The OMNY tap-and-go fare readers have been taking a $2.75 charge from people who have enabled a passcode-skipping Apply Pay service — which allows straphangers to enter the subway with a swipe of their iPhone at the turnstile — even while trying to use a regular MetroCard.
And:
MTA Chief Revenue Officer Al Putre confirmed that “about 30 customers” had complained about “unintended charges when the Express Transit feature of their iPhones is activated.”
And:
An Apple rep said the company has not had the issue in other cities where the Express Transit feature is available.
If 30 customers complained, my bet is there is a pool of people who were charged, but didn’t notice it.
That said, the fact that this appears to be specific to the OMNY contactless fare payment system makes me think this is an implementation issue, maybe a hardware issue, not necessary a flaw in Apple Pay. We’ll see.
To deal with some of the changes in Mac OS X, I ran apps and system extensions that restored some behaviors from classic Mac OS. Over the years, I weaned myself off most of these, but a few stuck. In particular, I found I did not want to live without the window layering policy from classic Mac OS.
In classic, when you click on a window that belongs to an application that’s not currently active, all the windows that belong to that application come to the front. In Mac OS X (and macOS), only the window that you clicked comes to the front.
Front and Center is a trivial app—so trivial that I was afraid it would be rejected for its limited functionality. But when running, it is used literally hundreds of times a day. And I obviously found it so essential that I was willing to help bring it into existence myself.
Call me an old dog who can’t learn new tricks but this might be the fastest I’ve ever spent three dollars.
Anyone paying attention to the news coming out of CES this week has probably noticed that 8K TVs seem to be the next big thing.
The coverage of 8K has really irked me. Nearly every article I’ve read that covers these newly announced 8K TVs seem to center around one criticism of the 8K trend: that no native content exists. This, while true, misses the point. Even if we had a surplus of available 8K content — as we do 4K content from services like Disney+ and Netflix — it wouldn’t make that much of a difference. Why? Because whatever benefits might come from 8K probably aren’t worth the added costs of getting it in the first place.
Is there any real interest in 8K TVs or is it all manufacturer hype? Personally, I won’t even bother looking into them until the price comes down significantly.
Before clicking the Checkout button on Amazon or other online bookstores, you might want to check out the handy browser extension called Library Extension. It adds a box to Amazon book listings to show you if that book is available for free at your local library.
The extension is available for Chrome and Firefox, and both versions have near-perfect reviews.
Once it’s installed, you’ll see the new Library Extension icon in your toolbar. Click it to choose which libraries the tool should look for books in.
Now you’re all set. Whenever you view a book’s listing on Amazon, a new box will appear on the right side above the buying options box. This will show you how many copies of that book each of your chosen libraries have on file and how many are available to borrow. Clicking the link takes you to the library’s book listing.
My small local library isn’t included but if yours is (you can check here), then this extension might come in handy.
Apple is starting the new year by celebrating more captivating ways to shoot on iPhone with an all-new Night mode photo challenge. Users are invited to share their impressive Night mode images captured with iPhone 11, iPhone 11 Pro and iPhone 11 Pro Max.
Beginning today through January 29, Apple is in search of the most stunning Night mode shots from users around the world. A panel of select judges will evaluate submissions to reveal five winning photos on March 4.
Follow the headline link, check out some of the examples. Some amazing shots.
Wonder if this contest will tip someone towards an iPhone 11 purchase.
I love my AirPods Pro and, ever since I bought them last October, I’ve been taking advantage of their noise cancellation technology to use them in more contexts than the original AirPods.
And:
There’s one thing I don’t particularly like about them, though: the default silicone tips.
Whether you can’t get a well-sealed fit with any of the AirPods Pro tips, or if you are after a more comfortable fit, take a few minutes to read Federico’s journey. Hard to explain it here, but just scroll through the images in Federico’s post and you’ll get a sense of how he used memory foam from another pair of headphones to make a much better fit, one that offers a better seal.
Apple has marked the close of a historic 2019 for its Services offerings, a year that introduced Apple Arcade, Apple TV+, Apple News+ and Apple Card, and celebrated the continued success of the App Store, Apple Music, iCloud and more experiences only Apple can create and deliver.
And:
Since the App Store launched in 2008, developers have earned over $155 billion, with a quarter of those earnings coming from the past year alone. As a measure of the excitement going into 2020, App Store customers spent a record $1.42 billion between Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve, a 16 percent increase over last year, and $386 million on New Year’s Day 2020 alone, a 20 percent increase over last year and a new single-day record.
That second paragraph is packed with interesting info. A quarter of all App Store earnings, since 2008, came in 2019. That’s remarkable.
And $386 million on New Year’s Day? Does that indicate a ton of new Apple product unwrapped over the holidays? Is New Year’s Day the day people kick back, relax, and start customizing their devices?
No matter, some incredible success for Apple. Congrats to the Services team.
At last year’s CES tech trade show in Las Vegas, Apple attracted a lot of attention because of a large well-placed billboard ad that read, “What happens on your iPhone, stays on your iPhone.”
This year, Apple made its first official appearance at the conference in years and was forced to defend that position. Jane Horvath, Apple’s senior director of global privacy, was on a panel on Tuesday alongside representatives from Facebook, Procter & Gamble and the Federal Trade Commission, and was asked about the company’s use of encryption.
Horvath said that Apple has a team working around the clock to respond to requests from law enforcement. But she said she doesn’t support building so-called back doors into software that would allow law enforcement elevated access to private data to solve crimes like terrorism.
“Building back doors into encryption is not the way we are going to solve those issues,” Horvath said.
This appearance has been touted as “Apple returns to CES!” but it’s all hype. Not what Horvath said but the seeming importance so many in the tech media seemed to place on her panel showing.
They’ve got a six car garage so I bet they can afford the repairs. My question is, how the hell does the Tesla not warn the driver the door is open or better yet, not move if the doors are open!?
A holy site where any casual viewer of Jeopardy! can appreciate the profound weight of the program’s 36-year history. A dissertation-level study on how the show’s nightly trivia affected the ambient knowledge of the American mind. An exacting catalog of the countless number of times that Alex Trebek has shepherded us through categories of potpourri, of arcane word games, of 19th-century novelists whose names begin with the letter E.
What is the J! Archive?
On the fan-run J! Archive, a would-be scholar can click on any season, from any year, and bear witness to thousands and thousands of tabulated episodes. There are national congresses that are less comprehensive than the J! Archive, and Robert Schmidt, a 39-year-old patent attorney and the original architect of the website, tells me over email that the full scope of documenting Jeopardy! requires a near-insurmountable amount of work. Still, he doesn’t think he’s doing enough.
I discovered the J! Archive many years ago when I was prepping to try and be on the show (never actually made it). The website is a throwback to the “old days” of Web 1.0 and is an incredible time sink you should not even look at unless you’ve got several hours to kill.
If you’ve been on social media in the past few weeks, you’ve probably seen a map (or five) of Australia’s devastating bushfires.
Maps displaying alarming red flames dotted around Australia keep going viral. But while such images are certainly raising awareness, they can also be a source of confusion, and even misinformation.
Here are a few examples of the maps being shared, and things to watch out for.
The situation in Australia is bad enough without people passing along incorrect information. Most of the “fire maps” you’ve seen on social media in the past few days are, at the very least, misleading.
Does your Apple Watch keep reminding you to breathe? You’re not alone. People all over the world are interrupted by the Apple Watch reminding them to breathe every day — even if they’re already breathing. So what gives?
One of the most common misconceptions about Breathe alerts is that they are related to stress. The idea is that the Apple Watch detects when you need to take advice from Taylor Swift and calm down.
I don’t suffer from this confusion (I “breathe” with the app when it’s convenient but give it no further thought) but this is a good primer into what’s going on behind the scenes.
With the release of iPadOS 13, Safari took a big step forward as a ‘desktop-class’ browser with a wide variety of enhancements that collectively eliminate a long list of complaints leveled against the app in the past. Safari’s ability to dynamically adjust the viewport to fit the iPad’s screen, enhanced support for pointer events, hardware-accelerated scrolling of frames and other regions of a webpage, along with other under-the-hood changes add up to a genuinely new browsing experience that has made work in sophisticated web apps like Mailchimp a viable option for the first time.
Great read. John Voorhees uses a specific use case to make clear the value of desktop Safari on iPadOS 13. To me, this is one of the tethers keeping me tied to my Mac falling away.
Apple has indicated that it plans to update its serial number format to a randomized alphanumeric string for future products starting in late 2020. Apple says all serial numbers that exist before the change is made will remain the same.
And:
Apple already uses alphanumeric serial numbers, but it has long been possible to determine the date and location that a product was manufactured based on the current format.
Arquette has won multiple Emmys, multiple Golden Globes (one win Sunday night), and an Oscar. A great and storied career, and arguably at the peak of her game. Solid get for Apple.
It’s been a few months since I launched Downlink, and since then I’ve put out a few nice updates—better handling of Spaces, multiple displays, and so on.
But there was one big feature on my list that I’m happy to announce is now available: custom views of Earth!
The full disk views can be really high resolution, so custom views can be zoomed in pretty tight on where you live or somewhere you love on Earth.
The week between Christmas Day and New Year’s Day in the United States is the most prolific for device activations, app downloads and app usage. A wave of new devices flood the market as phones are given as gifts during the holiday season, followed by consumers loading them up with apps.
Apple’s iPhone 11—this year’s lowest end model of the 11, 11 Pro, and 11 Pro Max trifecta—continues to dominate the smartphone landscape, representing 15.4% of all new Apple devices activated and 6.16% of all smartphones activated between Christmas and New Year’s Eve.
Apple’s 2018 iPhone XR, which was the dominant device leading up to Christmas Day in 2019, comes in at a close second with 13.2% of all Apple devices and 5.27% of all smartphones. In fact, Apple’s older generation devices continue getting traction, likely appealing to more price sensitive customers. iPhones 6, 7 and 8 all cracked the Top 10 list.
I find it interesting the iPhone 11 Pro doesn’t make this list. Looks like consumers are being budget conscious or going big, with no room in the middle for the “simple” Pro.
A friend of mine has been away from the Mac for a long time (living on an iPad), just bought a new MacBook Pro.
As he went to wipe down his keyboard, he discovered that pressing a key or the trackpad woke his computer. With his Apple Watch set to unlock his computer, he found himself wipe-typing, not something he wanted. He asked for the best way to disable this behavior.
In the old days, you could shut down your Mac, do your wiping, carefully avoiding the power on button. But with the introduction of the 2018 models, Apple made a change to both MacBook Pro and MacBook Air, so they turn on when you touch any key or the trackpad.
I brought this up on Twitter yesterday, got a number of suggestions (along with some expressions of frustration at this change).
My favorite idea is to select Lock Screen from the Apple menu. This puts you in the lock screen, but will not use your Apple Watch to unlock your Mac. So wipe away, just don’t wipe-type your password and you’ll be fine.
Another approach is this tool, which uses a specific keypress to lock your keyboard so you can clean your keyboard and screen. Type the key, clean away, then type the key again to unlock.
This was an amazing demonstration, 500 drones as pixels, bringing moving images to Singapore’s night sky.
When I saw this, I immediately saw a future with thousands of drones, and then millions of drones, eventually bringing video, surveillance, and advertising to the roofs of our cities.
Last night’s Golden Globes felt unmoored, Ricky Gervais in full, uncontrolled roast mode. Tim Cook was there, along with Apple TV+ stars such as Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon, and Jason Momoa.
Take a look at the video (quick, before the video is DMCA’d) in the embedded tweet for the double-edged take on The Morning Show and “sweat-shops in China”.
Ricky Gervais:
"…You say you're woke but the companies you work for…Apple, Amazon, Disney…if ISIS started a streaming service you'd call your agent, wouldn't you. If you do win an award tonight, don't use it as a platform to make a political speech…" pic.twitter.com/rVRIng2JAH
Jimmy Grewal, former Program Manager for Microsoft’s Mac Internet Explorer efforts, celebrates the twentieth anniversary of IE 5 and the port to the brand new Mac OS X, with pictures, videos, and a few Steve Jobs mentions, all rolled into a 25-part Twitter thread.
Although the influence of superheroes on modern culture is undeniable, the influence of modern culture on many superheroes remains hazy to this day. Comic creators, perhaps often wanting to maintain a little mystique, have historically been hesitant to get explicit about their inspirations. But when thinking through 80-plus-years-and-counting of our favorite caped crusaders changing slightly with the times, their real world analogues become clearer and clearer.
One of comics’ most iconic heroes might also be the perfect example of this. Since his first appearance in Action Comics #1 in 1938, Superman has adapted to the times. The “Man of Steel” we saw in 2017’s Justice League didn’t just happen overnight, after all. Superman’s long term evolution is the result of many transformations and technological advancements throughout the decades.
What a great Saturday morning read. I bet many people didn’t know Superman couldn’t fly in the original comic books.
