macOS Catalina is out and about, 32-bit app users watch out
Adobe severs all ties with Venezuela, leaving Creative Cloud customers high and dry
Instagram to remove the “following” tab & Spotify now supports Siri on iOS 13
Microsoft’s latest version of Flight Simulator leverages Bing & Azure to look superb
Cheap 512GB/1TB Silicon Power PCIe SSDs, Affinity Photo, iPhone 11, Lenovo smart displays, Hisense OLED, Sony WH1000XM3B headphones
macOS Catalina (aka macOS 10.15) is now out of beta and ready for public consumption. The biggest showstopper for most people will probably be the fact that 32-bit apps no longer work. If you have a 32-bit Mac app you rely on, you're gonna have to find an alternative, wait for the developer to update it or remain on 10.14 indefinitely. If you've forgotten what the new features are (iTunes dying, Sidecar, Apple Watch as auth on T2 Macs), Ars Technica has a detailed overview. As usual, I'm waiting until 10.15.1 to upgrade - I'm not in a rush for any of the new features and by .1 things should be a little more robust.
Due to new US regulations, Adobe has cut off all Creative Cloud subscriptions in Venezuela. If you were a legal, paying customer in Venezuela, you can't open any of your Creative Cloud apps and you can't even get a refund for what you paid. Executive Order 13884 has the practical effect of banning all transactions and services between the US and Venezuela and because Adobe is a US company, it has to abide by these new regulations or its execs will end up in the slammer. Adobe can't even give refunds to customers as the refund would be a transaction and it can't transact with Venezuela! Venezuelans have until October 28 to get their shit off Adobe's servers as on the 29th, all accounts will be shitcanned.
Instagram is gonna ditch the "following" tab in its smartphone apps. This is the section of Insta where you can see what the people you follow have liked or commented on. Based on some of the shit I see people favouriting, I reckon most people have no idea this stuff was made public. Probably good it's going away, but I liked being able to see what my friends liked. Totally unrelated, but I wanted to mention it anyways, is Spotify getting Siri support in iOS 13 and an Apple TV app. I haven't tested it yet, but if Spotify's CarPlay support is improved and Siri works the way it should, I can finally ditch the inferior Apple Music!
Hal Bryan attended Microsoft's demo day for the latest version of Flight Simulator and came away super impressed. For non-flight simulator nerds (like me), the craziest feature in Flight Simulator will feature 2 petabytes of data with "scenery built on Bing satellite and aerial imagery, augmented with cool buzzwordy stuff like photogrammetric 3D modeling and multiple other data sources, all of which is streamed via Microsoft’s Azure cloud service". Apparently you'll be able to do true VFR flying "day or night, with real-world landmarks is now possible everywhere on the planet". Just check out this video on YouTube from another attendee of the preview event. The amount of ground detail is amazing for what is considered a "consumer" flight simulator.
Silicon Power 512GB ($105) or 1TB NVMe PCIe SSD ($185) at Amazon AU
Affinity Photo for Mac or Windows - $38.99 from ePHOTOzine
128GB iPhone 11 - $1179 at Big W's eBay store
The Good Guys have a new eBay sale. Use code PGGUY:
Lenovo 8" Smart Display - $111.20
Hisense 55PX 55"OLED - $1196
Sony WH1000XM3B noise cancelling Bluetooth headphones - $319.20
🎶 Party of Special Things to Do - The White Stripes
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