posts

Joe Rossignol, writing at MacRumors:

A spokesperson for Apple has told French technology website Numerama that its M4 Max chip lacks an UltraFusion connector, which would have paved the way for the release of a doubled-up M4 Ultra chip in the future.

As we recently covered, Apple told Ars Technica that not every generation of M-series chips for Macs will include an “Ultra” chip. That seems like Apple indirectly confirming that it has no plans to release an M4 Ultra chip, and the M4 Max’s lack of UltraFusion technology makes it even more likely there won’t be an M4 Ultra chip.

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In addition to the new MacBook Air, Apple also updated the Mac Studio today:

Apple today announced the new Mac Studio, the most powerful Mac ever made, featuring M4 Max and the new M3 Ultra chip. The ultimate pro desktop delivers groundbreaking pro performance, extensive connectivity now with Thunderbolt 5, and new capabilities in its compact and quiet design that can live right on a desk. Mac Studio can tackle the most intense workloads with its powerful CPU, Apple’s advanced graphics architecture, higher unified memory capacity, ultrafast SSD storage, and a faster and more efficient Neural Engine. It provides a big boost in performance compared to the previous generation, and a massive leap for users coming from older Macs.

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As foretold, there’s a new MacBook Air out today, powered by the M4. Apple:

Apple today announced the new MacBook Air, featuring the blazing-fast performance of the M4 chip, up to 18 hours of battery life, a new 12MP Center Stage camera, and a lower starting price. It also offers support for up to two external displays in addition to the built-in display, 16GB of starting unified memory, and the incredible capabilities of macOS Sequoia with Apple Intelligence — all packed into its strikingly thin and light design that’s built to last. The new MacBook Air now comes in an all-new color — sky blue, a metallic light blue that joins midnight, starlight, and silver — giving MacBook Air its most beautiful array of colors ever. It also now starts at just $999 — $100 less than before — and $899 for education, making it an incredible value for students, business professionals, or anyone looking for a phenomenal combination of world-class performance, portability, design, and durability. With two sizes to choose from, the new 13- and 15-inch MacBook Air are available to pre-order today, with availability beginning Wednesday, March 12.

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Apple Newsroom, a day after Tim Cook posted his “There’s Something in the Air” tweet:

Apple today introduced the faster, more powerful iPad Air with the M3 chip and built for Apple Intelligence. iPad Air with M3 brings Apple’s advanced graphics architecture to iPad Air for the first time — taking its incredible combination of power-efficient performance and portability to a new level. iPad Air with M3 is nearly 2x faster compared to iPad Air with M1, and up to 3.5x faster than iPad Air with A14 Bionic.

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Tim Cook teased a product release coming this week with an old — but perfectly clear — reference to an old Apple event, saying on X — ugh — that “There’s something in the air.”

That tagline was used way back in 2008 when the first MacBook Air was introduced:

Rumor has it that the M4 MacBook Air is ready to go. I’m sure it’ll be a great machine, but I’m not sure it’s worthy of such a great reference. While we wait to see if this is more exciting than a mere spec bump,¹ let’s revisit that old announcement:

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Today more than ever we’re all drowning in a flood of information. News, research, social media. And while most of it is probably less important, we need to identify what actually is, keep it, and organize it. Only then it becomes “knowledge” that we can work with to create something new.

DEVONthink is the tool and the place for this. It keeps all your documents in databases right on your Mac, iPad, or iPhone, and gives you an environment full of pro-grade tools that let you work with them right inside the app.

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John Soliman returns to the show to detail his journey with Apple silicon, share his work on Pixar’s “Win or Lose,” and discuss video transcoding.

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Tom Warren, writing at The Verge:

It’s the end of an era. Microsoft is shutting down Skype in May and replacing it with the free version of Microsoft Teams for consumers. Existing Skype users will be able to log in to the Microsoft Teams app and have their message history, group chats, and contacts all automatically available without having to create another account, or they can choose to export their data instead. Microsoft is also phasing out support for calling domestic or international numbers.

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It’s not every week that I get to link to two new Mac apps, but turns out there is some good in this world yet.

Dark Noise developer Charlie Chapman has a new app out for creating those fancy in-device screenshots you see on fancy blogs. Here’s how he described Framous to Chance Miller:

Framous 1.0, the easiest way to quickly add device frames around your screenshots on the Mac, just released to the Mac App Store today.

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This week on the podcast:

Myke is away, so Stephen and Federico are relaunching every shirt from the show’s archives. Then, the guys talk through iOS 18.4 and Ticci’s new WiFi. Lastly, Stephen chats with Connected headphone expert Merri about her new Powerbeats Pro 2.

It’s always fun to have my wife crash the podcast.

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John Siracusa has a new Mac app out today that can scan your drive and reclaim space taken up by duplicate files. It works atop some clever features of APFS and has an excellent icon. In the app’s documentation, he writes:

Hyperspace searches for files with identical contents within one or more folders. If it finds any, it can then reclaim the disk space taken by all but one of the identical files— without removing any of the files!

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Online privacy isn’t just something you should be hoping for – it’s something you should expect. You should ensure your browsing history stays private and is not harvested by ad networks.

By blocking ad trackers, Magic Lasso Adblock stops you being followed by ads around the web.

As an efficient, high performance and native Safari ad blocker, Magic Lasso blocks all intrusive ads, trackers and annoyances on your iPhone, iPad and Mac. And it’s been designed from the ground up to protect your privacy.

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