Dustin Farrell:
Here is my second rendition of storm chasing with a Phantom Flex 4K. The best shots from two years of storm chasing jammed into 3.5 minutes.
Stats: 35K miles traveled, 30 terabytes of hard drive space, 300 hours editing/coloring, 3 speeding tickets.
Absolutely spectacular footage.
The Verge:
Apple’s new iOS 13 update adds a new privacy measure that requires apps to get your consent in order to use your device’s Bluetooth. After installing the latest version of iOS, trust me when I say you’ll be surprised by the number of apps asking for Bluetooth permission the next time you open them. Some might seem very strange (like Dunkin’ Donuts in my case), but others probably won’t make you think twice about giving the thumbs-up.
The reason Apple implemented this is because Bluetooth has enabled companies to sneakily track your location over Bluetooth by using beacons in stores, shopping malls, and even on popular city streets if they’re placed within range of a place you’d walk by.
While this is a good feature, Apple has done a poor job of explaining to average users like my wife why these notifications are suddenly popping up on her iPhone.
Macworld:
Apple on Thursday released a security update for iOS 12 and macOS Mojave, High Sierra and Sierra.
The update is for iOS 12 devices that cannot upgrade to iOS 13, macOS Mojave 10.14.6, macOS High Sierra 10.13.6, and macOS Sierra 10.12.6.
As always, security updates are important so backup your device and then install.
Engadget:
AltStore works by fooling your device into believing that you’re a developer sideloading test apps. It uses an app on your Mac or Windows PC to re-sign apps every seven days, using iTunes’ WiFi syncing framework to reinstall them on your device before they expire. You only need a free Apple ID (a throwaway will do) to install apps that Apple would never allow, such as Testut’s Delta emulator for Nintendo consoles.
One of the advantages of the App Store is the vetted apps. I feel 99% safe in downloading any app from there. This is going to be the wild west of unregulated and potentially harmful apps for your iOS devices. I wouldn’t go near it with a ten-foot pole.
“For All Mankind” premieres November 1 on the Apple TV app with an Apple TV+ subscription.
Touch Arcade:
Word Laces is not a typical game, and in this case that’s not exactly a good thing. This word-puzzle game can range from fun to downright bothersome as you try to mix and match a variety of different letters or combinations of letters to spell specific words based on the picture you see on your screen.
Word Laces does good things. The difficulty is perfect, the images are all high quality, there are no bugs that I’ve seen, and it does entertain at first. Unfortunately, the grind in the game is unreal and the lack of variety makes it less fun the more you play it. The game has its strong points and would be great for helping children learn spelling and vocabulary, but for the general public it’s just not good enough.
Not every game on Apple Arcade is a gem.
9to5Mac:
The never-ending Japan Display saga continues today, with a report that the rescue plan is once again in doubt — though there is some good news for the company in the form of iPhone 11 orders.
Japan Display has long been a LCD supplier for Apple, but was very late to diversify into OLED.
Nikkei Asian Review reports that the rescue plan is once again in doubt as the company leading the bailout has reportedly pulled out. That potentially also put Apple’s investment in doubt, as that was coming via Harvest — though a separate Wall Street Journal report suggests that the Cupertino company may actually increase its stake.
This company seems so important to Apple, I’m surprised they simply haven’t bought it.
AppleInsider:
The United Nations has recognized Apple for its environmental efforts, including the move to using renewable energy sources. Apple is one of 15 firms or projects announced as winners of the 2019 UN Global Climate Action Award.
“At Apple, we take our responsibility seriously to leave the world better than we found it,” said Lisa Jackson, vice president, environment, policy and social initiatives. “By running 100% of our operations on renewable energy and driving our entire global supply chain to do the same, we’ll bring more than 6 gigawatts of clean power online next year.
“Thank you to the United Nations for recognizing our commitment to clean energy and reducing the carbon footprint of our products,” concluded Jackson. “We promise to keep leading the charge for bold climate action.”
Congratulations to everyone involved at Apple.
One of the things I am most looking forward to doing, once I have my iPhone 11 Pro (in Boba Fett Midnight Green, of course) in hand is heading down to the water, where it gets really dark, and taking pics of the stars at night.
The video embedded below does a nice job of both showing off the results you can achieve with just the iPhone and a tripod, as well as giving a good sense of the Night mode interface.
There’s a lot of background noise, but bear with it.
Great, detailed walkthrough (with animated images) on how text manipulation has changed in iOS 13.
Amazon introduced a lot of new product yesterday, including Echo Ring and Echo Buds. But, to me, the most significant product they announced was a pair of glasses under the name Echo Frames.
Echo Frames brings Alexa to your ears, with new speaker designs that allow you to hear Alexa and listen to music, even in a noisy environment. Most significantly, Echo Frames are designed to take prescription lenses, so they’ll actually replace your own glasses, along with their treated lenses (my glasses are also my sunglasses, so this is important to me).
Apple does not have a solution like this. Yet. True, there’s Siri on your wrist, and in your pocket. And in your ears, at least some of the time.
Echo Frames is Alexa within whispering distance, every minute you are awake.
Watch the video below to get a sense of this. Follow the headline link to see the Echo Frames product page, and to sign up for the chance to be one of the testers when the product starts its rollout later this year.
Tiny nugget I found interesting:
We got around to opening up the 40 mm model and noticed a significantly different battery. This one has a snazzy new metal casing, as well as 10% more battery capacity than the Series 4 40 mm model. We’re going to spend some time researching and trying to figure it out. If nothing else, it seems to provide a tougher outer shell that is more resistant to pry damage. We doubt that’s its primary purpose, but we’re rummaging through patent filings for clues.
Always amazed at how much tech can fit in such a tiny enclosure. Even more so with AirPods.
Juli Clover, MacRumors:
Apple’s iPhone 11, iPhone 11 Pro, and iPhone 11 Pro Max will offer up a new warning if a repair technician ever uses a non-genuine Apple display when repairing a broken device.
“Unable to verify this iPhone has a genuine Apple display” will show up in the General > About section of the Settings app if a repair shop uses an unverified display component.
Good to be aware of this if you:
Per that last, if you do buy a used iPhone, that’s the first thing I’d check.
Adele Peters, FastCompany:
Sitting between two national parks in Kenya, the Chyulu Hills are home to large populations of elephants and other wildlife. The area is also the site of Apple’s latest donation, as the tech company looks for new solutions to climate change that can be replicated at scale.
And:
“By restoring tens of thousands of hectares in the Chyulu Hills, we can remove carbon from the air, protect a critical wildlife corridor for elephants, and support the livelihoods of the Maasai people,” says Lisa Jackson, Apple’s vice president of environmental, social, and policy initiatives, who formerly served as head of the EPA.
Love this. And props to Lisa Jackson for her work guiding Apple down this path.
9to5Mac:
The tvOS 13 update for Apple TV set-top boxes rolled out yesterday, and now Apple has started rolling out the new ‘under the sea’ screensavers produced in coordination with the BBC.
There are ten new underwater ‘Aerial’ screensavers offering a beautiful look at corals, shoals of fish, and generally stunning imagery of sea life. There are ten new underwater videos, showing many different species, coral reefs and more. All the videos are available in 4K on the Apple TV 4K.
Mayo has made all the screensavers available for viewing on his website.
I’ve been on a skateboard exactly two times in my life and both times I eventually fell off and almost busted my head open so I’m never going to try these tricks but it is interesting to watch them in slow motion with Hawk’s expert commentary.
Rolling Stone:
With its rigid beat and dry, monotone vocals, the song sounds like a synth-pop hit you would have heard in a dance club in the Eighties. (Or at least on an Eighties Spotify station.) Close your eyes and you can imagine a music video: awkwardly lip-synching musicians, exploding lightbulbs, foggy streets. It’s familiar. But the name of the artist or band doesn’t come to mind.
That’s because, right now, no one knows anything about it: who wrote it, who sang it, or even when it came out. And for about a dozen years, a dedicated gaggle of music obsessives from around the world has been searching for any information about these three minutes of music. Throughout this quest, which intensified this summer, thousands of man-hours have been devoted to unearthing anything at all about what these zealous investigators are calling “the most mysterious song on the Internet.”
What a great story.
Iconfactory:
It’s that time of year when artists the world over take up their pens, pencils, brushes, and digital styluses and participate in Inktober. Started by illustrator and animator Jake Parker in 2014, Inktober encourages people to draw 31 drawings in 31 days, one for each day in October.
Digital drawing apps like Linea Sketch for the iPad make participating in Inktober easy and fun and this year we’re taking it a step further. We’ve created a set of free downloadable templates that you can easily import into Linea Sketch.
Linea’s Inktober templates are completely free, easy to set up, and should quickly get you on your way to joining in on the inking fun.
There are all kinds of these “30-day challenges” – photography, writing, even mustaches. If you have someone who loves to draw, this might be of interest to them. My 13-year-old loves drawing and I’m going to see if I can get him interested in this. I can’t draw worth a damn but I want to buy a new iPad Pro and an Apple Pencil 2 for him just so he can use the Linea Sketch app.
On January 9th, 2007, Steve Jobs took to the Macworld stage and showed off the iPhone to the world.
The linked article is the Reddit page reacting to that reveal. It’s an amazing slice of history. There’s this Engadget review, worth reading all by itself, but then, best of all, are the comments below the Reddit post.
Enjoy.
Apple keeping up the string, posting a new Apple Arcade trailer every day. This is a great one. How can you not give this game a try?
Disney CEO Bob Iger was a guest on Mad Money. It’s a long segment, well worth the watch, but towards the beginning, Iger digs into his friendship with Steve Jobs.
There’s one moment in particular, where Bob talks about the pending purchase of Pixar, when Steve takes him for a walk, puts his arm around him, and tells him his cancer has returned. It’s poignant, and telling, an anecdote about integrity. Watch it.
Go back in time to that original iPad rollout, then watch the video embedded below. Think about how far the iPad operating system and user experience has come.
I find it a remarkable leap forward.
Side note: That music is Get It by the excellent Atomic Drum Assembly.
Apple:
The new seventh-generation iPad starts shipping on Wednesday, September 25 and will arrive in stores beginning later this week. Starting at just $329, the new iPad brings more screen area and support for the full-sized Smart Keyboard, as well as a new iPad experience with iPadOS. The upgrade packs even more value into the most popular and affordable iPad, featuring a stunning 10.2-inch Retina display and the latest innovations including Apple Pencil support, the fast A10 Fusion chip, advanced cameras and sensors, unmatched portability and connectivity, ease of use and great all-day battery life.
Note this footnote attached to that Apple Pencil mention:
The first-generation Apple Pencil sold separately.
Just in case you were thinking this iPad worked with the newer Apple Pencil.
Amanda Farough, GameDaily:
> As it turns out, Apple is fronting development costs. This makes the relationship closer to a traditional publisher/developer deal. And Apple stepping in means these weird, interesting, oddball mobile games that might not have had a chance anywhere else have been given a platform that has the potential to house almost half of the world’s mobile market.
And:
> We’ve surmised that a game like Simogo’s Sayonara Wild Hearts, which will simultaneously launch on Apple Arcade and Nintendo Switch on September 19, may be considered an exclusive for mobile devices. Based on what we’ve learned about Arcade’s exclusivity, other games such as the bingo for money games fall into total exclusivity (they may only ever exist on Apple Arcade) and subscription exclusivity (where the game may also be included in other subscription services).
And:
> The submission process for Apple Arcade isn’t relegated to someone scouting for the shiniest new game. In fact, there have been a few developers that Apple’s worked with for Arcade that came to them with nothing more than a concept and some wireframes. Fortunately, there are sites like 벳무브 코드 that can knock anyone’s socks off.
This is a fantastic article (note that it came out last week, but I came across it last night). If you have any interest in the business side of Apple Arcade, do take a look.
Interesting article, but I’d suggest that Apple might be pursuing a less complex keyboard mechanism with the goal of making it more reliable. And with a side benefit of a thinner mechanism and a thinner computer.
Apple:
An upcoming software update will fix an issue that impacts third-party keyboard apps. This issue applies only if you’ve installed third-party keyboards on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch.
Third-party keyboard extensions in iOS can be designed to run entirely standalone, without access to external services, or they can request “full access” to provide additional features through network access. Apple has discovered a bug in iOS 13 and iPadOS that can result in keyboard extensions being granted full access even if you haven’t approved this access.
Ooops…
Earlier this morning, we linked to a Variety article detailing a mysterious issue knocking out Mac Pros across Hollywood.
Avid emailed us the following statement:
Avid is aware of the reboot issue affecting Apple Mac Pro devices running some Avid products, which arose late yesterday. This issue is top priority for our engineering and support teams, who have been working diligently to determine and resolve the root cause. As we learn more, we will immediately publish information—directly to our customers and via our community forums and social media platforms—in order to resolve this issue for all affected customers and prevent any further issues.
More as we hear it.
UPDATE: Avid shared a video with us this evening, with the latest updates on the situation.
UPDATE 2: Avid sent us this update this morning:
Today, Avid is confirming that the root cause for a reboot issue encountered by some of our customers has been identified and is unrelated to Avid and its creative tools. Google confirmed that a Chrome update “may have shipped with a bug that damages the file system on macOS machines.” Google has paused its release and provided instructions for affected users.
Avid is also pleased to share that it has received no reports of data loss by affected customers. From the beginning when this issue was made known to Avid, our teams actively worked with customers, Apple and partners to identify solutions and communicate them to customers. At this time, most affected Avid customers have recovered from this issue by reinstalling their macOS. Avid received no reports of incidents from customers running on non-Mac operating systems. To reiterate, this was not an Avid issue, as was reported in some early media coverage.
And from the Google Chrome support team:
We recently discovered that a Chrome update may have shipped with a bug that damages the file system on macOS machines with System Integrity Protection (SIP) disabled, including machines that do not support SIP. We’ve paused the release while we finalize a new update that addresses the problem.
If you have not taken steps to disable System Integrity Protection and your computer is on OS X 10.9 or later, this issue cannot affect you.
If this bug affected you, follow this link to the Google Chrome support article for details on the fix.
DPreview:
Last week, Apple debuted its new iPhone 11 devices, all three of which feature an ultra-wide camera module. This marks the first time Apple has put an ultra-wide camera in an iOS device and with the new camera comes all-new capabilities and shooting modes.
Not all of the cameras are made equal though. In addition to not having optical image stabilization, it’s been revealed the ultra-wide camera unit on all three models isn’t yet capable of capturing Raw image data or manual focus, unlike the wide-angle camera (and telephoto camera on the iPhone 11 Pro models).
Optical image stabilization isn’t really needed on an ultra-wide lens and the lack of RAW support probably won’t affect many users. Apple might be able to fix the problem, which is assumed to be due to distortion present in the uncorrected ultra-wide images, with a software update at some point in the future.
Vice:
Grindstone is f’ing awesome.
The hook is dead simple. You’re tasked with creating paths through a sea of different colored enemies. The longer the path, the more bonuses that appear. The catch: you can only connect to enemies of the same color. However, string together enough enemies and a crystal drops, crystals that allow you to swap colors and go even further.
The act of tracing your fingers across a few enemies, then tracing back as your mind notices a better way through—that tiny, tactile joy reminded me of the early days of iPhone games. There is no reason Grindstone couldn’t be played and enjoyed on a controller, or with a mouse and keyboard, but it feels like a game that was conceived with the finger in mind.
I’ve played several of the initial Apple Arcade games but none have captured my interest as much as Grindstone has. Unfortunately, I’m stuck on Level 16 and can’t get any further. But it was fun while it lasted.
This one is still unfolding, but wow.
Variety:
Film and TV editors across Los Angeles were sweating Monday evening as their workstations were refusing to reboot, resulting in speculations about a possible computer virus attack. Social media reports suggested that the issue was widespread among users of Mac Pro computers running older versions of Apple’s operating system as well as AVID’s Media Composer software.
This is astonishing. Not just one or two Mac Pros, but a bunch of them, all refusing to reboot.
Some analysis by affected users seemed to suggest that the outage may not have been caused by a virus, but by a recent software update that may have corrupted some data, with some suggesting a OS X reinstall that keeps the existing data to restart the machine. Either way, it’s a good idea for anyone running AVID software on a Mac to back up all data right away.
Note that these are the trash can Mac Pros, not a secret rollout of the not yet released Mac Pros announced at WWDC.