The rack-mounted version of the expensive and handsome new Mac Pro is now available, starting at $6499. You can configure yourself a model up to $54,547.98, rack not included. Read the rest

This striking and immaculate cross-stitched Macintosh control panel is by Glenda Adams: "This took nearly 6 months, working on and off- so many little pixels to stitch."

And for the curious, the back pic.twitter.com/PxT8V1D3tG

— Glenda Adams (@glenda_atom) July 8, 2018

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Richard Moss's been working on The Secret History of Mac Gaming [Amazon] for years, and now it's finally out.

Written by Richard Moss , with additional contributions by Craig Fryar Designed by Darren Wall Illustrated by JJ Signal Published by Unbound Made possible by 1,265 crowdfunding backers

Available March 22 online and in the UK; April 15 in Australia

You can read excerpts on Ars Technica and Gamasutra .

The Ars Technica excerpt is the chapter on Apple's doomed game console; Gamasutra's is on the legendary Mac-first game Dark Castle, video of which is embedded below. The official website has more, and a great Mac OS Classic theme to boot.

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Marco Arment offers a review of things that make recent MacBook Pros a hard sell: unreliable keyboards, the neglected wasteland of USB-C, and (of course) the TouchBar.

Sorry, it’s a flop. It was a solid try at something new, but it didn’t work out. There’s no shame in that — Apple should just recognize this, learn from it, and move on.

Anecdatum: I had my 12" MacBook's (pictured) keyboard replaced once, and it's been perfect ever since. I think they got the reliability problem licked. But I'm just not coping with the USB-C situation, and I've given it two years of patience. I need a new computer, and that's what's pushing me toward getting a good old iMac instead. Read the rest

The New Mac Candle is a hand-poured, 100% soy 9-ounce candle offering 45-hours of burn time with notes of mint, peach, basil, lavender, mandarin and sage. It's $24.

Here it is reviewed by staff at The Verge, who all have different opinions on what it smells like, until they're told what it's supposed to be, whereupon they agree it smells nothing like a new Mac.

Yes, there is a MacBook-scented candle pic.twitter.com/FlcXICFDvh

— The Verge (@verge) February 9, 2017

I remember distinctly the scent in question: notes of adhesives and hot-pressed cardboard with a delicious aftertaste of styrene. Maybe the candle smells like a New Mac if you poured an artisanal cocktail on one? Read the rest

*deep inside the Apple lair, Tim Cook approaches his captive adversary*

"There will be no escape for you, Mr. Bond."

Images of New MacBook Pro With Magic Toolbar Leaked in macOS Sierra 10.12.1 [macrumors] Read the rest

With its high-resolution monochrome display, the early Mac didn't fit easily into the gaming mainstream, where chunkier, colorful graphics were the norm well into the 90s. But as a result it generated a culture of its own, focused around detailed artwork, literary experimentation and powerful tools such as Hypercard. This history is often ignored, but Richard Moss is setting the record straight.

His book, The Secret History of Mac Gaming, shares the stories behind the often-whimsical 80s Mac games and glorifies the unique "1-bit" art style that emerged from the technology.

Mac gaming welcomed strange ideas and encouraged experimentation. It fostered passionate and creative communities who inspired and challenged developers to do better and to follow the Mac mantra "think different".

The Secret History of Mac Gaming is the story of those communities and the game developers who survived and thrived in an ecosystem that was serially ignored by the outside world. It's a book about people who made games and people who played them — people who, on both counts, followed their hearts first and market trends second. How in spite of everything they had going against them, the people who carried the torch for Mac gaming in the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s showed how clever, quirky, and downright wonderful videogames could be.

"It was one of Jobs's most whimsical ideas," writes John Brownlee. "A mysterious cartoon character that would live inside each Macintosh computer. Then, the grim practical reality of early computing set in. This is the legend of Mr. Macintosh. Read the rest