Apple

Apple awards $10 million to help accelerate supply of COVID-19 sample collection kits for hospitals

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Apple:

Apple today announced it is awarding $10 million from its Advanced Manufacturing Fund to COPAN Diagnostics, a market leader in sample collection kits that play a critical role in COVID-19 testing. This funding will allow COPAN Diagnostics to rapidly accelerate their supply of sample collection kits for hospitals across the United States, expanding production from several thousand today to more than one million kits per week by early July.

What I really found fascinating (emphasis mine):

As part of this effort, Apple will support COPAN Diagnostics’ expansion to a new, larger facility in Southern California, with advanced equipment that Apple is helping design.

Makes me wonder if we’ll see Apple branded health hardware (beyond Apple Watch) in the future.

Not to minimize Apple’s efforts here in any way. This is great work that benefits us all.

Apple Updates AirPods Pro firmware to version 2D15

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To check your AirPods Pro firmware version, connect your AirPods Pro, then:

  • Go to Settings > General > About
  • Tap AirPods Pro

No way to force an update. Mine were updated by the time I checked.

See also, this Twitter thread from Gui Rambo:

https://twitter.com/_inside/status/1257764758280966150

I’ve not had a problem with my AirPods Pro, but I definitely feel like the phrase should be Noise Reduction and not Noise Cancellation. With Noise Cancellation turned on, I can still hear background noise, though it is definitely reduced.

If you are having issues with active noise cancellation, here’s Apple’s support article, for what it’s worth.

How Apple reinvented the cursor for iPad

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Matthew Panzarino, TechCrunch:

The iPhone and later the iPad didn’t immediately re-invent the cursor. Instead, it removed it entirely. Replacing your digital ghost in the machine with your physical meatspace fingertip. Touch interactions brought with them “stickiness” — the 1:1 mating of intent and action. If you touched a thing, it did something. If you dragged your finger, the content came with it. This, finally, was human-centric computing.

Then, a few weeks ago, Apple dropped a new kind of pointer — a hybrid between these two worlds of pixels and pushes. The iPad’s cursor, I think, deserves closer examination.

Great, long read, interspersed with comments from Craig Federighi, sharing insight into how this new hybrid cursor came to be.

Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro – After one week

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[VIDEO] This iPhonedo video (embedded in main Loop post) was really well done, gives a great sense of how well the Magic Keyboard enhances the iPad Pro experience.

The framing shows both the trackpad and keyboard as well as the screen, so you can see the gestures and the results they produce in a single shot.

Immersive.

All the WWDC 2020 Memoji

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I absolutely love the Memoji artwork pulled together by the WWDC team. The faces are hidden, buried in MacBooks, shot with a Portrait Lighting effect, a combination of dark, eerie, and whimsy. Delicious!

Spotify CEO expects Apple to further open up after complaint

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Bloomberg:

Spotify Technology SA Chief Executive Officer Daniel Ek said he expects Apple Inc. to further open up its platform a year after the Stockholm-based music streaming company filed an antitrust complaint with the European Union.

And:

Spotify has criticized Apple for taking a 30% cut of subscriptions and accused it of limiting app updates and preventing functionality on the Apple Watch and Siri.

And:

Since then, Apple has slightly opened up, rolling out a feature for Siri last year that lets the digital assistant control music services other than Apple’s own. Spotify also released an updated Apple Watch app and Apple TV app in recent months.

And:

Ek also reiterated his previous statements that he believes Spotify is growing faster than Apple Music, saying Spotify is twice the size of its nearest competitor and has three times the engagement.

That last bit, to me, makes it hard to make the argument that Apple is stifling Spotify’s growth.

As to the 30% cut, this from Apple (quote from March 2019):

“Even now, only a tiny fraction of their subscriptions fall under Apple’s revenue-sharing model. Spotify is asking for that number to be zero.”

Has Apple done enough here to avoid further antitrust action from the EU?

Apple to host virtual Worldwide Developers Conference beginning June 22

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Apple:

Apple today announced it will host its annual Worldwide Developers Conference virtually, beginning June 22, in the Apple Developer app and on the Apple Developer website for free for all developers. The company also announced the Swift Student Challenge, an opportunity for student developers to showcase their love of coding by creating their own Swift playground.

And:

Developers are encouraged to download the Apple Developer app where additional WWDC20 program information — including keynote and Platforms State of the Union details, session and lab schedules, and more — will be shared in June. Information will also be made available on the Apple Developer website and by email.

Can’t wait. Very curious about how the labs will be implemented.

Rene Ritchie on the new 13″ MacBook Pro

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[VIDEO] A river of detail, sorted. Video embedded in main Loop post.

I also found this Reddit thread extremely useful. Not the original post necessarily, as much as the comments that followed, especially the discussion of the various levels of graphics performance with each model.

The Apple TV+ interface

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The first half of this Benjamin Mayo, 9to5Mac piece is a bit of a retrospective, a look back at six months of Apple TV+. But then he digs into the interface:

The problem is the TV app misleads them (amidst countless other issues). Due to Apple’s arrogance in intermingling originals with $3-per-episode iTunes Store content, most users don’t understand the service. Here’s what happens in the mind of a typical user:

They get a popup on their phone that says they qualify for a free year of Apple TV+. They click the banner and it takes them to the TV app, an app they probably have never launched before. They see a Watch Now screen packed with content — Game of Thrones, Walking Dead, Star Wars, Modern Family, all the newest movies — and then they get asked to subscribe and enjoy 1 year of Apple TV+ free. They can’t wait to watch everything, and it’s only $5 a month!

… So, they press the button and in their minds have subscribed to ‘Apple TV’, so they click on the Search tab, type in their favorite show, see that it shows up, click on it, and get presented with a buy/rent panel and a link to find the show on Disney+ or Netflix.

Exactly my experience. I found the Apple TV+ interface a competing mix of all the shows on all the services and the shows specific to Apple TV+. If I do a search, I get all the shows, with no sense of how to pick the one that’s free to watch, vs the show I have to pay Apple to watch. I’ve learned to navigate to the Apple TV+ list in the Channels section to minimize confusion. But it took me a while to figure out what was going on. I can only imagine how confusing this would be for an Apple TV newbie.

When I do a search in Apple Music, it’s easy (and obvious) to tell if I’m searching my library or if I’m searching the world at large. I’d love a more customizable Apple TV search experience that let me:

  • limit my search to a specific service, or
  • show me all the occurrences of a specific show on all the services, perhaps divided by free to watch vs pay to watch

As to evidence of confusion, Benjamin’s article includes actual tweets from people convinced that Apple TV+ includes shows from other services, but that they have to pay, à la carte, to watch. Deep confusion between Apple TV and Apple TV+. It is a bit of a mess.

Vienna, Austria Apple Store opening today, Australia stores opening Thursday

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Juli Clover, MacRumors:

Apple will reopen 21 of its 22 retail locations in Australia on Thursday, May 7, according to Apple’s dedicated websites for each of the stores. All of the stores that are reopening will operate on limited hours for the time being.

And:

Apple’s sole Australian store that will remain closed is the Apple Sydney store. As noted by 9to5Mac, this store closed in January for major renovations, and it is possible that the global health crisis caused a construction delay.

If you jump to this Bloomberg post, scroll about halfway down, you’ll see a picture of the line to get into the Gangnam neighborhood Apple Store in Seoul that opened a few weeks ago. Packed line, people standing close together, no social distancing.

The key to South Korea’s success in this bit of a return to normal is testing and exposure response. Will this same experience be mirrored in Austria? Australia? Will each Apple Store reopen be a unique experience, or will they all mirror the Seoul, South Korea approach? I am definitely curious.

Apple, Google ban use of location tracking in contact tracing apps

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Reuters:

Apple Inc and Alphabet Inc’s Google on Monday said they would ban the use of location tracking in apps that use a new contact tracing system the two are building to help slow the spread of the novel coronavirus.

And:

The Apple-Google decision to not allow GPS data collection with their contact tracing system will require public health authorities that want to access GPS location to rely on what Apple and Google have described as unstable, battery-draining workarounds.

And:

Software company Twenty, which developed the state of Utah’s Healthy Together contact tracing app with both GPS and Bluetooth, said on Monday the app “operates effectively” without the new Apple-Google tool.

“If their approach can be more effective than our current solution, we’ll eagerly incorporate their features into our existing application, provided it meets the specifications of current and prospective public health partners,” Twenty said.

At some point in time, I’d expect Apple and Google to build their contact tracing exposure notification solution into the OS, in addition to providing access to third party apps via an API.

I’d expect that the concerns of adoption (getting the system to be actually used by the public) and battery drain are cornerstones of the teams doing the testing of the system.

And not sharing location tracking data? Seems a logical, and necessary, restriction.

Apple updates 13-inch MacBook Pro with Magic Keyboard, double the storage, and faster performance

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Apple:

Apple today updated the 13-inch MacBook Pro with the new Magic Keyboard for the best typing experience ever on a Mac notebook and doubled the storage across all standard configurations, delivering even more value to the most popular MacBook Pro. The new lineup also offers 10th-generation processors for up to 80 percent faster graphics performance1 and makes 16GB of faster 3733MHz memory standard on select configurations. With powerful quad-core processors, the brilliant 13-inch Retina display, Touch Bar and Touch ID, immersive stereo speakers, all-day battery life, and the power of macOS, all in an incredibly portable design, the new 13-inch MacBook Pro is available to order today, starting at $1,299, and $1,199 for education.

The base model:

1.4GHz quad‑core 8th‑generation Intel Core i5, Turbo Boost up to 3.9GHz, with 128MB of eDRAM

And the top of the line:

Configurable to 2.3GHz quad‑core 10th‑generation Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost up to 4.1GHz, with 8MB shared L3 cache

Note the range from 8th-gen i5 to the 10th-gen i7.

Storage goes from 256GB all the way up to 4TB. Memory goes from 8GB up to 32GB.

Be aware that the lower end models have 2 Thunderbolt 3 (USB‑C) ports, the high end models have 4 such ports.

The base model supports:

  • one external 5K display with 5120-by-2880 resolution at 60Hz at over a billion colors, or
  • up to two external 4K displays with 4096-by-2304 resolution at 60Hz at millions of colors.

The high end model supports:

  • one external 6K display with 6016-by-3384 resolution at 60Hz at over a billion colors, or
  • one external 5K display with 5120-by-2880 resolution at 60Hz at over a billion colors, or
  • up to two external 4K displays with 4096-by-2304 resolution at 60Hz at millions of colors

How to quick-switch AirPods between devices (iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch)

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This is about the quickest way to switch your AirPods from the device to which they’re currently connected to another.

You’ll likely know most of these shortcuts, but worth a scan. The first one is especially worth a look, using a quick tap in the Control Center AirPlay icon to quick-switch your AirPods to your iPhone or iPad.

Of course, you can also shorten this up a bit more with a Shortcut, but not sure that would be any quicker, time wise.

See also:

Apple Watch caught heart condition that hospital ECG did not

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European Heart Journal:

An 80-year-old lady with a work history as engineer presented with typical angina symptoms Canadian Cardiovascular Society Class III in our chest pain unit (CPU).

And:

The initial 12-channel ECG revealed no evidence for ischaemia. High-sensitive troponin I was also negative. The patient also complained about previous frequent episodes of ectopic beats which were recorded with her Apple watch. Further, Apple watch recordings included tracings with marked ST-segment depression.

And:

Based on this evidence of ischaemia, further diagnostic in the CPU was omitted and the patient was transferred to the catheterization laboratory, where a left main stem stenosis and a left anterior descending/diagonal bifurcation lesion. Accordingly, the patient was treated with coronary artery stenting and left the hospital a day later.

In a nutshell, the Apple Watch picked up a pattern because it had much more access to the patient’s heart data than a single visit to even the best hospital could capture.

This is still early days for Apple Watch and heartbeat irregularity detection. New heartbeat patterns that indicate a specific underlying condition are still being discovered. Some are known, but impossible to detect without constant heart monitoring. Apple Watch, and the underlying ECG pattern matching software are an incredibly valuable resource, one that continues to evolve. There’s way more here than AFib detection.

Apple TV+: Trying, first look

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[VIDEO] If the new Apple TV+ show “Trying” is not on your radar, take a look at the “first look” trailer embedded in the main Loop post. It does a great job showing off the tone of the show, the charm of its characters.

The show hails from BBC Studios and is distributed by Apple TV+. A second season has already been signed. The show is available to watch now.

The pioneers of shareware

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This is a great read for a number of reasons. There’s the whole “birth of shareware” aspect, which was a fantastic slice of history.

But beyond that, there’s the amazing picture of Microsoft, circa 1978, all 9 principals, with a very young Bill Gates in the lower left.

And then there’s this:

The PC World issue with the landmark review of PC-File was still on newsstands when Andrew Fluegelman had his next life-changing encounter with a computer: he was one of a select few invited to Apple for an early unveiling of the new Macintosh. He was so smitten by this whole new way of operating a computer that he immediately began lobbying for a companion magazine to PC World, to be named, naturally enough, Macworld. Its first issue appeared in time to greet the first Macintosh buyers early in 1984.

And:

People [say the Macintosh is] more of a right-brain machine and all that. I think there is some truth to that. I think there is something to dealing with a graphical interface and a more kinetic interface; you’re really moving information around, you’re seeing it move as though it had substance. And you don’t see that on [an IBM] PC. The PC is very much a conceptual machine; you move information around the way you move formulas, elements on either side of an equation. I think there’s a difference.

Wonderful read.

[By way of this Six Colors post]

Apple looks to make editing sent Messages possible at last

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This AppleInsider piece by William Gallagher is a semi-long read, so I’ll cut to the Message-editing specifics. Apple has a new patent application, and part of it concerns editing a Message that has already been sent:

“The first message can be edited, despite the fact that it has already been sent,” it starts. “To initiate the editing of the first message, the user selects the first message with a predefined touch input (e.g., a tap gesture, long press gesture, light press gesture, or deep press gesture) on the first message or the message region for the first message.”

Of course, just a mention in a patent does not mean the concept will ever see the light of day. So grain of salt there.

But the section in the AppleInsider piece titled Editing Messages is worth reading. It does a great job laying out the problem with editing messages and syncing those edits. Makes the patent mention that much more intriguing.

And if Apple does work out a system for doing this, maybe they can share the technique with Twitter.

The curious case of AnandTech’s faulty iPhone SE camera

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In a nutshell, the camera of AnandTech’s iPhone SE review unit produced less than spectacular images. When they contacted Apple, Apple replaced the phone and AnandTech saw what everyone else is seeing, great images, especially for a camera on a $399 phone. Jump to the article and you’ll see the before and after. Clearly a huge difference in camera quality.

Here’s the curious part:

The bad news is that we still don’t exactly know what went wrong with the first unit – what I don’t doubt is confirmed is that it suffered from a manufacturing defect in the optical system of the camera.

The problem with confirming such a scenario is that it’s very unlikely that I was extremely unlucky in being the sole person receiving such a sample, as usually one-off faults like these are insanely rare, with the more likely scenario being some sort of systematic failure for a whole batch of units.

The upshot? If you get an SE and are not happy with the images, it might be that your camera is part of the same batch that went to AnandTech. Check it against the before and after images in the article. This is the first such issue I’ve heard of, so it is possible it was just a single faulty unit, though that seems unlikely.

The iPhone SE battery drain test

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[VIDEO] This might not be a fair test, since the iPhone SE enters with, by far, the smallest battery capacity of the bunch.

The SE weighs in at 1821 mAh, while the next smallest is the iPhone 11 Pro, at 3046 mAh.

Still, if you’re considering an SE, good to have a sense of the battery capacity. Video embedded in main Loop post.

Apple is making it easier to unlock your iPhone with a mask on

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Todd Haselton, CNBC:

In the new iOS 13.5 beta 3 code, which was released to developers for testing on Wednesday, Apple simplifies the unlock process for folks wearing masks by bringing the passcode field to the main screen. All you need to do is swipe up if you’re wearing a mask, and you’ll skip the Face ID display and enter in a code instead.

Smart.

iOS 13.5 lets you turn off automatic face zooming in FaceTime

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You’ll find the new setting under Settings > FaceTime in the section AUTOMATIC PROMINENCE.

I’ve been doing a lot of Skype, Zoom, and FaceTime calls in coronavirus time. With more than two people on a call, the various approaches, and their flaws, become obvious.

I get the value of automatic prominence/face zooming. But it gets distracting, especially when you have many people on a call and several people are speaking at once. The tools to moderate large discussions are rudimentary, so the autocratic “mute all” seems to be the best play.

For me, no solution rises to the top. No one has really figured out the ideal solution, but hopefully the providers are learning from this experience and the next wave will be better.

Apple video: The Art of Music Production

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[VIDEO] Apple (about the video embedded in the main Loop post):

Follow hitmaking, Grammy-nominated songwriter and music producer Oak Felder as he creates a new song. Along the way, he speaks about music production, creating his own unique sound, working with the world’s top artists, and what it means for young artists to have access to powerful technology.

Felder is impressive. He’s six foot, five inches, 400 pounds, with a mohawk. He’s charming, articulate, and full of passion.

I get that this is a marketing piece for Apple, but I was drawn in by Oak Felder, his charisma and his obvious talent.

Apple releases new series of iOS betas with COVID-19 “exposure notification” API

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Chance Miller, 9to5Mac:

In conjunction with this, Apple and Google representatives say that they are also releasing the first seeds of the exposure notification API to public health authority developers. The goal, the companies say, is to collect feedback from those developers on how to improve the API ahead of its release in mid-May.

Here’s the setting that enables exposure notification:

https://twitter.com/_inside/status/1255549160981487622

And here’s what you’ll see when an app asks your permission to share your exposure data:

https://twitter.com/_inside/status/1255579037893898248

My concern is that not enough people will choose to participate in this process, at least in the early stages.

From this Bloomberg article, by Mark Gurman:

The first phase of the system will let health agencies build apps that allow a person who tests positive for Covid-19 to input their diagnosis. The system will then use Bluetooth technology to learn who the person has come into contact with and then notify those people of a possible exposure.

And:

A second phase of the project, to be released in the coming months, will have deeper integration with Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android operating systems to rely less on apps. Still, the first version of the program will require a software update for iPhones and a download from the Google Play store for Android phones.

Long term play. In the beginning, it’s all about creating a foundation, a system for privacy-respecting data collection. Deep iOS/Android OS integration will raise usage levels enough to make the data collected truly useful.

Maybe this won’t help so much in the short term, but when the second wave hits, this might be a game saver.

Apple Watch, the FDA, and COVID-19

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James R. Copland, CityJournal:

Millions of Americans own an Apple Watch, which commands roughly a 50 percent share of the smartwatch market. Among its many features, the Apple Watch can take your pulse. It also contains hardware to measure your blood-oxygen levels, and it has been doing so since the watch was released—but the hardware is not operable by the watch’s wearer, who thus cannot obtain the results. Under current FDA regulation, the function is disabled.

The article argues against federal regulation, and FDA overreach. That aside, what’s really interesting to me is the COVID-19 tie-in.

From this New York Times op-ed by longtime emergency doctor Richard Levitan:

We are just beginning to recognize that Covid pneumonia initially causes a form of oxygen deprivation we call “silent hypoxia” — “silent” because of its insidious, hard-to-detect nature.

And:

When Covid pneumonia first strikes, patients don’t feel short of breath, even as their oxygen levels fall. And by the time they do, they have alarmingly low oxygen levels and moderate-to-severe pneumonia (as seen on chest X-rays). Normal oxygen saturation for most persons at sea level is 94 to 100 percent; Covid pneumonia patients I saw had oxygen saturations as low as 50 percent.

And this is exactly what the Apple Watch’s built-in (but disabled) plethysmograph could prevent. If it doesn’t work, then no argument here. But if it works and the FDA’s testing would push off approval until, say, next year, this might be a time for an emergency exception. Lives are at stake.

Apple steering towards smart automobile windows

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TechXplore:

A recent patent filing offers a window into future forays by Apple into automotive design. Apple is exploring artificial intelligence systems that will enable future motorists to enjoy windows that continuously change characteristics as they drive.

Titled “Systems with adjustable windows,” U.S. Patent No. 10,625,580 envisions glass components that control light, reflection and heat conductance based on both user preference and sensory input.

I’ve always envisioned auto glass moving to edge-to-edge displays, combining see-through, heads up data displays for the driver, if there is one, and computer driven displays (that are transparent to the driver) with news, entertainment, etc., for the passengers. All of which are, as the article indicates, built to filter out the elements, as needed.

Will we ever see the fruits of Apple’s automotive efforts? Who knows.

Cellebrite pitches data-siphoning solution to COVID-19

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Reuters:

Cellebrite is pitching the same capability to help authorities learn who a coronavirus sufferer may have infected. When someone tests positive, authorities can siphon up the patient’s location data and contacts, making it easy to “quarantine the right people,” according to a Cellebrite email pitch to the Delhi police force this month.

Just iPhone their data and contacts. You’ll get permission first, right?

This would usually be done with consent, the email said. But in legally justified cases, such as when a patient violates a law against public gatherings, police could use the tools to break into a confiscated device, Cellebrite advised.

And:

“We do not need the phone passcode to collect the data”

What could go wrong? The mind reels.