Macworld February 2021

If there’s a single disappointment in the release of Apple’s first wave of M1 Macs, it’s the lackluster launch of iOS apps running inside of macOS. What should be an amazing unification of Apple’s platforms and a massive expansion of the Mac software base is, instead…kind of a non-event. Running iOS apps on the Mac can be a little weird, it’s true. But it can sometimes be good. Unfortunately, a lot of interesting iOS apps just aren’t available at all, because their developers have removed them from the Mac side of the iOS App Store. It’s not a great situation. It needs to get better. Here are some ways that might happen. WHAT DEVELOPERS CAN DO Though iOS app developers with the Apple silicon Developer Transition Kit could build their…

As a rule, Apple is a company that is judicious about what opportunities it takes, and which ones it leaves to others. The company is famous for saying “no” to way more ideas than it says “yes” to, with the understanding that this process makes the products it does choose to build that much better. But that doesn’t mean that the company never misses a trick. On the contrary, there are more than a few markets where an Apple presence would be a welcome one, especially in places where the company can lend its considerable heft to providing either a strong example, or meaningful competition. And, as Tim Cook pointed out during a recent financial results call, the current world situation has opened the door to new challenges and new opportunities,…

After a year that delivered a host of improvements to Apple’s silicon offerings, including the A14 Bionic and M1 processors, it appears that Apple is looking to bring even more components in-house. A recent report from Bloomberg claims that Apple has begun working on its first cellular modem to bring 5G to its growing system-on-chip components. The development of a 5G modem isn’t a surprise, as Apple paid a cool billion bucks on the remains of Intel’s smartphone modem chip business back in 2019. According to the report by Mark Gurman, Apple senior vice president of hardware technologies Johny Srouji told attendees at a recent town hall that Apple “kicked off the development of our first internal cellular modem which will enable another key strategic transition.” Development will likely take years to land…

Services: they’re so hot right now. Apple beat its self-stated goal of doubling Services revenue in 2020 with time to spare, and the company has not only recently announced that it has launched a new service, Apple Fitness+, but also finally elected to offer a competitively priced bundle of its many services to consumers. With all of that said, there are some elements of Apple’s services that are still a bit lackluster, and more than a few of them are parts of the very systems on which the company and its users rely. In the same way that you might want to look to patching a foundation before worrying about painting the walls, there are a few places where Apple might want to shore up its fundamentals before launching into something…

Sabrent’s pocket-sized Rocket XTRM-Q external SSD offers the kick-in-the-pants transfer speed (up to 10Gbps) provided by the Mac’s Thunderbolt 3, while adding the ability to operate via USB on computers that lack it. It is also available in a hitherto unheard of capacity of 8TB. Nice. Very nice. DESIGN AND SPECS The Rocket XTRM-Q (extreme/QLC) is a small, handsome, dark-slate colored monolith measuring approximately 4 x 1.75 x 0.5 inches. It weighs around 5 ounces and there is a Type-C port on the business end. Note that many companies (including Sabrent) advertise drives as USB-C and leave it at that. USB-C indicates USB connectivity and a Type-C port, but tells you nothing about performance. It might be SuperSpeed USB 5Gbps, it might be SuperSpeed USB 10Gbps or SuperSpeed USB 20Gbps. As…

The Tripp Lite SmartPro SMC1000T packs all the best features needed for high-performance and gaming PCs into one heavy, well-designed uninterruptible power supply (UPS). With the ability to support up to 650 watts of attached gear, that should suffice for nearly the most tricked-out system. If your system adds up to a more modest 325W, the battery-backup and power-conditioning system can run for nearly 15 minutes; even at full load, it can keep devices energized for a whopping five minutes. Tripp Lite offers management software only for Windows (and it requires Java), but the hardware supports macOS’s built-in UPS tools. Plug in the SMC1000T via USB, and with either the Windows software or using macOS’s Energy Saver preference pane, you can configure under what terms you want your device to…