“Sorry, we can’t help you,” said the Apple store Genius. My AirPods were dying. After just 15 minutes of use, the wireless headphones I use daily chirp a sad little battery-depleted alert. I came to Apple to get them repaired.
The employee said there were lots of people like me, with $159 AirPods purchased in 2016 and 2017 that now can’t hold a charge. But even though Apple promises “battery service,” the store had no way to fix my AirPods. It didn’t even have a way to test them.
If you are running into battery issues with your AirPods, here’s the sequence Fowler lays out for figuring out the economic path to follow:
If your AirPods are less than a year old and the battery is not performing up to the promised five hours of listening time, an Apple store will replace them at no cost.
Apple recently began selling its AppleCare+ warranty for $29, which covers the battery, too. But this extended warranty lasts only two years — which wouldn’t have been long enough to save my AirPods.
If your AirPods are out of warranty, Apple will replace them for $49 per stick — so in reality, $98 total. A replacement for the charging case, which doesn’t wear out as quickly, is also $49. The key phrase to say is “battery service.” (Apple is providing additional training to customer service representatives on that point, but if you still have trouble, show them this link — or this column.)
This is useful info, but to me, the core of the article is the complete lack of repairability here:
The life span of an expensive, resource-intensive gadget shouldn’t be limited to the life span of one consumable component. You wouldn’t buy an electric toothbrush where you couldn’t replace the brush. Or a car with glued-on tires.
Or a consumer electronics device that has to be disposed of when the battery wears out, impossible to replace.
Read the whole article. It’s full of interesting nuggets. I’d change that title though. To me, the lack of repairability is front and center.
“The suspect entered the rear of the building wearing body armor and armed with an assault rifle in an attempt to commit a robbery. The suspect attempted to disarm the security officer. However, the security officer was able to pull his weapon and fire multiple shots at the suspect,” said Sgt. Warren Mitchell.
The suspect tried to run away after being shot but collapsed in the alley. He was taken to the hospital where he was later pronounced dead.
This is the first time I’ve heard of a confrontation between Apple Store security and thieves/robbers. This a one off exception, or a sign of things to come? The suspect came prepared to kill, assault rifle in hand.
Apple doesn’t break out Beats 1 monthly listening figures; various commentators have speculated they are relatively low, the official line is “tens of millions”. What we do know is that one of Lowe’s priorities is to merge the two elements of Apple’s £9.99 a month Music offering: its Spotify-style streaming service and the Beats 1 radio shows.
And:
When it comes to someone like Billie Eilish, who now has her own Beats 1 show, the Apple Music team realised that their pre-adds, which allow users to register their interest in an album before it’s out, had made people more invested in her March 2019 album When We Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?
It turns out users are four times more likely to complete an album if they’d pre-added it to their collection, 1.5 times more likely to listen to it again and they listen to music four times longer than other Apple Music subscribers. In short, Apple is trying to build a better hype machine than its rivals to counteract the popular, but depersonalised playlists that have come to dominate music streaming.
And:
Data from music analytics firm BuzzAngle shows the top 25 artists accounted for 11 per cent of total streams in the US in 2018, and artists still need hundreds of thousands of plays a month to start making the equivalent of minimum wage. In Digital Music News’ December 2018 analysis of streaming service payouts, it found that Pandora pays the highest royalty rates with Apple Music in third place with an estimated $0.00735 per stream, ahead of Spotify at an estimated $0.00437 a stream, which has at least been moving in the right direction in recent years.
These are just a few nuggets from a long and interesting read, with quotes from Beats Radio Creative Director Zane Lowe and head of Apple Music Oliver Schusser.
Apple has emerged victorious after shelling out for “A Christmas Carol,” a new live-action musical based on the Charles Dickens classic to star Ryan Reynolds and Will Ferrell, numerous people close to the heated bidding told Variety.
And:
Reynolds and Ferrell stand to make staggering amounts as producers and stars, along with significant paydays for writer-directors Sean Anders and John Morris (“Daddy’s Home,” “Instant Family”). Fees for talent alone will clock in at north of $60 million.
Astonishing. The article digs into some of the behind-the-scenes negotiations, with Netflix leading, Apple stepping in at the last moment with an offer Reynolds and Ferrell couldn’t refuse.
If you’re a Mac user who regularly uses Adobe Photoshop or Lightroom Classic CC, we don’t recommend updating your computer to macOS Catalina just yet. Even though the new operating system has been in beta for months, updating your Mac today will lead to a few annoying issues that you might want to wait for Adobe to iron out.
Apple officially released macOS Catalina yesterday, and neither Adobe Lightroom Classic nor Adobe Photoshop CC were fully prepared to handle the new operating system as of this writing. According to Adobe’s macOS compatibility pages for both Photoshop and Lightroom, the latest version of these apps “work with macOS 10.15 (Catalina) but have … known compatibility issues.”
If you are a “professional” user of either app, you’d have to be insane to update to macOS Catalina until Adobe pulls its head out of its posterior and fixes these issues.
Aniston: “There was really something exciting about being the first at Apple. Apple is pretty awesome. They make cool stuff. Why wouldn’t they maybe make cool television? And they are all about quality, not quantity, so that was really appealing. And in spite of their comical secrecy, it’s been worth it. Who doesn’t want to be part of the Wild Wild West?”
I’m really looking forward to this show and seeing what Aniston pulls off.
Back in 2013, while everyone else was watching Apple unveil macOS Mavericks, David Hodge was missing WWDC announcements because he was in the middle of selling his company. Even as Apple presented its news that Apple Maps was adding the 3D flyover, it was already negotiating to acquire Hodge’s firm and improve future versions of its maps.
Now, six years later, Hodge has revealed a step by step account on Twitter of what happens when Apple buys your company.
They incurred $195,000 in legal bills for a deal that might not have even closed – yikes.
Thanks to Twocanoes Software for sponsoring The Loop this week. Winclone 8 is a complete solution for backing up, migrating, and deploying Windows 10 on a Mac. You spent a ton of time getting your Windows setup just right, and Winclone makes sure that you can get back to that same setup. Winclone creates an image of your Boot Camp partition, including all Windows system files, applications, and data. If you have a failed update, bad drive, or ransomware attack in Windows, you can quickly restore your Winclone backup and you are back up and running. Winclone 8 now fully supports Catalina.
One of the many features that came along with iOS 13 and macOS Catalina is Sidecar, the ability to connect your iPad to your Mac as a second display, one that supports touch and Apple Pencil.
Have you heard about Sidecar, but not yet given it a try? Check out the linked doc, Apple’s detailed, but easy-to-follow Sidecar overview and set-up instructions.
If you’ve updated to Catalina, do give this a try. It’s kind of cool.
The Supreme Court cleared the way Monday for blind people to sue Domino’s Pizza and other retailers if their websites are not accessible.
In a potentially far-reaching move, the justices turned down an appeal from Domino’s and let stand a U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling holding that the Americans With Disabilities Act protects access not just to restaurants and stores but also to the websites and apps of those businesses.
This is a pretty big deal. Far-reaching indeed. Is your web site accessible?
This is a surprisingly long trailer, filled with detail. I can guess why Apple did this.
Some (if not most) Apple Arcade games have relatively simple stories to tell. Frogger is a well known game mechanic. Stay alive, pick up stuff. Gorgeous, but relatively simple.
Same with many other Apple Arcade games. Oceanhorn 2 is a much bigger game, with more game mechanics to master and a much larger story to tell. It’s beautifully built, well balanced, and a lot of fun. The trailer does it justice.
Available today on iOS for viewers on our Hulu (No Ads) plan, you’ll now be able to download thousands of shows and movies — like past seasons of hit series including Family Guy, Desperate Housewives, This is Us, How I Met Your Mother, and ER, as well as Hulu Originals like The Handmaid’s Tale, Shrill and The Act — to take with you on the go.
And:
Navigate to the Downloads tab at the bottom of your screen to access your downloaded content. To find more shows and movies to download, click “See What’s Downloadable” and browse through thousands of titles just a few clicks away.
Similar to what Netflix has had for a while now. To me, download support is a critical feature for a media service to make the cut, earn that monthly payment. As the field gets more crowded, download support will be one of the features that helps me decide which services to keep, which to discard.
My question is, will Apple TV+ support downloads? Answer is (H/T Zac Hall), yup.
Subscribers can watch Apple TV+ originals both online and offline, ad-free and on demand, on the Apple TV app, which comes pre-installed on iPhone, iPad, Apple TV and iPod touch and will soon be on Mac with macOS Catalina.
The NFL fined Roethlisberger $5,000 for a uniform violation because the star quarterback wore an Apple Watch when the Steelers hosted the Cincinnati Bengals on Monday night, sources told ESPN.
Roethlisberger is said to be “livid” about the fine and is appealing it, according to sources. But NFL rules ban all electric devices that transmit messaging.
Don’t shed any tears for Roethlisberger. He has career earnings of $187 million dollars and he’ll make $26 million this year. He can pay the fine out of the change he’d find in his couch cushions.
The trio of games is very interesting and pretty varied. Bossa Studios’ The Bradwell Conspiracy is something many fans on multiple platforms have been looking forward to. The narrative driven first person experience has loads of puzzles and secrets.
Redout: Space Assault was originally announced for PC. The arcade shooter from 34BigThings has debuted through Apple Arcade with a PC release to follow in the future. I’m always up for more space shooter action and this one looks really good. It supports controllers right from the get go as expected. You play as Leon who is a pilot working to colonialize Mars with mankind struggling.
Nightmare Farm is the most surprising release for me. You’ve probably played a ton of Neko Atsume by now. Hit Point who brought us Neko Atsume is responsible for Nightmare Farm that is about a young girl in a nightmare world meeting unique characters to try and grow.
Apple on Monday released macOS Catalina, the newest operating systems for the company’s Macs. While there is a wealth of new features in the latest version, Catalina is also the first macOS to require 64-bit apps.
For those that have been following along, 64-bit is not that new. Apple has been talking to developers about the 64-bit transition for several years. Chances are your apps have already been updated to take advantage of the architecture.
However, if your apps haven’t been updated, they won’t run on the new operating system. You should be aware of that before you upgrade.
In typical Apple fashion, the company has made it easy to find out if you’ll have a problem with your apps. In your current macOS, you can go to About this Mac > System Report > Applications and get a list of all applications and whether they are 64-bit or not.
If you decide not to do that and try to install macOS Catalina, the installer will post a warning that some of your apps are not compatible with the new operating system. It will also give you a list of these apps. You can decide to stop the install process and contact the developers about updates or continue, knowing those apps won’t work.
I’ve been running macOS Catalina since the beta started, and all of my apps are 64-bit, which I think is standard for most users. However, there could be niche apps that haven’t been updated, so make sure you check.
Apple told me that updates to its Logic Pro and Final Cut Pro would also be released today.
One other change that users will see in Catalina is a notice when an application or web site tries to access files or folders. For me, this happened when I was downloading files from the Internet.
The alert would let me know that this web site wanted access to my Downloads folder. I had the option to allow or deny. When I allowed the download, Catalina also allowed all future downloads from that web site.
The way it was done is right. There is a notification giving you a choice, but it didn’t pop-up every time you tried to download something from the same site. Secure, but not bothersome.
Of course, macOS Catalina has many other features including Sidecar, which allows you to use your iPad as a second Mac display; more powerful Notes and Reminders; Catalyst, which will enable developers to bring iPad apps to the Mac; Apple Arcade; Apple TV; and more.
Apple Arcade’s launch was a mixture of well-known franchises (Frogger, Rayman), new games from designers during the App Store’s creative heights (Card of Darkness, Overland), and releases from high-profile publishers (Square Enix, Capcom). The service, part of a larger shift towards monthly subscriptions, is a big deal for Apple, so it made sense to double down on attention-grabbing titles.
Operator 41, also part of the launch, is hardly that, but is notable for a different reason: Operator 41 was developed by 14-year-old London designer Spruce Campbell.
Fantastic story. Hard to wrap my head around the fact that a 14-year-old was able to build a game that made the Apple Arcade cut. Remarkable.
tvOS 13 is here, but the update is sufficiently subtle that you may not even realize you’re running it, unless you’ve bumped into the new auto-play videos on the Home screen or one of the bugs that our readers have been reporting. I covered most of what’s new earlier this year in “An Early Look at tvOS 13” (10 June 2019), but an interesting new feature cropped up later in the beta cycle: Picture in Picture (PiP).
And:
Likely for the sake of simplicity, in the shipping version of tvOS 13, any video playing in PiP disappears if you return to the Home screen.
Nice explainer. Hoping Apple continues to develop PiP. It’s especially useful for live TV, where you keep an eye on the boxed video, bring it to the forefront when something significant happens.
This video flew around the internet over the weekend, woken from slumber, originally posted in 2014.
It’s a 5 minute chunk from a TED talk that does a terrific job explaining why Apple is different. I’d watch the entire thing, but if you’re pressed for time, the Apple part starts at about 2:19 in.
I love the thinking here, and I can’t help but think about privacy and health as two pillars of Apple’s current “why”.
This is a nice collection of tweets from Tony Fadell, curated by Filipe Espósito for 9to5Mac. I followed along on Twitter, but found myself wishing that someone would gather these in an easier to follow format, since they weren’t threaded on Twitter. And voila. Thanks Filipe.
My favorite bit:
I remember the day when Steve called me to the Board Room to personally sign a $4B purchase order for Samsung Flash for the Nano. “Are you sure we are ordering the right stuff? It’s going to work, right?” It was the biggest single order Apple had ever placed at the time.
I can only imagine the unbelievable pressure of that decision. A huge business gamble, one that paid off and paved the way for all future products.
On Friday, we linked to a Daring Fireball article addressing Apple’s decision to reject an app that helped Hong Kong protesters note the location of law enforcement.
Gruber’s original core comment:
But here’s the thing. What’s going on in Hong Kong is important. A small liberal democracy is standing up to a gargantuan authoritarian communist dictatorship with a superpower-grade military force.
And this update:
Good news: the developer of HKmap reports that Apple has approved the app, and it’s now propagating through the App Store.
According to Spotify’s release notes, Siri support is compatible over connected AirPods and also extends to CarPlay and HomePod via AirPlay. On iPhones and iPads running iOS 13, Spotify will also now turn on its Data Saver feature when a device has Low Data Mode enabled.
In addition, the streaming service says Spotify is “now available on Apple TV,” although it isn’t showing up in the tvOS App Store as of writing, so rollout is likely scheduled for later in the day.
“extends to CarPlay and HomePod via AirPlay” – Played with this a bit. If I ask HomePod Siri to play music via Spotify, Siri responds:
I wish I could, but I can’t open apps here.
Requiring AirPlay is still a significant bit of friction.
Now, a rare peek inside the binders has uncovered all the secrets of the Pythons’ earliest days. Although comic weirdness had been introduced to the BBC by The Goon Show, Monty Python went even further. Monty Python’s Flying Circus was first transmitted at 22:50 on 5 October 1969.
The BBC response, the archives make clear, was far less positive. At the weekly meeting where senior managers discussed the output, the head of factual had found Python “disgusting”, arts had thought it “nihilistic and cruel”, while religion objected to a Gilliam animation in which “Jesus … had swung his arm”. The BBC One controller sensed the makers “continually going over the edge of what is acceptable”.
50 years later, it’s still the silliest TV show I’ve ever watched.
I saw this video yesterday and showed it to my son. He was understandably captivated (he wants to go to Norway to meet Hvaldimir now) and wanted to know more. A quick search pulled up this article on Wikipedia. I’d heard about the “Russian Spy whale” but didn’t connect it to this beluga.
With DuetCam and the release of the newest operating system from Apple, iOS 13, you’ll be able to record videos using two cameras at the same time and save it to the device, share it online or even upload it directly to Instagram Stories.
During the last Apple Event, we saw this implementation in a video from Apple using Filmic Pro. The version of Filmic Pro shown is not yet available from that developer but, if all you need is this feature, DuetCam does the trick for a lot cheaper. The developer of DuetCam, Marcel Schmitz, told me via Twitter that a near-future update will have the ability to switch between the cameras while recording.
After taking on companies that track consumers all over the web, Apple has now set its sights on app publishers that track consumers all over the real world.
The iOS 13 update, for instance, will ask users if they want to allow an app publisher Bluetooth access. Open the Best Buy app, for example, and a prompt from Apple will display: “Best Buy would like to use Bluetooth. This will allow Best Buy to find and connect to Bluetooth accessories. This app may also use Bluetooth to know when you’re nearby.”
But Apple’s update will affect retailers because of their frequent use of location-based data for marketing purposes.
Read that headline again. Does anyone other than marketing weenies think that “crippling” is a bad thing?
