marco arment

macOS 11

by

macos11

So macOS 11 Big Sur was announced earlier today at WWDC.

First things first, WOW I did not see that interface change coming. 

There were no prior rumors about an interface change, so Apple really kept it tightly under wrap during the whole development. The last interface change came during Yosemite, during the Jony Ive de-Skeuomorphism era, when OS X was given a fresh coat of paint from the skeuomorphic graphical changes that started in OS X Leopard.

Apple paints this interface change as the biggest one since the one from Mac OS 9 to Mac OS X, and while I won’t go so far as to say that this new interface is like the second coming of Aqua, it looks really good, even if some longtime Mac people on the internets were complaining about it. The current macOS has elements from the early days of Aqua, mixed in with more recent graphical changes that were bolted on as the “design era” changes, so a complete interface facelift is definitely welcomed, even if that means an interface that is extremely similar to that of iPadOS 14. Well, in the first place iPadOS took a lot of design elements from macOS, so the influence isn’t exactly one-way.

Under the hood though, macOS 11 definitely does not have the kind of complete overhaul like it did when it went from Mac OS 9 to the Unix-based, originally OpenStep Mac OS X. It really is macOS 10.16, like what was indicated in the Xcode and macOS betas that were released after the WWDC keynote earlier today. “macOS 11” is basically a very recent Marketing decision, one recent enough that they did not have time to make changes to the betas to reflect the difference. 

The big news, of course, was the announcement that Macs will be transitioning to “Apple Silicon” and that the first Apple Silicon Macs will be out later this year. (Apple was never going to use the term “ARM”, come on. Previously I coined the term “Apple Processors”, but “Silicon” definitely sounds cooler.)

The transition was almost exactly like the one in 2005, right down to having Rosetta 2 as a translator for legacy apps that are abandoned (or for the folks who refused to pay full price or a expensive subscription just to use the new Safari extension that comes with 1Password 7). 

And while Tim Cook mentioned that there are still Intel Macs coming down the pipeline soon, and that Apple will continue to support them for years to come, based on experience by end 2006 (one and a half years after they announced the transition) nobody gave a damn about PowerPC Macs anymore (except for the collectors).

Speaking about collectors and collecting, I know for a fact that I will really love to have a Mac Mini G4 or even a G4 Cube today, so this might be a good time to actually buy one of the last Intel Macs and keep it for years to come, either as a compatibility machine or even as a piece of Apple history. Maybe a Mac Mini is in order, for I have wanted one of those for decades already. 

And did I mention previously that I can’t wait for the 12” MacBook to come back in Apple Silicon form? 

2021 can’t come soon enough. For many many reasons. 

PS Both purchases are pipe dreams, COVID-19 has not been kind to my financial health.

My podcast (listening) journey, 2013 edition

by

Changed a few things around the site. Contemplated going with a completely new theme, but decided that the effort will not be worth my time, especially as I really like the current layout.

Quite some time back, I wrote about how I discovered 5by5 studios, and how switching to it (from the deteriorating TWiT network) gave me new enjoyment as I discovered, along with other like minded listeners, Marco Arment and John Siracusa.

Then the whole John Gruber-Dan Benjamin fallout thing happened, and 5by5 lost The Talk Show. It was, however, not a huge loss for 5by5, for by then Build and Analyze and Hypercritical were way bigger shows than The Talk Show ever was, and John Gruber’s own relaunch received universal criticism for the lack of polish.

Then, the unthinkable happened. In late 2012, both Marco Arment and John Siracusa ended their shows on 5by5 studios. There was apparently no falling out between Dan Benjamin and either of the two bigwigs, and the termination of shows was reportedly on good terms.

Marco Arment, John Siracusa and their friend Casey Liss eventually went on to do their own car podcast, Neutral in early 2013…… and accidentally created a tech podcast in the process.

The Accidental Tech Podcast is, today, arguably the most popular Mac-related podcast amongst like-minded Mac podcast nerds, and is what I look forward to most every Friday.

Jim Dalrymple and Dan Benjamin on Amplified. Need I say more? Jim is the nicer version of John Gruber and the combination of Mac stuff and rock music is just awesome (I am into rock music and band stuff).

The Talk Show with John Gruber, Gruber’s relaunch of the popular The Talk Show on 5by5, is third, and only because the other choices are not very promising. Gruber is still a pretty bad host despite marked improvements, and there are episodes where I could not bear to continue listening after the first fifteen minutes. Very often though, the show is saved from extreme boredom by his interesting guests, who often ask the right questions in order to extract interesting replies from Gruber. The main problem with the current The Talk Show? The current host should be the one being asked questions, not the other way round.

To finish the list, I listen to the Vergecast from time to time. A bunch of noisy tech nerds talking industry-wide tech stuff is often interesting so long you can overlook the complete mess that is the Vergecast.

With the drought of interesting Mac news these days, these shows provide me, and probably many others, much needed relief from the boredom that is life.

You can follow MacRyu at @ryuworks on Twitter and @ryu on App.net.