This week, Marco Arment kicked off some fascinating dialog about Apple’s software development. Put simply, a lot of people are concerned Apple is running too fast with yearly release cycles and appears to be stumbling as a result. I think there is a lot of merit to these arguments. I’ve experienced some of these stumbles myself as of late.

There is one point, however, I’ve not seen stated about these challenges that I think is worth mention. Over the years, I’ve done a lot of home screen posts and one of the standard questions I ask is what my contributor would do different if they were running Apple. I don’t have exact numbers but can attest that by far, before iOS 8 the biggest request was better app sharing and communication between devices. Indeed, some people were arguing Apple was doomed because they weren’t moving forward on these issues.

With iOS 8 and Yosemite, Apple delivered on these requests in a big way. We got extensions, keyboards, handoff, and a host of other new features. I love (and use) these features daily. Because a lot of these features involve communications between my Mac and iOS devices, these features require updates to both the Mac and iOS operating systems. Put simply, the only way this could all work is if Apple stuck its neck out with significant changes to both systems.

While it’s easy to say, “I wish they’d taken a year off on the Mac”, that comes at a cost of functionality. We wouldn’t have these cool features if they hadn’t done the update. Maybe, in hindsight, that was a mistake by Apple adding so much but don’t forget how many people were talking about how stale and “closed” iOS was before iOS 8 arrived. I sympathize for the Apple engineers sitting somewhere right now, thinking they’re damned if they do and damned if they don’t. I, personally, think they did the right thing pushing forward with iOS 8 and Yosemite. I’m willing to deal with a few hiccups in exchange for these new features. 

While Marco may indeed be right and perhaps Apple should slow down the Mac OS release cycles, I don’t see how Apple had any choice in 2014 once they decided to give us the inter-operatability we’ve all been banging on about for years.

In our monthly feedback show, Katie and I talk about auditing your accounts with guest Bradley Chambers, quitting Family Sharing, follow-up on PDFs, discuss applications for money management, and share tips for managing RSS feeds on the go, sharing an iTunes library, managing photos and videos, preserving two-factor authentication codes, discuss the Evernote Stylus, family journaling options and more.

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The rumors surrounding the fabled 12 inch retina Mac have been swirling for about a year now. While you never know if a rumored product from Apple is real or not, this one has had so many leaks and mentions that I have to believe they are at least considering it. Moreover, as nice as the MacBook Airs are, it has been several years since they received a new design and you just have to know the design team is at least feeling a little itchy about it. Moreover, competitors are now perfecting their copies of the existing design.

So with all this in mind, Mark Gurman, one of the most reliable Apple-scoopers, just published an article at 9to5Mac about the new MacBook Air. Much has been written about this since the rumor first hit a few days ago. I think a higher resolution MacBook Air is a swell idea but if Mark Gurman is right and the new machine has just one USB port to cover power, external display, and external devices, I’m going to go on record as saying that is a little bit crazy. Can you image having to unplug your external drive so you can print or unplugging your power so you can connect a scanner? The very first MacBook Air had just one USB port. It was located on a clever little drop down hinge that reminded me of the docking bay on a particularly sleek spaceship. Everyone hated having just one USB port but at least that Mac had a separate MagSafe port. Speaking of MagSafe, if the 12″ Mac gets power via the USB port, what happens to MagSafe? That would be something I really miss.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Mark Gurman is generally right about the new Mac specs but wrong about just one USB port. At least, I sure hope he is.

We received news today of a lawsuit by Monster against Beats. While I have no idea of the merits of these claims, this event has finally given me an excuse to link the second most entertaining letter I’ve ever read between two lawyers. A few years ago Monster issued a cease and desist letter to Blue Jeans Cables, a company founded by a recovering IP attorney. The response starts, “Dear Monster Lawyers” and just gets better from there.

In case you are wondering, James Bailey’s letter on behalf of the Cleveland Browns is the best attorney letter I’ve ever read.

I talk and write about Star Wars frequently but I don’t say as often how fond I am of Star Trek: The Next Generation. I was in law school on a merit scholarship, which meant if my grades weren’t at a certain level, I was going to have to borrow boat loads of money. I studied a lot but it just so happened that Star Trek: TNG was running in syndication every day at 6pm. So every day I ate something out of the freezer and dined with Captain Picard. It was the one part of the day I didn’t have to think about school and it was delightful.

Just a few weeks ago, I felt nostalgic for an episode of ST:TNG and when fishing on Netflix. I found Family, where Captain Picard goes back home to France in attempt to pick up the pieces after being co-opted by the Borg. The episode was just as good as I remembered and got me thinking that I should go back and watch more. So you can appreciate my joy at finding out Max Temkin did a bang-up job summarizing some of the best Star Trek: TNG episodes. (I found out about this through Six Colors.)

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I have to admit when I first heard about this Kickstarter project, I thought it was a joke. It’s not. If you want a physical keyboard and a small screen to just write words on, check this out. While I thought something like this was a great idea in 1990, I cannot imagine myself carrying around a clunky Hemingwrite in 2015. I’m just fine with my amazing iPad, thank you. 

While I find a certain amount of nostalgia in this product to my old Tandy WP-2, that isn’t what they are driving for. The key selling point is the “you can’t stay out of Facebook so you need hardware limitations” argument we’ve seen with some of the Mac software products that cut you off from the Internet. Maybe this is my old-man-yelling-at-kits-on-lawn moment but why can’t people just turn off Facebook or Twitter or whatever when they need to dig in. If I had to buy intentionally crippled hardware to get work done, I think my problems would be much bigger. The project has been funded though so I presume we’ll see a few of them in the wild at some point.