Posts

Touch Bar on Apple's Standalone Keyboard Will Take A While If It Ever Happens

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Source:  9to5Mac Almost immediately upon learning about the Touch Bar on the new MacBook Pro, the next thought that occurred to me was when Apple will bring it to their standalone keyboard. I've left it on the table for a bit and allowed it to simmer for a few days. With Halloween on the horizon, I didn't think about it until I read the above post from  9to5Mac  which they showed a rendering of what an Apple Touch Bar keyboard will look like. I'm not sure if Apple brings the Touch Bar to the external keyboard, it would be just a simple strip like what we see on the MacBook Pro. If you believe that is all Apple will do, then don't expect it to happen this way. First of all, the jury is still out for me on the Touch Bar. I'm not a professional. I'm just a regular Mac user like the most of you. It's too early to see just how useful it will be outside of Apple's reality distortion field and video and photo cutting rooms. Being able to access ...

In Light of Samsung's Note 7 Fire Troubles, The Timing of Apple's Suit Against A Counterfeiter Could Not Be More Perfect

Source:  Patently Apple via 9to5Mac . The title to this post says it all. What we want to get into is why it is important that while come accessories are cheaper when you do not buy directly from Apple, at best, they could create unexpected results on how your Apple devices work and, at worst, pose a danger to you.  Apple launched a lawsuit against a counterfeiter who sold many cables and chargers on Amazon, declaring them as the genuine items.  And for a steep discount than what you would otherwise have to pay for from Apple, it sounds like a great deal.  Except it is not. These counterfeit items have not gone through Apple's own standards for safety testing for consumer use.  And there lies in the problem.  Uncertified chargers and cables may be more prone to overheating, catching fire, and shock users.  There are plenty of stories you there you can read if you google - people who decided to go with that $2 charger being sold on the street corner ki...

Best To let Macs Be Macs - You Know, With Intel Chips Inside

There is a lot of speculations about what Apple will or will not do with the Mac products as the level of anxiety has risen over the lack of new hardware from Apple.  Rightly so since most of the Macs on the market, the Macbook being the only exception, have been around for more than a year without any new hardware update.  And for most of us, it does not help when even leading Apple blogs seem to suggest that Apple is no longer focusing on Macs and has shifted even more resources to the development of iOS devices and the faster growing apps and service segments of its business.  Let me assure you that Apple will not abandon the Macs.  Apple will release new computers when it is ready.  That date will come when the hardware is ready and when marketing and the executive team believes that the time is right.  That is not to say that all the Macs will be updated.  I'm more to be inclined to believe that Macbooks will get the bulk of the attention with the...

Old Apple Watch: A Gift That Can Save A Life

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I passed on getting the Apple Watch when it went on sale in April of 2015.  I ended up with one as a gift.  And with the introduction of the Apple Watch Series 2 by Apple on September 7th of this year, it had enough new features that I ended up ordering one for myself.  So with the one that I currently own now, I've decided to pass it on instead of keeping it as a collection of some sort (I have a very small watch collection but I just don't see the Apple Watch in the same light yet - I'll get into that later).   It was an easy choice to make as to who I was going to pass my AWS1 (Apple Watch Series 1).  First, I wanted to make sure it was someone who was going to take good care of is.  More importantly, I wanted to make sure that the individual was going to make the most of it. My own Apple Watch experience evolves around the Activity App which records calories burnt, minutes spent on active workout that day, and how many times I've stood up from ...

New Way to Name The iPhone - An Apple-Only Opportunity to Change How Mobile Is Updated

Before Apple came out with the iPhone 7 on September 7th last week, their invitation had a play on the "7" and I was sort of sure that Apple would be fooling us about the naming scheme and actually end up calling the iPhone 7 just the iPhone or move onto another naming format.  I was wrong. Sorta. Like many others, I still believe the current naming scheme is unsustainable and would really think Apple will go with iPhone 20 thirteen years from now?   With nearly identical form factors between the iPhone 6, iPhone 6S, and the iPhone 7, it would have been a perfect time for Apple to abandon it.  However, perhaps, next year would be a better time to do just that when Apple do release the next iPhone with a rumored new form factor.   Here's why.  Apple had just gotten rid of the headphone jack.  Get that out of the way first - for whatever reason Apple truly got rid of it, let it be a distraction this year rather than next year when Apple truly ...

If Fujitsu Can Create A Supercomputer with ARM Chips, Apple Can/Should Create A Superdupercomputer

Call it the superdupercomputer from Apple - or the Mac S as in super or the Super Mac.  See, Fujitsu decided to use ARM chips over SPARC to design its next supercomputer (Source:  Duckduckgo ).  The Japanese tech company is looking to use ARMv8 architecture to be the brain behind its next computing machine, dubbed the Post-K, due to exceed the K Supercomputer in 2020.  So, given that Apple also use the ARM design as the basis for its iOS devices and with rumors that Apple has been spending time and effort to put its A-series chips as a potential replacement of Intel chips for its Mac computers, I wonder if Apple had considered designing its own supercomputer and perhaps even make it easier to link iOS devices and Macs together to share processing power. This would be especially useful and quite possibly necessary as mobile computing becomes smaller and even more portable as wearable devices begin to populate the mobile market. First, let's speculate a bit about the A...

iOS 10 Feature: Picture-In-Picture Would Rock!

Here is a 9to5Mac post on what they like to see and conceptualized the features for iOS 10 for the high-end iPhone 7.  One that I would love to see is the picture-in-picture feature that is only available on the iPad.  The iPhone 7 Plus would like have the same screen size at 5.5" as the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6S Plus.  There is more than enough room on there for a diminutive screen for streaming my Youtube, Amazon Prime, and iTunes videos. Why not the 4.7" iPhone?  Well, given Apple's past on making features exclusive for newer and bigger devices, it would not be surprising if Apple makes certain features available on select devices if only to up-sell them - resulting in higher profit and revenue.  It's not to say that this is always the case but I reckon features like PIP would be available only on the bigger screen iPhones because they would allow more room for operating an app while still have a small windowed video going on.  If anything, Apple might als...