macOS Mojave introduces Dark Mode, a dramatic new look that’s easy on your eyes and helps you focus on your work. Dark Mode uses a dark color scheme that works system wide, including with the apps that come with your Mac. And third-party apps can adopt it, too.
If you are running the Safari Technology Preview, you can check out 512 Pixels’ new Dark Mode theme.
There are a few surprises in his excellent post, and it’s made me feel good about making the 2018 MacBook Air my default recommendation for someone looking to buy a notebook.
Jason Snell, writing at Macworld:
Looking a bit further into the future, if Apple starts building Macs with ARM processors, is it going to want to offer different classes of processors within those models? On iOS, Apple has steadfastly refused to do this. Every model-year of a given model is generally powered by the same processor across the board.
It’s conceivable that Apple might roll out a new ARM processor across several Macs and have each one have a different clock speed or number of cores—but even then, I have a hard time imagining that Apple will let customers configure what processor goes in what Mac when they order them. It seems more likely that Apple will offer what it feels is the right processor configuration for a model—and if you want a more powerful processor, your option will be to buy the next model up.
I am technically on vacation this week, but I felt like I had to talk about this:
The more I use iPad Pro the more I believe iPads need their own OS. Software on iPad greatly lags hardware. Gestures feel kluged from the phone experience. Split screen/slide over are non intuitive and frankly counterintuitive.
— Michael Gartenberg (@Gartenberg) November 14, 2018
Since the new iPads were announced a couple of weeks ago, there has been a lot of talk about the device and its place in the world.
I wish all iOS podcast apps did this.
Paul Kafasis on the Rogue Amoeba blog, on a neat trick provided by Apple’s T2 chip:
On older Macs, the headphone jack and the internal speakers are essentially separate ports on a single output device, and only one of these ports is allowed to be active at a time. Because of this, audio can be sent to either the built-in speakers, or the headphone jack, but not to both. As well, if anything is connected to the headphone jack, the OS shuts off the built-in speaker completely.
The 2018 MacBook Air and Mac mini are out in the world, and that means we know a lot more about what’s going on under the hood of these new machines.
iFixit has taken apart the new notebook, and there are a few interesting things to note:
The group has also taken apart the new Mac mini, as Quinn at Snazzy Labs:
Samuel Axon over at Ars Technica got to sit down with Apple’s Anand Shimpi1 Marketing Phil Schiller to talk about the silicon powering the new iPad Pro. It’s a fascinating read and shows how deep Apple is into this world.
Intel should feel nervous.
Of AnandTech fame. ↩︎
This week’s show is a busy one. We shared our initial reactions to the new iPad Pros, talked about working on iOS and why it makes some people so angry, and then I shared a bit about installing a CarPlay receiver in my pickup truck:
Federico looks back on his PowerBook 165, Myke sends a tweet and Stephen goes for a drive with Siri.
My thanks to our sponsors this week:
If the cable from your external device doesn’t connect to the Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) or USB-C port on your Mac or iPad Pro, you might need an adapter.
“One port will make everything easier!”
This time on Liftoff, we say goodbye to two NASA missions and review First Man.
My thanks to our sponsor: