By John Moltz
January 20, 2023 3:16 PM PT
This Week in Apple: Non-events
This week answered the philosophical question: what if they held an Apple event and nobody came? Even if it was because nobody was invited. And speaking of not invited, some favorite apps have been uninvited to the Twitter party.
Apple event
Apple decided to make the announcement of new M2-based MacBook Pros and Mac minis, in which the new M2 Pro and Max chips were unveiled, an online-only affair which meant reporters could cover it in their PJs. The company still produced a video featuring talking execs (if not its most senior), lots of camera swooshes through the company’s headquarters, and videos. Yes, videos inside the presentation video. Videos of people making videos.
It’s like a video turducken.
The virtual event was not entirely Tim-less (Apple’s VP of Platform Architecture Tim Millet represented the Tims of Apple) but it was Cook-less. Still, that doesn’t mean there wasn’t sizzle.
The new M2 Pro Mac mini beats the M1 Max. If you can’t figure out Apple’s weird naming conventions, that means the new third-best thing beat the old second-best thing. Apple touts the M2 Pro and Max as “20 percent faster”, which makes sense because they have 20 percent more transistors.
Until you get smaller in nanometers, just keep throwing more transistors at the problem.
One weird footnote: the new Mac minis are a hair bigger than the old ones while the new MacBook Pros are a hair smaller. Not to split hairs.
Farewell, Tweetbot and Twitterrific
After Twitter pulling the keys for several third-party apps including Tweetbot and Twitterrific with no notice, the company announced this week that the apps were suspended as part of an effort to “enforce its long-standing API rules”. (To which Jason had a succinct response.) These would be the same rules that the company hastily re-wrote later in the week to ban all third-party apps. That’s some Star Trek-level causality bending, there.
“You violated the rules… from the future!”
A new clause under Restrictions says that developers are not able to “create a substitute or similar service or product to the Twitter Applications.”
“We’re tired of you making a better user experience for our service!”
In fairness to Elon Musk, his copy of “How to Win Friends and Influence People” may have been consumed in a tragic car fire. We just don’t know.
On top of having a steady revenue stream yanked out from under them with absolutely no warning or communication, Tapbots and The Iconfactory, makers of the aforementioned apps, will now be faced with people asking for refunds because, through no fault of their own, their apps don’t work anymore.
Instead of requesting a refund, might I suggest going to Tapbots’ and The Iconfactory’s websites and buying one of their other apps (personally, I picked Pastebot and a Wallaroo subscription). All of these are nicely priced apps that won’t get the rug pulled out from under them by a capricious billionaire.
HomePod
It’s time to play “Return of the Mack” on your HomePod because Apple has brought back the big HomePod (also known as the HomePod HomePod, the HomePod Prime, and the BigBoi), now slightly cheaper and with fewer tweeters (ironic, considering the previous story).
Of course, this had to happen. In terms of pure deductive reasoning, the existence of a HomePod mini implied the existence of a HomePod. Therefore, Apple was logically bound to bring the device back. That’s just simple quantum mechanics. It was only a matter of time.
It remains to be seen if the new $299 price point will make the device any more successful than it was before, which was not that successful. Color-wise it seems Apple considers it the HomePod Pro as it only comes in two colors. I’m not sure where Apple got the idea that pros don’t like colors, but they’re sure sticking to it.
Early reports suggest the device sounds about as good as the old one did, which is good because the old one sounded great. Meanwhile, if you have a HomePod mini, you can look forward to some additional features such as temperature and humidity sensing being added in a few weeks when 16.3 ships. It’s a little something for everyone (HomePod purchase required, void where prohibited).
Pour one out for Twitterrific and Tweetbot. At least we’ll have faster Macs and bigger HomePods to console ourselves with.
[John Moltz is a Six Colors contributor. You can find him on Mastodon at Mastodon.social/@moltz and he sells items with references you might get on Cotton Bureau.]