Posts in Linked

Connected, Episode 202: It Could Just Be Ghosts→

Federico and Stephen are joined by John Voorhees to talk about MacBook Pro throttling, HomePod rumors and answer some listener questions.

A fun episode of Connected this week with a discussion about how we use our HomePods and what’s going on with the 2018 MacBook Pros. You can listen here.

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Apple Releases Software Fix to Address MacBook Pro Throttling→

Jason Snell, writing for Six Colors:

After a week of controversy following the posting of a video that claimed the new 15-inch MacBook Pro could experience massive slowdowns, Apple on Tuesday acknowledged that the slowdowns exist—and that they’re caused by a bug in the thermal management software of all the 2018 MacBook Pro models. That bug has been fixed in a software update that Apple says it’s pushing out to all 2018 MacBook Pro users as of Tuesday morning.

Here’s the official Apple statement, furnished to Six Colors by an Apple spokesperson:

Following extensive performance testing under numerous workloads, we’ve identified that there is a missing digital key in the firmware that impacts the thermal management system and could drive clock speeds down under heavy thermal loads on the new MacBook Pro. A bug fix is included in today’s macOS High Sierra 10.13.6 Supplemental Update and is recommended. We apologize to any customer who has experienced less than optimal performance on their new systems. Customers can expect the new 15-inch MacBook Pro to be up to 70% faster, and the 13-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar to be up to 2X faster, as shown in the performance results on our website.

The controversy caused this past week over throttling reports surely isn’t the kind of publicity Apple was hoping for with its latest updates to the MacBook Pro. There’s been all kinds of speculation as to the reasons for the excessive throttling that’s been reported, with one popular theory claiming it’s an issue with the MacBook Pro’s thin body – an error similar to that found with the current Mac Pro, whose enclosure can’t sufficiently handle the additional heat caused by powerful chips and heavy workflows.

While official tests will take some time to confirm Apple’s message, it’s great to see that the i9 MacBook Pro’s issues don’t appear to be hardware-related, and Apple moved swiftly to solve them.

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iMessage Business Chat Continues Slow Rollout, Adding Multiple New Brands and Supported Platforms→

Apple launched iMessage Business Chat earlier this year as part of iOS 11.3, but at the time only a select few companies were signed on to support the feature. Four months later, we’re now starting to see the next Business Chat partners go live. Sarah Perez reports for TechCrunch:

In addition to Dish becoming the first TV provider to support Business Chat, Apple says it has also added four other brands, Aramak, Four Seasons, Harry & David, and American Express, in addition to five new technology platforms businesses can integrate with.

To this point Business Chat has primarily been deployed as a customer support solution, but with these new companies comes more diversity in how the feature is being used. In particular, I’m intrigued by what Aramark is doing with Business Chat as a customer service tool. Perez writes:

Aramak is piloting a 10-game “Brew2You” program at Citizens Bank Park, the home of the Philadelphia Phillies. Fans will be able to scan a QR code on their seat back in three sections to order beer or water over iMessage, and have it delivered right to their seat.

Ordering drinks at a ball game is a perfect use case for Business Chat, and one I hope catches on with related markets, both sports and otherwise. Movie theaters, concerts, or Broadway shows that offer the ability to order refreshments from your seat would be another great fit.

I used Business Chat for the first time last week with Dish, and the service worked as advertised, offering a pain-free support experience that’s miles ahead of a traditional phone call or other web chat service. While expansion has gotten off to a slow start, I’m hopeful that with Apple targeting not just individual brands, but also large platforms like Cisco, it will be easy for more businesses to get on board sooner rather than later.

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iFixit Tests MacBook Pro’s Keyboard Membrane→

iFixit ran more tests and took a closer look at the keyboard membrane that was added to the 2018 MacBook Pro released last week. It turns out, the membrane is one sheet of die-cut silicone with tiny cutouts to allow keycaps to connect to the butterfly switches beneath.

To test how well the new design holds up against dust, iFixit sprayed a new MacBook Pro with a dusting of paint additive. They then tore apart the notebook and found:

Lo and behold, the dust is safely sequestered at the edges of the membrane, leaving the mechanism fairly sheltered. The holes in the membrane allow the keycap clips to pass through, but are covered by the cap itself, blocking dust ingress. The previous-gen butterfly keys are far less protected, and are almost immediately flooded with our glowing granules. On the 2018 keyboard, with the addition of more particulate and some aggressive typing, the dust eventually penetrates under the sheltered clips, and gets on top of the switch—so the ingress-proofing isn’t foolproof just yet. Time will tell how long the barrier will hold up.

iFixit followed up by testing with grittier sand, which managed to cause keys to stick.

It’s good to see that the MacBook Pro’s keyboard withstands fine particles better than earlier models in testing. The real test, of course, is long-term human testing. Only time will tell whether the 2018 MacBook Pros can hold up when faced with a crumbly muffin in your local café or the pollen blowing across your keyboard as you browse the web in your backyard.

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Connected, Episode 201: An Internal Fortnite→

Federico bought an iPod touch, Nest and Instapaper both have new bosses and the world is finally getting the leg emoji it deserves.

On this week’s Connected, I also shared a status update on my iOS 12 review and the apps I’m using to put it together. You can listen here.

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Sharecuts→

Fun new project by iOS developer extraordinaire Guilherme Rambo – Sharecuts is a (so far, beta and invitation-only) directory to browse and install custom shortcuts created by other users. Sarah Perez has more details at TechCrunch:

But by the time iOS 12 releases to the public later this fall, Sharecuts’ directory will be filled out and a lot more functional.

The premise, explains Sharecuts’ creator Guilherme Rambo, was to make an easily accessible place where people could share their shortcuts with one another, discover those others have shared, and suggest improvements to existing shortcuts.

“I was talking to a friend [Patrick Balestra] about how cool shortcuts are, and how it should be easier for people to share and discover shortcuts,” says Guilherme. “He mentioned he wanted to build a website for that – he even had the idea for the name Sharecuts – but he was on vacation without a good internet connection so I decided to just build it myself in one day,” he says.

The site is currently a bare bones, black-and-white page with cards for each shortcut, but an update will bring a more colorful style (see below) and features that will allow users to filter the shortcuts by tags, vote on favorites, among other things.

This isn’t the first time users have tried to launch curated directories for workflows (there were a bunch for the old Workflow app), but I think projects like this are going to be especially important given the lack of an official public directory for Shortcuts; the gallery built into the Shortcuts app is managed by Apple and doesn’t accept user submissions. For now, Sharecuts works by uploading plain .shortcut files to the service, but I’m hoping that, once Apple brings back link-based sharing, you’ll be able to just paste a link to a shortcut you’ve created. In the meantime, you can find a couple of shortcuts I’ve shared here and here.

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AppStories, Episode 70 – Apps for Managing Big Projects→

On this week’s episode of AppStories, we discuss the apps we use to manage large projects like the MacStories and AppStories coverage of the App Store’s 10th anniversary and Apple’s fall OS releases.

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https://staging.macstories.net/podcasts/appstories/episodes/70/embed/

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After Two Years with Pinterest, Instapaper Regains Its Independence→

From Instapaper’s blog:

Today, we’re announcing that Pinterest has entered into an agreement to transfer ownership of Instapaper to Instant Paper, Inc., a new company owned and operated by the same people who’ve been working on Instapaper since it was sold to betaworks by Marco Arment in 2013. The ownership transfer will occur after a 21 day waiting period designed to give our users fair notice about the change of control with respect to their personal information.

We want to emphasize that not much is changing for the Instapaper product outside the new ownership. The product will continue to be built and maintained by the same people who’ve been working on Instapaper for the past five years. We plan to continue offering a robust service that focuses on readers and the reading experience for the foreseeable future.

Following Pinterest’s acquisition of Instapaper almost two years ago, there was a reasonable level of concern about what that change would mean for the popular read-it-later service. From an outside perspective, however, it seems like the transition has gone smoothly – which makes today’s announcement all the more surprising.

It will be interesting to see what changes this move brings in the short-term. In the immediate future, the company has already confirmed it’s working hard on making Instapaper available in Europe again. Looking further out, the service’s business model is a big question mark. Before Pinterest came along, Instapaper offered a premium subscription option that was later discontinued post-acquisition and its features made publicly available to all users. A new subscription plan may be in the works, likely with currently unannounced new features. Only time will tell what the future holds, but in any case, it’s always nice to see an app’s development team in full control of its product’s destiny.

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