For most of us, this is just never something we’d ever consider. But read the linked post, learn from this Redditor’s mistake.

That seems an impossibly good deal, 50% off from AT&T.

Is there a catch? Not seeing it. But it does make me think this is cheaper than a year of Apple TV+, assuming this qualifies for the free year. And it also makes me wonder if this is an indicator of new hardware coming.

Apple TV+ is out, at least in the US. Here are a few links you might find useful:

• Start off by launching the TV app on your Apple TV or iOS device. Or, in Mac Safari, jump to the main Apple TV+ page.

• Follow the headline link to Apple’s main Apple TV+ support page. Lots of detail there, answers to most common questions.

• This Reddit page is dedicated to reviews, broken down by Apple TV+ show. The goal is to keep it spoiler free, but caveat emptor.

• This review from the New York Times appreciates The Morning Show, and just glows about For All Mankind. As to See, they couldn’t suspend their disbelief. I say, watch for yourself, and give these shows time.

• Here’s Apple’s official Apple TV+ press release. They seem quite fond of it. 😊

A reminder: Buying a new Apple TV, Mac, or iOS device gives you a free year of Apple TV+.

Google Blog:

Fitbit has been a true pioneer in the industry and has created engaging products, experiences and a vibrant community of users. By working closely with Fitbit’s team of experts, and bringing together the best AI, software and hardware, we can help spur innovation in wearables and build products to benefit even more people around the world.

And:

Similar to our other products, with wearables, we will be transparent about the data we collect and why. We will never sell personal information to anyone. Fitbit health and wellness data will not be used for Google ads.

FitBit occupies a niche outside the traditional ecosystems, a space between Apple Watch and Google’s Wear OS. FitBit runs its own operating system, FitBit OS. My guess is, FitBit will migrate that OS to Wear OS over time, but as is, the Google wearables universe is now slightly more fragmented.

Bottom line, FitBit has chosen sides. Resistance is futile.

Vox:

Netflix has ruled the streaming video world for years. Now Apple, Disney, and other big companies are trying to change that: They’d like to claim some of the time and money you give to Netflix — which has nearly 160 million subscribers worldwide — and they’re going to spend billions trying to make it happen.

Which is why you’re hearing a lot right now about Apple’s new streaming service, which launches Friday, and Disney’s, which launches a couple of weeks after that. And you’ve probably heard about WarnerMedia’s new take on HBO, which will come online in May but got a big debut this week.

It’s also why you may be confused about all of this. What is all of this stuff? How much do I pay for it? And do I want to watch any of it, anyway?

We hear you, dear reader and fellow binger. And we are here to help. Let’s start explaining the Streaming Wars and why you should care about them.

It’s all going to come down to content and price.

Digital Camera World:

The DJI Mavic Mini seems like a great way to get some high-impact drone footage without too much fuss. It’s relatively affordable, is well built and grabs decent quality, incredibly stable footage. While it doesn’t do as much as its larger siblings, the Mavic Air and Pro, therefore, costing significantly less, we wouldn’t expect it to.

I had the DJI Mavic 2 Pro and loved it and the reviews of this one so far are pretty good. I couldn’t live without the 4K video capture and object tracking this one lacks but if you want a high quality “budget” drone that doesn’t require you to register it with the authorities but still allows a lot of the capabilities of its big brother, this might be a good thing to put under your tree this holiday season.

This is a nice little writeup from a Redditor who picked up AirPods Pro from a New York City Apple Store.

Read the whole thing, but two snippets I had to post:

If you buy them in-store, set them up next to the line of display iPhones. Absolutely hilarious to watch a full line of iPhones pop up the setup box in sync. When you press connect on yours, all the other ones will switch to “Not your AirPods Pro.” If that’s not a “pro” experience, I don’t know what is lol.

I definitely want to see a video of this. If you are at an Apple Store and have a way to capture this, please do send it my way.

And this on sound quality, vs AirPods:

It’s actually a bigger step up than I thought previously (I was mostly paying attention to ANC quality). The seal makes a big difference but honestly the drivers are just better.

Was wondering if the drivers are new, and if they made a difference. If you care about the subtlety of the AirPods sound, here’s another, more detailed take on the difference.

This is from the Halide blog. It goes deep, and is full of fascinating insight into the new camera system. Or, rather, the emergence of the incredibly important role that machine learning has taken on in the iPhone 11 camera.

If you are at all interested in the iPhone camera, set aside a few minutes and make your way through this.

Watch the 3D X-ray video in step 3. Very cool.

Looks like the battery is deep in a well of glue and solder, so about the same repairability as previous AirPods generations. Which is to say, 0/10. Feh.

Kif Leswing, CNBC:

Under the argument for an iPhone subscription, which some people call Apple Prime after the Amazon program of the same name, Apple would bundle hardware upgrades with services like iCloud storage or Apple TV+ content and hardware for a single monthly fee. This would let it switch iPhone sales from a transactional model to a subscription model, potentially driving the stock price up without having to increase product sales or prices dramatically.

And:

″In terms of hardware as a service or as a bundle, if you will, there are customers today that essentially view the hardware like that because they’re on upgrade plans and so forth,” Cook said during an earnings call. “So to some degree that exists today.”

And, most importantly:

“My perspective is that will grow in the future to larger numbers. It will grow disproportionately”

I had the chance to be on John Gruber’s show (recorded yesterday, guessing it’ll drop today or tomorrow, assuming John is not too horrified with the results), and we were talking about this, peripherally. John mentioned the future possibility of Apple Prime, a concept similar to Amazon Prime. From the article:

Under the argument for an iPhone subscription, which some people call Apple Prime after the Amazon program of the same name, Apple would bundle hardware upgrades with services like iCloud storage or Apple TV+ content and hardware for a single monthly fee.

I suspect we’ll all eventually be subscribing from a menu of services, including column A, software, column B, traditional services, and column C, hardware. Intriguing.

John Gruber:

Wearing noise-canceling earbuds on the subway and walking through the city is going to take some getting used to. It’s so good you really do lose sense of your surrounding aural environment.

And that’s a good thing. Combines with:

The “Transparency” mode is interesting and a little mind-bending. It really does make it possible to conduct a conversation while still enjoying the benefits of noise cancellation.

And:

Transparency lets you hear parts of the world around you. One obvious use case for this: jogging or running and maybe just plain walking on streets where you want to hear the sounds of traffic.

To me, this is a huge benefit. Traditional noise-canceling means, when walking, you won’t hear that car horn (or, at least it won’t be alarmingly loud, which is what you want in a car horn) or other sound of warning.

Another bit I like:

The force sensor — the flat section on the earbuds stem that faces forward when in your ear — is effectively a button. But it’s not a button. It doesn’t actually move, and it doesn’t provide haptic feedback. But it acts like a button and — most importantly — sounds like a button. When you press it, the AirPod Pro plays a click.

This is a great review. If you are considering AirPods Pro, John does a nice job painting a picture of what they’re like in real life.

Take a minute to open up a new browser window and enter the address:

doc.new

If you are a user of Google docs, you’ll create a new document. You can also use:

sheet.new

That’ll create a new spreadsheet.

If this is new to you (it’s been this way for about a year), no surprise, it’s not well publicized.

With that as the baseline, read the linked article to see all of new “.new” coming. The two biggest are “word.new” to create a new Word document, and “playlist.new” to create a new Spotify playlist.

Interesting that Apple is not a player here.

Mae Anderson, AP:

Apple is giving consumers notice when installing the update, iOS 13.2. Individuals can choose “Not Now” to decline audio storage and review. Users who enable this can turn it off later in the settings. Apple also specifies that Siri data is not associated with a user’s Apple ID.

One of the little publicized changes that came with iOS 13.2. Most likely because the HomePod change and bricking monopolized the news.

Personally, I opted in. Comes down to trust. I trust Apple with my privacy.

Lots of changes. Worth the time to scroll through the linked post just to get a sense of what’s new.

Benjamin Mayo, 9to5Mac:

In a surprise announcement, Apple has announced its first bundle deal for Apple TV+. For subscribers to Apple Music on the student plan, $4.99 per month, Apple will giveaway Apple TV+ at no additional charge.

My favorite bit:

The news was announced on Hailee Steinfeld’s Instagram page, who stars in Dickinson. Apple TV+ launches this Friday.

Not clear if this is intentional experimentation, or different approaches taken by different teams, but Apple is clearly using a variety of approaches to get the word out on new product.

Take all the reviews with a grain of salt. This is Apple TV+’s maiden voyage.

My two cents? Like all networks, there will be a range of quality in the collection of Apple TV+ shows. There are stinkers on Netflix. There will be stinkers here. But Apple is no doubt in this for the long haul. No matter how they do, they will profit from these early experiences.

Try the free trial, binge, see if anything clicks for you. That’s my plan.

For the record, I had no problem with the update, but I did speak to people who did brick their HomePods. Not fun.

I’m guessing this fix is high priority for Apple and that we’ll see a new update pretty quickly. Details in the linked post.

Fascinating interview. A slice of history, for sure, but my favorite bits of this read are when Steve explains concepts. He was so very good at translating the abstract into something you could wrap your head around.

Wonderful read.

This is a crazy story. Samsung created the SpaceSelfie mission:

Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd today announced a bold, out-of-this-world mission as it launches the Galaxy S10 5G 65,000 feet above the earth to give consumers the chance to get their face in space.

But what made the news is not the mission, but the mysterious blinking object that fell from space and landed in a Michigan couple’s yard.

Read the article (headline link) and watch the video embedded below. I love the references to the “space contraption”.

[H/T Robert Walter]

The scrollbar page is interesting, but wish there was more detail and a more fluid navigation system.

That said, don’t miss the infomesh.org link (Information mesh was the one of the names in Tim Berners Lee’s original World Wide Web proposal). I especially liked the hackers.exe timeline.

[H/T @tperfitt]

Mark Gurman, Bloomberg:

> Apple Inc. is ramping up hiring for a team that is working on new smart-home software and devices in an effort to catch up in a field where Google and Amazon.com Inc. have dominated, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

Two elements at work here. First is HomeKit:

> The overhaul is designed to spur more outside accessory and appliance makers to connect smart-home products such as lights and garage doors with the iPhone and Apple’s voice-activated digital assistant, Siri.

Not sure I’d use the phrase “falling behind” to describe HomeKit. Over the weekend, got a tour of some new home construction that was built from the ground up with HomeKit compatibility, including smart locks, smart music systems, and smart light switches throughout the house. The sense I get is that new construction offers HomeKit compatibility as a matter of course. A tv built into bed is popular in smart homes.

As the integration of smart-home technology becomes more prevalent in new constructions, it’s essential to consider the foundational aspects that support these advancements. Accurate land surveying is a critical component in ensuring that these state-of-the-art homes are built on solid ground.

Advanced surveying tools, such as those offered by https://www.thecarlsonguy.com/, play a vital role in the construction process. These tools provide precise measurements and data, enabling architects and builders to plan and execute projects with utmost accuracy. By incorporating top-tier surveying technology, construction projects can seamlessly integrate cutting-edge smart-home features while maintaining structural integrity.

But where the phrase “falling behind” seems appropriate:

> The team also is exploring the possibility of building new home devices beyond the HomePod speaker.

There’s the rub. Amazon and Alexa have a clear lead here, with huge inroads into your home. HomePod still feels like a one-off, not a seamless part of a house wide ecosystem. Feels like HomePod and HomeKit are crafted by two separate product teams, where all Alexa products feel much more cohesive, unified.