Apple.

Apple reached two trillion dollars in valuation this week. The company is the first U.S. company to achieve this feat; and it achieved this, doubling its one trillion dollars in valuation in just two years.

Honestly, I don’t know a lot about what this means other than the fact that Apple has a metric ton of money.

Yet, the company continues to strong-arm developers and the like into following their “30% cut” of generated revenue from developer apps in their App Store. As a developer that has never developed an iOS app, I’m really not sure how I feel about this, as I’ve never developed anything where Apple had to take a 30% cut of the revenue simply for having the app available for iPhones and iPads.

As consumers we are stuck in a tricky place; Apple charges an exorbitant prices for their hardware and dings developers 30% of their revenue from the apps that are distributed through the Apple app store. Kinda sucky. At the same time, Google offers the Android ecosystem with their Android phones, but vacuum every scrap of data they can from the consumer and use the data to sell ads and share the information with god know who on the other end, disrupting any shred of privacy a user may expect.

Honestly, as consumers we have no great choice. Spend an unreasonable amount of money or whore out our privacy to god knows who.

This is not how technology was suppose to evolve. Devices were suppose to get cheaper and we weren’t suppose to give up our privacy. Why does a company need a two trillion dollar valuation? What purpose does that serve?

So I went ahead and installed Mac OS Big Sur on my mid-2015, 15-inch MacBook Pro. I’ve been messing around with it a bit here and there and while the new UI elements taking some getting used to, it feels more stable than I thought it would. I’m also surprised at the responsiveness, this beta version is running faster than the latest production version on Mac OS Catalina.

I’ve run across a couple of bugs here and there; the label for my clock widget says “City” instead of “Chicago” and the weather widget keeps defaulting back to Cupertino. I was able to reproduce an issue another blogger is seeing, but otherwise it’s a new coat of paint on the status quo. While users will instantly notice the new look and feel, they should still feel comfortable and confident when Big Sur is realized in the Fall.

I sold the Mac Mini I was using as a “BYOD”, or “Bring Your Own Device”, machine at work. Work has completely gone down the Microsoft path and have done their best to lock non-Windows machines out of the network. While my work as a developer that uses Linux (or other Unix platforms) all day long is still entrenched in a decidedly non-Windows environment, the work desktop team feels everyone in the company should be using Windows laptops. So I make do. I can deal and it’ll be nice to use the money from the sale of the Mac mini toward my next computer. I’m trying to decide if I want to try the full-time Linux leap or just embrace this aging MacBook Pro and iPad Pro combo I currently have going on.

Oh well, there’s no need to rush while everything is working just fine.

In the meanwhile, I’ll see what other bugs in Big Sur I can find and provide feedback to Apple. If you’re not filling out bug reports, you’re doing the whole “beta software” thing wrong.

Everyone can relax, I have my MacBook Pro back in my possession. While Earl and I were out for lunch I received a voicemail from the local Apple store and they said I could c’mon down and pick up my repaired MacBook Pro whenever I was ready to do so, but I had to do it within a week.

We were there within the hour.

For those just catching up with the story, my mid-2015 15-inch MacBook Pro was part of the recent battery recall due to fire and explosion concerns. Some airlines were not allowing this model on flights (though my MBP has flown thousands of miles over the years). I took advantage of the recall and Apple told me it would be two weeks to get it repaired.

My computer was repaired in one week, and that was including Labor Day occurring in the mix.

The computer is over four years old, so the battery was getting rather aged. When I was chatting with the Apple Genius during the intake process, they told me a new battery might make things run faster on my computer, and I can tell you, that is absolutely true. Since getting the computer back interactions are much more responsive. My computer feels new again.

All of the work was fully covered under the recall program.

While my MBP was in the shop I was using my iPad Pro as my full-time computer. I mentioned earlier this week that it was a 100% one-for-one experience and I still maintain that feeling to absolutely be the case. While my iPad Pro is great for most things, it’s not great for all things. There are times where I just want a full-sized keyboard and a full web-browser experience. While the upcoming iPadOS 13 (which I’m running on my iPad Pro) promises a full Safari experience, there was something still just ‘off’ for me. I don’t know if it’s the smaller screen or the reduced keyboard on the Smart Folio or just the way of interacting with the computer itself, but I don’t feel like I’m ready to move to an iPad Pro for 100% of my computing needs.

Suffice it to say I’m really happy to have my MacBook Pro back. Because I bought a fully-tricked out version of what was available back in 2015, I’m confident I can still squeeze a few more years out of this laptop. It still may be my last laptop, and I’m still going to see what I can do with my iPad Pro to move to it 100% someday, but …

I’m happy to have my Mac back.

Apple announced some changes to their iPad lineup today and I’m just thrilled! I’m still reading up on the announcement, but the iPad Air and the iPad Mini have both been refreshed with the latest Apple processor and Apple Pencil support. What wonderful news!

I truly believe the tablet will be the computing device of choice in the future, so seeing the “lower end” iPads get refreshed by Apple helps build that momentum to the future I’m envisioning.

I’m especially excited about the new iPad Mini with Apple Pencil support. Before my iPad Pro 10 (with Pencil support), the iPad Mini was always my tablet of choice for when I was flying. It ran my preferred Electronic Flight Bag (EFB) ForeFlight beautifully, even though the iPad Mini 4 was starting to fall behind in horsepower for that particular use. Using the iPad Pro 10 and an Apple Pencil in the cockpit has been wonderful, as ForeFlight has grown in leaps and bounds over the past couple of years and features beautiful functionality with the Apple Pencil, but the iPad Pro 10 is slightly too big for the airplanes I fly (primarily the Piper Cherokee series, Cessna 172s, and now the Diamond Sky DA-40). It works and works well, it just feels like it takes up a little too much space. Having an option to go back to the smaller iPad Mini is wonderful news.

I’m happy to see that Apple made this iPad announcement today, so they can focus on their new services offerings and their big announcement next Monday on 3/25.

You know I’ll be watching the keynote.