This week on Ungeniused, we get into the wild world of yard art:
There are a wide range of garden decorations out there, but some are far classier than others.
My thanks to our sponsor:
Five decades ago, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins’s massive Saturn V rocket lifted off in Florida, propelling the three men toward the moon, and into history. I’ll be collecting some links here today marking the occasion:
I thought now would be as good of a time as ever to link to these pages:
Simone de Rochefort is a video producer and podcaster at Polygon, and co-hosts Rocket on Relay FM. She walks Stephen and David through the process of creating videos at Polygon, from the writing process, to capturing game footage, editing and more.
This interview was a lot of fun, mainly because Simone is awesome.
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Quad-core performance has done this machine a lot of good. Update: Jonathan Morrison has a video highlighting the new notebook:
Matthew Panzarino at TechCrunch:
Apple has disabled the Apple Watch Walkie Talkie app due to an unspecified vulnerability that could allow a person to listen to another customer’s iPhone without consent, the company told TechCrunch this evening.
Apple has apologized for the bug and for the inconvenience of being unable to use the feature while a fix is made.
Here is the company’s statement:
We were just made aware of a vulnerability related to the Walkie-Talkie app on the Apple Watch and have disabled the function as we quickly fix the issue. We apologize to our customers for the inconvenience and will restore the functionality as soon as possible. Although we are not aware of any use of the vulnerability against a customer and specific conditions and sequences of events are required to exploit it, we take the security and privacy of our customers extremely seriously. We concluded that disabling the app was the right course of action as this bug could allow someone to listen through another customer’s iPhone without consent. We apologize again for this issue and the inconvenience.
Myke has a story about the beach, Federico has a plan for NFC stickers, and Stephen has some thoughts on this week’s MacBook news.
My thanks to our sponsors:
With today’s revisions to the Mac notebook line, choosing between a new MacBook Air and a new MacBook Pro has gotten a little more interesting.
The machines are similar in many ways. They both come with two Thunderbolt 3 ports, Touch ID, 8 GB of RAM and a 128 GB SSD. Both can be stepped up to 16 GB of memory, while the Pro tops out at 2 TB of storage, as opposed to the Air’s new 1 TB cap.
Mitchel Broussard at MacRumors:
Alongside a refresh of the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro this morning, Apple has also dropped the price on high-end storage upgrades across the Mac lineup. This includes the iMac, iMac Pro, MacBook Pro, Mac mini, and even the soon-to-be-discontinued Mac Pro.
Additionally, the MacBook Air now has a 1 TB option, unlike before where one had to jump from 512 GB to 1.5 TB. When I bought my wife a MacBook Air, I was disappointed by this, and helped her cram her user data into a 512 GB SSD because the 1.5 TB was so expensive at $1,200. Now, the 1 TB SSD is just $400, the same cost as the 512 GB we purchased.
This morning, Apple has announced an updated MacBook Air. The new machine is the same as the 2018 model, but now includes a True Tone display. The MacBook Air now starts at $1,099, while students can buy one for $999.
I think Apple has finally gotten the starting price right for the MacBook Air.1
One rung up the product line, the two-port MacBook Pro, previously dubbed the “MacBook Escape” by the Mac faithful, has received a pretty big overhaul. Here’s a bit from Apple’s press release:
As spotted by 9to5Mac and others, Apple has re-released its classic mobile poker game, Texas Hold’em:
Apple’s Texas Hold’em is back! To celebrate the 10 year anniversary of the App Store, we’ve brought back one of its first games, a popular classic. Originally created for iPod, then brought to iPhone, fans will love the polished redesign, featuring new characters, more challenging gameplay, and stunning graphics for the newest iPhone and iPod touch. Players will also love that it’s free to play—for the very first time.
I don’t miss the days of fragmented software support on iOS devices.