Back to the Mac 006 - Five things I'm looking forward to in 2018 [9to5Mac]

**The Exciting World of Mac Computing: What to Expect in 2018**

This year promises to be an exciting one for fans of Apple's Mac lineup, with several developments on the horizon that are sure to excite. One of the most anticipated features is the upcoming ultra-wide display from LG, which boasts a resolution of 50-120 by 2160 pixels. This larger-than-usual display offers a wider viewing experience compared to traditional 5K displays like the iMac or LG's Ultra Fine Display. For users who work extensively with timelines on Final Cut Pro 10 or Logic Pro 10, this could be a game-changer, as it provides ample space for horizontal timelines without sacrificing resolution.

The LG ultra-wide display is indeed an attractive option for those seeking a wider viewing experience. However, previous attempts by LG to deliver a high-quality 5K Ultra Fine Display were met with disappointment, citing issues such as image retention and build quality problems. While these concerns have been largely addressed in newer models, it's still uncertain how the 34" W295 will perform. Nevertheless, the prospect of an ultra-wide display with Retina resolution is undeniably appealing, especially for creative professionals who require a generous workspace.

Another development that has generated significant buzz among Mac enthusiasts is improved GPU support. For years, external GPUs (eGPUs) have been a topic of interest among gamers and content creators, but their integration into Mac OS has been limited. Fortunately, the latest beta releases have seen noticeable improvements in stability and hot-swap ability, with some cards even recognized by name like the Vega 64 or RX 580. However, there are still several underlying issues that need to be addressed before this technology can reach its full potential.

One of the most significant challenges facing eGPU enthusiasts is internal display support – being able to drive the internal display of their MacBook or iMac using an external GPU. Currently, this feature is only available on Windows machines, a limitation that Apple has yet to address. While it's unclear when, if ever, this functionality will be added to Mac OS, it would significantly enhance the eGPU experience.

The 2018 MacBook Refresh: A New Low-Cost Option?

Rumors have been circulating about a new low-cost MacBook model, potentially replacing or complementing the existing MacBook Air. If true, this new device would boast a Retina display at an attractive price point – potentially under $1,000. This development has significant implications for Apple's product lineup and pricing strategy. By offering a more affordable option with improved specs, Apple could simplify its Mac offerings and attract a broader audience of students and professionals who don't require the highest-end hardware.

The prospect of unifying the existing MacBook Air and 12-inch MacBook lines is also an exciting possibility. A single, lower-cost model with a Retina display would provide a more streamlined product lineup and cater to those who want a high-quality laptop without breaking the bank. With its reputation for innovation and customer loyalty, Apple has consistently demonstrated its ability to adapt to changing market demands while maintaining its commitment to quality.

**Looking Ahead: What's Next for Mac Computing?**

As 2018 unfolds, we can expect significant developments in Mac computing. From improved GPU support to a new low-cost MacBook model, these changes promise to enhance the user experience and expand the possibilities of what can be achieved with Apple hardware. Whether you're a professional content creator or simply looking for an affordable laptop, there's never been a better time to explore the world of Mac computing.

By staying informed about the latest developments in the Mac ecosystem, you'll be well-equipped to make the most of your Apple devices and stay ahead of the curve in an ever-evolving tech landscape. Whether you're a seasoned Mac user or just starting out, there's always something new to look forward to in the world of Apple computing.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhow's it going ladies and gentlemen boys and girls this is Jeff Benjamin with a 9 to 5 Mac welcome to episode number 6 of back to the Mac oh this week's episode I talk about 5 Mac related things that I am looking forward to in 2018 now before we start that I just want to preface this episode by saying some things have changed I've been taking a lot of your feedback and trying to apply that I'll be it slowly but have been trying to apply that in a way that brings noticeable changes and results to this video series so I've tried to take some of your suggestions and apply them a lot of things from a visual perspective a lot of you complained about the cable management how they were just cords and cables laying all over the floor I've tried to address that as you could see in the background that way it's nicer for you guys to look at you're welcome the next thing that I tried hard to address was the ambient light reflecting off the screen in the background a lot of you not a lot but several of you complained about that so I've tried to address the reflection problem in a how could I say this a very very interesting way you put it that way so that's been address and some other things perhaps you noticed this new aspect ratio so it's a little tighter in here so hopefully that makes a difference because most of you guys are watching this on an iPhone a lot of you guys are watching this on your iPhone 10 so hopefully the new aspect ratio is something that you enjoy let me know down below in the comment section okay so now that we got all the housecleaning out of the way let's talk about another change related to this video series in particular and that is a more focused more pointed more direct less fluff less filler and I'm trying to make this as concise as possible yet still being fun informative etc so we're gonna drop a lot of the stuff that just really ultimately didn't matter we're gonna stick to the topic and we're going to really focus on those topics to make this not so long and to make it just more concise into the point yeah that explanation was anything but concise and to the point so on this week's episode I want to talk about those five Mack related things that I am looking forward to in 2018 the first thing is something that I'm not even sure that Apple is actually going to be working on but hopefully they learn something from 2017 where there were several very embarrassing bugs that crept up and Mac OS we don't want to rehash that but yeah so my hope is that Apple really focuses on stability and bug fixes in Mac OS and also stability and bug fixes within some of their core apps like Final Cut Pro but really a renewed focus on the core elements of Mac OS the underlying frameworks would be a huge win for users I don't think we need any more features right now I don't want Nomo we're good on features we just need stability that's something I think they're gonna be working with on iOS 12 hopefully they have just a renewed focus on stability not so much the new features we don't need a lot of new features honestly with the Mac it's nice to have a few new features here and there but for me I place stability and reliability over new bells and whistles any day of the week what about you what's your experience been like over the last couple of years related to stability on your Mac has it been fairly solid or have you experienced a lot of problems let me know down below in the comments now the second thing that I'm looking forward to is something that was first reported on by Bloomberg and that is cross-platform apps on Mac OS so reports are stating that there will be future development tools that allow developers to create a single application that's capable of running on the iPhone the iPad and Mac OS so these apps will be designed in such a way that they can work with the touchscreen they can work with a mouse they can work with a trackpad and reportedly this cross-platform support will come as a part of iOS 12 and Mac OS 10.14 now it's funny because I was just talking about not wanting a lot of new features wanting to focus on stability but this is a huge feature this is a Iger feature now there are two basic lines of thinking that I've encountered when considering cross-platform applications the first line of thinking is that this will somehow dilute the quality of applications on the Mac because this is obviously going to be a very iOS centric endeavor but basically people are complaining saying that hey this is going to result in a bunch of watered-down iOS apps on the Mac that no one wants to use on a desktop but really it's kind of silly to even assume that that's how it's going to be because we don't know what Apple's plans are related to this we just know some very very high level details in who knows this may not even ship with iOS 12 in with Mac OS 10 point 14 so I think it's worth waiting to see exactly what Apple's plans are regarding cross-platform support now the second line of thought is a more positive take and that's one that I would adopt and that is that Apple is going to use this as a way to stimulate app development on the Mac developers are mainly focused on iOS because that's where the people are but this could serve as a way to get some of those development resources back to the Mac and that caused a bunch of fiscal and hourly overhead on the part of the development team so it could be a win-win both for the user and for the developer will it be more iOS centric UIKit centric where developers are developing for iOS devices and they check a box to enable Mac support or will it be deeper than that will this be something like UX kit the same framework that powers the Photos app on the Mac and on iOS I don't know but it sounds interesting what do you guys think I think it could be a really cool thing if pulled off correctly and I think it can also be a really bad thing if pulled off nook not correctly incorrectly now the next thing that I'm strangely pumped about is LG's upcoming 21 by 9 ultra wide 34 inch 5k display yes they call it the 3-4 w k95 you rolls right off the tongue but what's really cool about this is it's an ultra wide display the resolution of 50-120 by 2160 you don't get as much resolution as a 5k iMac or LG's ultra fine display but you get a larger display that's a lot wider so that may actually be a better setup for you depending on your use case if you're working with a lot of timelines on Final Cut Pro 10 or Logic Pro 10 or Adobe Premiere Pro or any app that uses a timeline where the timeline is horizontal and it goes on and on and on and on then this could be a display you want to look out for because I was super disappointed in the LG ultra fine display which was I think a disappointment for most users like coming from the Thunderbolt Display to the LG ultra fine 5k display yes it had more resolution yes it was Retina but it was pretty mediocre I won't say it was horrible but it has image retention issues it has build quality issues it had that weird shielding problem or lack thereof when you set a router too close to it that's been fixed but still that just kind of shows you that was super disappointing to pay that much for a 5k display and then to have it have all those issues but of course we still don't know how the 34w k95 you will fare but I'm pretty optimistic and I'm just super hyped to try that always for a y21 by 9 34 inch diagonal display that's gonna be really cool with that resolution of 50 120 by 2160 pixels that's 2560 by 1080 so you're getting 2560 by 1080 retina resolution with that not a whole lot of vertical resolution but that may not matter depending on your use case looking forward to trying to Final Cut Pro with that thing and here's another thing I'm really looking forward to improved a GPU support you guys know I'm a huge fan of external GPUs I have the mantas Venus I have used the aqui tio node Pro recently I've tried a whole bunch of other external GPU boxes and they all have one thing in common they don't really work that well on Mac OS yet but that is changing thankfully with the latest beta releases we've seen some noticeable improvements in stability and hot-swap ability hot-plug ability mac OS is actually recognizing certain cards by name like the vega 64 in the RX 580 but there's still a couple of underlying issues that I feel like need to be addressed soon and hopefully as it says on the Mac OS High Sierra webpage these updates will come soon in fact it says spring 2018 and I think spring is just a week away if I'm not mistaken hey Siri window spring start spring begins Tuesday so I want to see better performance improves stability and here's the biggie I want to see internal display support so being able to drive the internal display of your MacBook or your iMac using the external GPU right now you can't do that you can do it on Windows machines you can't do it on the Mac hopefully that is something that is in the cards yet lastly the new MacBook / MacBook Air refresh now rumors are stating that a new low-cost MacBook something whether they call it an air or just MacBook is still up in the air but it should be a new lower-cost 13-inch model with a Retina display what's interesting is that the MacBook Air at 999 dollars is still selling really well right now even though it has some very antiquated specs such as a non Retina display do not want but the point is that $9.99 price point matters students people who don't want to spend an obscene amount of money on a laptop I could see a new updated MacBook with a Retina display at a $9.99 or cheaper price point being very popular it's also possible that this new hardware could supplant both the current MacBook Air and the 12-inch MacBook unifying the two product lines now of course if this happens higher-end 13-inch MacBook s' would still exist just like right now you can buy a 12-inch MacBook for almost two grand so not only would this help Apple to simplify their Mac offerings it also opens the door to a bunch of potential new so there you have it folks those are five of the things that I'm looking forward to in 2018 related to the Mac number one a more stable version of Mac OS number two cross-platform apps on Mac OS number three LG's upcoming 5k ultra wide display number four improved a GPU support and number five a cheaper MacBook with a Retina display so ladies and gentlemen what Mac centric things are you looking forward to in 2018 let me know down below in the comments section and thumbs up if you appreciated this video this is Jeff with nine-to-five Machow's it going ladies and gentlemen boys and girls this is Jeff Benjamin with a 9 to 5 Mac welcome to episode number 6 of back to the Mac oh this week's episode I talk about 5 Mac related things that I am looking forward to in 2018 now before we start that I just want to preface this episode by saying some things have changed I've been taking a lot of your feedback and trying to apply that I'll be it slowly but have been trying to apply that in a way that brings noticeable changes and results to this video series so I've tried to take some of your suggestions and apply them a lot of things from a visual perspective a lot of you complained about the cable management how they were just cords and cables laying all over the floor I've tried to address that as you could see in the background that way it's nicer for you guys to look at you're welcome the next thing that I tried hard to address was the ambient light reflecting off the screen in the background a lot of you not a lot but several of you complained about that so I've tried to address the reflection problem in a how could I say this a very very interesting way you put it that way so that's been address and some other things perhaps you noticed this new aspect ratio so it's a little tighter in here so hopefully that makes a difference because most of you guys are watching this on an iPhone a lot of you guys are watching this on your iPhone 10 so hopefully the new aspect ratio is something that you enjoy let me know down below in the comment section okay so now that we got all the housecleaning out of the way let's talk about another change related to this video series in particular and that is a more focused more pointed more direct less fluff less filler and I'm trying to make this as concise as possible yet still being fun informative etc so we're gonna drop a lot of the stuff that just really ultimately didn't matter we're gonna stick to the topic and we're going to really focus on those topics to make this not so long and to make it just more concise into the point yeah that explanation was anything but concise and to the point so on this week's episode I want to talk about those five Mack related things that I am looking forward to in 2018 the first thing is something that I'm not even sure that Apple is actually going to be working on but hopefully they learn something from 2017 where there were several very embarrassing bugs that crept up and Mac OS we don't want to rehash that but yeah so my hope is that Apple really focuses on stability and bug fixes in Mac OS and also stability and bug fixes within some of their core apps like Final Cut Pro but really a renewed focus on the core elements of Mac OS the underlying frameworks would be a huge win for users I don't think we need any more features right now I don't want Nomo we're good on features we just need stability that's something I think they're gonna be working with on iOS 12 hopefully they have just a renewed focus on stability not so much the new features we don't need a lot of new features honestly with the Mac it's nice to have a few new features here and there but for me I place stability and reliability over new bells and whistles any day of the week what about you what's your experience been like over the last couple of years related to stability on your Mac has it been fairly solid or have you experienced a lot of problems let me know down below in the comments now the second thing that I'm looking forward to is something that was first reported on by Bloomberg and that is cross-platform apps on Mac OS so reports are stating that there will be future development tools that allow developers to create a single application that's capable of running on the iPhone the iPad and Mac OS so these apps will be designed in such a way that they can work with the touchscreen they can work with a mouse they can work with a trackpad and reportedly this cross-platform support will come as a part of iOS 12 and Mac OS 10.14 now it's funny because I was just talking about not wanting a lot of new features wanting to focus on stability but this is a huge feature this is a Iger feature now there are two basic lines of thinking that I've encountered when considering cross-platform applications the first line of thinking is that this will somehow dilute the quality of applications on the Mac because this is obviously going to be a very iOS centric endeavor but basically people are complaining saying that hey this is going to result in a bunch of watered-down iOS apps on the Mac that no one wants to use on a desktop but really it's kind of silly to even assume that that's how it's going to be because we don't know what Apple's plans are related to this we just know some very very high level details in who knows this may not even ship with iOS 12 in with Mac OS 10 point 14 so I think it's worth waiting to see exactly what Apple's plans are regarding cross-platform support now the second line of thought is a more positive take and that's one that I would adopt and that is that Apple is going to use this as a way to stimulate app development on the Mac developers are mainly focused on iOS because that's where the people are but this could serve as a way to get some of those development resources back to the Mac and that caused a bunch of fiscal and hourly overhead on the part of the development team so it could be a win-win both for the user and for the developer will it be more iOS centric UIKit centric where developers are developing for iOS devices and they check a box to enable Mac support or will it be deeper than that will this be something like UX kit the same framework that powers the Photos app on the Mac and on iOS I don't know but it sounds interesting what do you guys think I think it could be a really cool thing if pulled off correctly and I think it can also be a really bad thing if pulled off nook not correctly incorrectly now the next thing that I'm strangely pumped about is LG's upcoming 21 by 9 ultra wide 34 inch 5k display yes they call it the 3-4 w k95 you rolls right off the tongue but what's really cool about this is it's an ultra wide display the resolution of 50-120 by 2160 you don't get as much resolution as a 5k iMac or LG's ultra fine display but you get a larger display that's a lot wider so that may actually be a better setup for you depending on your use case if you're working with a lot of timelines on Final Cut Pro 10 or Logic Pro 10 or Adobe Premiere Pro or any app that uses a timeline where the timeline is horizontal and it goes on and on and on and on then this could be a display you want to look out for because I was super disappointed in the LG ultra fine display which was I think a disappointment for most users like coming from the Thunderbolt Display to the LG ultra fine 5k display yes it had more resolution yes it was Retina but it was pretty mediocre I won't say it was horrible but it has image retention issues it has build quality issues it had that weird shielding problem or lack thereof when you set a router too close to it that's been fixed but still that just kind of shows you that was super disappointing to pay that much for a 5k display and then to have it have all those issues but of course we still don't know how the 34w k95 you will fare but I'm pretty optimistic and I'm just super hyped to try that always for a y21 by 9 34 inch diagonal display that's gonna be really cool with that resolution of 50 120 by 2160 pixels that's 2560 by 1080 so you're getting 2560 by 1080 retina resolution with that not a whole lot of vertical resolution but that may not matter depending on your use case looking forward to trying to Final Cut Pro with that thing and here's another thing I'm really looking forward to improved a GPU support you guys know I'm a huge fan of external GPUs I have the mantas Venus I have used the aqui tio node Pro recently I've tried a whole bunch of other external GPU boxes and they all have one thing in common they don't really work that well on Mac OS yet but that is changing thankfully with the latest beta releases we've seen some noticeable improvements in stability and hot-swap ability hot-plug ability mac OS is actually recognizing certain cards by name like the vega 64 in the RX 580 but there's still a couple of underlying issues that I feel like need to be addressed soon and hopefully as it says on the Mac OS High Sierra webpage these updates will come soon in fact it says spring 2018 and I think spring is just a week away if I'm not mistaken hey Siri window spring start spring begins Tuesday so I want to see better performance improves stability and here's the biggie I want to see internal display support so being able to drive the internal display of your MacBook or your iMac using the external GPU right now you can't do that you can do it on Windows machines you can't do it on the Mac hopefully that is something that is in the cards yet lastly the new MacBook / MacBook Air refresh now rumors are stating that a new low-cost MacBook something whether they call it an air or just MacBook is still up in the air but it should be a new lower-cost 13-inch model with a Retina display what's interesting is that the MacBook Air at 999 dollars is still selling really well right now even though it has some very antiquated specs such as a non Retina display do not want but the point is that $9.99 price point matters students people who don't want to spend an obscene amount of money on a laptop I could see a new updated MacBook with a Retina display at a $9.99 or cheaper price point being very popular it's also possible that this new hardware could supplant both the current MacBook Air and the 12-inch MacBook unifying the two product lines now of course if this happens higher-end 13-inch MacBook s' would still exist just like right now you can buy a 12-inch MacBook for almost two grand so not only would this help Apple to simplify their Mac offerings it also opens the door to a bunch of potential new so there you have it folks those are five of the things that I'm looking forward to in 2018 related to the Mac number one a more stable version of Mac OS number two cross-platform apps on Mac OS number three LG's upcoming 5k ultra wide display number four improved a GPU support and number five a cheaper MacBook with a Retina display so ladies and gentlemen what Mac centric things are you looking forward to in 2018 let me know down below in the comments section and thumbs up if you appreciated this video this is Jeff with nine-to-five Mac\n"