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$29 Batteries Available to All iPhone 6 or Later Customers, Even if It Passes Diagnostics⇢
I was in my Apple Store over the weekend, and every other person through the door had an iPhone 6 or 6S in hand, inquiring about getting a new battery installed. I had assumed Apple would be testing these phones and only replacing batteries that were operating below a certain threshold, but it seems like anyone who wants one can have a new battery installed at the discounted price.
This is going to cost Apple a pile of cash, but it’s the right call. Apple needs consumers to trust them, and that relationship has been damaged for many people. Turning someone away because their battery hasn’t failed would only make it worse. It’s better for the company to eat some battery swaps that it doesn’t need to do to start rebuilding trust.
Connected #174: 2017 In Review: I’ve Been Sitting on That Joke for Months⇢
We’re starting the year off right on Connected:
We grade our predictions for 2017 before setting off on a trip down memory lane of the last twelve months of Apple news.
My thanks to our sponsors this week:
Review and Manage Your Apple ID⇢
I have a recurring task every December 31 to log in to this page at Apple.com and make sure my Apple ID is all up to date. This page make it easy to dissociate your ID from any hardware you may have replaced, check your payment options and Apple Pay Cash balance, adjust your email subscription options and more.
I had a couple of MacBook Pros to clear out, haha.
Apple Apologizes for Poor iPhone CPU Smoothing Communication, Updates Support Website and Battery Repair Costs⇢
Today, Apple published an open letter over the fact that as of iOS 10.2.1, some iPhones are effectively throttled to keep them from shutting down under high CPU load thanks to worn batteries. While this allows a customer to use their iPhone for longer without crashes, it’s clear that public was unhappy.
We’ve been hearing feedback from our customers about the way we handle performance for iPhones with older batteries and how we have communicated that process. We know that some of you feel Apple has let you down. We apologize. There’s been a lot of misunderstanding about this issue, so we would like to clarify and let you know about some changes we’re making.
Lisa OS Source Code Release Coming in 2018⇢
Al Kossow, a software curator at the Computer History Museum recently published some exciting news about the Lisa OS:
Just wanted to let everyone know the sources to the OS and applications were recovered, I converted them to Unix end of line conventions and spaces for Pascal tabs after recovering the files using Disk Image Chef, and they are with Apple for review.
After that’s done, CHM will do an @CHM blog post about the historical significance of the software and the code that is cleared for release by Apple will be made available in 2018. The only thing I saw that probably won’t be able to be released is the American Heritage dictionary for the spell checker in LisaWrite.
Kbase Article of the Week: HyperCard Virus: Merryxmas⇢
The Merry Christmas (merryxmas) virus is written in HyperTalk, the HyperCard scripting language. It can’t affect any files other than HyperCard stacks and does not destroy or damage data. The most common indication of the merryxmas virus is that stacks launch and run much slower.
Many stacks can function properly when infected, but the Service Source won’t function properly with this virus present. When the Service Source CD-ROM is built, every stack on the CD is checked for the virus, which is eliminated if found.
PCalc Turns 25⇢
25 years sounds like a really long time. A quarter of a century sounds even longer. Yet, that is how long it has been since PCalc 1.0 was released.
I sent an email to the Info-Mac archive moderators that evening, and it turned up on FTP mirror sites around the world a few days later.
It normally travelled on floppy disks. The web did not yet exist.
PCalc was my first ever application. I started writing in the summer of 1992 and it took me around six months to get it into a state where I was happy to show it to the world. Some of that code still runs today, deep at the heart of the machine.
More on Universal Apps⇢
On this week’s episode of Under the Radar, Marco Arment and _David Smith discussed the rumor of Apple moving to a universal app platform across macOS and iOS.
Their conversation has changed my thinking on the topic. It’s easy for people like me to view the Mac in an idealistic way, not a pragmatic one. I want my Mac apps to be fully native and rich, integrating with system features smoothly. The reality is, sadly, that quite a few of the apps in my Dock aren’t native, but are either wrappers around websites or Electron monstrosities.
Apple Clarifies iPhone Performance Changes with Older Batteries⇢
Matthew Panzarino has details:
As that battery ages, iOS will check its responsiveness and effectiveness actively. At a point when it becomes unable to give the processor all of the power it needs to hit a peak of power, the requests will be spread out over a few cycles.
Remember, benchmarks, which are artificial tests of a system’s performance levels, will look like peaks and valleys to the system, which will then trigger this effect. In other words, you’re always going to be triggering this when you run a benchmark, but you definitely will not always trigger this effect when you’re using your iPhone like normal.
Questions Abound After Bloomberg Reports ‘Apple Plans Combined iPhone, iPad & Mac Apps’⇢
Mark Gurman has posted a huge story to wind down a year of massive Apple leaks:
Starting as early as next year, software developers will be able to design a single application that works with a touchscreen or mouse and trackpad depending on whether it’s running on the iPhone and iPad operating system or on Mac hardware, according to people familiar with the matter.
Developers currently must design two different apps – one for iOS, the operating system of Apple’s mobile devices, and one for macOS, the system that runs Macs. That’s a lot more work. What’s more, Apple customers have long complained that some Mac apps get short shrift. For example, while the iPhone and iPad Twitter app is regularly updated with the social network’s latest features, the Mac version hasn’t been refreshed recently and is widely considered substandard. With a single app for all machines, Mac, iPad and iPhone users will get new features and updates at the same time.
Ungeniused #40: Film and Television Accidents⇢
This week on Ungeniused, Myke and I learned that creating movies and TV shows can be a dangerous business.
It was sponsored by Squarespace. Enter offer code UNGENIUSED at checkout to get 10% off your first purchase.