This is a great, detailed look at Time Machine and how it has evolved over time. Especially important is how Time Machine deals with the challenges of each new macOS X release, especially with the introduction of APFS and Catalina’s Volume Groups.
If you depend on Time Machine, take a few minutes to read this.
Caught red-handed by a pinging Apple Watch. Amazing.
Hollywood Reporter:
Billie Eilish’s big 2019 is culminating as she nears a deal with Apple TV+ for a documentary that comes with a $25 million price tag, according to multiple sources.
The film, which has already been shot, was directed by R.J. Cutler and produced in collaboration with Eilish’s label, Interscope Records, for a budget that one source pegs as being between $1 million and $2 million. It is expected to follow the 17-year-old singer-songwriter in the wake of the release of her debut album, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?, in March of this year. Cutler was granted deep access to Eilish’s private moments with family and behind-the-scenes of her public appearances.
Last night, Billie Eilish did a show at Apple’s Steve Jobs Theater, broadcast live via the Music app. Eilish expressed her appreciation for Apple several times during the show. They’ve been behind her since the beginning. I suspect this documentary will draw a wide audience.
Last night’s concert was beautifully produced, the sound and visuals crisp and clear. Eilish and her brother were engaging, clearly comfortable in the setting. Apple did a terrific job bringing this together, making it easy to watch.
I hope we see many more of these shows. If you missed last night’s performance, fire up your Music app and look around for Billie Eilish Live at the Steve Jobs Theater. It’s pretty heavily promoted, should be easy to find.
Tip: If you’re watching on your phone and don’t see the video, turn your phone sideways.
Joe Rossignol, MacRumors:
Goldman Sachs has confirmed that it is working with credit bureau TransUnion to begin reporting Apple Card information, informing cardholders that they will see full details on their credit report within the next five days. This includes the date the Apple Card account is opened, credit balance, payment status, and more.
In other words, like any other credit card, the way you use your Apple Card can now have an impact on your credit score.
Apple Card slowly adds aspects of “normal” credit cards. But this is a good thing. Consider that “normal” credit cards will never be tightly integrated with macOS/iOS.
My opinion, no reason not to get one. There’s no fee, and you can simply use it for the 3% discount on whatever monthly services you get, hardware purchases you make from Apple.
Mike Judge, creator of Silicon Valley and a bunch of other shows, in a New York Post interview:
Steve Jobs didn’t build anything. The fact that an iPhone right now is what a Cray supercomputer was in 1993, and it’s all due to some hardware innovations.
This is a tiny nugget from an interesting interview. At its core, the comment is that Steve Jobs gets the credit for what was built by many other people, many of whom got little credit/publicity.
I’ve heard this argument countless times, applied to Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, etc. While there is truth to the statement that the hands that formed the iPhone, that designed all the prototypes, came up with the software keyboard and proposed those countless innovations that you hold in your hand did not belong to Steve Jobs, it is thoughtless to discount Steve’s role in changing the world.
Apple posted the linked support document (the headline is its actual title) in response to reported shutdowns for some users.
In my opinion, this is how Apple should respond to all such issues. Get the response up there quickly, put out the word to funnel users to that document. Perfect.
Krebs On Security:
One of the more curious behaviors of Apple’s new iPhone 11 Pro is that it intermittently seeks the user’s location information even when all applications and system services on the phone are individually set to never request this data. Apple says this is by design, but that response seems at odds with the company’s own privacy policy.
and:
“We do not see any actual security implications,” an Apple engineer wrote in a response to KrebsOnSecurity. “It is expected behavior that the Location Services icon appears in the status bar when Location Services is enabled. The icon appears for system services that do not have a switch in Settings” [emphasis added].
There’s been a lot of discussion since this piece dropped. At its core, there seem to be system services that use Location Services without a Settings switch to disable that usage.
Grain of salt time. Interesting that this seems to be specific to the iPhone 11 Pro, and not occurring in earlier models. Seems to me that Apple should address this with a technical note or some added verbiage in the Location Services documentation.
Fascinating piece on Roger McNamee, who made his fortune backing a ton of big companies at their earliest stages (just one example, invested more than $200M in Facebook two years before it went public) and has now switched sides.
Part of an email McNamee sent to Zuckerberg and Sandberg days before the 2016 election:
Recently, Facebook has done some things that are truly horrible and I can no longer excuse its behavior… Facebook is enabling people to do harm. It has the power to stop the harm. What it currently lacks is an incentive to do so.
Great read/listen.
Short, interesting read on a curtain people disappear behind when they go to work for Apple.
Benjamin Mayo, 9to5Mac:
Apple News is expanding its mail notifications with a new ‘Good Morning’ daily newsletter. Previously, users could opt in to receive email alerts from Apple News about select featured stories. The company appears to be formalizing that into a regular daily newsletter.
Apple says it will bring top news, analysis, and fascinating features every morning, collating the ‘best stories from the most trusted sources’.
I get the idea here, good path for Apple News to solidify its relationship with subscribers. But…
Right now, there doesn’t seem to be a way to manage email notification settings inside the News app. If you are receiving Good Morning emails and would like to opt-out, or if you want to sign up, for now the easiest way is through Apple ID settings.
To opt out:
- Go to appleid.apple.com.
- Log in with the account associated with your email address.
- Scroll down to the ‘Messages from Apple’ section.
- Uncheck the box for ‘Apple News updates’.
My two cents, the lack of an unsubscribe link, or at least clear unsubscribe instructions is a mistake. Put the unsubscribe link inside the newsletter, at the bottom. Like everyone else does.
If you make it difficult to unsubscribe, you are building a false base of subscribers, and eroding your relationship with your users. And these users have taken a chance on Apple News. Treat them well.
UPDATE: Interestingly, some people are reporting an unsubscribe link at the bottom of their emails, others not seeing it. Hopefully, this is simply an error and the unsubscribe link was the intent all along.
[VIDEO] Just for comparison, here’s the original version of this iconic song, most definitely in a celebratory major key.
With that as context, take a listen to the reworked version (embedded in the main Loop post). I find it amazing how well this one works, and the fact that someone was able to make the pitch changes to the original to make this possible.
Reuters:
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday signed legislation requiring all smartphones, computers and smart TV sets sold in the country to come pre-installed with Russian software.
And:
The law has been presented as a way to help Russian IT firms compete with foreign companies and spare consumers from having to download software upon purchasing a new device.
Seems impossible to predict the impact this will ultimately have, both in Russia and abroad. Seems like short term chaos for developers, device manufacturers, and resellers in that market, at the very least, with isolation sure to follow. Is that the goal?
[VIDEO] Interesting interview with Scott Forstall, former software and Senior VP at Apple, significant contributor on both the Mac and iOS sides.
From Forstall’s Wikipedia page:
In 2005, when Jobs began planning the iPhone, he had a choice to either “shrink the Mac, which would be an epic feat of engineering, or enlarge the iPod”. Jobs favored the former approach but pitted the Macintosh and the iPod team, led by Forstall and Tony Fadell respectively, against each other in an internal competition. Forstall won that fierce competition to create iOS.
The decision enabled the success of the iPhone as a platform for third-party developers: using a well-known desktop operating system as its basis allowed the many third-party Mac developers to write software for the iPhone with minimal retraining. Forstall was also responsible for creating a software developer’s kit for programmers to build iPhone apps, as well as an App Store within iTunes.
The video (embedded in the main Loop post) is part of Stanford University’s Philosophy Talk series. The relevant part of the conversation, highlighted on the headline linked Reddit post, starts at about 31 minutes in.
In a nutshell, Forstall talks about giving everyone who reported to him (a fairly large group) a month off to work on whatever they wanted. Give a listen.
It used to be a common perq at big tech companies (Google and Apple are but two examples) that you got time to work on stuff that interested you. Sometimes that benefit came in the form of a long sabbatical, allowing you to travel around the world, or take classes in some unrelated field, all via paid leave.
Another take on this policy allowed you to carve out a percentage of your time each month to fiddle around with technology you thought might lead to something that might benefit the company in the long run.
Does this sort of thing exist any more? Anyone have that freedom at their job? Is there a value to the company, a value that’s now been lost because this sort of thing is hard to translate into dollars and cents?
And is it possible this approach, one that gives team members the ability to ease themselves from the threat of burn-out, has benefits in terms of more stable OS releases, less employee turnover?
Almost as an afterthought in Apple’s Apple Music Awards press release:
Apple Music Celebrates with Global, Live-Streamed Performance by Billie Eilish at the Steve Jobs Theater on December 4 at 6:30 p.m. PST
Arguably, the hottest artist in the world is going to perform on Apple’s campus, in a small, intimate setting.
Oh, yeah, and it’s being live-streamed. If this is for you, set a reminder for tomorrow at 6:30p PT, 930p ET.
Definitely worth the time to go through the list of winners. There are best apps for iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple TV, along with a series of gaming app awards.
[VIDEO] Andy Hertzfeld:
A few years ago, I uploaded some interview snippets recorded in October 1983 with members of the original Mac team, intended for commercials that were never used. This post is the entire reel of proposed commercials, featuring mini-interviews with Mike Murray, Burrell Smith, Bill Atkinson, Susan Kare, George Crow and me.
This kills me with nostalgia. The original Mac team, back before the Mac was even a thing. Oh how young they were. Video embedded in main Loop post.
[VIDEO] This dropped while I was on vacation last week. The video is embedded in the main Loop post.
Worth watching if you have an interest in the new Apple Arcade games. But I also found this interesting from a marketing point of view. This is officially posted by Apple, but the take feels, to me, like a third party review.
AdAge:
New York-based Lemonade is a 3-year-old company that lives completely online and mostly focuses on homeowners and renter’s insurance. The company uses a similar color to magenta — it says it’s “pink” — in its marketing materials and its website. But Lemonade was told by German courts that it must cease using its color after launching its services in that country, which is also home to T-Mobile owner Deutsche Telekom.
And:
“If some brainiac at Deutsche Telekom had invented the color, their possessiveness would make sense,” Daniel Schreiber, CEO and co-founder of Lemonade, said in a statement. “Absent that, the company’s actions just smack of corporate bully tactics, where legions of lawyers attempt to hog natural resources – in this case a primary color—that rightfully belong to everyone.”
This is a ruling in Germany, but for an international company, it’s an issue with impact.
The idea of a company owning all rights to a color is problematic. Does Sprint own yellow? Does IBM own that specific shade of blue?
[VIDEO] Came across a video on Twitter, a gif someone made of Steve Jobs talking about asking for help.
I did a bit of digging, found that the clip was from a documentary pulled together back in the day by the Santa Clara Valley Historical Association.
Here are two clips from the documentary that really speak to me (both embedded in main Loop post). They are very short and both worth watching.
At the core, both messages are about not being afraid to poke life, to try things. When I was young, I had a vision of writing a book on Mac programming. The information I needed just wasn’t available, everyone was just figuring it out by themselves, with clues in the still forming technical documentation from Apple.
I’d never written a book, but I did some detective work, found a publisher (Addison-Wesley) who published technical books, started making phone calls. After a lot of dead ends, I finally found a human being who could see what I saw, was willing to take a chance on me.
And that act changed my life. Watch the videos, great messages in both.
Reddit:
Last week I upgraded my iPhone from the Xs to the 11Pro and the sales person asked me if I wanted AppleCare+, I did and now you have the option of paying for it all up front or paying month to month. I said that I’d likely upgrade my phone again next year so it probably made more sense to go month to month. I told him I wish this would have been an option the last time, cause now I have a year left that I’ve already paid for. He said most people don’t know about this, but you can call Apple support and they’ll reimburse you for the remaining coverage. I just called and in less than 5 minutes, including the wait time to speak with someone, he processed my reimbursement for about $75. The only information I needed was the serial number of the phone I traded in which was on the box that I still had. There may be another way to find it if you don’t have your box, but in my case I was good.
Good to know. Surprised you have to make a call to make this happen.
If you plan to trade in your Apple product (you can trade in Macs too!), ask at the Apple Store if they can credit your unexpired AppleCare+. If you are successful, please do let me know. I’d like to verify this.
UPDATE: If you plan a trade-in, spend a minute on Apple’s How to manage your AppleCare plan support page. [H/T Andy Rubin
[VIDEO] There have been a lot of reviews of the new 16″ MacBook Pro. This review by Dave Lee (embedded in the main Loop post) is a bit different, in my mind the perfect marriage of technical and practical, especially useful if you are looking at upgrading, considering which model to buy.
Amber Neely, AppleInsider:
On November 17, Apple removed the “Ratings & Reviews” section from all product pages on the Apple website. It is currently unclear what has prompted this decision, nor when Apple will bring back the option to read the opinions of other customers at the time of purchase.
The article walks through the process that uncovered this change. Interesting read. But to see it for yourself, hop on the Apple Store and pick a product. No reviews.
Here’s a wayback machine link to the Apple Pencil from last week. Note the star reviews.
Sarah Perez, TechCrunch:
According to new data from Sensor Tower, the top 1% of publishers globally accounted for a whopping 80% of the total 29.6 billion app downloads in the third quarter of 2019. That means just 20%, or 6 billion, downloads are left for the rest of the publishers.
This translates to:
This bottom 99%, which equates to roughly 784,080 publishers, averaged approximately 7,650 downloads each during the quarter.
That’s an average of 2,550 downloads a month. Hard to make a living as an indie dev.
[VIDEO] Wow. Just wow. Great watching this take shape. Video embedded in main Loop post.
Apple should use this in an iPhone ad.
Dan Moren, SixColors:
On macOS, we’ve long been able to add words to the system’s built-in dictionary, so they don’t come up every time we run check spelling.
And:
But this ability simply doesn’t exist on iOS. We’re told that if you override autocorrect a couple of times, the system should remember your correction, but in my experience, that “feature” is hit or miss. It’s also incredibly opaque and annoying as a user experience: the only way to have something done right is to fight with the system? Multiple times? Bizarre.
I agree with Dan here. I wish iOS offered a straightforward way to teach the autocorrect mechanism, to definitely mark a word as spelled correctly, and as a word you’d like added to the database of spellings to suggest when typing.
As is, predictive text is, indeed, opaque. It is always learning, and leans on machine learning, which is based on mathematical modeling, regression, and probabilities. While you do have the nuclear option (Settings > General > Reset > Reset Keyboard Dictionary), it’d be nice to be able to add to and edit your own private stash of words.
[VIDEO] Nice set of privacy tips from Rene Ritchie, video embedded in main Loop post.
Mark Gurman, Bloomberg:
Software chief Craig Federighi and lieutenants including Stacey Lysik announced the changes at a recent internal “kickoff” meeting with the company’s software developers. The new approach calls for Apple’s development teams to ensure that test versions, known as “daily builds,” of future software updates disable unfinished or buggy features by default. Testers will then have the option to selectively enable those features, via a new internal process and settings menu dubbed Flags, allowing them to isolate the impact of each individual addition on the system.
And:
Prior to iOS 14’s development, some teams would add features every day that weren’t fully tested, while other teams would contribute changes weekly. “Daily builds were like a recipe with lots of cooks adding ingredients,” a person with knowledge of the process said.
Test software got so crammed with changes at different stages of development that the devices often became difficult to use. Because of this, some “testers would go days without a livable build, so they wouldn’t really have a handle on what’s working and not working,” the person said.
The proof will be in the pudding which, in this case, is iOS 14.
[VIDEO] I don’t want to spoil this at all. Just let it unfold. The story starts at 43:53 in. Video embedded in main Loop post. Worth your time.
[H/T, Friend of the Loop, Andrew Leavitt]
This is important stuff. If nothing else, when (and preferably before) you make the leap to Catalina, read the “summary recommendations” about a page down. The first two:
Before upgrading to Catalina, make one last backup (or two!), then turn Time Machine off.
Once you have upgraded, turn Time Machine back on but using a new backup set which won’t then be accessible from macOS 10.14.x or earlier.
From Apple’s Time Machine support document, updated for Catalina:
If you create a backup on a Mac or partition with macOS Catalina, you can only use that backup on Mac computers or partitions with macOS Catalina.
Seems to me, this is a sea change for Time Machine.
I’m a big fan of getting things straight from the horse’s mouth wherever possible. In this case, here are the official questions from the House antitrust subcommittee (technically, the Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial and Administrative Law of the Committee on the Judiciary, but who has time for that mouthful?) along with Apple’s official responses.
This is surprisingly easy to read, especially if you are a regular Mac/iOS user.
This is surprisingly easy to read, especially if you are a regular Mac/iOS user. It’s chockfull of interesting tidbits.