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The Retrofit-The-Incumbent Edition Thursday, November 3, 2016

Apple Debuts New 'Dive' Ad Focusing On iPhone 7 Speakers And Water Resistance, by Juli Clover, MacRumors

Apple today shared a new television ad on its YouTube channel, designed to off several key iPhone 7 and 7 Plus features, including the improved waterproofing and the device's speakers.

Wherefore Art Thou Macintosh?, by Horace Dediu, Asymco

You’ve unleashed a disruptive force and now you’re supposed to retrofit the incumbent with the tools to compete. Why not just let the disruptor grow up unhindered.

The Mac is what it is because it’s not alone. It’s part of a family. It is a parent. It strives to be better but will not take the future from its child.

Apple’s New Touch Bar: A Breakthrough Or Commonsense?, by Martin Tomitsch, The Conversation

It might seem like a simple idea, but it builds on a long history of research on what is referred to as “human–computer interaction”.

The feature deserves the attention it’s receiving as it provides a glimpse into how we will be interacting with computers in the not so distant future.

It’s not a new idea, but once again Apple has managed to bring an innovation to the mass consumer market.

Is Apple Getting Too Sloppy?, by Rob Lefebvre, AppAdvice

It’s things like this that make me worried, frankly. Yes, this specific issue is simply an oversight and will get fixed in the next iOS update.

But I’m not the first to notice that Apple might be losing its way.

Stuff

Second And Third-Generation Apple TV Models Not Working For Some Users, by Juli Clover, MacRumors

Some second and third-generation Apple TV owners have started experiencing a mysterious bug over the last few days, which seems to have essentially disabled the device for a number of users. Affected Apple TV models are only able to display Computers, Music, and Settings, with no other channel options available.

Put Your Phone To Work Doing Some Good, by Kit Eaton, New York Times

With the holidays upon us, some smartphone apps can let you help someone in need with just a few taps of your finger.

Vine Creators Announce New ‘Hype’ Live Streaming App, Available Now For iOS, by Chance Miller, 9to5Mac

Essentially, Hype takes the simplicity of Periscope and adds a more feature-rich experience.

Develop

Notes On Working With The NSTouchBar APIs, by Gus Mueller

There's a lot you can do with this API and based on the examples Apple shows on the MacBook Pro page, there are a lot of different ways to interact with Touch Bar. But this also means a lot of code, and quite a bit of duplicate code unless I want to do some heavy refactoring. And this is for a tiny subset of the market. Do I really want to invest heavily into something that'll only be on pro laptops for the foreseeable future?

Notes

The Cowardly Apple TV, by Jared Newman, TechHive

It takes courage to publicly tell powerful media companies that they’re wrong, but Jobs wasn’t afraid to do so. In 2007, for instance, Jobs publicly criticized the music industry for draconian digital rights management.

Start-Ups For The End Of Life, by Eilene Zimmerman, New York Times

Mr. Isard said funeral directors “would rather sit across from someone and talk to them, listen to them, than have them go online and try and figure it out for themselves.” That is also one reason the death care industry, as it is called in the industry, has been able to maintain its lack of pricing transparency. But with nearly 2.6 million people dying annually in the United States, entrepreneurs see an opportunity to innovate.

A new crop of tech start-ups is hoping to capture a slice of that sector. Many are founded by millennials, who have grown up online and expect to shop for — and curate — everything there.

Bottom of the Page

I was a Mac user just before we all realized Apple was doomed.

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Thanks for reading.