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    Last Episode — August 24: Gene presents a regular, tech podcaster and commentator Kirk McElhearn , who comes aboard to talk about the impact of the outbreak of data hacks and ways to protect your stuff with strong passwords. He’ll also provide a common sense if unsuspected tip in setting one up. Also on the agenda, rumors about the next Mac mini from Apple. Will it, as rumored, be a visual clone of the Apple TV, and what are he limitations of such a form factor? As a sci-fi and fantasy fan, Kirk will also talk about some of his favorite stories and more. In is regular life, Kirk is a lapsed New Yorker living in Shakespeare’s home town, Stratford-upon-Avon, in the United Kingdom. He writes about things, records podcasts, makes photos, practices zen, and cohabits with cats. He’s an amateur photographer, and shoots with Leica cameras and iPhones. His writings include regular contributions to The Mac Security Blog , The Literature & Latte Blog, and TidBITS, and he has written for Popular Photography, MusicWeb International, as well as several other web sites and magazines. Kirk has also written more than two dozen books and documentation for dozens of popular Mac apps, as well as press releases, web content, reports, white papers, and more.

    For more episodes, click here to visit the show’s home page.

    Android Apps

    June 15th, 2018

    Most Android applications are downloadable from Google Play Store. Android users scrolled down to see the many application options there are in a certain category. Once they find the application that they are looking for they either get it or look for another one.

    Categories of Android Applications

    Google Play applications for Android fall under a number of categories. There are more than 30 different application categories. A few of them include parenting, food and drink, weather, music, books, travel,  sports, finance, games and a whole lot more.

    Most popular Android Applications

    According to the Statistics, for the first quarter of 2018, the most popular applications were for Education and Entertainment. The Statistics Portal reports that Education had an 8.29%of usage and Entertainment was at 7.43%.

    The Statistics Portal goes on to say, top 5 applications for 2017 included Video Players and Edit (96.7%), Travel and Local (95.8%) and Social 95.2%).

    And for the first quarter of 2018 in the top five are also Business (6.96%), Lifestyle (6.73%) and Tools 5.45%).

    This is rather odd because a quick assumption would be that most popular application would be games and social media. Social media is cool and games keep us entertained while the real money casino games will even give real money rewards. For more information about casinos, visit this reviewer casinoaus casino. Mobile online casino games are amazing fun too.

    Most Unpopular Android Applications

    Naturally,where there is a number one application just as there will always be a least popular one. In the case ofthe Android applications for the year,it was the Dating, Transport, andParenting. All were under 2%. For the first quarter of 2018, there is Music, Dating, and Parenting.

    Apparently,people are not too keen to download Apps that help them to find mates. Perhaps the reason usage of parenting Apps is low is a result of low Dating App use. The two are related in a very intimate way. As more people date, regardless of sexuality, there will be more families formed as a result. Something that could lead to increased demand for parenting Apps.


    There’s Yet Another Rant About Apple and Mac Users

    June 11th, 2018

    Over the years, some tech pundits have decided that Apple really needs to drop the Mac. To them, it has outlived its usefulness and, besides, far more money is made from selling iPhones.

    But it’s a good source of hit bait to claim that “Mac users don’t really matter to Apple.”

    Indeed, Apple has, at times, made it seem as if that claim was accurate. The Mac mini has not been refreshed since 2014. After releasing a total redesign for the Mac Pro in late 2013, Apple appeared to drop the ball and mostly abandoned that model.

    When a new MacBook Pro was launched in late 2016, some thought the claim that it was a professional notebook was a huge exaggeration. It was thinner, in the spirit of recent Apple gear, but the highly touted Touch Bar, powered by an ARM system-on-a-chip, was thought to be fluff and not much else.

    Apple also got dinged for things it had never done, such as supplying a model with 32GB of RAM. But that would have required using a different memory controller that might have impacted performance and battery life. In comparison, most PC notebooks were also limited to 16GB. A future Intel CPU update will offer an integrated memory controller that doubles memory capacity.

    Just after Christmas, a Consumer Reports review failed to recommend the 2016 MacBook Pro supposedly due to inconsistent battery life. After Apple got involved, it turned out that CR’s peculiar testing scheme, which involves disabling the browser cache, triggered a rare bug. After Apple fixed it, a retest earned the MacBook Pro an unqualified recommendation.

    Was all this proof that Apple just didn’t care about Macs?

    Well, it’s a sure thing the Touch Bar wasn’t cheap to develop, and embedding an ARM chip in a Mac is definitely innovative. But Apple’s priorities appeared to have gone askew, as the company admitted during a small press roundtable in early 2017.

    The executive team made apologies for taking the Mac Pro in the wrong direction, and promised that a new model with modular capabilities was under development, but it wouldn’t ship right away. There would, however, be a new version of the iMac with professional capabilities. VP Philip Schiller spoke briefly about loving the Mac mini, but quickly changed the subject.

    Before the 2017 WWDC, I thought that Apple would merely offer more professional parts for customized 27-inch 5K iMacs. But such components as Intel Xeon-W CPUs and ECC memory would exceed that model’s resource threshold. So Apple extensively redesigned the cooling system to support workstation-grade parts.

    The 2017 iMac Pro costs $4,999 and up, the most expensive, and most powerful, iMac ever. You can only upgrade RAM, but it’s a dealer only installation since it requires taking the unit completely apart, unlike the regular large iMac, where memory upgrades are a snap.

    Apple promised that a new Mac Pro, which would meet the requirements of pros who want a box that’s easy to configure and upgrade, would appear in 2019, so maybe it’ll be demonstrated at a fall event where new Macs are expected.

    But Apple surely wouldn’t have made the commitment to expensive Macs if it didn’t take the platform — and Mac users — seriously. The iMac Pro itself represents a significant development in all-in-one personal computers.

    Don’t forget that the Mac, while dwarfed by the iPhone, still represents a major business for Apple. Mac market share is at its highest levels in years in a declining PC market, serving tens of millions of loyal users. When you want to develop an app for iOS, tvOS or watchOS, it has to be done on a Mac. That isn’t going to change. In addition, Apple is porting several iOS apps for macOS Mojave, and developers will have the tools to do the same next year.

    According to software head Craig Federighi, iOS and macOS won’t merge and the Mac will not support touchscreens.

    Sure, the Mac may play second fiddle to the iPhone, but that doesn’t diminish the company’s commitment to the platform. But it’s still easy for fear-mongering tech pundits to say otherwise, perhaps indirectly suggesting you shouldn’t buy a Mac because it will never be upgraded, or that upgrades will be half-hearted.

    Perhaps there’s an ulterior motive behind some of those complaints; they are designed to discourage people from buying Macs and pushing them towards the latest PC boxes that, by and large, look the same as the previous PC boxes with some upgraded parts.

    But since Intel has run late with recent CPU upgrades, Apple has often been forced to wait for the right components before refreshing Macs. That doesn’t excuse the way the Mac mini and the MacBook Air have been ignored, but I’ll cut Apple some slack with the Mac Pro, since a major update has been promised for next year.

    Now this doesn’t mean the Mac isn’t going to undergo major changes in the coming years. Maybe Apple is becoming disgusted with Intel’s growing problems in upgrading its CPUs, and will move to ARM. Maybe not. But that’s then, this is now.


    Forcing Your Apple Gear Out to Pasture

    June 7th, 2018

    When the question comes up, Apple regularly denies that it’s deliberately making, or sabotaging, older gear to become obsolete; there is no nasty planned obsolescence plot that will force you to buy a new model before its time.

    But it’s not that Apple hasn’t done things to foster that impression. It almost always seems as if the newer OS is slower than the previous one on older gear. So is Apple doing nasty stuff under the hood to make it run that way? Or is it just a matter of having more features, and exploiting the capabilities of newer hardware to do things quicker?

    There is also that notorious update, which first appeared in iOS 10, to manage a problem with sudden shut-downs on some iPhones. What Apple failed to explain at first was that this problem only occurred in units with failing batteries, and thus Apple opted to reduce peak performance to fix it. At least until the battery was replaced. But it also meant that many users would suddenly see a huge dip in performance, made crystal clear in benchmarks.

    It fueled class-action lawsuits, even when Apple explained they were trying to make performance more reliable on the affected iPhones. Of course, the symptoms would disappear with a battery replacement, and performance would return to normal. A few sentences in the releases notes would have clarified all this. Indeed, Apple took a step that should have been done long ago in iOS 11.3, which was to add a Battery Health indicator, and allow you to turn off the throttling if you decided to take your chances.

    The lawsuits are still active. The lawyers are no doubt hoping Apple will pay them off to settle, thus resulting in huge paydays. Those who joined the class will get coupons, perhaps a discount on a battery replacement. Of course you already have a discount of $50 until the end of the year.

    Another method to convey the impression your Apple gear is obsolete is to remove it from iOS and macOS update support. My wife’s still-functioning iPhone 5c is stuck with iOS 10. But she mostly focuses on phone calls, checking her email, and an occasional Google search. Whenever I mention the possibility of buying her a new iPhone someday, she barely notices.

    But in response to frequent complaints that the oldest supported hardware will run slower with a new iOS release, Apple has made a big move to address the problem in iOS 12. There is the promise of a huge boost in app launch, keyboard launch and camera response across the board. These are key factors in judging how fast your iPhone or iPad runs. What’s more, Apple will allow its next OS to run on the same gear as iOS 11. That includes the iPhone 5s from 2013 and the last iPod touch.

    Will it slow user upgrades? Will it encourage more people to buy such gear because it’ll be supported for up to six years with annual OS upgrades?

    Compare to users of Android hardware, where the chance of buying a new device with the latest OS is extremely slim, not to mention the chance it’ll ever receive an update.

    It’s not that Mac users will see the same level of support, however. Evidently some of the key features of macOS 10.14 Mojave, such as Dark Mode, Dynamic Desktop and Stacks, evidently require Metal graphics. But older Macs don’t have graphic chips with that support, and since Apple is deprecating Open CL and Open GL, it means that most Macs released prior to 2012, except for a couple of Mac Pro models with the right graphics cards, are going to be abandoned.

    Such as my 2010 MacBook Pro. It will still run macOS High Sierra with good performance, since it has an SSD and maxed out memory, but the handwriting is on the wall.

    Then again, offering OS support for an average of six years and seven years before the next macOS arrives in 2019, is really nothing for which an apology is required. Apple should not be expected to abandon potential improvements because older hardware won’t support it. Besides, it’s not as if running an older OS suddenly renders your Mac inoperative. The only concern might be the fact that security updates may stop coming after a year or two.

    But to expect Apple to avoid innovation in favor of giving older hardware a longer lifespan is hardly logical for a profit-making corporation. The lifetime of Apple gadgets is pretty good as it is. How many people have eight-year-old PCs that still work great with the newest apps and OS installed, or at all?

    Indeed, one reason that Apple has cut back on allowing customers to swap RAM and storage devices to many recent Macs appears to stem from the fact that only a tiny percentage of customers ever attempt to upgrade. There’s also the promise of more reliability and making it thinner, although such design considerations may be lost on most people.

    Yes, I’d like to be able to swap out RAM, if not the storage device. Then again, I suppose Apple could max out memory on more models, so it wouldn’t matter.


    Newsletter Issue #966: WWDC 2018: Forget the Hardware

    June 5th, 2018

    Last week, there were contrary rumors about whether new Macs, and possibly iPads, would debut this week at the WWDC. It was largely wishful thinking, because there were few indications of impending hardware updates, but since last year’s developer event was flush with hot new gear, there was always a possibility. I even thought Apple might demonstrate the next Mac Pro, expected in 2019. But that didn’t happen either.

    This is not to say there was nothing that would impact hardware. There is a set of performance boosts for iOS 12 that will benefit many iPhone and iPad users, especially those with older hardware who have experienced slowdowns whenever major OS updates arrive.

    It’s a common theme, those slowdowns, which fuel the theory that Apple really wants you to buy new hardware, and thus throttles performance of older gear to hasten the process. It’s not just that the new OS requires more resources to effectively access new features. And this is what has caused people to expect the worst when Apple did release an iOS update that actually reduced performance on some older models.

    Continue Reading…