Today is World Emoji Day. Started by Emojipedia founder and very handsome man Jeremy Burge in 2014, it’s a day to celebrate the tiny icons that have taken over much of our communication.
To help mark the day, Apple is previewing the new emoji coming to the company’s operating systems later this year. Beyond the press release, Apple Podcasts is getting into the day in a big way:
Happy #WorldEmojiDay!
Come play along with us and turn podcast titles into emojis with #PodcastEmoji.
This month in my MacStories column, I wrote about three of the most adorable Mac notebooks ever shipped: the PowerBook Duo, the 12-inch PowerBook G4 and the original MacBook Air.
My thanks to Balance for Mac for sponsoring 512 Pixels once again this week. Balance is a powerful menubar app for your money built by a team from Apple, Stripe and Ethereum. It’s super nifty.
The last time the Mac Mini was updated was October 16, 2014. Today is June 12, 2017. I had to use an online calculator to be sure, but the results are exactly 1000 days since the last Mac Mini update. This isn’t nearly as bad as the Mac Pro update debacle, but it’s still worth noting.
Damn.
For years, users have been able to make suggestions from within Apple’s Maps app about mislabeled or incorrect information.
Last week, I submitted my first comment. Apple was showing a baseball stadium in Memphis as a landmark. The problem was that the park was torn down in 2005.
Whoops.
I noticed it, and filed a report that the stadium was nothing more than a field now. Last night, I got a push notification:
This week on Query, my new show with Serenity Caldwell:
iCloud Photo Library can have a serious impact on your backup strategy, as Matthew, Dave and Ryan have learned. After trying to clear up the cloud service’s various modes, Ren and Stephen talk about task managers, help Alex pick out a drawing app for the iPad, and discuss gaming PCs.
If you haven’t check out this podcast yet, this is a good place to start. We’re answering all types of tech questions, not just Apple ones, so if something’s on your mind, tweet it with #askquery and we’ll see it.
This article felt relevant this week:
Your Mac includes many photos and other images that you can use as desktop pictures (wallpaper) to give your Mac a custom look. Or you can use your own.
Follow these steps to change the desktop picture used as the background of your screen. You can do it from from Photos, the Finder, or Desktop preferences.
While we’re on the topic of my recent appearances, I was pleased to sit down with David Sparks and Jason Snell to talk about my early attempt at being an Apple blogger, a fateful meeting over tea and how I ended up leaving my job two years ago.
I was honored to speak at AltConf back in June. I spoke about my first two years of independent life, and some of the assumptions I had about making the transition to working on my own stuff full-time. Things I assumed would be easy were really difficult, and I really struggled the first nine months or so of working for myself.
Video of the talk is up now. I hope you enjoy it.
Every major version of Mac OS X macOS has come with a new default wallpaper.
I have collected them all here, in glorious 5K resolution. I owe a huge thank you to the mysterious @forgottentowel for upscaling many of these for modern screens.
Balance is a powerful menubar app for your money built by a team from Apple, Stripe and Ethereum. It was featured in the U.S. Mac App Store when it launched in February.
Balance uses Plaid.com, the best API for securely accessing your financial data. It gives the app a read-only token to access your account history.
With one click or keyboard shortcut you can pop open Balance and check all of your accounts. Lock the app with a password or TouchID.
There are a lot of colorful Macs. Look no further than the original iMacs and iBooks if you need a little more than brushed aluminum in your life.
These machines are all great, but there’s one Mac that puts them to shame when it comes to being colorful.
Say hello to the JLPGA PowerBook 170:
There were only 500 of these made to commemorate the 1992 JLPGA golf tournament in Japan. The guts are a run-of-the-mill PowerBook 170, 1 but the case is truly special. The blue body is completed with a white lid and base. The battery doors are red, as are the screen adjustment sliders. The hinges are bright yellow; rounding things out are the green feet.