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The Big-Block-of-Aluminium Edition Wednesday, March 23, 2022

Apple’s Super-powerful Mac Studio Was Almost Two Decades In The Making, by Robert Leedham, GQ

In many ways, it’s a callback to the original Mac Mini with its charmingly small footprint and curved, boxy aesthetic. Back in 2005, achieving that cute look meant taking a big block of aluminium and then innovating within Apple’s milling process in order to carve out its insides and create a thick 5mm wall. Nowadays, that product’s polycarbonate top and bottom have evolved into a shell for the Studio that’s made from 80 per cent recycled aluminium and better aligned with Apple’s goals of carbon neutrality by 2030. “Because of the Mac’s product history, we've been able to take those products from 20 years ago that might look pretty pedestrian to us today but were groundbreaking at the time, and then learn every single little thing that we can from them,” says Bergeron.

Apple's Old Tech And Recycled Ideas Have Finally Worn Out Their Welcome, by Jason Snell, Macworld

As someone who has used an iPad Pro with Center Stage to do Zoom and FaceTime calls weekly for almost a year, I’ve gotten used to the Center Stage camera and its quirks. What I saw on the Studio Display was, for better or worse, a Center Stage experience–it looked fine and it followed me around when I moved. It didn’t feel especially worse than the 1080p camera on my iMac Pro.

But it’s all about context. A lot of reviewers (many of whom have spent little time using Center Stage) compared the Studio Display’s camera to an external 4K webcam, or to a still image taken by a smartphone camera. These are not comparisons that the Center Stage camera is going to win.

Six Years Later, First-gen iPhone SE Runs The Latest Version Of iOS – And It's Still Good, by Filipe Espósito, 9to5Mac

To my surprise, the first-generation iPhone SE is still quite usable even with iOS 15. When using it for basic tasks like surfing the web, listening to music, or opening social networking apps, it’s hard to notice apps that are unresponsive or running slowly. Some things take longer to open when compared to newer iPhones, but it’s nothing like using an iPhone 3G with iOS 4 or an iPhone 4 with iOS 7 (if you’re old enough, you know what I mean).

Having access to the latest version of iOS on a six-year-old phone means that you can get at least some of the same features available on the latest iPhone 13. The iPhone SE has Focus Mode, redesigned notifications, rich Spotlight results, new Emojis, and all the latest privacy and security improvements that come with iOS 15.

Stuff

Apple Configurator App Updated With Support For iPhone SE 3 And iPad Air 5, by Filipe Espósito, 9to5Mac

Apple this week updated its Apple Configurator app, which is used to deploy iOS and Mac devices in schools and business. The latest version of the tool makes it fully compatible with the newly released third-generation iPhone SE and fifth-generation iPad Air, as well as the latest versions of iOS and macOS.

Apple-owned Shazam Updated With In-depth Concert And Tour Information, by Chance Miller, 9to5Mac

With Bandsintown integration, Shazam will now show you concert information and ticket information when you search for a song or Shazam a song.

It Started As A College Project. Now It's The Music Industry's Hottest Recommendation Tool, by Elias Leight, Rolling Stone

The app recommends you a slew of songs based on your past listening preferences and plays you TikTok-sized snippets of each. You swipe left or right depending on your feelings about each track; the ones you like are automatically added to a Spotify playlist for you.

We Tried Mystery Meals From The Too Good To Go App, Which Sells Leftovers From Chicago Restaurants For Cheap, by Nick Kindelsperger, Chicago Tribune

Too Good To Go, which launched in 2016 in Denmark, seeks to lessen the waste with its inexpensive grab bags from local restaurants, said spokesperson Allie Sale. The app takes a flat fee of $1.79 from each order, and the restaurant keeps the rest. The company estimates that it has diverted hundreds of thousands of pounds of food waste from landfills.

OtterBox Launches First Collection Of AirTags Cases With Three Rugged Styles, by Blair Altland, 9to5Toys

Each one takes on a different design, but all of them are based around the keychain form-factor. They all have the same clip at the top in order to pair with keychains or slip onto backpack zippers and the like.

Notes

Explaining The Mac Studio’s Removable SSDs, And Why You Can’t Just Swap Them Out, by Andrew Cunningham, Ars Technica

Deeply sympathetic as I am to the goals of the right-to-repair movement, and deeply frustrated as I am by Apple's storage prices relative to other high-end SSDs, Miani's conclusions are based on incorrect assumptions about how modern Mac SSDs work. It's also likely that these modular SSD slots actually do facilitate easier upgrades and repairs than, say, desoldering NAND chips from a logic board and soldering on higher-capacity NAND chips. There are just caveats you need to be aware of first.

Apple And Amazon Are Changing The Way We Watch Live Sports, by Alex Perry, Mashable

And while a great many of our beloved senior citizens can work their way around modern tech, it’s no secret that older people tend to acclimate poorly to these sorts of changes. Apple getting in bed with baseball to start its streaming journey is fascinating because that sport has the oldest audience of the big team sports.

How To Start A Collection Of Classic Macs, by D. Griffin Jones, Cult of Mac

Apple computers are highly collectible. They span the entire history of personal computing. The company’s unwavering design philosophy, always pushing ease of use, means even the oldest and weirdest Apple computers are never hard to figure out. The historical lineup spans all different kinds of form factors and designs. Not to mention, they look rad.

Apple Acquires UK Banking Startup In Potential Hint At International Apple Card Launch, by Hartley Charlton, MacRumors

Credit Kudos offers insights and scores based on loan applications drawn from transaction and loan outcome banking data, sourced by the UK’s open banking framework. The company’s API offers lenders a way to get faster, automated decision-making about loans with reduced risk and higher rates of acceptance, according to its website.

Bottom of the Page

I went from my iPhone X to the current iPhone 12 mini not because the iPhone X was failing -- the battery is less than 100% capable, but everything else was working fine -- but it was getting frustrating to manage all my stuff with the little storage. Now, i didn't settle with the base model of storage, and I hope my iPhone 12 mini can last longer for me than my iPhone X.

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Thanks for reading.