Review: macOS Catalina 10.15 is what Apple promised the Mac could be, and is a crucial upgrade
Apple's latest macOS 10.15 Catalina breathes a fresh new vitality into the last seven years of Macs and macOS.
Dan worked as a journalist covering the tech industry, and in particular Apple, for more than 15 years. He's contributed to AppleInsider since 2005. Prior to that, he managed Information Technology teams and handled technical operations ranging from startups to enterprise organizations including U.S. government, higher education, and healthcare research organizations.
Apple's latest macOS 10.15 Catalina breathes a fresh new vitality into the last seven years of Macs and macOS.
This year, iOS 13 and the new macOS Catalina introduce a variety of new features and apps for users, few of which could be described as radically "revolutionary." Is Apple's innovation factory in trouble?
Those piles of often-defective electric scooters that have littered the sidewalks of major cities over the past couple years are commonly seen as a nuisance that needs to be scrubbed from the streets. But to the roughly 700 registered attendees at the Micromobility Conference in Berlin, Germany, the problems associated with these fleets of personal vehicles are solvable, leading to dramatic improvements in sustainability and quality of life. Notably, some of those attendees were from Apple.
To compete with Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant, critics have insisted that Apple would need its own drastically cheaper HomePod. But instead of Apple moving down into the loss leader territory of $30 Echo Dots and Google Home minis, Amazon has unveiled its much more expensive Echo Studio, with a $200 price tag equivalent to a half dozen Echo Dots.
Analyst Horace Dediu was one of the first analysts to correctly recognize what Apple was accomplishing in mobile computing with the iPhone. He has recently focused on the future of personal mobility — an area Apple has investigated in some depth, although the company hasn't yet revealed a clear strategy. On October 1, Micromobility Europe will discuss the state of the art in Berlin, and AppleInsider has learned that Apple will be in attendance.
It's a tough crowd at Apple Park. One of the first hot takes to fly off the grill of the New York Times after Apple's iPhone launch event this week demanded that the company stop doing product events entirely because they have become "exhausting love letters to consumerism." But is angry, embittered cynicism a more legitimate response to a product launch than any other emotional reaction?
Two years ago, Apple surprised the world with the tech-laden, $999 iPhone X. The usual suspects complained about its stratospheric pricing and assured their audiences that there was no chance it would gain traction because "some users" were assumed to find it too expensive. But this year, Apple made an even better version of that phone available to the masses at the standard $650 iPhone pricing from 2016. Here's how, and why, it matters.
Apple is thought to be working on Augmented Reality glasses that are perhaps two years out. But in moving the AR experience from the handheld screens of iOS devices to a fixed panel you look through, users will need a new way to navigate AR worlds. Little attention has been given to the role of game controllers in AR navigation, but Apple's patent filings and its recent announcements suggest that its next new play in hardware could be an advanced gaming controller, perhaps even a wearable one.
Apple TV hardware hasn't been updated for two years— which just so happens to be the typical length of time before a new model is introduced. This year, Apple could have a special impetus to update Apple TV based on its new Apple Arcade gaming subscription and the availability of the faster, smaller A12X chip. Here's why.
Less than a week before Apple unveils its latest "by innovation only" iPhones, the rumor mill and data mining is in full swing. However, the most important element of Apple's global success is not contingent upon a new feature introduction or perhaps a new product initiative, but rather the continued success of the software market that acts as the ecosystem binding together virtually everything Apple sells: the App Store.
When you upgrade to a new iPhone — as millions will next month at the unveiling of the "A13" powered iPhone 11 — you're voting with your dollars for a future driven by advanced new silicon with incredible sophistication. There is no way Apple or any other company could design and manufacture this future without you. The recent history of Google's Pixel Visual Core explains why.
Steve Jobs launched iPhone as "a phone, a widescreen iPod and a breakthrough Internet device," but over the last decade, one of the primary features driving its adoption among new buyers and upgrades among existing users has been its camera. Here's a look at where Apple stands in mobile imaging technology, with a look at what's expected for iPhone 11 in September.
On Monday, CNBC compiled the confused thoughts of a Wedbush Securities analyst who doesn't seem to have any grasp on reality whatsoever when it comes to the future — or even present — of Apple.
For years, this new Apple product was derided as too expensive to compete against cheaper alternatives. Yet by targeting the premium high end first, it was able to establish itself and then attract an even broader audience of users at broader price points in the future. No this isn't about iPod, or iPhone, or iPad or Apple Watch. It's a look at HomePod, Apple's home audio device featuring HomeKit and Siri functionality, often confused with merely being a Wi-Fi microphone.
Apple Card is all over the news, in part because the physical legacy card it ships with can be scuffed up if you throw it in your jeans pocket with coins and keys. There are thousands of other card issuers globally that wish the inherently fragile nature of a pristine credit card was also capable of driving free global advertising of their brand as well. Why does Apple get so much free press?
Apple pioneered the concept of making its products accessible to users with disabilities back in the 1980s. It has made environmentally sound manufacturing and supplier responsibility a key aspect of its global operations. It has taken a public stand for inclusion and diversity and has made privacy and security primary features of its products. Why haven't other tech giants offered more than a meek "me too" in these areas?
Since 2012, Apple has been buying back shares at the extraordinary rate of around $10 billion per quarter. A year ago it picked up the pace to around $20 billion per quarter. After a reprieve last winter, the company has resumed its buyback frenzy with its largest-ever quarterly funding: $24 billion in Q2 followed by $17 billion in the most recent June quarter. Here's why. [The original version of this article contained an error regarding the dates of Apple's quarterly buybacks.]
Apple's reported operational expenses for research and development in the June quarter hit a new all-time high of $4.257 billion, well over twice the quarterly spending it reported in 2015. Apple's aggressive expansion demonstrates the company is building for the future even as its rivals retreat from tablets and smartwatches and fail to keep pace with Apple's aggressive OS updates and custom silicon work.
When Apple entered the smartphone market in 2007, it didn't do so to lose money making most of the world's smartphones as a public service. All these years later, a shocking number of analysts and reporters still seem to be confused about this.
Apple's continuing performance as a market-responsive, commercially savvy innovator is destroying feebleminded media narratives that seek to portray the company as helpless and befuddled. It also demonstrates that the real incompetence lies in bad reporting by sloppy journalists seeking to deliver titillating headlines rather than accurate, factual portrayals of the industry.
In 2005, Steve Jobs announced that Apple would transition Macs to use PC-standard Intel x86 processors. Fifteen years later, Apple appears poised to make another CPU shift that could prove to be far more significant in the future of technology. Here's why.
Microsoft is running a retro-styled advertising campaign tied into the new third season of Netflix's "Stranger Things" TV series, which is set in 1985. It promotes fake nostalgia for a romanticized Windows launch that in reality was only scoffed at as underpowered, poorly-built vaporware at the time.
Apple's subtly flattering new FaceTime feature in iOS 13 beta 3 corrects the appearance of your attention so that you appear focused on your caller — as if perfectly staring at the camera — even when you're looking at the screen. The magic behind it has incrementally developed across years of evolving software and hardware advancements, offering some interesting insight into how Apple uniquely charts out the future with its products.
The Wall Street Journal crafted the "Big Hack" of Apple clickbait: a high drama tell-all that insulted everyone at Apple, mocking its departing design chief, his boss, and the team that worked with him. As fiction, it was Netflix-caliber entertainment, but to insiders, it was so bad it was hard to finish.
Microsoft's former chief executive Bill Gates mused this week that it would have been the "natural thing" for Microsoft to have been the "standard non-Apple phone platform." But he's wrong, and here's why.
{{ summary }}