Matt Birchler:
Below is basically what I would pitch to my boss if I worked on the watchOS team at Apple on what I thought we should be doing. Since I don’t work there, though, this is my public wish list for the platform and I hope you agree and pass this along so it’s more likely to get in front of someone on the actual team as inspiration.
This is a pretty good read. My favorite is, “A Damn Day Off”. Would be a nice option, especially when you are on vacation, trying to unwind.
Twitter:
We observed a particularly high volume of requests coming from individual IP addresses located within Iran, Israel, and Malaysia. It is possible that some of these IP addresses may have ties to state-sponsored actors.
And:
When used as intended, this endpoint makes it easier for new account holders to find people they may already know on Twitter. The endpoint matches phone numbers to Twitter accounts for those people who have enabled the “Let people who have your phone number find you on Twitter” option and who have a phone number associated with their Twitter account.
In the Twitter app, do this:
Turn stuff off.
Up to $30 for the Series 1 Apple Watch, up to $100 for Series 2 or later. Pretty hard to resist.
[VIDEO] Audio engineer Neil Parfitt puts his new rack mounted Mac Pro through its paces, shares the results, along with details on his setup and his overall impressions in the video embedded in the main Loop post.
Juli Clover, MacRumors:
When visiting Apple’s Support site to initiate a device repair, there’s now a mention of an onsite option when scheduling a repair. “Look for an Apple Authorized Service Provider or Genius Bar. In select locations, onsite service may be available.”
Onsite repairs from Go Tech Services appear to be available in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Houston, and Dallas.
I’m curious about the pricing model. Obviously, there’s an extra fee for these services.
[VIDEO] Start off with the two videos embedded in the main Loop post. One is a “livestream”, showing a quick run through of a bit of Oceanhorn 2. It’s reminiscent of a Pixar short.
The second is an Apple Arcade commercial that’s just plain fun.
And last, but not least, jump to the Apple home page and check out the animated Apple Arcade additions. Don’t forget to scroll.
Whimsical, right?
Detailed graphical look, by Justin O’Beirne, at what’s changed with the massive new Apple Maps rollout.
Juli Clover, MacRumors:
Customers who have AirPods Pro that also purchased an AppleCare+ protection plan for $29 appear to be able to receive free replacement tips for their AirPods Pro.
Multiple MacRumors readers have reported being provided replacement tips at no cost after going through Apple’s support repair steps for the AirPods Pro.
File under good to know.
The proposal is embedded in this GitHub repository. Easy read, short and clearly written.
From the linked ZDNet explainer:
Apple engineers have put forward a proposal today to standardize the format of the SMS messages containing one-time passcodes (OTP) that users receive during the two-factor authentication (2FA) login process.
And:
The proposal has two goals. The first is to introduce a way that OTP SMS messages can be associated with an URL. This is done by adding the login URL inside the SMS itself.
The second goal is to standardize the format of 2FA/OTP SMS messages, so browsers and other mobile apps can easily detect the incoming SMS, recognize web domain inside the message, and then automatically extract the OTP code and complete the login operation without further user interaction.
Basically, the goal is to automate the process, to have your device enter the code automatically, rather than you having to copy and paste it. Seems to me, in the past when this standardization was raised, there was a security concern about taking the human out of the middle of this process. Was that concern unfounded?
Cam MacMurchy, 9to5Mac:
I know it’s not too common for people to be out and about wearing masks in public in the United States, but it’s fairly common over here in Asia. The thinking behind it is actually to prevent you, the mask-wearer, from spreading your diseased germs to other, healthy, happy people.
And:
The Coronavirus, obviously, is different: doctors are recommending people wear masks to prevent coming into contact with the “novel” virus, thus keeping yourself safe. But the masks cover a huge portion of your face (even a big face, like mine) basically invalidating Face ID. I know, I know, this sounds very trivial, and it is. But trivial and annoying have long conspired together to cause great anger and frustration.
This is an interesting perspective, and makes me wonder if Apple has a team working on solutions to open your phone when wearing a mask. Perhaps a smarter, eye-centered Face ID, or a combination of Face ID and some other biometric (perhaps Touch ID as an additional option).
[VIDEO] I’m not in the market for a Mac Pro, in any form, but I found this pair of videos quite interesting. Both are from audio engineer Neil Parfitt, both embedded in the main Loop post.
The first is the arrival and unboxing, with running observations along the way from the perspective of someone who makes their living working on TV and movie soundtracks.
My favorite quote:
I made a decision almost 22 years ago, while I was still on PC, that has brought me into this ecosystem that I can’t escape.
The second video is the Mac Pro, now rack mounted, with some interesting discussion about some of the workarounds Neil needed to get things working in his current (temporary) setup.
This was published last month, but I came across it yesterday, thought the whole thing was fascinating, if not a bit politically incorrect.
Mostly, this is a series of unvarnished anecdotes about Apple’s now-defunct Aperture product from one of its team members.
Loved the whole post, but my favorite thing was that bit in there about a pair of leaks to Daring Fireball.
First, there’s this report from The Athletic [PAYWALL]:
The NFL under terms of its agreement with its existing media partners cannot currently negotiate with other firms. But it is no secret Goodell and Apple CEO Tim Cook talk. One subject they surely broached is Sunday Ticket. DirectTV has two more years left to carry the out-of-market package and then is widely expected to walk because of shifting priorities at parent AT&T. The NFL has long been under pressure to open Sunday Ticket to more platforms than just satellite, and streaming it through Apple TV would solve that concern.
And this explainer from Jason Snell (headline link):
For those who don’t know, NFL Sunday Ticket is a subscription offering that allows football fans in the U.S. to watch all live games that are being shown outside their local market. It’s been exclusive to satellite-TV provider DirecTV for decades, and has probably driven millions of people to sign up for DirecTV. (Me included!)
DirecTV pays the NFL $1.5B (that’s Billion with a B) per year for the exclusive rights to this package. Their deal expires at the end of the 2022 season.
This may be much ado about nothing, pure speculation on the part of The Athletic. And it might also be that Apple gets involved sooner, offering a streaming sidecar in cohort with DirecTV.
Ben Lovejoy, 9to5Mac:
Apple has cancelled Xnor.ai’s Pentagon contract for military drone work following the iPhone maker’s acquisition of the AI company.
Xnor.ai was reportedly working on the controversial Project Maven, which is using AI to identify people and objects in drone video and photos.
I don’t expect we’ll ever get an official comment on this, so take with a grain of salt. But we’ll know the truth of this over time, no question.
Is this Apple picking their battles, or freeing up their newly acquired team to focus on Apple stuff?
In the market for a new SSD or other form of mass storage? Follow the headline link, check the appropriate boxes, see what’s cheapest.
Worth bookmarking.
The original headline from the Electronic Freedom Foundation was:
Ring Doorbell App Packed with Third-Party Trackers
To me, that gave the appearance that the iOS app was packed with trackers. But the article itself doesn’t have a single mention of Apple or iOS, makes it clear the issue is with the Android app. Just wanted to call that out.
On to the article itself:
An investigation by EFF of the Ring doorbell app for Android found it to be packed with third-party trackers sending out a plethora of customers’ personally identifiable information (PII). Four main analytics and marketing companies were discovered to be receiving information such as the names, private IP addresses, mobile network carriers, persistent identifiers, and sensor data on the devices of paying customers.
The issue is not that the danger of your doorbell video or statistics being leaked, but that the trackers can be used to connect your IP address and other identifying info to other devices, building an on-line profile showing where you live and what other on-line information is linked to you.
This cohesive whole represents a fingerprint that follows the user as they interact with other apps and use their device, in essence providing trackers the ability to spy on what a user is doing in their digital lives and when they are doing it.
I hate this behavior. I love the idea of a video doorbell, but I continue to wait for one that is devoid of trackers, truly anonymized.
LiveMint:
In an interview to the BBC last week, Facebook’s Vice President of Global Affairs and Communications, Nick Clegg, said it wasn’t WhatsApp’s fault because end-to-end encryption is unhackable and blamed Apple’s operating system for Bezos’ episode.
Hubris.
Two things I always look forward to after each Apple quarterly results call are the call transcripts (I can read quickly, but can only listen as fast as someone is speaking!) and Jason Snell’s set of charts reflecting “the numbers”.
Take a look. They are beautifully done. Three charts that tell a big part of the story:
Wearable/Home/Accessories – Just look at that growth. And that’s with all the headroom of HomePod vs Amazon Echo and HomeKit devices like a doorbell to compete with Ring or a smoke detector to compete with Nest. So much opportunity still to come.
Services revenue – Slow and steady growth, with just a little more pop the last two quarters.
Apple regional year-over-year growth (the very last chart) – Look at that China curve. A precarious dip a year ago, with steady recovery ever since.
Surprisingly readable, a headline in every paragraph.
One subtle point that stuck out to me. This is from Apple CFO Luca Maestri’s part of the call:
Mac revenue was $7.2 billion and iPad revenue was $6 billion. Both products had a difficult year-over-year comparison due to the launches of MacBook Air here, Mac mini and iPad Pro during the December quarter a year ago and the subsequent channels fill. Despite the tough compare, on a demand basis, our performance for both Mac and iPad was around even to last year.
Mac and iPad year-over-year was down, but for a good reason.
Continuing:
Importantly, around half of the customers purchasing Macs and iPads around the world during the quarter, were new to that product. And the active installed base of both Mac and iPad reached a new all-time high.
So though the short term year over year number is flat, the customer base is growing. Tim, earlier in the call, spoke about iPad growth “in key emerging markets like Mexico, India, Turkey, Poland, Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam”.
This all makes me wonder what the iPad/Mac mix is in Luca’s “half of the customers purchasing Macs and iPads around the world during the quarter, were new to that product”.
No matter, clearly a blowout quarter, no matter how you look at it.
[VIDEO] If you have any interest in taking video, take a few minutes to watch Rene Ritchie play with (and explain) FiLMiC’s DoubleTake app (the one they teased at the iPhone 11 rollout event). The video is embedded in the main Loop post.
The app is free and, surprisingly, works on older iPhones, as far back as the iPhone Xs, Xr, though not quite in the same way as the iPhone 11.
Want to try DoubleTake out yourself? Here’s the App Store link.
Lots of detail. At the top of the page, tap/click Camera for the rear facing camera review from Nov ’19, tap/click Audio for the audio review from Oct ’19.
Wojtek Pietrusiewicz:
I built my last hackintosh in 2014 and it was overdue for an update. Since Apple recently updated their iMac with Core i9s and skipped the T2, this is probably the last time I’m building this sort of computer, before MacOS is locked down forever.
I wish Wojtek had expanded on that last bit, but it does feel as if the Mac is heading down the road of getting more and more locked down. And as far as I know, there’s no way to add a T2 to your own build, so if that ever becomes a requirement for a Mac, that’d be that. (Please do correct me if I’m wrong about that).
Add to that Apple’s recent moves towards all macOS software being notarized. From Apple:
Beginning in macOS 10.14.5, software signed with a new Developer ID certificate and all new or updated kernel extensions must be notarized to run. Beginning in macOS 10.15, all software built after June 1, 2019, and distributed with Developer ID must be notarized. However, you aren’t required to notarize software that you distribute through the Mac App Store because the App Store submission process already includes equivalent security checks.
Another sign of macOS lockdown. Could this be the last days of Hackintosh?
All that aside, if you are interested in building your own Hackintosh, this is a pretty build, lots of pictures.
Terrific interview from Input Magazine.
A bit about the two iPad leads, just to whet your appetite.
Imran Chaudhri, Former Director of Design on the Human Interface team:
I came to Apple in 95 as an intern in the Advanced Technologies Group. When I finished school in 97, I came to Apple and Steve was there after the NeXT acquisition and he was going through and cutting and trimming the fat at Apple — and ATG was a place that he wasn’t a huge fan of. He wasn’t a huge fan of research for research sake and I wasn’t either, which was kind of an interesting thing. I always wanted to really, really ship products and ATG really wasn’t about that. Steve laid off everybody in ATG and I was kind of left to figure out what I was going to do. I started emailing Steve some ideas and we started working closely together and the relationship formed a lot of products, the revitalization of the Mac, going on to the iPod, the development of multitouch to the iPhone and iPad and, post, to a bunch of stuff like the Watch, the AirPods and HomePod, etc. All things we finished before I left a couple of years ago.
Bethany Bongiorno, Former Software Engineering Director:
I joined in 2008, actually, right after they shipped the first phone. I joined immediately after that and started as a project manager on the iPhone. There was a very small team back then; we sat kind of in one hallway. [The phone] was definitely a startup within Apple and I was brought on board because the project manager that was working there really didn’t like working with designers and really didn’t like working at the higher levels of the stack. She preferred kind of working at a lower level; the core operating system and the kernel and things like that.
Then very quickly after that, they told me that the real reason they had to hire me was because Steve had this pet project that he was really excited about and they needed somebody to lead that effort because the team really needed to remain focused on development of iPhone.
Fantastic read.
Nikkei Asian Review:
Apple has asked its suppliers to make up to 80 million iPhones over the first half of this year, people familiar with its planning told the Nikkei Asian Review, a rise of over 10% on last year’s production schedule that could boost the company’s near-record share price.
And:
However, suppliers warned that blistering pace of production could be complicated by the outbreak of the coronavirus in China’s Hubei Province, given that their main manufacturing centers are in nearby Henan and Guangdong provinces, with more than 100 confirmed cases as of Monday afternoon, and in Shanghai, with over 50 confirmed cases.
Good news, bad news. And no way to truly gauge the coronavirus impact.
As to sales impact, I suspect that people will be willing to wait longer for their iPhones if Apple can’t make them fast enough.
[VIDEO] This is simply great. Rene Ritchie doing what he does best, tell a story with clips and voiceover.
This is fun to watch and, in my opinion, one of the best pieces Rene has ever done. Video embedded in the main Loop post.
I know this sounds like piracy, but it’s not about that. This is a walkthrough of some lesser known resources that you can mine, free, for a pretty wide range of content.
[VIDEO] Apple:
Here’s a little story they’re about to tell…Coming April 24 to Apple TV+, Mike Diamond and Adam Horovitz share the story of their band and 40 years of friendship in a live documentary directed by friend, collaborator, and their former grandfather, Spike Jonze.
Can’t wait for this to drop. Video embedded in main Loop post.
Before you follow the link, think about what the list of the most borrowed books of all time (well, since the New York Public Library opened in 1895) might look like.
Don’t forget kids books, a favorite at most libraries.
Enjoy.
[VIDEO] A deepfake is a video that is processed to overlay one person’s face on top of another. One of the earlier deepfakes to go viral was this Conan O’Brien interview in which Bill Hader does impressions of Al Pacino and Arnold Schwarzenegger. At key moments, Bill Hader’s face is post-processed to resemble each celebrity.
But the video embedded in the main Loop post breaks new ground, as the face is changed in real time, on demand, with much more detail than the Bill Hader fake.
Nothing good can come of this. Like counterfeiting.
[VIDEO] Beautifully shot and edited. If you are a winter sports fan, this video (embedded in main Loop post) is some immersive fun.
Back in the day, I used to live around the corner (literally) from Warren Miller Filmaking in Hermosa Beach, California. Warren Miller died a few years ago, but left an enormous legacy of extraordinary skiing and surfing movies. If you enjoyed the video embedded below, do a search for:
“Warren Miller” skiing movies
Here’s one to get you started. I can only imagine what Warren would have done with an iPhone.