MacBook

Earlier in the year, a small-but-not-insignificant number of Apple customers complained about screen issues with their new Retina MacBooks and Retina MacBook Pros, specifically cases where the anti-reflective display coating leaves marks and stains on the screen, ranging from small corner blobs to large patches.

Several months later, Apple seems to have acknowledged the issue and launched a Quality Program to replace affected users’  hardware. The Staingate Facebook page now includes many reports of people successfully sending their MacBooks in for repair at Apple Stores. The existence of the program was first reported by MacRumors.

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Following the corresponding update to Pixelmator for iOS 9, the company has released the latest version of Pixelmator for the Mac ($29.99) with full support for El Capitan. This includes compatibility with changes to the OS as well as an overhaul in the Pixelmator user interface to feature San Fransisco, Apple’s new system font. The update, version 3.4, also includes official full-screen Split View support on El Capitan, so users can dock Pixelmator next to any other app on the system filling the display.

Perhaps most interestingly, the app now includes a Photos.app editing extension …

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Update: Apple has also increased the price of Macs in Australia by AUD $80-$200, depending on the model. Mexico and Thailand have seen similar price increases, as well.

The same week as it increased the price of apps in Australia, Indonesia and Sweden, Apple today has raised the prices of its Mac line in a handful of countries. The company has increased the prices of its MacBook, MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, Mac Pro, and Mac mini in Brazil, Norway, New Zealand, and Malaysia to account for the fluctuation of foreign currency against the United States dollar.

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While Apple may have waited for the iPhone 5s before it introduced Touch ID, it’s been working on the technology since shortly after the launch of the original iPhone. A patent first filed in 2007 was finally granted today, and includes the use of a fingerprint sensor in laptops – though the drawing Apple used to illustrate the concept seemingly dates back even further than 2007!

A finger sensing apparatus may include a finger sensor including an integrated circuit (IC) substrate, an array of finger sensing elements on the IC substrate, and match circuitry on the IC substrate for performing final finger matching. […] FIG. 1 is a perspective view of an electronic device in the form of a laptop computer including a finger sensor and enhanced security in accordance with the present invention.

The patent also covers use in desktop computers, aka the iMac today, embedding the sensor into the keyboard … 
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Twelve South’s family of BookArc stands for MacBooks are perhaps its best-known products, having debuted alongside the company back in 2009. Today, BookArc received a substantial redesign in the form of BookArc for MacBook ($50), which now is sized to properly support every current-generation MacBook, MacBook Air, and MacBook Pro from 11.6″ to 15″. Interchangeable silicone inserts promise that the new BookArc “will be the perfect home for your current (and future) MacBook for years to come.”

The new BookArc is made from bead-blasted silver aluminum that matches the looks of most MacBooks, with a polished chamfered edge mimicking the design cue Apple introduced in iPhones, iPads, and iPods. While the “arc” shape remains the same as before, cradling the bottom of your MacBook, the cable pass-throughs have been shrunk and flattened. BookArc for MacBook is available now, and the wooden version BookArc Mod will continue to be sold for a $10 premium, while the MacBook Air-specific BookArc sells for $10 less.

Updated: We’ve just added hands-on impressions below…

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Apple has officially released OS X El Capitan for the Mac, adding some new improvements as well as bringing parity with changes in iOS 9, released two weeks ago. OS X El Capitan (version 10.11), can be installed on any Mac that runs OS X Yosemite: simply download the free update from the Mac App Store. The release does not feature anything radically new — like the major visual overhaul that came last year — but there are new features as well as a strong focus on overall performance and stability improvements.

Here’s what’s new in Apple’s latest version of the Mac operating system …

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The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has today published a patent application from Apple for a fuel cell system designed to allow a MacBook to operate without external power “for days or even weeks.” The patent was published shortly after a British company rumored to be working with Apple managed to fit a fuel cell battery into an iPhone 6, powering it for a week at a time. We first reported on that project last summer.

While the patent refers only to a ‘portable computing device,’ both the text and diagrams specifically reference MagSafe, giving a clear indication that a MacBook is the device in question (even if Apple may be moving away from the system) … 
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$AAPL stock has opened below $100 in the first minutes of trading, erasing any gains since October 2014. Apple’s stock officially opened at $95.12 but has corrected slightly upwards since to circa $101. The fall in share price saw Apple’s market capitalization lose about $60 billion dollars in value today. Although any fall in price is bad news for the company, the 7% fall should not be taken at face value.

The whole market is down with losses across the board: the S&P saw a 5% overall fall — the largest one-day drop for four years. Technology stocks are being affected as much as any other sector. Twitter, Alibaba, Tesla and Netflix all saw falls in the double digits.

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Every time Apple is expected to release an S-series iPhone — the 3GS, the 4S, the 5s, and now the 6S — pundits rush to discount the value of each anticipated new feature, claiming that it won’t be enough to boost iPhone sales. Yet historically, every prediction of iPhone sales peaks or declines has been wrong: each iPhone, whether a big “tick” or small “tock” on Apple’s upgrade schedule, has outsold its predecessors. Even without form factor or screen changes, speed sold the iPhone 3GS, Siri boosted the 4S, and Touch ID and camera improvements helped the 5s. (In S years, improved distribution, new color options, and price and capacity tweaks have made a big difference, too.)

This week, analysts and pundits have co-opted my colleague Mark Gurman’s scoop that Force Touch on the iPhone 6S will be used for shortcuts across iOS, suggesting that Force Touch isn’t going to be exciting enough to make people upgrade. That’s true, but also so obvious as to be ridiculous: Apple certainly won’t pitch a pressure-sensitive screen as the iPhone 6S’s marquee new feature. Force Touch debuted in the Apple Watch, but it’s not even mentioned on the first Apple Watch page on Apple.com, instead showing up in the fifth paragraph of the “Technology” page. It’s similarly found only paragraphs down on the page of the 12″ MacBook where it made its Mac debut.

With the notable exception of the iPad mini 3, Apple never releases new devices with only one new feature to hook customers. Even a month before it’s announced, it’s a virtual certainty that the iPhone 6S will arrive with camera improvements and faster processors, most likely a new color option, and Force Touch as one of many small but nice additions. So long as Apple gets distribution and international pricing right, the iPhone 6S is going to do just fine…

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When I wrote a series of How-To guides showing how easy it was to swap old Mac hard disks for new solid state drives (SSDs), I focused on raw upgrades — slow mechanical drives for fast chip-based ones. The reason was simple: put an SSD in your Mac instead of the old hard disk, and you’ll be blown away by the speed increases. But as several readers have noted, there is another way to add an SSD to your Mac: you can keep your old hard drive, and instead replace the Mac’s CD/DVD optical drive, also known as a SuperDrive.

Swapping a SuperDrive for an SSD has a mix of pros and cons. It’s typically a little easier and less expensive to replace the SuperDrive than a stock hard drive, and you’ll always wind up with more internal storage than you started with. But you also lose CD/DVD reading and writing abilities — things fewer people care about these days — and you’ll need to set up your Mac to properly take advantage of the SSD. Read on for the details…

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Like many other people right now, I’m in the midst of watching my house transform as a direct result of Marie Kondo’s best-selling book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing. As the title suggests, the book powerfully explains how to properly keep any room tidy, in the process helping you resolve lingering issues in your life. Thanks to positive press, strong word of mouth, and surprisingly tangible results, Tidying Up is rapidly taking minimalism mainstream, bucking an age-old trend towards hoarding untold quantities of stuff and leaving it scattered around one’s living and working spaces.

As a long-time minimalist, it’s refreshing to see decluttering catching on. But Kondo’s KonMari system — keep only those items that “spark joy” and are actually being used, discarding everything else — has created a problem for tech-savvy readers. No matter how necessary they’ve become in our lives, Apple device chargers don’t “spark joy.” In Kondo terminology, their cables are untidy; particularly if you’ve purchased inexpensive third-party options, they’re not particularly nice to look at.

I knew this was a problem when my wife, inspired by Tidying Up, nearly tossed out the multi-iPad charger our family has used for years. Yes, the charger was creating visual clutter, but we needed it — or something better — to keep everyone’s iPads working. My hunt to find minimalist solutions to our daily charging needs inspired this article. Below, I’ll run through a few options that will help you tidy up your iPad, iPhone, iPod, Apple Watch, and Mac spaces, so you (and/or your significant other) can achieve minimalism without giving up your favorite devices…

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Update: Our winner has been announced! Congrats!

Congratulations to Jaime Marin—the winner of the Bushel Challenge! Jaime manages Apple devices for a mid-sized produce company that specializes in providing quality fruits and vegetables for their customers, 365 days of the year.  They’ve been able to utilize features from Bushel such as Wi-Fi configuration, app deployment, password policies, and more to streamline work processes for the team.

Thanks to all who participated in the Bushel Challenge—we hope you had a little fun along the way! While there’s only one lucky winner, everyone who participated can still manage up to three devices for free, for life. If you missed the Challenge, head on over to Bushel to learn more and get started for free today.

If you need to deploy iOS or OS X devices to your employees or organization, having cloud access to setup, deploy, and manage your fleet these days seems like a no-brainer. That’s why our go-to recommendation is Bushel, a super easy-to-use and slick web-based app that offers cloud access to deploying and managing Apple devices. The perfect supplement to Apple in the workspace, Bushel — created by JAMF Software — is a few steps ahead of the game. In this article, we walk you through how to use Bushel (which is free for up to 3 devices) to manage your fleet of Apple devices.

In special collaboration with 9to5Mac, Bushel is also offering a challenge to businesses: Try out Bushel and get entered to win free Bushel for life, as well as a free iOS device for your company.
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Being a writer and video creator, my bags are easily some of the most important possessions I have. The reason is obvious: they protect my essential tech and gear. I’m always super picky about which bags or backpacks I choose for this hefty task, and most of them come at a steep price. They hardly every look what you may call “good” though. I’m usually all about function over form when it comes to my bag decision. Choosing durability and features like pocket space usually means you’ll need to compromise on design.

With that said, I don’t consider myself a “briefcase” kind of guy. The style has just never been my thing because briefcases tend to be rather conservative on space and stiff in shape. So what’s with all of this talk over bags and briefcases? It just so happens that I’ve found a briefcase that’s actually kind of a bag, and it delivers both form and function. If this is what you’d call a briefcase these days, I’m all in. Meet The Briefcase from Pad & Quill…
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Pixelmator for iPhone and iPad has today been updated to version 2.0.2 bringing even more features to the popular image editor for iOS and Mac. This update adds a new kind of brush stroke called Dynamic Touch, which simulates pressure sensitivity by examining the size of the finger input that touches the screen. Larger surface area produces thicker strokes on the canvas. Similarly, using just the tip of a finger results in fine lines in the app.

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