Today Apple announced held their October event, "There’s More in the Making". This was held in Brooklyn, New York. Apple announced a bunch of new products. Let us look at each of them, starting with the Macs.

MacBook Air

Back in 2010 Apple unveiled a brand new product, a very thin, very light, and all-flash laptop. They named it the MacBook Air. Since its introduction it has been the same general shape. Today Apple unveiled a brand new MacBook Air. The new MacBook Air sports an 8th Generation Dual-Core Intel i5 processor that runs at 1.6GHz. with Turbo Boost up to 3.6GHz.

The MacBook Air comes with two Thunderbolt 3/USB-C ports. These are both along the left side of the machine. The biggest change to the MacBook Air is the brand new Retina display, which is the first time there has been a Retina display on the MacBook Air. The display is edge to edge and has a

The MacBook Air also comes with 8GB of memory standard and 128GB of flash storage. The memory can be configured up to 16GB and the flash can be upgraded to 256GB, 512GB, or 1.5TB.

The new MacBook Air starts at $1199, which is $200 more than the older MacBook Air, which is still on sale. The new MacBook Air comes in three colors, Silver, Space Gray, and Gold. You can order the new MacBook Air today, and it will ship next week. Let us now turn to another new Mac, one that has been a long time coming.

Mac mini

The Mac mini was introduced back in early 2005. At its initial release, and with subsequent updates it was positioned as an entry-level Mac that would be great for new Mac users to bring your existing keyboard, display, and mouse and replace your old device. The Mac mini has not been updated since October of 2014, so four years old. Today, that has changed with a brand new update.

The new Mac mini has all re-designed internals. This start with the all new flash-only storage options. These options are 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, 1TB, or 2TB.

To go along with the flash options, there are some additional memory options as well. 8GB is standard, but you can configure 16GB, 32GB, or even 64GB of memory.

The Mac mini comes in two models, the entry level, which sports a 3.6GHz quad-core 8th Generation Core i3 processor, and the higher-end model has a 3.0GHz six-core 8th Generation Core i5 Processor. Yes, you read that correctly, a six core processor. You can configure either model with a 3.2GHz six-core Intel Core i7 processor if you want.

There is one last configurable option. The Mac mini comes with a standard Gigabit ethernet port, but you can configure a 10-gigabit ethernet network adapter that is capable of running at 1Gbps, 2.5Gbps, or 5Gbps. This option does cost $100 more, but if you need it, you can configure it.

The last new feature of the Mac mini is the case. Since its initial release the Mac mini has been Silver in color. The new Mac mini no longer come in silver, it comes in Space Gray, and it only comes in Space Gray. The new color looks really good and will be welcome by man.

The new Mac mini comes with a slew of ports. In fact it has four Thunderbolt 3/USB-C ports, 1 HDMI 2.0 port, one ethernet port, one 3.5mm headphone jack, and two USB 3, traditional USB A ports. It also comes with 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 5.0.

The new Mac mini starts at $799. You can order it today and it will ship next week.

The new MacBook Air and Mac mini are great updates to machines that have been a long time coming and will be welcome to users who are looking to upgrade their existing machines.

Earlier this week Apple sent out an email to affiliate members indicating some changes that will be taking place as of October 1st. Here is the email that was sent:

Thank you for participating in the affiliate program for apps. With the launch of the new App Store on both iOS and macOS and their increased methods of app discovery, we will be removing apps from the affiliate program. Starting on October 1st, 2018, commissions for iOS and Mac apps and in-app content will be removed from the program. All other content types (music, movies, books, and TV) remain in the affiliate program.

This will have some impact on some websites who rely on affiliate links from iOS apps, Mac apps, and in-app purchases to run their business. At least there is some heads up on this. This has been preceded by Apple reducing the payout from 7% to 2.5%. So it was inevitable that this would be the case that these would be removed.

I am not impact much by this because the website does not rely on affiliate links. I am curious to see how long the affiliate program lasts overall. I would not be surprised if it goes away in the future. It may take a couple of years, but it is possible that it will be stopped in the future.

I did not write about this last week when it happened, because it appears as though there is a barrage of negative stories about Apple and with everything going on the world, who needs additional stories to get riled up about. Last week Dave Lee posted a video that showed that the Core i9 model of the 2018 MacBook Pro was throttling down its CPU under heavy loads. If you were to buy one of these computers, you would expect it to work really well, regardless of how much load the computer was under.

When the video was released many were skeptical that this was actually the case, and if it was indeed the case, that it was a design flaw with the MacBook Pro. It appears as though it is not a design flaw, but in fact it is a bug with the new 2018 MacBook Pros. Here is Apple's statement:

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.

This means that it is not the hardware itself that was the issue, but in fact it is software related. It is good to see that Apple took this seriously and found the cause of the issue. This bug affects the 13-inch models as well as the Core i7 and Core i9 15-inch models. It is highly recommended that you get the supplemental update to fix the issue. You can download it via the Updates tab in the Mac App Store, or by downloading it directly from Apple's support page.

Via Six Colors.

Late on Friday Apple announced that they are creating a Keyboard Service Program for a range of their laptops. There have been many reports of users having keys that stick, letters not being shown, or a key that gets repeatedly pressed even if you only press a key once.

The list of affected computers are:

• MacBook (Retina, 12-­inch, Early 2015)
• MacBook (Retina, 12­-inch, Early 2016)
• MacBook (Retina, 12-­inch, 2017)
• MacBook Pro (13­-inch, 2016, Two Thunderbolt 3 Ports)
• MacBook Pro (13-­inch, 2017, Two Thunderbolt 3 Ports)
• MacBook Pro (13-­inch, 2016, Four Thunderbolt 3 Ports)
• MacBook Pro (13-­inch, 2017, Four Thunderbolt 3 Ports)
• MacBook Pro (15-­inch, 2016)
• MacBook Pro (15-­inch, 2017)

If you have one of these laptops and are experiencing any of the keyboard issues, you can contact Apple, or Apple Authorized Reseller, and setup an appointment. If you have already paid to have your keyboard fixed, you can get a refund.

It is good that Apple has recognized that this is an issue but this is not new. This has been going on for over three years and this way overdue. What is worse is that if you got any dust under the keys, they would stop working and the "fix" to use compressed air at a 75 degree angle is not acceptable for most users.

I hope that any future updates to the keyboard will not have these issues, but there have not been any updates since last summer. Only time will be able to tell if this was a small time-frame where laptop keyboards were problematic or if this is an on-going issue.

: Apple.

Current MacBook Pros

There has been much consternation over the direction that Apple has taken their laptops. While there have been those that have questioned the inclusion of the TouchBar, many have questioned whether or not the TouchBar is a useful tool in place of standard function keys. While the TouchBar has been controversial, there is a topi that has been even more problematic, and for good reason. That feature is the new keyboards. The issues that have been expressed are:

• How little it takes for a key to stop responding.
• The cost of an out-of-warranty keyboard repair, which is approximately $540 dollars out of warranty.
• The suggested fix by Apple.
• And most problematic, the rapidity of the issues.

All of these have added to the hesitation of many pundits to recommend the 2016 and 2017 MacBook Pros.

Early 2015 MacBook Pro

A couple weeks ago the Apple Care on my Early 2015 MacBook Pro ended. When I realized it had been three years, it got me to thinking about how I never wrote a review of the MacBook Pro. I did post about the issue that I had when I first got the machine.

As a brief recap of the issue, it would stop randomly and sometimes rebooting fixed the issue, sometimes it did not. At the time Apple offered to just return the computer and order another one. This was just about the time that the brand new 12-inch MacBook was released. I seriously considered ordering one, but since the laptop was just still so new, I opted to have them fix it. Ultimately, this was a better choice for me. The ultimate problem was a bad cable to the SSD. Once they replaced that, it fixed all of the issues.

Selecting the MacBook Pro

When I start looking at any computer, I end up creating a Numbers spreadsheet to allow me to compare many different factors, with just a quick glance. These include:

• Storag
• Memory
• Price
• Video Memory

Storage, Memory and Price are the biggest factors that I look at. Screen size typically dictates the prices. I look at video memory, mostly for long term viability.

Specs

The MacBook Pro that I got is a mid-tier model. It is a 13-inch with a 2.7GHz Core i5 CPU and 16GB of memory with a 256GB SSD.

The 2015 MacBook Pro was my first purely solid-state storage computer. Prior to getting the 2015 MacBook Pro I had a 2011 iMac with a 1TB hard drive traditional hard drive, a 2007 Black polycarbonate MacBook with a 500GB hard drive, and a 2007 20-inch iMac with the same specs as the Black MacBook.

For just over two years after getting the MacBook Pro, it was effectively my primary computer. It is not that my 2011 iMac did not work, it did and still does. There were a couple of factors that lead me to use it as my primary. The first is that it seems like a faster computer. The second, and more importantly, the MacBook Pro has a Retina Screen.

The Screen

The MacBook Pro has a 2x Retina display which allows for resolutions that go between 1024 by 640 to 1680 by 1050. For my usage, I tend to go with the highest resolution of 1680 by 1050. When I first got the MacBook Pro I went with the default because it was new. As time progressed, and especially when the MacBook Pro became my primary computer,

This has to do with needing as much space as possible when doing coding, particularly with Xcode. As mentioned above, the MacBook Pro was my primary computer for a while, so it is the one where I updated my app <a href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/wwrite/id366196225?mt=8&at=1000l5Yb'>wwrite and wwriteFree. While working on the code, and in particular in the Xcode Simulator, given the size and space needed for being able to develop and test the app. Over the years, the extra screen resolution has been quite handy. It has been nice having the extra screen size. There have been occasions when I need to adjust the screen resolution, but I have typically kept it at the maximum.

Storage

Keyboard

Ports

• Two Thunderbolt 2 ports
• One HDMI port
• Two USB 3.0 Type A ports
• One SDHC slot
• One headphone jack
• One MagSafe 2 connector

General Usage

Closing Thoughts

I listen to a lot of podcasts and many of them are technology-focused, which likely would come as o surprise to nobody. One of the announcement that Apple made at their Let's Take a Field Trip event was that their iOS app named Classroom was coming to the Mac.

The Classroom app allows teachers to perform a variety of tasks. Some of these include:

• Launch any app, website, or book on student devices with a tap
• Lock devices into a single app to help students focus
• Lock screens to pause work or refocus your class
• Mute audio on student devices

• See an overview of all student screens at once
• Focus on a single student screen
• Students are informed when their screens are being viewed

What I heard many times was that the Classroom app was being ported to the Mac because the teachers are more accustom to the Mac. I understand the idea behind it. Meaning that teachers are not used to iPads. I think that for a percentage of teachers this is true, however I do not think this is the primary driving factor. Let us start with a scenario.

Imagine that you are a teacher with 25 kids. You are doing a lesson that involves showing the students the planets and what you are showing them is a video that is within the app. Along with this you would like to make sure that the students are paying attention. Since the iPad that you, as the teacher, are using is showing the app, so you cannot monitor what the students are doing.

Now, with the Classroom app on the nearby Mac, you can now keep an eye on what the students are doing while the video is playing, and if necessary put them back on task.

We are definitely in a transition time, but the immediate thought that teachers are "olds" and need to use a Mac to get stuff done. While that may be the case for a number of teachers, the ability to use the Classroom app on the Mac, in addition to an iPad, will allow teachers to monitor the students even if the iPad is currently in use.

The original Mac was unveiled in 1984, which makes it 33 years old. One of the most iconic Macs has been the iMac. The iMac debuted 19 years ago, in 1998. While there have been a number of form factors throughout the ages, the iMacs overall design has remained unchanged. The iMac has become more svelte as it has aged. The internals have improved significantly over the time. The latest iteration of the iMac if the Mid-2017 iMac.

Given the maturity and longevity of the iMac it is difficult to review the latest hardware, but I shall give it my best shot.

My Mac History

The Mid-2017 iMac is not my first iMac. It is actually my third. My first iMac was a 20-inch 2007 iMac with a 250GB hard drive, running an Intel Core 2 Duo at 2.16GHz, and 3GB of memory. My second iMac was a Mid-2011 iMac with a 1TB hard drive, running an Intel Sandy Bridge at 2.7GHz, and has 12GB of memory. Each of these purchases were done at an Apple Store. This means that they were stock models. The memory was added afterwards. The models that Apple has at the store are the stock models. These are not customized in anyway. The Apple stores generally have different tiers, and these are available at the stores, however there are no customizations at the store. For these purchases, the reason I ended up going with these comes down to price.

Each of the iMacs I bought had a larger version, the 24-inch and 27-inch models respectively. In the case of the 2007 iMac, it was my first Mac, so I did not want to spend too much on my first Mac, just in case. For the 2011 iMac, I would have liked to have purchased the 27-inch model, but I could not justify the cost.

When looking to purchase a new iMac, I did some calculations about the length of time that I have kept my Macs. This came to 6.03 years. I knew it was time to look at getting a new iMac. This information played into my consideration of which model to purchase.

The Screen

The Mid-2017 iMac that I purchased is the top of the line 27-inch model. The iMac maintains the same form-factor as the 2014 and 2015 Models. It sports a 5K Retina Monitor. The difference with this year's iMac is that it has a 500 nit display. This display is 43% brighter than the previous models. For me, the difference is easily noticeable when compared to my 2011 iMac.

One of the biggest features of this display is also available in the 2015 model and that is Display P3 color gamut. The Display P3 color gamut allows more colors to be shown. The 2017 model is slightly better in that it can do just a few more colors than the old model.

When a color is displayed on a computer, it is made up of three primary colors, Red, Green, and Blue. On most screens, each of these is capable of having one of 256 values, or 8 bits.. This results in the ability to display 16.7 Million colors.

The 2017 iMac is capable of 10-bit color, or 1024 different values for each color, Red, Green, and Blue. This means that it is capable of 1.07 Billion colors. So just a few more colors than before.

Ports

One of the biggest changes for the Mid-2017 iMac is the the ports that are on the machine. The 2017 iMac has traditional USB-A ports. These are USB 3 ports. The old Thunderbolt 2 ports have been removed in favor of the new Thunderbolt 3 ports. Thunderbolt 3 ports are compatible with USB 3.1 ports, or more commonly known as USB-C. The USB-C connector is the new standard for many computers, not just Macs. You can still use Thunderbolt 2 accessories with an adapter.

There is a standard ethernet adapter. The beloved SD Card slot and headphone jack are still present as well.

Keyboard

One of the more recent changes to the iMac line is the inclusion of the Magic Keyboard. The Magic Keyboard differs greatly from the old-style keyboard. There are a couple of major differences. The biggest is that it no longer requires batteries and instead uses a rechargeable battery. The method in which it connects is still bluetooth, but you pair via an included lightning cable.

The keyboard switches in the Magic Keyboard have less distance to travel, compared to the older style keyboards. These switches make the keyboard a little bit noisier than before. I purchased a Magic Keyboard for use with my old iPad Pro but I don't use my keyboard with my iPad as much as my iMac. I have become accustom to typing on the Magic Keyboard and now typing on an old keyboard, like that on my MacBook Pro is definitely a bit of an adjustment to go back to the old keyboard.

Remote Disc

One of the trends with modern computers is the removal of optical drives. This trend is completely understandable given the tendency to lean towards digital media purchases and streaming. Yet, there may be times when you need to use an optical drive. Apple has covered with a feature called "Remote Disc". Remote Disc will allow you to share the optical drive of another Mac with any computer that you would like. I never really had a need to use the feature, but I was working on my iOS 11 and macOS High Sierra e-books and wanted to watch a DVD while adding images. The 5K iMac does not have an optical drive, so I used Remote Disc. I put the DVD into my 2011 iMac and connected to the computer. The playback was just as if the disc was being played on the 27-inch iMac. I was only trying to play a DVD, so it was not super data intensive.

5K Screen Comparison

On the topic of DVDs, the maximum resolution possible on a 5K iMac is 5120 pixels wide by 2880 pixels tall. The 5K iMac was not my first Retina device, that was the 3rd Generation iPad in 2012. It was not my Retina Mac either, that is my 2015 MacBook Pro. But it is my first desktop Mac with Retina. The number of pixels is not easy to comprehend if you are coming from a non-retina screen. My 13-inch MacBook Pro is capable of 2560 pixels by 1600 pixels. This means that there are 3.6 times as many pixels on the 5K Retina iMac Screen as compared to the 13-inch MacBook Pro. To really get a good comparison, here is an image of 27-inch iMac at its full resolution with a DVD in the corner, which is 480 pixels.

Here is a picture of the maximum resolution of the 5K iMac with the maximum resolution of the 2011 iMac, which was 1920 pixels by 1080 pixels.

And just for good measure, here is a screenshot comparing all three sizes.

I have settled on using a resolution of 3200 pixels by 1800 pixels. While this may degrade some performance, as the note in display preferences states, it is a trade off I am willing to make. This is because most of the time I need more screen real estate than performance. Yet, if there is a reason why I need performance, I will have that option as well.

Geekbench Comparisons

I thought I would run some Geekbench comparisons across all of my devices. These were run with the latest version of Geekbench 4. For those who really want to know, below is what I got when I ran the tests.

Closing Thoughts

If you are in the market for a new Mac and want to get a desktop, which is not the most common type of computer purchased these days, then the Mid-2017 27-inch 5K Retina iMac may be right for you. If you know that you need a significantly, and even more, powerful workhorse of a Mac, then wait for the iMac Pro that is coming later this year. While the 2017 27-inch 5k Retina iMac may be iterative over its previous brethren, it is a speedy and powerful machine that is worth an upgrade. If you are in the market to create Virtual Reality content, but the starting price of the iMac Pro, $4,999, is a bit out of reach, then the 2017 27-inch iMac may be a good option.

Here's the 1984 introduction video for the Mac

Ok, so I want to build a webapp... while for most things the stock apache / php / mysql installs on Leopard are great... but not if you want extensions... I need to be able to create PDFs... and so I need to build all of the stuff from source... Let's see exactly how well that went..

Here are the basics... Step One... obtain Apache source Step Two... ./configure apache2 with the necessary options Step Three install apache2 using the sudo make install command

This went well.... Next Thing to install... PHP Get Source ... do ./configure then sudo make install That went well... Except for the 4 hours spent trying to get everything needed in order to actually compile the damn thing... but I finally got it working this morning

Mysql.... actually went well...

Now in order to create PDF files I need PDFLib... which will require a rebuild of PHP... I also need to make sure that the ldap extension works for my webapp... and lo and behold... it's not installed... so now I have to find it...

Find Ldap source... using openldap... And I try and compile that and guess what... it requires Berkeley DB, which is installed on mac by default.. but it's the wrong version... guess I'll go and build that... There were well written instructions on how to do that...

download source decompress cd build_unix ../dist/configure sudo make sudo install

That's compiling as I write this... I just hope that this works so I can have PDFLib on my server...

With the 10+ hours spent thus far just compiling things I wonder if Leopard server would've had any of these issues...

oh well... just the way it goes... I wonder if doing this on a linux box would be any easier...

I'll keep everybody posted...

So I've had Leopard for almost a week now, and I've only installed it on my iMac. I had originally installed onto an external hard drive, just to verify that all of my programs would work, and most of them did. One of the major programs that did not work was Talkshoe. Almost every other program has worked. XCode is excluded, since there's an updated Leopard version, which I haven't yet installed.

To see a rant on the supposed "Mac OS X Trojan F.U.D" head over to macgasm.net