Originally published at: http://appletalk.com.au/2016/11/tuesday-morning-news011116/
The Verge says the new MacBook Pro looks and feels great. The Touch Bar shows the same kind of practical genius you’ve come to expect from Apple, you’ll either love or hate the keyboard depending on how you feel about the keyboard in the Retina MacBook, and although you’ll need a few dongles to connect your peripherals (at least to start off with), dongles are much less of a hassle for laptops than they are for, say, phones.
Apple’s SVP Worldwide Product Marketing Phil Schiller has responded to a customer email to say that the reason you can’t get 32GB of RAM on the new MacBook Pros is due to battery life concerns, but the real reason is more technical than that. A post on Reddit points out that there are very few Skylake-equipped machines that do support 32GB RAM, and that’s because Intel themselves don’t include support for LPDDR4. The eagle-eyed among you will note that the new MacBook Pros use LPDDR3 RAM, but then we’re back to the battery life concern.
A teardown of the new 13-inch MacBook Pro tells us that there’s a removable SSD in the touchless model, which gives some measure of hope for those that are thinking about upgrading their machines in the future.
Minor tidbits about the new MacBook Pros as shared by MacRumors include the fact that there’s no more backlit Apple logo, and no power extension cable included with the new USB-C power adapters. Pricing was also adjusted across the board – Canada and the UK were hit with price hikes, while Norway and New Zealand got price drops, this time around.
Apple has removed the Mac startup chime with the new MacBook Pros. You can turn it on via an NVRAM tweak, otherwise there’s now a cool feature where the new MacBook Pros will turn themselves on once you open the lid.
There’s a new version of iOS out, and 10.1.1 fixes a Health-related bug that meant your Health data went away and didn’t come back.
Developers are already adding Touch Bar and Touch ID support to their apps, and 1Password has shown off both integrations on their website. Of course, the new MacBook Pros aren’t shipping for weeks yet, but there’s a good chance some of your apps will be ready by the time they do.
The little section at the start of Apple’s October event about the Apple TV was something that no-one was really expecting. And yet, their “incoherent strategy” on the Apple TV and tvOS appears to have disappointed at least one person who was expecting the world, and got a little app instead.
MacStories has a guide on designing and launching your own iMessage stick pack on the App Store. As with all good apps, if you have an idea that hasn’t been done before and has some sort of value, you might even make enough to justify your time investment.
TechCrunch tells us about the other MacBook Pro. Yes, they’re talking about the 13-inch touchless model which comes with just two Thunderbolt 3 ports. It’s almost certainly a better buy than the 12-inch Retina MacBook at this point, which raises questions about why the $200 cheaper MacBook still exists at all.