I feel pretty good about my choice to sit out this upgrade cycle.
posts
Mac Apps Now Included in Universal Purchases⇢
The macOS version of your app can now be included in a universal purchase, allowing customers to enjoy your app and in‑app purchases across iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS by purchasing only once. Get started by using a single bundle ID for your apps in Xcode and setting up your app record for universal purchase in App Store Connect.
This is great in terms of giving developers more flexibility when considering branching out onto other platforms, but it could hurt their bottom lines when users come to expect this from every app.
iMac Concept Merges Pro Display XDR with Apple’s Desktop⇢
Viktor Kádár and Patrik Borgatai have put together a lovely concept design of what a future iMac could look like. I generally don’t pay much attention to this sort of thing, but their work is beautiful. While I don’t think the iMac is going to pick up the wild hinge in Apple’s $999 Pro Stand, I think the rest of this could come to pass.
via 9to5Mac
150+ Mac Tips⇢
If you’re looking to be a lot more productive on your Mac, Quinn Nelson has you covered:
Sponsor: Micro.blog⇢
Micro.blog offers blog hosting, native macOS and iOS apps, and a welcoming community built around independent microblogs that can be used for short- and long-form writing.
We wanted to do something for everyone who might feel isolated working from home, and who are looking for a new outlet to be creative and positive. We added free podcast hosting to all standard microblogs through the end of April.
Mac Power Users #528: The Merlin Awakens⇢
This week on a very special episode of Mac Power Users:
MPU Hall of Famer Merlin Mann returns to discuss using plain text, home automation, the Apple TV and more.
It was great to catch up with Merlin on the show. My thanks to our sponsors for making it possible:
- 1Password: Have you ever forgotten a password? You don’t have to worry about that anymore.
- 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.
- Clean My Mac X: Your Mac. As good as new.
- Hover: Make a name for yourself. Get 10% off any domain name.
Mac Madness 2020: Round 1 Winners & Round 2 Voting Open Now
Voting has closed in Round 1 of Mac Madness. The first round was a huge success, with 3,495 people casting their votes for their favorite Macs.
As promised, I live streamed the results:
The raw numbers can be found at the bottom of this post, but I have to say, I was surprised by several of the totals. As I said, these matchups were selected at random, and that meant that some good machines have already been knocked out.
Jason Snell, on the new MacBook Air⇢
I’m so happy that with 2020 MacBook Air, Apple finally has a notebook that anyone could recommend without any major caveats.
Snell has his hands on one, and his review is great. The bit about the processor is not something you want to miss:
If there’s a hint of things to come in my test results, though, it’s the performance of the iPad Pro. This isn’t the new 2020 model that’s due out next week, either—it’s the third-generation iPad Pro that was released the same day as the first Retina MacBook Air model. The 2018 iPad Pro was faster in single-core performance and 70 percent faster in multi-core performance.
Mac Madness: Round 1 Voting Closes in One Hour⇢
If you haven’t voted, consider this the final call for Round 1. I’ll be live streaming on the Relay FM Twitch channel at 3:30 PM Eastern.
Update: Voting has closed.
Connected #286: The iPad G4⇢
Apple has announced new iPad Pros with a new keyboard and trackpad case, as well as the addition of cursor support in iOS 13.4. Myke takes it for a spin as Federico waits for his download to finish. Then, a tour of Apple’s updated Macs and Stephen’s new project, Mac Madness.
Lots of news this week, which is a nice distraction.
My thanks to our sponsors:
Introducing Mac Madness 2020
It’s a weird time in the world, so I thought it would be fun to pick — as a community — our favorite Mac.
As it is March, this naturally took the form of a bracket:
Here’s how this works. I’ll be hosting five rounds of voting over the next couple of weeks, and we should have a winner on Friday, April 3. I’ll announce new rounds here on the blog and on Twitter. You can view all the Mac Madness 2020 blog posts in one place, on this page.
The Icon Garden #34: This Old Mac with Special Guest Stephen Hackett⇢
This week, I joined Dan and Jake on an episode of their podcast to talk about the Titanium PowerBook G4, HomeKit, Mac collecting and a lot more. I had a blast recording this.