Jason and Stephen talk about President Trump’s call for a Space Force, then Opportunity’s struggle against a Martian dust storm and Peggy Whitson’s retirement from NASA.
My thanks to our sponsor this week:
The tables in this document list the update or updates you should install on your iMac computer. Under each iMac model is the list of updates that should be installed on your computer. If you are unsure if your iMac has a particular update installed, download and open the update installer. If the update is already installed, the installer will alert you.
Once you start noticing orange on Apple’s products, you realize it’s everywhere.
I don’t usually link to Tim Cook interviews, but this one really jumped out at me. In it, Cook talks about the time leading up to him taking over the company and the early days of the iPhone in a way I found very enjoyable to watch.
Yours truly, over on MacStories:
In every way, the Power Mac G5 was more than the G4 it replaced. It was bigger, more expandable and faster.
Of course, we know the trouble that came with that power — the inability to ever ship a G5-powered notebook. Even with that cloud hanging over it, this tower brought a lot to the table worth talking about.
Recovered from WWDC, Myke previews his summer’s work, Federico shares what he knows about Shortcuts and Stephen gets nerdy about Dark Mode in macOS Mojave.
My thanks to our sponsors:
On the surface, Shortcuts the app looks like the full-blown Workflow replacement heavy users of the app have been wishfully imagining for the past year. But there is more going on with Shortcuts than the app alone. Shortcuts the feature, in fact, reveals a fascinating twofold strategy: on one hand, Apple hopes to accelerate third-party Siri integrations by leveraging existing APIs as well as enabling the creation of custom SiriKit Intents; on the other, the company is advancing a new vision of automation through the lens of Siri and proactive assistance from which everyone – not just power users – can reap the benefits.
The Appearance Manager, introduced with Mac OS 8, modifies the appearance of the original Finder to include options for changing menu fonts, window-shading (collapsable window title bars), and other appearance-centric features. The Appearance Manager is now considered an integral part of the Mac OS, and is installed as part of an “Easy Install” process.
Seemed appropriate after talking about macOS Mojave’s Dark Mode this week.
Today marks the 15th anniversary of Smile, makers of tools like PDFpen and TextExpander.
To mark the occasion, I spoke with co-founder Greg Scown about the company’s history, present and future.
1. Tell me a little bit about how Smile got started.
My co-founder Philip introduced himself to me at Macworld San Francisco 2003, where I was exhibiting PageSender, my faxing software. We hit it off, I had an idea for a product, he had the artistic know how, and together we produced DiscLabel, our disc labeling app. We shipped DiscLabel 1.0 at the last Macworld New York in July 2003. DiscLabel won best of show, which was very exciting. I was Smile Software. Philip was OnMyMac. Together, we became SmileOnMyMac.
The most obvious change to macOS coming later this year is in the inclusion of Dark Mode.
When Apple redesigned macOS back in 2014 with Yosemite, it included a less ambitious version of the feature. Here’s a bit from my review:
To say that Yosemite comes with a “Dark Theme” is vastly over-stating the “Dark menu bar and Dock” option found in the “General” preference pane:
As shown above, OS X’s new dark mode only affects the menu bar, Command+Tab UI, drop-down menus, the Dock and Spotlight. Everything else — from Finder windows to built-in apps — remain their normal, bright selves, no matter what System Preferences says.
Mark Sullivan at FastCompany is reporting on a change that I definitely think is coming to the Watch at some point:
Apple will stick with the Watch’s current button configuration, with a button and a digital crown situated on one side of the device, but neither will physically click as before. Rather than reacting to the user’s touch by physically moving back and forth, the new buttons will vibrate slightly under the fingertip, using the haptic effect Apple calls the Taptic Engine. (The digital crown will still physically rotate to navigate through content.)
It really seems that Apple is cleaning house in some corners of macOS. Something big is coming this way, it feels like.
