Macworld February 2023

If you owned a MacBook with a busted butterfly keyboard, Apple may soon send you a refund. A judge has approved a $50 million class-action lawsuit settlement for several states that will reimburse MacBook users for repairs going back to 2015. Here’s what you need to know. WHICH MODELS DOES THIS SETTLEMENT COVER? Every MacBook with a butterfly keyboard is part of the class-action suit, including the MacBook (all), MacBook Air (2018–19), MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2016–19), and MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2016–19). WHAT WAS THE ISSUE? For years, MacBook users complained of stuck, repeating, and broken keys when typing with MacBooks. The issue has been traced to Apple’s use of butterfly-style keycaps, which have a lower profile than scissor-style keys. Apple began replacing the butterfly keyboard with the Magic Keyboard in the 16-inch MacBook Pro…

For the first time in years, Apple sells two standalone monitors for the Mac, a 27-inch Studio Display with a camera and Spatial Audio support, and the high-end Pro Display XDR starting at a whopping $4,999. According to a new report, Apple is working on “multiple new external monitors” that will likely launch alongside several Mac releases in 2023. In his December 18, 2022, Power On newsletter, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman indicates that Apple is working on an upgrade to the 32-inch 6K Pro Display XDR with Apple silicon inside to be released with a new Mac Pro. The report claims the update will add Apple silicon to bring the monitor up to date with the Studio Display that launched with an A13 Bionic chip in March. Gurman doesn’t spill many new details…

Apple just can’t seem to leave its laptop keyboards alone. While some of us are still recovering from the MacBook butterfly keyboard debacle of the 2010s (see page 7) and basking in the return of the function keys on the MacBook Pro, Apple has already moved on to the next big thing. According to a recent patent filing reported by Patently Apple, Apple is experimenting with keys that have mini displays. The patent describes a keyboard where each key has a perforated keycap that would reveal illumination from an “array of lights” underneath. Essentially, this keyboard would have keys fitted with micro-LEDs or OLEDs to show the letter or symbol that identifies the key. It’s not unlike the Touch Bar but for each individual key. The way MacBook keyboards are implemented now…

If I had to guess, I’d say Apple sold fewer than 1,000 Mac Pros last year. Between the long wait for Apple silicon, the arrival of the Mac Studio, and the years-long lack of meaningful upgrades, Apple’s most expensive Mac likely only sold to the most desperate or unaware Apple buyers. That was supposed to change this year. When John Ternus teased the Apple silicon Mac Pro for “another day” at Apple’s Peek Performance event last March, he seemed to give a nod and a wink to the most fanciful rumors of a machine significantly greater than the just-announced Mac Studio and its massive M1 Ultra chip. Fast-forward 10 months, and we’re still waiting for the Apple silicon Mac Pro to arrive. The safest bet would be the new Mac Pro arriving…

President Joe Biden just penned an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal in an effort to get Republicans and Democrats on board with reining in the excesses and abuses of the biggest tech companies. He didn’t name any individual company by name, but it is clear he was talking about most of the big companies whose products we use daily. As the most valuable (and some would argue most important and influential) tech company on earth, Apple comes high on the list in terms of the need for regulatory scrutiny. Biden lays out three major areas in which he will push for legislation. One will likely make Apple quite happy, another should make Apple sweat, and the third doesn’t really concern Apple much at all. The first is a call for better…

If you like emoji, it’s easy to find and insert them in apps like Discord, Messages, and Slack and on many websites, particularly social media ones like Facebook and Twitter, which commissioned emoji drawings unique to their products. But outside of apps and sites that embrace emoji, macOS offers a convoluted process to access them otherwise. Rocket blasts its way into that gap. This simple utility provides the same simplicity as in Slack in typing a colon, part of an emoji name, and pressing a completion key (like Return) to insert it. For instance, type :rocket and press Return, and there’s a. You can change the trigger key from a colon or require typing the trigger twice to invoke the emoji picker. The free flavor of the app matches names with an…