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This year’s colorful, cheaper-but-still-more-expensive-than-any-other-entry-level-model iPhone XR is a fascinating phone. It delivers iPhone XS performance in a nice enclosure, with just enough corners rounded cut to be more in line with previous iPhone prices.

I spent a couple of weeks with a blue model in January, and fell in love with it. The LCD is great, battery life is incredible and the colors are a lot of fun. At the end of the day, I found myself missing the second camera on the back of the XS, however:

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This fortnight on Liftoff, Jason Snell and I check in on the SLS’ test procedures and the on-going planning to return to the moon in 2024, then get a dose of planetary defense.

Next time: Apollo 10!

My thanks to our sponsors:

• Squarespace: Make your next move. Enter offer code LIFTOFF at checkout to get 10% off your first purchase.
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This week on Ungeniused, we talk about some weird weather:

It isn’t cats and dogs, but rains including fish, frogs and spiders have been recorded around the world.

My thanks to our sponsor:

• Away: Travel smarter with the suitcase that charges your phone. Get $20 off with the code ‘ungeniused’.

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Anthony Colangelo of the space blog and podcast Main Engine Cut Off has a new Mac app out, named Downlink:

While browsing the GOES Image Viewer a few months ago, I had an idea: with the data frequency that these new GOES satellites provide, I could build a Mac app that pulls the newest image every 20 minutes and sets it as your desktop background.

What resulted was a simple little menu bar app that gives you a near real-time view of Earth all day long. I’ve been using it for a few weeks as I’ve built it, and it is an absolute joy to have a window to Earth all day.

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Apple Support:

Follow these steps on your Mac if a blank optical disc (such as a CD-R, CD-RW, or DVD-R) doesn’t appear on the desktop or in the Finder after you insert it.

When’s the last time you used a CD or DVD?

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This week on MPU, David and I got nerdy about Finder and some Mac applications that can enhance it, or even replace it:

At the heart of the macOS experience is Finder, which is part file manager, part search tool and a whole lot more. Its smiling blue icon boasts many features, and third-party developers have written tools to make it even more powerful for those users who need more.

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This week on Connected:

Stephen returns order to the podcast after two weeks away, Myke reads some Hex color codes and Federico turns on his hype machine.

We also talk about the death of Aperture, Overcast’s new sharing feature and Reeder 4.

My thanks to our sponsors:

• Hover: Extensions for anything you’re passionate about. Grab a .ME domain for $9.99.
• Squarespace: Make your next move. Enter offer code CONNECTED at checkout to get 10% off your first purchase.
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Steve Troughton-Smith on Twitter:

Dashboard isn’t the only thing gone in 10.15 — so is 32-bit app & plugin support, Carbon, Ink, QuickTime 7 & QuickTime plugins, PPTP, and hardware RAID. You will get Python 3.7 and Ruby 2.6, at least ????

This fall, the Mac will move fully into a 64-bit world, and with it many old applications and services that users may still rely on today in Mojave. And as James Thomson pointed out, it’s also the end of any remaining Newton codebase.

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Jason Snell has fired up his chart machine:

Apple’s quarterly results are in. The company posted revenue of $58 billion, down 5% from the same quarter a year ago. iPad revenue was up 22% and Services revenue was up 16%, but Mac revenue was down 5% and iPhone revenue was down 17%.

Don’t miss his transcript of the call.

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Apple has a new support page up urging customers to migrate their libraries out of Aperture, for the end is nigh for the photo editing application:

In June 2014, Apple announced the discontinuation of development of Aperture. Since that time, Apple has released five major macOS updates. For technical reasons, Aperture will not run in future versions of macOS after macOS Mojave. To continue working with your Aperture photo libraries, you must migrate them to the Photos app included with macOS, or migrate them to Adobe Lightroom Classic.

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Apple Support:

Mac OS X applications typically store preference settings in plist files, such as “com.apple.Mail.plist”. In Mac OS X 10.3.9 and earlier, plist files were typically in XML format. In Mac OS X 10.4 and later, plist files are often in binary format for faster application performance.

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This week on Mac Power Users, Michael Hyatt joins David and I this week in an interview that ranges from how to get your life together and find a little focus to nerdy Keyboard Maestro scripts.

It was a lot of fun to talk to Michael about being a nerd who runs a growing business organization. My thanks to these sponsors:

• Moo: Custom business printing and design. Use promo code PRINT15 for 15% off.
• Sanebox: Stop drowning in email!
• 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.
• Squarespace: Make your next move. Enter offer code MPU at checkout to get 10% off your first purchase.

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