Apple’s standard AirPods don’t claim to be waterproof (though the more recently released — and more expensive — AirPods Pro are sweat and water-resistant), and neither do the Powerbeats Pro or Samsung’s latest Galaxy Buds. But if you’re looking for an affordable set of earbuds with some degree of protection against splashes, the Powerbeats Pro and Galaxy Buds do offer an official water-resistance rating. That’s just the rating though — to find out exactly how much water exposure each one of these buds can handle, we put them through the wringer (so to speak) with a series of splash, dunk and laundry tests.
None of this tech is “waterproof” but a lot of it is surprisingly very water-resistant (yes – there is a difference). How important is water-resistance to you?
After San Francisco in May placed new controls, including a ban on facial recognition, on municipal surveillance, city employees began taking stock of what technology agencies already owned. They quickly learned that the city owned a lot of facial recognition technology—much of it in workers’ pockets.
City-issued iPhones equipped with Apple’s signature unlock feature, Face ID, were now illegal—even if the feature was turned off, says Lee Hepner, an aide to supervisor Aaron Peskin, the member of the local Board of Supervisors who spearheaded the ban.
This is what happens when those who don’t understand technology make laws about technology.
Dave and I talk about some of the best gadgets over the last decade, Samsung’s inflated numbers, and the scourge the earth—porch pirates.
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This is the decade we learned that crowdfunded gadgets can be utter disasters, even if they don’t outright steal your hard-earned cash. It’s the decade of wearables, tablets, drones and burning batteries, and of ridiculous valuations for companies that were really good at hiding how little they actually had to offer. It’s the decade of Google filling up its product graveyard, Apple stubbornly denying obvious missteps, and Microsoft writing off billions of dollars.
Here are 84 things that died hard, often hilariously, to bring us where we are today.
This is a truly spectacular list. How many of these products did you buy or buy into?
The global profits from cell phone sales fell by 11% in the third quarter of 2019, earning companies an estimated total of $12 billion. Apple has again dominated those profits, though, earning a reported 66% or almost $8 billion. When compared to revenue instead of profits, Apple remains in the lead with 32%.
According to Counterpoint Research, the remaining 34% of profits was chiefly divided between Samsung, Huawei, Oppo, Vivo and Xiami. Of all of these, Samsung was the closest to Apple, but it only earned 17% of the profits.
Keep this in mind when “those people” start banging on about marketshare.
Last year, Finland launched a free online crash course in artificial intelligence with the aim of educating its citizens about the new technology. Now, as a Christmas present to the world, the European nation is making the six week program available for anyone to take.
There are already quite a few sites for people looking to learn the basics of AI, but Finland’s offering seems worth your time if you’re interested in such a thing. It’s nicely designed, offers short tests at the end of each section, and covers a range of topics from the philosophical implications of AI to technical subjects like Bayesian probability. It’s supposed to take about six weeks to finish, with each section taking between five and 10 hours.
Not for everyone but if you’re interested in such things, this course is well presented and very interesting.
Apple Inc. has a secret team working on satellite technology that the iPhone maker could use to beam internet services directly to devices, bypassing wireless networks, according to people familiar with the work.
The Cupertino, California-based iPhone maker has about a dozen engineers from the aerospace, satellite and antenna design industries working on the project with the goal of deploying their results within five years, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing internal company efforts. Work on the project is still early and could be abandoned, the people said, and a clear direction and use for satellites hasn’t been finalized. Still, Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook has shown interest in the project, indicating it’s a company priority.
I don’t believe a word of this but I post it if only to get the opinion of The Loop’s readers. Is this even slightly plausible or is it yet another example of the Apple rumour mill playing a game of “Telephone” and getting it all wrong?
The first images you saw of movies as diverse as Jurassic Park, Schindler’s List, and Do The Right Thing were all created by the same man — and you probably don’t know his name. That man is Tom Martin, a veteran art director who designed thousands of iconic movie posters, billboards, DVD covers, and other pieces of graphic art for movies in the course of his 30-year career.
Now, the inspiration for much of that work will be maintained forever as Martin recently donated his collection of sketches, posters, and drawings to The Academy’s Margaret Herrick Library where they will be preserved and made available to researchers.
Following are some of the stories behind his iconic work.
Flickr is in trouble… again… or maybe still. In an open letter to Flickr users and fans published on the company’s blog, SmugMug CEO and Co-Founder Don MacAskill admitted that his company has not yet managed to make Flickr profitable, and implored photographers to consider upgrading to Flickr Pro in order to “keep the Flickr dream alive.”
The letter, titled “The world’s most-beloved, money-losing business needs your help,” starts by explaining why SmugMug acquired Flickr in the first place, and all of the progress that has been made.
“We didn’t buy Flickr because we thought it was a cash cow. Unlike platforms like Facebook, we also didn’t buy it to invade your privacy and sell your data,” says CEO MacAskill. “We bought it because we love photographers, we love photography, and we believe Flickr deserves not only to live on but thrive. We think the world agrees; and we think the Flickr community does, too. But we cannot continue to operate it at a loss as we’ve been doing.”
This is not good. Given the desperation of this, I wouldn’t expect Flickr to be around in its present state in two years.
Take some out-of-context radio messages, some random commentary, and animator Nick Murray Willis… what do you get? F1 Animated, of course! Take a look at some re-imaginings of the 2019 season.
You may have to be an F1 fan to really find this funny but I thought it was hilarious.
Every minute of every day, everywhere on the planet, dozens of companies — largely unregulated, little scrutinized — are logging the movements of tens of millions of people with mobile phones and storing the information in gigantic data files. The Times Privacy Project obtained one such file, by far the largest and most sensitive ever to be reviewed by journalists.
After spending months sifting through the data, tracking the movements of people across the country and speaking with dozens of data companies, technologists, lawyers and academics who study this field, we feel the same sense of alarm.
One search turned up more than a dozen people visiting the Playboy Mansion, some overnight. Without much effort we spotted visitors to the estates of Johnny Depp, Tiger Woods and Arnold Schwarzenegger, connecting the devices’ owners to the residences indefinitely.
Just as we design our products to be simple, intuitive, and capable, we design them to be secure. Key security features, such as hardware-based device encryption, can’t be disabled by mistake. Other features, such as Touch ID and Face ID, enhance the user experience by making it simpler and more intuitive to secure the device. And because many of these features are enabled by default, users or IT departments don’t need to perform extensive configurations.
This documentation provides details about how security technology and features are implemented within Apple platforms. It also helps organizations combine Apple platform security technology and features with their own policies and procedures to meet their specific security needs.
Not necessarily a site you’d read over a glass of wine late at night but it’s still great to see Apple saying, “This is who we are and what we stand for.” Here is the web site associated with it.
Try as you might, Christmas fiends, you cannot kill Williams-Sonoma. I know because I’ve been sh*tting on this company’s catalog every Christmas for YEARS, as a matter of both tradition and moral principle. But all of my efforts to drown this yuppie trinket hive in the toilet have seemingly been in vain.
In fact, last year, I myself nearly died before this company did. And I’m a sturdy fellow. I work out an elliptical trainer five times a week and occasionally eat fruit. I am strong. I am invincible. I AM MAN. Alas, I am no match for a company wily enough to sell Star Wars Le Creuset roasting pans for $450 (HOLY LIVING F*CK) and somehow make it work.
How does W-S do it year after year?
This guide to hating Williams-Sonoma (which, BTW, is a store I love!) is something I look forward to every year.
Lodged with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York by plaintiff Pro Music Rights, the suit focuses on unpaid royalties and ongoing infringement related to 15 registered copyrights covering a clutch of songs.
I have a feeling that there is more to this than meets the eye. Apple is not new to licensing and how the music business works, so it’ll be interesting to see how this progresses.
Graham Cochrane, a freelance recording and mix engineer:
Does anyone even care about rock music, or real instruments like drums and guitars anymore?!
It’s a question that’s been asked and talked about for years. I believe Rock is alive and well, but it is going through some changes that make many people uncomfortable. Graham has some interesting thoughts on the issue.
A German court on Thursday banned Uber ride-hailing services in Germany, arguing the U.S. company lacks a necessary license to offer passenger transport services using rental cars.
Uber also lost its license in London last month. I’m not sure what the path forward is for Uber in Europe, but it doesn’t look promising.
Can A.I. make music? Can it feel excitement and fear? Is it alive? Will.i.am and Mark Sagar push the limits of what a machine can do. How far is too far, and how much further can we go?
The Age of A.I. is an 8 part documentary series hosted by Robert Downey Jr. covering the ways Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Neural Networks will change the world.
Apple on Wednesday announced “Mythic Quest: Raven’s Banquet,” a hotly anticipated comedy series from “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” creators Charlie Day and Rob McElhenney, will debut as an Apple TV+ exclusive in February.
Produced by McElhenney and Day, and co-created by co-created by McElhenney and fellow “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” executive producer Megan Ganz, “Mythic Quest” delves into the challenges of running a successful video game studio, Apple said in a press release today.
This looks utterly ridiculous and I can’t wait to watch it.
We are all drowning in a firehose of information at the expense of not only our attention spans but also true understanding. Our industry has a moral responsibility to help readers translate all that information into knowledge. Into wisdom.
This article isn’t specifically about tech journalism, but all journalism. I believe in reporting the truth, without bias, about any topic I write about. You may not agree with me, and that’s okay—in fact that’s healthy. When it comes to reporting on Apple, which I’ve been doing fo 25 years, I find myself in more disagreements with other writers more than ever before. A lot of that comes from me questioning the motives of why a story was written—which are often sensationalized—instead of enjoying the read. We need to help readers understand the information we write about.
The past 10 years have been eventful ones, beginning with Iceland’s erupting Eyjafjallajökull volcano and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, through the violent rise of the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, the refugee crisis in Europe, the U.S. presidential election of 2016, the first close-up images of Pluto, the #MeToo movement, an impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump, and so much more.
Warning: There are several very disturbing images in this post but all of them are powerful, important images.
It’s no secret that we’re pretty big fans of machine learning and we love thinking of new and exciting ways to use it in Pixelmator Pro. Our latest ML-powered feature is called ML Super Resolution, released in today’s update, and it makes it possible to increase the resolution of images while keeping them stunningly sharp and detailed. Yes, zooming and enhancing images like they do in all those cheesy police dramas is now a reality!
There is just no way to express how impressed I am with the folks at Pixelmator. They continue to evolve and innovate in a very difficult market.
Maybe, like us, you willingly chose to take part in this crazy, collective global experiment: take a nervous system that’s evolved for running away from cheetahs, and give it a big glowing screen showing it all the bad things happening in the world in near real time.
Fortunately, that wasn’t the only news. There were other stories out there, stories of conservation, better health, rising living standards, tolerance, peace, cleaner energy and environmental stewardship. Most of that stuff didn’t make it onto our Facebook feeds though, and that means that what we saw on our screens in 2019 was not the world. It was a negative image of the world, in both the photographic and tonal senses.
Here’s a slightly different picture.
Things are never as bad as we think nor as good as we hoped. H/T to @kottke for the link.
For the past 70 plus years, nations around the world have attempted to intercept a mysterious hypersonic, high-flying intruder from the North Pole and learn its aeronautical secrets. Our Lapland aerospace Correspondent CHRIS TINGLE reports on the secret effort to counter these annual airspace intrusions.
The intrusion by this unknown vehicle (hereby referred to by its codename Supersonic Atmospheric Northern Transport Aircraft (SANTA) – travelling at incredible speeds in a single 24hrs has been not just a cause of concern for military planners around the world, baffled by this incredible capability – but also by civil aviation experts – concerned about a hypersonic aircraft weaving between scheduled commercial flights. Many suspect the only reason a mid-air collision has not occurred is that the SANTA flights take place at a time of year when scheduled airline operations are quieter.
For over 60 years NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command) has taken on the role of attempting to track through the world’s airspace, provide updates and potentially unlock the secret of SANTA’s amazing aerospace technology and the secret Polar base from which this vehicle (or vehicles) operate. Despite SANTAs predictable schedule and a whole year to prepare defences, its astonishing speed and height have enabled it to outrun and outfly multiple attempts to intercept it.
This is the most wonderfully silly thing you’re likely to read all week. Thanks to @movinmeat for the RT of @RAeSTimR.
From now until New Years Eve you can get a six months subscription to Apple Music for free. All you need to do is Shazam something with the Shazam iPhone app. When you do so you will automatically be able to sign up for six months Apple Music for free.
The deal isn’t only open to those who have never subscribed to Apple Music. Apple has confirmed to Macworld that previous subscribers who resubscribe can get three months for free.
Great deal if you’ve never signed up although, while the story says resubscribers can get three months free and the app says “Get up to four months of free Apple Music,” when I went to redeem the code I was only offered a one month free “Apple Music individual membership.” so YMMV.
From across the other side of the world, a colleague has just accessed my Ring account, and in turn, a live-feed of a Ring camera in my apartment. He sent a screenshot of me stretching, getting ready for work. Then a second colleague accessed the camera from another country, and started talking to me through the Ring device.
Earlier today, we posted about the Apple, Amazon, Google alliance designing an IoT open standard. I’d love to see Amazon close up these security holes.
Until then, I’ll limit my video doorbell candidates to those who sign up for HomeKit Secure Video.
There’s been a lot of Twitter griping about the new Mac Pro Geekbench results not being that much better than the 2017 iMac Pro, essentially making the point that the Mac Pro is not worth all that extra money.
If you check out the Geekbench scores, you’ll see that the lowest model of the new Mac Pro scores worse than the top end 2017 iMac Pro.
I priced out the top-end iMac Pro (256GB RAM, top video card) at $13,299. That does include a display, obviously.
I priced out a base model new Mac Pro (went up to 384GB RAM) at $11,999. More RAM, no display.
The pricing seems reasonable to me. And one is the top of its line, the other the absolute bottom of its line. Close enough.
