Apple revealed a lot of new products and features at the ‘It’s Glowtime’ event earlier this week, but the best moment of all? For me, it was when Apple showed off the Camera Control, a new touch-sensitive button on the iPhone 16 range that lets you snap photos, change the camera’s focus point, switch between controls for depth of field and zoom, and more. You can press it to take a picture, or lightly press and swipe to scroll through various camera controls. For something so small, it packs in an awful lot.
It perfectly encapsulates that elusive Apple magic inside a button that can do so much in some very clever and intuitive ways. It’s the sort of thing that, like so many Apple features, will spawn a legion of imitators, but none will come close to the original.
It reminded me of another attempt Apple made at a touch-sensitive strip with multi-function capabilities: the Touch Bar. This was a thin LED ribbon that sat at the top of the MacBook’s keyboard. Its functions could change depending on the app you were using, giving it the ability to adapt to your needs as they changed throughout the day.
That was the theory, at least. In practice, the Touch Bar was a failure. The problem was it never got enough support from third-party apps to make it truly indispensable. It also required you to lift your hands far away from your keyboard and trackpad, thus interrupting your flow. In the end, Apple slowly and quietly phased it out.
Yet despite their differences, I couldn’t help but think of the Touch Bar when I saw the Camera Control in action. Sure, the Camera Control is much smaller and sleeker, but the spirit of the Touch Bar seems to live on in that it’s a touch-sensitive, multi-function strip that is designed to adapt its abilities depending on what you need.
If anything, though, the Camera Control shows that Apple has learned from the Touch Bar debacle. Unlike the Touch Bar, the Camera Control comes with a narrow, single-minded focus. Instead of trying to work with a whole range of apps and offer up a massive array of features, the Camera Control is, predictably, limited to controlling your iPhone’s camera. Whereas the Touch Bar tried to do too much, diluting its appeal in the process, the Camera Control just wants to do one thing really, really well.
As well as that, the Camera Control is small and compact. It’s completely out of the way when you don’t need it, but ready and waiting when you do. Compare that to the Touch Bar, which spanned almost the entire width of the MacBook Pro, making it almost obnoxiously large. It demanded your attention, even if you really didn’t want to use it.
Apple sometimes takes its own past ideas and reworks them into something better — see the Mac Pro’s “cheese grater” design, for example — and it seems that the company thought there was something in the Touch Bar idea worth salvaging. In this instance, the Camera Control feels a lot more exciting than the Touch Bar ever did.
While the Camera Control makes perfect sense on the iPhone — it’s for taking photos, after all — could it (or something similar) ever work on the Mac? I think it could.
Hear me out. I’m not talking about something specifically for taking photos, because obviously that doesn’t make sense on a Mac. No, I mean a small, touch-sensitive strip that could be used to enable quick actions and gestures in macOS. In a case like that, I think it makes a bit more sense.
If Apple can keep the Camera Control’s small size, locate it near the trackpad for easy access, and keep its focus tight and specific, it could be a helpful addition to the Mac. Would I actually buy a Mac specifically for a Camera Control-style feature? No, just as I was never swayed by the Touch Bar. But the Camera Control shows that Apple has what it takes to refine an idea and drastically improve upon it. And the Mac could stand to benefit from that kind of thinking.
I’m not saying that Apple should add a Camera Control-esque feature to the Mac, or that it’s going to do so any time soon. I’m merely saying that Apple has managed to rework a previously questionable idea into something that could actually have wider applications than just taking pictures on your iPhone. That speaks to Apple’s ability to learn from its mistakes and pull something better out of its proverbial hat.
And if Apple does give a Mac-based touch-sensitive strip another go? Well then it’ll have learned a lot of great lessons along the way.
The absolutely absurd idea of putting a touchscreen display on a mouse isn't exactly new. Turtle Beach already did it with its Command Series MC7, which features a 2.25-inch control screen. But apparently, even that wasn't ridiculous enough for Arctic Fox Technologies. Its new Super Mouse looks like someone took the chunky old Atari ST mouse, slapped a touchscreen and scroll wheel on it, and called it an upgrade.
The result is a rather unusual-looking mouse that is now on Kickstarter, starting at $199. And as ridiculous as it looks, some of its features are genuinely intriguing.
Apple is less than a day away from launching its highly anticipated OLED MacBook Pro with a touch-sensitive screen. But it appears that the upgrade is going to cost a pretty penny. According to a report by Bloomberg, Apple is reportedly eyeing a starting price of $2,899 for the 14-inch MacBook Pro, while the 16-inch version could start at $3,399 in the US.
"At $2,899, the 14-inch model would mark the highest starting price for a new MacBook Pro model, surpassing the $2,799 Apple charged for a 17-inch version introduced in 2006," says the report. The report claims that Apple is targeting a minimum price hike of $400 for its upcoming redesigned 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models.
I've spent a good amount of time digging into the spec sheet of the new M6 MacBook Pro (14-inch), and for all intents and purposes, this is a classic Apple "chip and connectivity" refresh. It's not a full redesign. The chassis, Liquid Retina XDR panel, speakers, ports, and battery, all of them carry over unchanged.
However, the M6 brings more cores, stronger on-device AI, higher memory bandwidth on the larger configs, and modern wireless. Here’s the practical rundown of what actually improved, and whether those gains are worth your money.