2019 Fall foliage map

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That time of year again. The leaves are about to start turning, at least up north.

Follow the link, drag the slider to see when the leaves will be prime for peeping in your neck of the woods.

After taking the premium tier, HomePod will expand in markets Amazon and Google can’t

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Daniel Eran Dilger, AppleInsider:

For years, this new Apple product was derided as too expensive to compete against cheaper alternatives. Yet by targeting the premium high end first, it was able to establish itself and then attract an even broader audience of users at broader price points in the future.

And:

HomePod was one of the results of Apple’s largest-ever acquisition —the $3 billion purchase of Beats Electronics in 2014. This acquisition gave Apple the world’s largest and most profitable headphone and speaker business, and contributed to the audio overhaul that brought much higher-quality stereo sound to iPhone 7, iPads, and MacBooks.

And:

Comparing only the emerging sliver of Apple’s overall Siri activity exclusively connected to HomePod against virtually the entire business of Amazon Alexa and often all of its partners is ridiculous, yet market research groups continue to do this.

In a nutshell, HomePod is a clue to an emerging business. The business model has not yet revealed itself.

Google and its licensees haven’t been effective at establishing proprietary features to keep Android users from leaving the platform. Apple has. Over the last decade, Apple has introduced tight Continuity integration between iPhones, iPads, and Macs; introduced Apple Watch and AirPods as wearables with similarly tight connectivity; and launched iMessage, iCloud, AirDrop, Apple Pay, Apple Card and other free and paid Services that keep iOS users reluctant to even examine other options. This year, the new Apple Arcade, Apple TV+ and AirPlay 2 are expanding the tight integration between Apple’s products.

And:

Apple has already launched a successful business in home audio in its first year, without needing to rival Amazon or Google in total unit shipments. Yet HomePod didn’t even need to be commercially successful on its own to be strategically successful for Apple. As part of the Siri, HomeKit, and AirPlay 2 ecosystems, HomePod is a valuable product category for Apple.

Judging HomePod as an expensive speaker playing in the expensive speaker marketplace is a short term view. To me, the long game has just gotten started. Apple is doing what it always does, patiently learning about a market, releasing product to enhance its ecosystem.

Don’t forget, HomePods are said to have brought in about $1.4 billion in revenue last year. Hard to argue that that’s anything but a great success.

Australian who says he invented bitcoin ordered to hand over $5 billion

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The Guardian:

The Australian man who claimed to have invented cryptocurrency bitcoin has been ordered to hand over half of his alleged bitcoin holdings, reported to be worth up to $5bn.

The IT security consultant Craig Wright, 49, was sued by the estate of David Kleiman, a programmer who died in 2013, for a share of Wright’s bitcoin haul over the pair’s involvement in the inception of the cryptocurrency from 2009 to 2013.

First things first, wrap your head around the above. A court ordered someone to hand over about $5 billion worth of bitcoin to someone else.

But this part of the story takes the cake:

Wright claimed to the court that he couldn’t access the bitcoin because he doesn’t have a list of the public addresses of that bitcoin. He claimed in 2011, after seeing the cryptocurrency had begun to be associated with drug dealers and human traffickers, he put the bitcoin he mined in 2009 and 2010 into an encrypted file and into a blind trust. The encrypted key was divided into multiple key slices, and the key slices were given to Kleiman who distributed them to people through the trust.

Even better:

Wright said this meant he could not decrypt the file until he gets access to the key from a bonded courier who will arrive in January 2020.

Crazy.

Steve Jobs signed Pixar Poster up for auction

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Nate D Sanders auction page:

Extraordinarily scarce Pixar Animation Studios poster signed by its co-founder Steve Jobs, sometime after 1995 when ”Toy Story”, the first computer-animated feature film, debuted. Jobs’ legendary vision is evident in his backing of Pixar, whose potential was immediately realized in the success of ”Toy Story”, earning three Academy Award nominations, breaking box office records and securing its reputation as one of the finest animated movies of all time. Poster measures 24” x 36”, signed by Jobs in black fiber-tip marker. In near fine condition. With JSA COA.

A minimum bid of $25,000. Ouch. That lets me out.

[Via 9to5Mac]

Apple posts new Apple Card commercial

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[VIDEO] A fine commercial (video embedded in main Loop post), but one bit of the voiceover stuck out to me:

It’s a new kind of credit card, created by Apple, not a bank.

The fine print in the ad (tiny, but readable) says, in part:

Issued by Goldman Sachs Bank, USA

I get the point. Apple is the creator of the card, Goldman Sachs Bank a partner. And, more importantly, a partner who follows Apple’s specific privacy rules.

Jean-Louis Gassée: Apple Card and “What?” vs “How?”

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Jean-Louis Gassée:

Does the world need a new credit card, especially one without any outstanding perks? The answer lies in the way the Apple Card works rather than in the number of miles or the cash rebate percentages.

And:

For a sufficiently large number of Apple customers, the new payment system is a classic How vs What proposition — and the “How” wins. The Wallet app offers complete control over purchases, payments, rebates, timing, and security, all in one place. As for security, three different card numbers track purchases made with the physical card, with a card number on line, or with Apple Pay on your Watch or iPhone. No need to use a special third party app, such as the excellent Mint. Everything is built into the Wallet, itself built in every iPhone and iPad.

A great take on Apple Card. One interesting tidbit was the reveal of two different on-boarding processes for the physical Apple Card. This tweet shows both side-by-side. Anyone know the why on this?

UPDATE: The answer appears to be NFC support. My iPhone XR supports NFC, which was used to activate the card. Brigitte’s iPhone is likely an older pre-NFC model, no auto-activate magic.

Dickinson: An Apple TV+ teaser trailer

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[VIDEO] From the official show description:

Dickinson is a half-hour comedy series starring Oscar® nominee Hailee Steinfeld. Created by Alena Smith, Dickinson audaciously explores the constraints of society, gender, and family from the perspective of rebellious young poet Emily Dickinson.

Hard to wrap my head around this one. I feel the same as I did about the teaser trailer for The Morning Show.

But lesson learned. The official trailer for The Morning Show was a perfect follow-up, conveyed the depth of the show’s core, fleshed out the characters.

Dickinson is an interesting premise, a difficult marriage to pull off, bringing to life a dark, secluded character from the 1800’s, a prolific, slant-rhyming poet whose work was incredibly influential, but whose life was mostly unexplored.

I am quite curious about this show. Video embedded in the main Loop post.

Apple Card vs Amazon Prime Rewards Visa: A privacy experiment

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Geoffrey A. Fowler, Washington Post:

I recently used my credit card to buy a banana. Then I tried to figure out how my credit card let companies buy me.

And:

Despite a federal privacy law covering cards, I found that six types of businesses could mine and share elements of my purchase, multiplied untold times by other companies they might have passed it to.

And:

When I swiped my cards, of course my banks received data. What’s surprising is who they can share it with. My data helped identify me to Chase’s marketing partners, who send me junk mail. Some data even got fed to retail giant Amazon because it co-branded my card.

And:

This is where the Apple Card is different. In the Goldman Sachs privacy statement, its answer to most kinds of sharing is “no.” Goldman still shares information with credit agencies about whether you pay your bills. But it says it doesn’t feed transactions to marketers or a sister company that mines card data.

The whole article is a fascinating read. But if I had to highlight a single point, it’s that last quoted paragraph above. Yes, you can get more cash back, more frequent flyer miles, etc., but there’s a price, both in a yearly fee charged by most credit cards, and in data sharing.

What’s in your wallet?

iPhone 11 name game: What Apple should call its new phones

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Jason Snell:

This is the third year of the iPhone X hardware family, and the second year for the iPhone XR, so changes to the external design of Apple’s phones — often the biggest driver of a huge sales bump — are unlikely. The presence of the iPhone XR adds another wrinkle as Apple continues to try to differentiate it from the company’s more expensive models. And then there’s the iPhone X name itself, which seems unlikely to be continued through another generation. iPhone XRM? iPhone XST? Yuck.

And:

If you ask me, one of the worst product names Apple has ever generated is iPhone XS Max. Apple’s large ultrapremium phone takes the ridiculous Roman numeral/letter combination of the entire 2018 phone generation and, well, maxes it out. iPhone 11 Pro Max would be slightly less bad, but it’s still ridiculous.

Interesting look at Apple’s iPhone naming conundrum. Do you go with XI? 11? Do you follow the Mac’s lead and come up with a long-term name, like iPhone Air, iPhone Pro, and iPhone Max, then append the year to lock in a specific model?

That last approach would help unify Apple’s product strategy, make things just a bit less confusing.

But the die is cast, product names long locked in. Are the first boxes printed and warehoused, ready to jet their way to Apple Stores around the world? Or is that switch still to be thrown?

Come Together on a double-sided guitar

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[VIDEO] Cool guitar, great cover. Love the performance, love the audio, love the camera work. Video embedded in the main Loop post.

A first look at Disney+

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Engadget got the chance to sit down with Michael Paull, president of Disney Streaming Services and look at a preview of Disney+.

A few nuggets:

Aside from shows like The Mandalorian and High School Musical: The Musical: The Series, which will be available on November 12th, Disney announced at D23 Expo that it has a bunch more in the works, such as Marvel’s Ms. Marvel and She-Hulk as well as a new Lizzie McGuire original.

And:

There’s also going to be a feature that will let people create profiles which are programmed for children seven and under, which are organized by characters (e.g. Mickey Mouse and Disney Princesses) instead of shows or movies.

And:

What’s more, if you’re watching a movie or show on, say, the Apple TV or Xbox One and pause, you can continue watching where you left off on your other devices.

The more I hear, the more this $6.99 a month price is a no-brainer to me. Might be enough content for me to swap out Netflix, which feels like much less of a value.

Apple TV+? I will definitely give it a try, but without a back catalog, might be a tough sell at the rumored $9.99 a month price.

Nasa astronaut accused of space crime

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New York Times:

Summer Worden, a former Air Force intelligence officer living in Kansas, has been in the midst of a bitter separation and parenting dispute for much of the past year. So she was surprised when she noticed that her estranged spouse still seemed to know things about her spending. Had she bought a car? How could she afford that?

Ms. Worden put her intelligence background to work, asking her bank about the locations of computers that had recently accessed her bank account using her login credentials. The bank got back to her with an answer: One was a computer network registered to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

And:

Ms. McClain acknowledged that she had accessed the bank account from space, insisting through a lawyer that she was merely shepherding the couple’s still-intertwined finances. Ms. Worden felt differently. She filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission and her family lodged one with NASA’s Office of Inspector General, accusing Ms. McClain of identity theft and improper access to Ms. Worden’s private financial records.

Space crime. Sounds like a great title for an Apple TV+ show. Crazy story.

Google and those Wizard of Oz ruby slippers

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To honor yesterday’s 80th anniversary of the Wizard of Oz release date, Google added a little Easter egg.

Go to Google.com, then:

  • Search for “Wizard of Oz”
  • On the page that appears, look for the sparkly ruby slippers (here’s a pic).
  • With the sound on, tap or click those slippers.
  • To get back home, tap the tornado.

I find this charming.

A walk through the iOS 13 Health App

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Juli Clover, writing for MacRumors, provides an excellent walk through the updated iOS 13 Health App. Lots of pics, easy to skim, worth your time.

No matter your iOS, be sure to check your profile. Get a sense of what’s available, verify that your profile data is correct and up-to-date, and take a minute to set up your Medical ID info.

Medical ID lets you specify health issues, blood type, organ donor signup, lots more.

Fantastic collection of opt-out links

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This is a fascinating resource. At the very least, scroll through to see some of the user data collecting that you can opt-out of.

How to clean your precious…er…Apple Card

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Apple posted a page on cleaning your Apple Card. This is real.

One particular highlight from the page:

Some fabrics, like leather and denim, might cause permanent discoloration that will not wash off.

I have to say, this is some upper echelon marketing. Can you imagine if Capital One or CitiBank sent you instructions on cleaning your credit card?

But there’s more.

Not sure what factors came into play here, but here’s one user’s card after two months in a leather wallet. Not so precious.

Also, there’s a new Apple Card Twitter account. Kind of hoping for some Wendy’s / Burger King level comedy, but I won’t hold my breath. Until the other credit card companies get together and create accounts to get this rivalry started.

Sign In with Apple: Goodbye account management

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Ryan Christoffel, MacStories:

Often when I try something new, however, I’m immediately confronted with the obstacle of a login screen. At which point there’s a choice to make: do I go through the hassle of creating an account for this service, or – if the option is available – do I simply authenticate via a third party like Google or Facebook? Sadly, neither option is ideal.

And:

When apps update to adopt Sign In with Apple, I suspect many users’ initial thoughts will be some variation of what immediately popped into my mind after trying it for the first time: “Where has this been all my life?”

It’s going to take a while, but I’m looking forward to this rolling out across the appiverse, becoming the standard rather than the exception.

Too much power in one company’s hands? Hey, I’d rather it be Apple than anyone else.

British Airways giving all 15,000 cabin crew members an iPhone XR for customer support

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I love my iPhone XR. As I’ve discussed on the podcast, I started with an iPhone XS Max, then “downgraded” to the XR. Price, crazy battery life, color choices were all big wins for me. I did give up screen and camera advances, but no regrets.

It’ll be interesting to see the divide between the next generation iPhones. We shall soon see.

Hands on with six Apple Arcade games

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[VIDEO] This is a great walkthrough from 9to5Mac’s Jeff Benjamin. The games I’m seeing so far really click for me, look like my kind of games.

From the video, Jeff seems to agree. If the price is, as rumored, $4.99 a month for 100+ games, seems a no-brainer to me.

Watch the video (embedded in the main Loop post), judge for yourself.

Apple Card and rejecting arbitration

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Getting an Apple Card? If so, be aware that you can opt out of the arbitration clause.

To do so:

  • Launch the Wallet app
  • Tap your Apple Card
  • On the Apple Card page, tap the (…) menu (upper right)
  • Tap the Message button
  • Type “I want to reject arbitration”

Here’s a look at the entire process, in a single tweet. Simple.

As to why you’d want to reject arbitration, consider this explainer from the Economic Policy Institute (via Nick Heer). One way it was explained to me: Arbitration is an end run around class action suits. Good for corporations, bad for consumers.

Anyone know of an upside to keeping the arbitration clause, a reason not to reject it?

John Gruber on Apple Card “aimed at keeping you locked into your iPhone”

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John Gruber, commenting on this BuzzFeed article, which makes the claim that Apple Card was created to lock you in to the Apple ecosystem:

I don’t think the reason for this is to keep you locked to your iPhone, although that’s certainly a side effect. I think this simply reflects Apple’s internal culture. Apple’s culture is to make native apps for everything as a first priority, with web interfaces as a much lower priority.

I agree. The Apple Card has the same impact on lock-in as Apple Watch. Neither is a requirement, and both have plenty of non-Apple counterparts you can move to if you want to leave Apple behind.

It’s the ecosystem itself that keeps you around, not any one piece of it.

Apple TV+ may support downloads for offline viewing, limit simultaneous streams

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Steve Moser, MacRumors:

According to code strings found in macOS Catalina, Apple will apparently allow videos to be downloaded for offline viewing, but with limitations on the total number of downloads, downloads per show or movie, or the total number of times a show or movie can be downloaded. For example, if a user tries to download the same video on multiple devices, the Apple TV app will inform them that “To download this episode of ‘The Morning Show’, delete it from another device and try again,” for example.

Glad to see that Apple TV+ will (apparently) allow downloads, just like Amazon Video and Netflix. When I travel, I always download videos for later consumption, since there are times when internet access is either spotty or limited in some way.

Live from space, an astronaut uses an iPad to DJ a party back on Earth

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[VIDEO] Digital DJ Tips:

This past week, the first ever live DJ set from space took place. Using an iPad with djay Pro, European astronaut Luca Parmitano’s performance was beamed from the International Space Station straight to a cruise ship packed with ravers. Floating inside one of the ISS’s rooms, DJ Luca dropped a mix of EDM, hardstyle and uplifting (ahem) trance to an enthusiastic audience watching him from massive LED walls back on Earth.

This is amazing. Check out the video embedded in the main Loop post. Tiny detail I love is the velcro on the back of the iPad that Luca uses to keep his iPad from floating away.

Apple Card launches today for all US customers

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Apple:

Apple Card, a new kind of credit card created by Apple and designed to help customers lead a healthier financial life, is available in the US starting today. Customers can apply for Apple Card through the Wallet app on iPhone in minutes and start using it right away with Apple Pay in stores, in apps and on websites. Built on simplicity, transparency and privacy, Apple Card has no fees, encourages customers to pay less interest, offers an easy-to-understand view of spending and provides a new level of privacy and security. This launch follows the Apple Card preview earlier this month, during which a limited number of customers were invited to apply early.

For qualifying customers, subject to credit approval.

In the footnotes:

Apple Pay is coming soon to Uber services like Uber Cash, Scheduled Rides and JUMP.

If you are in the US and have been spamming your Wallet app to no avail, try again now.

  • Launch the Wallet app
  • Tap the + in the upper right corner
  • Tap the Continue button on the bottom of the Apple Pay page
  • You should see an Apple Card item. Tap it. Off to the races.

I think Goldman Sachs Bank is going to be incredibly busy today.

ARKit and animated tattoos

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This is both cool and significant. Start by watching the video in the embedded tweet:

https://twitter.com/singareddynm/status/1163071327248572421

These were created on a Mac using an app called EyeJack Creator. Imagine the possibilities.

On the art side, there are paths for animation and storytelling. And there is also the possibility of embedding hidden copyright information tied to a specific design.

There is also the possibility of tying hidden messages to a temporary tattoo, something akin to steganography. Very interesting.

How Home Sharing works in macOS Catalina

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Use Home Sharing on your Mac to share your media with your home, dorm, or office? Never heard of Home Sharing?

Either way, take a read of the linked article. Kirk McElhearn walks through the new Home Sharing interface coming with macOS Catalina.

Apple moves gambling app rating to 17+ globally, works with Republic of Korea to expand App Store

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From an Apple developer email:

To ensure that our global age rating system continues to help make the App Store safe for kids, apps that feature Frequent/Intense Simulated Gambling will be rated 17+ in all countries and regions starting August 20, 2019.

And:

In an effort to open up additional opportunities for developers, we’ve worked with the government of the Republic of Korea on making more apps available on the App Store in the Republic of Korea.

Note that the Republic of Korea is the official name of what is commonly referred to as South Korea.

If your app meets at least one of the criteria below, you’ll be able to offer it on the App Store in the Republic of Korea to users 19 years of age or older.

And here are those criteria:

  • Apps in the Casino subcategory with age rating 17+
  • Apps in the Games or Entertainment categories with Frequent/Intense selected for at least one of the following content descriptions:
    • Simulated Gambling
    • Sexual Content or Nudity
    • Alcohol, Tobacco, or Drug Use or Reference
    • Realistic Violence

Scatter plot of every music genre, interactive, with playlists

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This is impressive work. If you scroll down below all the genres, you’ll find:

Every Noise at Once is an ongoing attempt at an algorithmically-generated, readability-adjusted scatter-plot of the musical genre-space, based on data tracked and analyzed for 3,311 genre-shaped distinctions by Spotify as of 2019-08-16. The calibration is fuzzy, but in general down is more organic, up is more mechanical and electric; left is denser and more atmospheric, right is spikier and bouncier.

If you are on a Mac browser, type command-F and enter a search term, like “rock”. That’ll make the page a bit easier to navigate.

Click a genre and you’ll hear a short example snippet. Once selected, click the chevron that appears on the right and you’ll dive in. Click Playlist (at the top) and you’ll get a Spotify playlist.

I’d love to see something like this for Apple Music. This’d be fantastic for music discovery.