Word game addicts, say goodbye to your family, friends, and productivity: Spelltower is back and better than ever. The newly launched Spelltower+ from Zach Gage and Jack Schlesinger takes the original game, modernizes it for the latest iPhone and iPad screen sizes, adds lots of new game modes, and packs several other key feature enhancements. Whether you’re a longtime Spelltower fan, or the game missed your radar entirely in its glory days, Spelltower+ deserves your attention.
Spelltower is a word game in which you trace on a grid of letters to connect them and form the longest words possible. It’s like connect the dots, but with letters. You can connect letters that are on any side of each other, including diagonal and backwards, and the longer the word, the better. Most tiles are just standard, but certain colored tiles give you a bonus of some sort, such as the blue tiles that take out the full row they’re sitting on when used. Yellow tiles are a new addition to Spelltower+, offering multipliers on your word’s point value. Overall gameplay is extremely simple, but hard to put down. It’s just plain fun, and the brilliant sound design and haptic feedback on iPhone make for a quality overall experience.
If you like words or “see” words in jumbles of letters, this is the game for you. Very addicting.
Apple today announced that all users in the United States can now experience a redesigned Maps with faster and more accurate navigation and comprehensive views of roads, buildings, parks, airports, malls and more, making it easier and more enjoyable to map out any journey. Apple completed the rollout of this new Maps experience in the United States and will begin rolling it out across Europe in the coming months.
“We set out to create the best and most private maps app on the planet that is reflective of how people explore the world today,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services. “It is an effort we are deeply invested in and required that we rebuild the map from the ground up to reimagine how Maps enhances people’s lives — from navigating to work or school or planning an important vacation — all with privacy at its core.”
It’s a big ask but I’d love to see this level of detail outside the US. Don’t forget about us up here in the Great White North, Apple.
I know it’s not too common for people to be out and about wearing masks in public in the United States, but it’s fairly common over here in Asia. The thinking behind it is actually to prevent you, the mask-wearer, from spreading your diseased germs to other, healthy, happy people.
And:
The Coronavirus, obviously, is different: doctors are recommending people wear masks to prevent coming into contact with the “novel” virus, thus keeping yourself safe. But the masks cover a huge portion of your face (even a big face, like mine) basically invalidating Face ID. I know, I know, this sounds very trivial, and it is. But trivial and annoying have long conspired together to cause great anger and frustration.
This is an interesting perspective, and makes me wonder if Apple has a team working on solutions to open your phone when wearing a mask. Perhaps a smarter, eye-centered Face ID, or a combination of Face ID and some other biometric (perhaps Touch ID as an additional option).
I’m not in the market for a Mac Pro, in any form, but I found this pair of videos quite interesting. Both are from audio engineer Neil Parfitt.
The first is the arrival and unboxing, with running observations along the way from the perspective of someone who makes their living working on TV and movie soundtracks.
My favorite quote:
I made a decision almost 22 years ago, while I was still on PC, that has brought me into this ecosystem that I can’t escape.
The second video is the Mac Pro, now rack mounted, with some interesting discussion about some of the workarounds Neil needed to get things working in his current (temporary) setup.
The NFL under terms of its agreement with its existing media partners cannot currently negotiate with other firms. But it is no secret Goodell and Apple CEO Tim Cook talk. One subject they surely broached is Sunday Ticket. DirectTV has two more years left to carry the out-of-market package and then is widely expected to walk because of shifting priorities at parent AT&T. The NFL has long been under pressure to open Sunday Ticket to more platforms than just satellite, and streaming it through Apple TV would solve that concern.
And this explainer from Jason Snell (headline link):
For those who don’t know, NFL Sunday Ticket is a subscription offering that allows football fans in the U.S. to watch all live games that are being shown outside their local market. It’s been exclusive to satellite-TV provider DirecTV for decades, and has probably driven millions of people to sign up for DirecTV. (Me included!)
DirecTV pays the NFL $1.5B (that’s Billion with a B) per year for the exclusive rights to this package. Their deal expires at the end of the 2022 season.
This may be much ado about nothing, pure speculation on the part of The Athletic. And it might also be that Apple gets involved sooner, offering a streaming sidecar in cohort with DirecTV.
It’s been 10 years since former Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the iPad. The move firmly pushed tablets into the mainstream gadget conversation while leading many to ask, “What the heck is this giant iPod touch?” (Oh 2010, you sweet summer child.) In a review of the first-gen iPad that year, CNET described the device as “an elegant, affordable supergadget.” One of the main draws was how easy it was to access and navigate the apps on the 9.7-inch screen.
We selected 25 apps that have turned the iPad into a useful tool for entertainment, reading, working and playing. Here are the top 10.
Myst came to market in 1993, which was a banner year in PC gaming—1993 also brought us X-Wing, Doom, Syndicate, and Day of the Tentacle, among others. It’s fascinating that Myst happened the same year that Doom launched, too—both games attempted to simulate reality, but with vastly different approaches. Doom was a hard and fast shotgun blast to the face, visceral and intense, aiming to capture the feeling of hunting (and being hunted by) demons in close sci-fi corridors; Myst was a love letter to mystery and exploration at its purest.
A few months back, Ars caught up with Myst developer Rand Miller (who co-created the game with his brother Robyn Miller) at the Cyan offices in Washington state to ask about the process of bringing the haunting island world to life. Myst’s visuals lived at the cutting edge of what interactive CD-ROM technology could deliver at the beginning of the multimedia age, and, perhaps unsurprisingly, fitting the breadth of the Millers’ vision onto CD-ROM didn’t happen without some challenges.
I never finished Myst – I didn’t have the patience for it – but it was an undoubtedly beautiful and cutting edge game and design.
The emoji list for 2020 is now complete, with 117 emojis making the final cut for release this year.
Additions include Bubble Tea, Smiling Face With Tear, bottle-feeding parents and the Transgender Flag.[1] Emojipedia is today releasing sample images for each of the new emojis approved as part of this list.
Welcome additions include an emoji showing People Hugging which shows a greater sense of empathy than the previous Hugging Face and a pinched finger gesture which is commonly referred to simply as “Italian Hand Gesture”.
I rarely use emojis but if you do, here comes a bunch more.
It’s a big day for one of my favorite all-time apps—Fantastical has been updated for all platforms, and for the first time, receives feature parity across platforms.
Fantastical is the best example of an app you didn’t know you needed until you start using it. From its natural language parser to the advanced calendaring features, Fantastical can handle anything you can throw at it.
While I’ve always enjoyed how intelligent Fantastical is for things like figuring out and parsing time zones (because we’ve all missed a meeting now and then), the developers have added some new features that add even more functionality to the app.
One of my favorites is the Meeting Scheduling function. How many times have we gone back and forth with someone—or worse, a group of people—to find a time that works.
Fantastical now includes meeting proposals, which makes it easy to ask people what dates or times work for them. Create a proposal with multiple times and the invitees will be asked to choose what times work for them. Once everyone responds and a common time is found, the proposal can automatically be turned into an event and added to your calendar.
Another feature I like is the addition of Interesting Calendars, which lets you add calendars for things like holidays, sports, TV, and other events. I always have the Boston Bruins schedule added to Fantastical, but sometimes there is calendar spam, depending on where you subscribe. This feature will look after that.
There are a lot of other features that are available like the improved parsing engine, Calendar Sets, improved tasks, and more. However, there is another significant feature that I need to address—Fantastical Premium.
Fantastical Premium is a subscription that unlocks all of the features of the app. One subscription covers all platforms: Mac, iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch. The subscription comes with a 14-day free trial and is available for $4.99 per month after that. There is also a yearly subscription that will save you even more money.
There is a free version available, but it is limited in its features.
The big question for me was, what if I had Fantastical 2 and upgraded to version 3.0 but didn’t want a subscription? Instead of forcing its customer to upgrade, Flexibits is giving all of its Fantastical 2 the same features they had with the older version after the new app is downloaded. You can still upgrade to Fantastical Premium if you want, but you’re not losing a thing if you decide not to upgrade.
Just as an aside, it has been nearly five years since Fantastical users have had to pay for an upgrade, and this upgrade is paid monthly.
I have already signed up for Fantastical Premium because this is an app I can’t live without.
The original headline from the Electronic Freedom Foundation was:
Ring Doorbell App Packed with Third-Party Trackers
To me, that gave the appearance that the iOS app was packed with trackers. But the article itself doesn’t have a single mention of Apple or iOS, makes it clear the issue is with the Android app. Just wanted to call that out.
On to the article itself:
An investigation by EFF of the Ring doorbell app for Android found it to be packed with third-party trackers sending out a plethora of customers’ personally identifiable information (PII). Four main analytics and marketing companies were discovered to be receiving information such as the names, private IP addresses, mobile network carriers, persistent identifiers, and sensor data on the devices of paying customers.
The issue is not that the danger of your doorbell video or statistics being leaked, but that the trackers can be used to connect your IP address and other identifying info to other devices, building an on-line profile showing where you live and what other on-line information is linked to you.
This cohesive whole represents a fingerprint that follows the user as they interact with other apps and use their device, in essence providing trackers the ability to spy on what a user is doing in their digital lives and when they are doing it.
I hate this behavior. I love the idea of a video doorbell, but I continue to wait for one that is devoid of trackers, truly anonymized.
In an interview to the BBC last week, Facebook’s Vice President of Global Affairs and Communications, Nick Clegg, said it wasn’t WhatsApp’s fault because end-to-end encryption is unhackable and blamed Apple’s operating system for Bezos’ episode.
Two things I always look forward to after each Apple quarterly results call are the call transcripts (I can read quickly, but can only listen as fast as someone is speaking!) and Jason Snell’s set of charts reflecting “the numbers”.
Take a look. They are beautifully done. Three charts that tell a big part of the story:
Wearable/Home/Accessories – Just look at that growth. And that’s with all the headroom of HomePod vs Amazon Echo and HomeKit devices like a doorbell to compete with Ring or a smoke detector to compete with Nest. So much opportunity still to come.
Services revenue – Slow and steady growth, with just a little more pop the last two quarters.
Apple regional year-over-year growth (the very last chart) – Look at that China curve. A precarious dip a year ago, with steady recovery ever since.
Surprisingly readable, a headline in every paragraph.
One subtle point that stuck out to me. This is from Apple CFO Luca Maestri’s part of the call:
Mac revenue was $7.2 billion and iPad revenue was $6 billion. Both products had a difficult year-over-year comparison due to the launches of MacBook Air here, Mac mini and iPad Pro during the December quarter a year ago and the subsequent channels fill. Despite the tough compare, on a demand basis, our performance for both Mac and iPad was around even to last year.
Mac and iPad year-over-year was down, but for a good reason.
Continuing:
Importantly, around half of the customers purchasing Macs and iPads around the world during the quarter, were new to that product. And the active installed base of both Mac and iPad reached a new all-time high.
So though the short term year over year number is flat, the customer base is growing. Tim, earlier in the call, spoke about iPad growth “in key emerging markets like Mexico, India, Turkey, Poland, Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam”.
This all makes me wonder what the iPad/Mac mix is in Luca’s “half of the customers purchasing Macs and iPads around the world during the quarter, were new to that product”.
No matter, clearly a blowout quarter, no matter how you look at it.
I love Neil Young. I have followed his career for as long as I can remember, and I love his music. However, Neil’s comments today about audio and the MacBook Pro are just completely wrong and nonsensical.
I’m not sure if his comments were a stunt to help sell his book or if he’s just lost touch with reality. Despite his hatred for digital, the things Young had to say today about the MacBook Pro were way off base.
Let’s take a quick look at what the MacBook Pro has to offer in terms of audio before we tackle the rest of Young’s comments. According to Apple’s web site, the 16-inch model has High‑fidelity six‑speaker system with force‑cancelling woofers; Wide stereo sound; Support for Dolby Atmos playback; and Studio‑quality three-mic array with high signal-to-noise ratio and directional beamforming.
That’s quite an impressive hardware list to get on a laptop. Now let’s look at the things that don’t make sense to me.
The only way you can get it out is if you put it in. And if you put it in, you can’t get it out because the DAC is no good in the MacBook Pro. So you have to use an external DAC and do a bunch of stuff to make up for the problems that the MacBook Pro has because they’re not aimed at quality. They’re aimed at consumerism.
I’ve been recording in my studio for many years, and I have a lot of the DAC (digital-to-analog conversion) gear that Young is talking about. If I plug in my Universal Audio Apollo 8 into my MacBook Pro, I have studio-quality gear at my disposal.
There are no “problems” to deal with. The MacBook Pro is a workhorse that can handle any amount of audio that I want to throw at it. The Mac is the engine that is powering everything else I’m doing.
There are instances where people will record a song idea into the MacBook Pro using the built-in mic. Usually, these are ideas, songs written on the road, on a tour bus or hotel room. If these songs are chosen by the band to be released, the ideas are recorded into full-fledged songs.
So what exactly is Young arguing here? Does he not know the quality of the DAC gear is high-quality enough to make an album, even on a MacBook Pro? Is there a specific album he thinks is poorly recorded? I sure would like to know the answer to that one.
I’ve talked to many well-known artists over the years that have recorded songs into phone voicemails, voice memos, cassette tapes, and all kinds of other crazy mediums. I’m also sure that Young used some of these tricks to record some of his song ideas before they were released. Clearly, these were not great quality recordings.
To me, Young seems to be arguing something that is halfway between “analog is better,” and for some reason, “the MacBook Pro sucks.” He’s just confusing all kinds of thoughts that don’t fit together at all.
I believe that analog has its place in music. I won’t dispute that. Recording on tape was great back in the day. However, the industry has moved away from many of the old analog way of doing things. It’s opened up the music world to artists that would never have had the chances they do today.
Apple, to its credit, has tried to make recording music a positive experience for its users. From GarageBand and Logic to the higher-end features of the MacBook Pro, Apple has brought together a team of passionate, world-class audio engineers to work at the company.
Apple has also used some of the best people in the music industry, like the legendary Bob Clearmoutain, to help develop the AAC codec it uses on Apple Music. The company did this to help create a better codec, so we hear better music.
Let’s look at some of the artists that won Grammys this year that use Logic and, therefore, a Mac: Billie Eilish & Finneas, Lizzo, J Cole & 21 Savage, Chemical Brothers, and Jacob Collier.
We also know of a lot of other artists that use Macs and Logic to create music and soundtracks like Coldplay, Ed Sheeran, The Weekend, Fall Out Boy, Ramin Djawadi (Game of Thrones, Westworld), and many others.
Many of the studios Young would have artists go into to record their music are now gone. Closed. Forever. They couldn’t make it work in the new music economy. That’s sad, but it’s true. Studios are also costly, and most young artists would never be able to afford a recording studio.
The truth is, we have a way to create an end-to-end recording solution and do it all on a MacBook Pro. That is a good thing for music and the people that create the music we listen to every day.
Neil Young took his well-documented hate of digital recording and turned it into an undeserved, nonsensical slam on the MacBook Pro.
Apple on Tuesday reported its financial results for the fiscal first quarter of 2020 with quarterly revenue of $91.8 billion. That’s a 9 percent increase over the same quarter last year, and an all-time record according to the company.
“We are thrilled to report Apple’s highest quarterly revenue ever, fueled by strong demand for our iPhone 11 and iPhone 11 Pro models, and all-time records for Services and Wearables,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “During the holiday quarter our active installed base of devices grew in each of our geographic segments and has now reached over 1.5 billion. We see this as a powerful testament to the satisfaction, engagement and loyalty of our customers — and a great driver of our growth across the board.”
Apple said that international sales accounted for 61 percent of the revenue.
Apple’s iPhone revenue was $55.9 billion this quarter, up from the $51.9 reported in the same quarter as last year. Mac sales were $7.1 billion, down from the $7.4 billion last year; iPad revenue was $5.9 billion, down from $6.7 last year; wearables was $10 billion, up from 7.3 billion last year; and services revenue $12.7 billion, up from the $10.8 billion posted last year.
In an interview with The Vergecast, Young tells Verge editor-in-chief Nilay Patel that even though Grammy-winning artists are able to make music almost anywhere they go on their laptop or mobile devices, they’re still sacrificing on audio fidelity.
Young said, “A MacBook Pro? What are you talking about? You can’t get anything out of that thing. The only way you can get it out is if you put it in. And if you put it in, you can’t get it out because the DAC is no good in the MacBook Pro. So you have to use an external DAC and do a bunch of stuff to make up for the problems that the MacBook Pro has because they’re not aimed at quality. They’re aimed at consumerism.
That’s what Steve Jobs told me. He told me that exact thing: “We’re making products for consumers, not quality.”
All due respect to Mr Young but he’s full of shit. I will categorically say Steve Jobs never said that to him.
MGM has held preliminary talks with a number of companies, including Apple and Netflix, to gauge their interest in an acquisition, two of the people said. MGM owns the James Bond catalog and its studio has made several current hit shows including “The Handmaid’s Tale,” which streams on Hulu, and “Live PD,” a reality police show that has frequently been the most watched show on cable TV and airs on A&E. It also owns premium cable network Epix. MGM had revenue of more than $1 billion for the first nine months of the year.
Apple, for example, is brand new to media production and distribution and has started Apple TV+ without an existing library of series and movies to entice consumers. Buying an existing studio with experienced media executives may make sense, especially if the company, such as MGM, is heavy on intellectual property and light on people.
I don’t usually comment or post about rumours but this makes a huge amount of sense if Apple is looking to expand past original content. MGM has a huge back catalog including the Bond franchise.
This afternoon in the US (4:30 PM EST on Wall Street, 1:30 PM PST in Cupertino, 2020.01.28 21:30 GMT) Apple Inc. will release the results of the company’s first quarter of fiscal year 2020. Coverage will happen live on a slew of websites, on CNBC, and on Twitter (we’ll be committing attempted punditry @macjournals if you care to watch).
We thought we’d take some time in this introductory issue under new tools to go through some of the basics of Apple results, what they mean, why they matter, and why, ever so occasionally, an analyst reaction or question can be so stupid.
Great analysis of what will happen later today and why.
If you have any interest in taking video, take a few minutes to watch Rene Ritchie play with (and explain) FiLMiC’s DoubleTake app (the one they teased at the iPhone 11 rollout event).
The app is free and, surprisingly, works on older iPhones, as far back as the iPhone Xs, Xr, though not quite in the same way as the iPhone 11.
Want to try DoubleTake out yourself? Here’s the App Store link.
Lots of detail. At the top of the page, tap/click Camera for the rear facing camera review from Nov ’19, tap/click Audio for the audio review from Oct ’19.
I built my last hackintosh in 2014 and it was overdue for an update. Since Apple recently updated their iMac with Core i9s and skipped the T2, this is probably the last time I’m building this sort of computer, before MacOS is locked down forever.
I wish Wojtek had expanded on that last bit, but it does feel as if the Mac is heading down the road of getting more and more locked down. And as far as I know, there’s no way to add a T2 to your own build, so if that ever becomes a requirement for a Mac, that’d be that. (Please do correct me if I’m wrong about that).
Add to that Apple’s recent moves towards all macOS software being notarized. From Apple:
Beginning in macOS 10.14.5, software signed with a new Developer ID certificate and all new or updated kernel extensions must be notarized to run. Beginning in macOS 10.15, all software built after June 1, 2019, and distributed with Developer ID must be notarized. However, you aren’t required to notarize software that you distribute through the Mac App Store because the App Store submission process already includes equivalent security checks.
Another sign of macOS lockdown. Could this be the last days of Hackintosh?
All that aside, if you are interested in building your own Hackintosh, this is a pretty build, lots of pictures.
A bit about the two iPad leads, just to whet your appetite.
Imran Chaudhri, Former Director of Design on the Human Interface team:
I came to Apple in 95 as an intern in the Advanced Technologies Group. When I finished school in 97, I came to Apple and Steve was there after the NeXT acquisition and he was going through and cutting and trimming the fat at Apple — and ATG was a place that he wasn’t a huge fan of. He wasn’t a huge fan of research for research sake and I wasn’t either, which was kind of an interesting thing. I always wanted to really, really ship products and ATG really wasn’t about that. Steve laid off everybody in ATG and I was kind of left to figure out what I was going to do. I started emailing Steve some ideas and we started working closely together and the relationship formed a lot of products, the revitalization of the Mac, going on to the iPod, the development of multitouch to the iPhone and iPad and, post, to a bunch of stuff like the Watch, the AirPods and HomePod, etc. All things we finished before I left a couple of years ago.
Bethany Bongiorno, Former Software Engineering Director:
I joined in 2008, actually, right after they shipped the first phone. I joined immediately after that and started as a project manager on the iPhone. There was a very small team back then; we sat kind of in one hallway. [The phone] was definitely a startup within Apple and I was brought on board because the project manager that was working there really didn’t like working with designers and really didn’t like working at the higher levels of the stack. She preferred kind of working at a lower level; the core operating system and the kernel and things like that.
Then very quickly after that, they told me that the real reason they had to hire me was because Steve had this pet project that he was really excited about and they needed somebody to lead that effort because the team really needed to remain focused on development of iPhone.
Apple has asked its suppliers to make up to 80 million iPhones over the first half of this year, people familiar with its planning told the Nikkei Asian Review, a rise of over 10% on last year’s production schedule that could boost the company’s near-record share price.
And:
However, suppliers warned that blistering pace of production could be complicated by the outbreak of the coronavirus in China’s Hubei Province, given that their main manufacturing centers are in nearby Henan and Guangdong provinces, with more than 100 confirmed cases as of Monday afternoon, and in Shanghai, with over 50 confirmed cases.
Good news, bad news. And no way to truly gauge the coronavirus impact.
As to sales impact, I suspect that people will be willing to wait longer for their iPhones if Apple can’t make them fast enough.
The announcement 10 years ago today of the “magical” iPad was clearly a milestone in computing. It was billed to be the “next” computer. For me, managing Windows, just weeks after the launch of Microsoft’s “latest creation” Windows 7, it was as much a challenge as magical.
The success of iPhone (140K apps & 3B downloads announced that day) blinded us at Microsoft as to where Apple was heading. Endless rumors of Apple’s tablet obviously meant a pen computer based on Mac. Why not? The industry chased this for 20 years. That was our context.
Sitting in a Le Corbusier chair, he showed the “extraordinary” things his new device did, from browsing to email to photos and videos and more. The real kicker was that it achieved 10 hours of battery life—unachievable in PCs struggling for 4 hours with their whirring fans.
There was no stylus..no pen. How could one input or be PRODUCTIVE?
Sinofsky is the former President of the Windows Division at Microsoft and had a front row seat to the disruption the iPad would cause.
Few things epitomize America more than the all-you-can-eat buffet.
For a small fee, you’re granted unencumbered access to a wonderland of gluttony. It is a place where saucy meatballs and egg rolls share the same plate without prejudice, where a tub of chocolate pudding finds a home on the salad bar, where variety and quantity reign supreme.
But one has to wonder: How does an industry that encourages its customers to maximize consumption stay in business?
To find out, we spoke with industry experts, chefs, and buffet owners. As it turns out, it’s harder to “beat” the buffet than you might think.
I don’t like buffets in principle (the idea of “picked over food” nauseates me) but woe be to the restaurant that offers “All You Can Eat Sushi.” I can eat my body weight in sushi.
An antivirus program used by hundreds of millions of people around the world is selling highly sensitive web browsing data to many of the world’s biggest companies, a joint investigation by Motherboard and PCMag has found. Our report relies on leaked user data, contracts, and other company documents that show the sale of this data is both highly sensitive and is in many cases supposed to remain confidential between the company selling the data and the clients purchasing it.
The documents, from a subsidiary of the antivirus giant Avast called Jumpshot, shine new light on the secretive sale and supply chain of peoples’ internet browsing histories. They show that the Avast antivirus program installed on a person’s computer collects data, and that Jumpshot repackages it into various different products that are then sold to many of the largest companies in the world. Some past, present, and potential clients include Google, Yelp, Microsoft, McKinsey, Pepsi, Sephora, Home Depot, Condé Nast, Intuit, and many others.
I opt-out of all data collection regardless of whether or not the company claimes “the data is fully de-identified.” If you use “Avast Security for Mac”, you might want to look for alternatives.
