Month: November 2016

Ars Technica Reviews the new MacBook Pro without Touch Bar

Dan Uff November 2, 2016 0

“What you’ve got in the new MacBook Pros is a lineup of very nice-looking (if not game-changing) laptops that combine a refreshed design with a healthy dose of updated technology,” Andrew Cunningham reports for Ars Technica. “Today, we’ll be examining the $1,499 version of the 13-inch MacBook Pro, the version with the row of function keys in place of the ballyhooed Touch Bar. We’ll be examining the other 13- and 15-inch model thoroughly when we can get them, of course, but the $1,499 version still tells us a lot about the design, the keyboard, the new Thunderbolt 3 ports, and about Apple’s design priorities and the Pro’s target audience.”

“If the Retina MacBook was what you’d get if an iPad and a MacBook Air were put into the Large Hadron Collider and smashed into each other, the new MacBook Pro is what you’d get if you took the Retina MacBook and the first Retina MacBook Pro and did the same thing,” Cunningham reports. “The Pro’s construction is still rock solid despite being thinner and lighter, and there’s still not a trace of creaking or flexing anywhere in its aluminum unibody design.”

“At 3.02 pounds, the new Pro is around half a pound lighter than last year’s and roughly the same weight as the 13-inch MacBook Air. I’m jumping from the 13-inch Air to the 13-inch Pro since I can’t quite live with the 12-inch MacBook’s performance or its individual port, so if you’re making that jump the laptop is going to feel exactly the same in your bag. The weight savings is noticeable but not life-changing if you’re coming from an earlier Retina model, but remember that it’s a full 1.5 pounds lighter than a pre-Retina, 13-inch unibody Pro—if you’re coming from one of those older machines, it makes a huge difference,” Cunningham reports. “This would be a great laptop if it was positioned at the $1,300 starting price of the old MacBook Pros, though the 12-inch MacBook might need to move downmarket a bit to make room for it. At its current price, the $1,499 Pro feels like a laptop with a new design that just happens to be missing a bunch of the features that make the new design worthwhile.”

Read more here.

Why is Apple Music gaining in Subscribers so quickly?

Dan Uff November 2, 2016 0

“Apple’s Services revenue rose 24% YoY (year-over-year) in fiscal 4Q16 to $6.3 billion,” Adam Rogers writes for Market Realist. “App Store revenue was driven by Apple Music, which grew 22% YoY.”

“Recently, a J.D. Power Streaming Music Satisfaction Study named Apple Music as the top-rated music streaming service,” Rogers writes. “According to the study, 35% of respondents were “strongly committed” to Apple Music. In comparison, 30% of respondents were strongly committed to Spotify and Google Music.”

“Apple Music now has over 17 million subscribers, up from 15 million in August 2016 and 11 million in March 2016,” Rogers writes. “Spotify has only 30 million paid subscribers, and the company has taken almost ten years to reach this figure.”

Read more in the full article here.

Stop using Apple’s iCloud

Dan Uff November 2, 2016 0

“Apple’s iCloud has a long and troubled past, but the company keeps pushing it for iPhone and Mac users with every new operating system update,” Thorin Klosowski writes for Lifehacker. “Don’t be fooled. The service is an inconsistent mess and more trouble than it’s worth.”

“My main problems have come from three different parts of the iCloud service: iCloud Photo Library, iCloud Drive, and iCloud backups,” Klosowski writes. “iCloud Drive, which is ostensibly Apple’s more traditional approach to a syncing file storage service, is a little less baffling than iCloud Photo Library. It’s still, however, a far cry from useable. iCloud Drive uses a traditional folder structure, which means you can access files that you store on the backup service from the Finder or an app on iOS. Regardless, it has a ruleset that feels unpredictable and Apple’s attempts to make it ‘hidden’ and ‘just work’ make it more complex.”

“At best, iCloud is good for device backups. Without doing anything, you can seamlessly swap between an iPhone or iPad, or replace an old iPhone with a new one,” Klosowski writes. “iCloud’s backups stores your contacts, your list of installed apps and their settings, and your general iOS settings. It’s a solid service for device backups, but like everything else in iCloud, it does weird things for no apparent reason.”

Read more in the full article here.