Saeki Kentaro, NHK World:
When it came to Kyoto, Oshima Hiroshi was Steve Jobs’ man. Oshima worked as a chauffeur and a tour guide for Jobs on four trips, the last in 2010, just one year before the Apple founder’s death. Jobs would arrive with a vague idea of what he wanted to see but left the specifics to Oshima.
Follow the link, read the story. Some fascinating insight into Steve and his love of Japan.
Don Clark, New York Times:
The machine is made by ASML Holding, based in Veldhoven. Its system uses a different kind of light to define ultrasmall circuitry on chips, packing more performance into the small slices of silicon. The tool, which took decades to develop and was introduced for high-volume manufacturing in 2017, costs more than $150 million.
And:
The complex machine is widely acknowledged as necessary for making the most advanced chips, an ability with geopolitical implications. The Trump administration successfully lobbied the Dutch government to block shipments of such a machine to China in 2019, and the Biden administration has shown no signs of reversing that stance.
And:
Manufacturers can’t produce leading-edge chips without the system, and “it is only made by the Dutch firm ASML,” said Will Hunt, a research analyst at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology, which has concluded that it would take China at least a decade to build its own similar equipment. “From China’s perspective, that is a frustrating thing.”
Most importantly:
TSMC uses the tool to make the processors designed by Apple for its latest iPhones.
It’s the most complicated machine in the world, and vital to Apple’s plans. It’s one bit of the stack too expensive and complex for Apple to replicate.
Bloomburg:
It’s unclear exactly when Kvashuk stumbled on the gift card glitch in Microsoft’s security system (which the company says has since been closed). But at some point in 2017, around the time Microsoft recruited him for a full-time, $116,000-a-year engineering position, he gleaned that his team’s experimental accounts were programmed only to prevent the e-commerce site from shipping fake purchases of physical goods: PCs, tablets, keyboards, and so on. Microsoft simply didn’t intend for its digital-retail testers to order Xbox gift cards on the job. Kvashuk could have reported the vulnerability to his bosses, but he took the red pill instead.
This is a fascinating read, a real insider con story.
Benjamin Mayo, 9to5Mac:
The Apple original limited series ‘Defending Jacob’ starring Chris Evans, has been released on Blu-ray and DVD this week. This makes it the first Apple TV+ original title to get a physical media disc release.
And:
Given that Apple TV+ has been out for almost two years at this point, it seemed fair to assume that Apple had maintained release exclusivity over its original TV shows and movies, requiring everyone wanting to watch to get an Apple TV+ subscription.
However, the physical media release of Defending Jacob by Paramount shows that this is not a strict hard-and-fast rule. Travel series Long Way Up is also promoting a disc release coming later in the year.
Reading this, it appears that at least for some of its show deals, the rights to physical media time out and stay with the originating studio.
Will we ever see Ted Lasso on Blu-ray or DVD? Might Apple make such a deal with a third party distributor for streaming content it originated and owns completely?
Justin Sink, Bloomberg:
President Joe Biden will direct the U.S. Federal Trade Commission to draft new rules aimed at stopping manufacturers from limiting consumers’ ability to repair products at independent shops or on their own, a person familiar with the plan said.
The executive order leaves the specifics to the FTC, so it’s not clear how big an impact this will have. One particular aim here:
The order is also expected to benefit farmers, who face expensive repair costs from tractor manufacturers who use proprietary repair tools, software, and diagnostics to prevent third-parties from working on the equipment.
As to Apple and control over repair of Macs, iPhones, iPads, and the like, there are a wide range of possibilities here. Might Apple be forced to allow non-Apple approved parts into their warranty programs? In other words, might I be able to get a non-Apple replacement display for my iPhone without voiding my warranty?
Or, deeper still, might the new rules force a design change to Apple’s manufacturing, making it simpler for me to, say, swap out RAM or an SSD on my Apple device to give me more storage, without paying the Apple RAM/SSD premium price?
This is a long-running thread (see the date of each question) on early days at Apple and Woz. Here’s how it opens:
My obsession with computers began in 1973 at the age of 13. Since there were no “personal computers” for sale, I wanted to make my own. To learn how, I started attending Homebrew Computer Club meetings. Since I was unable to drive, I asked if anyone lived near me that could give me a lift to the meetings. A really nice guy came up and said he lived close and could give me a ride. I answered, “Great! What’s your name?” His answer: “Steve. But my friends call me Woz”.
A fascinating bit of Apple history.
Here’s the tweet:
https://twitter.com/samhenrigold/status/1412122843949715459
The full video was taken down from Vimeo this morning. I had the chance to watch it before it was removed. Some real cringeworthy moments there. No surprise any plans to show it were scrubbed.
It’d be interesting to hear the backstory on the making of this video. Curious how far down the road the video made it before the kibosh was applied.
Taylor Hall, 9to5Mac:
tvOS 15 includes a new look for the built-in video player interface on Apple TV. The new design features more readable titles and discoverable controls.
Follow the headline link, scan through the images. I really love the changes, terrific improvement.
Tim Hardwick, MacRumors:
Popular open-source audio editing software Audacity is facing “spyware” allegations from users for recent privacy policy changes that suggest the desktop app is collecting user data and sharing it with third parties, including state regulators where applicable.
Audacity is a very popular audio processing app. It allows you to do things like compression, normalization and other effects, and features a rich plug-in library that serves a wide set of needs.
From the updated privacy policy page:
All your personal data is stored on our servers in the European Economic Area (EEA). However, we are occasionally required to share your personal data with our main office in Russia and our external counsel in the USA.
That’s just a sample. The open source community is not taking these changes kindly, to put it mildly.
If you wish to access, correct, update or request deletion of your Personal Data, you can do so at any time by contacting via [email protected].
Apple has set the privacy bar here by requiring apps to put up an opt-in request at first launch. Audacity goes the opposite way, hiding the opt-out in the privacy notice and requiring users to reach out, non-specifically, via email. Hmmph.
Patience Haggin, Wall Street Journal:
After the tracking change took effect in April, many users of Apple’s iOS operating system have received a high volume of prompts from apps asking permission to track them—requests that most have declined. Less than 33% of iOS users opt in to tracking, according to ad-measurement firm Branch Metrics Inc.
Many users have received a high volume of prompts? What does this mean? Do the Branch Metrics numbers measure all iOS users and, thus, that 33% number includes folks running older versions? “Less than 33%” of iOS users opt in to tracking seems a ridiculously high number if it’s purely measuring folks who’ve responded to the “track me” prompt.
As of June 22, more than 70% of iOS devices had been upgraded to a version that requires the tracking prompt, according to Branch Metrics, allowing advertisers to begin assessing the impact.
And:
Tinuiti advertisers were allocating about 50% of their Audience Network spending to iOS users at the start of April. By the end of June, they were spending about 20% on iOS users, Mr. Taylor said. Advertisers have typically spent more per iOS user, seeing them as bigger spenders than Android users.
The trend is clear. Advertisers are switching away from iOS, presumably because they can’t get that precious personal ad response data.
Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said in March that “it’s possible that we may even be in a stronger position” after Apple’s change, particularly if it encourages “more businesses to conduct commerce on our platforms, by making it harder for them to basically use their data in order to find the customers that would want to use their products outside of our platforms.”
Early days still. The value of Apple users (and their deep pockets) hasn’t changed. Long term, I’d expect still another shift, as advertisers adjust to new models of reaching those users. What I don’t see is them abandoning iOS users in favor of Android. At least not in the long term.
AC/DC on TV, way back in the day. The energy is both funny and quirky, with a brilliant bit of bagpiping thrown in. Delightful way to start your day.
Monica Chin, The Verge:
Have you ever been using a recently updated Mac computer and thought, “Man, I would love to use this operating system with a really tiny keyboard and a really tiny screen?” Okay, me neither, but I certainly would love the opportunity to carry a MacBook around in my pocket and whip it out on command.
Apparently, YouTuber Ike T. Sanglay Jr., or “Iketsj,” has had this thought as well. In this eight-minute vlog, the YouTuber builds a tiny handheld PC that can run macOS Big Sur, and it’s very fun.
Yeah it is. Fun, I mean.
Here’s the video.
This is a glorious immersion in the iOS and iPadOS 15 betas, willed with detail and thoughtful opinion.
It’s a bit of a long read, but easy to get through. It just flows.
Too much content to highlight, but here’s one great example:
I set up a Home Screen dedicated to the iOS review I’m working on, and I filled it with widgets and shortcuts related to my big annual project; then, I set up a Focus called iOS Review that silences all notifications and hides all my other Home Screens. Now, when I sit down with my iPad Pro to work on the iOS Review and enable its Focus mode in Control Center, all I see is this Home Screen, and it’s glorious.
This is a terrific use case for Focus. This article is full of stuff like this, giving a true sense of the new betas.
Very straightforward process, and it all starts here.
Chance Miller, 9to5Mac:
The 12-inch Retina MacBook was first introduced during Apple’s March Event in 2015, with Apple touting it as the thinnest MacBook to date. It ushered in a new era for the MacBook lineup with a USB-C port and butterfly keyboard design.
And from this 2019 farewell when Apple discontinued production:
From trivial changes like space gray/gold finishes and display lids too thin for backlit Apple logos to futurist new features like automatically booting up when the lid is opened and a giant Force Touch trackpad without the diving board click button, the MacBook introduced changes that now outlive the machine.
A groundbreaking machine, in terms of design. It’d be interesting to compare the benchmarks of the 2015 MacBook with the similarly priced M1 MacBook Air. One additional USB-C port, way better battery life, and about a million times more processing power.
Parker Ortolani, 9to5Mac:
It’s hard to believe, but it’s been 14 years since Apple shipped the first iPhones. On this day in 2007, Apple Stores across the United States hosted the “iPhone World Premiere,” and life was never the same. Looking back on that day, it’s clear that it marked a turning point. It was the beginning of a revolution in basically every single industry.
This is a fantastic article, sure to prompt huge waves of nostalgia in folks old enough to remember the huge power of that original launch.
Don’t miss Gary Allen’s incredible Flickr album, especially the pics of Steve Jobs at the bottom of the page.
But scroll, scroll, scroll. There’s so much richness here, including some fantastic videos from back in the day. Great job pulling this together by Parker Ortolani.
Mark Gurman is one of the OG Apple reporters, surfacing info on coming products, detailing subtle changes to the Apple ecosystem, in hardware, software, and policy.
Mark cut his teeth at 9to5Mac, then made his way to Bloomberg, where he regularly reports today.
And now he’s put out a newsletter, called “Power On”. It is excellent and worth your consideration. The headline link will take you to the inaugural edition. Here’s a link if you decide to subscribe.
Ben Evans, AmericaSpace:
In the early hours of 30 June 1971, the Soviet Union prepared to welcome its three latest cosmonaut heroes back to Earth after a record-breaking mission. Not only had the Soyuz 11 team—Georgi Dobrovolski, Vladislav Volkov, and Viktor Patsayev—spent more than 23 days in orbit, but they had also successfully occupied the world’s first true space station. It was a fitting response to the U.S. achievement of placing a man on the Moon. As the commander of one of the recovery helicopters spotted the parachute of Soyuz 11’s descent module, it was a glorious sight. The helicopters touched down and the would-be rescuers made their way cheerfully to the spacecraft, still superheated and charred from re-entry.
They could not have anticipated the horror that they would find inside.
A rarely told addition to the pantheon of space tragedies.
Michael Simon, Macworld:
Despite few negatives and a 4-star score in this review, I wouldn’t actually recommend the 12.9-inch iPad Pro to anyone who wasn’t already dead set on buying one. The screen is nice but not noticeably better than last year’s. The chip is fast but not noticeably faster than last year’s. The front camera is improved but not noticea—OK, the front camera is a lot better. But that’s not really a reason to spend a thousand-plus dollars to upgrade.
Read the review. If you ignore the headline and the conclusion (quoted above), it makes a great case for how phenomenal the new iPad really is. There’s the FaceTime camera and Center Stage. The incredible speed boost. The display upgrade. There’s a lot to love here, especially if you make use of apps that place a demand on the iPad processor.
But, to be fair, like most Apple hardware that has evolved over time (iPhone, Apple Watch, Apple TV), if you own the previous model, the leap in performance might not justify the expense of moving up by a single model. That’s just life in the ecosystem.
Zoe Schiffer, The Verge:
[A month ago] Tim Cook sent out an email telling employees the company was rolling out a new work model that would require them to return to in-office work on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays starting in the fall.
Then:
In the wake of that announcement, Apple employees wrote a letter saying some employees had been forced to quit because of the policy, and asking Cook to change his stance.
And, now:
Apple isn’t backing down from its hybrid work model that will require most employees to return to the office three days a week starting in early September. Fully remote positions will be extremely limited.
Apple’s response:
“We believe that in-person collaboration is essential to our culture and our future,” said Deirdre O’Brien, senior vice president of retail and people, in a video recording viewed by The Verge. “If we take a moment to reflect on our unbelievable product launches this past year, the products and the launch execution were built upon the base of years of work that we did when we were all together in-person.”
A solid test case for remote work and the tension between wanting to work at Apple and taking a job elsewhere to be able to work at home.
Did the pandemic make a foundational change to the way we think about where we do our jobs? Or was this a blip, with a slow slide back to the old ways?
Both of these were really worth watching. Amazing just how much detail was packed into the iOS 15 beta.
[H/T to @MHNDHQ for that second video]
On the off chance you didn’t know you could download Apple TV+ content, here’s a walkthrough on the process.
Jason Kottke:
WHAAAAAAATTT the hell did I just watch? In 2016, Luke Aikins became the first person to intentionally jump and land without the aid of a parachute or wingsuit — check out the video above to see how he does it. At one point, his heart rate is displayed on the screen and I’m certain that mine was in the same ballpark just before he landed.
Same. Just watch this, see if it doesn’t get your heart racing. An amazing feat.
J. Glenn Künzler, Sonny Dickson blog:
Earlier this week, news broke of a strange networking issue that can permanently disable all WiFi activity on iOS devices. It’s currently known to affect iOS 14 only, and can cause quite a mess. The news was originally revealed by reverse engineer Carl Schou (via BleepingComputer (story sourced via MacTrast), and while there was originally very little information revealed about the issue or how it functions, we decided to put our research hats on and see what we could discover.
This all started with this tweet:
https://twitter.com/vm_call/status/1405937492642123782
Don’t try this at home. But a fascinating bug.
If you find this interesting, follow the headline link to watch J. Glenn Künzler try his hand to work through what’s going on.
In the list of additions (courtesy of José Adorno for 9to5Mac):
Here are links to installers for macOS Monterey, and for macOS Big Sur.
I’ve been playing with the Safari Technology Preview on top of my macOS Big Sur install. So far, so good. I’m editing these words in that preview. Note that the Preview is a separate app with its own icon, so you won’t be replacing your existing Safari install.
This is another in a long line of Apple Stores that do the original venue justice with a thoughtful, careful, and gorgeous restoration. In the name of commerce, yes, but done with all due respect.
The linked article is filled with gems. Start by scrolling through the pictures. The first two really tell the tale, showing the outside and the inside. But don’t miss that gallery in the middle of the post, leading off with a great side-by-side showing the original theater, in black and white, contrasted perfectly with the new Apple Store.
And, finally, take the time to watch the short embedded video showing off the theater and the restoration.
Another Apple Store for my bucket list.
This is a great explainer on how Apple Private Relay works and, just as importantly, what it will and will not do.
If the whole 9 minutes is more than you have to spend, jump to 3:10 in and watch from there, a real sweet spot in the explanation, where Rene lays out some differences between Apple Private Relay and a VPN. Great stuff.
Juli Clover, MacRumors:
Our FaceTime guide outlines everything that’s new in the FaceTime app in iOS 15 and iPadOS 15, and many of these features are also in macOS Monterey and can even be used in tvOS 15. We’ve also included detailed how tos and tutorials so you can dive right into FaceTime after upgrading.
Another useful post, one that yields fruit with just a scan. I appreciate posts like this with a narrow scope, simpler slices through the river of new features introduced in the WWDC keynote.
Josh Centers, TidBITS:
We’re all eagerly awaiting iOS 15, iPadOS 15, macOS 12 Monterey, and watchOS 8, but will they run on the devices you have now? Apple continues to do an excellent job of supporting old devices, but many iPhone and iPad features will require at least an A12 Bionic chip. On the Mac side, some of the new features require an M1 processor.
Dig into the lists, see if your current hardware will support the features that interest you.
For example, here’s a list of features that require an A12 Bionic or later processor:
This is what I’d call “feature coaxing”, the addition of new features coaxing you to upgrade your hardware. Apple has this down to a science.
Great, useful, post.
Ben Lovejoy, 9to5Mac:
The iPhone 13 name would be off-putting to some 18% of iPhone and iPad users, who would describe themselves as triskaidekaphobic – that is, having a fear of the number 13.
The preferred alternative name would be iPhone (2021).
Famously, most tall buildings have no 13th floor. Because triskaidekaphobia, a superstitious fear of the number 13. There’s even a “thirteenth floor” Wikipedia page.
Will Apple push on with the name iPhone 13, despite the widespread (at least in the US) superstition? As Mike Glass points out, Apple didn’t have this issue with iOS 13, so my bet is on iPhone 13 and business as usual.