Posts about Apple

An earlier draft of my initial thoughts on the iPhone Duo included a long note describing my curiosity about how Safari would feel and work on the Duo. It was growing too esoteric and wordy, and I wasn’t in the headspace to edit it for clarity, so I just deleted it.

Thankfully, my earlier questions — which were mostly about env(safe-area-inset) — are slowly getting answered. Mike Piontek writes about his disappointment in Safari on the iPhone Duo, and the situation looks pretty bleak. As in, this is the worst possible outcome.

Like Mike, if Apple insists that our designs should influence the browser chrome, I would like to control the browser chrome. I’d love to see his suggestions get adopted sooner rather than later, and they have solved this problem before with safe area insets.

For something like a year, there have been rumours going around about the new touch-based OLED MacBook Pros. 

The rumour that had me most skeptical was one about being thinner and lighter than previous generations.

I really want lighter MacBook Pros. Anything we can do to maintain their power envelope while making them smaller is a big win. My 16″ MacBook Pro is a tank, while 5lb isn’t enormously heavy, it definitely adds up in a bag. (From my recent experiences, I can tell you it adds up more when you’re carrying a laptop bag, a car seat, and a 13lb 6‑week-old baby too).

I was an early adopter of the disastrously thin and light MacBook Pros with the world’s worst keyboards. I went through a bunch of those as a sort-of unpaid QA tester for the world’s largest company. It was not great. Eventually, I gave up and bought an iMac Pro instead, because getting work done was more important than being portable.

The current MacBook Pro generation is a wonderful design and was a great course correction. Making them smaller and lighter again sounds like a terrible idea.

So I’ve been nervously waiting for more information about that with baited breath.

From the same Bloomberg article about Ternus taking charge of design at Apple (which I also wrote about) comes this juicy new tidbit about new laptop designs:

The new MacBook Pros are lighter — significantly lighter. Apple has reengineered the machine’s interior, miniaturizing parts and rearranging components to make the computer much easier to carry. The current 16-inch MacBook Pro weighs as much as 4.8 pounds, compared with 3.3 pounds for the 15-inch MacBook Air, so any meaningful reduction would be immediately noticeable. I expect these machines, currently in testing with macOS 27.2, to arrive by next month.

I will not be a guinea pig for this design. I’m not buying one in 2026. (Maybe 2027 with a new studio budget, but we’ll have to see.) 

However, this sounds like good news! Making a laptop thinner and lighter without making dramatic changes to the rest of the machine is a terrible idea. Making a laptop thinner and lighter because your chips are all smaller now at 2nm and you’ve miniaturized and rearranged the other components? That sounds like it could work. 

I’m hopeful that this machine doesn’t throttle, burn my legs, or ship with a stupid busted garbage keyboard made by imps from hell. But I’ll let other people test it.

My current laptop is an M4 Max and still has lots of life in it. A few things I would consider upgrading for:

1. If the touchscreen lets me work in something like Concepts on my Mac (where I do all my early exploration for work), that would be incredible.
2. If the laptop were lighter while maintaining or exceeding current sustained performance, and maintaining or improving current battery life, that’s a must.
3. Cellular. Please. Please add cellular. My home network is so fast (3.5gb/s symmetric) that leaving the house and using somebody else’s network is painful. And on top of that, the networks at my favourite coffee shops and libraries just don’t work reliably at all, leaving me to hotspot to my phone. And when I hotspot to my phone, I run into bizarre issues with Docker, DDEV, AWS, and Imgix while working on local development. Having cellular built into the laptop would resolve a lot of pain points for me.
4. If they, at the very least, keep the ports we have. HDMI takes up a lot of space, but I end up using it in conference rooms all the time. You know what’s annoying? Bringing the USB‑C to HDMI dongle. I’ve lost a lot of those.
5. 128gb of RAM. I bought 64gb on this machine a year and a half ago to save a couple hundred bucks. In the face of current RAM pricing, it’s important that I share this publicly: that was stupid. I should have bit the darn bullet; I could always use more RAM. (Currently I have 24GB in swap, and it’s a Sunday afternoon; I’m not even working.)

The nano-texture screen is so great on my current laptop, and the mini LED design works so well for me, that I’m not even sure OLED would make a difference in my workflow. While I’m a big fan of OLED and have the biggest OLED TV I could buy in my home theatre, I don’t need it on a laptop.

But there are other things I would like to have. I am very much looking forward to the October event.

From Bloomberg: Apple’s John Ternus Has Found a New Design Chief: Himself:

[The design arrangement] changed when Williams retired last year. Although Cook announced in a press release that the design teams would report directly to him after Williams’ departure — and that was true on paper — they actually began answering to Ternus. Cook gave him responsibility for design as part of the eventual transition to CEO. During the CEO transition period between April and September, Apple’s design leaders were effectively Ternus’ only direct reports before Cook stepped down.

Ternus already had some involvement with the design studio as Apple’s head of hardware engineering, given the close coordination required between the two functions. Since becoming CEO, however, he has immersed himself in the industrial design and human interface teams. Several people familiar with the department say he works hands-on in the studio several times a week, sometimes visiting multiple times in a single day.

Steve Jobs, of course, was known for taking a similarly direct approach to design while working with Ive. But Ternus’ involvement marks a major shift from the Cook era. Designers say Cook typically visited the studio for about an hour once a month, at most.

… With Ternus making design a major priority and taking such an active role in the department, it appears he has already chosen Apple’s new design leader and ultimate decision maker: himself.

Compared to Tim Cook, Ternus’ involvement is refreshing. Colour me intrigued. Cook was never much of a product guy, and there were times when the products suffered for it.

The comparison to Steve Jobs makes my eyes roll into the back of my head a little bit. We need to stop comparing every tech CEO to Steve. Only Steve could be Steve.

One thing that Steve had was taste, and he had it in spades. It remains to be seen if Ternus has taste. It sounds like he took over in July last year, presumably when the new Liquid Glass designs were already wrapped. So I’m encouraged to see Liquid Glass get a little better this year. All their changes have pushed it a little closer to the Aqua designs of yore, and it’s a massive improvement over all.

I also think Ternus is a good speaker and a smart (and shrewd) guy, and it comes across like he knows his stuff. In a couple interviews with Tom’s Guide and TechRadar, Ternus speaks clearly and intelligently about his team’s products.

But clearly Ternus is stuck between a rock and a hard place. He was a known Mac Pro apologist at one point. He understands the Mac. If he doesn’t like Liquid Glass on the Mac, I wouldn’t be surprised.

But as CEO, he as conflicting priorities:

1. Apple’s pride and hubris forbids it from admitting mistakes and rolling back a design. So we need to wait until the next full redesign in a few years to see if Ternus has the goods.
2. Ternus might be a product guy, but he’s also a corporate CEO, and he knows the iPhone is where the juice is. What’s good for iPhone is good for Mac, from that perspective, so maybe Liquid Glass stays, even if it makes the platform a little worse.
3. Money, money, money is the top priority for a CEO.

So fixing designs that old-school (read: old) people in the community don’t like is probably pretty low down his priority list.

All that to say, I don’t know what to think about this. It’s either very good news or very bad news, but it’s hard to imagine that a CEO spending hours a week guiding the designers is a neutral event with no consequences whatsover.

We’ll have to wait and see.

I have two thoughts on the iPhone Duo.

First, I think the iPhone Duo is going to be a hit.

Second, It’s not for me. But I kind of want one anyway, partially out of curiosity and partially for work.

My prediction

As far as my prediction goes: I don’t think the Duo is going to be the best-selling iPhone this year. (I don’t think Apple could produce enough of them to make that happen, even if they wanted to.) But I do think it’s going to sell like hotcakes. I think they’re going to sell as many as they can make, and I think every folding phone will look like this within the next twelve months.

I’m 35 years old, and my friends, my parents and in-laws, and my friends’ parents are all talking about this phone. All of them are expressing skepticism: ​“Who on earth would want a folding phone? Why do you need that?”

I am well aware that anything invented after you’re 30 is basically from the devil and unnecessary, so I’m cognizant that this derision from the older generation likely indicates a hit.

A few other times I’ve heard similar sentiments in my lifetime from the same age range:

• “This iPad thing. What a stupid name. And it’s just a big phone. What’s the point?”
• “A phone without a keyboard is just dumb. Nobody wants this.”
• “So you’re telling me people send text messages to the internet and it just posts on this Twitter thing. It’s 104 characters or something. What a joke. Nobody wants that.” (This remains my personal favourite; my father said it after he heard about Twitter on the radio one day circa 2007.)

As far as I’m concerned, ​“Who wants a folding phone?” has claim chowder written all over it.

In addition, I was at the Apple Store on Sunday for an unrelated errand and asked one of the employees if people seemed excited about the Duo, and he told me at least 50% of the people coming by were asking if they could see one. So yeah, people seem very interested.

My own thoughts

As for me, I think the form factor is smart, and the design team has clearly knocked it out of the park. I think people are going to love the matte display outdoors (I would love a nano texture option for my iPhone Pro). And I think people just love their iPhones, and given the option, always want a bigger iPhone.

I’ve been keeping a list of how often the bigger iPhone would have been handy since it was announced. My wife and I just celebrated the arrival of our firstborn. She’s six weeks old now. Until just a couple days ago, she wouldn’t sleep without being held, and I’m already a bit of a night owl, so I took the night shift. A larger single-handed device would have made this much better for me, as you can imagine.

But I don’t think the form factor is for me. To tell you the truth, I want a smaller phone, not a bigger one. My iPhone 17 Pro is already too wide for me. I don’t think my hands are particularly small or particularly large. They’re normal-sized hands for a male. And phones are getting too large for me to use with one hand, which is a problem.

I’d love the Mini form factor with the Pro camera system.

However, at some point, I think I’m going to test the Duo in an Apple Store. Depending how it feels to use, I might end up with one. Maybe not this year, and not as my primary phone. But if this thing takes off, it’ll be important to understand the form factor and how it feels for web browsing and apps. 

Safari on a Duo looks really weird.

Lex Friedman writes about the origin story of Apple Cards, an app I had completely forgotten about. Turns out to be a very good piece of reporting and a great read:

In 2011, Mike said, ​“Steve Jobs was on one of his famous walks after having had a dinner with someone,” and he said to his walking companions from Apple, Mike was later told: ​“Wouldn’t it be great if I could just right now on my iPhone send [the dinner companion] a thank you card?”

Apple decided to build an iPhone app just for creating and mailing cards. And the project moved fast, because it was a Steve-initiated one. As it turns out, the app was built and launched during the final year of Steve’s life.

While I’m talking about Lex, let me also say that his new website covering Apple instead of AI is really, really great, and has already become something I look forward to reading in my RSS feed.

I haven’t updated to Tahoe yet, but I did update Safari, and my word this version of Safari (on Sequoia) is unbearably slow. Using the URL bar is slow. Typing a URL or a search query is slow. Scrolling is almost broken.

Between this and the awful Safari design on iOS 26, I’m very close to making Chrome my default browser.

Does anybody know how to fix this? I tried updating to the Safari beta, which apparently has the fix, but it’s still entirely broken.

For years, it’s been obvious to me that Apple should open up the iPhone and let users download apps from the web. This week, after the ICEBlock drama in the United States (see John Gruber’s post), I wanted to add my voice to the chorus of many asking Apple to allow people to download apps from the web on iOS. As Jason Snell once wrote, the Mac is the model. He was right then, and he is more right now.

I really enjoyed Nick Heer’s review of iOS and macOS 26. I wish I wrote something as thoughtful; after my summer spent fighting Safari’s new design, I had a lot to say, but I never wrote it down.

The whole thing is worth reading, but I’ll highlight one section I particularly enjoyed. Nick writes about macOS here, but there are many apps in iOS and iPadOS where this same critique could be levied, including Safari. (The emphasis below is mine.)

The way toolbars and their buttons are displayed on MacOS is, at best, something to get used to, though I have tried and failed. Where there was once a solid area for tools has, in many apps, become a gradient with floating buttons. The gradient is both a fill and a progressive blur, which I think is unattractive.

This area is not very tall, which means a significant amount of the document encroaches into its lower half. In light mode, the background of a toolbar is white. The backgrounds of toolbar buttons are also white. Buttons are differentiated by nothing more than a diffuse shadow… the sum of this design language is the continued reduction of contrast in user interface elements to, I think, its detriment.

Apple justifies these decisions by saying its redesigned interfaces are ​“bringing greater focus to content”. I do not accept that explanation. Instead of placing tools in a distinct and separated area, they bleed into your document, thus gaining a similar level of importance as the document itself. … in my experience, the more the interface blends with what I am looking at, the less capable I am of ignoring it. Clarity and structure are sacrificed for the illusion of simplicity offered by a monochromatic haze of an interface.

Even if I bought that argument, I do not understand why it makes sense to make an application’s tools visually recede. While I am sometimes merely viewing a document, I am very often trying to do something to it. I want the most common actions I can take to be immediately obvious.

The passage I emphasized is the very same problem I have with the design, particularly as a designer. When the tools of the OS bleed into my document, particularly when designing a website, my design has to accommodate Apple’s UI, and that deeply frustrates me. 

But Nick also writes about something else vexing. Tools are now hidden in junk drawers, and often more difficult to find. Apple’s software is great graphic design, but it is becoming frustrating interface design. These are different practices, with different goals. Graphic design is intended to draw attention, often for the sake of branding or advertising. Interface design is not unlike designing a hammer: it is the practice of making a tool useful and usable. For Apple’s software to be a great piece of graphic design, but not a great interface design, is a dramatic failure of purpose.

Nick also asks why Apple feels the need to do this now:

Why is this the first time all of the operating systems are marketed with the same version number? And why did Apple decide this was the right time to make a dedicated ​“operating system” section on its website to show how it delivers a ​“more consistent experience” between devices? I have no evidence Apple would want to unify under some kind of ​“Apple OS” branding, but if Apple did want to make such a change, this feels like a very Apple‑y way to soft-launch it. After all, your devices already run specific versions of Safari and Siri without them needing to be called ​“Mac Safari” and ​“Watch Siri”. Just throwing that thought into the wind.

Stop giving them ideas, Nick.

Apple has worked to unify their designs for years, despite the cries from the design community that this is a fruitless idea. Large, multi-window operating systems like the Mac (and now the iPad) naturally demand different interfaces than a modal OS running in a device you hold in your hand. I don’t know why they did this now. I like Craig Hockenberry’s thoughts on this, where he posits that this all might be in preparation for a foldable phone, but I question anybody who thinks Apple plans that far ahead. I think Apple looks 12 – 24 months out at a time, like most organizations I’ve worked with. 

What I’ve pieced together from years of rumours is that Apple started this redesign process shortly after Ive departed. There was a rumour years ago that Apple was working on a design that embraced ​“neumorphism,” which is a word I never hoped to have to spell. 

What Apple ended up with isn’t exactly — look, don’t ask me to spell it again. But it’s not far off. Listen to the criticism of neumorphism, directly quoted from the Wikipedia page:

Neumorphism has received criticism from UI designers, notably for its lack of accessibility, difficulty in implementation, low contrast, and incompatibility with certain brands.

That sounds about like where we’re at to me. From Wikipedia’s Liquid Glass entry:

However, other users noted that certain elements were too transparent, making text difficult to read in low-contrast environments, such as direct sunlight. Designers interviewed by Wired felt that the visual effects distracted from app content. One designer said developers with smaller teams might struggle to meet the high visual standards set by the new interface.

Neumorphism and Liquid Glass are by no means identical, but one could argue they share the same etymology. Based on when neumorphism was trending (2022 and 2023), I’d wager they’ve been working on Liquid Glass for two years. I’d also wager they might have waited another year to ship this redesign, if it weren’t for the disaster that Apple Intelligence was for the company last year. They needed a win.

If Apple was working on this for at least two years, and it involved redesigning everything (including macOS), I’m not convinced it was for a foldable phone. I’m also unconvinced their plan is to make one unified operating system. If I worked at Apple, the major selling point of a cohesive design is a manageable component library. Every large platform I’ve worked on is obsessed with minimizing components across all their apps. Apple makes a lot of operating systems and need to avoid both design and engineering complexity. It is easiest to share parts where they can. 

I don’t think they have a plan. While a unified design library makes sense to me as a design practitioner, I am not certain it works in practice (particularly on macOS). As far as asthetics, I think Apple thinks design is partially fashion, and that they need to be a forward-thinking fashion house. They are not wrong. But is OS 26 forward-thinking or merely a façade? I suspect the latter, but only time will tell.

With rumours abounding about an updated Studio Display from Apple, this seems like a good time to review the state of Apple’s current slate of desktop monitors, and maybe compare the competition.

I have not kept secrets about how badly I want to buy Apple’s Pro Display XDR. That would be a terrible decision, because the display is practically ancient at this point. It’s a Mini LED display with over 500 dimming zones, but that number is paltry across its 32″ canvas. The MacBook Pros are also Mini LED, and the 16″ model — a quarter of the size of the Pro Display XDR — has over 2,500 dimming zones. 

I know specs aren’t everything, but basically, that’s a lot more lights, which means a lot more consistency in brightness across the display. 2,500 is five times more than 500, but it’s also in a quarter of the space, so a new Pro Display XDR would need 10,000 dimming zones to keep up. That’s twenty times more dimming zones than it has now.

The Pro Display XDR’s matte coating is also less effective than similar technology in the MacBook Pro line. In the MacBook Pro, the nano-texture coating is chemically etched, which is far more subtle than the physically etched coating on the Pro Display XDR. On my matte MacBook Pro, there is barely a perceptible loss in brightness or contrast. With the physically etched implementation on the Pro Display XDR (and Studio Display), I get a headache.

So the technology in the Pro Display XDR needs a rethink.

However, the Pro Display XDR is not rumoured to get a revision right now. Apple apparently only plans on updating the Studio Display next year. In my mind, the Pro Display XDR needs this revision much more than the Studio Display does. Apple could do nothing to the Studio Display for another five years and it would keep selling like hotcakes.

That’s because the Studio Display is a great monitor. It looks good on a desk, and despite the fact it’s ​“only” an IPS display, the colours and brightness are consistent across the entire panel (according to my calibration device). Competition is only now starting to catch up, with similar panels from ASUS and Samsung hitting the market this year. 

The Studio Display’s rumoured updates include Mini LED, which would be interesting because it would supplant the Pro Display XDR if it were done well. There are apparently two Studio Displays in testing at Apple. I have a few theories about this:

1. One of them could be an iMac.
2. The rumours could be right and this is Apple’s way of experimenting with production and doing a coin toss on which one to ship.
3. My dream scenario: we’re getting back to 2004, an era when Apple shipped multiple monitors simultaneously, in different sizes but otherwise with similar specifications. I would love to see a revised Studio Display available in 27″ and 32″ sizes.

What I want is the Pro Display XDR. But the technology in that display has come down in price, and it seems reasonable that a panel with similar tech (and a more modern implementation of that tech) could be made for around the same price as the current Studio Display.

Historically speaking, top-of-the-line monitor tech from Apple works its way downstream, and then the top-of-the-line monitor disappears. (See the high-end Cinema Display becoming the affordable Thunderbolt Display somewhere around 2011.) So Maybe Apple plans on removing the Pro Display XDR from the lineup entirely. 

If Apple ships a 32″ Studio Display with 10,000 dimming zones next year, I will happily replace at least one of the two Studio Displays on my desk.

(It’s worth noting that ASUS just released a 32″ 6K display with similar technology to the current Studio Display. YouTubers have posted a couple reviews, and while the panel itself looks totally fine, I can’t imagine working with a flimsy, plastic thing on my desk. I have to stare at that thing all day. I would genuinely rather set money on fire and buy a new Pro Display XDR if I were forced to pick one.)

Love this Bondi Blue iMac made out of LEGO . If 10,000 people upvote it, LEGO will consider turning it into an actual product. Go vote!

Today, I get to eat a little crow: contrary to my publicly stated intentions, I did not return my iPad Pro. The short version is that my old iPad Pro more or less died on me. 

In my previous post, I wrote that I could do everything I needed on an iPad with pen and paper. The thing is, I didn’t inventory my work on iPadOS until after I wrote that post. (This was stupid of me.) That was when I thought to myself: ​“Shoot, I do a lot of iPad-only stuff when I’m working on wireframes.” I’ll frequently grab screenshots of apps and websites and place them alongside my sketches. I tend to iterate on ideas from left to right, duplicating old ideas, erasing what didn’t work, and sketching more (as though I were duplicating art boards in Figma). 

On top of that, a lot of my clients are long-term clients, and the work that I do months or years prior might (and has) become useful again, even if it were disregarded prior. I do not want to keep stacks of draft paper filed away for months or years at a time.

At that point, I made a decision: I still don’t need this new iPad, but I do need my old one.

So I booted up my 2017 10.5” iPad Pro, which I had previously formatted for trade-in, and set it up again. I had a bit of work to do, so once Freeform was ready, I got to it.

That was when I noticed the smell.

The iPad had this faint smell of burning plastic, but only when I held my face near it (which I tend do while drawing; please do not judge me and my weird habits). I’m no engineer, but I know that anything resembling the smell of fire in a battery-powered product was bad, so I shut the iPad down, and made a new plan.

Clearly, my 2017 iPad Pro was kicking the bucket.

So, in an effort to get the best bang for my buck and make the new one last, I would keep the 2024 iPad Pro, and trade in the 2017 iPad Pro.

A day or two later, I brought the 2017 iPad Pro to the Apple Store to trade it in. I explained what I just wrote, but the Apple Genius seemed nonplussed. ​“Does the device power on?” he asked. I said yes. ​“Does the screen work?” he asked. I said yes again. Finally, he asked if Touch ID worked and there were any large dents or scratches. I said yes and no, respectively, but I added that the battery only lasts an hour and may or may not be swelling. He again, said this wasn’t an issue and they would check all that during their diagnosis.

So he used whatever fancy tool Apple has for this, signed off on everything, and gave me a refund of $100 towards the 2024 iPad Pro (which felt pretty generous, all things considered).

Then he got me to wipe the 2017 iPad Pro, and something happened.

The iPad froze after I entered my password to disable Find My on the iPad. ​“Oh yeah, this happens all the time,” the Genius said. ​“On every product, not just iPads. iPhones and Macs all freeze here too. Don’t worry.” 

Then the iPad unceremoniously shut down. 

I asked if we should have seen an Apple logo with a loading indicator below it (we should have), and the Genius said yes. But then he added nonchalantly, ​“Who knows though? I’ll be back.”

He spent a few minutes helping other customers before he returned. My iPad still hadn’t rebooted.

“You said the battery doesn’t last, right?”

I said yes.

He took about thirty seconds to find a Lighting charger buried somewhere in the deep recesses of the store and plugged the iPad Pro in. It still didn’t turn on. 

The Genius’ brow furrowed. ​“I think your iPad is dead.” Seeing my immediate look of concern, he added, ​“but we already gave you the money for the trade in, so it’s our problem now.”

I spent another several minutes with him while he tried every troubleshooting method I knew of and a couple I didn’t. Eventually, the iPad rebooted long enough just long enough for us to see the iOS welcome screen. ​“There. Your data’s been wiped,” he confirmed. 

Then the screen turned off again as the iPad shut down, while plugged directly into an outlet.

And that, dear reader, is how my old iPad Pro died the moment after Apple gave me my trade-in value for it. As my father-in-law pointed out to me, it is rare in life for a system like that to work in your favour, so cherish it while it lasts.

I did, however, return the Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro, which only served to help me procrastinate on the iPad before returning to my Mac. I replaced it with the Smart Folio cover, which is totally fine.

About a week ago, I took delivery of a new M4 iPad Pro. My old iPad, a 2017 model, lasts about an hour on battery life, and the Pencil is starting to get laggy. Now seemed like a great time to upgrade.

In the past couple weeks, I’ve really enjoyed my time with the iPad. But I’m going to return it, because it’s not a tool I can use to get my work done. I wrote about this in 2020, and the situation hasn’t changed. (In fact, it’s more true for me now than it was then; I’ve added audio and video production work to my plate, and I need Mac-specific tools more than ever before.)

I’m not upset about this. My brain is most compatible with macOS, it turns out. I like having many windows open at once, and I like having a file system. Every time I sit in front of the iPad with its Magic Keyboard attached, my brain tricks itself into thinking I’m sitting in front of a capable laptop, and then I waste hours of time not doing my actual work. So the iPad Pro is going to go back, because there are many other interesting ways to spend that $2,000.

What this did make me realize is that the tools don’t matter. As makers, creative pros, we can use whatever we want to use. If we like fancy pens and paper, use them (​“you will not be the reason that our forests disappear”). And if you like iPads, use those, if you can.

That being said, it’s our responsibility as makers to discern the right tool for the job. Two weeks ago, a plumber came to our home to fix an issue with a toilet. He did not need to use a hammer to fix our toilet, and thank goodness he didn’t try! (Imagine the thunderous crack of a hammer colliding with porcelain.)

Instead, the plumber used a screwdriver and a couple minor objects unique to his trade. He disassembled a couple things, replaced a part, and put it all back together in under twenty minutes.

Let’s pretend, though, that the plumber always admired the shape of hammers and the satisfaction he gets when he swings one. If he were a little off his rocker, he might attempt to use a hammer for all his work. Even an outside observer would recognize this as problematic.

I think I feel similarly about the articles I’ve read in which folks suggest the iPad virtualize macOS as a sort of ​“escape hatch” for Apple (Steve Troughton-Smith put it best). I’m sure I would love macOS on an iPad. I’m not arguing with that. But, to continue with my tool metaphor, let’s call a spade a spade and deal with the object as it is. Let the iPad be an iPad.

One other thing I’ve been thinking about is the continued movement to digitize everything in our lives. The a‑ha moment for me about my iPad came when I realized I can just sketch wireframes for my clients on a piece of paper. Not only is the tool I use for wireframing irrelevant to my clients, but the increased focus I’ll get from paper’s inherent limitations (no wifi!) is a boon in the context of work.

Or, to put it another way, does every room need to have a computer in it? We are so addicted to computers. New computers promise to work better in daylight and remove blue light in an effort to suggest, I suppose, that you can use their product anywhere, anytime — or more aptly, everywhere, all the time.

Perhaps we need to get better at saying no thanks to technology that doesn’t dramatically improve our lives.

Three things struck me while watching Apple’s Halloween-themed M3 event last night.

The first observation: while Apple unveiled three chips last night, they did a better job clarifying who each machine is for than they’ve ever done before.

There are three new chips, unsurprisingly called the M3, the M3 Pro, and the M3 Max. Here’s what Apple said about the audience for each one when introducing the laptops that use them. 

For the basic M3, Apple said:

Whether you’re a student, entrepreneur, creator, or combination of all three, you’ll find everyday tasks lightning fast. And when you’re using pro apps or playing games, the advanced thermal system allows you to sustain the phenomenal performance of M3… It’s great for working with demanding content across a variety of workflows. Such as making intricate 3D models in Sketchup faster than before. Or viewing and interacting with large medical images in SurgicalAR.

This is pretty clearcut to me: machines equipped with the base-level M3 are great for aspiring creative pros, students, and entrepreneurs (which, in Apple’s parlance, I think means new business owners outside the tech sector).

For the M3 Pro, which is the next step up, Apple said the following:

(The M3 Pro) provides even greater performance and additional unified memory for users with more demanding workflows like coders, creative pros, and researchers… Stitching together and manipulating enormous panoramic photos in Photoshop is much quicker, working on large and complex data models in MATLAB is more fluid, and compiling and testing millions of lines of code in Xcode is even faster.

I think this is pretty clear too, but there are several caveats here that are worth mentioning a little later. (I look forward to Austin Mann and Tyler Stalman testing this machine though, since it seems aimed at photographers, designers, and developers.)

In theory, the M3 Pro is aimed at me. At first, I thought this was great news, because my current machine is an M1 Max, and it’d be nice to shift downmarket if I could. (Again, more on this later.)

Apple had this to say about the M3 Max:

For users with extreme workflows like AI developers, 3D artists, and video professionals, it’s an absolute beast… You can model and iterate remarkably complex 3D content in Cinema 4D with Redshift… And video post-production work on the highest resolution content is an absolute breeze thanks to two ProRes engines… M3 Max also supports up to an enormous 128GB of unified memory… This enables creators to easily work on large and complex projects spanning multiple pro apps and plugins, like Substance 3D Painter, Maya, and Arnold. Or compose huge film scores with Pro Tools, where entire orchestra libraries are instantly available from memory. 

This also seems clear cut to me. To be perfectly blunt, I am no longer the target market for these machines. The target market is well above what I do, even when I’m doing my own recording and video production.

The second observation: The configurations are weird. 

First, RAM comes in 18GB, 36GB, 48GB, 64GB, 96GB, and 128GB allotments. If you want 48GB, 64GB, or 128GB of RAM, you need the most expensive M3 Max chip. If you want 96GB of RAM, you need the least expensive M3 Max chip. It works out so that 96GB of RAM is only $100 more than 64GB, but you don’t get as many CPU cores.

This is very weird to me. Does Apple have multiple RAM providers or something? Why don’t these varieties match up? Why do I have to make this choice?

The M3 Pro, as I noted above, is the chip aimed for people like me: creative pros. But a lot of people like me need more than 36GB of RAM, which is the limit of the M3 Pro, and getting more requires a large upfront investment. The 64GB model is more expensive than my M1 Max, at least in Canada, so while you can order up to 128GB, the addition of the higher memory option hasn’t resulted in a reduction of prices elsewhere in the lineup.

I’m glad I’m not in the market for a machine right now, because I’d have to make some odd choices. This reminds me of the Intel Mac Pro configuration flow, and that’s not a compliment. It’s too complicated. I am grateful for the options, but I wish they moved in a straight line from the cheapest to the most expensive.

I’m looking forward to Anandtech’s review of these chips.

Finally, the third observation: The Apple event was shot on an iPhone. The footage looked great. Nobody knew until the credits rolled. But The Verge ran an article about how that marketing line is deceptive because of all the other pro gear involved.

On one hand, I get it. Lighting, drones, gimbals, and everything else you need for a pro setup like this isn’t cheap. There were also a wealth of special effects employed throughout the event.

But on the other hand, The Verge’s article seems to suggest that consumers will think their footage will automatically look that good without additional gear. I don’t know if that’s the case. Thanks to decades of marketing from Hollywood, I think most people who care even a little know that there’s a lot of gear involved in making stuff look good. The fog machines alone in the opening of Apple’s event make it clear that their budget goes beyond the average bedroom Youtuber’s. I don’t see how there’s a negative story here, apart from clickbait.

The bottom line is simple: the event looked great, and the iPhone is clearly a very capable videographer’s camera in the right hands.

Log is the ​“pro” in iPhone 15 Pro. Stu Maschwitz has published a handy primer on why log recording is A Big Deal, especially for a camera that fits in your pocket.

Before the Apple Silicon transition, it was always the case the biggest MacBook Pro was the most powerful. That’s no longer the case. These days, 14″ MacBook Pro can be specced out to be just as powerful as its bigger sibling. 

Without considering the implications of this, I purchased the 16″ MacBook Pro last year — the biggest one available — out of sheer habit.

Next time, I’m getting the 14″. I want as much power as I can get, but when I’m portable, I want as much portability as possible.