MacRumors:

Apple TV+ series “The Morning Show” has been nominated for three Screen Actors Guild Awards for outstanding male actor and outstanding female actor.

Steve Carell and Billy Crudup, who play Mitch Kessler and Corey Ellison, respectively, have been nominated for the Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Drama Series award.

“The Morning Show” is the only one of Apple’s TV shows to receive award nominations in 2020, and it is the series with the most notable cast.

I take the SAG Awards more seriously than the Golden Globes in general but also specifically when it comes to the particular categories where they overlap. SAG has more than 160,000 potential voters while the Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s Golen Globes are voted on by a minuscule 90 people.

CNET:

Of all the new services Apple launched in 2019 — which included Apple TV Plus, Apple News Plus and the new Apple Card — Apple Arcade is the most polished and offers the clearest value. Pay $5 per month, which adds up to the same price as one console game per year, and you get access to over 100 games and a steady stream of new titles virtually every week. The fact you can play games across iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, Mac and Apple TV and download them to play offline are added bonuses.

While Arcade isn’t perfect and has important opportunities to improve in 2020, it’s still a service that’s easy to recommend — especially at the price. It’s an especially easy service to recommend for parents, since it gets kids off the merry-go-round of in-app purchases. Apple Arcade’s games can also be downloaded to mobile devices to play in the car and while traveling. Plus, the catalog is curated so there’s very little objectionable content. This is why Apple Arcade has been made a CNET Editors’ Choice pick for 2019.

While there is some valid criticism of Apple Arcade, there’s no doubt that for most game players, it’s an incredible value.

Popular Mechanics:

Spend a few tens of thousands on optional upgrades, and the new Mac Pro becomes a list of superlative performance specs. But those numbers also come with a lot of heat. That means Apple engineers have to find creative ways to exploit the laws of thermodynamics.

“Years ago, we started redistributing the blades,” Chris Ligtenberg, Senior Director of Product Design says. “They’re still dynamically balanced, but they’re actually randomized in terms of their BPF [blade pass frequency]. So you don’t get huge harmonics that tend to be super annoying.”

Really interesting technical discussion about the innards of the Mac Pro.

Vincent Laforet has also had a Mac Pro and associated hardware for the past two weeks. Rather than film an unboxing video and first impressions, Vincent shared his experience in a detailed blog post.

A few quotes:

In short: the Mac Pro makes post-production feel seamless. One might even say that at times the post-process can actually become delightful. And to be clear, the words “seamless” and “delightful” are seldom if ever used in conjunction with the words “post-production.”

And:

For tech geeks, this is the equivalent of punching the accelerator of a top of the line sports car.

And:

I’ve actually caught myself saying the word Gigabyte more than once when I meant Terabyte a few times when speaking with others – given how fast certain operations have become (notably with the internal ultra fast SSDs that can reach nearly 3,000 Megabytes per SECOND.) Copying several hundred gigabytes of data can take just a few minutes now – not hours (or days with slower drives or interfaces that are just 2-4 years old.)

If you have the need, the need for speed, read the whole thing.

Nikkei Asian Review:

Cook was speaking exclusively with Nikkei in Tokyo, where he visited local Apple stores and ink supplier Seiko Advance. He also met technology developers including the self-taught 84-year-old Masako Wakamiya.

A lot of cherry-picked quotes. I’d love to see a video of the entire conversation (ping me if you run across one).

Bloomberg:

Every time a customer waves an iPhone at the register to use the new card, a retailer may feel an extra pinch on its profits.

That’s because the card, marketed by Apple and backed by Goldman Sachs Group Inc., is designated “elite,” which allows it to levy significantly higher interchange fees on each swipe or tap. Those fees aren’t paid by the consumer but by the merchant as part of the cost of accepting credit cards.

And:

Card networks tell merchants the higher costs are justified because premium cardholders also have more buying power—so they’ll spend more.

Interesting article. This is not just Apple Card, but the entire category of so-called “elite” credit cards.

FastCompany:

Today, Paul Pierce is a distinguished designer at Motorola. But 15 years ago, he was on the original design team of the Razr—the impossibly thin phone that would go on to change everything—and he wasn’t so sure about how it was shaping up. Specifically, he wasn’t sure about that big chin.

Another detail the design team obsessed over? How the phone sounded when it closed. They were particular about the materials used on the bump stops that padded the screen from the keyboard: Technically, a material like felt could have made this gesture silent—but what fun would it be to hang up on someone without an audible snap?

I absolutely loved my Razr. It still might be the phone that is the most tactile and the most fun to absentmindedly play with and spin in your hands like a fidget spinner.

Reuters:

U.S. senators grilled Apple and Facebook executives over their encryption practices on Tuesday and threatened to regulate the technology unless the companies make encrypted user data accessible to law enforcement.

At a U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Democrats and Republicans presented a rare united front as they invoked child abuse and mass shooting cases in which encryption has blocked access to key evidence and stymied investigations.

“You’re going to find a way to do this or we’re going to go do it for you,” said Senator Lindsey Graham. “We’re not going to live in a world where a bunch of child abusers have a safe haven to practice their craft. Period. End of discussion.”

This is a battle that is far from over and one I fear these companies will lose if only because of the ignorance of the members of Congress and the population in general.

Bloomberg:

Apple started selling its new Mac Pro desktop computer on Tuesday, complete with eye-watering pricing options that can push the cost north of $50,000.

The new machine, built in Austin, Texas after Apple got tariff relief from the Trump administration, starts at $5,999 for specifications that some programmers, video editors, and photographers might consider measly. Fully loaded, the computer costs more than $52,000, and that’s excluding the optional $400 wheels for easily moving the machine around an office.

For some professional users, the cost of Apple’s new computer is just part of doing business. But for most consumers, the Mac Pro’s price is shocking.

While know-it-all pundits avail themselves of the opportunity to take potshots at Apple over being “out of touch,” almost every one of them seem to be oblivious to the fact that this is not a consumer-level machine. It is a high-end machine for professionals and is priced accordingly.

I personally know two scientists and one video guy who are salivating over this machine. They’ll be maxing it out and happy to do so because they know they can work faster and better and make more money over the next 12 months than they would otherwise. Saying, as Macworld does, “A maxxed-out Mac Pro costs more than a 2020 Corvette convertible!” is utterly ridiculous. Lots of things cost less than a maxxed-out Mac Pro. But lots of things cost more as well.

Pundits should take some time to talk to Apple’s target market for this machine. Few of them blink at the price. They just want to know, “Does it work as advertised? Yes? I’ll buy it.”

Iconfactory:

The app will be transitioning to a subscription payment model. This will happen with the release of Linea 3.0 sometime early in 2020.

We tried hard to avoid a subscription, but the costs to maintain the app are much higher than the income from new sales. This is obviously not a sustainable situation! We have two options:

Let the app die a slow, painful, and unsupported death Find a source of recurring revenue

I hate the subscription model as much as anyone but given this blog post, I completely understand why Iconfactory, a well respected and trusted Mac/iOS developer, feels it needs to go this route. The best news is the subscription for Linea Sketch 3 will only be $10/year. And, if you buy/bought the app in 2019 (it’s only $5), you’ll get a year of the new version for free.

Needham analyst Laura Martin, who downgraded the California-based tech giant to “underperform”, believes Netflix will have to add a lower priced service to compete with competitors including Apple Inc’s Apple TV+ service and Walt Disney Co’s Disney+.

I don’t buy it. If all Netflix did was show old re-runs of shows, then this analysis would make some sense, but that’s not the only thing Netflix does. It’s original programming is among the best in the industry right now. Apple, Disney, and Amazon are add-ons to Netflix and I don’t see that changing in the next year.

A number of items that were stolen from the family of Ozzy Osbourne’s late guitarist Randy Rhoads were recovered early Sunday when an Eyewitness News viewer spotted them in a dumpster.

Someone had broken into the Rhoads family music school in North Hollywood on Thanksgiving night and stole irreplaceable instruments, memorabilia and photos.

I’m so glad the family got these items back. Randy was one of the great guitarists of our time.

Eye-popping read. Impossible to me that this is real, but it is.

Interesting to dig through the top level application for the rack mount version of the coming Mac Pro, if you like that sort of thing.

But follow the headline link to this sub-page, then scroll through the PDF to page 10 for an image of the rack mount Mac Pro in the wild. Sweet setup. Insert joke about Ikea, color choices, wheels, etc. here.

Benjamin Mayo, 9to5Mac:

The 6% cashback offer is only available on Apple hardware purchases made in-store or online. This means outright purchases of iPhone, AirPods or a new Mac for example. 6% cashback is a good promo for Apple, but if you are hunting for the best deal then you are still probably better off looking elsewhere.

Assuming the new Mac Pro is eligible, at a floor of $5,999 for the base model, that’s $359.94 cash back. No small potatoes.

Bloomberg:

The company’s senior director of privacy Jane Horvath will be speaking on a “Chief Privacy Officer Roundtable” on Jan. 7, according to the CES agenda.

And:

Apple’s last major official appearance at CES was in 1992 when then Chief Executive Officer John Sculley gave a presentation at a Chicago version of the summit to introduce the failed Newton device.

Back in the day, Apple regularly appeared at conferences, highlighted by keynotes at Macworld Expo. Apple’s disappearance from Macworld and CES was a jarring change, but signified a change in controlling their message, with announcements at conferences and events that they controlled completely, including WWDC.

The New Yorker:

Gibson was far from the first sci-fi writer to explore computers and their consequences; a movement, soon to be known as cyberpunk, was already under way. But “Neuromancer” changed science fiction by imagining a computer-saturated world that felt materially and aesthetically real. Gibson’s hardboiled prose was fanatically attentive to design and texture.

The ten novels that Gibson has written since have slid steadily closer to the present. In the nineties, he wrote a trilogy set in the two-thousands. The novels he published in 2003, 2007, and 2010 were set in the year before their publication. Many works of literary fiction claim to be set in the present day. In fact, they take place in the recent past, conjuring a world that feels real because it’s familiar, and therefore out of date. Gibson’s strategy of extreme presentness reflects his belief that the current moment is itself science-fictional. “The future is already here,” he has said. “It’s just not very evenly distributed.”

When I was a kid, I loved Isaac Asimov’s view of the future. As an adult, I understand and expect Gibson’s brilliant writing to be more representative of it.

PCMag:

In the US, 20 percent of small businesses can’t make it a year, half are dead in five years, and a full 70 percent can’t make it past a decade, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Success is even harder if that business is all about one particular product—especially if that product is tech-related.

That’s what we’re here to reflect on: 10 years of tech product failure. Not the small ones like those above, but the products and services you came to love, or wanted to love, or can’t understand why they didn’t get any love. Some are great ideas that never went anywhere. Some were incredibly flawed products that never should have made it past prototyping. A few are glorious vaporware—products rumored, promised, or even guaranteed, but that never came to be.

Great list. Hard to argue with many of them.

Two years ago, Apple unveiled Intelligent Tracking Prevention for Safari which aimed to protect users of the browsers from unwanted tracking. It was yet another in a long-running move towards more privacy on behalf of the company for its customers, and this technology, in particular, seems to be having a major impact on the advertising industry.

The ad industry has hated Apple’s implementation of privacy features for its users from the very beginning. To be absolutely clear, the only reason we needed these types of features in the first place is because of the slimy way the ad industry tracked us in the first place.

Apple’s Siri Remote has always been a bone of contention for Apple TV users. And with Swiss fiber TV company Salt giving Apple TV 4K boxes to its subscribers it was only a matter of time before they complained. And when they did, Salt made an alternative.

It’s cool, but for my uses right now, the ATV remote seems to work fine.

US only. Enter an address, check the list of available stations.

Click on a callsign for details. Drag the location around the map to check out other places.

This came out a few weeks ago, but I had some fun playing with it over the weekend.

From the Apple support article:

Apple Music Replay uses your Apple Music listening history to calculate your top songs, albums, and artists throughout the year. Apple Music Replay also uses a variety of other factors to determine the music that you’ve played this year such as:

• Music played on any device that’s signed in to Apple Music with your Apple ID
• Not including music played on devices that have “Use Listening History” turned off in Settings
• Counting only music that’s available in the Apple Music catalog
• Songs played in your library must be synced with your Apple Music subscription
• A minimum amount of plays and time spent listening to a song, artist, or album

Interesting that this is only available on the beta Apple Music web app. You can save the playlist and share it, just like any other playlist.

Apple has been nominated for big awards before, taken home some significant hardware. But this is the first of this sort of recognition for Apple TV+, an important step for the service.

And if they win? Huge recognition, huge validation.

The Golden Globes are January 5th on NBC.

MacRumors:

Apple plans to release the new Mac Pro and the Pro Display XDR on Tuesday, December 10, according to “Save the Date” emails that Apple began sending out to some customers this afternoon.

Apple in November confirmed that the ‌Mac Pro‌ and Pro Display XDR would come in December, but until now, the company had not provided a specific date. Apple’s emails say orders will begin on December 10, so presumably shipments will begin soon after orders open up.

I saw this email and thought, “Oh cool!” Then I realized I’d have to sell significant body parts to afford one.

CNET:

When you buy a new lightbulb, you know that it’s energy efficient and will last for a while because of an Energy Star label on the package. But when you buy an internet-connected lightbulb, there’s almost no way of telling if it’s secure from hackers.

Underwriters Laboratories, the electronics safety organization, is looking to fix that by introducing security ratings for internet-of-things devices. UL is known for its safety standards certifications for products, ensuring, for instance, that the charger you bought online isn’t a counterfeit that’ll set your house on fire.

Now UL wants to set the security standard for cybersecurity threats — a notorious issue for IoT devices.

I’m betting nothing actually gets done until there is a major security breach.