Picked up straight to series late last year, Gere was set to star as one of two elderly Vietnam vets and best friends who find their monotonous lives upended when a woman they both loved 50 years ago is killed by a car.
Gordon and Leight collaborated on two scripts and, sources say, were met with notes from Apple about the show’s tone of vigilante justice. Sources say Gordon did not want to focus on the larger metaphor of friendship between the two Vietnam vets and wanted to focus on the darker elements of the series, with Fox 21 executives backing the veteran producer. Leight departed shortly afterward and Apple, which multiple sources note is looking for aspirational programming, wanted to ensure the series was focused on the heart and emotion of the central friendship.
This is “big news” mostly for the Apple connection. TV series get scrapped at this stage all the time in Hollywood. But it also may point to the tone Apple wants for its Apple TV+ series’.
The small screen renders illegible many of Lawrence of Arabia’s most’s memorable shots: Omar Sharif riding up in the distance through the shimmering heat, for example. Others are such technical and aesthetic achievements that their appreciation demands full-size viewing: take the assembly of two images that comes out of a search for “greatest cut in film history.”
It occurs early in the film, just after the young British army lieutenant Lawrence has received word of his impending transfer from Cairo to the Arab Bureau. He lights a cigar for Mr. Dryden, the diplomat who arranged the transfer, blows it out, and suddenly the sun rises over the Arabian desert.
If you would tell me I could see only one film in 70mm in a theater, I’d pick this one.
The Voice Control feature we know today has lineage in Apple history. One of the banner features of the iPhone 3GS, released in 2009, was Voice Control.
The official reason Apple created Voice Control is to provide yet another tool with which people with certain upper body disabilities can access their devices.
There is also opportunity for Voice Control to have relevance beyond the original intended use case. It might find appeal to people with RSI issues, as using one’s voice to control your machine would alleviate pain and fatigue associated with using a keyboard and pointing device. Likewise, others might simply find it fun to try Voice Control for the futuristic feeling of telling their computer to do stuff and watching them respond accordingly. Either way, it’s good that accessibility get more mainstream exposure.
Aquino does a deep dive into the workings of Voice Control and how it will increase accessibility for many Mac users.
Typically, marine photography is done in rich, saturated color — the better to show off the riot of life beneath the waves.
But the photographer Christian Vizl has done it in high-contrast black and white, producing eerily intense ways of re-seeing marine life. You can see the work on his site, and in his new book Silent Kingdom.
We usually think of underwater photography as not a good subject for black and white images but these are amazing photos.
The Bugatti Chiron is officially the world’s fastest supercar — and by quite a long shot, too. Top Gear broke the news on Monday, confirming Bugatti test driver, Andy Wallace, reached a v-max of 304.77 miles per hour on the Volkswagen Group’s Ehra-Lessien test track in Germany.
The insane top speed was verified by Germany’s TÜV, or Techincal Inspection Association, according to Top Gear. This makes the Chiron the first supercar to break the 300-mph barrier.
Someone could offer to let me do this test drive and I still wouldn’t drive this car that fast.
9to5Mac has learned from sources inside Apple that the company is working on sleep tracking for the Apple Watch, which won’t require any special hardware to work.
And:
While asleep, the Apple Watch will track the user’s quality of sleep using its multiple sensors and inputs, including the person’s movement, heart rate, and noises.
Noises!
One of the issues with wearing an Apple Watch during sleep is that many users choose to charge their Apple Watch at night. Apple thought about this and developed a feature that will remind users to charge their Watch beforehand so they can get through the night.
When wearing the Watch during bedtime, if the user wakes up and starts their day before their alarm goes off, it will automatically turn off the alarm.
This is all fascinating to me. Makes me wonder what I’d do with that information. Will there be an addition to the Health app to help me get better sleep? To take advantage of this information in some way?
Another question: Will this work with an existing Apple Watch model? If so, how far back will it go?
Americans may soon be able to get their medical records through smartphone apps as easily as they order takeout food from Seamless or catch a ride from Lyft.
But prominent medical organizations are warning that patient data-sharing with apps could facilitate invasions of privacy — and they are fighting the change.
And:
The American Medical Association, the American Hospital Association and other groups said they had recently met with health regulators to push for changes to the rules. Without federal restrictions in place, the groups argued, consumer apps would be free to share or sell sensitive details like a patient’s prescription drug history. And some warned that the spread of such personal medical information could lead to higher insurance rates or job discrimination.
This is no small thing. It’s the reason federally mandated privacy rules are in place. Apple’s privacy commitment is a promise, but not a legal requirement. And if you move beyond Apple and the Health app, your privacy risks rise significantly.
To me, knowing exactly who has access to my shared medical history is at least as important as who has access to my location or email. Centralizing access to a patient’s medical records is certainly valuable, making it easier for all your doctors to gain an accurate view of your history and medicines. But there is the potential for all your highly personal medical details to become public.
The Nürburgring is a race track that allows the public to pay 22 Euros to do a lap. It’s hilarious to watch the variety of cars that will “race” around.
Apple has determined that, under very rare circumstances, a crack may form along the rounded edge of the screen in aluminum models of an Apple Watch Series 2 or Series 3. The crack may begin on one side and then may continue around the screen.
Follow the link, check out the images to get a sense of this, and to see if your Apple Watch qualifies.
> September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, and once again this year, I am raising money for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, which treats patients without charging their families a dime. > > Treatments invented by St. Jude have helped push the overall cancer survival rate from 20% to more than 80%. My 10-year-old son is a survivor of brain cancer, thanks to the hard work of the men and women at St. Jude. Josiah is in 4th grade this year, and leads a joyous life. He loves music, playing with babies and spending time on our big tree swing. He is a true blessing to everyone who gets to meet him, and cancer cannot keep him down.
> > Cancer treatment has come a long way, and advancements in research are continually improving patient outcomes. Many clinics are now focusing on personalized medicine, tailoring treatment plans to the individual characteristics of each patient’s cancer. One such facility, Louis Cona’s clinic, is dedicated to utilizing cutting-edge therapies and innovative approaches that optimize recovery rates. By integrating comprehensive treatment options, including immunotherapy and targeted therapies, these clinics aim to provide patients with the best chance at beating cancer.
Families never receive a bill from St. Jude. For anything. Travel, food, all covered. A worthy cause.
We’ve been recommending the Hamilton Beach Set & Forget 6 Quart Programmable Slow Cooker since we first published this review in 2013. And after testing it against eight new competitors, we’ve found that it still offers the best performance and features of any available slow cooker. The Set & Forget consistently cooked foods at a gentle simmer, making the most tender roast in our tests. It’s one of the few cookers we tested with a locking lid that seals tightly for easy transport, as well as a probe thermometer so you can cook to a target temperature.
I know The Loop’s publisher just got a slow cooker and is enjoying using it. I’ve had one for a year and love it as well. They are especially good for throwing everything in the pot in the morning and coming home after work to an already done meal.
One might think after many years of Spotlight search being in macOS that there would be no new tricks. But a colleague on Twitter asked a reasonable question and many people chimed in with the same query: When viewing a list of results in a Spotlight search in the Finder, how do you jump to see the item in the context of its enclosing folder rather than just opening the file?
While the chestburster scene in director Ridley Scott’s 1979 sci-fi horror classic Alien still haunts me, it’s because of Alien’s originality and complex creatures that I grew up loving horror films. Now fans like me can continue to celebrate the movie’s 40th anniversary with a new documentary called Memory: The Origins of Alien.
The first trailer for the documentary shows exclusive behind-the-scenes footage that gives fans the untold origin story behind the movie.
My wife didn’t believe me that Alien was “just” a “there’s a monster in the house!” horror movie until we watched it again. But it’s a great horror movie.
A number of malicious websites used to hack into iPhones over a two-year period were targeting Uyghur Muslims, TechCrunch has learned.
Sources familiar with the matter said the websites were part of a state-backed attack — likely China — designed to target the Uyghur community in the country’s Xinjiang state.
It’s part of the latest effort by the Chinese government to crack down on the minority Muslim community in recent history.
I’ve been really proud of myself for keeping the streak going for 3 whole months (I know people who have gone years!) but honestly, looking ahead at an empty September is daunting.
The problem only gets worse over time. The longer my streak continues, the more pressure there is not to break it. It can be so stressful in fact, some people have come up with clever hacks to work around breaking streaks. Contrary to what the folks on Apple’s Activity team may tell you, this isn’t actually healthy. It’s important to give your body (and mind) a break to recover and rebuild every now and then. Which is why iOS desperately needs to build in the concept of rest days into its Activity app.
Unlike Ged, I’m not a “slave” to my Apple Watch rings but, as I said on Twitter, the Activity app does need more customization similar to what he writes about. For example, it would be great to have lower goals during the week for people who work or live in colder/wetter/hotter climates who can’t get outdoors every day and higher goal rings on the weekends. Having to do the same amount EVERY DAY is not feasible for many of us.
When Adobe InDesign was launched on August 31, 1999, it was aimed at precisely one rival, the then immensely successful QuarkXPress. Yet really the whole development of this page design software is the story of rival companies fighting. There was Quark and Adobe, but also Adobe and Aldus —and Adobe and Apple.
Us oldtimers remember back in the day when QuarkXPress ruled desktop publishing but due to a lack of competition (among other things), Quark rested on its laurels and became a customer hostile company. It opened the door for Adobe.
Washington Post: >As summer-getaway season draws to a close, it’s time to face a tough reality: America is not a great vacation nation. > >In fact, one report goes so far as to call the United States a “no-vacation nation,” thanks to the paltry (well, nonexistent) amount of paid vacation time mandated by federal law compared with that of other well-off countries. > >The United States, on the other hand — on the very worst hand — mandates no paid vacation or paid holidays. Zero days. It’s the only country in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a group of 36 of the world’s wealthiest nations, that doesn’t require employers to give workers annual paid leave, according to the Center for Economic and Policy Research. That leaves 23 percent of Americans with no paid vacation and 22 percent without paid holidays.
When I lived in the US, I was appalled at how little vacation time was mandated. Turns out, it was even worse than I realized. Those who are fortunate enough to have paid vacation credits and are planning to visit Arizona may book a Scottsdale spa resort.
Apple sent out the event invite just as Dave and I were podcasting, so we talked a little bit about what to expect at the September 10 event. Apple also clarified what it will be doing to help Siri become better, while maintaining the privacy of its customers.
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Apple’s South Korean site posted a sequence of colorful AirPod case pictures, along with a video showing off those cases.
I tweeted a couple of screen shots of the images (not from the video). New cases appeared each time I refreshed the page. Interesting designs. Fascinating that some of them have hooks to hang the case from a chain.
Did Apple make these prototypes? Are these Etsy-like 3rd party crafts? No matter, I love ’em all. Whimsy!
Rene Ritchie combines a look at every single iPhone over the years with a bracket challenge.
Personally, I enjoy a good retrospective, and found myself rooting for certain models. Interesting idea, well executed. How do you have enough time in the day to do all this stuff, Rene?
As you make your way around the blogosphere this morning, you’re sure to see a number of articles highlighting mysterious or indiscriminate iPhone attacks, quietly hacking iPhones for years.
Earlier this year Google’s Threat Analysis Group (TAG) discovered a small collection of hacked websites. The hacked sites were being used in indiscriminate watering hole attacks against their visitors, using iPhone 0-day.
There was no target discrimination; simply visiting the hacked site was enough for the exploit server to attack your device, and if it was successful, install a monitoring implant.
And:
TAG was able to collect five separate, complete and unique iPhone exploit chains, covering almost every version from iOS 10 through to the latest version of iOS 12. This indicated a group making a sustained effort to hack the users of iPhones in certain communities over a period of at least two years.
Most importantly:
We reported these issues to Apple with a 7-day deadline on 1 Feb 2019, which resulted in the out-of-band release of iOS 12.1.4 on 7 Feb 2019. We also shared the complete details with Apple, which were disclosed publicly on 7 Feb 2019.
So, the way I read this, Google uncovered the threat, reported it to Apple back in February, and Apple issued a patch pretty much immediately.
This is a news story, fair enough, but it’s about a problem that’s been long solved. Keep that grain of salt deeply in mind.
Similar to the Nike Adapt BB shoes from earlier this year, the new Huarache shoe includes a FitAdapt lacing system. Run from a midfoot motor, the system is controlled by the connected Nike app and tightens or loosens the shoe based on user control.
A midfoot motor. In my wildest dreams, I never saw that phrase coming.
But I get it. Loosen or tighten your boots, depending on the activity, and do so with your voice.
Not for everyone, but for athletes, people passionate about athletic activity, or people who make their livings in some form of athletic endeavor, I can see real value here.
When things go terribly wrong in a military aircraft, the pilot’s last resort is the equipment they’re sitting on: the seat. And it cannot fail, ever.
The 200-lb ejector seat, with its 3,500 or so parts, is a remarkable piece of technology that not only gets pilots out of a crashing plane but also ensures they survive the experience more or less unscathed.
All told, ejector seats have saved an estimated 12 to 13,000 lives since the mid-1940s.
There are lots of things I would have loved to experience in a fighter jet but ejecting out of the seat is not one of them.
Tim Hortons is a Canadian institution. I love the stat in the video that there is one Starbucks for every 42,000+ Americans, one Dunkin Donuts for every 38,000+ Americans but one Timmies for every 9,800 Canadians. That’s incredible market penetration here in Canada. But their lack of success to even make a dent in the US market is a fascinating study in business failure.
