Your Apple Update

With all of the big changes coming to the Mac later this year, particularly the transition away from Intel to Apple silicon, should you buy a new Mac now? Or wait until next year? Also, Microsoft is shuttering its retail stores, a high-end watch publication just became an Apple Watch authorized retailer, and why your next iPhone may not come with earbuds or a charger.

This week Apple held it’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) where it announced the new features coming this fall to macOS, iOS, watchOS, iPadOS, and tvOS. The Mac got the biggest redesign in 20 years, and Apple officially announced that it’s going to transition the Mac away from Intel chips to its own in-house designed Apple Silicon processors. I break all this down plus give my thoughts on the questions that seemingly will not die: Will Apple merge macOS and iOS? And will the Mac get a touch screen? Listen for all that and more.

This month marks 20 years since I bought my first Macintosh computer. I look back on those 20 years of Apple fandom and the two things that made me fall in love with Apple and changed the course of my life. Also in this episode I discuss the rumored upcoming transition away from Intel chips in the Mac and over to ARM-based chips. I have three important questions about how this will affect users and developers. And finally, we now know when and how Apple will be bringing Greyhound (the new WWII naval drama from Tom Hanks) to Apple TV+.

In this week’s episode John provides a review of the Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro. The design, keyboard, trackpad, price, and some discussion of Apple’s strategic thinking around the iPad both now and across its ten year history. Also, Apple is beginning to re-open its Apple retail stores, and John lets you know what you need to know before you plan your visit since there are some COVID-19 precautions that Apple is taking.

This week Apple announced when it will be holding it’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference (June 22), announced a new 13-inch MacBook Pro, and updated us all on it’s latest efforts in the fight against COVID-19.

Other topics - hardware issues with my AirPods Pro, tracking how COVID-19 has affected requests for directions in Apple Maps, how to find COVID-19 testing centers in Apple Maps, and why the new iPhone SE might be the perfect iPhone for the current times we’re living through.

This week saw the arrival of reviews of the new iPhone SE, plus customers began getting their Magic Keyboards for the iPad Pro, and Bloomberg released a big article about Apple’s plans to transition the Mac away from Intel processors to ARM chips.

Apple held its annual Fall iPhone event this week, but also took time to announce updates to several other products as well. In this video, I want to focus on Apple Arcade and Apple TV+, the two services announcements from Apple. What content can you expect, how it will work, when you can start playing/watching, and what these services will cost. Take a look!

We know a lot about the content that Apple will be showcasing on its Apple TV+ streaming service later this Fall, but we don’t actually know yet what it will COST to watch this content. But based on reporting from Bloomberg, it might be higher than you might think.

Apple caught some much deserved flak recently when it came to light that they were using contractors to “grade” Siri by having them listen in to randomized Siri interactions. This was intended to make Siri more accurate, and the testing process made sense... except that users weren’t aware that their Siri interactions were being monitored. Oops! The Apple community and press held Apple’s feet to the fire on this one, and today they apologized and announced changes to how they handle Siri interactions. In this video I break it all down.