatted with my buddy Tyler Stalman the other night about all the changes coming for the Mac that were announced at WWDC. It was a fun conversation about the tool at the center of many professional workflows.
This week on a hectic episode of Connected:
WWDC 2020 is underway, so the time has come to judge The Rickies. After a new Chairman is crowned, the guys do a high-level pass on Apple’s OS announcements, as well as what’s new with Shortcuts.
It’s going to be a busy summer.
My thanks to our sponsors:
As well as our members, who can enjoy an ad-free, extra-long version of the show.
Tom Warren, writing at The Verge:
Apple will start switching its Macs to its own ARM-based processors later this year, but you won’t be able to run Windows in Boot Camp mode on them. Microsoft only licenses Windows 10 on ARM to PC makers to preinstall on new hardware, and the company hasn’t made copies of the operating system available for anyone to license or freely install.
“Microsoft only licenses Windows 10 on ARM to OEMs,” says a Microsoft spokesperson in a statement to The Verge. We asked Microsoft if it plans to change this policy to allow Boot Camp on ARM-based Macs, and the company says “we have nothing further to share at this time.”
Doing unusual things at Mac startup has long required remembering keyboard shortcuts. Is it Command-Control-P-R or Command-Option-P-R that zaps the PRAM? Is that still even a thing? Is it Command-S for Recovery Mode—or wait, that’s Single User Mode, it’s Command-R for Recovery mode, Command-T for Target Disk Mode, Option to choose a startup disk.
With the advent of Macs running Apple-designed processors, things will get a whole lot simpler. As described Wednesday in the WWDC session Explore the New System Architecture of Apple Silicon Macs, these new Macs will only require you to remember a single button: Power. (On laptops, that’ll be the Touch ID button. On desktops, presumably it’s the physical power button.)
Depending on how you count them, Apple has several different routes for developers to take when it comes to modernizing their apps for the future of macOS. Let’s take a look at these related technologies to see what they can provide.
The future for traditional, built-with-AppKit applications seems to be solid, at least for now. With Big Sur’s redesign, AppKit has received a major overhaul, and I don’t think there’s any real reason to think it can’t live side by side with other technologies like UIKit and SwiftUI for years to come. However, these apps have been rooted in the world of Intel for a long time, so Apple has a couple of ways to help developers get them up and running on Apple Silicon Macs.
I searched for “Big Sur,” but saw this article and knew I had to share it.
Recorded just a few hours after the WWDC keynote, Stephen and David share their reactions to iOS 14, macOS Big Sur, and the Mac’s transition to Apple-designed processors.
There’s so much to think about this year, but it was good to spend some time with David sorting through some of it.
My thanks to our sponsors this time:
Like during the switch to Intel, Apple has put together a transition hardware kit for the move to ARM.
Like with Intel, this is not a product, and Apple was quick to note that it doesn’t represent what final hardware could look like. That said, here are the specs:
… all in a Mac mini case, as predicted.
A quick look at a “About this Mac” window in today’s keynote showed the version number of the copy of macOS running on the Apple Silicon development hardware was 11.0, but Apple is also using the new name on the Developer website:
macOS 11 introduces many user interface changes that update the appearance of apps and make them more approachable to people transitioning from iPad apps. macOS 11 also adds support for familiar iOS features — such as SF Symbols and text styles — that enhance the user experience and can streamline the app design process.