September 16, 2021

Apple refutes FlickType developer’s account of App Store issues ∞

Written by

William Gallagher, AppleInisder:

Apple has told AppleInsider how it denies FlickType developer Kosta Eleftheriou’s claims in a lawsuit, over the App Store handling of his accessibility keyboard app for Apple Watch.

And:

Apple has now told AppleInsider that a letter Eleftheriou posted on Twitter after the “California Streaming” event, dates from 2019. At that point, FlickType had been removed for contravening the App Store’s then-rule about Apple Watch keyboards.

However, after Eleftheriou resubmitted the app to the App Store review team with an explanation of its accessibility functions, Apple says that the update was allowed.

This response concerned the story we posted yesterday, titled Apple blocked the FlickType Watch keyboard… then announced a clone of it.

Read the rest of the AppleInsider piece. There’s more. But, key to all this:

Now, says Apple, there are multiple Apple Watch keyboard apps available on the App Store. And FlickType itself was highlighted in a Top Apps of 2020 promotion on the store.

The iJustine, Tim Cook post-Apple Event interview

The whole interview is fun, worth watching. But my favorite bit is right at 2:47 in, where Tim holds up the iPad mini. It’s the purple one, the model I just ordered and hope to have in my hands sometime next week.

Here’s a still frame of Tim and the mini. I think this gives an excellent sense of the size of this iPad. Clearly well bigger than the biggest iPhone, but small and light enough to manage in one hand. Yet with the same power as the brand new iPhone 13 Pro. A beast!

Why Steve Wozniak left Apple

The video below was posted earlier this year. It tells an interesting story, but what made me post it was this comment from Woz himself, sent out this morning (and shared with permission):

I am primarily honored by many of the good comments that describe me well. Some of this video is incorrect or my version is different, but it’s largely on the mark. I got what I wanted (respect of engineers) and Jobs got what he wanted, notoriety, and the power to create good products. Jobs failed every time he tried to create a computer but his own Apple II came with the iPod, much later.

Enjoy…

Some interesting tidbits about the Apple Watch Series 7 ∞

Written by

Start off with this tweet:

https://twitter.com/stroughtonsmith/status/1437975564841803779

This prompted a lot of speculation about just how much changed from the Series 6 to the Series 7.

From the headline linked post from Sami Fathi, MacRumors:

As noted by Steve Troughton-Smith, the CPU in the S7 chip carries the same t8301 identifier as the CPU in the previous S6 chip, which explains why Apple’s performance claims are unchanged relative to the S6.

Much is the same, the primary difference being the slightly larger screen, which would explain the slightly heavier weights of the various Series 7 models.

Also:

With the ‌Apple Watch Series 7‌, Apple includes faster charging, claiming that it can charge to 80% in just 45 minutes and that 8 minutes of fast charging will provide sufficient battery life for 8 hours of sleep tracking. To support the new fast charging, Apple will be offering a new 1-meter USB-C magnetic fast charging cable.

And:

On the connectivity front, the Series 7 includes the same Bluetooth 5.0 protocol as the Series 6, but, unlike the Series 6, the new ‌Apple Watch Series 7‌ also has built-in support for Beidou, China’s satellite navigation system.

The fast charging strikes me as the biggest improvement, which will make charging after a night of sleep monitoring much more practical.

And the satellite nav support in China (and there’s a U1 chip too) is an interesting wrinkle.

Inside the studios’ (and Apple’s) frenzy to get Christopher Nolan’s next film ∞

Written by

Borys Kit, The Hollywood Reporter:

After a trek to the director’s Hollywood Hills compound, Universal, Sony and Apple learned he wanted total creative control, at least a 100-day theatrical window, around a $100 million budget, equal marketing spend, 20 percent of first-dollar gross, and a blackout period where the studio would not release another movie for three weeks before and after the feature.

And:

There, in the same place Nolan has a full-on postproduction facility and does his editing, the execs read the filmmaker’s script for his latest project, centered on one of the fathers of the atom bomb, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and then discussed conditions.

And:

But when one door closes, a new window (pun intended) opens. To the surprise of several insiders, one company’s executive class invited to make the trek was that of Apple Studios, the tech giant that is making a formidable push into movies and series. The company has spared no expense wooing top talent and is making movies with Martin Scorsese, Leonardo DiCaprio, Will Smith and Scarlett Johansson, among others. This was their chance to make inroads with one of the biggest proponents of the theatrical experience, and they took it.

Apple didn’t ultimately get the film, but key here is that they were invited to take a seat at the (well-moneyed) table with all the other studio heads. Apple TV+ (AKA, Apple Studios) is legit.