[VIDEO] Willie’s guitar, nicknamed “Trigger”, is one of those iconic instruments, recognizable by tone and by that famous hole in the body.
Follow along (video embedded in main Loop post) as Mark Erlewine gives it some love and repair.
[H/T Josh Centers]
[VIDEO] Follow the headline link for all the details but, in a nutshell, Bluetooth LE Audio:
The video embedded in the main Loop post gives a taste of what’s coming.
John Voorhees, MacStories:
With the release of iPadOS 13, Safari took a big step forward as a ‘desktop-class’ browser with a wide variety of enhancements that collectively eliminate a long list of complaints leveled against the app in the past. Safari’s ability to dynamically adjust the viewport to fit the iPad’s screen, enhanced support for pointer events, hardware-accelerated scrolling of frames and other regions of a webpage, along with other under-the-hood changes add up to a genuinely new browsing experience that has made work in sophisticated web apps like Mailchimp a viable option for the first time.
Great read. John Voorhees uses a specific use case to make clear the value of desktop Safari on iPadOS 13. To me, this is one of the tethers keeping me tied to my Mac falling away.
MacRumors:
Apple has indicated that it plans to update its serial number format to a randomized alphanumeric string for future products starting in late 2020. Apple says all serial numbers that exist before the change is made will remain the same.
And:
Apple already uses alphanumeric serial numbers, but it has long been possible to determine the date and location that a product was manufactured based on the current format.
Interesting.
Arquette has won multiple Emmys, multiple Golden Globes (one win Sunday night), and an Oscar. A great and storied career, and arguably at the peak of her game. Solid get for Apple.
A friend of mine has been away from the Mac for a long time (living on an iPad), just bought a new MacBook Pro.
As he went to wipe down his keyboard, he discovered that pressing a key or the trackpad woke his computer. With his Apple Watch set to unlock his computer, he found himself wipe-typing, not something he wanted. He asked for the best way to disable this behavior.
In the old days, you could shut down your Mac, do your wiping, carefully avoiding the power on button. But with the introduction of the 2018 models, Apple made a change to both MacBook Pro and MacBook Air, so they turn on when you touch any key or the trackpad.
You can read all about that behavior in this technical note.
I brought this up on Twitter yesterday, got a number of suggestions (along with some expressions of frustration at this change).
My favorite idea is to select Lock Screen from the Apple menu. This puts you in the lock screen, but will not use your Apple Watch to unlock your Mac. So wipe away, just don’t wipe-type your password and you’ll be fine.
Another approach is this tool, which uses a specific keypress to lock your keyboard so you can clean your keyboard and screen. Type the key, clean away, then type the key again to unlock.
Happy cleaning.
[VIDEO] This was an amazing demonstration (video embedded in main Loop post), 500 drones as pixels, bringing moving images to Singapore’s night sky.
When I saw this, I immediately saw a future with thousands of drones, and then millions of drones, eventually bringing video, surveillance, and advertising to the roofs of our cities.
[H/T, the mellifluous Julie Sobsey]
Last night’s Golden Globes felt unmoored, Ricky Gervais in full, uncontrolled roast mode. Tim Cook was there, along with Apple TV+ stars such as Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon, and Jason Momoa.
Take a look at the video (quick, before the video is DMCA’d) in the embedded tweet for the double-edged take on The Morning Show and “sweat-shops in China”.
https://twitter.com/yashar/status/1213998800852795392
Ouch.
To be clear, you can select one from a limited set of emoji, or go with text, one or the other.
Emoji engraving available on all three AirPods case choices (original, original charging case, or AirPods Pro).
Jimmy Grewal, former Program Manager for Microsoft’s Mac Internet Explorer efforts, celebrates the twentieth anniversary of IE 5 and the port to the brand new Mac OS X, with pictures, videos, and a few Steve Jobs mentions, all rolled into a 25-part Twitter thread.
[VIDEO] If you are interested in the iPhone camera, this is worth watching (video embedded in main Loop post). Not so much for the “I was wrong” part, but for the explanations and examples. Well done.
Bradley Chambers pulled together some Apple Music tips for folks new to the service. But there’s one in particular that I think everyone should know about:
If you are traveling for the holidays, you might want to keep your entire library downloaded to your iOS devices. Of all the Apple Music tips I am sharing today, I’ve used this one the most often. I wish Apple had a simple option here, but you have to trick it with a playlist.
Read the article for the details, but the trick is to create a smart playlist that matches every song in your library, forces it to download on your device.
I definitely appreciate the trick, but can’t help but wish for a simpler way to accomplish this. Maybe a shortcut that force downloads everything in your library? Or a setting that does the same? Does such a thing exist? If you know of a better way, ping me.
Nikkei Asian Review:
In an interview, Cook told Nikkei that Seiko Advance is the “reason” Apple was able to release its top-of-the-line iPhone 11 Pro in a new color called Midnight Green.
And:
Midnight Green is not the only color Seiko Advance provides for the iPhone 11 Pro — it is also behind the Gold, Space Gray and Silver models. “We are the sole supplier of colors for the iPhone 11 Pro and iPhone 11 Pro Max,” said Kabe.
But, in my mind, Midnight Green is notable, noticeable, an evolution in metal iPhone colors.
Interesting article. Turns out, Seiko Advance has been an Apple partner since 2011. A relatively tiny company, doing an important job for Apple.
[VIDEO] Apple rolled out a series of Slofie videos. They’re all pretty good. Videos embedded in main Loop post.
As a reminder, Slofies arrived with the iPhone 11 back in September. This one, posted back then, remains my favorite, especially with the sound on.
It’s true. Spent some time roaming the big box stores on-line: Costco, Target, Walmart, Amazon, all sold out.
And on the Apple Store itself? Shipping pushed out until February 2020.
Amazing.
This was fun to look through. Rabbit hole warning.
Joseph Cox, Motherboard:
From across the other side of the world, a colleague has just accessed my Ring account, and in turn, a live-feed of a Ring camera in my apartment. He sent a screenshot of me stretching, getting ready for work. Then a second colleague accessed the camera from another country, and started talking to me through the Ring device.
Earlier today, we posted about the Apple, Amazon, Google alliance designing an IoT open standard. I’d love to see Amazon close up these security holes.
Until then, I’ll limit my video doorbell candidates to those who sign up for HomeKit Secure Video.
There’s been a lot of Twitter griping about the new Mac Pro Geekbench results not being that much better than the 2017 iMac Pro, essentially making the point that the Mac Pro is not worth all that extra money.
If you check out the Geekbench scores, you’ll see that the lowest model of the new Mac Pro scores worse than the top end 2017 iMac Pro.
I priced out the top-end iMac Pro (256GB RAM, top video card) at $13,299. That does include a display, obviously.
I priced out a base model new Mac Pro (went up to 384GB RAM) at $11,999. More RAM, no display.
The pricing seems reasonable to me. And one is the top of its line, the other the absolute bottom of its line. Close enough.
First things first, the headline link takes you to a 6-movie Studio Ghibli collection. Appears to be US only. $100 for all six. A great deal if you are a Studio Ghibli fan.
That said, there are other Studio Ghibli movies in the iTunes Store that are not part of the collection. It’d be nice if you could type Studio Ghibli in one of the many search fields (iTunes Store, TV app on Mac, Apple TV, etc.)
For example, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind is a great movie, not part of the collection, worth exploring.
UPDATE: Zac Hall, 9to5Mac, pulled together links for all the Studio Ghibli films. Nice job, Zac!
Apple:
Amazon, Apple, Google, and the Zigbee Alliance today announced a new working group that plans to develop and promote the adoption of a new, royalty-free connectivity standard to increase compatibility among smart home products, with security as a fundamental design tenet.
This has huge potential. It will be interesting to see if Amazon opens up their Ring doorbell protocol. All the Ring doorbell hacking stories, true or not, are hurting their brand, and likely hurting the overall product category trustability.
Would love to see a path where Apple forces stronger privacy/security, rather than a weaker standard that allows all entrants to play.
Here’s the link to the main alliance page. Note that Apple’s name (all the way at the bottom) is plain text, no logo. Odd.
[VIDEO] This is absolutely brilliant work. Amazing to me how much research must have gone in to the making of this video. Prepare for waves of nostalgia. Video embedded in main Loop post.
Been looking forward to this teardown. The most repairable Apple device, by far, though replacement parts might be expensive/hard to find.
[VIDEO] Peter Cohen, Harris Craycraft, iDownloadBlog:
iPadOS 13.3 adds Hot Corners, a new feature that works with a Bluetooth mouse. You can set up the corners of your iPad screen to automate actions just like you can on the Mac. Learn how it works in this short video.
Great feature, nicely detailed in the video embedded in the main Loop post.
Interesting interactive post from The New York Times:
When the decade began, tech meant promise — cars that could drive themselves, social networks that could take down dictators. It connected us in ways we could barely imagine. But somewhere along the way, the flaws of technology became abundantly clear. What happened?
The people who brought us this decade explain: Mark Zuckerberg, Edward Snowden, Ellen Pao, Phil Schiller, Kevin Systrom, Brianna Wu, Tyler “Ninja” Blevins, Mike Judge, Jonah Peretti, Diane von Furstenberg, Alex From Target — and many more. (People’s titles in the interviews below, which have been edited for clarity, reflect the roles they had at the time.)
Follow the headline link, click on the stuff that interests you for a popup article, with links to more related content. A definite rabbit hole.
Rewound:
We launched an App that let you customize your iPhone to look like a 2000s era MP3 player. As Rewound grew exponentially across the world from Japan to China to Iran to Russia and the rest of mainland Europe, Apple KILLED it.
Amazing how quickly this app spread. The power of nostalgia. Why did Apple kill it?
- Copying iPod Design
- Charging for Apple Music features
- People would mistake it for Apple product
The company behind Rewound is floating a campaign to fund a new web-based version of the app. Not the same.
Also:
We can’t update the app to get it re-approved without breaking the app for all 170,000+ users.
An interesting feature of the App Store. Apple takes an app down, but they do not take the app off your device.
MacRumors:
Apple today released a new firmware update for the AirPods 2 and the AirPods Pro, though there is no word on what’s new in the refreshed firmware.
AirPods Pro were previously using firmware version 2B588, while AirPods 2 were previously using 2A364. Both AirPods Pro and AirPods 2 run firmware version 2C54 following the update.
As far as I know, there’s no way to force a firmware update, but it’s delivered, at some point, over-the-air, when you connect your AirPods to your iOS device.
To check your firmware version#:
Settings > General > About > [Your AirPods Name]
Note that your AirPods won’t appear in the list until they are connected.
Samsung:
According to Samsung Electronics President Sohn Young, who participated at the TechCrunch Disrupt event in Berlin yesterday, there are over one million Galaxy Fold smartphones out there in the wild — double the initial sales estimate made in October of 500,000 units. Despite costing nearly $2,000 and requiring extreme care during use, a sizable number of people have embraced the 7.3-inch folding screen device, making Samsung quite happy and getting it closer to realizing its foldable goals for 2020.
Wow, that’s amazing. Astonishing success. I can’t believe Samsung sold more than one million Galaxy Fold, especially since I’ve not seen a single one in the wild. But live and learn.
Oh, wait.
Also Samsung:
Samsung has clarified that it has not, in fact, sold 1 million Galaxy Folds, in a statement given to Korea’s Yonhap News Agency. Samsung declined to comment on the actual number of units sold, only to say it was not over a million.
Samsung would not even state if estimates of 500,000 units were closer to an accurate figure, perhaps suggesting the real number could even be below analyst expectations.
Um. That’s a pretty big oopsie, Samsung. If one were prone to cynicism, on might think this was some sort of ploy.
What do you think the odds are that Jim will be talking about this on this week’s Dalrymple Report?
Interesting that 3 of the 10 are from Apple. And iPhone (2007) did not qualify. Can you predict what those 3 are?
Any important gadgets that should have made the list?
CNBC:
Apple employees in Silicon Valley can now get free genetic screenings for diseases from their on-site health clinics, thanks to a pilot partnership with Color Genomics.
And:
The idea is to move health care at Apple’s clinics from reactive to proactive, as genetic tests can offer a window into health risks down the line. In some cases, patients can take preventative steps to reduce their likelihood of getting a disease.
This raises the question, would you want to know what genetic testing can reveal? For me, certainly I’d want to know if there was any disease that I was highly prone to that was preventable.
But if I knew I was certain to develop a non-preventable terminal illness at a specific age, not so sure I’d want to know what was coming for me. And when.
That said, there’s far more to genetic testing than this. Interesting article.
This saves about $10 a year. No brainer if you like games.
Does make me wonder if we’ll eventually see a services bundle from Apple, as rumored.