Nuclear Monster

  • Before January 20th one of our national embarrassment’s favorite things to criticize President Obama about (over Twitter) was his penchant for golfing:

    This shameful embarrassment has been golfing 12 times in his first few months as president. Each trip costs us a few million dollars, and of course he promised “We’re not gonna be big on vacation.” while he was decrying the Obama administration.

  • Today’s software updates from Apple are notable for a lot of reasons. macOS 10.12.4 gets Night Shift from iOS, I can now find my AirPods in the Find My iPhone app, there are the beginnings of a standard to control apps that nag you for reviews on iOS 10.3, Siri enhancements on watchOS 3.2, but the most important change is he first switch from HFS+ to APFS. APFS is Apple’s new file system for iOS, macOS, tvOS, and watchOS. It’ll be installed with the latest iOS update, and will come to macOS in the future.

    File systems keep track of where your files are on a storage medium like a hard drive or SD card, and Apple has been using some variation of the same file system, HFS and HFS+, for the past thirty years.

    APFS should be an improvement in performance and reliability because it is targeted towards modern computing devices that use flash memory instead of spinning disks, but it is going to be a little bit like pulling a table cloth out from under a plated dinner and table setting in order for the operating system to replace the file system on the devices during the update.

    I made sure my iCloud backups were all up to date before starting the upgrade, you should too.

  • Matthew Panzarino has the scoop:

    Workflow the app is being acquired, along with the team of Weinstein, Conrad Kramer, Ayaka Nonaka and Nick Frey. In a somewhat uncommon move for Apple, the app will continue to be made available on the App Store and will be made free later today.

    This is terrific news. Workflow is an automation app that helps you get real shit done on iOS. I’ve used it to do things like clipping headlines out of articles and preparing a link in the format I use to link to posts like this one. Or you could use it for a simpler task like tapping one button to send a text message to your significant other and let them know how long it’ll take you to get home.

    Workflow can do all kinds of things, but it is the kind of thing that it’s great to see Apple embrace because it means they’re serious about improving the functionality of iOS for more than reading, watching, and playing. If folks who grow up with iOS ever want to hope of being productive on those devices instead of learning desktop computing, this is going to be a tremendous start.

  • Jim Sterling writing about the reactions YouTube celebrities have had to their racism being reported on:

    The Internet has warped the idea of “free speech” to mean “speech without consequence” and that’s simply not what it is.

    Absolutely, JonTron can share a Trumpian view on immigration and claim discrimination isn’t a problem, but other people have the exact same right to call him out on it. Given how insular YouTube communities can be, it’s easy to see why some might believe they’re free from the consequences of speech, but as their entertainment empires grow and more people become aware of them, they’re going to find those consequences are very real and they hit like a sack of bricks.

  • Photo via Apple

    If you want to buy an iPad today, which is the best one to get?

    If you want to replace a laptop, there’s the 12.9″ iPad Pro, that’s the one that hasn’t been updated since 2015. It has really outdated cameras front and back. The 12.9″ also has the largest screen, but it is missing features like true tone and the wide color gamut from the 9.7″ iPad Pro.

    If you want to go small, there’s the 4th generation iPad Mini. Like it’s giant brother, the Mini hasn’t been updated in two years and has an A8 chip in it. I’ve got the 2nd generation Mini with an A7, so I don’t feel like that A8 would be an upgrade. At least it’s extremely portable, perfect for reading a virtual book or getting a little bit more work done than on an iPhone.

    Maybe you’re looking for something sized in-between 12.9″ Pro and the 7.9″ Mini. Well that choice just got more confusing, too. Apple introduced a new 9.7″ iPad today.

    Neither an Air nor a Pro, this model is slightly thicker than the last Air model (that it replaces) and the 9.7″ Pro (that isn’t going away). It will also have a brand-new outdated processor when it ships with an A9 system-on-a-chip next week. That’s two-bumps older than the iPhone 7‘s processor, and one step better than the iPad Air 2. The iPad Pro’s both have A9x chips which are a step up.

    The new iPad display is going to be a bit worse off than the iPad Pros and the iPad Air 2, as well. Still missing true tone and other features, it is at least a little bit brighter than the old Air 2.

    What else? The Pro models are still the only ones with the smart connector for accessories like keyboards (so they don’t need to do a bluetooth pairing dance) and support for Apple’s stylus, the Pencil.

    So what on earth could justify this half-step model of iPad?

    The price.

    The new iPad minus Air and minus Pro is now $329 for the 32GB 9.7 inch base-model. That’s $70 less than yesterday’s base model of iPad Air 2.

    To get 128GB on the new iPad you have to go up to $429. Yesterday’s 128GB iPad Air 2 was $499.

    It gets more expensive if you’re interested in cellular data connectivity. On the new iPad, it’s $459 for cellular data and 32GB of storage, or $559 for a 128GB cellular iPad.

    The 4th generation Pad Mini was also updated today with more storage (128GB vs 32GB) for the same $399 price it had yesterday. Yesterday you could get a 32GB gen 2 Mini (the first one with a retina screen) for $269. That option is gone.

    One thing this price shuffling does is open up Apple to possibly update the iPad Mini later this year or next and charge more for a truly updated version of it than the new 9.7 iPad. It used to be that the price scaled down with the size of the device, this feels like Apple is telling us that was a mistake and is changing to meet the demand people have for smaller iPads.

    This is the most confusing time to buy an iPad unless you are reasonably price sensitive, in which case it is now the best time to buy an iPad.

    Pre-orders go up on Friday with general availability next week.

    Goodbye iPad Air, hello iPad Cheap.