When I was growing up in the 1980s, I had a chance to use lots of different computers including my own personal computers—the Sinclair ZX81 followed by a Commodore 64—plus various Apple II models that were in the computer lab at my school. But when the Macintosh was introduced 40 years ago this week in 1984, that was the computer that I really wanted, so much so that I even tried to imitate it by running a graphical user interface on my Commodore 64 called GEOS made by Berkeley Softworks. In 1988, using the money that I had earned working over the summer and thanks to the generous student discount at my college bookstore, I was finally able to afford my own Mac: a Mac Plus with an external 20MB (!) hard drive. Over the last four decades, we've seen many other influential technology products come and go—some of them from Apple itself, such as the iPod—but through it all, the Mac has remained and is actually doing better than ever right now. And I still use a Mac every day, including right now to type these words. A lot has been written about the Mac this week thanks to the 40th anniversary, but I don't think anyone has done a better job than Jason Snell, the former editor of Macworld magazine. Here is his excellent article on the 40th anniversary in The Verge, and he also wrote great articles on his Six Colors website about the four eras of the Mac and the Mac's enduring appeal. I'll admit that the iPhone, iPad, and other products like the upcoming Apple Vision Pro are often more exciting to talk about and use, but the Mac continues to get things done. Bravo for that. As we look forward to the next forty years of the Mac, here are the other items of note from the past week:
- iOS 17.3 was released this week, and the major new feature is Stolen Device Protection, which I discussed earlier this week. But there are other notable changes as well, and Justin Meyers of Gadget Hacks does his typical good job of describing all of the new features.
- Niléane of MacStories also does a good job of describing the new features in iOS 17.3.
- For more on Apple's new Stolen Device Protection feature, check out this article from Nicole Nguyen and Joanna Stern of the Wall Street Journal, the two reporters who have been covering this story since Day 1.
- Dan Moren notes on Mastodon that with the release of iOS 17.3, Apple has now rolled out all of the iOS 17 features that were promised when iOS 17 was revealed in 2023.
- ...but that doesn't mean that we are done with iOS 17. Apple has already started beta testing iOS 17.4, and there are lots of interesting new features planned. For example, as someone who loves to listen to podcasts and who records one every week, I'm particularly interested in a new automatic transcript feature in Apple's Podcasts app. It sounds like Apple is using AI to create the transcripts and then they sync with the audio, just like lyrics sync with a song in Apple Music. This will make it so much easier to relocate information that you heard in a prior podcast, and will have so many other uses as well. Jason Snell of Six Colors has information on this new feature, as does John Voorhees of MacStories.
- Federico Viticci of MacStories notes on Mastodon that Apple has been working on this transcripts feature for over four years.
- iOS 17.4 will also include new Emoji, and Roman Loyola of Macworld has a preview.
- Zac Hall of 9to5Mac reports that Live Activities now works with the Starbucks app. Thus, if you order ahead, you can see your order status on your iPhone's lock screen.
- Lucas Ropek of Gizmodo has an interesting warning about being careful what you say even when you think you are saying it in private. A teenager at an airport sent a message to a friend via Snapchat and made the (bad) joke that he was going to blow up the plane as he boarded. Because he was using the airport's public Wi-Fi, British security intercepted the message and took it seriously. Spain them scrambled two fighter jets to escort the plane to its destination, and the teenager was arrested. Spain is now seeking to make him pay $120,000 for the fighter jet deployment as a result of the teenager making what he thought was a joke in a private message to a friend.
- We are now only a week away from the public release of the Apple Vision Pro. I'm sure that Apple gave some reporters and others pre-release units, so my guess is that we will see the first reviews around Tuesday of next week. David Pierce of The Verge explains that Safari may be one of the most important apps to be included with the Vision Pro because you can do just about anything with a web browser, even if a developer has not released a specific app for the Apple Vision Pro. For example, without a Netflix or YouTube app (for now at least), you'll use Safari to watch videos from those services on the Apple Vision Pro.
- Apple released a really cool video that shows the Apple Vision Pro being made. But if you are like me, you may not understand what you are seeing in every shot of the video. Product designer Marcus Kane wrote a great thread on X in which he explains, with pictures, exactly what Apple is showing off.
- Malcolm Owen wrote an article for AppleInsider to explain why he thinks that the Apple Vision Pro is designed to be worn while sitting down.
- Chip Loder of AppleInsider explains the different modes of the Apple Vision Pro and who developers needs to keep this in mind when designing spatial computing apps for this device.
- As we think about the Apple Vision Pro, the next big thing from Apple, what will be the next big thing after that? Perhaps it will have something to do with a car. It is widely known that Apple has been working on car technology, and there were rumors this week from Mark Gurman of Bloomberg that we might see a product in four years. But as Zac Hall of 9to5Mac correctly points out, people have been saying that Apple's car project is four years away for nearly nine years now.
- The European Union is requiring Apple to change the way that its App Store works to comply with the Digital Markets Act. As John Voorhees of MacStories reports, Apple revealed this week how it will do so, and it includes allowing third-parties to run their own App Stores. It will be fascinating to see how this works in practice and whether it ends up being better for end users or just exposes them to more dangerous or unsavory apps.
- And finally, one of the new features in iOS 17.3 is the ability to share an Apple Music playlist with others so that a group of people can add to and edit a playlist. Ebro Darden, Nadeska Alexis, and Lowkey, who host the weekly video series called Rap Life Review, demonstrate how this new feature works in a video released this week by Apple Music:
