Originally published at: http://appletalk.com.au/2016/11/tuesday-morning-news151116/
As they start arriving to customers starting this week, reviews of the new MacBook Pro with Touch Bar are out. If you’ve already read about the new MacBook Pro’s USB-C ports, or how it has an even thinner, lighter design than any previous year’s MacBook Pro, then you’ll already be familiar with most of the changes. But the Touch Bar is an entirely different beast, and that combined with the rest of the changes means that we get a good — if somewhat expensive — look at the future of the MacBook Pro lineup, as reviewed by Ars Technica.
One interesting point from the Ars Technica review is that the AMD GPUs included with the new 15-inch MacBook Pro are quite fast. Not only do they use less power (and therefore generate less heat) than their Nvidia counterparts, they also have the advantage of being able to drive two 5K displays and the internal display simultaneously, thanks to support for six display streams.
Over at the Verge, their review of the Touch Bar-equipped MacBook Pro tells us that it’s an expensive machine (yes, even in USD terms), and that you’ll need a bunch of dongles to connect all your current peripherals. Reviews of the Touch Bar MacBook Pro mean that we also get a look at the 15-inch model for the first time since it was unveiled — up until this point, all reviews had been of the 13-inch Touchless model.
Whilst many of Apple’s own apps already support the Touch Bar, TechCrunch has a list of third-party apps that either have support now, or will do by the end of the year. Some apps will even include support by the end of the month, although you’ll need to wait a few weeks more until Photoshop has support.
If you’re feeling a little Touch Bar envy, Touché is a free Mac app that lets you simulate an on-screen Touch Bar for the current app. It’s nowhere near close to the real thing, but it’s probably as close as you’re going to get. If you have an iPad, TouchBarDemoApp will let you do a similar sort of thing, if you’re OK with side-loading apps using Xcode.
Apple has seeded the third beta of macOS 10.12.2 to developers, and there’s a pretty good chance we’ll see a public beta release this time tomorrow.
The third beta of iOS 10.2 has also been seeded to developers, which removes the SOS feature found in the previous one. According to Apple, the feature is currently only available in India, for reasons unknown.
The third beta of iOS 10.2 also removes the Videos app in favour of TV, at least for users in the US. Apple’s upcoming TV app will only be available in the US to start off with, and while I’d expect Apple to release the feature internationally, there’s been no word on when that is expected to happen.
Microsoft has said that Visual Studio will be coming to the Mac, but it’s probably not the Visual Studio you’re talking about. Instead, Microsoft will be bringing a version of Xamarin Studio’s C# development environment to the Mac, which Microsoft acquired last year.
Just when you think things couldn’t get worse, Chinese authorities have said that iPhone sales will suffer if President Trump makes good on a campaign promise to apply a 45% tariff to Chinese imports. Not the iPhones, man. Anything but the iPhones!