Episode #041

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Apple to Apple :

• – this episode is all Apple and my thoughts on the new Macs and iPads that came out recently.
• – I picked up both a new Mac mini and an iPad Air 2, which I cover in this week’s news and rant.



• News – Story 1: iMac 27-inch with Retina display

– I finally got a chance to play around with this new model last week at my local Apple Store; the screen is incredible; I can see it taking some time to get used to the increased resolution; I’ve been working in 1440 x 900 for years, so any upgrade to this new resolution would be stark; the resolution is now 5120 x 2880; that’s many times more than what I have now; a lot more than the 1920 x 1080 that I use when I hook up an external monitor; while the screen is the big focus, there are the two Thunderbolt 2 ports for connecting up external drives, monitors and other devices; USB 3 ports, upgradable to 1TB of PCIe flash storage; so much Mac that is highly capable of being a production system; I priced one out and even the basic model with AppleCare came to over $2800; not something I can pull off today, but it would be nice as a future Mac.
– Link to article: Apple iMac with Retina 5K display review

• News – Story 2: iPad Air 2 is faster, thinner and brighter, iPad mini 3 hardly got updated

– I sold my iPad Air from last year (i barely had it 11 months) and purchased the iPad Air 2 in silver and 128Gb wifi; the cellular option was another $130, which I didn’t care to opt for since I normally tether from my iPhone 5s; I was so impressed with the features of the Air 2, thinner, lighter, faster; and the last week or so that I’ve had it, it’s a dream to use; I had thought about getting an iPad mini 3, but the only difference between that and the iPad mini 2 is the Touch ID, which the Air 2 has; it’s nice to have it on both my iPhone and iPad now; seamless passcode bypass; cases for the iPad Air 2 are not all that plentiful yet, so I still use a slightly oversized Air back cover for now; it’s a great iPad and one that I should use for the next year, at least; hopefully longer.
– Link to article: Pick a new Apple: iPad Air 2

• News – Story 3: iOS 8.1 adds Apple Pay and brings back Camera Roll

– While I can’t take advantage of Apple Pay until I upgrade to an iPhone 6, I was happy with the return of the camera roll, which went away with the initial release of iOS 8; it was hard to see that go away, and obviously, I wasn’t alone; happy to see Apple still listens to those of us when they remove a feature or function; as for other features, I’m still enjoying the ability to remove myself from group SMS messages and an odd wifi connection issue that plagued me through iOS 6 and iOS 7; I’ve not enabled iCloud Drive yet as I still have an OS X 10.9 Mavericks system that I need iCloud document storage on; once you enable iCloud Drive, anything older than iOS 8 and OS X 10.10 Yosemite loses access; so far, I like the stability of iOS 8.1.
– Link to article: Apple Offers Upgrade with iOS 8.1


• RANT: The new Mac mini limits expandability and upgrading

– I purchased one of the new Mac minis; I’ve owned several Mac minis over the years, including my wife’s 2010 model; my daughter uses a 2011 model; while waiting for my custom order mini, I also purchased a 2012 mini to replace my wife’s 2010 mini; it’s an i7 quad core, which I upgraded to 16gb of RAM; the new mini that I ordered has 16gb of RAM as well, but it’s not upgradable; WHAT? yes, it’s true that Apple has decided to make this new mini non-upgradable; also, there is not a quad core option, only dual core; granted, the 2014 mini uses a Haswel processor, which is faster; but to omit the quad core and not let the user upgrade the RAM like in previous models; still getting used to Yosemite, which has it’s quirks; more on that in a future rant.

• SHAMELESS PLUG: My MacBook Pro 15” still running well after 5 years

– I bought my current MacBook Pro 15” Late 2008 model in August 2009 refurbished from the Apple Store; over 5 years later and with a few upgrades, it’s still running quite well; the 256Mb video RAM struggles and any video productions rendering takes a lot of time; upgraded to an SSD helped extend it’s life as it made things snappier; took out the DVD drive and added a 500gb hard drive for more storage – almost 1TB total; had to replace the battery on it 4 times; had a logic board replacement while it was still covered under AppleCare; would love to someday get a MacBook Air to speed things up as well as reduce weight in my backpack; for now, it’s my laptop I have loved the most.

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