Posts tagged with "mac"

Big Walk: A Good Hang with Friends

I dove into Big Walk with no expectations at all. I’d seen trailers leading up to the launch and knew that it was a co-op puzzle game from House House, the makers of Untitled Goose Game, but that was about it. And because most of my gaming is done solo, I initially tuned out most of the game’s post-launch headlines. Still, Big Walk is published by Panic, which has a great track record for finding and publishing great indie games, so I decided to give it a try earlier this week. And you know what? I love it.

Big Walk is about as low-key as a puzzle game gets in the best possible way. Co-op is the only mode, so you’ll need to coordinate a time to play it with a friend or group. One person takes the lead, setting up the session and inviting the others. The process is far simpler than trying to find a time that works for everyone in your group.

As players join, you’re dropped into a space to wait for the others and explore a little. This lobby space is where you’ll learn the game’s controls, too. Big Walk supports keyboard and mouse input as well as a controller, which is what I used, playing on an M4 Max MacBook Pro.

Once you get your bearings, it’s time to exit the lobby and start exploring. That exploration is core to what Big Walk is all about. You aren’t told what to do, but there are just enough clues to push you forward, figuring out the goals on your own without too much trouble.

I played using AirPods Pro 3, and the game made great use of their mics and speakers, simulating the environments we were in. Closed spaces were echoey, and speech was distant and faint when we were separated. Sound even becomes part of the mechanic in some puzzles, such as an early one where you have to look through an open window to hear each other properly and help guide the other player’s actions.

That cooperation is the key part of the game’s loop. You may see how to solve Big Walk’s puzzles on your own, but implementing the solution will require you and a companion to work together.

The togetherness of it all extends beyond the puzzles, too. Big Walk’s environment (at least in the early stages) is mountainous with large rocks and trees that make it possible to get separated from others. Add to that day and night cycles where it’s almost impossible to see where you’re going at night without a light, and you have every incentive not to wander off on your own without a plan for how to reconnect.

I’ve played through Big Walk’s first couple of sections, and it was a blast. The puzzles were clever and challenging without being frustrating, but most of all, I enjoyed working through them with someone else. There’s no time pressure or monsters lurking around corners – just puzzles and a chance to chat.

Ultimately, that’s what makes Big Walk work. It’s a good hang built against the backdrop of a beautiful landscape and low-key, fun challenges. I highly recommend giving it a try.

Big Walk, which supports crossplay and 2–12 players, is available on the Mac App Store for $14.99. The game is also on Steam, the Switch 2, and PS5.

Apple Upgrade Trades Ownership for Lower Monthly Payments

Apple has revealed its new hardware leasing program called Apple Upgrade, which is being offered in collaboration with Klarna. This is Apple’s pitch:

Introducing Apple Upgrade, a new way to always have the Apple products you love. Lease a new iPhone, iPad, Mac, or Apple Watch with pocket-friendly payments and terms that work for you. Then easily upgrade to something new at the end of your lease, and return your current device. It’s that simple.

That pitch comes with a footnote that includes other details worth considering:

  • The program is U.S. only (excluding U.S. territories).
  • You need to be a U.S. resident who is at least 18 years old, or whatever the legal age is where you live.
  • There are eligibility and credit approval requirements and you must have a credit or debit card and an Apple ID.
  • When a device is returned, it must be in good condition or damage fees will be assessed.
  • Upgrades require a new lease subject to whatever eligibility and credit requirements apply at that time.
  • For iPhones, you have to have a carrier and can’t use a prepaid plan.
  • The program isn’t available for refurbished devices or through the Apple Employee Purchase Plan, corporate Employee Purchase Plans, Apple at Work, Government, Education, or Veterans and Military Purchase Programs.

Okay, so maybe it’s not “that simple” after all.

The program is available for the iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch product lines. For the iPhone, monthly payments start at $17.99 for an iPhone 17e and start at $34.99 for an iPhone 17 Pro Max, for leasing periods of either 12 months or 24 months.

For iPads, the starting prices range from $12.99/month to $24.99/month, Macs range from starting prices of $24.99/month to $48.99/month, and the Apple Watch ranges from starting prices of $11.99/month to $47.03/month. But again, these are just starting prices. You can configure a fully loaded 16-inch MacBook Pro that is just under $230/month, and it won’t include AppleCare.

As a point of comparison, under the current program that is being discontinued, I pay $69.50/month for an iPhone 17 Pro Max, but I have a 512GB model, so my lease price for the same phone would be $40.83/month, significantly lower, but keep in mind that doesn’t include AppleCare+, which would add $13.99/month or $139/year for that iPhone. On a monthly basis, that puts a new iPhone 17 Pro Max with 512GB of storage and AppleCare+ at just under $55/month. Still a superior deal, but not nearly as good as the landing page might initially lead you to believe.

At the end of your lease you’ll have six months to decide to return the leased device, during which you’ll continue to make monthly payments, or pay a fee equal to the difference between the original purchase price and your lease payments to buy it outright. Your other option is to enter into a lease for a new device. If you return your leased device in poor condition, Klarna will charge you a damage fee. You can also terminate your lease early if you pay the remaining lease payments in full plus any taxes and fees.

If you lease accessories for your device, those don’t have to be returned. Why? Presumably because they have no value to Apple or Klarna.

Of course, if you have a device to trade in, that monthly figure could be significantly reduced. If I had the iPhone 16 Pro Max I had last year to trade in and leased a 17 Pro Max for 12 months, my monthly payments would be under $1. However, keep in mind that once you’re on the leasing train, you no longer own your iPhone, so future upgrades won’t reduce your payments the next time you swap your device for a new model. If you don’t own it, the value isn’t yours to trade in.

If you’re on the existing iPhone Upgrade Program like me, it’s being discontinued, but Apple has a transition offer for you. The old program spread payments over 24 months with the option to turn in an iPhone for a new one after 12 months. That’s not changing. If you’re paid in full on your first 12 months of an iPhone, you can sign up for the new program, get a new iPhone, and return your old iPhone to Apple, which will close your old account but won’t reduce your lease payments. You’re not obligated to join the new leasing program, though. You can also trade in your old iPhone, ending your finance contract, and buy a new full price iPhone.

As you may have figured out by now, I’m not a fan of this program, though I expect it will be successful.

Apple products, like all consumer electronics, are getting more expensive every day. The monthly payments on a leased device look very attractive compared to the pay-up-front price. For years, car leases have induced people into monthly payments that can become a burden when their financial situation changes. Now the same will be true of iPhones, iPads, Macs, and Apple Watches.

Maybe as a practical matter this program isn’t that different from the old financing program, but at least there, you owned your device at the end and could just keep using it indefinitely. With the new program, that’s not an option. When your lease is over, you’re empty-handed and faced with leasing again, buying out the lease, or buying at full price with no trade-in, which is objectively worse.

Ultimately, Apple isn’t responsible for customers’ bad financial decisions, but this program feels like Apple is putting its customers in harm’s way.

Pastebot 3 Doubles Down on Mac Clipboard Automation and Introduces Two New Business Models

Pastebot's Quick Menu.

Pastebot’s Quick Menu.

Tapbots has released Pastebot 3, a ground-up rewrite of the Mac clipboard manager that includes several powerful automation and customization options, along with two new pricing models.

Pastebot was already one of the Mac’s best clipboard utilities, capable of managing an extensive collection of copied text and images in multiple formats, PDFs, URLs, files, and HTML, along with metadata. The app can handle up to 1,500 clippings and features fast search, extensive customizable keyboard shortcuts, list and detail views of clipboard items, and iCloud sync between multiple Macs.

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Snazzy Labs Puts the Mac’s Upcoming Game Porting Toolkit 4 Through Its Paces→

Over at Snazzy Labs, Quinn Nelson has a great in-depth look at the changes coming to Apple’s Game Porting Toolkit with macOS 27 this fall. Paired with Metal 4, it’s a real leap over what’s possible today, and Nelson showcases the difference well.

Thanks to the upcoming update, Nelson was able to use CrossOver, a Windows-to-Mac compatibility layer that allows PC games to be played on a Mac, to spotlight some impressive numbers on games ranging from Red Dead Redemption to the recently released 007 First Light.

Not all games Nelson tried showed the same leap in performance, but that’s true on compatibility layers like Proton on the Steam Deck, too. What’s remarkable is that it’s all done in software and as Nelson points out, the advent of coding agents like Codex and Claude may help bring more PC games to Mac using the Game Porting Toolkit by reducing the porting costs.

Nelson also makes a pitch for an Apple gaming device. I agree with him that more than ever, the pieces, right down to a hardware-focused incoming CEO, are all there for such a device, and I remain optimistic. However, I’ve made the case for such a device for years now to no avail. Still, whether or not Apple builds gaming hardware itself, watch the full video above. It’s a fantastic view of how far the Mac has come as a potential gaming platform since the advent of Apple silicon.

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Headless Macs and Hamstrung iPads

My Codex setup.

My Codex setup.

In the current era of coding agents becoming productivity assistants, iPadOS’ limitations are no longer defined by the lack of desktop-class multitasking or access to external peripherals. A new class of iPadOS shortcomings looms large on the horizon: the iPad’s app sandboxing and the absence of an open filesystem have relegated it to acting as a remote control for agents.

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Apple Raises Prices Across Most of Its Product Lines

Apple raised the prices of Macs and other products across the board today. For entry-level Macs, the increases are mostly $100–$200. However, if you want a MacBook Pro or Mac Studio with lots of memory and storage, it’s going to cost you dearly. Prices were also raised on the iPad, Vision Pro, Apple TV, HomePods, and many items sold through Apple’s refurbished store.

This should come as no surprise to anyone, but it’s painful just the same. Last week, Tim Cook told The Wall Street Journal that price increases were coming without getting into specifics. Apple was able to hold the line on prices for several months, even while smaller gadget and computer makers raised their prices or canceled products altogether.

What’s happening is simple macroeconomics. Demand for memory and storage is vastly outstripping supply, largely due to the insatiable appetite of data centers that power AI services. That demand shows no signs of waning, and supply isn’t as simple as turning a knob to 11. There just aren’t that many makers of memory chips and SSDs, and bringing new plants online to manufacture takes years and billions of dollars.

For now, the price of iPhones has been left alone. Some may see that as a silver lining, but I suspect all it means is that Apple has enough prebuilt inventory to get to September, when new iPhones are announced. Apple Watch and AirPods prices remain the same, too.

Could Apple have avoided this? I doubt it. The magnitude and speed of the price increases and the projected duration are beyond what any reasonable company could or would plan for.

That said, I do think the situation will get better with time, again because of macroeconomics. The increases may preserve Apple’s margins, but it’s going to reduce the number of customers who can afford its products. Margins only equate to profits if you have customers willing to pay for your product. So with time, if the data center demand slackens or new chip capacity comes online, prices will improve. Just don’t expect that anytime before 2027 or 2028 if current projections are to be believed.

macOS 27 Golden Gate: The MacStories Overview

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

Apple’s crack marketing team has once again put their heads together and come up with another California landmark to use as the namesake for the latest version of macOS. During the WWDC keynote, we were introduced to macOS 27 Golden Gate.

As with all of Apple’s platforms this year, the main features of Golden Gate are Siri AI and new Apple Intelligence capabilities. You can check out our overview of those announcements for all the details, but there are some Mac-specific elements worth digging into here, as well as non-AI enhancements coming to macOS this fall that you’ll want to get excited for. Let’s dive in.

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BenQ’s More Affordable 5K Display Offers Mac Users Greater Flexibility with Some Trade-Offs

Source: BenQ

Source: BenQ

Until last fall, I was the happy owner of a first-generation Studio Display. In most respects, it was great. The screen was crisp, the colors vibrant, and it included many quality-of-life features other displays lack. Features like the Studio Display’s built-in USB-C hub, iSight camera, and array of six speakers and three microphones make it more like a Mac accessory than simply a display.

Those were all tangible upsides, but they came with their own set of tradeoffs, which Apple carried over from my original Studio Display to the updated model released earlier this year. That new model adopts Thunderbolt 5 for two of its ports – one upstream and another downstream – and improves the camera and speakers. However, both Studio Display models lack HDMI, DisplayPort, KVM capabilities for easy switching between multiple connected devices, and screen size choices.

That ultimately drove me to purchase an ASUS gaming monitor that I love. It’s OLED and bigger than the Studio Display, with a higher refresh rate, more input options, and built-in KVM. However, it lacks a webcam, microphones, and speakers, which I miss at times. It’s also 4K, whereas the Studio Display is 5K.

On balance, I’m glad I went the route I did, but it’s led me to think a lot about displays and the trade-offs among them. The good news is that there are many more choices for Mac users than ever before, even if you don’t want to sacrifice the Studio Display’s 5K resolution for more flexibility. That’s why when BenQ offered to send me their 27” 5K MA270S display to try, I jumped at the opportunity: unlike my 32” gamer-oriented ASUS display, BenQ’s display is specifically targeted at Mac users.

Let’s take a look at how it stacks up to the Studio Display and other options.

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Spark Mail Adds a Mac CLI and Agent Skills

About two weeks ago, Spark, the email app by Readdle, was updated with a CLI and a set of agentic skills for Claude Code, Codex, and other agents, allowing them read-only access to messages, calendar events, contacts, and meeting notes. These features were extended again a few days ago with new abilities that added email triage actions and more skills. The approach is clever in its local architecture, which keeps your message data on your Mac while making it available to agents.

CLIs are one of this year’s top app trends, with a wide variety of productivity apps adding them. The reason is simple: agents that work in the Terminal like Claude Code and Codex can use local CLIs, which keeps token usage down because the agent only sees a command’s text output instead of carrying tool schemas with it the way MCP servers do.

Spark works with several agents.

Spark works with several agents.

Spark isn’t the first to create an email CLI. The Google-created, but “not an official product,” googleworkspace CLI interfaces with Gmail and a bunch of other Google services, offering over 100 skills. The difference is that a CLI like googleworkspace contacts Google’s Gmail servers and acts on your messages in the cloud, whereas Spark’s CLI acts as a remote control for the Spark app itself, managing the messages locally on your Mac and then syncing them back to Gmail via the desktop app.

I’ve worked with both the googleworkspace CLI and Spark’s, and Spark’s is by far the easier one to use because you don’t need to set up a Google Cloud project or deal with OAuth. The only drawback is that the Spark app needs to be open for its CLI to work because everything happens on your Mac. However, as a practical matter, that’s not a limitation that has impacted me since my email app is open when I’d want to use Spark’s CLI or skills anyway.

Read-only actions are available for all users. Triage actions require a Pro subscription.

Read-only actions are available for all users. Triage actions require a Pro subscription.

There are two levels to what Spark offers. The read-only CLI and skills are available to all users, whether or not they subscribe to Spark Pro. Those actions include the ability to search and summarize messages, fetch context, read threads, and view your calendar, contacts, and meeting notes. A Pro subscription adds message drafting, replying, snoozing, pinning, labeling, moving, and archiving, along with team commenting. It’s an excellent set of actions that uses syntax similar to Gmail, which means it should be familiar to many long-time Gmail users straight out of the box.

And there’s more. Readdle has also released a set of recipes and personas, which are open-source skills. The recipes include instructions for morning and end-of-day email reviews, reviewing of new senders, catching up on messages after vacation, and more. Personas are more holistic approaches to your inbox that apply to an entire email session and have modes. For example, the Founder persona has Rapid Triage, Aggressive Delegation, and Cross-Team Oversight modes. Other personas include Executive Assistant, Freelancer, and Team Lead. Full details of every recipe and persona are available on Readdle’s GitHub page.

Searching email via the command line.

Searching email via the command line.

I’ve spent time using the read-only actions of Spark’s CLI with Claude Code, and it’s an excellent option for automating your email. Setup is simple and fast, and it works well. I’m not sure personas are for me, but there are a bunch of interesting ideas among the recipes, which I intend to explore more and use to create my own skills.

Spark Mail is available as a free download on the Mac App Store. The CLI’s triage actions are exclusive to users who subscribe to Spark Pro, which costs $20/month or $200/year.