Apple

The headline to the linked post is “Corporations That Use The Most Solar Power”. While that might be accurate, I think the kudos shouldn’t be about sheer usage, but rather about Apple’s success at shifting to environmentally sustainable operations.

Apple might use more solar power than any other company, but it’s about their commitment to powering their operations through solar, creating a model for other companies to follow.

Michael Steeber, 9to5Mac:

New displays rolling out to Apple Stores across the world highlight the Apple Music catalog and give AirPods Max a true home. You can preview the display yourself with an interactive augmented reality model.

Follow the headline link, scroll down to the “Launch The AR Experience” button, give it a tap. Now double-tap the downloaded file to launch the .usdz file and walk around to find a proper landing spot (you’ll need some space for the display). You can also experience this on your Mac, especially if you have Xcode installed.

I love the effort Apple puts into these AR tidbits. Apple’s teams are learning how to bring AR to life, we’re learning how to work with AR.

Vlad Savov, Bloomberg:

Having once upended the market with its AirPods, Apple Inc. looks likely to again change the course of the $35 billion advanced headphones arena with its $549 AirPods Max and inflict pain on incumbents from Bose Corp. to Bang & Olufsen A/S.

And:

Between Apple’s new over-the-ear play at the high end and aggressively priced incursions from below, firms like Sennheiser are struggling to compete with the wireless expertise, app ecosystems and global reach of phone makers.

Apple is great at disruption. They’ve upended the mechanical watch, traditional camera, and now headphone marketplaces. Cars next?

If you don’t already know/follow him, Matthew Cassinelli was part of the original Workflow app that Apple purchased and turned into Siri Shortcuts. Since then, he’s gone independent and shares all sorts of wonderful Shortcuts content.

Matthew’s newly revamped site is definitely worth a few minutes of perusal time, just to get a sense of what’s there. A great resource.

Podnews (via 9to5Mac):

Apple Podcasts will no longer use the word “subscribe” in a few weeks. Listeners will be invited to “follow” their favourite podcasts instead. The new wording will be in iOS 14.5, which should be released later this month (and is available in beta). We expect Apple to communicate further with creators, and listeners, when this version of iOS is released.

And:

Tom Webster from Edison Research says 47% of people who don’t currently listen to podcasts think that ‘subscribing’ to a podcast will cost money, describing it as a stone in the shoe of podcasting’s growth run.

Here are some pics of the new language from the iOS 14.5 beta.

Makes sense to me. Apple standardizing on the word subscribe meaning “pay for it”.

Joe Rossignol, MacRumors:

In an internal AppleCare email this week, obtained by MacRumors, Apple said the new serial number format will consist of a randomized alphanumeric string of 8-14 characters that will no longer include manufacturing information or a configuration code. Apple said the serial number format transition is scheduled for “early 2021,” and confirmed that IMEI numbers will not be affected by this change.

Just as predictable file names make hacking and discovery easier on a web site (once you know the name and path of an existing file, you can guess others based on the scheme), randomized serial numbers make guessing/faking a serial number that much harder.

Barbara Krasnoff, The Verge:

In 2019, an article in The Washington Post by Geoffrey Fowler described the author’s shock when he discovered just how many of his iPhone apps were collecting and uploading information about his usage while he slept.

And:

As Fowler’s article demonstrated, iPhone users are not immune to this. Since his article was published, Apple has made some laudable changes to its privacy policies. But it’s still a good idea to take charge of your own data. There are some simple ways to minimize the amount of tracking that app vendors can do and the amount of data they can access.

The whole article is worth scanning, just to get a sense of all the options.

But note that things are changing, and will continue to change. For example, there’s a new setting in the iOS 14.5 beta at Settings > Safari > PRIVACY & SECURITY called Privacy Preserving Ad Measurement, which is enabled by default.

Read the Verge piece (headline link), and read this post about Privacy Preserving Ad Measurement.

Joe Rossignol, MacRumors:

Apple plans to release its long-rumored mixed reality headset “in mid-2022,” followed by augmented reality glasses by 2025, well-regarded analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said today in a research note with TF International Securities, obtained by MacRumors.

And:

“We predict that Apple’s MR/AR product roadmap includes three phases: helmet type by 2022, glasses type by 2025, and contact lens type by 2030–2040,” wrote Kuo. “We foresee that the helmet product will provide AR and VR experiences, while glasses and contact lens types of products are more likely to focus on AR applications.”

From the Mixed Reality Wikipedia page:

Mixed reality is unique in that the term usually refers to artificial products that interact with users in the real world. Augmented virtuality (AV) is a subcategory of mixed reality that refers to the merging of real-world objects into virtual worlds.

I think more about augmented reality (look at a building, see an artificial address imposed on it) versus virtual reality (the building, along with all you see, is artificially created).

Very much looking forward to taking these products for a spin, assuming they ship.

Tim Hardwick, MacRumors:

Apple today added a new “Apple for Kids” portal to its support website, offering parents and guardians a one-stop hub for getting their children set up on Apple’s devices, services, and platforms, and managing their usage.

If you have kids, worth a look. Most interesting to me:

In the U.S., users over 13 can also find links showing them how to update their Apple ID birth date. Apple advises that if a child is under 13 and their ‌Apple ID‌ birth date is wrong, a parent or guardian will need to contact Apple Support on their behalf. The age cut-off for both actions varies by country or region.

If you are setting up an Apple ID, get the age right. Good to know you can fix this, but getting it right in the first place, especially if you are setting this up for someone else, will save hassle down the road.

I know some folks use an incorrect date to allow someone under age to access a service with a minimum age. Pure speculation, but I’m guessing that’s why this page is necessary.

SpeedCheck:

The data collected from 1 October 2020 to 31 December 2020 by our speed test , which measures the quality of Internet connections on millions of devices yearly, shows that 5G networks in the US did not deliver the super cellular connections that we were promised.

And:

5G download speeds across the country were only 2.7 times faster than 4G speeds. These real-world results pale in comparison with the promise of a hundred times faster connections. In some cases, 5G was even slower than 4G.

Three main reasons:

In every country around the world that has launched 5G – except the US – the C-band frequencies (that is airwaves between 3.4GHz and 4.2GHz) are at the very heart of the new technology, as they offer a great combination of good coverage and high-speed connections. In the US, most of the spectrum available in the C-band (280MHz) was not auctioned until January this year, forcing the major carriers to rely heavily on lower frequencies, which work over long distances but deliver slow speeds, or higher frequencies (mmWave), which carry far larger amount of data but on short-range signals.

And:

When the US deemed [Chinese-owned] Huawei a national security risk, it caused many 5G deployments to be put on hold. Operators then had to take big steps backward and choose other suppliers for their network equipment, in a move that delayed the commercial launch of 5G in the country.

And:

The majority of the initial 5G deployments in the US were Non-Stand-Alone (NSA), meaning that the new networks were aided by existing 4G infrastructures. On NSA deployments, LTE-controlled communications shift to 5G only when a device wants to exchange, resulting in a 4G-like user experience.

A great read.

[Via 9to5Mac]

Dustin Curtis:

About ten days ago, when I went to update a few apps in the App Store on my Mac, I was met with a curious error.

The post shows an “Account Disabled” alert.

The internet is filled with stories from people whose Google accounts were locked for unexplained reasons, causing them to lose all of their data, including years of email, so I was somewhat concerned. But I’d never heard of similar cases involving Apple’s services, and I wouldn’t expect such behavior from a customer-focused company like Apple, so I figured it was a glitch and made a mental note to try again later.

The next day, Music.app stopped working.

This is definitely alarming. At the very least, it demonstrates how much we’ve grown to depend on the cloud and on those monthly fees we spend to rent storage.

Read the post. In a nutshell, this was about changing bank info and Apple Card no longer having a valid billing mechanism. Is this Apple policy? Or was this a one-off falling through the cracks kind of mistake, one we won’t see again?

No matter, this should be a wake-up call. Do you have a backup plan if your Apple ID suddenly stopped doing its cloud thing?

And to be clear, I think I am less concerned that Apple disabled Dustin’s account as I am that it took so long to address the issue. If the call to Apple customer support had made the issue clear immediately, a couple of clicks would have resolved this. As is, and if true, looks like the left hand didn’t know what the right hand was doing.

Dan Moren, Macworld:

Once you’ve found a way to show a user this mix of real and digital content, one of the big questions is how you interact with all this information. Is it via traditional input methods, like trackpads and keyboards? With cameras that detect where your hands go and when they’re interacting with real or virtual objects? A system that tracks the movements of your eyes? Or is it some other sort of physical controller that lets you seamlessly switch between the world in front of you and the one on your displays?

Dan’s whole writeup is fascinating, raises important questions on how Apple might see the future of augmented reality. Will Apple keep existing models, like documents and a desktop, so creators can mix their AR world with the creative tools on their Macs and iPads?

Or will Apple move to a new universe, take the opportunity to reinvent the creation language completely, without relying on old models for creating new content.

Great read.

Chance Miller, 9to5Mac:

The report explains that the NFL is on the verge of having to renew “most if not all of its media contracts.” While it appears that the Monday Night Football package is likely to remain with ESPN, there are other deals to consider, including NFL Sunday Ticket and Thursday Night Football.

A critical piece of background here: DirecTV (now owned by AT&T) paid about $1.5 billion (with a B) a year for the rights to stream NFL games on Sundays. They are not expected to renew that deal, which expires at the end of this coming NFL season.

The door is wide open for Apple to add the NFL to Apple TV+, which could bring a huge audience to the service. Apple’s interest in adding the NFL has been rumored for years.

Apple was also said to have been involved in negotiations with the NFL for Thursday Night Football in 2016. Ultimately, the NFL ended up reaching a deal with Amazon, which was renewed for two more seasons in 2018 for a whopping $130 million.

Big money. Very interested to see how this plays out.

The NFL’s Sunday Ticket package has not been on the market for more than 15 years. Though the NFL audience has grown significantly since then, that same time has seen pushback on the game, due to raised awareness of the longterm impact of head injuries, social issues (think Colin Kaepernick and kneeling in protest), physical violence, and other issues. Have to wonder how those issues will impact Apple’s involvement with the sport.

Michael Steeber, 9to5Mac:

Every Apple Store in the United States is open for the first time in nearly a year. It was 353 days ago — March 13, 2020 — that Apple closed all of its retail stores outside of Greater China.

While some Apple Stores offer in-store shopping appointments and others can accept Express pickup of online orders only, all 270 US locations are now open in some capacity as of March 1, 2021. Apple Stores in Texas around Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio were the last to reopen today.

Dare I hope that this is the last of these Apple Store forced closures?

Add to this news today’s rollout of the new Johnson & Johnson one-shot-and-you’re-done vaccine, and I feel like this never-ending nightmare might actually be coming to a close.