MacBooks and Headphone Jacks

I’ve been wondering the past several days about whether or not we’ll see a headphone jack in tomorrow’s new MacBook Pros. There’s been lots of talk about the leaked Magic Toolbar and folks are assuming that it will have a bundle of USB-C ports but I haven’t heard anything about headphone jacks.

Apple must feel pretty good about removing the headphone jack from the iPhone 7. For months, when it was just a rumor, many people on the Internet lost their minds. Now the phone has shipped the expected outrage has largely fizzled. (I think the inclusion of an adapter in the box did a lot pull this off.) So now that they have the headphone jack out of the iPhone, what about the Macs to be announced tomorrow?

My expectation is that of course the new MacBooks (and future iPads for that matter) will have headphone jacks. The biggest reason that Apple explained removing the headphone jack from the iPhone was space. The air inside your iPhone is so precious that the headphone jack needed to go. I don’t see how you could make that case for a MacBook. There is a lot more space in both of those platforms for a tiny headphone jack. Moreover, a lot of people use Macs and IPads for music production and other sound-related tasks and they want a good set of wired cans connected to their Macs.

So maybe Apple will remove the headphone jacks tomorrow but I’d argue such a move is a mistake. As I post this, we’re just 14 hours away from finding out. 

AirPod Delay


Today an Apple representative told Tech Crunch that the AirPods aren’t done cooking.

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The early response to AirPods has been incredible. We don’t believe in shipping a product before it’s ready, and we need a little more time before AirPods are ready for our customers.
— Apple spokesperson to Tech Crunch

Goofy as it sounds, AirPods are one of the things I was looking forward to most about tomorrow’s Apple event. I can’t help but feel that when they launch, the AirPods are going to be a rare commodity, like Apple Pencil was for the first several months after it launched. I hope I’m wrong.

​Google Gets Creepier

ProPublica published an article (that I found via Daring Fireball) about recent changes in Google’s terms of service. Traditionally, Google has kept web-browsing information segregated from your personally identifiable information. Not anymore. As ProPublica explains, “… Google could now, if it wished to, build a complete portrait of a user by name, based on everything they write in email, every website they visit and the searches they conduct.”

Scary.

As I continue to tilt at the privacy windmill, I’ll continue to get the critical emails and tweets telling me to just get over it. I’m not trying to sound like the tin-foil-hat brigade here but what happens if Google gets new management next year that decides to use that data for evil or some foreign (or our own government) hacks that data to use for some nefarious purpose? It seems to me that is conversation we should be having right now.

Sponsor: SaneBox

This week MacSparky is sponsored by SaneBox. Email is hard and if you’re going to have any chance against it, you need some powerful tools at your back. That’s where SaneBox comes in. 

The SaneBox robots are like having my own email personal assistant. SaneBox sorts my mail as it comes in so when I look at my inbox I just see the seven most important emails instead of three hundred emails with those seven important ones buried in there … somewhere.

That’s just the beginning though. SaneBox also has a great anti-spam service called SaneBlackHole. They also have a reminder service that can send you automatic reminders when people don’t respond to your email.

Best of all, it’s server-based so it can work with any mail client. I’ve been a paying subscriber to SaneBox for years and am a very satisfied customer. If you need help with email, check out the below video and give SaneBox a try with this link to get a discount. 


 

MPU 346 – Workflows with Casey Liss

Casey Liss is a podcaster and app developer. He’s also a class act. This week he joins us on Mac Power Users to discuss his best tools and workflows to get things done. Casey, as a fairly recent dad, also explains the current state of baby technology. This one was a lot of fun to record.

Sponsors Include:

  • The Omni Group They’re passionate about productivity for Mac, iPhone, and iPad. 
  • Fujitsu ScanSnap ScanSnap Helps You Live a More Productive, Efficient, Paperless Life. 
  • Sanebox Stop drowning in email!
  • MindNode MindNode makes mind maping easy.

 

The Wirecutter – an Internet Success Story

Five years ago Brian Lam left Gizmodo to start up The Wirecutter where they research the crap out of tech products and make recommendations. I’ve had such good success with their recommendations that it’s now become the default place I go when I’m getting ready to buy some bit of gear I don’t have much experience with. The site has grown and added some of my favorite writers like Jacqui Cheng and Dan Frakes. They make money from the affiliate links.

The thing about The Wirecutter is that it was a good idea brilliantly executed. It was already an Internet success story but today it became even more so when the New York Times purchased The Wirecutter for $30M. Let’s just hope the Grey Lady doesn’t screw things up.

Relay FM Sticker Pack

In case you missed it, downloading the Relay FM app now puts a set of Relay FM stickers on your iPhone and iPad. In addition to all the other Relay shows and memes, there are stickers for both Mac Power Users and Free Agents. If you figure out a way to use them in conversations with your non-geek friends, you get not one, but TWO gold stars.

Table Flip

A few weeks ago indie developer Christian Tietze released a new app called Table Flip that simplifies the process of making tables in Markdown. A few days ago I was working on a project where I had an excuse to use the app and it’s great. Table Flip replaces a poorly written script I was using to make Markdown tables that felt like it was held together by rubber bands and scotch tape. Now I use Table Flip. My only gripe is the text size, which is too small. I understand that’s getting fixed soon.

I know that Markdown, by its very nature, shouldn’t require an app to create but for those of us on deadlines, having apps like Table Flip and Marked sure helps.

Siri vs. Google Assistant

The below MKBHD video compares Siri and Google Assistant. It’s interesting to see how Apple and Google are approaching several common-type questions to their digital assistants. My overall impression is that they are pretty close except Google is better at follow-up questions. Apple needs to work on that. I think Google pushing the envelope with their own digital assistant is going to be great for Siri users. Apple’s at its best when there’s healthy competition. 

This is one of those emerging areas of technology that will be fascinating to watch.