Don’t adjust your Retina display; I’m not Lex Friedman, but this is still The Weekly Wrap. This week, Apple announced a slew of new products for you to spend your hard-earned money on, we took a look at some great new software and hardware, and what week would be complete without us showing you how to do things that you’ve never done before.
Most of all, though, we’re just glad that Apple is now officially cool.
Center stage
Primadonna that Apple is, the company demanded our attention on Tuesday. If, somehow, you missed out on the dynamic duo of Tim Cook and Phil Schiller, you can relive the experience with our live blog.
At the center of the event were, of course, updates to iBooks and iBooks Author. And here I thought that books were called “television” these days—at least that explains the overlooked Final Cut Pro X update the company snuck out.
Okay, I guess, Apple also introduced a couple other things. A new 13-inch MacBook Pro with a Retina display, for example, a totally reimagined iMac, and—delivering on the “little more to show you” theme—a speed-bumped Mac mini. Those last two include some Emmett Brown-style storage devices, too.
And that was it. The end.
… You’re still here? The event’s over. Go home! Fine, okay, there was also a fourth-generation iPad and an iPad mini too. Fortunately, the latter lived up to precisely what two of our finest theoretical minds predicted.
Major league products
The more new products Apple launches, the more information there is for us to bring you. We got our golden lasso around iBooks 3.0, used every gadget on our utility belts to get our hands on the iPad mini, and determined you don’t need to be Superman to carry around the new MacBook Pro (turns out it benefits from flash almost as much as Keystone City.)
Elsewhere, we (man)hunted down all the details on the new iPads, and tried to determine if the iPad mini could hold a candle—or, should I say, a lantern—to competing tablets. And, of course, we convened our own league of heroes to discuss the announcements on the latest Macworld podcast.
That’s why they call it money
In case that wasn’t enough, Apple also made—roughly speaking— a hojillion dollars this week. It wasn’t enough to afford Tim Cook a flying car, but at least it helped out AT&T, and if there’s one thing we can all agree on it’s that AT&T seriously needs some help.
Fellowship of the reviewers
It wasn’t just Apple products on which we turned our unblinking eye this week. Some guy named Lex Friedman says the Libratone Zipp is the one AirPlay speaker to rule them all. Senior editor Roman Loyola recommended the Mac Gem QuickRes, which lets you quickly adjust your Retina display’s resolution from hobbit- to Balrog-size.
MailSteward Pro 9 will prevent your email archives from turning into the mines of Moria, and Letterpress is a great new iOS game that glows blue when in the presence of orcs.
How in the world
Learning about new products is all well and good, but what do you do with them once you have them? We’re here to help you out with their Chris Breen talked of mice and keyboards, and showed you how to conquer the dubious battle of using two accounts at the same time, and explained how to avoid your gripes of wrath when calendar alerts keep launching Mail.
We also showed you how to fix Mac sound issues, misfiring trailer downloads, and over-capacity iOS devices; create cool video titles with Final Cut Pro X; share Reminders with others via iCloud and Mountain Lion; and get transcripts in Messages
Where do we go from here?
All this Apple news encourages some deep thought, so we turned to Michael Gartenberg to find out where Apple goes from here. (Hint: Lex Friedman says it’s in a circle, though I think we’d all prefer if the company didn’t get back to the land before Macs.) Yours truly, though, thinks iOS 6’s Passbook has nowhere to go but up from here.
Round ups
As always, we rounded up the usual suspects: iOS apps that are breaking out like zombies, iPad cases that have gone mini, and iOS accessories that play well with others. We also took a look at the variety of read it later services (bookmark that one for a look some time), and riffed on music-identification apps.
Author: Dan Moren, Contributor
Dan has been writing about all things Apple since 2006, when he first started contributing to the MacUser blog. He's a prolific podcaster and the author of several novels; hist latest is the forthcoming supernatural detective story All Souls Lost.