New Mac mini & MacBook Pro, new HomePod features, iOS 17 Wishlist

The new M2 Mac mini and MacBook Pro models are reaching some buyers, and tempting others, while iOS 16.3 has brought updates to the HomePod, and listeners want more in iOS 17, on the AppleInsider podcast.

AppleInsider takes a brief trip to London where William Gallagher got to meet the "Slow Horses" team from Apple TV+, and brings back tales of the gorgeous Apple Brompton Road store.

Meanwhile, the brand new MacBook Pro models and especially that lower cost new M2 Mac mini are proving to be very attractive buys. You probably don't need an M2 Mac mini if you have the previous M1 version, but based on the first reviews, you will want one.

While not everyone pops over to London, and not everyone has bought the new Macs, what everyone did get this week was a slew of updates including iOS 16.3. It's one of those releases where there are significant improvements, but most are not immediately visible, so Stephen Robles explains what's really new.

That includes how iOS 16.3 also includes updates for the HomePod and HomePod mini. More than two years after the HomePod mini shipped, Apple has now enabled the temperature and humidity sensor that has always been in it.

Listen for what you can now do with that — and for what Stephen, William, and listeners truly hope will come in iOS 17.

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2 Comments

lesterkrimbaugh 9 Years · 60 comments

About 1 year ago

iOS and iPadOS need multi-user support – not just for family members but also to separate business and personal accounts.

dewme 10 Years · 5775 comments

About 1 year ago

lesterkrimbaugh said:

iOS and iPadOS need multi-user support – not just for family members but also to separate business and personal accounts.

Sure, why not? But from Apple’s perspective and the people having to do the work to make it happen, it would be a much larger and more complex job than you probably imagine it to be. Not to mention the additional storage and connectivity resources it would demand from the affected devices.

Peruse all of the things on your current iPhone or iPad that are tied to your single AppleID account and think about what it would take to replicate all of that for every additional account on the device. I nearly ran out of storage on my 256 GB iPad and had to go with a 512 GB model the next time I got a new iPad. If I had another account on the same device I’d have to come up with a way to manage the storage so I don’t run out from either account.

Apple’s optimization features help, which essentially turns your local storage into a local cache for a larger backing storage, so the macro problem can be mitigated, with resulting compromises. Being an Apple product, it would have to “just work” and not require reallocating resources like you have to do with BootCamp.

Can Apple come up with a solution? Absolutely. But moving from an architecture that is deeply rooted in these devices being single user with highly personalized experiences to being multiuser is a huge change. It’s also one that they’ve already solved on their devices whose underlying architecture was designed to be multiuser from the start, macOS. Perhaps when entry level iPhones come with 1 TB of storage and much faster WiFi and cellular capabilities Apple will feel confident to make them multiuser devices lacking any significant compromises.

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