MacLife February 2020

What’s the best MacBook ever? It’s a question that probably comes up quite often when we think about Apple’s hugely successful portable. It’s not an easy one to answer, mind, as there are lots of them to choose from. Ignoring the fact that the MacBook branding is technically still a bit of a youngster, at only 13 years old, you’re also encompassing devices such as the PowerBook (first released in 1991) and the funky new kid on the block (in 1999) in the form of the iBook, in its many myriad color schemes. Then there’s the Mac Portable too: a battery–powered Mac which was truly the first of its kind. The fact that it was a bit of a behemoth, at 16lb, may be just one reason why it doesn’t…

WITH JUST A little glitz and a touch of glamor, Apple held a special press event (unofficially dubbed “the Apple Oscars”) to announce its best apps and games of 2019. Apple did not explicitly explain the criteria used to choose the winners, except to state grandly: “Apps help simplify our lives and express our creativity, connect us to friends, family, and the world beyond, and of course, have fun. In 2019, apps made their mark by reflecting the zeitgeist of our society and sitting at the nexus of digital and pop culture.” It is clear, however, that the awards reflect editorial picks, not just sales performance. Charts of the most downloaded apps (apple.co/2DFgnMH) and most downloaded games (apple.co/2RaPDM6) were released separately. And the winners are… iPhone App of the Year Spectre Camera (Lux Optics) THIS AI–POWERED…

DIRECTOR STEVEN SODERBERGH shot 2018’s psychological thriller Unsane on an iPhone 7 Plus and 2019’s basketball flick High Flying Bird on an iPhone 8. To anyone unfamiliar with cinema gear, that might seem unsurprising — iPhone video looks great, right? But a glance at the camera rigs lugged around on even a modest production, accompanied by grips bearing lenses, monitors and terabytes of storage, suggests it can’t be quite that simple. Sean Baker shot 2015’s Tangerine with just an iPhone 5s (well, three of them). Having made the choice for cost reasons, he was pleased with the way it gave his movie a more intimate feel. But there’s a little more to it than point and shoot. Tangerine’s look was achieved with an anamorphic lens adaptor, a stabilizer and post–production color…

✗ SILENCED Apple silently removes all user reviews from the online Apple Store CONTROL Study shows most women say “please” to their AI assistant, but less than half of men DRIVE As Jony Ive makes his exit, Apple’s planned electric vehicle could lack design direction ✓ GOLDEN Did you really need 900 people to tell you the Lightning headphone adaptor was “lame”? DELETE After Judgement Day, gender representation in tech suddenly gets more balanced PARK Following Elon Musk’s Cybertruck example, they can just give any child an Etch A Sketch…

A FEW MONTHS ago, I was worried about the Apple Card having unpredictable downsides, and it didn’t take long for that to turn out to be the case. It appears that when women apply for it, they receive lower credit than men, even if they have higher credit ratings. Goldman Sachs provides the credit service for the card, and its official response said a number of factors are looked at, but not gender, race and similar. Perhaps more telling is that reportedly employees blamed it on the algorithm. As more companies entrust our lives to algorithms, they’re often careful to frame them as “neutral” — because how can code be biased? It’s just math. That goes double for algorithms built by machine learning, because all that happens is that you show…

1 1976 The Apple Computer 1, hand–built by Steve Wozniak, goes on sale at the Byte Shop, Mountain View, CA, for $666.66. Twelve days after founding the company with Wozniak and Steve Jobs, Ronald Wayne sells back his shares, becoming officially the rubbishest tech investor ever. 2 1977 With sales of the Apple I nearing 200, Jobs and Woz incorporate Apple, Inc and launch the Apple II, with a keyboard and everything. It will go on to sell five million, establishing the concept of a personal computer. Rob Janoff draws the Apple logo. 3 1979 Visiting Xerox PARC, Apple employees including Jobs and Jef Raskin see computers using GUIs and mice. The concept is incorporated into the Lisa, a putative business computer. 4 1981 Woz crashes his plane and effectively retires. Famous multi–millionaire Steve Jobs is heckled…