Backstage at last night’s Oscars, writer/director (and winner of Best Adapted Screenplay for Jojo Rabbit) Taika Waititi was asked what writers should be asking for in the next round of talks with producers. His response was all about the Mac keyboard.
Watch for yourself. I’m guessing a number of you will be nodding your head in agreement.
Backstage at the #Oscars, Taika Waititi says that the WGA should ask Apple to make the MacBook keyboard easier to type on. pic.twitter.com/mpwSFDPplO
This insider access seems to help Mythic Quest nail its authenticity. I am not a gamer, so I can’t speak to the precision and accuracy of every detail. As an outsider, though, I will say that Mythic Quest certainly feels real, in the way that The Larry Sanders Show did for late-night talk shows.
The show even covers an admirable range of issues affecting the industry, like the “bro monoculture” of it all, and it’s nice to see the Sunny team take on progressive topics in a new venue.
This is all fertile ground for TV comedy, and considering how mind-bogglingly popular gaming is, it’s about time there was a TV comedy set in this world.
It’s just a bummer that the comedy isn’t funnier.
My wife and I watched the first episode last night and this review is pretty much how we felt about it. I’m not saying it’s a bad show but we didn’t laugh once during the first episode. Laughter should be a given in a sitcom.
Wacom has responded to allegations drivers for its tablet line are collecting data on its users and passing it on to Google, including the names of macOS applications being used, by claiming it has no access to personal data and what data it collects is anonymized before it is seen by the company.
“We apologize for any confusion regarding data collection being done by the Wacom software driver,” the firm states, “and the unclarity about the actual information collected.”
Wacom claims it collects data “for quality insurance and development purposes only,” with the driver collecting a “sample of information” such as the model, hardware usage, and the names of apps. The company does not collect MAC addresses nor serial numbers.
Hey Wacom – if you had thought about this to begin with, you wouldn’t be in this trouble now. Companies need to learn what “opt-in” means.
Most college students today have only known Apple as the fashionable, popular, commercially competent, and trend setting global technology giant it is today. However, 23 years ago Apple Computer, Inc. was struggling to survive while trying to sell Macs in a PC world centered around Microsoft Windows. Things began to change after Apple acquired NeXT in a surprise deal that was announced in the last week of 1996 and was completed on February 7, 1997.
Apple’s acquisition of NeXT Software 23 years ago most obviously provided the company with a modern operating system foundation. NeXT’s advanced software and development tools promised to replace the old Mac System Software that had debuted back in 1984. The “classic” Mac software platform had grown outdated and difficult to modernize without breaking the software that ran on it.
More importantly, however, the infusion of new management from NeXT served to clear out the unfocused fiefdoms at Apple that each sought to promote their own pet projects, often at the expense of other parts of the company.
With the way Jobs took over and made wholesale changes as well as inserting NeXT employees into almost every facet of the company, I always say today is the day NeXT acquired Apple.
Dave got his new AirPods Pro this week, so we spent some time talking about our thoughts on the product. We also discussed the improved Apple Maps, and share our thoughts on Apple News+.
Apple has been fined 25 million euros by a French consumer fraud group for intentionally slowing down some iPhone models with a software update.
The Directorate General for Competition, Consumption and the Suppression of Fraud (DGCCRF), which is part of the country’s economy ministry, concluded that Apple had failed to inform users that iOS updates to older iPhones could slow down their devices.
The investigation followed Apple’s admission in 2017 that it slows down some older iPhones with degraded batteries during times of peak power usage in order to prevent unexpected shutdowns.
Apple was damned if they did and damned if they didn’t. The biggest error was in not being more open and forthcoming about this decision as it was happening. That being said, this fine is likely an intentional slap on the wrist.
The chairman of Disney said on Thursday that the company is apologizing to a California elementary school that was asked to pay for a license after it showed “The Lion King” at a fund-raiser organized by students’ parents in 2019.
Robert A. Iger, the chairman, said in a post on Twitter that the company “apologizes to the Emerson Elementary School P.T.A. and I will personally donate to their fund raising initiative.”
The event on Nov. 15 was meant to be a fun night at the movies for students at Emerson Elementary School in Berkeley, Calif., with pizza and a showing of “The Lion King.” Students were encouraged to bring blankets and wear pajamas to the fund-raiser.
But on Tuesday, Emerson’s parent-teacher association said it had been asked by Movie Licensing USA, a licensing company representing Disney, to pay $250 for a screening license, a request that pitted the school against a corporate behemoth and set up a broader conversation about public school funding.
There’s just so much dumb in this story. The school should have known better (you can’t just publicly show a movie without paying the rights holder) and Disney’s legal department handled it in the worst possible way. They could have simply said, “Don’t do it again.” but they ended up embarrassing their company and causing a lot of ill will and hurt feelings.
“The identity plays upon the three aspects of the restaurant’s name by unifying the swan and the mallard through the positive and negative space within the ampersand. A limited colour palette and minimalistic style helps create a simple yet balanced feel.”
I saw this absolutely stunning graphic design on Twitter yesterday but I can’t find the tweet anymore.
I posted a link to this a while back. It’s an AI that generates computer-generated faces.
In the last incarnation, the faces are realistic, but I could easily pick out artifacts from each face, blurry hair, odd shapes, unrealistic facial features.
That has all changed. To my eye, these artificial people are eerily perfect. Fake people, for your consideration.
Ryan Christoffel, MacStories, lays out his fix for iPad multitasking. This is some thoughtful, detailed feedback for Apple, a proposal to fix a system that is certainly problematic.
Personally, I find iPad multitasking to be confusing at best. So much so, I’ve just avoided it. There have been times when I’ve gone to swipe a second app off the screen, only to have the swipe get processed by the app and, on more than one occasion, swipe-deleted something from an app accidentally.
That said, I see the massive potential in iPad multitasking. It’s not an easy system to design, and I hope the team at Apple takes Ryan’s thoughts to heart, is willing to take a step back and consider some design changes to address user confusion.
A collaboration between Michael Tompert and photographer Paul Fairchild with this special tribute to the Apple brand. A destruction of products such as the iPad, iPhone and Macbook, presented destroyed or crushed in the form of 12 large format photographs.
Just what it says. A dozen photos of destroyed Apple products. It’s art.
1.Illumination of the part of the facility, located at 1 Apple Parkway, Cupertino, CA with a GPS signal to allow for the testing and experimentation indoors for continued exploration of utilizing GPS technologies within their devices to provide innovative applications and continue to provide safe products.
2.Further design, development and enhancement of existing GPS applications to provide greater efficiency and more effective means of utilizing GPS derived information.
Came across this on Reddit this morning. Wonder what this is for?
Recently, Motherboard obtained a copy of the contract businesses are required to sign before being admitted to Apple’s IRP Program. The contract, which has not previously been made public, sheds new light on a program Apple initially touted as increasing access to repair but has been remarkably silent on ever since. It contains terms that lawyers and repair advocates described as “onerous” and “crazy”; terms that could give Apple significant control over businesses that choose to participate. Concerningly, the contract is also invasive from a consumer privacy standpoint.
In order to join the program, the contract states independent repair shops must agree to unannounced audits and inspections by Apple, which are intended, at least in part, to search for and identify the use of “prohibited” repair parts, which Apple can impose fines for. If they leave the program, Apple reserves the right to continue inspecting repair shops for up to five years after a repair shop leaves the program. Apple also requires repair shops in the program to share information about their customers at Apple’s request, including names, phone numbers, and home addresses.
Anyone involved with Apple’s “Authorized Service Provider” program will recognize some of the restrictions here. Apple is notorious for the stringency of its terms and the unequal restrictions placed on those who want to do business with the company.
Pro tools for iPadOS and iOS? You betcha. Video and Film makers can create pro storyboards fast with Previs Pro, then share in AR, digitally or in print. Get the Free trial here.
You can quibble with the grades, but no doubt the discussion of each category is worth the read.
Two A’s, deserved in my opinion: Wearables (AirPods and AirPods Pro are home runs) and Hardware Reliability (surprising A, but my experience in recent hardware has been rock solid).
I think Jason Snell and John Gruber should consider adding Apple Store/Customer Service grades. Lots to discuss there.
I’ve seen a few apps do similar things, but this is now baked into macOS.
Makes me think of possibilities, of future AirPods that pick up your brain’s alpha waves, let you move your cursor, or control your iOS device with your mind.
The ability to use your mind to control a mouse has been around for a long time, but requires very specialized hardware. Imagine if Apple could find a way to embed that hardware in your AirPods or, perhaps, in an AppleHat?
Anyone who is interested in learning how to play chess, who’s just getting started, or who already loves to play: Watch The Magic of Chess. This charming short film by Jenny Schweitzer Bell, presented by The US Chess Federation, was filmed at the 2019 Elementary Chess Championships at the Nashville Opryland resort.
The short film is filled with excellent advice, “uninhibited, philosophical insights” by kids who seem to love playing chess
I learned how to play chess when Bobby Fischer was World Champion (yes – I’m old) but I bet every one of these kids could still beat me.
I love the first beta of a new iOS version. It’s where you get a peek at the newest features. Some good stuff here, beyond the CarKey API covered in the last post.
iOS 13.4 contains references to a “CarKey” API, which will make it possible to use the iPhone and also the Apple Watch to unlock, lock, and start a car. According to the system’s internal files, users will be able to use CarKey in NFC-compatible cars, as they only need to hold the device near the vehicle to use it as a key.
I would absolutely love this feature.
I recognize this might not be possible with existing hardware, but imagine if you could get a text or your phone could ring if someone unlocked your car and your keys were nowhere near the car.
Or how about a camera built into the car that took a snapshot every time your car was unlocked? If you live in or near a city, car break-ins are a way of life, and these two features might help reduce these.
The unification of the car and the smartphone ecosystem moves ever closer.
Maps is one of the very few products I use, equally, in both the Google and Apple ecosystems. Apple doesn’t have a counter to Google search. I use Gmail, not Mail. But I use Google and Apple Maps interchangeably.
I definitely prefer Apple Maps, purely for the ecosystem support, and especially for those turn-by-turn Apple Watch taps that I don’t get with Google Maps.
But I am not a fan of Yelp, and I find Google Maps’ crowd-sourced restaurant reviews more accurate than what I experience with Apple Maps’ Yelp tie-in.
So a Google Maps update is nice news. Follow the headline link to scan through the new features. A welcome redesign, some nice new ideas.
Last week I set up my tablet on my new laptop. As part of installing its drivers I was asked to accept Wacom’s privacy policy. Why does a device that is essentially a mouse need a privacy policy? I wondered. Sensing skullduggery, I decided to make an exception to my anti-privacy-policy-policy and give this one a read.
In section 3.1 of their privacy policy, Wacom wondered if it would be OK if they sent a few bits and bobs of data from my computer to Google Analytics.
Wacom didn’t say exactly what data they were going to send themselves. I resolved to find out.
Wacom will undoubtedly offer a heartfelt apology and explanation as to why they do this but the big question will be, for how long have they been doing this and what do they do with the data? The other part of this is I wish I had half the technical chops this guy does.
As first spotted by Steve Troughton-Smith, release notes for the latest beta build of Xcode include a major development: Mac apps can soon be included as universal purchases with their iPhone and iPad companions.
Universal apps currently enable you to make a single purchase to gain access to both iPhone and iPad versions of an app. Nearly all cross-platform developers default to this option, though some still sell separate iPhone and iPad apps. macOS has never been included as part of universal apps though, even after Mac Catalyst launched last year. That sounds like it’s going to change when the latest OS updates – iOS and iPadOS 13.4 and macOS 10.15.4 – arrive this spring.
My day was completely ruined yesterday when I stumbled upon a fun fact that absolutely obliterated my mind. I saw this tweet yesterday that said that not everyone has an internal monologue in their head. All my life, I could hear my voice in my head and speak in full sentences as if I was talking out loud. I thought everyone experienced this, so I did not believe that it could be true at that time.
Literally the first person I asked was a classmate of mine who said that she can not “hear” her voice in her mind. I asked her if she could have a conversation with herself in her head and she looked at me funny like I was the weird one in this situation. So I began to become more intrigued. Most people I asked said that they have this internal monologue that is running rampant throughout the day. However, every once in a while, someone would say that they don’t experience this.
I would tell them that I could look at myself in the mirror and have a full blown telepathic conversation with myself without opening my mouth and they responded as if I had schizophrenia. One person even mentioned that when they do voice overs in movies of people’s thoughts, they “wished that it was real.”
This is kind of mindblowing. I also didn’t realize not everyone could “hear the voices in their head.”
Unlike on iOS and iPadOS, Apple is quite permissive about running full web browsers on macOS. Mac browsers can use their own technologies to render webpages and set themselves to be the default web browser. On iPhone or iPad, they can’t do either of those things.
There’s nothing wrong with sticking to Safari, but depending on your own particular needs, it might not be the best browser. Some services, like YouTube TV, won’t run on Safari at all. And some features, like YouTube’s support for 4K video, don’t work with Safari. So you’ll need to try another browser. Here are five other Mac browsers worth trying out.
News+ was never going to work as a stand-alone subscription offering from Apple. With the news today of a key departure from the group, perhaps the company now sees that. But the writing has been on the wall from day one.
So, what to do?
It’s so obvious that it’s already rumored. Make News+ a part of an Apple bundle. Yes, yes, “Apple Prime” as it were. Flip the script so that News+ isn’t yet another cognitive load on us. Something that may be a good deal but will I really have time for that? To: oh wow, this is included in what I already pay for? Awesome.
This is a no-brainer that many of us have been saying from the start. In light of today’s departure of a key executive, I’ve been told Apple will announce a News+ bundle at or before WWDC this June.
kiboko, a video editor who focuses on drum tracks, took the iconic Toronto Pearson Airport inspired instrumental “YYZ” by Rush and brought the audio of Neil Peart‘s drumming to the forefront while quieting Geddy Lee‘s bass and Alex Lifeson‘s guitar.
Beautifully done. Really showcases the complexity of Peart’s iconic drumming style.
At first blush, this post’s title, “One very bad Apple”, gave the impression of pure trolling. But reading through (which is worth your time, IMO), I found it to be an informed take on Apple’s evolving privacy model, full of detail and solidly sourced links.
Bottom line:
So, here we are, in 2020, with Apple in a bit of a pickle. It’s becoming so big that it’s not prioritizing security. At the same time, it needs to advertise privacy as a key differentiator as consumer tastes change.
Not sure I’d agree that Apple is “not prioritizing security”. But Apple’s massive growth has certainly made supporting privacy a far more complex problem than in Steve Jobs’ time, when Apple was small enough that he had complete control.
> The head of business for Apple Inc.’s news app stepped down less than a year after launching a high-profile subscription product that has struggled to attract paying readers. > > Liz Schimel, the outgoing executive, joined in mid-2018 after serving as the president of international business at magazine publisher Conde Nast, said people familiar with the move who asked not to be identified discussing personnel matters. At Apple, Schimel oversaw relationships with advertisers and news publishers.
Of all Apple’s services, News+ seemed to me the toughest win for Apple. When Apple took on the music space, it had a stronger financial model, consumers very willing to pay for songs to bring from CD to their hard drives and then pay again for the monthly all-you-can-eat of Apple Music. Apple also had Steve Jobs building and cementing those initial relationships.
Much has changed since the iTunes Store launched back in 2003. Liz Schimel had an unenviable, difficult task convincing publishers that News+ was their savior. Too much competition in news aggregation, much of it free.
To me, this is not a sign of doom for Apple News+. More a sign that change is needed. And if the Bloomberg report is correct, change is coming. However, if you suspect your business may face financial challenges during such transitions, don’t hesitate to seek Business Insolvency Help: Take Action to safeguard your business and secure its future.
