Apple developing new Remote for the next-generation Apple TV

Written by

Filipe Espósito, 9to5Mac:

We’ve been hearing rumors about the next-generation Apple TV for a while now, but we don’t know when the company plans to officially announce it. Now 9to5Mac has learned that Apple is developing a new Remote for Apple TV, which corroborates some previous rumors about Apple updating the Siri Remote.

Read Filipe’s post for all the details, but this does feel real. If it is real, will this be part of the WWDC keynote? I would love a new remote, one you can clearly navigate in the dark, tell the top from bottom, feel the button shapes you are looking for.

And maybe one compatible with “Find My” for those occasions when it slips behind the couch cushions.

Apple announces 2021 Worldwide Developers Conference

Written by

Apple:

Apple today announced it will host its annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) June 7 through 11, in an all-online format. Free for all developers, WWDC21 will offer unique insight into the future of iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS.

And:

Apple also announced that this year’s Swift Student Challenge, an opportunity for young developers to demonstrate their coding skills by creating a Swift playground, is now accepting submissions.

Online and free. Perfect.

Will we see the next generation of Apple Silicon Mac? Apple Glass? A new Apple TV remote? Other rumored products? Can’t wait for the keynote.

Ted Lasso gives cast SAG Award pep talk

Written by

Entertainment Weekly:

Though season 2 of Ted Lasso won’t premiere on Apple TV+ until this summer, fans who tune into the SAG Awards will be treated to a new sketch starring the AFC Richmond gang, which will open the ceremony on April 4. EW has the exclusive teaser for the two-minute video, in which Coach Ted Lasso (Jason Sudeikis) gives his team a pep talk following their SAG Award nomination for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series.

If you can’t get enough of Ted Lasso, follow the headline link, put up with the ad, then drink in the Lasso.

Will It Work: Installing DOS games on your iPhone

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I watch every one of the Will It Work videos. Always an interesting twist on connecting obscure hardware/media to your iPhone.

This episode is one of my favorites. It shows off an App Store approved DOS emulator running fresh out of the package DOS games. Nice.

“One more thing” trademark

Written by

Tim Hardwick, MacRumors:

Apple has lost a legal bid to block Swatch from registering Steve Jobs’ famous “One more thing” saying as a trademark in the UK, reports The Telegraph.

Here’s The Telegraph link, paywalled.

From the decision:

On Monday, judge Iain Purvis overturned a previous decision that sided with Apple, saying that even if Swatch had meant to “annoy” Apple, the company could not stop it from doing so.

He added that the phrase may have originated with the 1970s television detective Columbo, a character who was known for cornering criminals by asking them “just one more thing.”

That Columbo reference might be prior art here. But still, modern times, that’s a phrase I definitely associate with Apple, no doubt.

In 2017, Apple filed a complaint in a Swiss court over the use of the slogan “Tick Different” in a Swatch marketing campaign, arguing that the watchmaker was unfairly referencing the Apple’s 1990s “Think Different” ad campaign for its own gain.

And:

Two years later the Swiss court agreed with Swatch that Apple’s “Think Different” was not known well enough in Switzerland to warrant protection, and that Apple had not produced documents that sufficiently backed up its case.

Fascinating.

Fleeceware on the App Store

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Avast blog:

A total of 134 fleeceware applications have been identified by Avast on the Apple App Store.

Sensor Tower data estimates a total of 500 million downloads of these applications. It also estimates that the applications have brought in $365 million in revenue in their lifetime.

And:

Another solution could be subscription payment confirmation. If the user accepts a free trial, the app could require another confirmation before paying money for the actual subscription once the free trial is over. In this scenario, the app’s functionality would stop until the user pays the required fee. This would give the user direct control over subscription payments and allow them to make a fully informed decision on continuing with the subscription.

This seems a great solution to me. Require a confirmation from the user at the moment a free app transitions to a paying subscription. That confirmation alert should make the costs clear.

From the blog post, here’s a list of iOS Fleeceware apps.

If they can build this list, why can’t Apple?

Ted Lasso playing soccer on Twitch

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If you are a Ted Lasso fan, follow the headline link. This is fun. Ted Lasso and Coach Beard, fully in character, takes on Team Trevor Noah playing FIFA 21.

Audio starts about 15 minutes in. Make sure mute is off.

Apple TV+: Every upcoming show, series, and movie

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Nice resource, if a bit ad-saturated.

Can’t wait for Season 2 of Mythic Quest, which premieres May 7th.

Also looking forward to checking out Dr. Brain. And, of course, Ted Lasso.

A walking tour through Apple product memory lane

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This is a bit of an experiment. If it worked, you’ll see a pretty cool video embedded below, a walking tour through a boatload of Apple products, all in one packed room. If not, here’s a link to a page with the video. Worth seeing.

Later that same morning: So the embed worked, cool. This one is worth seeing on your iPhone, looks really great. Reload this post, tap the “full screen” arrows in the video, then hit play. Gorgeous.

Let’s take a walk down  memory lane… from u/fingerzdxb

Steve Jobs back in 1991

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I’ve not seen this interview before. Lots of interesting discussion, with Steve mid-NeXT. Note the use of “they” to refer to Apple. Glad he got to do something about that.

iPhone 12. Fumble. An ad.

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I laughed at this ad. Mostly cause I’ve done that dance so many times.

Relax. It’s iPhone.

Apple doubling down on supply chain security to prevent leaks

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Chance Miller, 9to5Mac, on a report from The Information about Apple’s updated factory security guidelines:

The Information says that it obtained an internal Apple document outlining the changes. One change is that manufacturing partners with which Apple works, such as Foxconn and Pegatron, are no longer allowed to collect biometric data from Apple employees, but they are still free to collect such data from their own employees, even if those employees are making Apple products.

Tricky line to walk, one set of rules for Apple employees, different set for non-Apple employees.

The guidelines also make other changes to help crackdown on product leaks that come from the supply chain. For the first time, Apple is now requiring manufacturers to run criminal background checks on all workers. The company is also mandating that the use of surveillance cameras be increased at these facilities.

I find the chasing of leaks to be a fascinating dichotomy for Apple, a light and a dark side, championing privacy for users, requiring surveillance for workers.

Another change includes Apple increasing its focus on “movement of sensitive parts in factories.” As part of this change, if a component takes “an unusually long time to get to its destination,” an internal security alarm must be triggered.

Leaking of Apple secrets is a disrespectful act. Obviously, there’s a hunger on the part of the media and Apple fans, but it disrespects the people who work hard for that moment when their labors can be shown to the world.

Chasing leaks while respecting privacy, a tricky line to walk.

Recently-created Shortcuts links are currently broken. Apple’s on it.

Written by

John Voorhees, MacStories:

iCloud links to shortcuts broke sometime in the past 24 hours. Instead of opening the Shortcuts app and allowing users to install a shared shortcut, tapping a shortcut link displays an alert with the message ‘Shortcut Not Found,’ explaining that the link may be invalid or the shortcut may have been deleted.

These links broke for everyone. For example:

https://twitter.com/viticci/status/1374707144021450754

Years and years of Shortcuts cut off from the community. A single point of failure, showcased.

Apple has acknowledged the issue and is on it:

We are aware of an issue where previously shared shortcuts are currently unavailable. Newly shared shortcuts are available, and we are working to restore previously shared shortcuts as quickly as possible.

The dark side of the cloud.

An act of desperation 20 years ago was the building block for the modern Mac. It also brought back Steve Jobs.

Written by

Jason Snell, Macworld, with a nostalgic look back at a critical transition for the Mac, one that occurred 20 years ago.

Side note: I was at Metrowerks at the time, and had the chance to play with early betas of that first new re-roll of MacOS. I remember being mystified by the completely reinvented Finder, especially the multi-column browser, lifted from NeXT’s interface. It felt like a forced fit at the time, but now I can’t imagine going back to the old version.

Interestingly, Steve left Apple and came back on September 16th, leaving in 1985, then returning in 1997.

Sister and brother to plead guilty to stealing millions of dollars’ of MacBooks from Stanford

Written by

Mercury News:

San Carlos resident Patricia Castaneda, 37, pleaded guilty to a charge of federal program theft while her brother, 36-year-old Eric Castaneda of Redwood City, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to transport stolen property across state lines. Patricia Castaneda worked for Stanford’s school of humanities and used her position to steal approximately 800 MacBooks from the university, prosecutors say.

You can watch the crime unfold via text messages in the plea agreement (scroll down to Appendix A, towards the end — interesting reading).

Click

Written by

Follow the link. Fish around. This is eerie, bordering on creepy. But interesting. Feels like the seeds of a game.

There a dark side here? Some kind of malware? Ping me if you discover anything along those lines.

Om Malik: “What Adobe isn’t telling you about Photoshop for M1 Macs”

Written by

Om:

Photoshop was the solitary reason I owned an iMac Pro and a MacBook Pro. My models were packed with memory and top-of-the-line graphic processors, and as a result, I could breeze through my photo edits.

Lots of Intel-based Macs out there, similarly kitted out for Photoshop.

With Apple ready to switch to its silicon, I decided it was time to sell those machines. What made my decision easier was that Adobe’s Photoshop Beta was spectacularly fast.

Yup. So far, so good.

The application has garnered gushing reviews across the board. Many have been gobsmacked by the software’s performance on M1 machines. I am no different. I love the performance of M1-Photoshop.

Except for one small thing.

Here comes the kicker:

The M1-Photoshop is pretty useless for those — like me — who use third-party extensions as part of their editing workflow. For instance, I use some extensions that allow me to pursue highly granular masking via luminosity masks. Other extensions for color grading (including Adobe’s own Color Themes) and additional tune-ups are also part of my flow. And none of them work with the new Photoshop.

Read Om’s post for the details. Part of this is the low-level pains involved in moving to a brand new chip architecture. If you build an app using third party libraries, for example, until those libraries are ported to the new architecture, you might just be stuck, waiting for that port so you can fully take advantage of the M1 speeds.

Not quite what’s happening here, but the solution is likely the same. Until those critical path extensions are ported to the new architecture, Photoshop users like Om are stuck in emulation.

Intel CEO: “We will pursue opportunities with Apple”

Written by

Yahoo!Finance:

Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger is staying hopeful that the frayed relationship with former long-time partner Apple could be salvaged.

“We will pursue opportunities with Apple,” Gelsinger said on a conference call updating the company’s business plans Tuesday evening.

Intel is doubling down on chip fabrication, pouring $20B into two new chip plants in Arizona. Here’s a link to the press release with all their announcements.

In the conference call laying all these plans out, Gelsinger specifically brought up Apple. Just days after launching a campaign mocking the Mac, using Apple’s own former spokes-character (Here’s a link to those ads, in case you’ve not yet seen them).

Don’t get me wrong. I truly want Intel to succeed. Having a US-based chip fabricator would be good for the economy, and potentially help take the strain off Apple’s (and other company’s) supply chains. Those ads just seem poorly thought out. A bit of a bridge burner.

Two college roommates and some robots: How Podswap replaces AirPod batteries

Written by

iFixit:

Like most AirPod owners, Emily Alpert found that, after 18 months, her wireless buds didn’t last, not even for one full run. Unlike most AirPod owners, Alpert, along with her best friend, got a robot to fix her problem.

That’s what started Podswap, a startup that replaces your AirPods, first or second-generation, for $60. First you get a thoroughly cleaned and refurbished pair sent to you, then you mail Podswap your dead pods. It’s like a SodaStream canister exchange, but for headphones that might otherwise be headed to a landfill.

Definitely going to give this a try. Love the concept.

Watch the video below to get a sense of the battery replacement process. Very interesting. And though the audio might be a bit annoying, I find it amazing how good artificial audio actually sounds.

[H/T, Ben LaGuire]

I captured the Iceland volcano eruption from up close

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Years ago, when I was young and stupid, I put on my bestest hiking books and trekked over the lava flow on Hawaii’s most active volcano, Mount Kilauea.

There were ten foot tall lava tubes to climb through, and places where you could see glowing red under the massive lava boulders on which I was standing (which easily could have collapsed, the red was molten lava). There were many plumes of acrid smoke, which turned out to be flares of sulfuric acid. Thrilling, wouldn’t change it, but thinking back, how am I still alive?

Every time I see volcano coverage, I lean in. Never lost the allure. Follow the headline link for some gorgeous photos. Can’t wait until I can travel again.

Be careful when deleting conversations in Messages

Written by

Josh Centers, TidBITS:

In a Hacker News thread about Dustin Curtis’s locked Apple ID (see “The Mystery of Dustin Curtis’s Locked Apple ID,” 5 March 2021), there were several reports of iMessage accounts being disabled after other users inadvertently marked messages from them as spam during deletion (swipe left on a message and then tap the trash icon).

Follow the link for all the details. Not going to test this (something I usually try to do when I run across stuff like this, but just don’t want to fall down that sinkhole).

But worth noting:

If you regularly delete messages or conversations in Messages, read the prompts carefully before responding to them.

Awareness raised.

Angry MacBook owners get class action status for butterfly keyboard suit

Written by

Adi Robertson, The Verge:

A judge has certified a class action suit against Apple for its fragile butterfly keyboard design. The suit covers anyone who purchased an Apple MacBook with a butterfly keyboard in seven states: California, New York, Florida, Illinois, New Jersey, Washington, and Michigan. That includes people who bought a MacBook model dating between 2015 and 2017, a MacBook Pro model between 2016 and 2019, or a MacBook Air between 2018 and 2019.

What about people who bought an affected MacBook in other states? What if they bought the MacBook on-line, from California-based Apple?

The plaintiffs accuse Apple of violating several laws across the seven states mentioned above, including California’s Unfair Competition Law, the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act, and the Michigan Consumer Protection Act. They aren’t asking for a nationwide certification at this time, but the law firm behind the suit has invited any US buyer of an affected MacBook to complete a survey.

Here’s a link to that survey. Let your voice be heard.

By far, my favorite part of this whole thing:

This suit claims Apple knew for years that its butterfly switches were defective — and that its incremental changes weren’t fixing the core problem. It cites internal communications inside Apple, including an executive who wrote that “no matter how much lipstick you try to put on this pig [referring to the butterfly keyboard] . . . it’s still ugly.”

No matter how many times I run across stuff like this, always amazed what people will put in writing.

Best USB-C and Thunderbolt displays for Mac

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When I bought my new desktop display (I got this one, on sale), I started my research with the headline linked article from Michael Potuck.

Michael updated the article yesterday, so if you are in the market, this is an excellent place to start.

Apple’s HomePod mini has a secret sensor waiting to be switched on

Written by

Mark Gurman, Bloomberg:

Apple Inc.’s HomePod mini speaker launched last November with new features such as a home intercom system. But one part of the device has remained secret: a sensor that measures temperature and humidity.

And:

The Cupertino, California-based technology giant never disclosed this component and the device currently lacks consumer-facing features that use it. The company has internally discussed using the sensor to determine a room’s temperature and humidity so internet-connected thermostats can adjust different parts of a home based on current conditions, according to people familiar with the situation. The hardware could also let the HomePod mini automatically trigger other actions, say turning a fan on or off, depending on the temperature.

And:

The part is situated relatively far from the device’s main internal components, meaning it is designed to measure the external environment rather than the temperature of the speaker’s other electronics. Many mobile devices include sensors that can trigger the device to slow performance or disable features to stop components overheating.

Is the sensor for internal use only (monitoring/adjusting to environmental conditions)? As in, nothing to see here, just some normal design, folks.

Or is there, as Mark hints, a stealth opportunity to link to HomeKit in some future iteration?

Very interesting read. No clear answer.

Privacy — Labels — Apple

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Apple puts their money where there mouth is, posting detailed privacy labels for every one of their iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS apps, all in one easy to navigate alphabetic listing.

Take a look. Click/tap an entry’s down-arrow for more details.

Oh, Facebook

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We’ve long done a series of posts with the title, “Oh Samsung”. This is the (long overdue, I think) very first “Oh Facebook”.

This started with this tweet:

https://twitter.com/schrep/status/1372568994738180098

That’s Facebook’s Mike Schroepfer, showing off some cool wrist-mapping interface work for Facebook’s Project Aria (AR glasses/wearables).

Watch the video, and watch this follow-on tweet video, showing a virtual keyboard that works on any surface.

This is cool stuff, very exciting. But.

On your Mac, follow the headline link to Facebook’s Inside Reality Labs page. Scroll down a bit and click play to watch that embedded video. As you may have seen in other Facebook places, you’ll immediately get this alert:

That last sentence is critical: “This will allow “facebook.com” to track your activity.

That is wildly open-ended. And if you want to watch the video, you have to agree to this. Click Don’t Allow and the video immediately shuts down. Like a honeytrap, they are luring you in with the promise of content.

Watch the video on your iPhone and a big cookie alert appears. It lets you watch the video without agreeing, but is there tracking going on behind the scenes?

Perhaps there’s nothing more nefarious going on here than a simple cookie. But how hard is it to believe that there’s more to it than that.

And I’m puzzled why the behavior is so different between the macOS and iOS treatments of this page. Facebook has a trust issue. At least for me.

Apple TV quietly premieres short-form (15 minute episodes) series “Calls”

Written by

Apple:

“Calls” is a groundbreaking, immersive television experience based on the buzzy French series of the same name, masterfully using audio and minimal abstract visuals to tell nine bone-chilling, short-form stories. Directed by Fede Álvarez (“Don’t Breathe”), each episode follows a darkly dramatic mystery that unfolds through a series of seemingly average, unconnected phone conversations that quickly become surreal as the characters lives are thrown into growing disarray. Featuring Lily Collins, Rosario Dawson, Pedro Pascal, Aubrey Plaza and more, “Calls” proves that the real terror lies in one’s interpretation of what they cannot see on the screen and the unsettling places one’s imagination can take them.

This series definitely comes with a twist. Or two.

First, there’s the length. Each episode is quite short. About 15 minutes long, give or take.

More importantly, each episode is us eavesdropping on a phone call, with visuals serving to narrate the call and add in a bit of visual frosting.

I kind of like the concept. Feels a bit like a well-produced podcast, or an old-timey radio show, where the reward is in the image you build yourself. Going to watch the whole thing.

Ted Lasso brings Apple two more awards

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Variety, on Sunday’s 73rd annual Writers Guild of America Awards:

Apple TV comedy “Ted Lasso” also continued its hot streak, taking the award for new series as well as the top comedy series kudo, which comes on the heels of its Golden Globe comedy series win earlier this month.

And:

“Keep watching TV,” enthused “Ted Lasso” executive producer Bill Lawrence as he accepted the trophy for new series.

Patiently waiting for the 12-episode Season 2 to drop. Season 1 started in August. Not looking for Season 2 any sooner than that.

Gruber on the new Justin Long Intel ads

Written by

John Gruber:

I’m sure some will claim to find this ad campaign to be a sick burn. I find it cringey, and kind of hard to watch. It’s neither parody nor sequel. It’s an attempt at comedy from writers who have no sense of humor. The concept isn’t actually anything beyond “Let’s hire Justin Long as our new pitchman, that’ll show them.” One gets the feeling, early on, that there was an uncomfortable phone call to Justin Long from his agent that began, “Before you say ‘no’, at least let me tell you how much money they’re offering.”

Read Gruber’s entire take. I couldn’t agree more.

And you can watch all 5 spots here.