Tag: Apple

Web by Joe WilcoxJan 3, 20178:51 pm

A Matched Set

I would never guess that the grey metal Master & Dynamic MW60 headphones purchased in December 2015 would match my new 15.4-inch MacBook Pro a year later. But here they are, together, shot on Dec. 30, 2016, using Fujifilm X-T1 with Fujinon XF35mmF2 R WR lens. Vitals: f/4, ISO 400, 1/60 sec, 35mm. The Featured Image is cropped but otherwise is as captured. Broad bokeh is deliberate, with focus on the Apple logo, as are the dark hues.

The MW60 make me think about Apple Music, which begrudgingly replaces Tidal as 2017 begins. The HiFi streaming service delights with fantastic audio fidelity—difference I can hear, starting with vocals. But Apple Music’s catalog is broader, and the curated playlists are superior, for my tastes. Consider “Best of 2016: Alternative“. I couldn’t have picked better, and I was a radio deejay in my college-age years.

Apple by Joe WilcoxJan 1, 20176:15 am

Living with Apple’s Mistakes

I lied, but not deliberately. One year ago today, I wrote: “Apple Lost My Heart to Google in 2015“, explaining that “my mainstays at the start of 2016: Chromebook Pixel LS, Pixel C, Nexus 6P, and Huawei Watch. I abandoned Apple and there are no plans to return..I will write more about Google in 2016 than previous years, because of the benefits I see. As for Apple, the company had my heart for the longest time. I challenge CEO Tim Cook to win back my adoration; skeptical I may be”.

By March, however, Apple won back my business with little effort, and I gave up the Google lifestyle. Transition back to the Orchard started with a 13.3-inch MacBook Pro: 3.1GHz Core i7 processor, 16GB RAM, 256GB SSD, purchased from DC Computers. Three reasons: 1) I believed Mr. Cook’s privacy promises, all while my concerns about Big G information collection increased. 2) I found the visual acuity of Apple fonts and user interfaces to be far superior to Google’s, which helped compensate for diminishing reading vision (later recovered through eye surgery). 3) Google’s platforms proved inadequate for easily recording, producing, and publishing the Frak That! podcast, which is available on SoundCloud.

Apple by Joe WilcoxDec 27, 20167:34 pm

The MacBook Pro with Touch Bar Battery Life Dilemma

Consumer Reports played nasty, little Santa’s helper by plopping a piece of chunky coal into Apple’s Christmas stocking, when denying the coveted—and expected—recommendation. Holy Moly. Over the holiday, the InterWebs exploded with stories during an otherwise, slow tech news cycle. CR found widely, or perhaps wildly, inconsistent charge-to-depletion times for MacBook Pro with Touch Bar. Uh-oh. At least the lap-hugger isn’t explodin’, like the Samsung Galaxy Note 7. B-b-b-boom!

Perhaps, like me, you bought or received as present, one of these newfangled Macs. I have some questions about your experience starting with: How’s your battery life? Do you get enough from the laptop to justify the price increase over last year’s model? If you bought, or received, something else, did news about battery life affect the decision? Since we’re all sharing our deepest, innermost MacBook Pro secrets, from here I will reveal my own. I bought not one, but two. Problems with the first, but not the second, and possible remedy will be familiar to long-time Windows users.

Apple by Joe WilcoxDec 21, 20166:30 pm

Apple Store, Bah Humbug

Apple sure knows how to keep its store stocked for the holidays. Ho, ho, ho, bah humbug. The shelves are bare, and you can get your must-have pretty thing some time next year. If you’re lucky. Let’s start with the delayed AirPods, which went on sale online last week. They arrived in stores on Monday, and whoosh were gone before the waiting line ended. My local shop had about 30 pairs. If you want them, first available retail pickup date is—cough, cough—February 8th. That is 2017. I had to confirm not 2018, because you never know with these dumbfounding delays. Straight-to-ship orders move your way in six weeks. Donald Trump will be president sooner!

Perhaps you’re pining for one of those pricey MacBook Pros—you know, the ones with Touch Bar that no sane person knows what to do with. Apple will miss Christmas, but you can still beat Martin Luther King’s birthday, with orders made today delivering sometime between January 4-10 or available for in-store pickup on the tenth. God Bless America and Made in China!

Society by Joe WilcoxDec 17, 20167:04 pm

iPhone for Education

Many educators won’t agree, but perhaps students will: The PC, whether desktop or notebook, is obsolete in the classroom. This reality, if accepted for what it is, presents Apple opportunity to retake the K-12 market from Alphabet-subsidiary Google’s incursion and sudden success with Chromebook among U.S. schools. If the fruit-logo company doesn’t seize the moment, a competitor will—and almost certainly selling devices running Android.

Chromebook’s educational appeal is three-fold: low cost, manageability, and easy access to Google informational services. For buy-in price, and TCO, no Apple laptop or tablet running macOS or iOS, respectively, can compete. Think differently! Providing students any kind of computer is shortsighted, by narrowly presuming that schools, or their parents, must buy something. I suggest, in this time of budgetary constraints, that educators instead use what the kids already possess (or want to) and what they use easily and quickly: The smartphone.

Apple by Joe WilcoxDec 14, 20164:49 pm

My Cat Wants to Know: Why 15.4-inch MacBook Pro?

Water smacked the windshield—a torrent of heavy droplets—as my wife struggled to feed money into the tollbooth machine. Pelting rain is uncommon during November in San Diego, but we had purpose for driving 36 km through the downpour to Chula Vista and the Otay Ranch Apple Store, where I had never been before. The shop was the only one around that had the 15.4-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar in stock.

Eleven days earlier, Nov. 15, 2016, I received the 13.3-inch model that was ordered on October 27th. While first impressions were wow, the laptop felt slow compared to my previous MBP, and the battery drained in about half the time as specs stated. I worried that Apple produced a defective unit. No store in the area had the smaller laptop in stock, should I want to take advantage of the 14-day return policy. Deadline approached, so I considered as alternative my first 15-incher in more than a decade, tempted in part by quad-core processor and discreet graphics.

Apple by Joe WilcoxDec 8, 20162:30 pm

Windows Phone is Dead

I laughed so hard and so often at IDC’s smartphone forecast, my response took nine days to write—okay, to even start it. The future isn’t my chuckable—that data looks reasonably believable enough—but the past. Because 2016 was supposed to be the year that Microsoft’s mobile OS rose from the ashes of Symbian to surpass iOS and to challenge Android.

In 2011, IDC forecast that Windows Phone global smartphone OS market share would top 20 percent in 2015. The analyst firm reiterated the platform’s No. 2 status for 2016 in 2012 as well. Not that I ever believed the ridiculous forecasts, writing: “If Windows Phone is No. 2 by 2015, I’ll kiss Steve Ballmer’s feet” and “If Windows Phone is No. 2 by 2016, I’ll clean Steve Ballmer’s toilet“. The CEO’s later retirement let me lose from those obligations had I been wrong. I was confident in my analysis being truer.

Apple by Joe WilcoxDec 7, 201610:05 pm

Google OnHub vs Apple AirPort

We all make mistakes. The challenge is recognizing and correcting them quickly enough. So comes admission: I bought Apple AirPort Time Capsule to replace Google OnHub—what a bad decision.

My tale starts with a chance sighting on Kinja Deals for the 2TB Apple WiFi router on sale at Amazon for $199; one-hundred bucks off. I ordered on Nov. 16, 2016, and the device arrived two days later. At the time, I had 45Mbps AT&T Internet (which has changed since). Placed in the same location where OnHub had been, about 3 meters away from my desk in the same room as the router, throughput consistently came in at 15Mbps, occasionally a little more, as measured by Fast.com or SpeedTest.Net. By contrast, Google’s router wirelessly pumped 40Mbps or more. Ah, yeah.

Apple by Joe WilcoxNov 15, 201610:13 pm

New MacBook Pro is ‘Wow’

A few hours after setting up 13-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar, I can tell you who it’s for. Surely you wondered, and maybe you even considered this pricey portable to be an insane release. Mea culpa, for thinking something similar. But no longer. The laptop lives up to my early expectations—and more.

I ordered new MBP, after serious deliberation, the day Apple announced it; Oct. 27, 2016. Better to get into the front of queue before backorders begin and cancel later should there be second thoughts. Or third. Or fourth. I had them. Often. But in the end took the risk. Apple Store indicated my order would arrive sometime between November 17 and 24. However, after shipping on the 13th, delivery date revised to the 16th but the beauty arrived today. Oh La La.

Apple by Joe WilcoxNov 1, 20165:04 pm

What’s Behind MacBook Pro Touch Bar?

For fervent fanboys who drink Apple Kool-Aid like water, the new MacBook Pro unveiled last week is a thrilling update. But excitement isn’t sure for the thinking public considering buying one or wondering whether or not to cancel an already placed purchase before it ships. Anyone perplexed by what Apple decision-makers are thinking, and whether the new laptops are good value, must first understand the underlying design-ethic and answer: Is it rationale?

Apple is finger-obsessed and has been since before the first Mac shipped, as I explained in March 2010 BetaNews analysis: “What 1984 Macintosh marketing reveals about iPad” (Also see from this site, in April 2010: “The Most Natural User Interface is You“). The company lags behind Google getting to the next user interface, which is more contextual and immediately responsive: Voice, meaning touchless interaction, rather than touch, supported by artificial intelligence. By contrast, Apple isn’t ready to abandon the finger-first motif, as Touch Bar makes so obviously apparent.

Apple by Joe WilcoxOct 28, 201611:29 am

Your Older MacBook Pro Is More Valuable Than You Think

If you’re a recent MacBook Pro buyer, Apple just did you a huge favor—something that may be lost on new MBP buyers, who are in for some sticker shock. The entry-level for the cheapest, newest 13-incher is $200 or $500 more than its predecessor, depending on whether or not opting for the newfangled Touch Bar and Touch ID. That’s $1,499 or $1,799. Yikes. MBP 15 is a $400 price hike, $2,399, for current tech.

But if you already own MacBook Pro, particularly the 13-incher released in March 2015 or the larger model two months later, Apple increased the laptop’s value by not accelerating its depreciation. No kidding. That’s because the new entry-level SKUs are the same as before.

Apple by Joe WilcoxOct 27, 20166:51 pm

Apple’s New Mac Family is Frightening

The Mac laptop line, following today’s new announcements, looks lots less like Apple and more like Compaq—where Tim Cook worked much earlier in his career, incidentally, long before the original IBM PC clone-maker’s demise. Confusing. Complicated. These are apt descriptions that might just send the ghost of Steve Jobs skyward on either—take your pick—Halloween or Day of the Dead.

Among Apple cofounder’s first tasks when returning to the chief executive’s chair in 1997: Simplifying product families. Jobs cut the deadweight, surprising many people by killing off Newton, for example. Complex product lines define Apple under successor Cook, by contrast.