This episode of the Maccast is brought to you by ZocDoc. More on them later in the show.
News
Apple car project hires former Ford exec
Bloomberg has noted that Apple has recently hired Desi Ujkashevic who has been with Ford for 31 years to join it’s Apple self-driving car project
The former Ford exec was most recently the companies the global director of automotive safety engineering and has experience with engineering design deliverables, body interior engineering
The piece also notes that she is also very experienced with managing regulatory issues which is something Apple will need help with as they try to bring the product to market
Prior reports have noted that Apple has a desire to make they vehicle safer with more backup and safety systems than their competitors
Apple is supposedly currently targeting a 2025 date for the release of their vehicle
Apple 3m Thunderbolt 4 Cable
Apple has released it’s 3m version of it’s Thunderbolt 4 cable
The thing is dang expensive at USD $159.00
This is the same style black braided cable that Apple ships with the Apple Studio display in a 1m version.
They also sell a 1.8m version on their site for USD $129.00.
But why so expensive?
ChargerLAB did a teardown and tries to justify it’s pricing with the build quality
A coaxial cable with 19 wires inside
The woven later is dust-proof and waterproof and under that is a layer of thermoplastic elastomer material (TPE) with a thin foil layer for shielding
5 tinned copper wires used for supplying power and most of the wires are plated with silver and pure copper
Two white plastic-covered wires used for USB 2.0 transmission
The connectors contain 24 gold plated pins and a myriad of chips including the licensed Intel chip that manages the Thunderbolt connection
It supports USB 3.1 Gen 2 data transfer at up to 10Gb/s and Thunderbolt transfer rates up to 40Gb/s and up to 100W power delivery
So yes, it’s a quality cable… but you know what else is? The [OWC Thunderbolt 4](https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/CBLTB4C2.0M) cables all the same specs and they cost just $57.00 USD for a 2m cable
Apple updates Studio Display Firmware, again
Apple has released a second beta of Studio Display Firmware update in a week with the release of macOS 12.4 beta 3
The biggest change in this version seems to be improved sharpness. The prior update seemed to improve noise reduction, contrast, and framing.
Overall though the images still seem to be a bit washed out and flat.
Apple supplier changes Apple’s design
And as you may imagine that has not worked out too well for them
We mentioned Chinese display manufacturer BOE on the show before. They are just one of the many suppliers Apple uses for OLED panels for iPhones
They only provided about 10 percent of all iPhone displays in 2021, but still supplied displays for the the iPhone 12 and iPhone 13
They’ve also been hoping to become one of Apple’s main iPhone display providers by 2023.
Now it looks like they could have messed that up.
According to The Elec their production dipped significantly around February mainly because there was a shortage of display driver integrated circuits and the majority of those were going to Apple’s main supplier LG
So BOE apparently “fixed” the situation by redesigning the panels by expanding the circuit width of thin-film transistors and when Apple found out they told them to halt production
They probably will actually continue to be an Apple supplier, but I have to imagine they have had a stern talking to and won’t be making that mistake again.
Apple does well in Q1 PC Market
Coming from Canalys a new report shows that in Q1 of 2022 worldwide tablet and PC shipments were down about 3 percent
Still Apple was able to slightly beat the rest of the industry when it came to the decline.
Apple saw shipped an estimated 14.9M iPads in the quarter which was down about 2 percent from 15.2M in the same period last year. Still Apple maintains an estimated 38 percent of the worldwide tablet market
Tim Cook noted in the last quarterly results call that the iPad was hit particularly hard by supply chain issues last quarter
When you combine desktops, notebooks, and tablets things were even a bit better for Apple. Overall shipment were up 1 percent year over year and Apple took first place in global marketshare with 18.8 percent of the market beating out Lenovo
Apple TV+ shows getting attention
Apple TV+ still isn’t a huge player in the streaming space in terms of marketshare. I think most estimates are somewhere around a 3-5 percent share of the market
But Apple’s focus on quality over quantity seem to be paying off at least in terms of buzz and charts
In a recent report from Just Watch Apple had two shows in the top 5 of most streamed shows for the month of April. Severance at number 2 and Slow Horses at number 5.
Not too shabby. Plus you hear he buzz for movies like Coda and for shows like Ted Lasso and seems like Apple is garnering a lot of attention even though they aren’t considered a threat to giants like Netflix or Disney
And they continue to announce new stuff that is interesting and with big names attached
This week Apple announced an upcoming film about the live of Michael J. Fox that will be directed by Davis Guggenheim
Laurene Powell Jobs, is also one of the executive producers of the film
Variety is reporting that Apple is also planning to release a new TV show based on the 1991 film the Prince of Tides
The 1991 film, which was based on a book of the same title, starred Nick Nolte and Barbara Streisand
The new adaptation for TV will reportedly be written by Tate Taylor.
There was no word on when the series will be released or who is signed on yet to star in the series
Variety is also reporting that Apple plans to delay the release of the film Emancipation which stars Will Smith
The film was originally supposed to release this year but will now come out in 2023
The report says at least part of the decision for they delay is the controversy surrounding Smith slapping comedian Chris Rock at this years Oscars
The story also notes that the film is still heavily into post-production and had been hit by several delays that have also created a reason to delay the release.
New AirPods updates in 2022
Mark Gurman says we still have some AirPods updates to look forward to this year
It’s been three years since the release of AirPods Pro, so they are getting long in the tooth. Gurman still expects an AirPods Pro 2 update this fall
Not a lot new about features but most expect a redesign with smaller or no stems and additional health features and maybe improved battery life?
He then also mentioned the AirPods Max saying he expects them to be available in new colors and also hoping for a price drop though not mentioning anything else, like new features. He also doesn’t say what colors.
I vote for brighter and maybe a cool deep purple?
Speaking of health features Gurman also recently claimed that Apple had been exploring a grocery delivery and pickup service, like Instacart, that would integrate with the Health app and assist with nutrition tracking
In addition, for expanding it’s services options, Gurman claims Apple is focused more immediately on two things
An iPhone hardware subscription program and a Buy now, pay later financing service for Apple Pay
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Feedback, commentary, opinions
App recommendation
We had a couple of recommendations come in based on past episodes
Devon says there is an app that can find blurred photos in your Photo library and it’s [Gemini Photos](https://macpaw.com/gemini-photos) from MacPaw
It will also identify duplicates, similar photos, videos, screenshots, notes, and others and let you clean those up too.
It is a subscription app at $19.99/yr or you can make a one-time purchase for $34.99
There is a 3 day free trial, but you’ll need to cancel before you get charged.
He says he uses it manually as well, like a checkbook app, bit it will import CSV, QIF, OFX, and QFX files
There is a premium subscription version, but I couldn’t tell what features this enables?
DIY Apple Studio Display
The new Apple Studio display is about the only 5K display , outside the LG Ultrafine display, that you can get today
It’s also the only one with Apple design and has some nice additional features, like the speaker system, mics, and 1080p wide angle camera (though of debatable quality) that you can get today.
But it’s pricey… it costs $1,599 USD which was just a tad less than Apple’s now discontinued 5K 27-inch iMac which had almost the same display and came with an entire Mac attached.
So maybe that’s part of what inspired Youtuber Luke Miani to take on a project to build a “cheaper” [Mac Studio Display from an old 27-inch iMac](https://youtu.be/0VXQu0fAc8s)
He found a donor 2014 27-inch iMac (fully functional) online for just over $600 bucks (missing P3)
He had to gut the system and add a USD $179 display adapter board and added in a USB-C web cam then ran all the cabling through the RAM access door.
All totaled the project cost just over $800 bucks.
Plus his iMac was fully functioning. If you could find one cheaper, with say a dead logic board but working display you could possible build one for even less.
Interesting project if you’re a DIY’er
Lesser known Finder tricks
Here are some handy Finder tricks that some of you might not know
Move menubar items around
Most, but not all like the date/time, menubar items can be rearranged if you know the trick
Hold down command and click and drag the icon to move it to a new position
Find your cursor
Ever lose your pointer on the screen…
For this trick you need to enable it in System Preferences > Accessibility. Choose “Display” and click on the “Pointer” tab.
Check on “Shake Mouse pointer to locate”.
Tile your windows
Hover over the green “stoplight” icon in the window
You’ll see a menu to tile the window to the left or right of the screen.
It’ll slide over and you can choose another window to tile next to it.
Click the green icon in the window again to take it out of tile / full screen mode
See hidden files
Type Command+Shift+Period to toggle on and off hidden files
Be careful with this one as many hidden files are used by the system so you don’t want to move or delete them unless you know what you’re doing
Use emojis
Press Control+Command+Spacebar to quickly access the emoji menu
Move files with a keyboard shortcut
Most of use know Command + C and the Command + V to copy a file from one location to another
Buy if you want to move that file instead add the option key. Command+Option+V
Also Command+Delete to move a file to the trash
Quicklook
Tap the spacebar on many documents in the Finder to get a quick preview
Works for many file types including PDFs, images, video, Pages, Numbers, Keynote, Word, Excel, Powerpoint and more
Quickly markup a PDF
Select a PDF in the Finder in “Column” view and in the preview window you’ll see a “Markup” button
You can click that and Markup the file without even opening Preview
You can also click the “…” icon to see and customize other actions for some filetypes. “Convert image formats” for example
What are some of your favorite Finder tricks that I haven’t mentioned?
