Matt BirchlerModify

2024-12-24 21:00:00

First off, merry Christmas!

I closed out last year with a series of posts reviewing Apple’s main product lines, iPhones, iPads, Macs, Watches, and the soon-to-be-released Vision Pro. I’ll be doing that again over the last few days of the year, but in the interest of keeping those posts reasonably short, I wanted to cover my hopes and predictions today.

iPhone

First was a prediction around whether a new iPhone SE was coming in 2024:

Whether an upgrade is coming in 2024 is an interesting question. On the one hand, it’s been 2 years since the last model, which might indicate it’s due for a refresh, but I think there’s a decent chance Apple waits until 2025 for the next model.

I wouldn’t commit, but I think I was slightly more in favor of them waiting and adopting the iPhone 12/13/14 form factor. We’ll have to wait until 2025 to find out if I was right.

I’d love to see the 5x telephoto lens come to the smaller Pro phone and for the ultra-wide lens to get a resolution boost on all phones.

I was super happy to see the 5x lens come to the smaller Pro phone this year, although the higher resolution ultra-wide lens only kinda sorta happened…only when shooting RAW, which I think counts for half points.

iPad

I hope that 2024 brings updates to all iPad lines, and those updates are synchronized so that they make the lineup more cohesive overall.

Yes! This almost entirely happened, with the sole exception being the base iPad which didn’t get an update.

The iPad Pro hasn’t gotten a design refresh since 2018, and while that 2018 model was iconic (and still an amazing device today), it would be nice to see something new and cutting edge on the design front.

It wasn’t a complete change, but it certainly did get a refresh and a sever thinning down, so I’m counting this one.

I’ll also lose my mind if they don’t move the front-facing camera to the long side of the device.

Perfect.

Oh, and for the love of god, give the 11” model the same screen as the 12.9” one; whether it’s same mini-LED tech they use now or something new across both models, it’s really annoying that you need to get the bigger model to get the better screen, and I hope they nip this in the bud in 2024.

Nailed it! I have the 11” model myself, and the OLED screen is just as beautiful as the 13” model.

Then on the iPad Air:

I don’t expect them to change this too much this year. An M2 seems reasonable, and the new camera placement is a must here as well.

That’s about right on both counts, although it did get support for a new Apple Pencil and they added a 13” model that I didn’t see coming.

On the iPad mini:

I would like to see it get a processor bump to the A16 or M1, as well as some reduced bezels if they can.

This one’s honestly a bit of a miss. It got the A17 Pro processor and the bezels remained the same as before. Basically all I got right was that the mini would get something this year.

Then on the base iPad:

The 9th gen will disappear as Apple gets the starting price for the 10th gen model down to $399 or below.

Correct! The 9th gen finally bit the dust and Apple got the 10th gen down to $349. The only thing I didn’t get right was that there’d be some sort of update to the 10th gen (enough to call it an 11th gen, even 😂), but that iPad just stayed the same.

Mac

We just got the M3 processor line, and we haven’t seen the M3 Ultra yet, so I’d expect to see that family completed in early 2024, with the Mac Studio and Mac Pro getting updated at the same time.

NOPE. The M3 generation never got an Ultra variant and the Mac Studio and Mac Pro remain on the M2 chips to this day.

The MacBook Air and Mac Mini will surely get M3 variants as well, and I don’t think they will get any other notable changes.

I started strong with the M3 Air coming out, but the mini never got an M3. It did, however, get a redesign.

I’d love to see a case size reduction in the Mini, but it doesn’t seem to be a big pain point and I don’t see Apple changing it until it is.

Well, I could technically give myself the point by saying 2024 was when they decided it was a pain point, but I think the spirit of this prediction was that I’d given up hope of the mini getting smaller in the near future, so I regrettably have to say I got this wrong.

Which brings us to the M4 family of chips, which I’m expecting to launch late in the year, likely once again in October. I don’t want to just say they’ll do the same thing they did this year, but I do think it made a lot of sense to launch the new chip in the MacBook Pros first, so I’d expect those to be updated on day one, and anything else is a bonus.

October did indeed come to pass and they did indeed put them in the MacBook Pros first, but we also got M4 chips in the iMac and Mac mini, so count that bonus!

Apple Watch

I hope the SE gets a processor bump, and I’d love to see it get an always-on display, but I find it more likely that it will still not get it, in no small part to maintain clear differentiation with the Series line.

The SE in fact wasn’t touched at all, so no go here.

For the Series line, I’m predicting this is finally the year we get a notable design change. I think a new health sensor is unlikely, but maybe they’ll expand what the temperature sensor can be used for.

So yes on the design change, yes on the lack of new sensor, and I’d argue that the new Vitals feature is a new use of the temperature sensor, so I’m taking the win here.

Finally, let’s take a swing here and say the name will be Series X.

Damn, missed on this.

Which brings us to the Ultra, which I suspect will get updated as well this year, and it will get whatever processor and sensor features the Series X gets. I also think this should be the year they introduce a new color to the line

Well, the Ultra 2 remains the Ultra you can buy today, so no point there, but they did add the dark titanium model, so not a total whiff.

Vision Pro

In terms of pricing, I hope the “starting at $3,499” isn’t code for “the one you actually want is going to be $4,500-5,000.”

While Apple did have multiple storage tiers, the maxed out model was $3,899, which isn’t as bad as I feared.

I expect the reviews to be mostly conflicted. It will be called “the best version of a product we’re not sure anyone needs,” and will be lauded for doing a couple things that are really cool, but criticized for being less useful for performing many tasks than an iPad or Mac. The Verge will say that given the price and limited functionality it’s not something most people should buy yet, which will anger Apple fanboys despite actually being good advice.

Yes, 100%.

I think people who buy one next year will be classic early adopters who are more forgiving of shortcomings and more adventurous when it comes to seeking out new apps and experiences. They’ll find things to really like about the product, but I think they’ll be frustrated when a good chunk of the public remains skeptical.

I do think most of the buyers are the classic “early adopter” type, but I actually think it’s Vision Pro users who are the most frustrated that they’re not finding as many uses for it as they hoped.

I think that looking at a big-ass computer screen or movie screen are going to be the biggest use cases a year from now, but I’d be happy to be proven wrong.

This is the most on-the-nose thing I’ve predicted in my opinion. I literally just watch movies and TV shows on mine, and using a Mac is easily the most excited I see other Vision Pro owners getting about doing in their headsets. In fact, a couple weeks ago 9to5Mac listed “3 upgrades that make Vision Pro a next-gen computer” and they were all about making the big-ass virtual Mac displays even bigger-ass and crisper.

We should also remember that the Vision Pro isn’t an island, it’s joining Apple’s ecosystem, and I'm looking forward to whatever updates iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, and macOS will get to bring the Vision Pro into the family.

Correct me if I’m wrong here, but I can’t recall anything notable that makes Apple’s products work better together. Maybe we can count seeing the Magic Keyboard in space (of note, the Quest 3 does this with any keyboard you want)? I’d really love to see something that makes using my iPhone when wearing the headset easier next year.

Finally, I’d love to see a gaming story develop here.

Sadly nothing’s changed here in the past year. Now you can remote play a PS5 in it, but that’s not at all what I was thinking. VR games are basically completely absent, and notable games that are respected in the current market are 100% absent. Here’s hoping that rumored support for PSVR2 controllers helps change that in 2025 because there’s definitely potential here.

Overall, I think I did pretty well! After Christmas I’ll be back with report cards on how I think Apple did this year. And of course I’ll put it all on the line and make some predictions for what I expect in 2025.

2024-12-24 06:00:33

I don't have a huge love for Star Fox 64. I mean I played it with friends and I still have the cartridge all these years later, but it's not as big a part of my childhood as Ocarina of Time was. That said, the Ocarina of Time PC port was one of my favorite things from a few years ago, and now that team has done the same thing with Star Fox 64 in a project called Starship.

For clarity, Starship does not include any code or assets from Nintendo or the original game. The intended use case is to rip your own copy of the game to a ROM and Starship will import the files it needs from that. This can of course be used for ilicit means, but that's on the infividual users, not the creators of the app.

Starship is a full PC port of the original game. Not emulation, but a full on port. That means the team is not restricted to how the game originally worked, they can expand on it in interesting ways. As for the 1.0 release that just came out yesterday, that mostly means you can play at any screen resolution or aspect ratio you want (4:3 like the original, 16x9, 16x10, ultrawide, or anything in between, it's up to you), and at any frame rate you want. This was a good chance for me to enjoy the silky smooth 240Hz of my new monitor, and it didn't disappoint. Obviously the game wasn't meant to be played at 4k, it was intended for more like 360i, but it is super fun to play it like this anyway. And again, the magic of this port is that if I wanted to, it's about 3 clicks and I'm playing at that original resolution and feeling 10 years old again.

The current Starship release is only for Windows, although they have said the macOS and Linux versions are coming soon, which seems to mean the next few weeks if everything goes to plan.

Here's a video of the first 3 missions in the game (don't judge, I haven't played in nearly 30 years!) if you were curious how it looks.

2024-12-23 23:48:49

Jess Weatherbed: X Raises Premium Plus Subscription Pricing by Almost 40 Percent - The Verge

X has substantially raised the price of its top-tier user subscription in multiple regions to help bolster the platform’s creator payouts. The increase for Premium Plus came into effect on December 21st according to X, raising prices in the US from $16 per month to $22, or from $168 to $229 for annual subscriptions.

Not to be a pill, but I pay notably less than that to run my own Mastodon server that gives me absolute freedom of speech, no ads, and supports the genuinely independent web. That’s not even to mention that I’ve grown every one of my side projects significantly since leaving Twitter in both audience and revenue.

2024-12-22 23:00:41

Last year I was the 27th of four hundred and freaking eight people to write about their default apps, and I though it would be fun to turn this into a tradition and revisit the list to see if anything has changed since last year.

✨ next to each change from last year

So all in all, not a ton of change, but let’s quickly hit on the things that did change from last year.

• Most controversially, my email client changed to Superhuman this year. The pricing is ridiculous, but I think it says something that when I’d made my video about this app and went to cancel it, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I simply find it to be the best way to do email I’ve ever found, especially on my iPhone. On the Mac, I could easily use Mimestream full time and be happy, but the email app situation on the iPhone and iPad is dire. Apple Mail is unreliable and slow for me, I really dislike how Spark feels to use, and everything else feels bad in an assortment of ways. Here’s hoping Mimestream’s iOS app comes out this year and it awesome.
• My web browser changed from Arc to a combination of Vivaldi and Zen this year. The Browser Company’s AI obsession started to push me away at the start of 2024, and it only escalated since then. In fact, their own loss of interest in Arc added to my feeling of distance from the browser I once loved. I still think Arc is great, but I don’t resonate with the people building it like I once did and if they’re ready to move on, then maybe I should too. I like Vivaldi for being very customizable and providing a great experience overall on a Chromium base which means it works with the sites and tools I want, but Zen has tapped into something special with me and despite not being as stable or functional as Vivaldi, I keep opening it up and using it a bunch. Watch this space in 2025.
• On the social front, I continued to use Mastodon and Threads, with Mastodon being my main home on the social internet, but my Threads usage dropped a ton this year. Bluesky came in to fill the gap, and for me, Mastodon is where I talk with my core group of nerdy people and Bluesky and Threads is where I get out of that bubble and see what other parts of the world are talking about.
• The first game I play every morning made a change this year from one Zach Gage project to another. Last year I was obsessed with Knotwords, and this year I really fall deep into Puzzmo, specifically their Pile-Up-Poker game which I thoroughly love and never want to stop playing.
• My terminal app on my Mac switched from Warp to iTerm, which is free and more private. I also got introduced to things like Oh My Zsh, which let me add basically all the things Warp did to whatever terminal interface I wanted.
• My flight tracking has actually shifted to the United app rather than Flighty. Flighty is very good, but as a regular United flier, I really appreciate how well their iOS app gives me exactly what I need at each phase in the journey. It has a live activity that’s more relevant than Flighty’s in that it counts down to boarding time, not take-off time, which is a more important time when I’m getting to my gate, and when I get to my destination it does a good job giving me a guide on where the exits of that airport are and how to get to rides hare spots.
• I dropped off package tracking in any meaningful way this year. I do get emails from USPS, FedEx, and UPS, but that’s basically all I ever need.
• Finally, my go-to chatbot changed from ChatGPT to “it’s complicated” this year. I think Claude is better for a lot of things, especially coding assistance, but it’s also not good for real time questions as it’s knowledge is continually a year or so behind the current date. ChatGPT on the other hand has added a real time web search that I’ve found quite useful and I find myself using on a surprisingly regular basis.

And that’s it for my default apps of 2024! Not a ton of change, but a few notable ones that I think were the right decisions for me at this point in my life. The one app on this list most on the bubble has got to be Superhuman, which simply costs too much and I’m praying we get a good Mimestream iOS app soon so that I can get off it and save hundreds of dollars per year.

2024-12-20 21:30:15

Yup, we’re doing this again because you all seem to like them an honestly I kinda like making them 😊

2024-12-20 21:00:12

Niléane has a new webcam, Chris is downing in keyboards, and everyone installs some web-ass web apps.

Watch it on YouTube or listen in your favorite podcast app!