An Apple Watch, a MacBook, and an iPhone all for less than $300?

Saw Luke Miani’s recent video, and it is a compelling ecosystem for a young adult. I’m talking about a late tween or early teenager, especially if they’re homeschooled and their current laptop is a Chromebook that makes the original MacBook Air screen look like a Retina display.

Yes, it’s that bad.

The fact that a 5 year old watch, a 10 year old laptop, and an almost 3 year old phone can still communicate with each other just seems incredible. It shouldn’t really surprise me since I’ve been using an 11 year old laptop that communicates with the newest iPhone and Apple Watch for logging in and Apple Pay.

ChatGPT can now read your Apple Notes on Mac.

Tim Hardwick from MacRumors:

OpenAI has expanded the capabilities of its ChatGPT app for macOS, adding support for Apple Notes and a range of popular third-party apps. The update builds on last month's release that introduced the ability to read on-screen content from select Mac apps…

OpenAI says that users maintain full control over which apps ChatGPT can access, and all data handling follows the same OpenAI privacy protocols as the app's regular conversation history. The expanded app integration feature remains exclusive to paid subscribers, including ChatGPT Plus, Pro, Team, Enterprise, and Edu users.

You do have to give ChatGPT permission to use the app, but that’s a lot of sensitive data to give to a 3rd party application, especially one as controversial as ChatGPT. People store all kinds of data in their Notes, including passwords, personal reflections, Driver’s license, medical and financial information, you name it.

I’m a free user of ChatGPT, so I have nothing to worry about, for now.

Is an 11-year old MacBook still usable in 2024?

I posted about this last year, but the 2013 15-inch MacBook Pro with the 2GB NVIDIA GT 750M graphics card, 1TB SSD, and 16GB of RAM still holds up well today. I recently went on a 3-day work trip, and I took this laptop as my primary laptop. I had my work desktop as a backup computer if anything went wrong, but everything worked out just fine.

I left the base model M1 Air at home even though it would run circles around this beast from 2013. It is always nice to retreat back to a 15.4 inch screen. The M1 Air is obviously the better choice for portability, but I was using the 15-incher as a desktop. I had it elevated on a stand, and paired it with the Magic Keyboard with Touch ID. Plugged in a USB-A mouse, and I was good to go. No, Touch ID does not work on the Magic Keyboard, but everything else does. When I did need to use Apple Pay, I had my watch and my iPhone nearby, so it wasn’t an issue when I had to buy lunch, or anything else that caught my eye online. 

When I got back to the hotel, I just used the laptop’s keyboard and trackpad, a delightful and reliable experience. This is pre-butterfly keyboard mayhem.

The most limiting factor about this laptop for me is ironically, the blog platform for my website, which is Squarespace. In the past, Squarespace was the Achilles’ heel as it would constantly cause the fans to spin up and slow down this computer. I eventually took a hiatus from blogging, and when I came back months later, I noticed that Squarespace had changed its design and layout and updated their platform altogether. I was skeptical if a 2013 laptop would keep up, especially now that it has been improved with a more modern UI.

To my surprise it actually performed better than before! Whatever optimizations Squarespace did in the background ended up breathing new life into this machine. Still not as fast as a modern computer, but nothing that would make you call it a slow machine and make you want to hurl it down the street after typing for 15 minutes, only to find out that nothing was saved due to website errors and not pressing the save button frequently enough. I used to blame the laptop for those issues before, but in hindsight, maybe it was Squarespace that was the kink in the armor?

It just goes to show that software optimization can go a long way in making an old computer work like new.

Not everything is great, of course, since we are still talking about an 11-year old laptop. The battery life is at best 3 hours, which is good enough for me and probably most people who would use this as a backup computer. Once again my main use for this laptop was as a desktop, and the hardest I pushed it would be using Squarespace while doing some graphical work in Canva. I would also have the typical Apple apps open in the background, such as Mail, Safari, Notes, and Apple News. Safari works fine and you can easily browse any website with no issues, including YouTube.

When I bought it in 2018, I paid around $800 for it. Now, you can get these for $300 at the high end, which is insane. I’m not saying you should buy this laptop, since for another $300 you could get an M1 Air that is miles ahead of this Intel based laptop. What I am trying to say is, if you have one of these lying around, you should definitely give it another life.

Maybe you know someone who wants to try macOS but doesn’t want to take the plunge? Let them borrow this for a while. Or you have a child who needs a real computer (sorry Chromebooks, and iPads). 

If you do want to tinker around and get one, remember to get the right spec. It has to have 16GB of RAM since that is not user upgradeable, and you should get the GT 750M graphics. It helps a ton. For more details, check out Louis Rossman’s video about which older Macs are worth buying. Remember, this video came out during the butterfly keyboard era, and also before Apple introduced the M1 chip.

Unfortunately if you need to buy a charger, they’re still $80 brand new for a real one. Don’t get a fake one and burn your house down.

Upgrade your Mac Studio Storage for a fraction of the cost - with a huge caveat.

Apple’s rates for upgradable storage has always been absurd, and people are always trying to find a solution for quality and cheaper storage.

Polysoft Services has managed to reverse-engineer Apple’s SSDs and is offering up to 8TB of storage for around $1160 vs $2400 from Apple.

That’s a huge savings.

Their 4TB option is $845 vs $1,200 from Apple.

The price difference becomes more negligible for the 2TB option at $420 vs $600 from Apple.

Polysoft was able to reverse engineer Apple’s SSD modules, and even upped Apple by including overvoltage protection, which was notorious for frying MacBooks:

So, we sacrificed a SSD module, removed all its small components one by one using a laser station, inventoried them and measured their characteristics, then we oil sanded every layer with fine-grained sandpaper and scanned every layer with a flatbed scanner.

We could then start making our own schematics from this work. But not only did we want to make MacStudio upgrades possible, we also wanted to customize the SSD modules... Having repaired lot of 2019 MacBook Pros 15“ and 16” with total data loss due to a failed voltage regulator sending a surge to the soldered NANDs, we thought it necessary to design our boards differently from Apple. That's why we've added a very simple but effective overvoltage protection, which will prevent NAND from overvoltage and protect you from total data loss in the event of a voltage regulator failure.

As a tribute to Louis Rossmann work, we've called this overvoltage protection “RIROP" as in "Rossmann Is Right Overvoltage  Protection”.

I like the shoutout to Louis Rossman, whose video helped me purchase my first MacBook Pro.

Although you can save a serious amount of money with these storage upgrades, do note that it could void your warranty.

In their FAQ, the first question is, “Will it void my warranty?”

Here is their answer:

Technically no, legally yes.
Apple allows you to repair your MacStudio on a self-service basis, and these boards are designed with the same components as the original, plus customized surge protection.
That said, yes, Apple's contractual terms clearly state that any use of parts not sourced by them may void your warranty.

I would interpret that as a yes.

Great feat of engineering that I’m glad exists, but only for the hardcore power users who really need that kind of storage at those kinds of speeds who are willing to go through the arduous process.

If you want to see the actual process, check out this video by Luke Miani who goes through it in detail.

This is the one reason why you need iPhone Mirroring on your Mac.

With macOS Sequoia and iOS 18, you can now seamlessly mirror your iPhone to any of your Macs.

It might seem pointless since whatever you can do on your iPhone you can do bigger on the Mac, but there is one reason, one critical reason, why you need this feature.

As much as we love our Macs, there are always times where it just doesn’t want to work as magically as Apple would make you think. 

You get an iMessage on your iPhone, but it doesn’t show up on your Mac. 

You get a WhatsApp message on your iPhone, but it doesn’t show up on your Mac. 

You need to login to your bank and need your 2-factor code that was texted to you, but it doesn’t show up on your Mac.

Are you getting it?

With iPhone Mirroring, you will never miss a message from any app since you literally have your iPhone on screen. No more frustration and forcing yourself to reboot your Mac right then and there when you are in the skin of it in order to make all the things sync perfectly.

Just mirror your iPhone and reboot later when it’s convenient for you.

iPhone Mirroring on a desktop Mac only works well if you have these devices.

To put it simply, you need a Magic Trackpad or a Magic Mouse to get the full iPhone mirroring experience. If you use any other mouse, the experience is not good.

Transitions stutter, and clicking and holding your normal mouse to swipe left and right on your home screen is imprecise. Very often the iPhone triggers “jiggle mode” to edit your home screen when you just wanted to swipe left or right. Scrolling with the click wheel is also not smooth at all.

And yes, I have a very capable wired mouse.

Swiping left, right, up, and down on the Magic Trackpad just feels more natural for operating iOS since it is a touch-based OS. The experience is very similar to my iPad Pro with a Magic Keyboard.

I haven’t tested the Magic Mouse, but if you love the Magic Mouse, I am sure it will work just as well since it uses a similar touch interface.

Thankfully, Apple’s Magic Trackpad is worth the cost compared to the Magic Mouse, especially now that it is USB-C.

Buy the M4 MacBook Pro if you are a true display enthusiast.

The new MacBook Pro has been lauded for its M4 line of chips and increased RAM for the same price as last year.

Now we have even more great news.

It turns out that Apple has updated the displays without mention to a quantum dot display, which provides better motion performance and punchier colors.

Ross Young, who has over 25 years in the display industry, has confirmed the transition to quantum dot display film.

Even the blur busters confirmed the M4’s visual performance vs an M1 MacBook.

Some of the best wallpapers for your desktop.

Filip Chudzinski has some great wallpapers he managed to make inspired by, “the immaculate interior design
of Apple Stores around the world.”

I have used these on my Mac for nearly a year, and they’re great.

M4 Mac Mini - can you actually upgrade the storage after purchase?

Yes, you can technically upgrade the storage after purchasing the new Mac mini, but it won’t be easy. If you need a lot of storage and you prefer not to buy any external storage, just upgrade the device through Apple when purchasing. This process could void your warranty and will be more expensive if you mess up.

M4 MacBook Pro nano-texture display - what the experts are saying.

The new M4 MacBook Pro comes with the option of a new nano-texture display, which is the first time we are getting a matte display on an Apple laptop in years.

Should you get the $150 option? Whether you go 14-inch for 16-inch, here is what the experts are saying:

The Verge:

As for doing my edits on the nano-texture display, I know glossy screens have a slightly deeper contrast, but I love not worrying about glare. I’m not exclusively editing in a dark room with a hooded reference monitor, and I like the flexibility of working in places with less-than-ideal lighting conditions. The convenience of the nano-texture far outweighs any slight technical advantage of a glossy display. And at $150, it’s a worthwhile upgrade for visual pros. 

Their description sounds great, but their review images don’t seem that convincing. Take a look for yourself. The nano-texture display is on the right:

Source: The Verge

Source: The Verge

Six Colors:

I frequently use my laptop outside. If it’s a nice day, I will sit in my backyard under a redwood tree and write. I did so for this article, in fact, and spent some time trying to counteract the afternoon sun shining through the branches with the new screen brightness and nano-texture display.

The results were very good. True, not even the nano-texture display can really defeat the sun shining directly into the screen and reflecting into my eyes. But beyond that extreme condition, it defeated all other forms of glare easily. Using a nano-texture-covered display is a little weird—the reflections just stop at the screen edge, as if by magic. It works incredibly well. And most of the time, in more normal lighting conditions, I didn’t really notice the nano-texture being there. Yes, if you look closely, you will notice a light scatter that reduces contrast a bit.

More praise, but no photos really showing a good comparison.

If we go to some video reviewers, we get a better idea of what to expect. Dave2D does a nice comparison between the two displays and the difference is night and day.

Same with Bobby Tonelli, who says that the nano-texture is amazing and, “there’s no degradation in contrast.”

Final Conclusions

If you are someone who hates glare and has to work in different lighting environments, you should opt for the nano-texture display. If you are someone who values every bit of contrast and punchy colors your display can offer and are willing to deal with glare, then go for the standard display and save $150.

If I were to get one of these laptops, I would go for the glossy display since I don’t work under harsh lighting and I would rather have the maximum amount of vibrancy from the display.

Plus I would save $150.

What features do older iPhones get with iOS18.1?

Great writeup by Chance Miller showing all the features you get even if your iPhone doesn’t support Apple Intelligence.

Apple Intelligence is only supported on the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max, and all iPhone 16 models.

If you have an older iPhone, then check out the link to see what features you will get with iOS 18.1.

The best feature in my opinion the ability to drag and drop files from your iPhone to your Mac and vice versa:

Making good on its promise from WWDC, iPhone Mirroring now supports the ability to easily drag and drop files between your iPhone and your Mac. This feature requires both iOS 18.1 and macOS Sequoia 15.1. Then, when you’re using iPhone Mirroring, you can wirelessly move files back and forth just by dragging and dropping.

Buying a MacBook this holiday season? Avoid this one!

Now that Apple has made 16GB of RAM the standard for all their Macs, there will be plenty of sales and deals for the 8GB models to get them out of companies’ warehouses.

Amazon has already started discounting the M2 MacBook Air base model which has 8GB of RAM and 256GB SSD storage for $699.

Yes $699.

That sounds like a great deal, but it is a trap.

Do not buy this MacBook, even at that price.

The base M2 Air model was crippled with slow hard drive speeds, making them unsuitable for most people who do or plan to do even basic creative workloads. This includes middle schoolers all the way to professionals.

The minute you start doing something demanding, your laptop will noticeably slow down. This problem was known well enough in the tech community that others started writing about it and making videos to show how the previous generation M1 MacBook Air was superior.

Here’s what Dan Seifert said from The Verge:

…slower storage speeds can impact a number of tasks, including file transfers, and can also slow down overall performance since Macs use SSD space as temporary memory (swap memory) when their onboard RAM is used up.

That said, will these particular differences impact you? People the Air is marketed to will likely not see a life-changing contrast between the 256GB and 512GB models when it comes to everyday performance. I ran two 4K YouTube videos over 25 open Chrome tabs for 30 minutes on both machines without either needing to dip into swap memory.

This sounds fast enough for web browsing if that’s all you plan on doing, but Max Tech has shown in multiple videos how the slow SSD hard drive on the base model can slow down a computer while doing one performance task, such as photo editing while browsing the web. 

The slow SSDs were such a problem that Apple fixed the issue when the M3 models came out a year and a half later.

The base M2 MacBook Air finds itself in a weird situation because it doesn’t really have a target market. 

If you just want a cheap laptop that performs well and better than the $699 M2 Air, you can get the M1 Air brand new for $50 cheaper at Walmart at $649. How does it perform better? It has a better heat sink and dual SSD channels allowing faster hard drive speeds. You will get faster data transfers and also better performance when the computer uses the SSD as RAM for multitasking.

If you want a lot of performance out of your laptop, the base M2 Air is not even on your radar.

When you include Apple Intelligence and how much resources it will eventually use up, the base M2 Air will age poorly in performance and will cost you more money in the long run.

Don’t buy a new MacBook right now..

Rajesh Pandey from Cult of Mac:

In the latest Power On edition, Bloomberg‘s Mark Gurman claims Apple will release its new M4-powered Macs on November 1. These include a new low-end 14-inch MacBook Pro with M4 chip and high-end versions of the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro featuring M4 Pro and Max.

M4 iMac and a revamped Mac mini with a smaller design should also launch on November 1. A new iPad mini with a faster chip will supposedly debut alongside the M4 Macs.

Gurman reports that Apple will release iOS 18.1 with Apple Intelligence support on October 28. So, the company might officially unveil its new Macs on the same day, presumably via a press release.

The M4 MacBook Pros are not unsurprising, but what I’m really interested to see is what Apple will do with the new desktops. If we are getting an all new design for the Mac mini, then surely we should be getting new USB-C accessories? Apple’s Magic Keyboard, Magic Mouse, and Magic Trackpad all still charge via lightning, and that is just not acceptable anymore in 2024.

Just wait till they announce these Macs before buying one now. You can either get the latest and greatest hardware that will last longer, or you can score an even better deal when the M3 hardware goes on deep discounts.

Is a ten year old MacBook still a good option in 2023?

Is a ten year old MacBook really still a good option in 2023?

Yes, a 2013 MacBook Pro is still a good option for day to day tasks at a much cheaper price, but you have to get the right one. 

I initially had a 2013 13-inch Retina with integrated graphics, and it was sluggish when I went into the photos app. The main problem was video, and any 4K video playback was out of the question. For other basic tasks, it was just fine. For this reason alone I would avoid getting the 13-inch laptops, especially if you want to do any type of basic video editing.

If you want to experience top of the line 2013 specs, you want to get the 15-inch laptops with the built-in GPU. I decided to go all out and get a maxed out 15-inch model with the NVIDIA GT 750M and with a 1TB SSD, thanks to sound advice from Louis Rossman . The good thing with these laptops is that you can swap out the hard drives, so you can go as cheap or expensive with the storage if you need to. 

You won’t get the amazing battery life of Apple silicon Macs, but it is still good enough to last at least 3-4 hours. I tend to use mine at around 75% brightness, but if you lower your requirements, it can probably last longer. 

Now what do I use it for? Basic web browsing in both Chrome and Safari (because we still live in a world where not everything works on Safari). My work based stuff works better on Chrome, so I get to enjoy the battery drain that Chrome does on intel based Macs. I also use the stock Apple suite of apps, mainly Calendar, Notes, and iMessage. In 2022 I even used it for editing videos with DaVinci Resolve, and it was able to handle it pretty well.

I really love the keyboard of this generation. 2015 was the last year of the classic keyboard before Apple went with their infamous butterfly keyboards, and the 2013 is the same body style and experience as the 2015 models. The one thing I like about these older keyboards is they have a more satisfying clicky sound and feel that just isn’t there with the M1 Pro my wife has (which used to be mine, but that’s a story for another day). I also love the keyboard brightness keys. I honestly prefer these much more than the new dictation and focus mode keys. 

You obviously don’t get any biometrics, but you can use your Apple Watch to unlock this laptop. It keeps the unlock experience more modern and you don’t have to worry about typing your (hopefully strong) passcode. My only gripe is that sometimes the Apple Watch to unlock is too good of a feature, and my kids can easily open the laptop and get access to it.

These laptops did have a serious cosmetic flaw with screen delamination, but if you’re buying an old used laptop, you don’t really care about it being in pristine condition. Honestly, after using this laptop for more than 4 years, I don’t even notice the delamination, especially when the screen is on. You do have to look at it in certain lighting to notice the delamination on the bezels, but it’s not something that will really bother you. 

You can’t notice it when actually using it day to day. I had to get in direct sunlight for this picture.

I use this laptop as my go to “beater laptop.” If I am going somewhere public where I might have to leave my laptop unattended for a few minutes here and there, or if I will only use it for maybe a couple of hours, this will do the job just fine. I also will have more peace of mind not having to leave a multi-thousand dollar laptop unattended. 

When budgeting for this laptop, remember that it uses MagSafe 2 for charging and you will probably have to spend an additional $80 to get the official Apple charger. If you have the original MagSafe cable, you can purchase an adapter directly from Apple for $10 instead. 

Now why would you need to buy an additional charger if you're getting one on eBay?

When I bought this used on eBay back in 2018, it came with a charger, but I found out soon enough that it was a fake charger. Check out this link for why you would not want to take a chance with a fake charger. From my own experience, I saw sparks coming out of the pins when connecting it to the MacBook. Per Ken’s article, those sparks signify a full power delivery that is not regulated by a microcontroller like the genuine MagSafe charger:

Only when a microcontroller inside the charger detects that the charger is connected to a laptop does the charger switch to the full output power. (Details are in my Magsafe connector teardown article.) This is a safety feature of the real charger that reduces the risk from a short circuit across the pins. The counterfeit charger, on the other hand, omits the microcontroller circuit and simply outputs the full voltage at all times. This raises the risk of burning out your laptop if you plug the connector in crooked or metallic debris sticks to the magnet.

Needless to say, you shouldn’t be getting any sparks when connecting your MacBook to a MagSafe charger. It’s not worth risking your laptop catching on fire. After all, these batteries are not going to be brand new. 

The one I got looked real and didn’t have any suspicious gaps. I really had no way of telling it was fake until I tore it down myself. It matched up real well with the fake ones in Ken’s posting. I was able to get a partial refund for the fake charger from the eBay seller since I had to fork out $80 for a real one. I could have gotten a full refund, but I would have to return the whole laptop, which I fell in love with and didn’t want to return. 

The 2013 models unfortunately stop at macOS Big Sur, so you don’t get a lot of the fancy options such as Universal Control and Continuity Camera. I can live with those compromises, and will gladly trade the savings for a retina 15.4 inch display.

When you include the cost of the MagSafe 2 charger, I paid almost $900 back in 2018 to get this laptop (which was a bit overpriced at the time). Now you can get these on eBay for around $400. That is one of the greatest MacBook values you can get right now.

I would highly recommend the 15-inch with dual graphics since it provides a good value for those looking for the most bang for the buck with decent battery life, a great visual experience, and solid reliability.

P.S. The multi-touch trackpad on this 10 year old laptop is still better than most laptops today!

Apple’s markup is kind of a mess.

Apple’s markup tool is something that I use probably on a daily basis, but there are some inconsistencies that you should be aware of, especially if you are using it cross platform between iOS and macOS. Here are just some scenarios that I tried and discovered how confusing things can get.

Let’s start with the Mac:

1. Markup for screenshots are permanent edits once you close out of the preview, whether you do the edit immediately after taking the screenshot by clicking on the small icon in the corner of the screen, or if you access it later from Finder.

2. Markup for a photo in the Photos app can always be edited and undone.

3. Markup for a pdf can always be edited and undone.

On the iPhone and iPad:

1. If you take a screenshot and edit right away by clicking the tiny screenshot, whatever markups you do that way will become a permanent “instance.” The only thing you can do after this point is revert back to the original image, or build upon the current markups you did. You cannot erase part of these markups.

   • For example, if you added a square and a circle to your markup, you can revert back to the original image with no markup, or you can build upon the square and circle. You cannot erase just the circle or just the square.

2. If you take a screenshot and flick it away, go to the photos app and then do the markup, you can edit, erase, and undo without any restrictions. Nothing is permanently engraved until you share the photo with the share card.

3. Markups for a pdf can always be edited and undone.

For cross platform talk:

1. Pdf files are pretty easily editable without much hassle on either platform. I have had no trouble when switching between the 3 platforms and was able to easily undo any changes seamlessly.

2. If you have iCloud photo library on, you can edit on an iPad and easily undo those edits on an iPhone, Mac, and vice versa. I was able to verify this on my iPhone and iPad, but since I do not have iCloud photo library enabled on my mac, I can’t confirm whether that works or not. My guess is that it does work.

The tip of the day is: if you are taking a screenshot of anything on iOS or iPad OS, swipe it away and access it from the photos app before you do any markups. This way you have more control in modifying your markups later on. For mac, markups for screenshots are permanent so be careful regardless of when you mark them up.