Thirty-three years ago, five friends sat down at a kitchen table in Tulsa, Oklahoma and decided to start a company. Among them: president of Maccor Andy MacKay and his wife Helen, who runs personnel. Today, less than a mile from that spot, Maccor now occupies 80,000 square feet of space and has earned itself a reputation as the top manufacturer of battery testing systems in the world.
Maccor is one of 9,000 American suppliers that Apple spent a collective $60 billion dollars with in 2018, which supports 450,000 jobs. Altogether, Apple is responsible for creating and supporting 2.4 million US jobs across all 50 states, four times the number of American jobs attributable to the company eight years ago. Apple is on pace to directly contribute $350 billion to the US economy by 2023, which the company announced in January of 2018.
This is absolutely incredible. Apple has a huge workforce across the U.S. (and the world), but we often forget how many jobs Apple is creating outside of the company.
Apple has recently updated its App Store Preview pages for stories to allow users to view the full content of stories from inside their desktop web browser. App Store stories have always been shareable as links, but the web version was just a title and a navigation link to ‘open this story in the App Store’.
Huzzah! Great to see this. I often encounter a link to an app on Mac Safari. A pain (and broken marketing for the app creator) to force me to re-find the link on my iOS device to learn more.
As an example, try opening this iOS link to PCalc on your Mac. Instead of just text telling you to open the link on an iOS device, you’ll see all the images, reviews, etc. Great!
Twitter will begin allowing users to follow interests, the company said today, letting users see tweets about topics of their choosing inside the timeline. When the feature goes live, you’ll be able to follow topics including sports teams, celebrities, and television shows, with a selection of tweets about them inserted alongside tweets in your home feed.
Twitter will curate the topics, minimizing the potential for abuse. And you can temporarily mute a topic so you don’t see spoilers for a game you’ve recorded, a movie or streaming episode you haven’t seen.
The company has been researching the bad incentives that Twitter can create, with the like and retweet often serving to promote outrage and polarization.
Google Assistant is about to gain a new reminder feature that allows you to get someone else to do your bidding.
Called Assignable Reminders, the feature lets you set reminders for other people, so long as they are in your Google Contacts or opted in to your Family Group.
I can see the value here. As long as I have to approve a reminder before it gets added to my list.
Tricky to make this work without adding friction. I don’t want zero friction, where my friends and family can add reminders without my knowing. But I also don’t want to have to do a lot of work to prevent and/or manage outside reminders.
The good side is that I can just disable this if I don’t like it. It’ll be interesting to see if Apple adopts this idea.
AT&T and T-Mobile have started rolling out cross-network call authentication services for their subscribers. That means the companies will now be able notify their customers if the call they’re getting from the other carrier truly is from the number shown on screen or if it’s a spoofed robocall.
Details in the linked post, but seems to me, this is a problem of our own creation. Why not just disable the ability to spoof entirely? If a call comes in that is not on my contact list, I want to see the true phone number, no fake names allowed.
No fines. Just break the spoofing mechanism in the first place. And first carrier to make this happen wins my business.
Everyone is paying for books when they don’t have to.
There’s so many ways to read almost anything ever published, for free, that it borders on the obscene. Libraries: They’re good! Sure, if you want the latest release from your favorite author you either have to pay or wait for a copy from the library, but for millions of older books, you can get a digital version, legally, for free.
One secret of the publishing industry is that most American books published before 1964 never extended their copyright, meaning they’re in the public domain today.
This has been around for a while but I like reminding people every now and then.
You walk into the restaurant, scan the room, and there he is, hunched over a table tucked close to the wall, catching your eyes with his. Eyes exactly like his father’s.
He pops up from his seat, extends his hand, and gives a big smile—the same smile his father had but rarely flashed. “Hi, I’m Michael Gandolfini,” he says. He’s thinner than his father was, and full of boyish energy. But you notice other mannerisms—the way he runs his fingers through his hair, how he rubs his nose with the back of his hand. And all at once you realize why it was inevitable that David Chase would cast him, the twenty-year-old son of the man who played the adult Tony Soprano, James Gandolfini, as the teenage Tony in the feature-length Sopranos prequel, The Many Saints of Newark (2020).
Following in your father’s footsteps is never easy. I can’t imagine how much more difficult it is for this young man.
There’s a clip flying around the internet of Bill Hader being interviewed by David Letterman. Hader does impressions of Al Pacino and Tom Cruise. But in this Deep Fake version of the clip, Hader’s face morphs into Pacino and Cruise as he shifts characters. It’s eerie, creepy, fascinating, and a sign of deeper fakes to come.
If you haven’t seen the clip, take a minute to watch.
UPDATE: Sadly, the whole reason I posted this was the clip referenced below. It’s been pulled. I suspect due to a copyright claim. Search the interwebs, ping me if you find it anywhere. Bummer.
I’ve embedded the Bill Hader clip, so it wouldn’t be a total loss.
UPDATE 2: Found it! Weirdly clipped, but take a look quick, before this gets pulled.
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And then watch the clip below. It’s a similar treatment of the opening to the show Full House, but with a special Nick Offerman mustache treatment.
First things first, this is a terrific Apple Card explainer by Juli Clover for MacRumors.
But have a bit of fun and click on the Apple Card image in the middle of the post. Type in any name you like and see the Apple Card with that name come to life.
Mine is here. Feeling particularly clever? Feel free to reply with your own creations.
A few months ago, I purchased an iTunes gift card off of a popular discount website.
And:
About a week after I redeemed the gift card, I noticed my iTunes account wasn’t working. When I tried to log in, it said my account was locked. I searched online for help, but I couldn’t find a solution. I called up Apple support.
And that’s the beginning of a two month journey. Fascinating read, especially if you consider the personal impact of being locked out of your Apple ID for two months.
U.S. airline safety regulators banned select MacBook Pro laptops on flights after Apple Inc. recently said that some units had batteries that posed a fire risk.
In a statement, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration said it was “aware of the recalled batteries that are used in some Apple MacBook Pro laptops” and stated that it alerted major U.S. airlines about the recall.
I totally get this. A bad battery is a bad battery. But my question is, how will they enforce this ban? Will they be checking model numbers on all MacBook Pros? This going to be an honor system thing?
Is it a propeller or not? BMW’s logo has been a hot discussion topic for decades. And all because of a publicity stunt. Find out what the BMW emblem really means and how it came into being in this article.
“Many people believe the BMW logo is a stylized propeller,” says Fred Jakobs of BMW Group Classic. “But the truth is a little different.”
So, what does the BMW logo mean? And what does the BMW badge represent? We will explain everything here as part of our series “BMW explained”.
The BMW logo is one of the most recognizable in the world. Its always been assumed it represented propellers and, up until now, BMW didn’t confirm or deny that interpretation. Interesting story.
Watch the world champion of gymnastics Simone Biles stick the landing on a triple-double at yesterday’s U.S. Gymnastics Championships in Kansas City. Biles won her sixth all-around title. This is two days after she made history with a double-double dismount off the balance beam.
Absolutely incredible. Check out this Twitter thread to see the progression of moves that led up to this amazing jump.
A select set of consumers are finally starting to get their Apple Cards, and the web is overflowing with banal analysis about every mundane detail. Did you hear the one about the guy with a credit score of 620 who got approved? Gasp!
Look, I get it. This is Apple, after all. Anything the company does gets dissected, fawned over, argued about, and hot-taked into oblivion. But the Apple Card is often mistakenly considered to be far more noteworthy than it is: outside of the fact that the Apple Card is, well, from Apple, it’s not very remarkable at all.
A rare bit of clarity from Macworld. The Apple Card, is it presently stands, is in the middle of the pack when it comes to “the best card.” But Apple will undoubtedly offer more and better features and options as time goes by.
If you pee in the pool, it’ll go blue! There’s a special dye in there, designed to detect urine, and it’ll billow around you in a big, embarrassing, pissy cloud, and everyone will know you’ve done it, and you’ll be hounded out of town as a known pool-piddler.
Everybody knows that, right?
Except it isn’t true. It doesn’t even stand up to any scrutiny as an idea — what chemical specifically detects wee-wee?
How many of us were told this as kids? How many of us believed it?
With Apple Card slowly rolling out to more users, Apple has been busy preparing a slew of support documents that explain how to use the new credit card —and it includes explanations of many things we’d been left wondering. Such as precisely how Daily Cash works.
This is the system whereby if you buy something using your Apple Card, you get rewarded with a certain percentage of the purchase price paid back to your account in cash.
Planning on getting an Apple Card? Read the linked post for the details on Daily Cash in real life usage.
In the coming school year, more than 100,000 college students will enjoy the ease and convenience of carrying their student IDs on iPhone and Apple Watch. Students at Clemson University, Georgetown University, University of Tennessee, University of Kentucky, University of San Francisco, University of Vermont, Arkansas State University, South Dakota State University, Norfolk State University, Louisburg College, University of North Alabama and Chowan University will soon be able to use their student ID in Apple Wallet to get into dorms, buy lunch and more.
As recently as a few years ago, a large number of colleges used a student’s social security number as their student ID and, even worse, printed those numbers on the physical cards students had to carry.
This move to contactless student IDs has been a long time coming. Integration with Apple Wallet is an excellent next step.
CarPlay fascinates me because it’s a relatively rare example of a successful Apple software product that isn’t tightly integrated with the company’s hardware. Of course, CarPlay runs from an iPhone, but it also relies on automaker media systems to deliver its experience to users in their cars. This lack of integration shows in cars with slower media systems; however, even when automakers’ hardware provides a subpar experience, CarPlay’s simplified but familiar interface and access to content already on users’ iPhones is superior. So much so in fact that Apple says CarPlay has managed to capture 90% of the new car market in the US and 75% worldwide.
Those are astonishing numbers. Compare them to Android’s far larger market share in smartphone representation. My gut is that this is due, in part, to the relatively high cost of buying a car. With smartphones, you have a massive low end, with some phones given away. Android dominates the low end.
But there are no car giveaways, the base cost is high enough to level the playing field for Apple’s CarPlay and Android Auto.
All this aside, the rest of the article is an excellent resource, especially if you are in the market for a new car. CarPlay has certainly come a long way.
This is an incredible story. At the heart of it: Pornography.
Yahoo bought Tumblr which, back in 2013, was a hotbed for pornography. Yahoo banned porn, and site traffic plummeted.
According to the linked Wall Street Journal article:
Verizon Communications Inc. has agreed to sell its blogging website Tumblr to the owner of popular online-publishing tool WordPress.com, unloading for a nominal amount a site that once fetched a purchase price of more than $1 billion.
Verizon is set to sell the social network Tumblr to Automattic Inc, the owner of online publishing tool WordPress. A source familiar with the deal puts the price-tag “well below” $20 million, while another source puts it below $10 million.
And according to this tweet, the price “tumbld” to less than $3 million. Wow!
“Salmon to our people is absolutely the most important aspect of the whole environment,” says Allen Edzerza, a Tahltan Nation elder and advisor to the British Columbia First Nations Energy and Mining Council. “But … in the pursuit of the metals, you see big scars on the landscape.”
And:
Add logging, urbanization, record wildfires and landslides in the region, and salmon runs don’t stand a chance. But RESOLVE, a nonprofit organization tackling some of the planet’s most critical challenges through innovative, unexpected partnerships, wants to fix that.
Their proposal: Combine re-mining with restoration to improve the streams and open them back up for salmon, grayling and other fish species to return.
The linked press release from Apple details partnerships that marry environmental restoration efforts to help compensate for the destructive effects of mining.
I can’t think of another company that does more to consider and offset the impact of its product creation on the environment. Props to Apple and their Supplier Responsibility program.
The new Apple Card credit card has an iOS-only app to see transactions and make payments, which means if you lose your Apple device, you won’t be able to pay your bill online.
There are no paper statements with the digital-first Apple Card. Unlike a traditional credit card, everything is accessed through the Wallet app on the iPhone, including transaction histories, total balances, previous statements, and payments. There’s no website to view the latest transactions made on the card or make a payment if you lose access to that Wallet app.
According to Apple Support, your options are: 1. Use an iPad or other iOS device to access the Wallet app, or 2. Call Apple Support (not, presumably, with the phone you just lost) and a representative will connect you to an Apple Card specialist at Goldman Sachs, Apple’s bank partner.
Following previous pledges to support HomeKit in its Kasa range, TP-Link has now revealed that its popular accessory will not be updated to work with Apple’s system.
Previously, the company had promised support when unveiling the range at CES in January 2019. At the same time, the company had also claimed that existing devices would be updated to work with HomeKit early in the year. However, following months of delays, TP-Link has now cancelled plans to support Apple’s system.
“Due to changes in our roadmap, the Kasa Smart Plug Mini (HS105) smart plug will not offer support for Apple HomeKit,” says TP-Link’s document.
As I said in this morning’s YML Daily, this serves to illustrate what I’ve always said about CES — never believe any announcements coming out of CES until the product actually ships.
The Morning Show stars Academy Award-winner Reese Witherspoon, Emmy Award-winner Jennifer Aniston and Emmy Award-winner Steve Carell in a high-stakes drama that pulls back the curtain on early morning TV.
Apple is rolling out more teases for the upcoming Apple TV + streaming service.
I plugged the Apple lightning cable into my iPod and connected it to my Mac, just as I normally would. My iPod started charging, iTunes detected the device, and my iPod produced the pop-up asking if I wanted to trust this computer. All expected behaviour.
But this cable was hiding a secret. A short while later, a hacker remotely opened a terminal on my Mac’s screen, letting them run commands on my computer as they saw fit. This is because this wasn’t a regular cable. Instead, it had been modified to include an implant; extra components placed inside the cable letting the hacker remotely connect to the computer.
This was more fruit from the annual DefCon hacking conference, proof of concept that is worth keeping in mind.
Me? I avoid using unknown USB bricks, lightning or USB-C cables. I suspect I might be overly paranoid, but easy enough to just throw an extra charger in my bag when I travel so I never have to take that chance.
That’s right, Samsung is once again spamming Galaxy phones with advertisements, this time for the Note10.
This time around, push notifications advertising the Note10 are being sent out by at least three pre-installed applications — Samsung Pay, Bixby, and the Samsung Push Service. Bixby wants you to ask it about the Note10, Samsung Pay is offering points when you look at the phone’s product page, and Samsung Push Service just gives you a banner ad with no indication of where it came from. I received the Bixby ad on my international Galaxy S10e, but I haven’t personally seen the others.
Does Apple push unasked-for ads like this? I can’t ever recall getting an ad of any kind from Siri.
> The Apple Card makes quite an impression. The white titanium slab contains no numbers or expiration date—only your name, an Apple logo and the chip. Whip it out of your wallet and it clatters onto a table with a delightful “tink” sound. James Bond might be a Black Card guy, but Q would definitely use an Apple Card.
And:
> The card isn’t the point, though. The Apple Card is mostly a digital being, a combination of expense-tracker and bill-payer in an app on your phone. It’s also something of an ad for Apple Pay, the company’s tech for paying with iPhone, your Apple Watch or your Apple ID.
And:
> If you have the Apple Card, you get 2% back on purchases you make using Apple Pay—3% when you use the card to buy apps, movies and devices from Apple.
And:
> The most surprising thing about my testing was discovering how many places accept the tap-to-pay Apple Pay features. Apple says 65% of all U.S. retail locations now support it.
To me, the Apple Card is a no-brainer, at least to get. It’s free and offers significant benefits on purchases from Apple. It’s also a solid first credit card for beginners, helping build financial literacy and an understanding of where your money goes, as emphasized in insightful reviews of Invest Diva.
If the built-in planning tools are not important to you, get the card as a supplement. Use your normal card for benefits and protections not offered by Apple Card, use Apple Card where it works better.
Fascinating deep dive into Steve Jobs’ beloved bicycle analogy.
Here’s the quote:
“When we invented the personal computer, we created a new kind of bicycle…a new man-machine partnership…a new generation of entrepreneurs.” —Steve Jobs, c. 1980
