john-useless

As an Apple TV+ subscriber and a huge "Breaking Bad" and "Better Call Saul" fan, this is great news. I know that Gilligan has already said he's taking a break from the "Breaking Bad" universe, but any series that he creates is likely to be on my watch list — even more so if it's starring Rhea Seehorn.

This is a great win for Apple TV+.

Every time an Apple Store theft makes the news, one thought occurs: Can't Apple simply remotely disable any stolen product that is capable of broadcasting its own identity via Bluetooth, WiFi, and/or the FindMy network? One would think that Apple could quickly identify the serial number of every item that leaves a store.

Apple couldn't prevent a stolen Mac, Watch, iPhone, AirPod, AirTag, monitor, or Apple TV from being powered on … but for new, unregistered products, I would have thought that Apple could potentially do something to prevent them from being registered as new, legally-purchased items — and possibly even alert authorities as to the locations of stolen goods.

With the upcoming arrival of Stage Manager in macOS Ventura, I'm living in fear that Apple will discontinue the Spaces feature — the virtual desktop feature first introduced, I think, with Mac OS X 10.5 in 2007. Using a total of four real displays on my Mac (a 14-inch MacBook Pro, an Apple Studio Display, and two Dell monitors) I have configured five virtual desktops, assigned specific applications to each desktop, and created custom keystrokes (control + numbers 1 through 5 on a full-size keyboard's number pad) to be able to access any virtual desktop directly.

Spaces, as I've configured it, transforms my four real displays into 20 virtual displays. My five virtual desktops are organized like this:

1. Messaging, conferencing, and social media: Messages, Microsoft Teams, Slack, Twitterific

2. Web: Safari and Microsoft Edge

3. Remote connections: Terminal, Screen Sharing, and Microsoft Remote Desktop

4. Calendar & email: Fantastical & Mail

5. Creative: Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, Compressor, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Pixelmator Pro, etc.

Spaces is an incredibly useful feature for me, and I've got 15 years of muscle memory for accessing these various applications this way. I agree that "no feature is safe" but am very much hoping Apple doesn't take Spaces away in favor of Stage Manager. Is there anyone using the Ventura beta that could confirm that Spaces remains in place?

Apple is definitely not too late to market. As the article and other commenters said, Apple was "late" to music players, smartphones, and wearables — but nobody today can accurately claim that the iPod, iPhone, AirPods, and Apple Watch product lines haven't been fantastically successful and profitable.

Before buying my first iPhone in 2007, my prior two phones were the Motorola StarTAC and RAZR — leading flip phones of the era. There was something incredibly satisfying about snapping them shut. If Apple comes up with a flip-style iPhone that has no gap by the hinge when closed and isn't significantly thicker when closed than today's iPhone 13 Pro Max, I would at least consider such a model.

To be frank, whether or not there exists a "mass-market use case" for a flip-style iPhone is probably not relevant. Apple might very well market such a product to steal a few customers away from Samsung and its Galaxy Z models (fold & flip). With Apple's traditional high profit margins, it's unlikely that Apple would lose money. And Apple's foldable phone might leapfrog their competitors in design.

keithw said:

Like most things in modern, software enabled hardware, an occasional reboot doesn't hurt.

Although I am generally satisfied with my Apple Studio Display, there have been two occasions during three months of ownership that it failed to wake from sleep and I've had to "reboot" it — and the only way to do that is to unplug it, which for me is a hassle because it's connected to a power strip in a hard-to-reach spot.

My Macs start becoming wonky after about 45+ days without a full restart (a sleep/wake cycle is inadequate) … so since the Studio Display is essentially now a computer with its own operating system, I wish Apple would program the Studio Display to reboot automatically every so often. Perhaps once per week, a certain number of hours after it went to sleep? This might keep its OS happy without much chance of interrupting actual use (presuming, of course, that it isn't in 24/7 use by its owner).