The new Mac Mini is up to five times faster

Now that the Air’s got shiny new update, it’s time for the other major neglected entry in the Mac line. As Tim Cook noted on stage, the company’s got another “small” addition to the line. The pint sized desktop is getting it’s “biggest updated, ever, according to the company.

The footprint is the same familiar squircle design that’s defined the line since the begin, but now with the space gray finish found on the rest of the line. The biggest changes, however, are on the inside. The new device features the latest generation six core processor, up to 64GB of RAM and up to 2TB of solid state storage.

On the back of the device, you’ll find four Thunderbolt 3, an HDMI and USB-A ports. Like the new Air, the updated Mini is made from 100 percent recycled aluminum. The entry level version features 8GB of RAM and starts at $799. Pre-orders for the diminutive desktop starts today, and it starts shipping on November 7.

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Long-awaited brand-new MacBook Air finally gets retina display and Touch ID

MacBook Air fans aren’t hard to find. Although I admit to being a bit skeptical at its introduction, the laptop grew from an underpowered runt to an underappreciated workhorse over the years. But the design has hardly changed in the decade (!) since it came out — at least until today’s Apple event, when the company took the wraps off a totally redesigned Air with a retina display and Touch ID — and a new $1,199 price.

“When Steve pulled that MacBook Air out of that envelope, it was clear things would never be the same,” recalled CEO Tim Cook in his introduction. “MacBook Air truly embraced the notion that less indeed could be more. And it redefined the modern notebook in the process. MacBook Air has become the most beloved notebook ever. it’s time for a new MacBook Air, one that takes the MacBook Air experience even further in the areas that are most important to our customers.” (Yes, he said the product name five times in a row like that.)

The new Air is clearly meant for budget buyers who have been put off by the 12″ MacBook, which although popular, isn’t without its flaws, and it ain’t cheap, either. For anyone looking to spend less than a grand on a new Mac notebook, the Air is their best (and practically only) bet.

Although the old Air was updated as late as last year with new specs, the display has always been an obvious deficiency. 1440×900 was nothing to crow about even in 2008, let alone nearly a decade later. That’s been fixed with a new high-resolution 13.30-inch screen: inches and 2560×1600. (And “48 percent more color,” whatever that means.)

Of course the guts to support that display, and the tasks you’ll be doing on it, needed a serious bump too. So the new Air has an 8th-generation Intel processor, presumably with integrated graphics. It’s probably enough to play Fortnite, which is all that matters.

As for the design, it really is hard to improve on the original; its knifelike profile was nothing short of astonishing at its debut, and it’s stayed more or less the same since, with a solid keyboard and (regrettably) a rather prominent bezel. The bezel is gone, at least, replaced with a thinner black one. There goes the signature Air look, but you won’t see anyone crying about that.

At least it’s still aluminum, and all recycled aluminum now too, Apple explained with pride. Helps make it more sustainable.

The trackpad is the new force touch version, meaning no actual movement when you click, which is a mixed blessing. It’s quite a bit larger, at least, while the laptop itself is a bit smaller and lighter.

The addition of Touch ID and the secure enclave that runs it is welcome, of course, and it’s doubtful many will miss the Touch Bar, which so far hasn’t demonstrated any serious utility outside a few specialty apps and workflows. You have the F-keys instead, which is a good choice.

Unfortunately, Apple has also decided to change the keyboard. While the old Air used a tried and true scissor switch, and my 2012 model still types like a dream, the new model uses the much-criticized “butterfly switch” mechanism. This keyboard has proven to be one of Apple’s worst engineering mistakes in years, with many complaining of noise, key failures, and discomfort. Air lovers may find this extremely disappointing.

The MBA’s variety of ports, including USB-A and an SD card reader, are of course gone, replaced by the now-standard USB-C. While I realize this is the future, it’s still a little sad to lose those legacy ports, which are still incredibly useful.

I’ll be holding onto my late-model MacBook Air, myself, but I understand the draw of this new one. It starts at $1,199 — apparently they couldn’t quite hit that $999 sweet spot — and should be available next week.

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There are now 100 million Macs in use

During its press event in Brooklyn, Apple CEO Tim Cook shared some numbers on the Mac in particular. The active install base of all Macs is currently 100 million.

“People love the Mac and they use it to create all kinds of amazing things every day,” Cook said.

Obviously this number is much smaller than the iPhone install base, but it’s also a smaller market overall. More important than the number of active Macs, Apple is still converting a lot of new users to the Mac.

51 percent of Mac customers are new users overall. And in China in particular, 76 percent of buyers are buying a Mac for the first time.

Cook didn’t say how many Mac people are buying a Windows computer because Apple has been really slow when it comes to Mac updates. Maybe it’ll change today.

“Of course, one of the drivers for Mac's high customer satisfaction is macOS,” Cook said before recapping some of the new features in macOS Mojave. PC makers have stepped up their game. It’s clear that macOS remains the best thing in the Mac.

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Live from Apple’s iPad event

In the words of three of our greatest philosophers, “no sleep ’til Brooklyn.” That goes double for all of you West Coasters, because today’s Apple event is kicking off bright and early at 10AM ET/7AM PT. It’s been just over a month since the last big Apple hardware event, but it seems the company still has plenty to announce ahead of the holidays.

Expect today’s big event at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Howard Gilman Opera House to focus primarily on all things iPad and Mac. Here’s a quick breakdown of all of the things we expect to see. Of course, this being an Apple event, there’s sure to be plenty of surprises as well. As ever, we’ll be on-site, bringing you the news as it breaks.

We’ll also be liveblogging the event right here on this very page. Stay tuned to this spot to see everything Apple has up its sleeve (or watch the live stream).

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How to watch the live stream for Apple’s iPad and Mac keynote

Apple is holding a keynote today at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Howard Gilman Opera House, and the company is expected to unveil a brand new iPad Pro as well as updated Mac computers. The event starts at 10 AM in New York (7 AM in San Francisco, 2 PM in London, 3 PM in Paris), you’ll be able to watch the event as the company is streaming it live.

If you live in Europe and already put a note in your calendar, make sure you got the time right as daylight saving time has yet to happen in the U.S. New York is currently 4 hours behind London, 5 hours behind Paris, etc.

Apple is likely to unveil a new iPad Pro to replace the 10.5-inch and 12.9-inch iPad Pro. Rumor has it that it’ll look nothing like your current iPad. The device should get rounded corners, thinner bezels and a Face ID sensor. Apple could also switch to USB-C instead of Lightning and refresh the Apple Pencil.

On the Mac front, the MacBook Air could get a refresh. This could be Apple’s new entry-level laptop. But it should sport a retina display for the first time. There could also be a new Mac Mini of some sort after all those years without an update.

Finally, maybe Apple will tell us why the AirPower charging mat is still not available. Apple might also update the AirPods. But maybe it’ll happen later.

If you have a recent Apple TV, you can download the Apple Events app in the App Store. It lets you stream today’s event and rewatch old events. Users with pre-App Store Apple TVs can simply turn on their devices. Apple is pushing out the “Apple Events” channel so that you can watch the event.

And if you don’t have an Apple TV, the company also lets you live-stream the event from the Apple Events section on its website. This video feed now works in all major browsers — Safari, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft Edge.

So to recap, here’s how you can watch today’s Apple event:

• On iOS: Safari.
• On the Mac: Safari, Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox.
• On Windows: Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox or Microsoft Edge.
• An Apple TV with the Apple Events app in the App Store.

Of course, you also can read TechCrunch’s live blog if you’re stuck at work and really need our entertaining commentary track to help you get through your day. We have a big team in the room this year.

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Civil servant who watched porn at work blamed for infecting a US government network with malware

A U.S. government network was infected with malware thanks to one employee’s “extensive history” of watching porn on his work computer, investigators have found.

The audit, carried out by the U.S. Department of the Interior’s inspector general, found that a U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) network at the EROS Center, a satellite imaging facility in South Dakota, was infected after an unnamed employee visited thousands of porn pages that contained malware, which downloaded to his laptop and “exploited the USGS’ network.” Investigators found that many of the porn images were “subsequently saved to an unauthorized USB device and personal Android cell phone,” which was connected to the employee’s government-issued computer.

Investigators found that his Android cell phone “was also infected with malware.”

The findings were made public in a report earlier this month but buried on the U.S. government’s oversight website and went largely unreported.

It’s bad enough in this day and age that a government watchdog has to remind civil servants to not watch porn at work — let alone on their work laptop. The inspector general didn’t say what the employee’s fate was, but ripped into the Department of the Interior’s policies for letting him get that far in the first place.

“We identified two vulnerabilities in the USGS’ IT security posture: web-site access and open USB ports,” the report said.

There is a (slightly) bright side. The EROS Center, which monitors and archives images of the planet’s land surface, doesn’t operate any classified networks, a spokesperson for Interior’s inspector general told TechCrunch in an email, ruling out any significant harm to national security. But the spokesperson wouldn’t say what kind of malware used — only that, “the malware helps enable data exfiltration and is also associated with ransomware attacks.”

Investigators recommended that USGS enforce a “strong blacklist policy” of known unauthorized websites and “regularly monitor employee web usage history.”

The report also said the agency should lock down its USB drive policy, restricting employees from using removable media on government devices, but it’s not known if the recommendations have yet gone into place. USGS did not return a request for comment.

Smart home tech makers don’t want to say if the feds come for your data

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At long last, pet portraits with background blur are possible on the iPhone XR

The new iPhones have some great new photography features, but the XR lacks a couple, for instance portrait mode for non-people subjects, owing to its sadly having only the one camera. So last year! Fortunately third-party camera app Halide is here to help you get that professional-looking bokeh in your doggo shots.

There’s more to this than simply the lack of a second camera. As you know, because you read my article, The future of photography is code — and the present too, really. What’s great about this is that features that might otherwise rely on specific hardware, a chip or sensor, can often be added in software. Not always, but sometimes.

The future of photography is code

In the case of the iPhone XR, the lack of a second camera means depth data is very limited, meaning the slack has to be taken up with code. The problem was that Apple’s machine learning systems on there are only trained to recognize and create high-quality depth maps of people. Not dogs, cats, plants or toy robots.

People would be frustrated if the artificial background blur inexplicably got way worse when it was pointed at something that wasn’t a person, so the effect just doesn’t trigger unless someone’s in the shot.

The Halide team, not bound by Apple’s qualms, added the capability back in by essentially taking the raw depth data produced by the XR’s “focus pixels” and applying their own processing and blur effect to make sure it doesn’t do weird things. It works on anything that can realistically be separated from the background — pets, toy robots, etc. — because it isn’t a system specific to human faces.

As they write in a blog post explaining some of this at length, the effect isn’t perfect, and because of how depth data is sent from the camera to the OS, you can’t preview the function. But it’s better than nothing at all, and maybe people on Instagram will think you shelled out for the XS instead of the XR (though you probably made the right choice).

The update (1.11) is awaiting Apple approval and should be available soon. If you don’t already own Halide, it costs $6. Small price to pay for a velvety background blur in your chinchilla pics.

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