All Articles by Jason Snell

Championing the Mac Pro

Submitted by Jason Snell on Fri, 05/19/2017 - 10:30

You may never buy Apple's next professional Mac, but it still holds an important place in the lineup.

A tech vacation reality check

Submitted by Jason Snell on Fri, 01/27/2017 - 10:00

You learn a lot about your tech packing tips when you actually use them to go on vacation. This week on the Network, Jason Snell reflects on his recent Hawaiian vacation.

Packing tech on vacation

Submitted by Jason Snell on Fri, 12/30/2016 - 10:00

Over the years, Jason Snell has put together a pretty good system for packing before a vacation. This week on the Network, he shares his packing list — physical and virtual.

All the Ways I Automate

Submitted by Jason Snell on Fri, 11/25/2016 - 12:00

Automation features on the Mac are just too useful to vanish.

Life, as seen through 73,732 digital photographs

Submitted by Jason Snell on Tue, 10/04/2016 - 12:01

My Photos library contains over 70,000 images, including almost a decade of pictures taken by the iPhone.

The age of the dramatic Apple event reveal is over, and that's okay

Submitted by Jason Snell on Fri, 08/26/2016 - 11:00

Do I miss the romance of the big, shocking reveal? I do. But we don't live in that era anymore.

My search for the best iPad Pro accessories

Submitted by Jason Snell on Fri, 07/29/2016 - 10:00

The iPad Pro wouldn't be a good Apple product if it weren't surrounded by a universe of accessories.

A little less color: Seeing Apple through color blind eyes

Submitted by Jason Snell on Wed, 06/29/2016 - 09:00

This week on the Network, special guest and Six Colors editor-in-chief Jason Snell speaks about his deuteranopia (red/green color blindness), how it affects using technology, and what Apple's doing in iOS 10 to fix it.

The quest for a smarter Siri

Submitted by Jason Snell on Mon, 06/06/2016 - 10:00

If Apple wants Siri to be crowned leader of the voice-controlled assistant pack, the company has a few improvements to make.

What does Apple look like without the iPhone?

Submitted by Jason Snell on Fri, 04/29/2016 - 10:00

This week on the Network, Jason Snell takes a page from Garfield Minus Garfiled and imagines an Apple without the iPhone.

The art of the Apple event

Submitted by Jason Snell on Fri, 03/18/2016 - 12:30

Of all the brilliant tricks Steve Jobs pulled during his second stint at Apple, maybe the most clever was his transformation of the technology product announcement.

The persistence of iPhone

Submitted by Jason Snell on Fri, 01/29/2016 - 09:00

The reports of the iPhone's death have been greatly exaggerated.

2015: An Apple TV odyssey

Submitted by Jason Snell on Tue, 11/03/2015 - 10:00

Apple's famous "hobby" of the past eight years might finally be something more than that this year, thanks to a Siri-enabled remote, support for third-party apps, and more. As this moment, it's worth considering how Apple TV got to this point—and where it might go from here.

Technology, meet vacation: The 21st century road trip

Submitted by Jason Snell on Wed, 08/19/2015 - 09:00

You know the drill when it comes to a summer road trip: The bags are packed, but before you leave, you’ve got to make sure you haven’t forgotten any essentials. Traditionally, I would be fretting about sunscreen or water or if I brought enough socks, but this is 2015, so instead it’s about Lightning cables and power adapters and mapping apps and hotel Wi-Fi. Welcome to the 21st century road trip.

Here's why Apple can take on the streaming industry

Submitted by Jason Snell on Fri, 06/26/2015 - 10:03

The other week I was rummaging through my old audio CD library, and found a few discs that I don't remember buying. Classic Yo-Yo by Yo-Yo Ma. A Bob Dylan live album. Where did they come from?

Then I remembered. Oh, yeah—Steve Jobs bought those for me.

Waiting for Godot, HomeKit edition

Submitted by Jason Snell on Fri, 05/22/2015 - 10:00

If Apple announces a new change-the-world technology and 11 months later nobody's using it, did the announcement actually happen?

About a year ago, Apple unveiled HomeKit, its take on home automation, and announced that the framework would ship in the fall with iOS 8. Which it apparently did. And then... nothing happened.

Truthfully, we heard hardly anything about HomeKit until this past January at CES, where a bunch of companies showed off HomeKit-enabled devices, coming "this spring" or "soon." It's been four months since, and spring is almost over.

But the fever is, fortunately, about to break: HomeKit has pulled off its blankets and is about to rise from its nap. Last week, Apple told the Wall Street journal that the first HomeKit devices will appear in June, a year after the original announcement.

So what took this so long?

Un-conventional: How WWDC became the heart of the Apple world's calendar

Submitted by Jason Snell on Fri, 04/17/2015 - 12:30

This week Apple opened registration for WWDC, the company's annual developer conference, which will be held June 8-12 in San Francisco.

WWDC is a huge deal in the Apple community, but it wasn't always so. I've been going to WWDC since the mid-1990s, when it was a sleepy affair that took place at the McEnery Convention Center in San Jose. Probably the most memorable moment of any of the San Jose-based WWDCs I attended was the last one: That was 2002, when Steve Jobs laid the classic Mac OS to rest — no, seriously, there was a coffin on stage.

My (practical) Apple Watch wish-list

Submitted by Jason Snell on Fri, 03/06/2015 - 09:00

Truly, this is an exciting time to follow Apple.

With the company set to hold a media event on Monday — six months to the day since Tim Cook first stood on the Flint Center stage and unveiled the Apple Watch — we're about to move out of our current period of vaguely-informed speculamalation and into the era of somewhat more informed speculification. At that point, we'll be perilously close to the time when the Apple Watch really ships, and pundits can actually start complaining about the real product rather than jousting with straw men wearing extremely expensive timepieces.

My point is, are we there yet? No? Okay, then, with a very short amount of time to go before we know incrementally more about the Apple Watch, here's my wish list for the next six months of the Apple Watch. You know, when we can actually use the thing.

Apple and the agents of change

Submitted by Jason Snell on Fri, 02/06/2015 - 10:01

Ed: Welcome to iMore's new author spotlight column, The Network. Every Friday, we'll be bringing you the perspective and charm of the best and brightest minds in the Apple community. To start us off, we're thrilled to have the one, the only, the incomparable Jason Snell.

After spending 17 years at the same company, last fall I set out on my own for the first time. I've spent years writing and speaking about the inevitability of change, and how we have to embrace it. But as human beings we're wired to prefer routines and dislike change — and I'm no different.

These days I don't have a commute (other than to walk through a door). I'm not responsible for a staff of a few dozen people. I also don't have an employer cutting me checks every other week and paying for most of my health insurance. I'm responsible for every word (and every bit of HTML and CSS) on my website. Even four-plus months in, I'm still adapting, trying to discover new rhythms.

More than ever, this experience has made me wonder how companies and corporate cultures fare when it comes to embracing change. Even riding high as it is now, with record financial results, Apple's going through times of dramatic change.