Category: Apple Insider

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• You have to create an account first with Adobe before you can redeem.
• Make sure to review the renewal plan terms link to suit your needs.
• Keys are stackable. The storage remains 100GB, but the subscription extends by an extra month.

There are plenty of additional bargains to snap up alongside this Adobe deal. Here’s a roundup of markdowns on Apple hardware and software, with hundreds of items on sale in our Apple Price Guide.

Apple’s Notes app lets you store notes locally and in iCloud. For both types of notes, macOS makes a local copy and stores them for the Notes app to use. Should you need to find these for any reason, or if for some reason you need to recover the thumbnail images for notes, you can do it locally on your Startup Disk.

You might want to do this if you’ve accidentally deleted a note, or want to recover a cached thumbnail from a note that was deleted long ago. You might also want to use the local files if you want to reinstall macOS, or set up a new Mac, although in the latter case, you’re probably better off syncing all the Notes to iCloud and then re-syncing the new Mac to it to download everything.

Trying to move the existing local Notes data over to a new Mac by copying the local files may work, but you may only obtain partial results, and the potential for losing data via this method exists.

To view both local and iCloud notes in the macOS version of the Notes app, first click the sidebar icon in the main window’s top left corner to reveal notes in the sidebar, then click the small hidden turnable arrow next to both the “Notes” item under the “iCloud” heading, and the one under “On My Mac”.

The small turnable arrow next to both items is hidden until you hover over them, which is a strange violation of Apple’s own Human Interface Guidelines.

Once the Notes items are revealed in the sidebar, click on each one to display iCloud or local notes in the main window’s right-hand pane.

You can also create new folders by clicking the small New Folder “+” icon in the main window’s lower left corner. The new folder gets created under either “iCloud” or “On My Mac” in the sidebar, depending on what the default account is set to in the Notes->Settings window from the main menu.

Notes also allows you to share Notes from other internet services such as Google, Microsoft Exchange, OneNote, Yahoo!, and others.

To add an internet account go to Notes->Accounts from the main menu. This brings up macOS Settings pane, from which you can click the “Add Account” button on the right to add a new internet account.

For local notes, the Notes app stores everything in:

~/Library/Group Containers/group.com.apple.notes/

In this folder you’ll find local Notes preferences stored in a subfolder in /Library/Preferences/group.com.apple.notes.plist. Many of the settings in this .plist file are private to Apple and may or may not be modifiable.

Some, but not all cached note thumbnails are also stored in the ~/Library/Group Containers/group.com.apple.notes/ folder, but in a /Thumbnails/Recent folder. A .png and a .json description of the thumbnail are stored here.

Notes removes these thumbnail caches at times it sees fit, but which is undocumented.

A much larger thumbnail cache is also stored in ~/Library/Group Containers/group.com.apple.notes/ but in the /Accounts folder in a folder with a UUID as its name. This folder contains a folder named “Previews”, which in turn contains .png files, each named with a unique UUID generated by Notes.

This folder can get quite large and it’s not clear the logic Notes uses to empty it when you delete individual notes in the app. To save disk space you may want to go through and manually clean out ancient files that are no longer used.

Also in the same /Accounts subfolder, is a folder entitled “Media”. This is where Notes stores any items you may have pasted into your individual notes: large images, videos, links, and other items.

The logic Notes uses for clearing this folder is also not documented by Apple.

There is another subfolder in /Accounts, named “LocalAccount”, but oddly not much ever seems to be stored here – local or not. iCloud items and media are never stored here, but to date, we’ve not seen anything from local individual notes stored here either, no matter how long they’ve existed.

Also stored in the ~/Library/Group Containers/group.com.apple.notes/ folder is an invisible preferences file named .com.apple.containermanagerd.metadata.plist. To view this file, you’ll need to show hidden files in Finder, which we’ve discussed previously.

This file contains some metadata used by the Notes app – mostly just UUID settings and some POSIX user and group ID info.

In ~/Library/Group Containers/group.com.apple.notes/ you’ll also see several lock files which are used while Notes is running, and which are deleted or unused when it’s quit. There are a few other files and folders such as state, database backup files, and temp files. You can ignore most of these.

But the really important file is named “NoteStore.sqlite”. This is a local SQLite database file, which stores all the notes and info associated with them. SQLite is an open source standard and the NoteStore.sqlite file can be viewed with any database app which can read .sqlite files.

Easy-to-use free SQLite viewer apps include Liya, DBeaver, and DB Browser for SQLite. If any of your notes are protected by passwords you’ll need those passwords to be able to view the databases.

Most of the info in the database file are merely references back to the media on disk, and so it may take some searching to find what you’re looking for.

For Notes stored in iCloud, most of the note data is stored on Apple’s iCloud servers via the CloudKit framework and API in a remote database. If you have an Apple developer account you can view some of this data via the CloudKit web interface.

When you add a new note to the Notes app under the “iCloud” heading, the Notes app automatically syncs them to iCloud servers via CloudKit (actually the background daemon cloudd does the syncing).

In macOS Ventura, iCloud stores some partially mirrored iCloud Notes data locally in:

1. ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Notes.datastore
2. ~/Library/Containers/Notes/Data
3. ~/Library/Containers/Notes/Data/Library/Notes

But most of the iCloud Notes data gets sent to the iCloud servers.

In ~/Library/Containers/Notes/Data/CloudKit you’ll find one or more UUID-named folders, each containing a database and other folders. You’ll also find a “cloudd_db” folder. These are mostly local caches of CloudKit databases, records, and indices used to speed up Notes data access, but they may or may not also contain some records.

There are also folders for the Notes Quick Look extension, and Spotlight indexing in the ~/Library/Containers/ folder.

Notes iCloud syncing has been a contentious issue for users for years, and Apple has yet to fully address the issue, although Notes syncing across devices does seem to have improved somewhat in recent years.

The biggest sync problems seem to arise where a huge number of notes are stored in the Notes app, or when one device hasn’t been synced in a long time and the synchronization data is far out of date for a particular device.

Apple won awards

At the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York City, The One Show, organized by the global nonprofit organization One Club for Creativity, celebrated its 50th anniversary with a special ceremony. The advertising awards show is one of the most significant events of its kind, with 20,166 entries from 69 countries in 2023.

Apple London, in collaboration with Apple Cupertino, was honored with the Best of Show and Best of Discipline in Brand-Side/In-House categories for its film “The Greatest.” This film showcased Apple’s enduring dedication to accessibility and was launched on December 3, 2022, commemorating the International Day of Persons with Disabilities.

The company emerged as one of the prominent victors of the evening, being honored with the coveted One Show Pencil, a striking new design inspired by the original Pencil crafted by industry icon George Lois five decades ago. Luke Lois, son of George Lois, was present on stage during the unveiling of this remarkable accolade.

The One Show Pencil is an esteemed accolade in the advertising industry and is known to be one of the most challenging awards to obtain. In 2023, the competition received over 20,000 entries from various parts of the globe.

The redesigned Pencil, larger than the traditional version, features a crystal exterior encasing a black metal core for the Best of Show award and a gold metal core for winners of the Best of Discipline and “Of the Year” categories.

The submission for “The Greatest” aimed to generate awareness about accessibility innovations developed by Apple to support individuals living with disabilities. It sought to portray disability in a fresh light, celebrating ability within everyday moments made possible by Apple technology.

This work received five Gold Pencils and one Silver recognition from the awards show.

Apple achieved three additional wins alongside the Brand-Side/In-House Best of Discipline victory. In the category of Music & Sound, Apple received the Best of Discipline for “Rihanna – Stay,” created for Apple Music.

TBWA\Media Arts Lab Los Angeles, in collaboration with Blacksmith New York and MJZ, secured the Best of Discipline in Moving Image Craft & Production for their work on “Share the Joy” representing Apple. Partnering with OMD, the lab also claimed the Best of Discipline in Out of Home for Apple’s “Public Displays of Encouragement.”

“Apple really crushed it this year with work like ‘The Greatest’ and ‘R.I.P. Leon’ that shows off the brand in an innovative and inspiring way,” said Kevin Swanepoel, CEO, The One Club. “We like to say ‘great creative is great for business’, and Apple’s continued success is proof that those two things go hand in hand.”

Apple’s VR Headset will be expensive

Early estimates suggested Apple’s VR Headset would cost around $3,000 retail. That would account for the research and development, bill of materials, shipping, and some margin for profit.

Information gathered by XR Daily News shows differing reports for the bill of materials. When discussing how much a product will cost on store shelves, small variations in the bill of materials can make a big difference, so the $200 swing is notable.

One report, from Minsheng Electronics, suggests that the total cost of the headset materials adds up to $1,400. It even adds in that a conservative shipping estimate places the cost at $1,600. The report also notes that Apple allegedly expects over 400,000 to be built in late 2023.

A document from Wellsenn XR suggests the total bill of materials is $1,509. It has slightly different names for some of the components but a similar set.

A third report contains information from two separate sources ranging the bill of materials between $1,209 and $1,300. These are notably lower than the other estimates provided, but may not include shipping costs.

So, data from four different sources places the bill of materials between $1,209 and $1,509 — assuming these are all estimated without shipping. Apple does account for research costs when determining the final price, and a margin for profit does need to exist, so a $3,000 starting price isn’t out of the question.

Some have seen these numbers and thrown out lower estimates, but conservatively, $2,000 is the absolute minimum. That is if any of these reports are accurate, since technically only one can be.

Apple is expected to announce its VR headset during WWDC in June. It would run xrOS and bring VR to Apple’s ecosystem.