Posts Tagged → mac

The Case For Having “Recall” on the Mac

A few weeks ago, Filipe Espósito, at 9to5Mac, argued that Apple should build their own version of the Microsoft Recall feature.

I agree.

If you’re unfamiliar with it, Recall traces your history on your computer, allowing you to find just about anything: Recover deleted files, replay a meeting or even find a now-unpublished web page. With Recall, if it’s been on your screen, you can later find it with the use of some clever AI.

Microsoft’s initial launch was delayed due to security problems, but now they have a revised version in beta. The utility of this feature can’t be argued. While us nerds can do a pretty good job of finding old data, most users are clueless. If you could throw a query at a local AI that could find anything in the computer’s past, it would solve a lot of problems for a lot of people.

The problem, of course, is privacy, but there’s no company better to address that problem than Apple. Through some concoction of encryption and perhaps even the Secure Enclave, Apple should be able to pull this off in a way that is entirely local and entirely private to the user. Of course, you’d be able to turn it off, and of course, there would be a lot of privacy controls. But for most of us, I think it would just be damn useful.

I’m not saying it’s easy, but I firmly believe it’s possible. I’d be shocked if Apple doesn’t have a team looking into this already.

New Macs Coming Next Week

Apple is teasing an “exciting week of announcements” starting Monday. If you’ve been holding off on buying a new Mac, next week might be an expensive one. We’re expecting the M4 iterations of the MacBook Pro, Mac Mini, and iMac, which have been anticipated for a while now.

It looks like Apple won’t be holding a formal event but will instead roll out the new products over the course of the week. Rumor has it that we’ll also see USB-C versions of Apple’s Magic keyboard, trackpad, and mouse. So if that one remaining Lightning cable has been driving you nuts, relief is on the way.

The Hypothetical Cellular Mac

Ryan Christoffel, over at 9to5Mac, wrote an excellent article about how we are at an interesting crossroads over Macs with cellular chips. Specifically, Apple seems closer to releasing their own cellular chip and a lot of folks, myself included, have used that event as the hypothetical tipping point where Apple starts putting cellular chips in Macs.

If they don’t have to pay a fee to some other manufacturer, why not? Right?

If Apple doesn’t start putting cellular chips in Macs after they start shipping their own cellular chip, I have to wonder if they’ll ever do it.

Unread for Mac

I’ve always considered Unread one of the most attractive RSS reader apps. However, there has never been a Mac version. Today marks the release of Unread for Mac. It’s an RSS reader made with taste. It has great typography, themes, search, and compatibility with the usual suspects. I love having this app on my Mac.

About this Folding Mac Rumor

There is a new rumor that Apple is working on a foldable, keyboard-less Mac for release in a few years, which will get a 20-inch display in something resembling a 13-inch MacBook Air footprint. That would be impressive, but it would also raise many questions.

First, what about the keyboard? Once you take away a keyboard, is it still a Mac? I’d say it is so long as it’s running macOS. A lot of folks tend to like their keyboards. At the same time, voice-to-text dictation is moving rapidly as artificial intelligence kicks into high gear. I also can’t help but note the irony that I am typing this out on a virtual keyboard on my 13-inch iPad Pro without any trouble.

Second, if Apple released an all-screen Mac, wouldn’t it make sense to include a touch screen and maybe even Apple Pencil support?

Something different, for sure.

Does iPad (and Mac) Reliability Explain Slowing Upgrade Cycles?

Apple didn’t release any new iPad hardware this year, but according to Ming-Chi Kuo, that’s changing next year with iPad updates across the board, including the long-awaited OLED iPad Pro.

That’s good, and I hope that’s all true. But I also know how easy it was to go a year without iPad upgrades. I routinely hear from listeners and readers wanting to know about future iPhones and Macs. Questions about upcoming iPad hardware are a lot more rare.

To me, this is a better indicator of Apple’s success with the iPad than its failure to ship new iPad hardware in 2023. Now, the iPads are so solid and reliable that folks are waiting a long time to upgrade.

I purchased my iPad Pro in 2019. It still works great, and I don’t expect to buy an OLED iPad in 2024. For a nerd like me, four-going-on-five-year-old Apple hardware says something.

To pile onto this point (and I’ve been saying this on the podcast for a while now), I think we’ll get to the same place with the Apple silicon Macs. Apple has done an excellent job of figuring out Mac hardware, particularly with the arrival of their M-series chips. I expect we’ll be happy and hang on to them for a long time. That’s one of the reasons why I think Mac shipments (as reported by Apple last week) are down. The hardware is excellent and lasts a long time. That results in slower upgrade cycles, and that’s good!

I also expect this will be no surprise to Apple which partially explains why services are becoming such a big deal to them.

Record Anything with Audio Hijack

With Audio Hijack, you can record any audio on your Mac. Save audio from individual applications such as Safari or Zoom, record from hardware audio devices like microphones and mixers, or even capture the audio output of the entire system. Whatever you need to do with audio on your Mac, Audio Hijack can help.

– Record conversations from Zoom, FaceTime, and other VoIP apps

– Create podcasts, both remote and in-studio

– Save streaming audio from the web

– Digitize vinyl

– And so much more

I use Audio Hijack daily. I don’t know how I’d be able to do my work without it. It’s powerful, stable, and constantly improving. If you want to do just about anything with audio on your Mac, this is the app you’ll need.

Check out the latest version of the award-winning Audio Hijack today. Through the end of September, MacSparky readers can save 20% when purchasing using coupon code MACSPARKY20. Learn more and download a free trial on the Audio Hijack site.

The Future of Mac Reliability

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about Apple silicon and its implications for Macintosh reliability. Before the arrival of Apple silicon, a typical Mac logic board included a CPU, separate RAM, an Apple W2 or some other sort of secure enclave, chips to manage inputs and outputs, (often) a discrete video card, Apple’s separate machine-learning chips, and a bunch more bits and pieces that all now exist as the single System on a Chip (SoC) that is Apple silicon. So does combining everything in one SoC make the Mac more or less reliable? A case could be made for both points. Without all the digital tethers needed to tie all those separate pieces together, Apple silicon should have less that can go wrong with it and be more reliable. On the flip side, if something does go wrong on Apple silicon, the machine is probably dead.

When trying to predict whether these new Apple silicon Macs will be more or less reliable, it is important to remember this is not Apple’s first SoC rodeo. They’ve been making SoCs for the iPhone and the iPad for years.

A few days ago, I was on the telephone with an old friend, and he commented that his wife still loves the iPad I helped him set up about nine years ago. It is an iPad 2 and still working fine. I told him, “You should buy your wife an updated iPad. They have a good one for $329.” He had me on speaker because then his wife chimed in, “I don’t need a new iPad. This one still works like new.” Her nine-year-old iPad running on an Apple SoC still runs “like new” after nearly a decade. I realize this is anecdotal, but looking at iPads in particular that have a bit more cooling (even if it is just a big aluminum heat sync) and don’t get abused as hard as iPhones, I’m aware of a lot of very old iPads still in use.

Moreover, again anecdotally, I’m not aware of anyone I’ve spoken to who told me their iPad SoC failed. I know plenty of folks who broke the screen, but nobody who had the SoC fail them. Think about your friends and family circle. I suspect you’ve had the same experience.

I take this as a good sign for the new Mac SoC designs. The Mac SoC is a successor to those early iPad chips. Indeed, the new iPad Pros run on the current Mac SoC, the M1. If I were a betting man, I’d say that old running Macs are about to become much more common in the coming years. I sure hope so.

Assuming I’m right, the problem then becomes software. Even though my friend’s wife still loved her iPad 2, I’m sure her operating system has to be years old. Apple is generally good about supporting old hardware with new software updates, but what will they do if it becomes common for Macs to run reliably for 10 or 12 years? There is just so much to this Apple silicon Mac transition that seems to be rewriting the rule book. Exciting, right?