Month: November 2020

Enlarge / Big Sur's default wallpaper is bright and abstract and frankly kind of iOS-esque. (credit: Apple)

The era of Mac OS X is over. Kind of.

For the first time in almost two decades, Apple has decided to bump up the version number of the Mac’s operating system. The change is meant to call attention to both the pending Apple Silicon transition—Big Sur will be the first macOS version to run on Apple’s own chips, even if it’s not the first to require those chips—and to an iPad-flavored redesign that significantly overhauls the look, feel, and sound of the operating system for the first time in a long while. Even the post-iOS-7 Yosemite update took pains to keep most things in the same place as it changed their look.

But unlike the jump from Mac OS 9 to Mac OS X, where Apple swept away almost every aspect of its previous operating system and built a new one from the foundation up, macOS 11 is still fundamentally macOS 10. Early betas were even labeled as macOS 10.16, and Big Sur can still identify itself as version 10.16 to some older software in order to preserve compatibility. Almost everything will still work the same way—or, at least, Big Sur doesn’t break most software any more than older macOS 10 updates did. It may even be a bit less disruptive than Catalina was. This ought to be a smooth transition, most of the time.

Enlarge (credit: Ars Technica)

We're inching closer to Black Friday, but today's Dealmaster has a few good deals for those in need of new tech in the meantime.

Our roundup includes Apple's latest-generation iPad for $299, which is a $30 discount from Apple's MSRP for a tablet we still consider commendable for casual users. Beyond that, one of Fitbit's newest fitness trackers, the Charge 4, is down to a new low of $100, while Apple's AirPods Pro are still available for their all-time low of $194. We have discounts on recommended Bluetooth speakers, USB-C chargers, and games as well, plus half off a year of NBC's new Peacock service and a good price on an Instant Pot.

You can take a look at the full rundown below.

Enlarge / Popular "is it me?" site DownDetector displays a massive spike of user reports of YouTube outages. The site itself (and associated apps) remained functional, but videos did not play successfully during the outage. (credit: Jim Salter)

Last night between 7:10pm and 9:13pm Eastern Time, YouTube was unavailable to its users. The outage does not appear to have been limited to any particular market or region. YouTube's team acknowledged the issue within 10 minutes or so of the spike on DownDetector, and YouTubeTV chimed in an hour later to acknowledge that the unexplained issue brought it down as well.

Just over two hours after the initial spike of user reports, Team YouTube assured users that the service was back online, though with no explanation whatsoever about what went wrong or how the problem had been fixed—either on its Twitter accounts or in the support thread it opened to keep users apprised of the outage status. This is an unfortunate contrast to other massive services, which tend to provide fairly detailed explanations in short order during similar outages.

Although YouTube is owned by Google, the service isn't included in the Google Cloud Dashboard or G Suite Dashboard—both of which report significant technical detail about engineering issues as they occur, and neither of which reported any significant problems last night. When reached for comment, YouTube representatives so far are not providing any further details and simply refer any inquiries to the tweets linked above.

Enlarge / A Fortnite loading screen displayed on an iPhone in 2018, when Apple and Epic weren't at each other's legal throats. (credit: Andrew Harrer | Bloomberg | Getty Images)

US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers this week threw out two Apple counterclaims stemming from the company's antitrust/breach-of-contract court battle with Epic Games over the fate of Fortnite on iOS.

The underlying court case, as regular readers know, stems from Epic's August attempt to get around Apple's standard 30% fee on microtransactions by adding an "Epic Direct Payments" option to Fortnite on iOS. Apple considered this a breach of Epic's development contract and barred the game from the iOS App Store as a result, leading Epic to immediately sue Apple for "anti-competitive conduct."

This week's ruling, however, deals with counterclaims filed by Apple in response to that lawsuit. In those counterclaims, Apple argued that the introduction of Epic Direct Payments (which are still available in the iOS version of the game, for people who downloaded it before the App Store removal) amounted to "intentional interference" with Apple's legitimate business. The company also sought extra punitive damages for what it considers "little more than theft" of the 30-percent commission that it is rightfully owed.