Pok Pok Playroom arrives ↦

Pok Pok Playroom, the new software toy for young kids (ages two to six) from an eponymous studio spun out of game studio Snowman, has arrived. I’ve had a chance to play with it, as has John V… | Continue reading


@sixcolors.com | 3 years ago

Report: Home app to finally let you set timers on HomePod ↦

9to5Mac’s Filipe Espósito reports that iOS 14.7 will bring a feature long-awaited by me and many other HomePod owners: With this new version of iOS, users will be able to set timers on the Ho… | Continue reading


@sixcolors.com | 3 years ago

(Podcast) Clockwise 399: Especially the British Wolf

Lossless and spatial audio on Apple Music, improved Pixel photography for people of color, Google’s AI dermatology tool, and moving from voice to video calls. | Continue reading


@sixcolors.com | 3 years ago

(Podcast) The Rebound 342: Side Docker

You think you know people, then you find out where they put their Dock. | Continue reading


@sixcolors.com | 3 years ago

Restyling Numbers charts in Affinity Designer

Recoloring Numbers chart bars in Affinity Designer. If you haven’t noticed, I leaned into the name of this site by color-coding all Six Colors charts by Apple product category. iPhones are bl… | Continue reading


@sixcolors.com | 3 years ago

2021 iPad Pro review: All systems go, but where?

It’s probably safe to say that the iPad Pro is a product in transition. Sales of iPads have returned to the heights of its heady early days, and the low-end iPad and the mid-range iPad Air re… | Continue reading


@sixcolors.com | 3 years ago

Bloomberg: New Macs featuring better chips may debut as early as summer ↦

Mark Gurman’s latest piece at Bloomberg lays down a pretty thorough look at what is likely coming down Apple’s Mac pipeline: Redesigned MacBook Pros are expected to debut as soon as ear… | Continue reading


@sixcolors.com | 3 years ago

(Podcast) Upgrade 353: Orange iMac in My Orange Office

Jason’s been using an orange 24-inch iMac for the last week and we’ve got his review. Also, Apple Music goes for high quality and spatial audio, WarnerMedia is on the move again, and Je… | Continue reading


@sixcolors.com | 3 years ago

24-inch M1 iMac review: She’s a rainbow

The original Bondi Blue iMac was a computer designed to draw attention, in an era where ugly beige-box PCs were designed to fade into the background as much as possible. And for a few years, the or… | Continue reading


@sixcolors.com | 3 years ago

Apple’s troubling relationship with China ↦

Lengthy article in the New York Times by Jack Nicas, Raymond Zhong and Daisuke Wakabayashi about Apple’s relationship with the Chinese government: Behind the scenes, Apple has constructed a b… | Continue reading


@sixcolors.com | 3 years ago

Apple Music adding Spatial Audio, Lossless at no extra cost in June

As expected, Apple has announced that it will be upgrading its Apple Music streaming service with better audio quality. The improvements comes in two forms: Spatial Audio with Support for Dolby Atm… | Continue reading


@sixcolors.com | 3 years ago

High-quality Apple Music announcement imminent? ↦

Benjamin Mayo at 9to5Mac: Apple Music has started teasing a special announcement coming soon, on the main Browse tab in the Music application. The teaser comes as Apple is rumored to announce a new… | Continue reading


@sixcolors.com | 3 years ago

The state of my Apple hardware (Member Post)

I’m used to having an Apple product to covet. It’s a little weird right now, having just been through an Apple event, and having WWDC around the corner that there’s nothing that I… | Continue reading


@sixcolors.com | 3 years ago

6C Podcast: May 14, 2021

Broadband in America, and hiring Bob From Down The Hall. | Continue reading


@sixcolors.com | 3 years ago

(Podcast) The Rebound 341: Coming Soon in June

Special appearance by Lex Friedman. | Continue reading


@sixcolors.com | 3 years ago

(Podcast) Clockwise 398: A Dongle Don’t Do It

How we deal with spam calls and texts, whether we’ll be subscribing to Apple TV+, the dongles we do and don’t use, and our thoughts on tech recycling and ecology. | Continue reading


@sixcolors.com | 3 years ago

How Apple’s new MacBook can avoid the same old mistakes (Macworld/Jason Snell)

The Apple rumor mill has been churning lately with reports that Apple is readying a new consumer laptop that’s thinner than the MacBook Air, available in various colors, and possibly has the next g… | Continue reading


@sixcolors.com | 3 years ago

New smart-home tech alliance is ‘Matter’ ↦

Stephen Shankland of CNET reports that the CHIP smart-home alliance announced back in December 2019 by Apple, Google, Amazon, and others, has a new name and is going to start rolling out publicly l… | Continue reading


@sixcolors.com | 3 years ago

Snowman introduces Pok Pok ↦

John Voorhees of MacStories has the details about Snowman’s big announcement: Today, Snowman, the studio behind some of our favorite games on Apple platforms like Alto’s Adventure and Odyssey… | Continue reading


@sixcolors.com | 3 years ago

(Podcast) Upgrade 352: Living Inside an Orange

This week Myke and Jason debate the form of future Mac laptops, discuss Apple and Epic’s first week in court (complete with angry emails!), and then imagine what’s next for iOS and iPad… | Continue reading


@sixcolors.com | 3 years ago

The good times may stop rolling as Apple faces tough questions (Macworld/Dan Moren)

With a blockbuster quarter in its rear-view mirror, Apple seems like it’s sitting pretty right now. But the problem with results as astounding as those Apple recently posted is that it can be chall… | Continue reading


@sixcolors.com | 3 years ago

Kobo Libra H2O: Liberated from Amazon?

The Kobo Libra H2O is $100 less than the similar Kindle Oasis. This past year I’ve been spending more time reading books on a Kobo ereader, rather than on my Kindle. The Kobo, a 2016-vintage … | Continue reading


@sixcolors.com | 3 years ago

6C Podcast: May 7, 2021

Apple spent the week in court while we all wait for the iMac and iPad Pro to arrive. | Continue reading


@sixcolors.com | 3 years ago

Good night, sweet hedgehog ↦

When I started Six Colors in 2014, one of the first tools that I adopted was Nuzzel. Nuzzel looked at my Twitter feed, and even my Twitter lists, as well as the feeds of other people, and turned th… | Continue reading


@sixcolors.com | 3 years ago

Why isn’t Apple Podcasts showing you the latest podcasts?

ATP Episode 429 is out… everywhere but in Apple Podcasts. I’m getting a lot of tweets and emails saying the same thing: the latest episode of (some podcast I’m involved with) hasn… | Continue reading


@sixcolors.com | 3 years ago

Overwhelming majority of public comments for FCC net neutrality debate were fake ↦

Protocol’s Issie Lapowsky summarizes the findings of an investigation into the public comments during the net neutrality debate before the FCC in 2017: In a new report, New York Attorney Gene… | Continue reading


@sixcolors.com | 3 years ago

(Podcast) The Rebound 340: Mark Suckerberg

Courtroom drama’s more fun with no actual lawyers. | Continue reading


@sixcolors.com | 3 years ago

(Podcast) Clockwise 397: Stewing in Bitterness

How we feel about sideloading apps on our iOS devices, thoughts on AirTags and privacy, the importance of email to our daily workflow, and what software changes the iPad desperately needs to match … | Continue reading


@sixcolors.com | 3 years ago

What could Apple give up to put off greater legal threats? (Macworld/Jason Snell)

Apple does what it wants to do, and nothing else. At least, that’s the company’s preference…but sometimes courts and laws and governments get in the way. And at the moment, as some Apple executives… | Continue reading


@sixcolors.com | 3 years ago

All hail consumer hardware (Member Post)

Three years ago, I wrote about how far Apple has strayed from its once-iconic Grid of Four product strategy: To quickly recap, this is what Jobs and company came up with after his return to Apple a… | Continue reading


@sixcolors.com | 3 years ago

‘LaserWriter II: A Novel’ ↦

MCD x FSG books, promoting the debut novel of New York Times and New Yorker illustrator Tamara Shopsin: LaserWriter II is a coming-of-age tale set in the legendary 90s indie NYC Mac repair shop Tek… | Continue reading


@sixcolors.com | 3 years ago

(Podcast) Upgrade 351: Long Hair Is In, Disco Is Back

This week we cover Apple’s record-breaking product sales, as well as the clouds on the horizon–a global semiconductor shortage, the EU’s ruling against it, and the arrival of the … | Continue reading


@sixcolors.com | 3 years ago

Quick Tip: High quality Mac icons are coming from inside your Mac!

Over in the Six Colors Member Slack1, reader Matthew wondered: Does anyone know where I can get a decent icon file of a MacBook Air (Space Grey)? I want to replace the hard disk icon of Macintosh H… | Continue reading


@sixcolors.com | 3 years ago

Money talks: Apple’s quarterly report is filled with clues about what’s coming next (Macworld/Dan Moren)

Every three months, financial analysts and journalists tune in to hear Apple report its quarterly results with the hopes that maybe, just maybe, they can find some wheat among the chaff, some gold … | Continue reading


@sixcolors.com | 3 years ago

Is a higher-quality Apple Music tier on the way? ↦

Music industry site Hits Daily Double reported Thursday that Apple Music is going hi-fi: Apple will announce a new high-fidelity audio streaming tier in the coming weeks at the same $9.99-per-user … | Continue reading


@sixcolors.com | 3 years ago

The Back Page: Color me impressed (Member Post)

Colors have returned! The sleek new 24-inch iMac brings a design awash in six different colors, evoking the classic fruit flavors of the iMac G3. For a company that has spent the last decade mainly… | Continue reading


@sixcolors.com | 3 years ago

6C Podcast: April 30, 2021

It’s 2021 and Apple’s rules are… flexible. | Continue reading


@sixcolors.com | 3 years ago

SuperDuper can now make bootable Big Sur backups ↦

Dave Nanian of Shirt Pocket Software announcing that SuperDuper can now make bootable backups of Big Sur Macs, including on Apple silicon: To be clear, this is only possible because Apple made it p… | Continue reading


@sixcolors.com | 3 years ago

VMWare: Fusion on Apple silicon coming, Windows TBD ↦

Michael Roy, Product Line Manager at VMWare, provides a status report on VMWare Fusion running on Macs with Apple silicon: Of course, users are expecting to run Windows in a virtual machine, much l… | Continue reading


@sixcolors.com | 3 years ago

‘Not cast in concrete’: Apple moving with the (regulatory) times

(Photo by Brooks Kraft/Apple Inc.) I got most of my thoughts about Apple’s financial results and comments on its quarterly call with analysts in my Macworld column this week, but having slept… | Continue reading


@sixcolors.com | 3 years ago

The 2021 iPad Pro will work with the old iPad Pro Magic Keyboard ↦

Last week we linked to a report that there’s a new Magic Keyboard model for 12.9-inch iPad Pros that adds compatibility with the new, 5th generation (2021) model. The implication was that it … | Continue reading


@sixcolors.com | 3 years ago

How the heck did Apple make so much money last quarter? (Macworld/Jason Snell)

The last few years, Apple has been on such a ride that it can be hard to put it into proper context. Almost every quarter sets a business record. And yet this quarter, covering the first three mont… | Continue reading


@sixcolors.com | 3 years ago

(Podcast) The Rebound 339: I’m Not Great At Math

We ask questions and answer questions. Just not necessarily the same ones. | Continue reading


@sixcolors.com | 3 years ago

This is Tim: Transcript of Apple’s Q2 2021 analyst call

Immediately after announcing record second-quarter results, Apple CEO Tim Cook and CFO Luca Maestri hopped on a conference call to make statements and then answer (or dodge) the questions of financ… | Continue reading


@sixcolors.com | 3 years ago

(Podcast) Clockwise 396: Fiddlier & Fiddlier

Encouraging others to update software, the fiddly nature of macOS, our keyboard preferences, and what we do when we’re faced with poor internet connectivity. | Continue reading


@sixcolors.com | 3 years ago

Apple’s record second quarter in charts

On Wednesday Apple announced the results of its fiscal second quarter of 2021 and the numbers are staggering. It’s Apple’s best non-holiday quarter ever, with all its major product cate… | Continue reading


@sixcolors.com | 3 years ago

Speculation about the future of Apple silicon

One of the most exhilarating things about the current state of the Mac is that we don’t know what’s coming next. Most of Apple’s time is spent in interation, punctuated by big lea… | Continue reading


@sixcolors.com | 3 years ago

Report: The next M-series chip is in production ↦

Cheng Ting-Fang and Lauly Li, reporting for Nikkei Asia, say that production of the successor to the M1 is gearing up: The next generation of Mac processors designed by Apple entered mass productio… | Continue reading


@sixcolors.com | 3 years ago