Rene Ritchie

Analysis of AirPods 3 and AirPods Pro 2 rumors in reverse order, Momento-style!

Adobe: Photoshop ships on Macs with Apple Silicon: Gains speedier selections, filters and performance boosts

I am thrilled to announce that today we are releasing the first version of Photoshop to run natively on Macs with the new M1 chip. Our internal tests show that Photoshop delivers significant performance gains across the application for customers using these latest Macs.

Also:

☁️ Two big features for Photoshop on the iPad: Cloud Documents Version History

📷 Super Resolution in Adobe Camera Raw Plugin

https://blog.adobe.com/en/publish/2021/03/10/adobe-photoshop-ships-on-macs-with-apple-silicon-gains-speedier-selections-filters-and-performance-boosts.html#gs.v7fh0m

Google, Sundar Pachai, says they’re going to stop tracking our activity across the web just to target us with personal ads. Some think this has to do with Apple, with Tim Cook’s new App Tracking Transparency in iOS 14.5, which tries to compel companies like Google and Facebook to ask our permission, to get our consent before following us across apps and the web. That this is Google finally coming to terms with our right to privacy and to choose for ourselves. But it is absolutely none of those things…

When I quit my big media job in April of 2020, I needed to build a new channel and I needed to build it as fast as possible. Here's what I learned about doing that (most recently on Clubhouse):

• Best way to get subscribers is to ask for them.
• Never be ashamed to ask and never let anyone shame you for asking.
• Ask for subscribers near the beginning of the video, right after you’ve delivered value. ~20 seconds in, right after the hook.
• Asking for subscribers is not about converting first-time viewers, it’s about reminding viewers who have watched and enjoyed several of your videos to subscribe.
• People who enjoy your videos can often be so engrossed in watching they don’t even think about subscribing, so it really is a helpful reminder.
• One of the best converting CTA for subscribers is Dream’s: “YouTube shows me X% of you watching haven’t subscribed yet. Please hit that button and bell so we can build the biggest/best community together. It’s free and you can always change your mind later.” (I use a version of this, but much shorter, but only one or two videos a week because it’s… a lot.)
• Smooth segues into CTAs after showing value also work. “This is how you do XYZ and make sure you hit that subscribe button and bell for more videos just like this.”
• Teasing big upcoming videos also works. “And I’ll have the full review next week, so make sure you hit that subscribe button and bell so you don’t miss it.”
• If you’re trend-jacking or know a particular video will over-perform, use the most impactful CTA because it will drive the most conversions from the best performing videos.
• Graphical CTAs with no verbal component don’t convert well at all.
• Jimmy does his CTA at the end because he’s worried if someone pauses to subscribe they’ll get distracted by another video in Suggested, maybe even stop watching, but his AVPV is ridiculous so the same rules don’t apply.
• Find your videos that have the highest subscriber conversion numbers and make them into a short playlist that you can funnel new viewers into to increase conversion.
• Also! Study those videos to see what worked and repeat it!
• Don’t stack or split CTAs. “Like, Subscribe, fill out this form, jump up and down.” Don’t give people too many jobs all at once. They will not like you. If you want subs, ask for subs, and only subs, and don’t ask for anything else for 5+ minutes. (If something else is more important to you, do that instead, or alternate in different videos.) People will do one thing for you. People will feel confused or annoyed for multiple things and just do nothing.
• Subscribers is a vanity metric. Getting someone to watch 3 of your videos will get you into their recommended, which is as good as a sub and better for growth. But vanity metrics can still be important. They can build your brand, your rep, your esteem, get you play buttons, partner programs, partner managers, collab opportunities, etc. So if you want them, that’s fine! That’s great! Just make a strategy and implement it. Test, iterate, improve, repeat!

You had so many questions about the M1 Macs, upcoming M1X and M2 Macs, Macs vs. the iPad Pro, and Pro Apps for the upcoming A14X iPad Pro... I just had to answer them all!

0:00 - M1 Mac SSD Thrashing Issue?
2:10 - M2 iMac and Face ID?
3:13 - M1 7 vs 8 GPU: what does it mean for M2?
4:21 - iPhone vs. Mac FaceTime camera quality?
5:17 - When is the Apple Silicon Mac Pro?
6:18 - How will Apple differentiate M1 Mac from iPad?
9:05 - Any chance for in-person Apple Events in 2021?
10:37 - Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, Xcode pro apps coming to iPad?
13:12 - New Apple Display alongside new M1X iMacs?
14:53 - Glowing Apple logos?
15:37 - M1 Macs and malware?
16:52 - Has Apple painted the Mac into a corner?

Apple’s iPad Pro is good, really good, I love it, but it could be better. It could have closer to an HDR — high dynamic range — display, a way to attach teh Apple Pencil where it doesn't get knocked off so always, a FaceTime camera that's not giving us perpetually wicked side-eye, functional LIDAR portrait mode on the back, and Thunderbolt — maybe even dual Thunderbolt on both sides.

But can the next-generation iPad Pro (2021) really help fix all this...?

Massive, sizzling hot new rumor report on iPhone 13, iPhone 14, iPhone 15, iPhone SE3, and iPhone Fold from Financial analyst and supply chain exfilitrator extraordinaire, Kuo Ming-Chi.

Swear to jobs, if I see one more piece of iPhone 13 clickbait that’s not actually about the iPhone 13…

And I'll tell you why in my weekly iMore column!

https://www.imore.com/iphone-13-clickbait-so-bad-year

I’m going to tell you the exception to Tim Cook’s rule, to the Apple Secrecy Law, the one where the only acceptable answer to any question about the next iPhone or Mac — or whatever — is “We don’t discuss future products or plans”. The aluminum curtain dropped on every investor call, TV interview, event, briefing — everything. Every single time…. Except one…

And I'll tell you all about it in my weekly iMore column!

https://www.imore.com/apples-worst-kept-secret-virtual-and-augmented-reality

In this video, I’m reacting to all the recent reports on the next-generation iMacs, including M1X Apple silicon with x-as-in-extra cores, all-new, all-Pro Display XDR design, and, most recently, the return of color. Yeah, talk about your tangerine dreams!

But, not really… let me explain…

Color

I’ll get to the M1X and what it really means to the iMac in a sec, but Jon Prosser of Front Page Tech just dropped a fresh report this morning saying colors are coming back to the iMac.

Not the original Bondee Blue from 1998, not the fruit-themed blueberry, strawberry, lime, tangerine and grape from 1999, and certainly not the flower power and blue dalmatian from 2001. Though you’ love to see it. And yeah, those really happened. And on Steve Jobs and Jony Ive’s watch.

But also more than the glossy iPod white and, most recently, bead blasted aluminum with its single space grey variant, you know, for the Pros.

Something that seems to match the current iPad Air colors — and AirPods Max cups colors — pretty much exactly.

Silver and space gray, rose gold, green, and sky blue.

And… it would be the ultimate expression of Apple’s recent retro future chic design vibe. Even though they haven’t gone anywhere nearly as colorful with anything in the Mac lineup for a long, long time. Not even with last year’s M1 MacBook Air, which feels like it would have been primed for it, just the perfect place to start.

Now it’s possible… it’s possible Apple’s waiting on the redesigns to start blowing minds, and we’ll see that in the M2 update, but demand forecasting and managing channel inventory on multiple color SKUs on ultra-lights is one thing. On products as pricy as the iMac, even if it’s just the lower-end, smaller-sized iMac?

But… let me know which if any of those colors you’d want in the comments.

Design

Prosser also echoed other recent reports from Kuo Ming-Chi and Mark Gurman saying the new iMac design… would echo the Pro Display XDR design. Now, multiple rumors do not a confirmation make. Never a confirmation make. If you ever see someone claiming a rumor confirms anything, close the tab and go watch a Pitch Meeting video instead.

But multiple reports are worth considering, as is past as prologue. And Apple has, typically, kept their iMac designs pretty close to their stand-alone display designs. Which is particularly great for anyone who wants to pair them together. And just like everything in the last generation seemed to follow the original iPad mini or iPod touch design language, everything in this generation seems to be following the iPad Pro.

Now, the Pro Display XDR is all cheese-gratored on the back because of the active cooling system needed for the extreme dynamic range technology that makes it… 6K for 6K. But, if Apple sticks with LCD or manages to go mini LED, even if just on the higher end, then they can probably stick with a flat back. Even if that grater look is all shades of hella cool.

Prosser says he doesn’t know about the ports yet, but given what we’ve seen from the M1 Mac mini, it’s not hard to imagine we’ll be getting similar from the iMac, though hopefully with a couple more USB3 slash Thunderbolt 3 ports, courtesy of a couple more thunderbolt controllers on the M1X chipset.

M1X

Which, if the iMac ships in the first half of the year, should be identical to the M1 chip in the current Apple Silicon Macs, but with far, far more performance and graphics cores. According to Mark Gurman, up to 16 pCores on the low end, maybe even 32 on the high end. Same with the graphics cores. 16-32. Which… certainly is something.

And if they ship in the second half… who knows, maybe they’ll be based on the M2, with even better cores, just as massively multiples. Which would just be something else.

Because, Apple’s been using what are basically laptop parts in iMacs for as long as they’ve had to cram those hot, power-hungry Intel, AMD, and Nvidia parts into that thing aluminum shell.

But the M-series is basically desktop power with better than laptop efficiency. Like… the TARDUS, they’re… bigger on the inside. Which means the iMac shell won’t be a constraint any more. With active cooling, Apple can power it up as much as they want. For a price.