Apple's quarterly earnings calls have fallen into a predictable pattern for the past year or two: iPhone revenues are declining year-over-year, and the Mac mostly remains stagnant, but every other one of Apple's businesses—wearables and services most notably—are ballooning.
That was the case again with Apple's Q4 2019 earnings report today; iPhones were down, but the company posted its highest revenue ever in a September quarter thanks to good performance from services like the App Store, AppleCare+, and Apple Pay, as well as strong iPad and Apple Watch sales. Total revenue was $64 billion.
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In an answer to an investor question, Cook let it be known that he sees wearables like the Watch and its associated health functionality as the future of the company. "There will be a day in the future that we look back and Apple's greatest contribution will be to people's health," he said.
Later this year, Apple will allow Apple Card customers to buy a new iPhone from its stores on a 24-month installment plan that carries no interest, fees or other charges. As an Apple purchase, Apple Card users will gain the usual 3% cash back on the buy.
During Wednesday's earnings call, when analyst Toni Sacconagi asked about the idea of a prime subscription, Apple CEO Tim Cook did not shoot down the idea. In fact, he suggested that something like it was already in effect.
"In terms of hardware as a service or as a bundle, if you will, there are customers today that essentially view the hardware like that because they're on upgrade plans and so forth," Cook said during an earnings call. "So to some degree that exists today."
Apple CFO Luca Maestri said today that the US Census Bureau is adopting iOS devices for next year’s census. Maestri explained that the adoption of iOS devices will help the Census Bureau produce “quality results” and lower costs.
Want some more color on Apple’s latest financial results? Here’s a transcript of the give and take between Tim Cook, Apple CFO Luca Maestri, and a bunch of Wall Street analysts that traditionally follows the release of results.
Squeezing the shorter handles and holding just enough sometimes feels fiddly, and I accidentally pause (squeeze without holding). [...]
I also find, as I walk from Penn Station, that pinching on a shorter stem is harder to pull off than AirPod-tapping used to be.
Most earbuds with silicone tips give me that “plugged up” feeling, but even after a couple hours of solid use, I never felt that with the AirPods Pro. The ventilation system Apple designed really works.
Apple today released a new 13.2.1 software update for the HomePod, which comes a few days after the 13.2 update. Shortly after Apple's 13.2 HomePod software was released, complaints of bricked devices surfaced.
If you’ve paid close attention to Apple’s computational photography features, this Deep Fusion situation might sound a lot like the Smart HDR feature that came out last year with the iPhone XS. In theory, it is similar, since the iPhone is constantly capturing these buffer images before the photo is taken to prevent shutter lag. In practice, however, Deep Fusion isn’t just pulling out the highlights and shadows of different exposures to capture more detail. It’s working on a hyper granular level to preserve details that individual frames might have lost.
The lack of a native calculator app on the Apple iPad has bugged many (including me) for years. Even with the recent release of iPadOS, that hasn't changed, which is quite disappointing. Thankfully, there are more than enough third-party calculator apps on the App Store to go around. Perhaps a bit too much, to be honest.
Yes, the App Store will throw a bunch of calculator apps if you search for them. So, if you feel confused as to what calculator you should download off the App Store, then here are a handful of the best.
There are more ways to customize 1Blocker than I need myself, but that’s the strength of the app. No matter what your web browsing habits are and which types of web content bother you, 1Blocker can accommodate them, which is why I’ll continue to use it across all of my devices.
The screenshots show an updated Find My app with a bottom bar with "People," "Devices," "Items," and "Me." In the screenshots, the AirTags are still referred to by their codename, "B389."
Other screenshots show the AirTags setup process, which will consist of pulling the tab on the AirTag and bringing it within range of an iPhone.
Asked to describe what will keep their bosses happy, Mr. Erlicht said, “Critically acclaimed quality shows, first and foremost. Ultimately subscribers matter. But Day 1, high-quality, distinctive, critically acclaimed programming will drive everything.”
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The executive added that Apple would not get in the way of the show creators they now rely on.
“If we were to start to impose certain things like ‘it has to be this’ or ‘it must only do this,’ we would start to pull at a thread of authenticity and potentially be a place that didn’t celebrate — as deeply and emotionally as we do — creative expression,” Mr. Van Amburg said.
“We spent a lot of time at Cupertino getting to know all of the various division heads who were going to be critical to our success,” Erlicht says. “We spent a good chunk of [the first] few months flying up to Cupertino multiple times a week, figuring out how what we’re doing on the entertainment side fit in with everything else at Apple. We knew we needed to make [Apple TV Plus] feel seamless for the company.”
“You told us you would support our ambition, particularly if we were being ambitious. You told us you’d pick us up when we needed the help, stay out of the way when we were cruising and when we landed the plane. you’d be fully behind us the rest of the way home,” Ellenberg said. “You’ve come through on every promise and commitment one-thousand-fold.”
In a surprise announcement, Apple has announced its first bundle deal for Apple TV+. For subscribers to Apple Music on the student plan, $4.99 per month, Apple will giveaway Apple TV+ at no additional charge.
Amtrak trains are pretty noisy — especially at what we in the U.S. so adorably consider “high speeds” — but with AirPods Pro the clackety-clack rumble was effectively blocked out.
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My corner store has a noisy refrigeration unit. With AirPods Pro on — playing nothing — I couldn’t hear it at all. I couldn’t tell that my dishwasher was running even though I was sitting right across from it in my kitchen. As someone who doesn’t generally write while listening to music, I’m likely to use AirPods Pro, playing nothing, just to tune out the world around me in a noisy space.
Apple’s works adaptively, similar to what it offers on its over-ear Beats headphones. That means the microphones are constantly listening to your surroundings and adjusting accordingly. It’s not quite a full immersion, like you would get from over-ear headphones, but with a tight seal, it does a pretty terrific job drowning out your surroundings when needed.
For those times you need to be more alert, there’s transparency mode, which uses the on-board mics to beam in ambience. Once again, it’s a good mix, letting in sound without completely overwhelming the music.
Apple has also introduced a custom try-on and comparison experience to as few as 10 stores for the AirPods Pro launch. A new black table merchandises boxes of the headphones on color-matched planks, surrounded by black leather try-on mats. iPhones paired with standard AirPods and AirPods Pro are provided to compare the difference in fit, audio quality, and noise cancellation.
macOS Catalina 10.15.1 is a fairly significant update, introducing new emoji characters that were added in iOS 13.2 earlier this week, adding support for the AirPods Pro that are launching tomorrow, and bringing Siri privacy controls to the Mac to allow users to opt out of sharing their Siri recordings with Apple.
In addition to support for the older Apple Watch models, watchOS 6.1 includes support for AirPods Pro, as well as performance improvements and bug fixes.
While Budiu qualified that the firm hasn’t conducted its own research on the usability of dark mode, she says they generally don’t recommend dark mode for “normal vision users,” and says positive contrast polarity, a.k.a. good old black-on-white text, is “easier to read and more glanceable,” especially in low light conditions.
Published research in ergonomics seems to back this up. A 2017 study in the journal Applied Ergonomics found that “dark characters on light background lead to better legibility and are strongly recommended independent of observer’s age.” And Human Factors: The Journal of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society found in 2013 that “the typically higher luminance of positive polarity displays leads to an improved perception of detail.”
This year marks the 20th anniversary of the National Novel Writing Month project, which challenges people to write a 50,000-word novel in November. NaNoWriMo, as it is known, is a nonprofit that supports creative writing and education. Those who sign up for the group’s free annual event get community support, progress tracking and motivational advice to complete a book draft.
If you think you have a novel in you, here is a quick guide to digital tools to help you along your way.
What makes Lake stand out is its dedication to the artists that create the illustrations you get to color. Each artists includes a short bio of their work and inspiration. The "Hey!" discovery tab is also a great place to find out about artists and their whimsical work.
The Mac Pro has appeared today on the FCC registry site, with its regulatory testing information publicly released. This usually means a product launch is imminent.
Corellium’s key argument lies on the assumption that Corellium’s customers are looking for bugs with the intention of alerting Apple of their existence.
For now, however, that is only an assumption.
In 2019, it’s highly possible to make a living as an illustrator without learning how to draw in the classical sense. Virtually anyone can produce professional-looking artwork using illustration software and digital tools. Clumsy drawing gestures snap into perfect shapes, stock digital brushes generate instant texture, and a few mouse clicks can result in a perfectly convincing composition.
Technology is one reason why editorial illustrations are looking flatter, sharper, and arguably more generic. It’s hard to miss the trend.
I think there’s a really strong, counter-trend bet to be made here over the next few tech generations. If the world is going to get reorganized into services and dependencies, so be it; but find what’s air gapped, and find what’s ours. People are smart enough to tell what’s solid and what isn’t. Product teams who go out of their way to give us real, tangible objects we feel that we can own will find a great deal of success.
I read the reviews of the AirPods Pro, and I do want them. Then I look at the price tag, and figured that I better 'use up' the reamaining battery life first before moving on to a new pair.
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I'm still on the iPhone X, because it is still working fine for me. I'm still on the pre-Force-Touch MacBook Pro, because I am afraid of the new keyboards.
But I did buy my wife the new iPhone 11, and I am hoping I can use my Apple ID account (instead of my wife's) to redeem the one-year Apple TV+ trial. The OCD in me wanted to subscribe to all our family's Apple services from one single account. (So far, we have Apple Music and iCloud storage.) Who knows whether Apple will do a bundle subscription some day?
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Thanks for reading.
Rather than replacing the existing second-generation AirPods, Apple is launching AirPods Pro as a separate option for users who want the premium features included in the new Pro model: active noise cancelling, water and sweat resistance, Transparency, and Adaptive EQ. [...]
The new AirPods Pro use two microphones, one that faces outward and one that faces toward the ear for active noise cancellation, adapting the signal 200 times per second. Transparency mode uses the microphones to allow users to listen to music while also hearing their surroundings.
There it is, at 35 seconds in. The exploded view, showing all the pieces that come together to make the new noise cancelling, water splash resistant, AirPods Pro.
What does it mean that, thrice now, the leader of the world’s most powerful tech company couldn’t be bothered to actually stick these gadgets in his ears for a photo op?
It’s a design that makes it feel like they don’t want you to keep reading.
iOS and iPadOS 13.2 represents the first major new feature release since iOS 13 came out several weeks ago. Up to this point, Apple's unusually frequent updates have been focused on either bug fixes or on introducing features that were originally planned for the first version of iOS 13.
There's a mixture of new and previously planned here, but it marks the biggest update yet for iOS 13 users. Additions include Deep Fusion computational photography for better low- and mid-light photos on the latest iPhones, the ability to opt-out or opt-in to sharing Siri voice recordings with Apple, support for AirPods Pro and the Announce Messages with Siri feature, a bunch of new emoji, new smart home features, and a number of bug fixes.
There’s a bunch of brand-new ones (I love the otter) as well as emoji to represent people with disabilities, gender-neutral emoji (following in Google’s footsteps), and a new way to select the skin colors of each individual in the holding hands emoji.
Apple appears to have pulled the HomePod's multi-user update after numerous reports of the software rendering speakers unusable. The glitch typically leaves the speaker partly or completely unresponsive. If an owner tries to reset the HomePod, it either freezes up or gets stuck in an endless loop.
Broadcast is already in freefall, and with Apple TV+, the second wave of tech is here. Unlike present and future competitors, Apple is new to content creation, and it is choosing to get into the TV game at a time of great saturation because it wants to—i.e., thinks it’s strategically wise and necessary—and not because it has to—i.e., it will cease to exist as a functioning company if it doesn’t figure out streaming. The lack of urgency is apparent in the offer: For $4.99 a month, customers will have access to a handful of new shows—five to start, with more arriving later in the year—and no back catalog, a scoffably scant amount of content
But it doesn’t matter. Apple can afford to dip its toe into streaming. The company has nearly $250 billion in cash, a mere billion of which it has been earmarked for this project. Like Amazon, another extremely lucrative tech company that has patiently bankrolled a streaming service, Apple can afford to throw money at the problem almost indefinitely. Whereas linear channels that have to make a profit have been going gray competing against Netflix, which doesn’t have to make money so long as its subscriber growth convinces shareholder it eventually could, they can now tear all their hair out competing against another company with Scrooge McDuck–style reserves.
Catalina adds a couple of new features to the Continuity family: Continuity Sketch and Continuity Markup, which let you draw sketches and mark up files on a device running iOS 13 and sync that data back to a Mac running Catalina.
If you want to add better grammar checking features to Pages, try Grammarian Pro3 X from Linguisoft. It’s an interactive spell and grammar checking, dictionary, thesaurus, AutoCorrect, and AutoType tool that works within every program on the Mac.
So the better thing to do is plan which features go into which releases, and have a date for internal use for just the next release — and refrain from making public ETAs.
Even if you the software developer think you can make accurate ETAs — and maybe you did, once or twice — you’re not going to be that lucky most of the time.
Back in 2017, I was building a rich text editor in the browser. Unsatisfied with existing libraries that used ContentEditable, I thought to myself “hey, I’ll just reimplement text selection myself! How difficult could it possibly be?” I was young. Naive. I estimated it would take two weeks. In reality, attempting to solve this problem would consume several years of my life, and even landed me a full time job for a year implementing text editing for a new operating system.
A folder within the filesystem for the latest version of Apple’s mobile operating system possibly confirms the name “AirTag” for the new device, which will be paired with a user’s iPhone just like AirPods and will allow users to track any item using the Find My app.
Millennials grew up with some world-changing developments: The internet, cell phones, the free market's inability to provide basic things like affordable healthcare, and most importantly, video games. According to a Nielsen report released this past summer, they now make up 40 percent of the video game audience. They play more online games than their Gen X counterparts, watch nearly as many Twitch streams as Gen Z, and spend more money on video games than any other cohort.
As millennials creep into their 30s, they're only now just seeing the ravages of time take their toll. But unlike previous generations, personal experience and recent research suggests that they face a unique and harsh reality: They're just not that good at video games anymore.
When I see AirTag, I think AirBags.
Out of all the devices and software I have on my desk in front of me right now, the one name that I really like is Safari.
Probably like many people, I came to not dislike the MacBook name. Maybe one day I will also not dislike Find My and macOS.
By the way, I will be watching Apple TV+ shows in my Apple TV app on my Apple TV soon. (Did the first iPod touch has an iPod app? I cannot remember…)
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Thanks for reading.
In September alone, more than 636,000 women completed the Flo health assessments, said the app’s developer, Flo Health. The app then recommended that 240,000 of those women, or about 38 percent, ask their doctors about the hormonal disorder. (BioWink, the developer of Clue, declined to provide similar usage statistics.)
But what many women who used the Flo and Clue health tools may not have known is that the apps did not conduct high-level clinical studies to determine the accuracy of their health risk assessments or the potential for unintended consequences such as overdiagnosis. As a result, some experts said, the new tools could lead some women to be labeled with a hormonal imbalance they did not have or that may have no significant repercussions for their health.
Today’s stylus equipped and mouse-capable iPad shows great promise. (I connected my trusted Microsoft Mouse and its two buttons and wheel — no problem.) It clearly has the potential to become a multifaceted device capable of a wide range of interactions. From the simplest one-finger control enjoyed by children and adults alike to the windows and pointing device interactions “power users” hope for, the iPad shows great potential — and the need for more work to make the new features more discoverable.
Apple Inc. is ramping up hiring for a team that is working on new smart-home software and devices in an effort to catch up in a field where Google and Amazon.com Inc. have dominated, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
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Some of Apple’s job listings mention supply chain expertise and developing wireless, battery-powered devices with camera modules, indicating exploration into new home appliances. Apple has said it plans to release a new cloud storage feature for security cameras later this year, which could potentially play into the company’s future plans. A few years ago, teams inside Apple explored creating a wide range of smart-home accessories, such as modules for opening and closing windows, cabinets, and doors, but those efforts were put on hold, according to a person with knowledge of the work.
Peanuts fans will soon be able to shape the stories of their favorite characters. Apple is adding a new Design Lab to its series of Today at Apple sessions inspired by the upcoming Apple TV+ exclusive Snoopy in Space.
Back in July, Apple released updated versions of iOS for older iPhones and iPads models, including the iPhone 5, to address an issue that could impact GPS location performance and lead to the system date and time being incorrect. The GPS time rollover issue began affecting GPS-enabled products from other manufacturers on April 6, 2019, but Apple's affected devices aren't impacted by the problem until just before midnight UTC on November 3, 2019.
Smartphones are getting bigger and heavier every year, but our hands aren’t. At some point something has to break. And when it does it’ll either be a sting in the wallet when your phone hits the ground or a pain in the hand as your constant finger stretching induces dreaded RSI.
There aren’t any really small smartphones on the market, just smaller phones that are often very expensive. And that doesn’t help you with the phone in your pocket right now, whether an iPhone 11 Pro Max, a Pixel 3 XL or Galaxy Note 10+. So the solution is some kind of accessory to help you keep a grip. Here are five of the best.
Swift Publisher 5.5 is an absolute must-have update to our favorite inexpensive Mac desktop publishing software which makes it easier than ever to design and print labels, envelopes, cards, disc media, and much more.
The flexibility to work where you want when you want should support work-life balance, but often it does the exact opposite. In contrast to a traditional office, remote work puts much more focus on output — what did you get done — rather than input — how many hours did you spend doing it. There’s a sense of personal responsibility to get “enough” done that can lead people to keep themselves working long past the point of optimal productivity. Couple that with a lack of physical work boundaries, and remote workers can quickly fall into a downward spiral that’s hard to see the way out of.
They changed the world with their tech products, employ vast swaths of the Bay Area’s workforce and together own more than $16 billion in Silicon Valley property.
But Google and Apple — the valley’s two biggest tech property owners — differ wildly in a critical aspect: the way they use their resources in response to the region’s chronic housing crisis. A side-by-side comparison reveals that Google is taking a far more proactive approach to corporate citizenship than Apple, a disparity that illuminates the question many tech companies struggle with today: How much should they be expected to help the people and communities who fall victim to Silicon Valley’s success?
I have no idea how to look at the history in the Apple Music on iOS 13. I get overwhelmed by all that little circular icons in the Photos editing screen. My iPad screen stopped rotating and I have no idea how to fix it. (One week later, I remembered I can reboot the machine, and the problem disappeared.)
I must be getting old.
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Thanks for reading.
“GLSEN knows well and has held as its mission for nearly 30 years, that what we learn and what we’re told to value as children can define the course of our lives,” Cook said onstage, accepting the Champion Award. “If a teacher, a parent, an authority figure takes time to show kindness, to represent the great diversity of our humanity and to create space for authentic conversations when we’re young, it stays in our hearts forever and it builds better people as a result.”
“Unfortunately, we still see far too often the consequences of failing our kids. Trans and non-binary young people kicked out of their homes and attacked on our streets. Bullying and harassment in our schools,” he continued. “And a broader society that still sends the message, when the going gets tough, it’s the least among us who get targeted first. There is so much more each of us can do to change these things and that’s what brought me here.”
Traditionally, artists have struggled with the idea of selling their music to advertisers. Some, such as Arcade Fire and Adele, have steadfastly refused, citing artistic integrity. But the relationship between creatives and corporations is only getting stronger with the rise of labels like AWAL, and Josh Ocean, the artist who is known as NVDES, makes no apologies for jumping into bed with Apple. NVDES, which currently tours mid-size venues with fellow Los Angeles-based genre-defying artist Oliver Tree, has an audience of millions who will will hear Ocean’s song “Brazooka” in ads for iPhone 11.
This is a modern-day example of a longterm love affair “based on a relationship that we built over time,” says Jeannette Perez, president of global synch and brand partnerships at publisher Kobalt, who along with her team of 50 licensing experts has closed campaigns with Acura, T-Mobile and Toyota. “They were interested in approaching NVDES to write an original song for the spot [but] the band had this song in their back pocket and everybody at Apple thought it worked perfectly. It happened somewhat organically in the sense that it worked for the creative and all the stars aligned.”
The inaugural episode of New Music Daily, which runs just over one hour, spotlights a wide range of music and interviews including appearances by Selena Gomez, Coldplay’s Chris Martin, and an excerpt from a longer interview with Taylor Swift that will be released next week. New Music Daily’s Apple Music page also includes excerpts of upcoming video interviews with Taylor Swift and Kanye West.
"Our New Music Daily playlist was built in the image of the artist and the fan. Music is constant and it’s in the hands of the artists now. Artists don’t want to wait anymore, and we wanted a really big playlist that reflected that sentiment and could do it quickly. I’ll be in the studio with artists and I ask when they’re putting something out and they’ll say, “I don’t know, in an hour?” We’ve been clearing that space for artists for years, and with New Music Daily as a live show we’ll continue to event-ize music, bringing an audience around shared listening moments, and reflecting the way artists want to release music on their own terms."
Quality add-on lenses like those offered by Lemuro aren’t quite as a good as having a DSLR, but they seriously up the capabilities of your iPhone’s camera(s). They offer enough flexibility that you may opt to leave the bulky DSLR behind and bring a lens or two in your pockets instead. There is an investment involved—although a Tele Portrait Lens, Wide Lens, and case will set you back considerably less than most entry level DSLRs. The Lemuro lenses are high quality, built to last, and they can be carried forward to your next iPhone as well—you just have to buy a case to fit the new model.
Apple SVP of Software Engineering Craig Federighi has offered some advice to an aspiring programmer in an email, with the Apple executive advising to keep studying, become an expert, broaden their horizons, and to follow their heart.
Now that Apple and Disney are in the mix, these prices are only going to increase. Together with Netflix and Amazon, the streaming services and their seemingly limitless funds could crowd some of the smaller networks out of the market entirely.
I am not a sports person, and I'm no longer a news person. So, I've practically stopped watching or listening anything live. I want a podcast-like experience for everything I consume. Everything must be funnelled into queues.
Which means that I seldom listen to Beats 1 radio shows, even though some of them do sound interesting. (I enjoy Elton John's show, when I remember to listen.)
So, here's my number one wish list item for Beats 1: can I have a podcast-like user-interface?
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And my number two wish list item: more genres, please.
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Thanks for reading.
It’s honestly impressive how much a small change can derail our routine, especially when we’re used to muscle memory taking the wheel for those million and one itty bitty tasks each day no one has time to think about.
Like, say, replying to an email. It’s important, sure, but practically second nature at this point. So, perhaps to keep us all on our toes, make sure its users haven’t been zombified by the glare of their phones yet, Apple decided it’d be a good idea to switch things up with the iPhone email app’s design with this latest OS. Now I’m no designer, but I would think that putting the trash button anywhere near where people are already used to clicking would be one of the first things they teach you not to do.
At the very least, if the toolbar is only going to have these two buttons, why not place the Trash button on the far left, and put the whitespace between the two buttons? That would eliminate inadvertent taps on the Trash button from either pre-iOS 13 muscle memory or from proximity to the Reply button.
Unfortunately, one thing Apple didn’t do as effectively was communicate that change to its users. Sure, if you’re the kind of person who pays close attention to Apple keynotes or reads Apple news sites regularly, you were probably aware of Find My. But for users who aren’t as attuned to the vagaries of Apple software updates, the first indication they had that anything was different was when they went looking for the Find My Friends app and it was simply gone.
The push to create a closed-loop supply chain means innovating almost everywhere across the company’s hardware. Last year, Apple hyped its breakthrough in using recycled aluminum across its product line. And the company's pushed its suppliers to go greener, too, with 44 of them using only renewable energy in manufacturing Apple products. But in order to have materials to recycle, Cook (and Apple) are hoping more people will trade-in their old phones. The company’s developed robots—dubbed Daisy—that can disassemble 200 old iPhones an hour, pulling out materials that can be re-used.
Handing your phone back to Apple has been an option for some time, but recently Apple’s ramped up the push. Go ahead and scout out the new iPhone—in the process, Apple will entice you with a respectable payout for your old phone. Cook wants people to think about their phones like their cars: when you're done with one, move it on to someone who can make use.
“They had the intelligence to not just wait a few days, but to actually wait for other pieces of context to line up in the way that the developer wanted them to,” Covington says. In this case, the presence of a SIM card indicates that the phone belongs to a real person rather than a security researcher—or one of the many humans that screen apps for App Store approval.
It’s a simple evasion, but clever. More important, in this case it was effective. If you downloaded one of these apps, it would act perfectly normal until it was reasonably confident that you’re a genuine mark. At that point, it would reach out to its boss—the command and control server—which would instruct the app to turn your iPhone into an invisible click farm.
I set out to see whether a phone camera can capture a journey like this as well as my DSLR could have and I genuinely think it's a close-run thing. I was seriously impressed with the images I shot with the iPhone and there were many images that I couldn't tell whether they were taken with the phone or the professional camera. That's not something I'd imagine saying even a year ago.
Had I been able to use my Moment and Lee Filters equipment with the phone too, I think it'd have been even closer. I did take my DSLR with me on the trip and fully intended to shoot some additional shots for fun, but I found that I just didn't need to take it out as often. I trusted the iPhone's quality would be sufficient to get what I wanted.
The video highlights how much private information we have stored on smartphones and that it should belong to “you.”
It’s like carrying a tiny little Macintosh with you wherever you go.
Apple Arcade now has 89 games available for iOS and tvOS, and 81 on macOS, as Apple closes in on its promise of over 100 games.
Unicode has been in the business of deciding what symbols merit international exposure since it adopted emoji in the early 2000s. Many of those decisions, which a small subcommittee votes on, teeter on identity politics: Yes, redheads deserve representation; no, marijuana does not. But when it comes to flags, emoji reflect geopolitics, too. And proposals to add new flag emoji can get caught in the crosshairs of governments, Unicode, and the technology companies that implement emoji on their platforms.
It was not a massive run—four full years of monthly columns in total—and it ended just as the internet was kicking off, which is probably why only Penn & Teller’s biggest fans might still remember the he had the back-page column in one of the most prominent computer magazines in the country.
But it was an interesting run, and one with few equivalents in publishing history—probably the closest comparison point is the regular column that Stephen King wrote about pop culture for Entertainment Weekly throughout the first decade of the 2000s.
We want new things, but we hate changes. Especially changes that make us lose data. As Steve Jobs said, the screen-only interface of the iPhone allows software to add buttons; But, software developers, do think carefully before moving or removing buttons.
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The thing is, when you join the dots and recognise the costs of staff recruitment, retention and training and cross that against the costs of absence, illness and staff replacement, any failure to address these problems is almost certainly more costly than dealing with them.
Plus, of course, happy staff stick around longer and are way more productive.
So, can an Apple Watch really help you stay a little healthier at work?
The team did want to preserve one facet of the iPad app — the fact that it was a contained, finite daily edition. The Guardian’s Daily app pushes out content once a day, at 3 a.m. London time. The content that’s selected for it is largely the same as the content that goes into the print paper, said David Blishen, group product manager. A slider above each section moves along based on how much you’ve read, giving you a clear sense of when you’ll be done. And when you’re done — as with a print newspaper — you’re done. (If you want more, you can always switch back to the other Guardian app, which is constantly updated.)
You can still listen to music through your beloved headphones, but take some precautions to preserve your hearing.
If you're concerned about hearing loss, you can try out a few different simple steps to reduce your risk of damage from headphones.
Apple Michigan Avenue is offering a new perspective on the built world with a series of Today at Apple sessions celebrating the Chicago Architecture Biennial. Local photographers, architects, and Apple’s Creatives at the flagship store will host Walks and Labs from November 3-24.
The Apple Card is improving with time, and will spur you to use tap-to-pay quite a bit more. However, even with the addition of new partner retailers offering 3% cashback, there are better rewards cards out there. The card’s appeal is its ease of use and rewards on Apple products, not a broad cashback bonus.
Earlier versions are not available for download, which really bothers me, but such is life with macOS.
What we have here is a three act story. The initial data loss is obviously a concern for Day One and its users – including me! Then the poor customer service response is something that the Day One team will undoubtedly want to look into as well. Telling customers that their data is gone and there's nothing they can do about it is bad enough. Doing it when you clearly can do something about it is even worse.
Thankfully the third act is where everything works out. Day One had a bug that was identified and then fixed. And most importantly, no data has been lost. And that's the most important thing here, surely?
Don’t play with hash values lightly.
“Some parents — I know because they’ve reached out to me — some parents struggle,” Cook said. “They think their child’s potential is less because they’re gay. They think they can’t achieve. They think they’ll be bullied. They think that it’s almost a life sentence to not have as good a life, to not have a happy life.
“My message to them is that it doesn’t have to be like that. It starts with them because if they treat their child with respect and dignity, just like we treat each other, then that child can do anything they want, including [being] the CEO of Apple, or to be the president or whatever they want.”
A few weeks ago, Lucy Greco heard a story on NPR about more clothing retailers shuttering their stores and moving online. Oh, great, she thought, recalling some of her past experiences with online shopping: “You’re clicking on something that says, ‘graphic graphic graphic,’ or some numbered file name, or some gibberish like that.”
The internet can be like this for Greco, who is blind and uses a screen reader to wayfind online. Screen readers convert display text into synthesized speech or refreshable Braille, giving visual displays an audio equivalent. But many websites have features that make them impossible for her to use—unlabeled graphics, forms with missing field labels, links mysteriously named “link.” Greco says she runs into issues like this “90 percent of the time” that she spends online. When she does, entire chunks of the internet disappear.
Finished? Good.
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Thanks for reading.
The arrival of iPadOS 13 was actually the thing that tipped me over into believing that it really would be perfectly reasonable to take an iPad to school as your primary device. Every time I tried to picture being in school with an iPad, I’d flash back to all the times I’d tried to get something done on my own iPad only to find a webpage that simply wouldn’t work right, or wouldn’t provide a fully functional desktop version to an iPad. But the desktop browsing feature of Safari in iPadOS 13 suggested that limitation would finally be a thing of the past.
Most of our digital conversations are mediated and monitored by corporations and governments; this is hardly a revelation. But Apple doesn’t own the letter A. It does own smiley face with hearts and all the rest. We have, in a sense, begun to cede to corporations the building blocks of speech—and thought—itself. A friend of mine recently described a mildly horrifying feedback loop: “Now, when I experience a tender moment, instead of sending an emoji, I imagine myself as the crying cat.”
Celebrating its work with companies founded and led by women, Apple says it has seen 100 entrepreneurs from 13 countries attend its program of coding, support and mentorship. Applications to join in the second year are now open.
Apple today released the Apple TV app for Amazon TV devices, starting with the Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K and the older HD model. Support for Amazon Fire TV Cube, Fire TV (3rd generation penchant design) and some other models is coming soon.
The latest Mophie Juice Pack Access both protects and extends the battery life of any of the new iPhone 11 models without blocking the Lightning port.
GameClub was not the way I pictured that iOS game preservation might finally become a reality, but the development is nonetheless encouraging. That’s because it demonstrates that back catalog games still have value, and when combined with the latest business models permitted in the App Store, classic games can have newfound longevity.
“I’m about to go on a ride I’ve never been on,” Kerry Ehrin says inside her office on the Sony lot in Culver City.
The 59-year-old writer and producer is hardly a novice, with credits that include “Friday Night Lights” and “Bates Motel.” But for the past 15 months or so she’s been on the suspenseful tick, tick, tick climb up the first peak of television’s newest attraction, Apple TV+, as the showrunner of the company’s most anticipated series and perhaps her highest-profile project to date: “The Morning Show.”
While early apps created for Mac with Catalina weren't well received by users, the release of MacOS Catalina brought several more to the Mac App Store that seem to have benefitted from more time in development. The technology remains in its infancy, but it has allowed smaller development shops who otherwise wouldn't have the resources to create Mac apps to do so with relative ease.
"Our vision for Mac Catalyst was always to make it easier for any iPad app developer, big or small, to bring their app to the Mac," said Todd Benjamin, MacOS product marketing director. "This allows them to leverage one codebase and one development team. Mac Catalyst gives iPad app developers a huge head start and for many, an opportunity to expand their reach onto the Mac platform that they may not have had before. Not only is this great for developers, but it's also great for Mac users, who benefit with access to a whole new selection of great app experiences from iPad's vibrant ecosystem."
Here's a look at where Catalyst stands now, and how the technology aims to improve the Mac experience for users and developers.
Well, looking more carefully at what we know about this, there’s a much more obvious explanation. It’s not yet another emergency update at all, but the result of Apple updating the security certificate on the original 10.15 Supplemental Update (or 10.15 Update as it seems to be called officially).
At Apple’s first Hollywood premiere, in October, Van Amburg and Erlicht addressed the sense of whiplash head-on. “Zack and I knew how to create a premium, high-quality, great show,” Erlicht said. “What, in retrospect, we didn’t know how to do was create from scratch a premium service at Apple.”
The new iPad is one of Apple's most un-Apple products—it's the only one that sees Apple racing to the bottom on price. There are compromises here in both design and performance compared to the rest of the lineup, though it is an indisputable step up on both fronts compared to last year's base iPad.
On the other hand, it's impressive that the company has managed to offer so much of what modern iPads are about for much less money than the other models. If you're just looking for a device to watch some movies on and maybe browse the Web a bit, the seventh-generation iPad is a strong option. It's also likely a good buy if you're a parent who wants to save money while still giving your kids access to apps and games like those in Apple Arcade.
It turns out that if you have three (or more) screens connected to a Mac, you can mirror two of the three by Option-clicking one and dragging it on top of another. This does exactly what you’d expect. The Mac acts as though it has only two screens instead of three, and the same image appears on the two that are mirrored, with the third being separate.
Today Todoist has launched a major update across all platforms under the branding Todoist Foundations. That name implies a complete ground-up revision to the app, and while that’s accurate in terms of under-the-hood code changes, from a user-facing standpoint this is still the Todoist you know, but with a variety of new features: project sections, a dynamic add button, new task and sub-task views, and more. Todoist’s team also says that Foundations lays the necessary coding groundwork for more substantial features that are coming in the future, such as Boards and an Upcoming View.
This blocks cross-site tracking cookies from sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Users can customize this setting, with the default option being “balanced for protection and performance.” If you set your Enhanced Tracking Protection settings to “strict,” you’ll successfully block more trackers, but some websites may break completely.
NetNewsWire 5 is a solid comeback, even if it lacks many of the conveniences of modern RSS reader apps.
Services from Apple, Google, and companies dedicated to password management offer similar solutions for never forgetting your password again.
The catch? You still need to remember your password for that specific service. The dozens or even hundreds of other passwords you need to know can be stored safely inside your login locker and out of your head.
Unsure about where to start? These are the top password manager services.
It's easy to find things that are fun and interesting to work on. But don't forget that every task, every project, takes a specific amount of resources. Whether you're a solopreneur or a CEO, those resources are limited.
On the upcoming episode of my podcast, special guest Rene Ritchie says his understanding is that Apple has its hands full dealing with the November 1 launch of TV+ and the premiere events for its various original shows. I fully expect more Apple hardware before the end of the year, but not another keynote event.
Why didn’t she know there were options further down the share sheet? Because she’s using an iPhone 8, which happens to be just the right height to perfectly crop the share sheet.
The US Supreme Court last week formally declined to weigh in on an argument that the Americans with Disabilities Act should not apply to websites and digital storefronts, leaving intact a lower ruling finding that the ADA does, indeed, apply to digital space. Internet and Web users with disabilities, as well as advocates for accessible design, are breathing a sigh of relief.
Accessibility in the digital space has come a great distance in a relatively short time, in many ways opening up the entire digital economy of the 21st century to millions of users. But the fact that one company—Domino's Pizza—could try taking a case for not making its services accessible to the highest court in 2019 makes clear how much work there is left to do to make the online world equitable, both today and in the future.
The hidden message: measuring your steps, activity, sleep, and diet everyday should not be normal. It is not natural. And without combating it, these practices can undermine a healthy relationship with exercise, sleep, and food.
[...]
We as a culture still value our physical well being, how we appear to be on the outside, and what our actions show over our mental health. Turning to fitness technology to fix our mental well being and restore a natural sense of self is the very problem.
The one 'bug' in Catalina that is... well... bugging me: iCloud Drive syncing on the Mac seems to be much slower than in previous version of macOS.
And, as every one know, Apple doesn't believe in a big button labeled "Sync Now!"
(The same file is shown as updated on my iPhone's Files app.)
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iOS 13 and macOS 10.15 Catalina have been unusually buggy releases for Apple. The betas started out buggy at WWDC in June, which is not unexpected, but even after Apple removed some features from the final releases in September, more problems have forced the company to publish quick updates. Why? Based on my 18 years of experience working as an Apple software engineer, I have a few ideas.
Apple has released a new version of its macOS Catalina Supplemental Update. The first iteration of the update was made available to Macs running Catalina on October 15.
Apple has aspired to make Sidecar dead simple to use, which adds to its appeal. It largely succeeds in its goal of transforming an iPad into a Mac screen.
But, as I discovered, the technology is still glitchy and unreliable. Feel free to give it a try, but temper your expectations for now.
The San Jose, California-based company will preview Illustrator for iPad at its Max conference in November before launching it in 2020, according to the people, who weren’t authorized to speak publicly about the decision. Illustrator, which designers rely on for digital drawing and creating graphics, would follow in the footsteps of Photoshop, which is scheduled to be available on the iPad later this year. Illustrator is one of Adobe’s most popular apps in its Creative Cloud software suite and would mirror many of the features from the desktop version when running on the iPad.
Templates, as the feature’s name suggests, provides the user with a variety of pre-made templates when beginning a digital whiteboard within Microsoft Whiteboard. Some of the templates currently available in the public preview are Brainstorming, Effective meeting, KANBAN sprint planning, SWOT analysis, Problem solving, Project planning, Retrospective, Project milestones, and KWL (Know, Wonder, Learn) for education.
Scanning your paperwork into PDF files for digital or online document storage can be a great way to move toward a paperless office.
The Paper Store is a new feature in Paper version 4.5. The idea is simple. You buy journals created by WeTransfer’s design team, together with a selection of freelance artists, illustrators and designers. These journals come prefilled with content that you can interact with using your Apple Pencil.
Brain.fm is a special kind of music service designed for the brain to enhance focus and relaxation within only 10 to 15 minutes of use. It does this by having real musicians “engineer” music to help you do what you need to do. They use a patented A.I. engine to create music specifically designed to help you do things like focus, relax, or fall sleep.
Instead of educating children about the world around them, Things That Go Bump is all about having fun.
When the lights are out, everyday objects in your home comes alive.
You might know that there’s a pothole in the road up ahead, but that doesn’t mean you have time to stop and fill it in. You’re just going to have to drive over it, and hope for the best.
Each new category of app that can access information via Siri comes with its own unique security and privacy concerns, so Apple’s choice to phase them in slowly with each new major iOS release is probably a wise one.
Microsoft is on the iPad. Adobe is on the iPad. How about you, Apple? Where are all your Pro apps? The longer we all wait, the bigger the expectations for Xcode on iOS.
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Steve Jobs' pitch for the original iPhone in 2007 as a phone, music player and internet communicator was a landmark moment in the tech world. It crystalized the iPhone's almost mythic reputation from the start -- remember the nickname, the Jesus phone? -- and helped usher in the idea that smartphones could be chic. But looking back, those three capabilities barely scratched the surface of what we can do with the modern smartphone.
What can you do with one now? Everything.
"We never imagined how a decade later iPhone would become such an essential part of our lives, from streaming TV shows and playing games, to finding directions when traveling, to managing health and fitness, to opening garages in smart homes, to sharing beautiful memories with stunning photos and videos," Phil Schiller, head of marketing for Apple, said in an email.
Though the timing of Apple's announcement seemed comically coincidental, Erlicht and Van Amburg had been talking to Apple for some time. In its quest to develop content that could hold up to fare from Netflix and Hulu, the company had been discussing possible partnerships with numerous studios, including Sony. “Obviously we were intrigued,” Erlicht says. At the time, “there wasn't an agency, production company, or studio that wasn't trying to hunt down what Apple would be doing.” When they were eventually offered the job (and accepted), one of their first calls went to Van Amburg's old friend: Ronald Moore.
If Apple were a person—if it truly took mortal form—that form might be Ron Moore. Like Apple, Moore has created epochal works that improve on the halting steps of their predecessors. And like Apple, he imagines a future that meshes with how humans actually behave and what they expect. Apple might call that Human Interface Design; Moore has called it “naturalistic science fiction.”
macOS Catalina introduces new security controls. For example, apps are now required to ask your permission before accessing parts of the drive where documents and personal files are kept. Let’s take a look at what’s new for security in Catalina.
While I see the overall, big-picture value for macOS Catalina for many — especially Apple, as the update does a better job of integrating the platform with iOS, iPadOS and tvOS — getting it on my Mac is just not a pressing concern for me yet. I'm probably going to get to it, and I'm guessing that others will also be waiting.
Apple boasts a long track record of elegant operating system upgrades. But as these issues—most all confirmed to be widespread—indicate, macOS Catalina wasn't quite up to those typical standards. Hopefully, future releases prove to be more polished.
The issue appears to affect both Apple TV HD and Apple TV 4K devices alike, running tvOS 13.0 (the current public release). It’s not a universal issue but the problem appears wide enough from reports that we have seen to our tips inbox and on social media to be worthy of coverage.
Rap Life With Ebro Darden will spotlight the playlist's latest additions with extensive discussions around hip-hop culture. Hosted by Beats 1 on-air personality Ebro Darden -- who was named Apple Music’s global editorial head of hip-hop and R&B in January -- the show will be a mixture of interviews, original reporting and chatter with fellow Beats 1 personalities Nadeska Alexis and L-Boog, among others.
Yes, it's ridiculously hard to do good estimates on software. Yes, most engineers are bad at it. And yes, being good at this will make you stand out. Saying that "software is just too complex" is an easy way out over asking the hard questions on why estimating is hard and how you can get better at it. Start with sensible project management, focusing on principles to reduce risk, over one-size-fits-all practices like Scrum. Reflect on why you under- or over-estimated. Adjust for next time. Rinse and repeat. I could write a post about just on this - wait, I actually did - but this is the gist of it.
If you never give estimates, you'll never become good at them. If you practice and learn from how things went, you'll keep improving and slowly build up the reputation of that person who's pretty reliable on how long things take.
At Uber, another friend told me I was looking at a frustrating situation the wrong way, the way they viewed their work was, “Each day I walk into work, and this slot opens up above my head, and money falls out of it into my hands, then the slot closes. I go about my day, and the next day I come back, and the slot reopens; more money falls out.”
This is a surprisingly dark way to view your life’s work. So as I pondered my father’s retirement, the question that caught hold of me was: How would I approach my work differently if focused on growth and engagement, and if I measured eras not in equity and IPOs but instead in decades? I’d focus on a small handful of things that build together, with each making the others more impactful as they compound over time.
That means podcasting will inevitably become more like the display ad ecosystem: commoditized, automated, audience-driven rather than contextual. The podcast ad world has been craft; it’s destined to be mechanized.
“It’s really hard to scale the program-specific, custom host-read stuff,” said an executive at one media agency that invests in audio. “It used to be death by a thousand cuts. … If you were interested in doing podcasting as a client, and you could work with two or three big partners, that is much more interesting than trying to do a hundred different deals.”
To ward off age-related cognitive decline, you may be tempted to turn to brain training apps. Last year, consumers spent nearly $2 billion on them, some of which claim to improve cognitive skills.
Evidence suggests you’d be better off spending more time exercising and less time staring at your phone.
Dear Apple, if you are going to name your radio station Beats 1, you got to follw up with Beats 2 and Beats 3 and Beats 4 and so on.
(Just don't name them Beats 360 and Beats 1S.)
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Lisa Zaccone was racing her coworkers to Chicago. Except, not really. They were tracking the number of steps they took each day, converting those steps into approximate mileage, and competing to see who, in a hypothetical trip starting at their office in Ann Arbor, Michigan, would arrive first in the Windy City.
Doing those calculations every day for everyone in the office was a lot of work, so Zaccone asked her son, John, a 31-year-old software engineer, to create an app that tracked the progress of their footrace for them.
John didn’t say no, even though he had never developed an app before. He wasn’t that kind of software engineer. But his mom was asking, and who can turn down their mom? So he began working on a way to track those steps. However, John thought he could do better than the imagined road walk from Michigan to Illinois that his mother and her coworkers had come up with. Instead, he coded the Appalachian Trail.
Dr. Nicole Taylor is an associate professor at Texas State University’s Anthropology Department who researches social media trends. She told Bustle for a previous article on social media use and mental health that social media use can help people connect "with a more diverse, global community than is possible through face-to-face engagement," but that "those connections lack the depth of face-to-face interactions," which can result in feeling lonely — which not great for your mental health.
If passively scrolling through your phone is hurting your mental health, taking time to use your phone more mindfully can help you reset how you interact with it. (Because unfortunately, it's not like phones are going away anytime soon.) It might be time to put your digital BFF on do not disturb and seek out some tools that can help you have a healthier relationship with your phone.
Don’t call yourself a programmer: “Programmer” sounds like “anomalously high-cost peon who types some mumbo-jumbo into some other mumbo-jumbo.” If you call yourself a programmer, someone is already working on a way to get you fired. You know Salesforce, widely perceived among engineers to be a Software as a Services company? Their motto and sales point is “No Software”, which conveys to their actual customers “You know those programmers you have working on your internal systems? If you used Salesforce, you could fire half of them and pocket part of the difference in your bonus.” (There’s nothing wrong with this, by the way. You’re in the business of unemploying people. If you think that is unfair, go back to school and study something that doesn’t matter.)
Instead, describe yourself by what you have accomplished for previously employers vis-a-vis increasing revenues or reducing costs. If you have not had the opportunity to do this yet, describe things which suggest you have the ability to increase revenue or reduce costs, or ideas to do so.
While Google and Microsoft have to deal with scores of partners to make hardware that runs their operating systems, Apple controls both the hardware and software and can dictate the entire user experience. It's the foundation of Apple's $266 billion in annual revenue.
Still, there are strategic reasons for big software companies to launch their own hardware, even if they aren't throwing off billions in profit like Apple.
The fact that many other iPhone and Apple Watch users report problems with accidental SOS alerts suggest that a better UX is needed. The emergency process on my iPhone model is initiated by rapidly pressing the side or top button. This might not be ideal for situations where the iPhone is in a handbag, surrounded by objects which can bump against it. (My SOS signal has also been triggered when I put the phone in an airport security tray, apparently due to being jostled by the conveyor belt.)
Another aspect of the UX that Apple should consider addressing is the SOS countdown alert. While it’s important to warn the user that the emergency protocol has been triggered (giving them time to disable it, if necessary), there are many scenarios where this blaring alarm could be extremely embarrassing — or worse, dangerous. While there is an option on iOS to disable this alert, a better alternative might be this: enable the user to choose complete silence, or a unique ringtone, buzz, or audio file to act as a countdown, a warning that only they will recognize as such.
It's been almost exactly a month since Apple Arcade launched. That means that a lot of free trials are about to expire, and it's time to decide: Is it actually worth your $5 a month? Like you, a number of Engadget editors have been testing out Arcade's various games in our spare time and, for us, the answer is a resounding "yes." The subscription gaming service has won us over in a very short time, including those that were initially on the fence.
We all have our own reasons, whether it's seeing Arcade as a potential solution to skeezy free-to-play mechanics, a tool to play titles across various devices or just a way to play some good games without paying a lot. Join four of us as we dig in a little deeper, and highlight some of our favorite games from the service along the way.
This latest generation of smartphones can capture outstanding photographs in low light. I was able to snap some incredible shots using only a handheld iPhone 11 Pro Max, but Samsung’s latest Galaxy devices and the upcoming Google Pixel 4 should have you covered as well.
I’ll focus on Apple’s night mode here, since that’s what I used, but other recent models offer similar functionality. Also, note that you’ll be able to capture these same results with all iPhone 11 models, since night mode works with the wide (1x) lens. Here’s how to get it done.
The icon looks similar to the 15-inch MacBook Pro asset that is included in previous versions of macOS, but with slightly thinner bezels. The notebook is depicted in both Silver and Space Gray, with "16" in both filenames presumably referring to the larger 16-inch display expected for the rumored machine.
The new Mac Pro is a long-anticipated development for Apple's high end pro users, but it sure looks as if the company also created the machine for its own strategic benefit —specifically to help make its Metal API become a dominant standard for GPU-intensive software. That could have big implications for Macs, iOS devices, and Apple GPUs going forward, with history providing some insight into why this matters.
From a user experience standpoint, the Roku app is essentially a slightly slower version of what you’d get on a native Apple TV device. You’ll notice it taking a moment to load from the main Roku menu, and sometimes briefly spinning the waiting wheel when accessing content. Visual transitions that are smooth on Apple’s device have just enough of a stutter here and there to remind you that you’re not enjoying the “seamless integration of hardware and software” that you’d get from a $149-$199 Apple TV box.
But at this point, that doesn’t really matter. As smart TV prices have dropped, Apple’s own devices have stood still at the same price points, such that you can now buy an entry-level Samsung smart TV with Apple TV app support for only $100 more than a standalone Apple TV box. Unless you’re really interested in playing Apple Arcade games on your TV, or deeply appreciate the added speed of an Apple TV box, there’s little need for the standalone device any more. Apple TV might not be a failure, but it’s not essential, either.
Apple Arcade added four more games to its new $4.99 monthly subscription service on Friday. Players can check out Pac-man Party Royale, Ballistic Baseball, Manifold Garden and Things That Go Bump as part of Apple Arcade's growing catalog of games. The games are available on iPad, iPhone and Apple TV to start, with some beginning to roll out to the Mac as well.
The service also added ShockRods, Stela, Mind Symphony and Decoherence earlier this month.
Einstein famously advised a young student to “never lose a holy curiosity.” Given our evolutionary history, there’s little danger any of us will. The challenge is changing its focus from the momentary to something more enduring.
In a rare instance of bipartisanship overcoming the rancorous discord that’s been the hallmark of the U.S. Congress, senators and sepresentatives issued a scathing rebuke to Apple for its decision to take down an app at the request of the Chinese government.
Signed by Senators Ron Wyden, Tom Cotton, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and Congressional Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Mike Gallagher and Tom Malinowski, the letter was written to “express… strong concern about Apple’s censorship of apps, including a prominent app used by protestors in Hong Kong, at the request of the Chinese government.”
Just as technical backgrounds have not insulated techie Waldorf parents from specious reasoning regarding vaccines, they have afforded them no privileged ability to assess technology’s influence on us more generally. Technical training as it generally exists today may even do the opposite, encouraging a degree of arrogance. As a society, we must see the technology world for what it is: an industry as insular as it is influential, and in desperate need of many more kinds of expertise.
After playing the first two, I realized I’d been programming for 17 years and could probably make my own, especially when all the art is 320 pixels wide and that’s about how many pixels I can work with before people give me a sideways look and ask if I really have a liberal arts degree. I decided to base the story loosely on my novel, for two reasons: first, if the game happens to get the kind of notoriety my novel has not, I might be able to boost sales by claiming the novel can serve as a hint book. Second, I spent nineteen years writing that stupid book, and this seemed like a good a way to manage the withdrawal symptoms. Three weeks later I’d built a rendering engine I’m quite proud of, a simple command and scene logic processor, and accidentally reinvented GIF compression.
The was only one thing left to do: come up with ways to die.
Random Saturday:
1) I'm too timid to turn on SOS service on my iPhone.
2) I hope Apple is not using price as a differentiator between macOS and iPadOS.
3) I don't have a good idea of what Northern Lights look like.
4) Oh, and I've just learnt about AV Plugs. For the dead.
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Thanks for reading.
Last October, as Facebook grappled with the fallout from the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Apple CEO Tim Cook gave a speech in Brussels in which he sought to distance the iPhone maker from its peers. Cook railed against the “data industrial complex,” and chastised companies like Google and Facebook for collecting personal information from users and weaponizing it against them. “This is surveillance,” he said. “This should make us very uncomfortable. It should unsettle us.”
The speech was meant to reaffirm Apple’s position in Silicon Valley as the Patron Saint of Privacy, the company willing to protect user data while others profit from it. In many ways, that reputation is well-earned. After all, Apple refused to help the FBI break into an iPhone that belonged to one of the alleged perpetrators of the 2015 San Bernardino terrorist attack. Its devices are among the most secure in the world, and its has aggressively curbed data-tracking in its own apps. But the company’s recent actions in China demonstrate that Apple’s privacy, security, and human rights virtues appear to have a limit. They don’t always extend beyond Beijing’s borders.
In the fall, a technology company’s fancy turns to new products. As we pass the midpoint of October, the holiday buying season has started to solidify, and we’ve gotten our requisite annual announcements from not only Apple, but from Google and Microsoft as well.
Now that these three big tech companies have all laid their cards on the table, we have a chance to look over what each of them discussed and compare and contrast approaches: where are they working on technology in the same vein, and where do their paths diverge. And, of course, there’s an opportunity to look at what Cupertino’s competitors are doing and see if they point out areas that might also be of interest to Apple.
Luna Display today introduced a new Mac-to-Mac mode that allows any Mac released within the last decade to be used as a second display for another Mac. This includes any combination of Macs, ranging from a MacBook Pro and an iMac to a MacBook Air being used as the primary display for a Mac mini.
One reason I’ve enjoyed Zach Gage’s games for so long is that they all can be picked up and played for just a minute or two at a time, but you can also easily get lost in them for hours at once. Card of Darkness is no exception – I’ve had some great extended periods of play while hanging out at home on the weekend, but the game has also been a go-to for short bursts on the train, or while waiting in line. Because of its turn-based nature, you can make as much or as little progress per play session as you’d like.
Here are the best mystery games on Apple Arcade so far.
"We crafted this story with the intention of creating a narrative that was not just seasonal and fun, but highly participatory and fully immersive, incorporating the most exciting elements of AR," said Thor Benitez, Within's lead creative and technical artist for the story, in a statement.
But the success of TurboTax rests on a shaky foundation, one that could collapse overnight if the U.S. government did what most wealthy countries did long ago and made tax filing simple and free for most citizens.
For more than 20 years, Intuit has waged a sophisticated, sometimes covert war to prevent the government from doing just that, according to internal company and IRS documents and interviews with insiders. The company unleashed a battalion of lobbyists and hired top officials from the agency that regulates it. From the beginning, Intuit recognized that its success depended on two parallel missions: stoking innovation in Silicon Valley while stifling it in Washington. Indeed, employees ruefully joke that the company’s motto should actually be “compromise without integrity.”
Finally, about a week after upgrading to Catalina, I've tried syncing my media files onto my iPod Nano. Everything seems to work fine via the new Finder, except that I have no idea how to transfer my Audible files over from the Books app.
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The San Jose, California-based company will hold its annual creative software conference, Max, in early November in Los Angeles and will provide an update on Photoshop for iPad at that time. The mobile app, which was announced to much fanfare and anticipation at the conference in 2018, is still on track to reach consumers by the end of this year, Scott Belsky, chief product officer of Adobe’s Creative Cloud division, said in an interview.
[...]
Belsky said that the beta feature set won’t represent the final version for consumers, and the need to collaborate with Apple meant that a lot of features are “coming in hot” ahead of the launch. At launch, he said that Photoshop will still lack some familiar features, but that will only represent version one of the product. “Launching every single feature that was accumulated over 25 years on the iPad on day one would not best serve our customers and the needs they have.” Usage on a desktop and an iPad isn’t “apples to apples,” he said, and Adobe “will definitely expand the capabilities” of Photoshop on iPad over time.
Airlines are reluctant to release figures on the volume of items turned in by type, and how many are returned to their owners. Delta did disclose that it receives about 40 pairs of AirPods per month. Spokesman Morgan Durrant said that doesn't rank in the top five of turned-in items. Phones, tablets, laptops, other varieties of headphones and eye/sunglasses can each reach into the hundreds per month, he said.
One sign of the volume of lost AirPods not reunited with passengers: Sales of AirPods at Unclaimed Baggage Center in Scottsboro, Alabama, which buys unclaimed items from airlines and resells them to the public, spiked in the past two years. Sales this year are up 126% from a year ago, according to spokeswoman Jamie Scalici.
Today, Niantic can believably cast itself as a company aimed at getting gamers outside. But John Hanke sometimes describes it as an advertising company or a digital mapping company, too. The open question of where this market-leading technology goes from here—whether it’s smiling pocket pets more believably hopping around our bedrooms, or the Hyper-Reality of ubiquitous computing, saturated with data-probes and targeted advertising—is what may make space for the rot to set in.
What is surprising about Niantic is not what it’s doing, but what it’s capable of, and the fact that most of its users won’t ever understand just how much they’re handing over whenever they use a location-based app.
“We live in a technological surveillance capitalism state,” said the former employee. “How could it be any other way?”
Indeed, this improved efficiency in combination with the Pro models' vastly increased battery capacities is what makes the new phones outright excel in terms of battery life. With a 17% increase in battery capacity for the iPhone 11 Pro and an even more impressive 25% increase in capacity for the 11 Pro Max – as well as a more efficient SoC – the new devices are able to showcase the best battery results ever seen in an iPhone. This praise isn't just limited among iPhones either, as the new devices rank among the longest lasting flagship phones we’ve ever tested.
[...]
But the biggest surprises and largest performance increases were to be found in the A13's GPU. Where the new chip really shines and exceeds Apple’s own marketing claims is in the sustained performance and efficiency of the new GPU. Particularly the iPhone 11 Pro models were able to showcase much improved long-term performance results, all while keeping thermals in check. The short version of it is that Apple has been able to knock it out of the park, delivering performance increases that we hadn’t expected in what's essentially a mid-generation refresh on the chip manufacturing side of matters.
Although Apple has marketed this feature primarily in relation to the iPad—specifically the iPad Pro—it works just the same in iOS 13 on an iPhone as it does in iPadOS.
“This [app] is one of the first building blocks toward growing digital subscribers. Contributions have been a great success, but we also need to tap into the importance of digital subscriptions,” said Juliette Laborie, director of digital reader revenues at The Guardian. “There’s room for a news experience with a different cadence, a finite amount of content carefully curated by editors as a complement to the live app, but for subscribers.”
The Guardian’s challenge in building a paying-reader base is that it won’t make content only available to those who pay. That’s far different than subscription efforts in place at The New York Times and elsewhere. Instead, the new subscriber app presents a different packaging of content, although all the content is still available to those who do not pay.
This makes it a fantastically convenient system. At home, charge normally in the stand. When you leave, either pick up just your phone on its own or – if you need more power to see you through the day – take the bank and phone together and slide them into your pocket or bag sleeve to keep the phone charged.
In a notice on Apple's Developer site, Apple warns of "upcoming scheduled maintenance" that will take place on October 20. The maintenance period will start from 6am Pacific Time, 9am Eastern, and depending on how work progresses, could last for up to eight hours.
Some design flaws are obvious. They smack you in the face immediately; everyone tears down the designer, and the project either gets redesigned or fades into oblivion. Other mistakes are just small enough for most people not to even notice, but once pointed out they can't be unseen. It's like have a tiny pebble in your shoe you can never get rid of.
What's the point of this long-winded introduction? Someone has spotted that the Send button in Apple's Messages iPhone app is very slightly wonky.
Thankfully, I haven't lost any of my AirPods yet. Yes, I've dropped one of the pods once. But, fortunately, it didn't land inside any nooks nor crannies.
I did have a weird dream once, though. In that dream, both of the AirPods suddenly 'pop' out of my ears, dropped onto the floor, and shattered into a million pieces. I have no idea what that dream meant or predicted.
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Thanks for reading.
Kids are outsmarting an army of engineers from Cupertino, Apple’s headquarters in Silicon Valley. And Apple, which introduced Screen Time a year ago in response to pressure to address phone overuse by kids, has been slow to make fixes to its software that would close these loopholes. It’s causing some parents to raise questions about Apple’s commitment to safeguarding kids from harmful content and smartphone addiction.
Curious visitors, limited to groups of 10 at a time, access the experience through an installed iOS app, created by digital production company Arcade Limited and only available via venue-provided iPhone XR smartphones paired with wireless headphones.
As users walk through elaborately colored, woodland-styled arches on a scene set, they point their phones at pictures of animals (really AR markers) that are logged by the iPhone's camera so that the scene tracks accurately, triggering the sounds of opera music and forest soundscapes.
"What is unique about this installation is it is physical as well as digital," Jon Meggitt, the CEO of Arcade Limited, told Next Reality. "We deliberately designed it that way so even people who don't engage with technology can get enjoyment out of the piece."
My suspicion is that Cook doesn’t want Apple to become an idealistic mirage of itself with closed-mindedness reigning supreme. If Apple only did business in countries that have laws matching its beliefs, Apple would operate in just a handful of countries. Such a strategy would represent a big step back in Apple’s toolmaking mission as the biggest loser would be the Apple customer. In my view, that is a good enough reason for Apple to remain engaged with China and other countries rather than retreat into some kind of self-imposed bubble. The fact that the preceding opinion is now viewed as extremist in the U.S. shows just how far the narrative involving China has shifted. Ongoing issues between China and the U.S. regarding intellectual property theft and economic prowess have taken over the discussion, making Apple’s “engaged” strategy seem naive and out of date.
Apple has released iOS 13.1.3, iPadOS 13.1.3, and macOS Catalina 10.15 Supplemental Update to address a wide range of bugs that have plagued the new operating systems. These are purely bug-fix releases without any new features or even CVE entries.
Now, iPhoto’s number is finally truly up. The outdated software won’t launch in macOS Catalina, because its core functions rely on a software framework Apple has also sent riding into the sunset.
If you upgraded to Catalina without first launching Photos or finding another solution, what options do you have? Plenty.
iOS 13 isn’t just about exciting new bugs. Apple did a lot of cleaning up and moving things around in its latest mobile operating system. One big, behind-the-scenes feature change comes in the iPhone’s Personal Hotspot. You can no longer turn it off. Or rather, you haven’t been able to turn it off for a while now. It’s just that iOS 13 finally makes it explicit.
However, this doesn’t mean your iPhone will constantly broadcast its hotspot status, or that it will run down your battery. In fact, this feature is now easier to understand, and more sensibly described, than ever. Here’s what the Personal Hotspot changes in iOS 13 mean.
The app uses three pieces of information: your sleep pattern, your chronotype (morning person or night owl), and your itinerary. It uses these metrics to generate a “personalized” jet lag plan, noting when to seek light and when to avoid it, plus optional recommendations around the use of melatonin and caffeine. Beyer-Clausen claims that if you follow the app’s instructions to a tee, “you can shift the clock three to four times as fast as normal.”
When reading a book, the iOS device will quickly process what is being said and automatically provide sounds effects. There are more than 600 to take advantage of. So, for example, when you read the word car, there is a short car horn beep.
Apple says the Transporter application allows developers to send apps, music, movies, TV shows, and books for distribution via the App Store, Apple Music, Apple TV app, Apple Books, or iTunes Store.
Apple executives have acknowledged entertainment isn't their expertise. "We don't know anything about making television," senior vp software and service Eddy Cue, the architect of the company's TV+ strategy, told audiences at South by Southwest in 2018. "We know how to create apps, we know how to do distribution, we know how to market. But we don't really know how to create shows."
But with AppleTV+'s Nov. 1 debut looming, Cue and company will need to prove that they've figured that out. Any hurdles they've faced leading up to the launch won't matter if their plan to offer a handful of original shows for $5 a month succeeds in attracting a fraction of their 1.4 billion Apple users. And many believe that it will. Wedbush estimates that Apple could attract 100 million TV+ subscribers by 2023 and generate between $7 billion and $10 billion in revenue from the product.
It is part of a strategy by Apple to get second seasons of most of its scripted series going ahead of lunch, which helps amortize costs and keep the Apple TV+ pipeline of original content going, avoiding lengthy hiatuses. Beyond The Morning Show, which had been picked up with a two-season order, Apple had not confirmed any renewals. Along with For All Mankind, also reportedly renewed or in the process of being renewed for a second season are such upcoming Apple series as the Jason Momoa starrer See; Emily Dickinson comedy Dickinson, starring Hailee Steinfeld, which Apple brass have been very high on; anthology immigrant comedy Little America; and the Hilde Lysiak young detective drama Home Before Dark.
An app that can predict the date and time of your death may have been too much for Apple to stomach: The iPhone maker removed a viral app inspired by the upcoming horror movie “Countdown” a few days ago, putting an end to its meteoric rise.
According to Apple's statement, [...] Tencent is used for devices that have their region code set to mainland China. Users in the United States, the UK, and other countries do not have their website browsing checked against Tencent's safe list.
But the news is coming as Apple faces harsh criticism for its very real concessions to the Chinese government. [...] Moreover, Apple often uses privacy and security to distinguish itself from other tech companies. So its willingness to compromise in China has been a notable weak point, readily exploited by competitors like Facebook.
Like the Studio 3 Wireless, the Solo Pro headphones use a form of adaptive noise cancellation Beats calls “Pure ANC.” This has the headphones' microphones constantly monitor the noise of your surroundings, the music currently playing, and your fit, then adjust the intensity of its active noise cancellation accordingly. You still can’t manually change the strength of the ANC, but Beats says it has fine-tuned the algorithm that drive the Pure ANC tech to better suit the Solo Pro’s on-ear design.
[...]
New to the Solo Pro is a “Transparency” mode. This isn’t anything new for modern headphones at large, but turn that on and it’ll use the Solo Pro’s external mics to blend outside noise in with your audio. This is typically useful if you need to quickly address someone—a store clerk, let’s say—or just want to be more aware of your surroundings without stopping the music.
The good news is that Catalina probably won’t slow down an old Mac, as has occasionally been my experience with past MacOS updates. You can check to make sure your Mac is compatible here (if it’s not, have a look at our guide to which MacBook you should get). I tested Catalina on a brand new MacBook Pro, a 2017 MacBook, and a 2016 iMac, and neither of the older machines felt any slower after the upgrade.
I haven’t had any significant issues running Catalina since the GM release, but some users have reported problems, mainly with third-party apps (Adobe Creative Suite especially has had some hiccups). Additionally, Catalina drops support for 32-bit apps. This probably won’t matter for most people, but if you rely on software that hasn’t or won’t be updating to 64-bit, you won’t be able to run it once you upgrade.
Today’s update to the AirPort Utility application includes security improvements and general stability enhancements. Some users had reported problems with the AirPort Utility app on iOS 13, so this update likely resolves those issues.
Like the TV app on Samsung smart TV sets, the Roku version of the app offers access to all iTunes movie and TV show content, as well as all Apple TV channels options, such as HBO, CBS All-Access, and soon Apple TV+.
Instead of emphasizing video, the new app is all about reading on your television. Scroll left or right, and you can cycle through a carousel of headlines with images, chosen by human editors. Select any one, and you can scroll through the article text with your remote. The app also offers adjustable fonts, text sizes, and color schemes so you can read more comfortably on the big screen. Mulder says that as streaming devices become more popular and more sophisticated, there’s room to use them as news readers.
“Scanners don’t wear out and people like to use their scanners for a long time, sometimes for 10 or 15 years,” said Ed Hamrick, President of Hamrick Software. “However, most vendor-supplied scanner drivers are 32-bit programs on Mac OS and don’t work on Catalina. VueScan lets people to continue using their scanners on Catalina, saving the environment and saving money.”
Netgear expands its Orbi line with new dual-band Mesh WiFi system, designed to provide reliable and customizable Wi-Fi coverage to large homes.
Seeing the stress it was putting on his mom to coordinate all medical appointments, medications, and be the main point of contact for all the helpers, Logan did what he could to help. He also began learning programming from online tutorials with the plan to develop an app that would coordinate all the data and calendar information.
Development of the app quickly became a family project. Logan’s dad, Eric, helped with his background in technology and programming; his twin brother Devin and sister Delaney provided input for the prototype; and Logan’s mom and aunt tested the initial version and provided crucial feedback.
My best guess for why Apple decided to spoof these two popular services and pretend to be a desktop when making its requests is that some sites may use custom logic for rich previews shown on Facebook and Twitter. [...] Spoofing user agents makes it difficult to get an accurate picture of where your web traffic is coming from. It also breaks standards like robots.txt (which iMessage doesn’t seem to respect either) which allow you to control how crawlers crawl your site.
When so many people have long or unreliable work hours, or worse, long and unreliable work hours, the effects ripple far and wide. Families pay the steepest price. Erratic hours can push parents—usually mothers—out of the labor force. A body of research suggests that children whose parents work odd or long hours are more likely to evince behavioral or cognitive problems, or be obese. Even parents who can afford nannies or extended day care are hard-pressed to provide thoughtful attention to their kids when work keeps them at their desks well past the dinner hour.
Consumer interest in the iPhone 11 suggests Apple may be tackling a problem that has plagued its lower-end models in recent years: Many people want the best iPhones, but can’t afford them. The iPhone 11 bridges that gap. The only major differences between that model and the iPhone 11 Pro is a third-camera for deeper zoom and the resolution of the screen. Reviews of the iPhone 11 have been positive, with praise coming for the consistency of the camera between the regular iPhone 11 and the Pro version.
Analysts agree that Apple is playing the long game with Apple TV+, and though the streaming service won’t launch with the breadth of content to immediately overtake the likes of Netflix or Hulu, having its own in-house studio could allow Apple to gradually bulk up its library to compete with those industry giants. And unlike services such as Netflix and WarnerMedia’s upcoming HBO Max, which recently shelled out hundreds of millions for popular legacy shows such as “Seinfeld” and “The Big Bang Theory,” respectively, Apple won’t have to ante up similarly large amounts of money to maintain the rights to its Apple TV+ projects, according to Wedbush analyst Daniel Ives.
If there is a larger lesson to learn from The Code, it is that technology cannot be separated from the social and political contexts in which it is created. The major currents in society shape and guide the creation of a system that appears to spring from the minds of its inventors alone. Militarism and unbridled capitalism remain among the most powerful forces in the United States, and to my mind, there is no reason to believe that a new generation of techies might resist them any more effectively than the previous ones. The question of fixing Silicon Valley is inseparable from the question of fixing the system of postwar American capitalism, of which it is perhaps the purest expression. Some believe that the problems we see are bugs that might be fixed with a patch. Others think the code is so bad at its core that a radical rewrite is the only answer. Although The Code was written for people in the first group, it offers an important lesson for those of us in the second: Silicon Valley is as much a symptom as it is a cause of our current crisis. Resisting its bad influence on society will ultimately prove meaningless if we cannot also formulate a vision of a better world—one with a more humane relationship to technology—to counteract it. And, alas, there is no app for that.
I'm behind in my podcast listening queue, again. This really mean that I haven't alone all that much these past few days, which also mean that I haven't been recharging much.
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Thanks for reading.
The problem is that Safe Browsing “update API” has never been exactly “safe”. Its purpose was never to provide total privacy to users, but rather to degrade the quality of browsing data that providers collect. Within the threat model of Google, we (as a privacy-focused community) largely concluded that protecting users from malicious sites was worth the risk. That’s because, while Google certainly has the brainpower to extract a signal from the noisy Safe Browsing results, it seemed unlikely that they would bother. (Or at least, we hoped that someone would blow the whistle if they tried.)
But Tencent isn’t Google. While they may be just as trustworthy, we deserve to be informed about this kind of change and to make choices about it. At very least, users should learn about these changes before Apple pushes the feature into production, and thus asks millions of their customers to trust them.
Payment company executives Quartz has spoken with grumble about Apple’s stranglehold on NFC. But for the most part, they’re not willing to pick a fight with a company that has a cash hoard of around a quarter of $1 trillion. It’s better to be friends with the tech titan that controls the App Store and has deep relationships from Washington to Shenzhen.
MacOS Catalina is live and out now for the masses to download—and Apple being Apple, it's packed with features focused on user security and privacy. Here's how Catalina promises to make your Mac safer and better protected than ever, from warnings about weak passwords to smart ways to retrieve a lost MacBook.
If you’re anything like me, you’ll have been a little dismayed to discover that the shots you’re getting from the camera app aren’t quite billboard-worthy.
Thankfully, Apple runs a number of masterclasses to help you eke the best out of its hardware.
Armed with a shiny new iPhone 11 Pro Max, which boasts the first triple-camera system seen on any Apple device, we headed down to the Covent Garden Apple Store to see what we could learn. Turns out, we could learn a helluva lot.
With the previous case we heard about, the most likely explanation was the information of the titanium Apple Card being skimmed and cloned by a thief. However, since with this latest case Larry claims he has only ever used Apple Pay with his Apple Card and never used the physical one, the skimming theory would out the window.
But it's an interesting philosophical discussion: Can a feature be so important that it gets a marketing name, but not important enough to be advertised in the interface?
How could journalists cover the multiple crises rocking Big Tech as something other than an unquenchable dumpster fire? We suggest that journalists covering technology take inspiration from the solutions journalism movement and creatively adapt some of its playbook. “Solutions journalism” is a fad, and a popular one. You may have read about it in a colleague’s grant proposal. But it’s a fad with something real to recommend.
Solutions journalism is reporting that focuses on the responses to social problems that other reporting describes and defines. Its proponents argue that such an approach offers several potential benefits, including sharing insights about what works, reducing the sense that the press only shows up when things go wrong (which contributes to distrust of journalists), and, crucially, combating the sense of hopelessness and powerlessness that accrues from a flood of bad news.
Getting rid of Google and Tencent for the Safe Browsing feature seems like something that Apple can solved by just throwing money at the problem.
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Thanks for reading.
When the latest (as of this writing) iPad Pro hardware and iPad OS come together, it creates a computer that isn't a computer, the most personal post-PC PC out there. However you define it, it’s great. I find myself reaching for my iPad more often than a MacBook or any other “real” computer. It's the best computing device I've ever used. There are still things a laptop or desktop PC is better for, but that list continues to get shorter.
There are two things that I wanted to get rid of on my iMac: The notice about Catalina, and the infuriating red dot. At its simplest level, this appears to require just two Terminal commands.
So what’s the verdict: have I become more focused? I filed this article very late, which probably answers that question. But there’s no denying that Eyal’s book is a refreshing antidote to the advice that we should all be buying flip phones and digital detoxing. The route to a healthier relationship with technology isn’t necessarily going cold turkey; it’s learning moderation and good habits.
I wish I can bookmark specific pages in Apple Music. I wish I can add radio stations to my library. I wish Beats 1 radio shows are available as podcasts.
Oh and, of course, peace on Earth and freedom for all.
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Thanks for reading.
The blowback to Apple’s decision has been swift—a rare black eye for a brand that usually only encounters criticism when its new devices are too boring. But unless Apple is able to substantiate its claims about the app being used to facilitate violence—so far, it hasn’t—this appears to be a case of the company giving in, days after the NBA was pilloried for doing the same, to a Chinese government on which it is now deeply reliant. Apple has a multibillion-dollar business in China, makes its phones there, and, like other corporations, generally doesn’t want to piss off the country’s leaders. But coming from a company that has fought for civil liberties at home—remember Apple’s stand for user privacy in the face of the FBI’s demand that it unlock the San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone?—its actions in Hong Kong are jarring.
[...]
Yes, all markets require a level of privacy in order to operate. You can’t know the political leaning of everyone you buy a sandwich from. Vendors can decide what they do or don’t want to disclose or ask of their customers. But when they do know, they have no obligation to proceed with that business. Activists and tech critics sometimes use the word complicit when talking about companies that look the other way when their inventions are causing harm. Assistive might be more accurate. Providing database and web services—even just email—to a cruel immigration regime assists in the cruelty. Censoring an app that’s popular with protesters because the Chinese government doesn’t like it may be harming those protesters. These companies can do what they want with the software they sell. But they should stop pretending that what they sell is neutral.
In early 2018 as development on Apple’s slate of exclusive Apple TV+ programming was underway, the company’s leadership gave guidance to the creators of some of those shows to avoid portraying China in a poor light, BuzzFeed News has learned. Sources in position to know said the instruction was communicated by Eddy Cue, Apple’s SVP of internet software and services, and Morgan Wandell, its head of international content development. It was part of Apple's ongoing efforts to remain in China’s good graces after a 2016 incident in which Beijing shut down Apple’s iBooks Store and iTunes Movies six months after they debuted in the country.
The consensus is that American companies should not censor the demonstrations in Hong Kong, but it’s less clear exactly how we can prevent these companies from engaging in censorship.
Ryan Calo, a professor of digital law and privacy law at the University of Washington School of Law, said that tech companies need to say, clearly and publicly, "when they will engage in censorship, if at all, at the behest of another nation."
Ultimately this means that only users who are aware of this “Fraudulent Website Warning” setting and have disabled it can be sure that their IP addresses aren’t being logged by Tencent or Google when using an iOS device.
I don’t know whether these are due to Mail bugs or to other factors such as problems on the Mac or with the mail server. But my advice is to hold off on updating to Catalina for now.
When Randy called Apple, the support agent said that the problem was a known issue with the iPad Air 2, and that Apple did not yet have a fix. However, the workaround was to reset the iPad Air 2 entirely (using Settings > General > Reset > Erase All Content and Settings, and restore from a recent backup.
With iPadOS, I believe Apple seeks to further explore the middle ground between the quick-task-oriented iPhone and the heavy-focus, power-user-oriented Mac. But there's a tension here, because the original pitch that made the iPad so popular was the notion that it's easier to use, more intuitive, and less overwhelming than using a laptop. There was a place in users' hearts, minds, and wallets for a simpler kind of computing. Apple has definitely compromised that minimalist goal here.
That ease of use and simplicity is still here in some cases, though. Many changes, like the home screen updates, add more powerful functionality while trying to avoid compromising the minimalism that was core to the platform’s initial concept. In some cases, this feels like a negative compromise. In others, it works quite nicely.
When Apple redesigned CarPlay for iOS 13, it knew it had to fit in the big displays that cars offer now and will offer moving forward. Its answer to this via the Dashboard was masterful, and using it on an expansive display was a joy.
Apple’s devices have always played well with each other; that’s a big part of the company’s appeal. But with Catalina, we see that the future is going to, more than ever, be about the ways each of Apple’s products can fill in the gaps for the overall ecosystem, bringing it all together as a unified whole.
Half a decade after the release of the iPhone, the mobile market was awash with clones, reskins, and other low-effort shovelware. In some cases, the clones were actually making more money than the originals, which famously happened to number-based puzzle game Threes in 2014. Schwartz and Scott felt that it was nearly impossible for the average game developer to get noticed without a million-dollar marketing budget. As young indie developers struggling to pay the rent, Schwartz and Scott were growing disillusioned.
Then they had a crazy idea. If the system had stopped working for them, maybe they could just work the system.
Apple is officially launching its own internal studio, making the series the first that it will own in-house. Apple's Worldwide Video heads Zack Van Amburg and Jamie Erlicht will also oversee the unnamed studio in a move that brings them back to their roots as head of Sony Pictures TV.
[...]
As former studio chiefs at Sony TV, Van Amburg and Erlicht are well-versed in the importance of having an internal studio that not only oversees production but owns the programming. Producing its programming in-house will monetize Apple's content and eliminate having to pay expensive licensing fees to such outside studios as Warner Bros. TV.
Bug! Bugs! I see bugs everywhere!
The Podcast app on Catalina is the worst. Buttons are going missing everywhere. The selection highlight occasionally goes missing on the sidebar. Clicks sometimes don't register. And the whole navigation continues to baffle me.
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The apps in my Dock are sorted in alphbetica order. So now my music app is in a different position. On the other hand, I usually switch apps on my Mac by typing into Spotlight, and "it" still brings up the Music app, so all's well. (Apple did that for the transition from iCal to Calendar too. Typing "ic" still bring up Calendar on Catalina. At least for me.)
Oh, and I have to update all my iTunes-related Applescripts.
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Why are the Shortcuts colors so muted in iOS 13? And I did have to spend a few minutes figuring out how to change the colors of my shortcuts.
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Speaking of colors: I am not used to the new icon color for "Find My", which replaces the spot previouslly occupied by Find My Friends on my iPhone home screen.
Launching the Find My app and switching to the Devices screen essentially reminds me of how much money I've given to Apple over the years.
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Thanks for reading.
“I think what’s cool is we’re making steady progress,” Jackson tells The Independent. “So much so that it just gets to be part of the story without being the lead. It’s not ‘look what we did’ – it’s, ‘we told you we’re going to keep working on this, and every new product has some story’.”
This time around, in the new iPhone, the story Jackson says she is is most proud of is the materials inside the Taptic Engine, the little vibrating component that lets the phone give you a tiny nudge. To do so, it relies on magnets made of rare earth materials – and now those materials will be recycled, helping boost the environmental credentials of the new phone.
That same story is a reminder that there is plenty of work left to do, however. “It’s about a quarter of all the rare earths you find in a typical iPhone, so it’s not all done.”
Apple is rolling out a new opt-in notice for Siri audio sample review with the beta of iOS 13.2. This new opt-in feature was promised back in August after reports that audio from Siri requests were being reviewed by contractors and that the audio could contain sensitive or personal information.
[...]
Apple is also launching a new Delete Siri and Dictation History feature. Users can go to Settings>Siri and Search>Siri History to delete all data Apple has on their Siri requests. If Siri data is deleted within 24 hours of making a request, the audio and transcripts will not be made available to grading.
I always thought that criminals were meant to be the ones that exploited “innovation”. But it felt like innovation had exploited me, and turned me into a criminal.
I still use Apple Pay to tap in on buses and trains — I’m not going to seek revenge against the digital revolution just because it stung me. But I have now invested in a portable charger. I must stop forgetting to charge it.
“Over the past several days we received credible information, from the Hong Kong Cybersecurity and Technology Crime Bureau, as well as from users in Hong Kong, that the app was being used maliciously to target individual officers for violence and to victimize individuals and property where no police are present,” Cook wrote in the memo, a copy of which was obtained by Bloomberg News. He also said the app violates local laws.
The company has been criticized for the move, and Cook addressed that. “These decisions are never easy, and it is harder still to discuss these topics during moments of furious public debate,” the CEO wrote. “National and international debates will outlive us all, and, while important, they do not govern the facts. In this case, we thoroughly reviewed them, and we believe this decision best protects our users.”
I can’t recall an Apple memo or statement that crumbles so quickly under scrutiny. For a company that usually measures umpteen times before cutting anything, it’s both sad and startling.
“We Hongkongers will definitely look closely at whether Apple chooses to uphold its commitment to free expression and other basic human rights, or become an accomplice for Chinese censorship and oppression.”
Attackers exploited a zeroday vulnerability in Apple's iTunes and iCloud programs to infect Windows computers with ransomware without triggering antivirus protections, researchers from Morphisec reported on Thursday. Apple patched the vulnerability earlier this week.
Maybe the good news, though, is this: USB-C didn't need the iPhone to come into its own. It still has its wrinkles to iron out, as manufacturers coalesce around the same standards within the standard. Even so, it’s largely fulfilled the promise it showed in 2015. And now that it’s finally the default port of the present, it should only get easier to wrangle from here.
Well, I'm not sure what I'm getting into, but my backups are done, and I'm about to upgrade all my devices on a single weekend. Good bye, and see you (hopefully) soon.
Signing off…
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Thanks for reading.
Behind all these iPhone-lensed features there has always been one go-to app: FiLMiC Pro. FiLMiC Pro unlocks professional-level control over the phone’s camera, including exposure, focus, color temperature, LOG recording, live shot analytics and many other features.
I got a chance to chat with Neill Barham, the CEO and founder of FiLMiC, about the appeal of mobile filmmaking to more established filmmakers, the democratization of filmmaking tools, and the future of FiLMiC Pro.
Apple released its last Environmental Responsibility Report in April of 2019, offering a glimpse into how the company is making strives to become environmentally friendly. The report shows some impressive figures, giving many Apple fans and environmental advocates hope for a brighter, more ecologically sound future.
But, there's a lot more behind the numbers and figures that Apple presents.
AirPods’s disposability is a problem, and it runs counter to Apple’s staunch pro-environmental messaging, but it’s a problem shared by every set of ear buds in the category. Keep in mind too, that a solution to this problem needs to account for weight, waterproofing, appearance, comfort, and cost. It’s a hard problem to solve, obviously.
The Apple Card comes with a Disaster Relief Program, according to a MacRumors reader who lives in Houston and recently experienced some flooding from tropical storm Imelda.
After reviewing and confirming a fraudulent purchase alert on his iPhone, David chatted with Apple Support who said his card was present for the fraudulent purchase several states away from him, and he didn’t lose his card.
Another concerning detail was that the location of the fraudulent purchase was labeled as being nearby David but tapping on the map revealed it happened hundreds of miles away.
That’s because a hacker has created the first Lightning cable that, when plugged into your Mac or PC, will allow someone to remotely take over your computer. Worse, this hacked Lightning cable, called the O.MG Cable, isn’t a bespoke one-off. It’s being mass-produced in factories so anyone can buy and use them to target your data.
An app without special permissions can register for notifications of file system events that occur in directories that are supposed to be protected. These file system event notifications can disclose private information that the app should not have access to.
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The File System Events API can't see the file contents, but it can see the file names! And because Safari names files after the web sites you visit, the File System Events API can be used to determine your web browsing history.
Apple has pulled an app that tracked the movements of Hong Kong police through crowdsourced data, becoming the latest company this week to bow to Chinese pressure.
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Apple reportedly told the developer “we have verified with the Hong Kong cybersecurity and technology crime bureau that the app has been used to target and ambush police, threaten public safety, and criminals have used it to victimise residents in areas where they know there is no law enforcement”, according to an excerpt shared on HKmap.live’s Telegram channel.
According to Quartz investigations editor John Keefe, Apple has removed the Quartz app from the iOS App Store. The website, which has been covering the Hong Kong protests in detail, has also been blocked across all of mainland China.
Apple has made a second release of watchOS 5.3.2 available for download, this time for the Apple Watch Series 4, enabling owners of iPhone models that cannot upgrade to iOS 13 or later to continue using the wearable device with their older smartphone.
Now that players can connect the Xbox Wireless Controller to their iPhone, iPad, or Apple TV to play games on Apple devices, it appears that Apple has worked out a deal with Microsoft to sell its controller on the Apple store.
With Texas Hold’em iPad support, you can play in full screen or while using other applications thanks to support for Split View and Slide Over multitasking.
I’ve used a lot of different RSS readers, and lire has always stood out because it can be customized in so many different ways. The app also does a better job than most other RSS clients of pulling the full text of an article from an RSS feed that offers truncated versions of its articles only. Although some features of the iOS and iPadOS apps aren’t available on the Mac yet, such as theming, I’ve been impressed with the level of customization that’s been brought over so far.
Magnet makes it easy to resize windows and applications, either with customizable keyboard shortcuts or by dragging windows to the edge or corners of the display.
Tap Strap 2 uses onboard intelligence to automatically know what interaction the user intends. When a user's hand is horizontal, Tap Strap 2 becomes a keyboard. When the thumb rests on a surface, it seamlessly switches to optical mouse mode. And when the user's hand is rotated vertically, Tap Strap 2 will switch gears yet again into AirMouse mode.
I’m starting a journey I’m calling Project Geneva, in which I’m going to see just how far I can push customizability and design of complications for the Apple Watch.
Life is wonderful, and we focus on the one thing that’s not.
Fans of the Crossy Road mobile game on iOS and Android, or those nostalgic for games like Mario and Frogger, might have a reason to be more interested in Apple Arcade: A new version of the app, called Crossy Road Castle, will be coming to the subscription service later this year. Crossy Road Castle supports local multiplayer capability for four people and will work with PS4 and Xbox controllers.
Shazam erased its losses and increased user totals during the course of 2018, a year that saw the audio-identifying app’s acquisition by Apple.
Vincent Connare, the creator of Comic Sans, has something to say about his Frankenstein-like font: “If you love Comic Sans you don’t know much about typography. And if you hate Comic Sans you need a new hobby.”
MacOS Catalina is here, and with it, a bunch of top-line features: Mac Catalyst, new apps, Sidecar, Screen Time, and Voice Control. But as you might expect, Catalina also includes dozens of small feature changes that are worth investigating. Here are a few of the most interesting hidden features in macOS Catalina.
Adobe is recommending that Photoshop and Lightroom Classic users hold off on updating their computers to macOS Catalina, Apple’s latest desktop operating system software, until all the “known compatibility issues” have been resolved. Support documents published yesterday in conjunction with Catalina’s release highlight various issues related to broken plug-ins and incompatibility with 32-bit applications.
Apple rolled out Catalyst, the technology to transition iPad apps into Mac versions, on Monday. It’s the initial step toward a bigger goal: By 2021, developers should be able to build an app once and have it work on iPhones, iPads and Mac computers through a single, unified App Store. But the first iteration, which appears to still be quite raw and in a number of ways frustrating to developers, risks upsetting users who may have to pay again when they download the Mac version of an iPad app they’ve already bought.
“As a user, I don't want to pay again just to have the same app,” said longtime Apple developer Steven Troughton-Smith. “As a developer, I don't want my users to have to make that decision.”
James Thompson has had to work harder than he expected to get his popular PCalc calculator iPad app running well on Mac computers. Getting paid a second time for that extra work makes sense for developers, but consumers may not immediately understand that after Apple made the porting process sound as easy as checking a box, he said. Kevin Reutter, who has brought his Planny app to Mac computers, called the situation “sad.”
Things that work well with touch, don’t necessarily look or feel great. In fact, I would say that the more an app uses the standard iOS user interface elements, the less it feels right on the Mac.
For something like a game that is all custom UI anyway, you probably couldn’t even tell, although Catalyst currently isn’t a great fit for game developers either.
But while apps from video and comic book streaming service DC Universe and car racing game Asphalt 9 were both removed from the Project Catalyst website this week, both are still planned for a future release, according to a person familiar with Apple's rollout plans. Popular apps including Twitter and TripIt are also still coming to Mac soon, according to Apple's website.
iOS 13 will almost surely be better with the next incremental update of bug fixes and patches, and there’s ultimately no right answer as to which version of iOS 13 is the one that’s right for you. And if you must have the latest and greatest now, iOS 13.1.2 certainly isn’t worse than it was at launch. But it still has plenty of room for improvement.
Graphics in some games like Sonic Racing and Super Impossible Road translate really well to the big screen, with Sonic Racing looking (and playing) like an online Mario Kart knock-off (it actually plays more like traditional Mario Kart than the new Mario Kart Tour). Sayonara Wild Hearts look just as visually impressive at 55 inches as it does on an iPhone.
On other games like Mini Motorways, Oceanhorn 2 or Capcom's Shinsekai Into the Depths, the graphics reminded me of an iPhone or Switch game blown up to a 55-inch 4K TV. They lacked the crispness I saw on the small phone screen.
Signs of mobile-first design are also present in some game interfaces. Mini Motorways and Sonic Racing, for example, have cursors that replicate your finger, either when playing the game or in the menu screens.
Backblaze has always kept a 30-Day Version History of backed up files, but today they are giving you the option to extend your Version History to a year or forever. If you extend your Version History, all versions of your files that are backed up — whether you’ve updated, changed, or entirely deleted them from your computer — will remain in your backup for one year after being modified or deleted on your Mac or Windows PC.
A follow-up to the original MeeBot, which allowed younger iPad users to learn to code, the second-generation kit is a collection of parts that can be put together to create a humanoid robot.
Spotify has updated its iOS and iPadOS app with Siri and Low Data Mode support, in addition to launching an all-new Apple TV app. I’ve spent some time with the update and overall it works as advertised, though it’s worth noting a few limitations.
To examine our inboxes is to examine our lives: our desires and dreams, our families and careers, our status, our networks and our social groupings, our projects, our commerce, our politics, our secrets/lies/fetishes. Inboxes are anthropological goldmines, textual archives, psychological case studies, waiting to be plumbed and probed for the expansive cultural, ethical, epistemological, and ontological insights lurking therein.
On second thought: they are probably not waiting to be probed, but actually being probed, scanned and algorithmatized, by Google, Amazon, the National Security Agency, the Russians, Julian Assange, employers, ex-lovers who remember your password, current lovers who install surveillance software on your laptop to monitor emails to your ex-lover/next lover, hackers who create fake networks on any public wifi you log onto, and/or anyone else who cares to discover whatever “secrets” you are secreting into the tubes.
If a developer can simply write one set of code, hit a button, and publish to two different platforms: is it worthwhile, then, for one company to have that two different platforms?
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Catalina moves macOS further and more decisively in the direction of iOS than ever; for the first time, third-party code written for iOS and iPadOS can run on the Mac with relatively few changes. At the same time, Apple remains adamant that the Mac and iOS/iPadOS are separate platforms that differ in ways that go beyond the underlying processor architecture or the primary input mechanism.
Catalina also draws clearer lines between the two platforms than we've gotten before. Apple has both said and done things that only make sense if the Mac will still be able to run whatever code you want for the foreseeable future, even as the default settings and security mechanisms become more locked-down and iOS-y. The overwhelming success of the iPhone indicates that most people are fine with Apple's restrictions most of the time. But the slew of new desktop hardware we've gotten in the last couple of years suggests that Apple understands that a valuable, vocal chunk of the Mac user base (and the developers who drive the iPhone's and iPad's success) still wants powerful hardware that runs more flexible software.
Despite continued angst about what it means for apps to be "Mac-like," the Mac will continue to be the Mac, distinct from the iPhone and the iPad. Keep that in mind as we dig into Catalina, which changes a whole lot of stuff about how Macs work while still aiming to preserve what people like about them.
The Mac isn’t in crisis, but it isn’t healthy either. Waiting until the Mac is on life support isn’t viable. Instead, Apple has opted to reimagine the Mac in the context of today’s computing landscape before its survival is threatened. The solution is to tie macOS more closely to iOS and iPadOS, making it an integrated point on the continuum of Apple’s devices that respects the hardware differences of the platform but isn’t different simply for the sake of difference.
Transitions are inherently messy, and so is Catalina in places. It’s a work in process that represents the first steps down a new path, not the destination itself. The destination isn’t clear yet, but Catalina’s purpose is: it’s a bridge, not an island.
More than anything, the potential changes to the app model are the main reason I’m recommending that you hold off on updating for a little bit. Do some Googling on your most important apps, and make sure they’re updated to support Catalina before installing it. I suspect that, for the vast majority of people and the vast majority of apps, it will be a nonissue, but it doesn’t hurt to check.
I don’t think we’re going to really know what this update will mean for the Mac until we know what happens with Catalyst apps. For Apple’s own software, Catalina’s biggest accomplishment is deconstructing iTunes into three separate apps. There’s still work to be done on Music, Podcasts, and Apple TV, but they’re a big step forward.
What I’m arguing is that one of the prices of using a powerful, relatively open platform is that sometimes things break and that’s okay. The alternatives are worse: you end up with something completely managed, something complete stagnant, or something completely boring.
So don’t yell at Apple or Microsoft or Google when apps break on new versions of their OS. Doing so just reifies the idea that they are our benevolent overlords and takes away some of our own power. Yell at them when their own software breaks — trust me, it happens often enough that you’ll never lack for moments of catharsis.
Tons of popular DJ apps, like Serato and Traktor, read XML files, and over the years, iTunes became the de facto way for lots of DJs to sort through their massive file libraries and quickly find tracks while performing.
But Apple’s confirmation means updating to Catalina will replace iTunes with Music, and that, in turn, will break communication between the app and pretty much all existing DJ software. The company says that if a customer is reliant on XML files for DJing, they should avoid updating and continue using their preferred software on macOS Mojave until developers push out fixes.
Apple has delayed the introduction of iCloud Folder Sharing in macOS Catalina until the spring, according to its website.
The key cloud storage feature has spent months in development and would have allowed users to share folders in their iCloud Drive with other Apple users via a private link.
I think iPadOS has a different learning curve than what we’re used to. It’s not a straight line, but it seesaws between shallow and steep. It is easier than nearly any other computer in history to start using. But when you start trying to get the same sorts of capabilities out of the iPad that you’d expect from a high-end laptop, that curve hockeysticks.
I’m weirdly proud of Apple for having the courage to present power users with that difficulty curve spike. Apple used to be so worried that people would get lost that it kept the iPad working like a big iPhone for a really long time. Now, it’s not afraid to just make things complicated and assume people who need it will figure it out.
That sure sounds like a computer to me.
The Metal improvements are substantial, improving playback, rendering, real-time effects, and exporting on Metal-compatible Macs. The 15-inch MacBook Pro, in particular, benefits from performance gains up to 20-percent faster, while iMac Pro users will see a whopping 35-percent faster gains.
Thanks to the launch of macOS Catalina, Carrot Weather has introduced an improved Mac app using macOS Catalina's Catalyst feature. The app brings with it everything you love on Carrot Weather's iOS app, including the familiar UI and snarky forecasts. Plus more secret locations and achievements.
Surprisingly, I found that the gamification of learning a language in Duolingo really clicked for me. It’s a simple mechanicism where you complete lessons to earn XP and move on to further levels.
We can do better than the automation status quo. First off, I’ve shown that somewhere, we probably already are: A scant few are bending and breaking rules to keep the benefits of on-ramp jobs while adapting to work involving intelligent technologies. We need to find these people and learn from them. Beyond this, we need to take a stand. Any of us—worker, manager, technologist, policymaker—can look for ways to handle the technologies that both preserve the benefits of on-ramp jobs and deliver the productivity gains we’re all hoping for. We could create new, even-more-valuable on-ramp jobs that are possible only because of intelligent technologies, for example. Some kitchens that buy the Dishcraft system will probably realize they could get more customers by showing it off through a plexiglass wall in the hallway on the way to the conveyor where you drop your tray. They’ll need someone to keep the wall and the robot clean and answer bystander questions. That’s the beginnings of an on-ramp job, and I bet many a high-schooler would jump at the chance.
The iPhone maker has recently approached the big music companies about bundling together Apple Music and Apple’s upcoming television service, but the two sides have not yet discussed a pricing formula, said people familiar with the negotiations. Talks are at an early stage, they added.
While some labels are open to the idea, people at one big record company said they had concerns, and that the industry was growing more wary about its relationship with Apple, which strong-armed labels a decade ago into selling individual songs for $0.99 on iTunes.
Apple doesn’t break out Beats 1 monthly listening figures; various commentators have speculated they are relatively low, the official line is “tens of millions”. What we do know is that one of Lowe’s priorities is to merge the two elements of Apple's £9.99 a month Music offering: its Spotify-style streaming service and the Beats 1 radio shows.
“I want more people to listen and discover this stuff,” says Lowe. “And I want to integrate what we do at Beats 1 into Apple Music more thoroughly. I would guess there are still subscribers who don’t realise Elton John has done over 200 shows. Those shows are works of art in their own right.”
Here's my plan: I'm going to devote my entire upcoming weekend to upgrade my Mac, my iPhone, and my iPad. My Apple TV has already been updated to the latest tvOS without problems, and I don't own any Apple Watches.
So, if the updates to this little website is sparse or non-existent this weekend, you know something has gone wrong.
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Thanks for reading.
Spotify has today released its iOS 13 update, which allows users to ask Siri to play albums and playlists using their voice. This brings Spotify up to par with other music apps; SiriKit integration for audio apps was exclusive to Apple Music until iOS 13.
A seized phone. A stopped concert. A text from Rihanna. All new fuel for a heated debate about theater etiquette in the digital age.
“We talk about addiction, but when it comes to Candy Crush, really? Facebook? We’re not freebasing Facebook. We’re not injecting Instagram here,” Mr. Eyal said one morning over croissants at New York’s Bryant Park. “These are things we can do something about, but we love to think the technology is doing it to us.”
And so in “Indistractable,” which was published last month, Mr. Eyal has written a guide to free people from an addiction he argues they never had in the first place. It was all just sloughing off personal responsibility, he figures. So the solution is to reclaim responsibility in myriad small ways.
Surprise! Last night, Apple added four new games to the Apple Arcade service, including the new game, Pilgrims, from Machinarium developer Amanita Design and the early release of The Bradwell Conspiracy.
I’m sure they make a ton of money, but it’s clearly coming at the cost of Nintendo’s most valuable assets: its image, the way people perceive the company, and people’s trust in Nintendo’s ability to create amazing games.
In the App Store listing for Apple's preinstalled Alarms app on the Apple Watch, there is a screenshot of an unreleased version of the Alarms app with a "Sleep" label and fine print that reads "set your Bedtime and wake up in the Sleep app."
Similar functionality is available on the iPhone through the Bedtime tab of the Clocks app.
There's no question the Series 5 is the best Apple Watch that's ever been made. The new always-on display makes this feel like the device we've always desired and the in-built compass is a nice added extra.
[...]
This is the most complete wearable on the market and Apple's rivals have a huge amount of catching up to do.
That’s why I recommend installing some form of drive-health monitoring software if you use a Fusion Drive. I recently reviewed DriveDx, but there are several other apps available, too. This category of software checks your drives on a schedule and alerts you the first time an error is noticed or a problem rises above a threshold. These reports can provide detail about the current wear state of your Fusion Drive SSD (or a regular full-disk one).
Updating to Apple’s latest operating system too soon can yield all sorts of issues with your Logic Pro X projects using third-party gear.
When it comes to mobile scanner apps, Prizmo 5 is unmatched for its fast, streamlined workflow and high-quality scans, but be prepared to pay up if you want unlimited on-device OCR or to share documents without a watermark.
The Twitch app for Apple TV offers the same features found on the iOS and Mac apps, so users can watch live streams, clips, and video on demand, as well as get involved in on-screen chat. Twitch also hosts a slew of additional broadcasts, including live Thursday Night NFL Games, so this news isn't necessarily just for videogame fans.
Apple makes around $3 billion in revenue from China each month. It's worth keeping that in mind as that would appear to be the price of Cupertino's scruples.
Whenever the iPhone maker gets sanctimonious about privacy -- and let's face it, it's not hard when your main competitor is an advertising company -- it's worth remembering that whatever Apple says, it doesn't apply in China.
Remember how to switch playlists with the no-display iPod shuffle? I wish I can do something similar with my AirPods, switching between the audiobook, podcast, and music app, without a screen.
(Siri is not there yet.)
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This is another excellent example of software that is ostensibly designed to assist people with specific needs actually being useful to everybody. This is the heart of accessible software design, and I think we’ll see more and more “accessible” software released from the relative obscurity of the Accessibility tab as we move forward.
Following the launch of the iPhone 11, a discussion thread over on Apple Support is gaining significant traction over claims that the iPhone 11's screen seems to be particularly prone to scratching.
These complications are essentially shortcuts to the Nike+ Run Club app. If you're a frequent runner, it is a nice convenience to have.
Any other watch face still has the standard Nike complication, but it takes up one of the usable spots.
Apple TV+ made two appearances at New York Comic Con this year, with panels on Servant and For All Mankind. For Servant, Apple announced a launch date (November 28) and an advance look at the official trailer.
Osmo Super Studio with Frozen 2 is built to allow kids to enjoy an all-new A.I. drawing experience like never before. This is a great way to let your little one get ready for the film’s theatrical release in November while still getting them to learn and grow at the same time.
Honestly, right now her iPad is so foreign to me, I don’t touch it. I don’t want to break it! Unfortunately, that has put a barrier between me, my child, her social life and education.
Mr. Cook is one of the few executives in a hyperpolarized political era who has managed to both support and challenge the president’s agenda in a way that has kept him in Mr. Trump’s good graces while avoiding any public backlash from either employees or customers.
Dear [Singapore bank, you know who you are]: if you know there is something wrong with your 2FA token thing that prevented customers from logging in to your internet banking, you might want to put up a status message thing on your login page, so that I need not have tried so many things on your website and your app and calling you on the phone and navigating through all the phone menus (twice!) and do all that waiting, just to hear from a human being that there is something wrong with your 2FA token thing.
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Apple + scratchable = tale as old as time.
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“Apple has determined that certain iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus devices may not power on due to a component that may fail," the page for the program says. The program is wordily called "iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus Service Program for No Power Issues."
It does not affect all iPhone 6S and 6S Plus units; rather, it affects phones in a certain serial number range that corresponds to some handsets sold between October of 2018 and August of 2019. The iPhone 6S was discontinued in North America throughout that window, but the company continued to make and sell it for some other regions.
If you’re already running macOS Catalina, you can try Apple Arcade by simply accessing the Mac App Store. You can even pair a PlayStation 4 or Xbox Wireless controller to improve gaming experience.
Apple Inc.’s App Store reversed a recent decision to reject a Hong Kong app that shows police activity in the midst of increasingly violent pro-democracy protests in the city.
The app, known as HKmap.live, is a mobile version of a website that helps users avoid potentially dangerous areas, according to the developer, who uses the alias Kuma to remain anonymous. It was rejected from Apple’s App Store because it “facilitates, enables, and encourages an activity that is not legal,” Apple told the developer, according to a copy of the rejection notice seen by Bloomberg News. “Specifically, the app allowed users to evade law enforcement,” Apple wrote.
It’ll accurately track all but your longest runs. If you’re an ultra marathoner or want to monitor your sleep, look elsewhere. Likewise, if you already own the AW4, don’t bother upgrading now unless you absolutely must have the latest toys. For everybody else shopping for a new watch, give the AW5 a serious look.
Even though the processor is getting a little long in the tooth and Apple’s Smart Keyboard is too pricey, it remains impressive that you can get a computer this good for this price. It’s not a device that I would recommend upgrading to if you have a tablet you’re even moderately happy with, but it is a device I am sure you’ll be happy with if you buy it.
The palette system has been redesigned to improve their look, feel, and behavior (and palettes can now float freely in a separate window instead of being relegated to a drawer), the Draft View’s full-screen mode is improved with an auto-displaying options bar featuring the main menu, and typewriter scrolling is added for optionally keeping the selection a specified distance down the page while typing.
Siri was unveiled with the implicit promise that it would change the way people interact with technology, and while voice control has certainly become more common in the intervening years, we’re still a long way from upending the current paradigm. But these latest changes to Siri integration show that Apple is still interested in pushing the platform forward and, most importantly, that the company isn’t afraid of a little bit of competition.
Apple has confirmed its acquisition of UK-based visual effects company iKinema, which develops “full body” motion-capture software for games and movies.
[...]
iKinema might help iPhone app developers to build more sophisticated games or allow Apple to add arms and legs to its animated emoji faces, which were introduced alongside the iPhone X in 2017.
“I deeply believe that money must remain in the hands of states,” Cook said in a wide-ranging interview with LesEchos. “I am not comfortable with the idea that a private group creates a competing currency.
“A private company does not have to seek to gain power in this way. Money, like defense, must remain in the hands of states, it is at the heart of their mission. We elect our representatives to assume government responsibilities. Companies are not elected. They do not have to go on this ground.”
Disney’s ban of Netflix ads marks a significant shift. In the TV industry, it isn’t unusual for TV networks to reject ads from direct rivals, especially if they include the specific time and date when a competing program will air. But broadcasters have generally allowed streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime Video to advertise, even when it became clear they were luring away viewers.
Now, the landscape is changing. As traditional media companies launch their own streaming services, they will be going head-to-head with the tech giants—and with each other—as never before.
Once upon a time, I was so happy to install Google Chrome on my Windows machine at work. It was way better than all the alternatives, especially on that slow Windows laptop that I was using then.
About ten years later -- I've just removed Google Chrome on my Mac.
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Few Americans may realize that, under current law, releasing their digital health records to an app—So easy! Just like using Uber!—is like being bitten by a vampire: There is nothing you can do to reverse this action, and it has the potential to infect every part of your life. Third-party health apps—think apps for fertility, weight loss, lifestyle changes, or diabetes management—aren’t covered by federal privacy laws. They certainly aren’t covered by HIPAA, which governs only health industry “covered entities,” like health insurance companies, doctors, and hospitals, and requires that those actors adequately protect your health information and use (and disclose) that data only as minimally necessary to provide you services.
So, unless something changes, once you click impatiently through your favorite health app’s terms of service, that app will be able to sell your data—including your name and everything in your medical records—to anyone. A recent study found that 19 out of a sample of 24 general-purpose mobile health apps shared user data with more than 50 unique companies, most of which were data analytics companies; another study showed that many depression-tracking and smoking cessation apps currently share users’ personal details with third parties without clear disclosure.
As of iOS 13.1, certain Qi chargers that are rated to deliver 7.5W to wireless-chargeable iPhones have been capped to just 5W. This is affecting the iPhone 11, iPhone 11 Pro and iPhone 11 Pro Max plus last year's iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max models.
Adobe is out today with its 2020 release of Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements. The entry-level photo and video software from Adobe is available now with new features like one-click subject selection, guided edits, automatically colorize black and white photos, reduce noise in videos, and much more.
Grep searching apparently has gotten BBEdit creator Rich Siegel’s attention, because there’s a whole lot more of it in BBEdit 13. The Find window has gained the ability, previously available in the Live Search sheet, to automatically highlight all matching items in the active document window. Live Search has added the ability to use grep patterns. There’s a new grep cheat sheet right in the Find window, which should be helpful for people who are just getting into regular expressions—and even experienced grep users forget the right syntax for a particular pattern.
A pair of new iPhone applications can do a handy trick: record video from the front- and rear-facing cameras at the same time.
DuetCam does this for fun, while Parachute is a personal-safety tool.
The app serves as a one-stop shop for organizing all of your trip-related information: you can add Apple Maps points of interest to your agenda, scheduling them to specific times and days, add notes to each saved location, store important travel documents in the app, and share your full trip data with fellow travelers. All of this functionality is enhanced by a strong app experience thanks to system features like multiwindow on iPad, Sign In with Apple, dark mode, and more.
Apple encourages developers to take advantage of macOS Catalina technologies like Sign in with Apple, Sidecar, Core ML 3, and Metal. Apple also highlights Mac Catalyst, designed to bring iPad apps to the Mac.
Just a few days after releasing the 10th beta of macOS Catalina, Apple has released the macOS Catalina Golden Master. That’s just ahead of the expected public release tomorrow, October 4th.
Serial numbers are not top secret information—don’t turn them into a frustrating game of hide-and-seek.
Apple's new Reminders app for iOS 13, iPadOS, and macOS 10.15 Catalina isn't compatible with earlier versions of iOS and macOS. Problem is, the current release version of macOS is the earlier version, so while you can upgrade your iPhones and iPads to use the new Reminders, your Mac will be left out of the equation.
Apple does warn users about this issue, but it's likely that users either will misunderstand the issue, or not appreciate the severity of the issue.
Apple has removed a crowd-sourced app that tracks the location of protesters and police in Hong Kong.
For some, the app was seen as a way for protesters to stay safe, while others saw it as a way to evade the police.
Apple told app creators it "facilitates, enables, or encourages an activity that is not legal" - but it is still available on Google's app store.
“When I saw the Apple Arcade announcement in March I dropped everything and decided to build a whole new game for Arcade,” he told VICE via email. “I thought that the games that really fit Apple Arcade will probably be designed for it from the ground up, so I came up with a stealth game that would work on all the Arcade platforms.”
Rumors about new Apple AirPods with noise canceling aren’t exactly new, dating back a couple of years. But now a glyph found in iOS 13.2 reveals what the new AirPods with noise canceling will look like.
Apple obviously has the advantage here. It makes Safari, and also makes the operating system Safari lives on, as well as the hardware that the operating system runs on. It can build all three of these components to work more efficiently together, and it does.
I love tiny computers, and the Zagg Folio turns the iPad mini into a great one. This isn’t a product I’d use every week or even every month, but I would happily take this along with me whenever I’m traveling light and when my iPad Pro would be overkill.
What makes GoodNotes special is not just the sheer number of unique ways to open a second window for the app, though that’s impressive in itself, but the thoughtfulness of its execution. In every corner of the app where you might want to move a folder, document, page, or bit of data into a new window or document, you can. The result is a level of flexibility that even Apple’s own iWork suite doesn’t match, further cementing GoodNotes as my favorite app for taking handwritten notes.
The reason Lake works so well is because it has tablet-friendly features: activate automatic colouring inside the lines and swipe and swish your chosen colours without making a mess. The best part is the opportunity to colour some gorgeous original illustrations from emerging artists around the world. Between the paintbrush, pen, spray paint and fill tools, it’s easy to do justice to landscapes, cute doodles and intricate floral sketches alike.
This month, the European Union is running its annual series of Code Week initiatives with projects taking place between October 5 and 20. Apple is championing the EU's campaign which sees both its Swift language and Everyone Can Code events involved.
"We applaud your team's efforts in quickly addressing the critical security and compatibility gaps identified and successfully implementing them while Sign In with Apple is still in beta," wrote Sakimura. "Now users will no longer be limited to where they can use the service and they can have confidence in their security and privacy. Furthermore, Sign In with Apple is now interoperable with widely available OpenID Connect Relying Party software."
Sakimura concludes by asking Apple to "continue working through the issues identified."
A good typist can type around 100 words per minute (WPM) on a desktop keyboard, but most of us only type around 35-65 WPM. According to the research, people using two thumbs can achieve typings speeds averaging 38 WPM on smartphones.
“[That’s] only about 25% slower than the typing speeds we observed in a similar large-scale study of physical keyboards," Anna Feit, a researcher at ETH Zürich and co-author of the study said in a statement. Feit said the number of people who can achieve speeds of 100 WPM on a keyboard is decreasing.
Apple Inc. executives Tim Cook and Deirdre O’Brien waded into the battle over Dreamers, filing a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in favor of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
In its brief, Apple profiled five DACA recipients, known as Dreamers, and said it employs 443 of these people from more than 25 countries. “We are distressed at the prospect of ripping our DACA colleagues from the fabric of our company,” the executives wrote. “This issue is a moral one: Our country made a deal with a highly vulnerable population interested in a bright future, and we should keep that deal.”
Microsoft sure is doing this embrace, extend, and extinguish thing at an extremely slow pace nowadays, isn't it? :-)
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The Cupertino, California-based company plans to release a software update later this year that will help outside messaging applications work better with the Siri digital assistant.
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When the software refresh kicks in, Siri will default to the apps that people use frequently to communicate with their contacts. For example, if an iPhone user always messages another person via WhatsApp, Siri will automatically launch WhatsApp, rather than iMessage. It will decide which service to use based on interactions with specific contacts. Developers will need to enable the new Siri functionality in their apps. This will be expanded later to phone apps for calls as well.
Apple is launching an early look at its new Deep Fusion feature on iOS today with a software update for beta users. Deep Fusion is a technique that blends multiple exposures together at the pixel level to give users a higher level of detail than is possible using standard HDR imaging — especially in images with very complicated textures like skin, clothing or foilage.
The developer beta released today supports the iPhone 11 where Deep Fusion will improve photos taken on the wide camera and the iPhone 11 Pro and Pro Max where it will kick in on the telephoto and wide angle but not ultra wide lenses.
2× doesn’t mean you’re always using the telephoto camera — in low light it will use the wide-angle camera and digital zoom.
The advantage the iPhone offers over a dedicated cinema camera is that it's compact, capable and affordable compared to cameras like the Arriflex Alexa, which at a basic setup can cost just under $100K. With the new iPhone 11 Pro, Apple improved the versatility and convenience of its phone (yes, it still makes calls) by adding a new ultawide-angle lens, increasing the battery life and adding its special sauce "extended dynamic range" to 4K 60-fps video. These new features allow a filmmaker even more creative choices for their work.
To test that notion, Apple gave the iPhone 11 Pro to Rian Johnson who made Star Wars: The Last Jedi and the upcoming Knives Out and George Nolfi who wrote Ocean's 12 and The Bourne Ultimatum. Each used the 11 Pro to create a mini short film.
During the Today at Apple sessions, participants will use the new Adobe Fresco app on the iPad Pro with an Apple Pencil to draw colorful faces and objects, create an abstract painting, and more.
Perhaps most important is the simple fact that Files can now see destinations that aren’t cloud services or other apps. You can add local SMB file servers to Files by tapping the ellipsis icon in the Browse pane and choosing Connect to Server, then entering the address of your SMB server. While you’re connected, that server will appear in the Shared segment of the Browse pane. (Strangely, Files doesn’t use Bonjour to detect nearby servers and display them, as Finder does.) I have a Mac mini on my home network that I use as a file server, and it’s been a delight to access files on it, directly, from within Files and apps that use Apple’s file interface.
Now, the Apple Watch is quick, with a huge display and with even more ways to augment your iPhone’s capabilities. That always-on screen is nifty, the new apps are pleasantly utilitarian and mostly health-oriented, and a service like emergency international calling (on the cellular model) is a nice feature to have in a pinch. It’s the smartwatch to beat. But all those new features only serve to highlight the tightrope Apple’s walking when it comes to battery life. Here’s hoping it’ll finally make a watch that’ll get through the night next year.
tvOS doesn’t try to reinvent the Apple TV experience, but it builds upon prior versions with a few improvements that make Apple’s streaming box better, which is exactly what you’d want to see from a major OS update.
Darkroom’s stride has placed it at the pinnacle of iOS photography right now. From hooking directly into your default camera roll and photo albums in the Photos app to automated editing workflows in Shortcuts, Darkroom can likely begin to replace the Photos app on your home screen. Not that this is a long time coming, but it feels like a long time coming.
When you are solving a difficult problem re-ask the problem so that your solution helps you learn faster. Find a faster way to fail, recover, and try again. If the problem you are trying to solve involves creating a magnum opus, you are solving the wrong problem.
It’s obvious why coffee shops are the gold standard for telecommuters without a membership to WeWork. Coffee shops always have plenty of caffeine in supply, they often have internet, and they’re generally pretty quiet — but not so silent as to be distracting. They’re also great for short meetings with clients and contacts. However, working from a coffee shop is not as straightforward as it seems. Disrespect for the space has resulted in some businesses deterring so-called “laptop squatters” by covering up electrical outlets and changing WiFi passwords on a daily basis to prevent internet freeloading. In some cases, computer use was all-out banned.
Nevertheless, there is a way for laptop users and coffee shops to live in harmony. From where to sit to the appropriate amount of time to stay, here’s a primer on how to work from a coffee shop without pissing everyone off.
Apple Arcade — and in particular the funding from Apple — has given mobile developers the freedom to think big without having to worry about how they’re going to make that money back. With the premium market all but untenable for everyone but the biggest games, Arcade has now become a home for mobile games that otherwise might not have existed on the platform. “It’s creating a space where you can take risks,” says Andrew Schimmel, producer at Alto developer Snowman. “You don’t have to think about the monetization model as you’re designing.”
Perhaps now that the new, richer complications have had time to settle down, and we’re clear that every watch face needs a bright, animated active mode as well as a subdued dim mode, Apple will be ready to let third-party face developers inside the tent. I’m not sure I’d bet money on the possibility, but it seems more likely now than it did even last year. Having seen some developers mock up their face designs, I’m encouraged that third-party faces would improve the Apple Watch overall.
"Customers buy an experience from us, and this experience includes a trustworthy place to buy apps in which we curate and check all applications," Cook told Stern, noting Apple filters out unseemly apps like those bearing pornographic material. "Anyone can take their iPhone and access that content in the browser, but we do not offer it ourselves."
Another bone of contention is Apple's increasing large App Store presence. With products like the iWork suite and a variety of free apps, the company is not only a software distributor, but for some a competitor.
"We have 30 to 40 apps, versus more than two million others," Cook said. He compares the App Store to a supermarket, saying, "The likelihood that it has its own brand is very high, and who benefits from having another product on the shelf? The customer. And that's a good thing."
The truth is I have not gone anywhere. I am, in fact, more present than ever.
Over time, I have begun to sense these messages reveal more than a lack of respect for privacy. I realize that to many millennials, a life without a social media presence is not simply a private life; it is no life at all: We possess a widespread, genuine fear of obscurity.
I think I may have be solving the wrong problems my entire life. :-)
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Apple doesn't usually release so many updates in rapid succession. iOS 13 only launched 11 days ago, and it has already received three updates. As we noted in our review of iOS 13, it's a major and ambitious update compared to last year's iOS 12, but iOS 13 has had a relatively rocky beta period and a number of kinks that still need to be ironed out even after today's update.
"We want to offer the cards everywhere," Cook told German newspaper Bild, indicating that the plan is to make Apple Card as ubiquitous around the globe as the iPhone. Cook does warn there are many difficulties in launching a credit card, with each country having different rules and regulations relating to banking countries.
It was a frustrating change at first, but the difference is a positive one, I think. I use Siri for simple tasks like setting alarms and adding reminders to return Amazon packages far more than I did to turn off my phone. And putting that function in the power button — which I nearly always have a thumb on when holding my phone, even more so than the home button — makes it even more accessible. Plus, the bigger button is just more enjoyable to press, especially on brand-new devices when the click is still nice and crisp.
Apple News+, Apple's paid subscription offering content from magazines and publications has gone live in two more countries, with users in the United Kingdom and Australia now able to sign up and read from over 150 outlets via their iPhone or iPad.
Of course, there are other watches that do similar things with their always-on displays, but none of the methods I’ve seen come close to this level of care. Some are hard to read, others eschew basic functionality, but Apple’s both look good and perform exactly as they should. The Series 5 display may be the same size as the Series 4, but it feels like a whole new experience. If you’re coming from a Series 3 or earlier, there’s no comparison.
The feature that should be most useful to the greatest number of people is the new multiwindowing support on the iPad. All three apps already supported Split View, but now you can open two instances of Pages, Numbers, or Keynote side-by-side.
I often find myself borrowing elements from one spreadsheet to build a new one or reviewing a reference document in Pages or Keynote while editing another. With multiwindow support that just got a lot easier. Now you can drag tables, page elements, and slides from one instance of an iWork app to another or use one as a reference for the other.
Many of us spend more time every day in our email client than in any other piece of software. If you’re in sales, marketing, design, HR, PR, or other professional fields with an “R” in the name, you may have to compose and reply to hundreds of messages a day, customizing many to each recipient and creating attractive or well-formatted messages for mass distribution. Postbox 7 is tailored for people who swim in email and deal with customers, clients, and leads.
With the update, you can now now edit images in your iCloud Photo Library non-destructively without creating duplicates. There are also new batch-processing workflows and better options for exporting images. It’s an interesting mix of updates that I expect will appeal to a wide audience even though there remain iPadOS features I’d like to see adopted in the future.
Apple Inc. won’t be exempted from tariffs on five Chinese-made components for the upcoming Mac Pro computer, even after the company announced it was keeping some assembly operations in the U.S.
The U.S. Trade Representative’s office denied Apple’s request for relief from 25% tariffs on the much-discussed optional wheels for Apple’s Mac Pro, a circuit board for managing input and output ports, power adapter, charging cable and a cooling system for the computer’s processor.