New 'Ultra-Thin' MacBooks Launching in Second Half of 2016 May Sport Metal Injection Mold-Made Hinges

Last November it was reported that Apple was working with suppliers to "fully redesign" many of the MacBook's internal components to achieve a slimmer design. Today,DigiTimes reports one of those redesigns is a move to metal injection mold-made hinges. 


Metal injection molding is a metalworking process that's used to create very small metal pieces that are typically used by Apple for the internals of products like iPhone and Apple Watch. Apple is looking to use the technology for its MacBook hinges to save space and achieve an "ultra-thin" design, according to DigiTimes. 

The new hinges will be supplied by Amphenol, who claims to produce some of the thinnest sliding hinges in the world on its website. The company partners with Microsoft to produce the parts for the hinges on the Microsoft Surface 4. 

While DigiTimes has a mixed track record reporting Apple's future plans, the report does corroborate an earlier report that Apple was working toward a slimmer MacBook, likely scheduled for release after WWDC 2016. However, it's unclear which MacBook lineup these reports are referring to. Apple's refreshed MacBook is expected to include faster Skylake processors and Thunderbolt 3 with USB-C.

Jony Ive Designed a One-of-a-Kind Yellow iPad Pro for Charity

Jony Ive's design team has created a one-of-a-kind 12.9-inch iPad Pro, iPad Pro Smart Cover, and Apple Pencil holder that will be auctioned off as part of a fundraiser for the London Design Museum, reports Wallpaper. 

The iPad Pro has been anodized with a bright yellow dye, making it unique among Apple's standard color lineup of Space Gray, Silver, Gold, and Rose Gold. Compared to the Gold iPad Pro, it's a much brighter, more vibrant shade of yellow. 

Unique and exclusive customised design by the Apple Design Team for Time for Design. 

Jony Ive showed a prototype mobile phone at the Design Museum in 1990, long before he started working for Apple. He was winner of the museum's first 'Designer of the Year' award in 2003 for the iMac. To support the museum, he and his team in Cupertino have designed this special iPad Pro in a unique colour numbered Edition 1 of 1.

Accompanying the yellow iPad Pro is Smart Cover made from a blue French leather and an Apple Pencil ensconced in an orange Italian calf leather case. According to the auction listing, the iPad Pro's back and the Smart Cover are etched with the words "Edition 1 of 1." 

The iPad Pro has an estimated value of GBP10,000 - 15,000, the amount it is expected to fetch at auction. It will be available to bid on starting on April 28. 

Apple has donated specially designed items for charity auctions several times in the past, with Jony Ive creating a red Mac Pro and solid gold EarPods, among other items.

More Evidence Hints At OS X Name Change To ‘MacOS’

Late last month a discovery deep within the OS X 10.11.4 file structure led to speculation that Apple was planning to rename the Mac operating system to fall more in line with the naming conventions applied to its other major software platforms. The “FUFlightViewController_macOS.nib” interface buried in the OS’ Library files hints at the potential for Apple to go down the route of renaming OS X in a future version to “MacOS”. There’s no official word from the company on if that’s actually going to happen, but a recent update to the company’s Environment webpage – which has since been edited – has given us yet another indication that a change is on the cards.

Introducing the Apple Watch and the fourth-generation Apple TV last year meant that Apple had two new operating systems to deal with in addition to iOS and OS X. The advent of those two new products came with the build and release of watchOS and tvOS, both of which fall in line with the iOS naming convention that has been in place for the last six years.

It’s likely that we won’t hear any official word about the future of OS X – both in terms of functionality and its name – until this year’s Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) in June, but the recent discovery in the FAQ section at Apple’s Environment webpage, along with the fact that the company has actually changed the wording back to OS X, has certainly raised speculation levels.

The webpage directly referred to ‘MacOS’ when discussing the power consumption levels of Apple’s products. The wording – prior to being changed back to OS X – was as follows:

To model customer use, we measure the power consumed by a product while it is running in a simulated scenario. Daily usage patterns are specific to each product and are a mixture of actual and modeled customer use data. Years of use, which are based on first owners, are assumed to be four years for MacOS and tvOS devices and three years for iOS and watchOS devices. More information on our product energy use is provided in our Product Environmental Reports.

We aren’t sure when the second change was made, but Apple’s web team has since edited the page’s content to reference the platform as “OS X” rather than “MacOS”. Apple may still want to publicly refer to the its desktop OS as OS X, but we’ve seen enough now to believe that a name change could be coming this June during WWDC where Apple could potentially announce OS X 10.12 with Siri support and the return of the Photos app.

Starting from Tomorrow, You Will Be Able to Play PS4 Games on Your Mac

In early March, Sony had announced that its next major firmware update for the PlayStation 4 will its Remote Play feature to Windows and Mac-based PCs. The feature will allow one to stream and play their PS4 games on their PC without being physically present in front of their console.

Well, the Japanese giant today announced that it will start rolling out this firmware update to all PlayStation 4 users from tomorrow. The firmware has been under beta testing for more than a month now, but the ability to stream games to Mac was missing from it.

Once you install the system software v3.50 update on your PS4 tomorrow, you will have to download and install the Remote Play installer on your Mac as well.

The Remote Play feature in PS4 will work with all Macs running OS X 10.10 or 10.11. Depending on the configuration of your Mac and your internet connection’s bandwidth, you will be able to stream the games in 360p, 540p and 720p resolution; and at up to 60fps. Your DualShock 4 controller need to be connected to your Mac using a USB cable so that it can act as a game controller.

[Via PlayStation blog]