This week on Connected, we ponder the future of Apple’s Mac and iOS platforms and explore what merging them may look like before talking about a recent Apple hire.
My thanks to our sponsors:
Jack Nicas and Cade Metz, writing for The New York Times:
Apple has hired Google’s chief of search and artificial intelligence, John Giannandrea, a major coup in its bid to catch up to the artificial intelligence technology of its rivals.
Apple said on Tuesday that Mr. Giannandrea will run Apple’s “machine learning and A.I. strategy,” and become one of 16 executives who report directly to Apple’s chief executive, Timothy D. Cook.
The 2015 MacBook Pro is more flexible, more reliable and costs less than its newer Touch Bar siblings. It’s the one to buy.
To upgrade the firmware on your Power Mac G5, read through the instructions below. You can print these instructions so they are available while you upgrade your firmware.
The Power Mac G5 Firmware Updater Version 5.1.5f2 is installed in Applications/Utilities.
If you run into problems, be sure to check out this support document.
Caroline Haskins, writing at The Outline, gets into why some weather apps seem to get things wrong so often:
Thousands of these events occur around the world each day, and there isn’t the human infrastructure to provide individual attention to each event.
This means that a large portion of weather forecasts on apps end up being dictated by computer models, which can’t explain their reasons for making a forecast. Users have no way of knowing whether their local forecast has been reviewed by a human.
Ian King and Mark Gurman:
The initiative, code named Kalamata, is still in the early developmental stages, but comes as part of a larger strategy to make all of Apple’s devices – including Macs, iPhones, and iPads – work more similarly and seamlessly together, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing private information. The project, which executives have approved, will likely result in a multi-step transition.
Buckle up.
With the release of macOS High Sierra 10.13.4 yesterday, eGPU support has officially come to any Mac with Thunderbolt 3 support:
The following GPUs are officially supported:
You’ll notice there are no Nvidia GPUs listed, but there are reports online of users getting them working.
macOS High Sierra 10.13.4 has finally shipped. Here’s what’s new:
It’s up in the Mac App Store now.
Ryan Christoffel at MacStories:
Today Apple released the latest update to iOS, version 11.3, which adds the previously promised iPhone battery health settings, along with four new Animoji, ARKit 1.5, a new Music Videos section in Apple Music, and more.
No sign of Messages in iCloud or AirPlay 2.
The crew is back together, just in time to talk about the big questions around Apple’s education event, Apple Watch rumors and the frustrations of troubleshooting iCloud issues.
My thanks to our sponsors:
Peter Kafka at Recode, recounting a couple of Tim Cook statements to Kara Swisher and MSNBC’s Chris Hayes:
The truth is, we could make a ton of money if we monetized our customer — if our customer was our product. We’ve elected not to do that.
And:
Swisher posed a question for Cook: What would he do if he were Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg? His answer: “I wouldn’t be in this situation.”