Alt-aviation wizard Burt Rutan set out to design a plane that could haul rockets to the edge of space. Then he persuaded Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen to build a dual-fuselage beast with a wingspan longer than a football field.
Everything about Stratolaunch is supersized. It has six screaming Pratt & Whitney turbofan jet engines, salvaged from three 747s. Its maximum takeoff weight is 1.3 million pounds. It’s got more than 80 miles of wiring. Most astounding is its 385-foot wingspan, the spec that puts Stratolaunch in the history books. That number may not seem remarkable, but on a single airplane wing 385 feet is an eternity. It’s a football field plus the end zones and a little bit more. If the Wright brothers had begun their initial Kitty Hawk flight at the tip of one Stratolaunch wing, they could have completed the journey and done it twice more before they reached the other end.
This is a giant, ugly plane but I would never bet against the legendary plane builder Burt Rutan or Paul Allen’s millions.
Your heart has four chambers, two atria and two ventricles. The atria are smaller chambers at the top of the heart, and their contraction fills the larger ventricles with blood. The ventricles then provide the powerful push that sends the blood either to the lungs to pick up oxygen or out to the body once it is oxygenated.
The proper coordination of the beating of all these parts requires a carefully synchronized spread of electrical signals through the four chambers. Given the complexity involved in getting this to work, it shouldn’t be surprising that it sometimes goes wrong. The fault for problems can be anything from a temporary physical change to a permanent problem with your heart’s development that started back when you were an embryo. The consequences can range from irrelevant to fatal.
Interesting post explaining something most of us have heard about but may not understand.
The Institute for Economics and Peace has released its Global Peace Index for 2018, an annual ranking of the world’s safest countries. Overall, the study found, the world is 0.27 percent less peaceful today than it was at this time last year. In fact, according to the institute, the world is the least peaceful it has been in the past ten years (probably not surprising for anyone who reads the news, like, ever). But while world peace has fluctuated over time, one fact has remained constant: the country that has remained at the top of the rankings for the last decade.
I don’t take these kinds of lists too seriously but I am happy to say I live in #6 and will be visiting #4 next March.
The heist of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is something like the holy grail of art crime — and remains so even 28 years after it happened. In a little under an hour and a half, two thieves stole 13 irreplaceable artworks from the Boston institution.
And:
In the early hours of March 18, 1990, the city of Boston was still celebrating St. Patrick’s Day. Two thieves dressed up in police uniforms and, at 1:24 a.m., simply rang the bell. The night security guard on duty, Rick Abath, let the two men in the Palace Road entrance. Abath called the second security guard on duty that night, Randy, back down to the desk. (Randy spoke to us on the condition that we only use his first name.) Then the would-be police officers handcuffed the two guards, and tied them up in the basement of the museum.
And:
“It was overwhelming to see what had been done. I mean to trash a museum like that. It was just like the barbarians had been through. I mean, to pull frames off the wall and shatter the glass, it was clearly not people that loved art that did that. I mean, cutting paintings out of frames. I mean, it’s unspeakable.”
Read the article, then watch the video. Fascinating.
I’ve long been a fan of Jeff Benjamin’s videos for 9to5Mac. In this one, Jeff unboxes his brand new iPhone XS Max, then takes us on a visual tour, highlighting lots of features along the way.
Lots of new shiny, well presented, worth watching.
Will Oremus, Slate, starts his article with this provocative subtitle:
The world’s most valuable company is wooing the media with a human touch and a huge audience. One thing it hasn’t delivered: money.
A few more callouts:
One platform in particular has exploded as a news source in the past year, and it promises an antidote to some of the poisonous dynamics that Facebook had set in motion. That platform is Apple News.
And:
Launched to rather tepid fanfare three years ago, Apple’s mobile news app has recently surged in popularity and influence, if publishers’ traffic figures are any indication. Sources at several news outlets say they’ve seen their audience on Apple News multiply in 2018 alone. Some now say it has become one of their top traffic sources, alongside Facebook and Google. At Slate, which disclosed its data for this story, page views on Apple News have roughly tripled since September 2017, and the app recently surpassed Facebook as a driver of readership.
Sounds great! But:
There is, of course, a catch. Whereas Facebook sent hordes of readers from its news feed to publishers’ websites, Apple tends to keep them inside its app. And so far, publishers have found that’s not a lucrative place to be. Although it’s been two years since Apple partnered with NBCUniversal to sell ads inside the app, several sources at media outlets told me that they’re seeing little to no ad revenue from Apple News.
In a nutshell, the complaint appears to be Apple’s relative scarcity of ads. Which I appreciate. But a publisher’s got to keep the lights on, got to pay those bills.
Apple News doesn’t support some of the common ad formats or systems that dominate ad sales on the web, and not all media companies find it worthwhile to develop and sell custom ads just for Apple News. (Those that do can keep all the revenue or they can let Apple sell them, in which case Apple takes a 30 percent cut.) As Matt Karolian, the Boston Globe’s director of new initiatives, told me, “The juice ain’t worth the squeeze.”
Early days for Apple News. I suspect they will respond to the market, or they will see demand fall.
I’m not a fan of the “capture and keep” approach used by both Apple News and Google AMP. It might be the novelty of all links pointing to the search hub, as opposed to the original publisher. I like to support the folks who wrote the original article by pointing readers back to the source, which is why I actively try to find and post the original links in all Loop stories, as well as in Twitter posts.
Late last week, Apple released more details about how (with certain opt-in settings) the Apple Watch Series 4 will contact emergency services if the watch detects that you’ve had a hard fall.
Before actually contacting first responders, the Apple Watch will try to give numerous urgent alerts: tapping the wearer on the wrist, sounding of a very loud alarm, and also displaying a visual alert.
There are several issues with Apple Watch Series 4 Fall Detection. In the short term, detection seems to be a bit buggy. Some people have complained of the alert firing off when the watch falls, without being on a wrist. Others have fallen hard and not had the Apple Watch detect the fall, even with Fall Detection enabled. These issues will, no doubt, be addressed over time.
A more complex, longer term issue:
If police are alerted by an Apple Watch of a possible injury, they do not need a warrant to enter a home under the “community caretaking” exception to the Fourth Amendment. This is the notion that law enforcement officers can enter a private space if they reasonably believe that someone needs emergency assistance.
Lots of implications there. Read the whole article. Thoughtful piece.
Marzipan apps are ugly ducklings. As soon as you use them, you can just know these are not at one with the system. You detect that there’s a translation layer of some kind at work here, just like when you use Slack on the Mac you instinctively feel that it’s a web app in a thin wrapper. The underlying implementation is exposed to the user with a bevy of performance sluggishness, UI quirks and non-standard behaviours. That’s bad.
Lots of detail here to back up Benjamin’s opinion. It’s early days yet, so I’d expect this experience to get better over time.
I debated calling this post ‘Home, News, Stocks and Voice Memos for Mac’ because it’s not really a comment on the Marzipan project initiative. After all, I don’t expect the solution Apple ships next year to have the same laundry list of drawbacks that these Mojave apps do. It’s a critique of the apps that are shipping now to customers of macOS. These apps are preinstalled with the OS. News was even unceremoniously placed into the middle of my Dock upon upgrading. And they are not good, simple as that. I would have been mildly happier if Apple had offered these apps as optional App Store downloads affixed with a beta label.
And:
Functionally, they are a win. These apps make the Mac do things it couldn’t before. That shouldn’t excuse them from blame, though. These are mediocre, bordering on bad, experiences. It’s not a good poster child for the future of the Mac.
Interesting for Apple to officially ship something like this, rather than hiding it in a beta until it is ready for prime time.
The linked video takes you through the logic of Apple building a custom iPhone just for the Chinese market. You’ll get a quick look at the double-SIMS and the process of putting them in a Chinese iPhone XS, and lots more.
Very interesting. Note that the first two minutes is about Apple and China, then things switch to another topic.
Apple Watch is undoubtedly one of my favorite Apple devices ever. It gives me information and notifications for everything I need, it helps me stay fit, and the new Series 4 device promises to watch my health like no Apple Watch before it.
The reasons to love the Apple Watch are as varied as the people that use it. Some love the fitness tracking, some like the freedom cellular access provides, and others just think it is a cool device. In reality, it’s great for all those things and much more.
For me, Apple Watch provides insight into what’s going on with me—my life. That’s the real key for Apple Watch, it’s a personal device.
I have mentioned many times before how the notifications on Apple Watch save me from going down a rabbit hole when I look at my iPhone. We all do this: pick up your iPhone because it buzzes and you check that message, then you decide you might as well check email; and since you have it in your hand, you should check Twitter, or Facebook, or Messages; and on and on it goes. Before you know it, 20 minutes have passed.
The sad thing about losing that 20 minutes is that the first buzz that caused you to pick up the iPhone probably wasn’t significant anyway.
I get a buzz on my Apple Watch, I glance at it and know right away I don’t need to deal with it immediately, so I keep doing what I’m doing. When I take a break, I scroll through and deal with all of the things that happened while I was working.
If something vital does happen, of course, I can deal with it right away and move on.
As with those notifications, fitness on Apple Watch has become more about information for me. I don’t always close my rings, but I do try. Unfortunately, some days are hectic, and there’s not a lot I can do about that, but I still have the information at my disposal, thanks to Apple Watch.
I try to follow the recommendations for standing every hour and getting in 30 minutes of exercise every day. The fact that I’m trying to keep up with those recommendations is 100 percent more than I was doing with before the Apple Watch came out, so I’m doing good.
Some of the new watchOS 5 and Apple Watch Series 4 features that I’ve enjoyed the most are simple. I really like the auto-detection for exercise. If you forget to turn on a workout, Apple Watch will prompt you after about 10 minutes and bring up an alert saying something like it looks like you’re going for a walk.
You can then turn on the walk, and it will go all the way back to the beginning of your steps, so you get credit for the exercise you did. It also detects when you finished your walk and will alert you to stop the workout. This helps keep all of your information accurate, which is really important when you are tracking your fitness goals.
When I first picked up the Apple Watch Series 4 at Apple’s event, I didn’t think it was much bigger than the previous version—until I touched the screen and turned it on. The watch face is magnificent. The screen is beautiful, and the amount of information you can fit on the watch face with complications is impressive.
I have temperature, activity, timer, Apple Music, date, heart rate, workout, and battery on my watch face. That’s eight items, and there is still lots of room. The 44mm Apple Watch is big enough to display everything and still seem spacious.
Apple Watch Series 4 comes with some new health and safety features too. Fall detection uses the watches next-generation accelerometer and gyroscope to help determine when you’ve fallen. If you haven’t moved in one minute, Apple Watch will automatically call emergency services, and a message with your location will be sent to your emergency contacts.
Fall detection is turned on automatically if you’re over 65. If you’re younger than 65, you have the option to turn it off during setup.
The new watch will also feature the ability to take an electrocardiogram (ECG) directly from the watch—this feature will be available in the U.S. later this year. To use the ECG, you just open the app on the watch and touch the Digital Crown. It has a built-in titanium electrode that completes the circuit with the electrodes on the back of the watch, allowing the watch to measure electrical changes across your heart.
The 30-second test will be stored on your iPhone and can be exported as a PDF to share with your doctor.
There are a lot of other small improvements in the Apple Watch Series 4 like the fact that the microphone has been moved to the opposite side of the speaker. This will lessen echoes during phone calls.
The speaker is 50 percent louder than the previous version, so phone calls and Siri are more easily heard.
The battery lasts all day and then some, so I never worry about running out. In fact, I have forgotten to plug it in on occasion, and it has last almost two days for me.
Apple Watch Series 4 kept everything I loved about Apple Watch and added so much more. I can’t imagine a day when I would get up and not put on my Apple Watch. I have and continue to recommend the Apple Watch to everyone.
For the great majority of Mojave users, its new stringent privacy protection may pass almost unnoticed. If the apps that you run don’t try to access newly-protected private data, you will hardly notice the change. That doesn’t mean to say that the protection is wasted, just that it will get on with doing its job quietly.
If you use third-party apps and other tools which do look in protected folders, or which use restricted features such as controlling other apps using AppleEvents, then you can save yourself a lot of potential trouble with a little planning and preparation, which this article explains.
Things like 1Password, SpamSieve and the like will need to acess this. Thanks to my friend John Welch for the link.
This is astonishing to me. Scramble up the Rubik’s Cube, set it down (or hold it still), and the brain and motors inside will twist and turn until the puzzle is back to its perfectly solved self.
Follow the headline link for lots of images and detail on the construction (that looks to be C++ code driving the whole thing).
This felt like a glimpse into the future, where objects are self aware and know the way they are supposed to exist, using their motors and sensors, and self-awareness, to return back to normal when disturbed.
DisplayMate really knows their stuff. They are the go-to site for a detailed take on any display technology. As they do with every new major smartphone release, DisplayMate ran their tests on the iPhone XS Max OLED display.
In a nutshell, the iPhone XS Max display just crushed it.
Here are a few comments from the analysis:
The Absolute Color Accuracy of the iPhone XS Max is Truly Impressive as shown in these Figures. It has an Absolute Color Accuracy of 0.8 JNCD (Just Noticeable Color Difference) for the sRGB / Red.709 Color Gamut that is used for most current consumer content, and 0.8 JNCD for the Wider DCI-P3 Color Gamut that is used for 4K UHD TVs and Digital Cinema, which are both Visually Indistinguishable From Perfect, and very likely considerably better than any mobile display, monitor, TV or UHD TV that you have.
The figures are in the Automatic Color Management section of the report. I do love the phrase “Visually Indistinguishable From Perfect”.
Mobile displays are often used under relatively bright ambient lighting, which washes out the image color saturation and contrast, reducing picture quality and making it harder to view or read the screen. To be usable in high ambient light a display needs a dual combination of high Screen Brightness and low Screen Reflectance – the iPhone XS Max has both. This is extremely important for screen readability, picture quality, and color accuracy in ambient light.
And:
The iPhone XS Max has a Record high calibrated 100% APL Full Screen Brightness for OLED Smartphones
And:
The measured iPhone XS Max Screen Reflectance is 4.7 percent, close to the lowest that we have ever measured for a Smartphone.
I could go on and on, but you get the idea. This is one impressive display.
Amazon uses fake packages to catch delivery drivers who are stealing, according to sources with knowledge of the practice.
The company plants the packages — internally referred to as “dummy” packages — in the trucks of drivers at random. The dummy packages have fake labels and are often empty.
Interesting read. You’d think this sort of strategy would stop working once word got out. But, since word getting out was intentional (Amazon commented for the record), perhaps putting this out there was the core of Amazon’s theft reduction strategy.
Noted Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has weighed in on early sales of Apple’s new products, and is seeing massive demand for the iPhone XS Max over the iPhone XS, with Apple Watch Series 4 demand so high that supply constraints may extend unless Apple brings on more assemblers.
And:
In a note seen by AppleInsider TF Securities’ Ming-Chi Kuo is seeing between three and four times the demand for the iPhone XS Max versus the iPhone XS.
And:
Worldwide, the 256GB model of the iPhone XS Max is reportedly most popular, with the 512GB one suffering from a “serious shortage” because of low NAND flash supply.
And:
As a result of channel checks, Kuo is expecting about 19.5 million Apple Watches shipped before the end of the year, up from 18 million.
Astonishing sales. Apple has this down to a science.
I’ve long recommended creating a bootable installer drive—on an external hard drive, thumb drive, or USB stick—for the version of macOS you’re running on your Mac. It’s great for installing the OS on multiple Macs, because you don’t have to download the ~6GB installer onto each computer, and it serves as a handy emergency disk if your Mac is experiencing problems.
Here’s this year’s version of my annual how-to guide. The procedure has changed slightly this year due to a change in Apple’s createinstallmedia tool.
Perfect timing. I’m downloading Mojave as we speak.
Today I wanted to write specifically about Google Chrome, how much I’ve loved it in the past, and why — due to Chrome’s new user-unfriendly forced login policy — I won’t be using it going forward.
This is justifiably worrying to security experts. I’ve been a Chrome user in the past but, with today’s release of Mojave, I’m likely going back to Safari.
DragThing is written using the 32-bit Carbon APIs that Apple have announced they will remove in the next major update of macOS after 10.14 Mojave, most likely in September 2019.
64-bit support would require completely rewriting DragThing from the ground up, a process which would take us six months to a year to complete, with no guarantees we could re-implement all the existing functionality.
Unfortunately, we do not believe there is enough of a market out there for a new version, such that it would be financially viable for us to do so. Almost all of our income over the last ten years has come from PCalc, and time spent on a new version of DragThing would be time we couldn’t spend on improving PCalc.
I predict we’ll see more of these kinds of announcements from developers as Mojave end-of-lifes more and more 32-bit apps.
I installed macOS Mojave shortly after it was introduced at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference in June. There are a few features in Mojave that made the upgrade really great for me, so I’d like to tell you a bit more about those.
As with most Apple operating system updates, Mojave has many great new features. I’m usually drawn to the ones that can help me in my everyday use of my Mac, but there is one feature that doesn’t really fit into that category that I love—Dark Mode.
When I first installed Mojave, I decided to give Dark Mode a try. I knew I wouldn’t like it, but I tried it anyway, just to say I did. That was in June, and I’ve never gone back.
There is something about working in Dark Mode is calming for me. I wish I could pinpoint what it is, but I just can’t. Perhaps it’s that I’m able to focus better on the work I’m doing, or maybe it’s as simple as the screen not feeling so bright. I’m not sure, but I really like it.
The only oddity I found in Dark Mode is in some colors, especially in my Calendar app. I have my work calendar set to orange, so it’s easy to pick out important events. However, with Dark Mode, the orange has turned into a yellowish color. It’s a small thing, for sure, and I’m used to it now, so it’s not a big problem.
Dark Mode is really helpful for looking at Photos because all of the colors seem to pop. There is no brightness from the app or desktop fighting for your attention, so you are focused on the image, which is lovely.
One of the other features that helped me quite a bit is Desktop Stacks. My desktop is typically a disaster. I have files and images all over the place, usually doubled or tripled up on the desktop because there are so many of them.
Stacks organizes all of those files into groups. This makes your desktop clean, but you can still find all of your files if you need them. You can scrub through the files by placing the mouse over a Stack and then use two fingers to move left or right. When you find the file you want, just double-click to open. You can also click on a Stack, and it will expand showing you all of the files it contains.
Apple has brought several of its iOS apps to the Mac in Mojave. Apple News, Stocks and Voice Memos are all part of Mojave. I like what Apple is doing here, but the real story is not that these apps are available on the Mac, it’s that Apple has developed a way to bring iOS apps to Mac.
This is going to be an exciting thing to watch in the coming months, as developers are able to bring their iOS apps to the Mac too. Some of these apps will make sense, and others won’t—it will be fun to watch as it unfolds.
The Mac App Store is being updated in Mojave, and I can’t wait to see how this goes. The update will include more editorial content, similar to what we’ve seen with the iOS App Store.
I am a big fan of what they did with the iOS App Store, featuring apps and developers in a way that’s interesting for the user. It’s actually content as opposed to a simple description written by the developer describing what the app does.
The Mac App Store has new tabs that are going to help you find the type of app you’re looking for right away. The categories on Discover, Create, Work, Play, and Develop—there’s also a Categories and Update tabs so you can dig a bit deeper into the store and keep your apps up-to-date.
Apple’s focus on privacy is something we all appreciate, and they are expanding those protections in Mojave.
We’ve all seen those social networking buttons embedded in websites. Those buttons can be used to track your web browsing, even if you don’t interact with them. Mojave blocks these buttons from being able to follow you across websites.
Mojave is also providing users against a tracking method known as fingerprinting. Essentially, when you visit a website, it gathers information about your machine. Advertising companies use this data to try to uniquely identify your machine, but Apple is doing something about that too.
Apple will provide those websites with general information about your computer, so it basically looks like every other computer. This will reduce a tracker’s ability to identify us.
Thanks for that, Apple.
There are a lot of other really great features in macOS Mojave from Home Automation to Machine Learning and password control, but the ones I talked about are the features that most impacted my look at Mojave.
Mojave is a very fast operating system with many features that will help you in your daily life. It is certainly a worthwhile upgrade for all Mac users.
In 2010, I needed more information about something Alan had seen when he was on the Moon. I was researching how rocket exhaust blows soil and dust during lunar landings. The best information on this topic was from Apollo 12, when Pete Conrad and Alan Bean landed their Lunar Module 160 m away from the old Surveyor 3 (“S3”) spacecraft. S3 had sat on the Moon deactivated for about 2 and a half years exposed to the lunar environment.
The Ap12 mission was planned to land near S3 to (1) demonstrate precision landing and (2) to cut pieces off S3 and bring them back to Earth to see how the lunar environment degrades various types of materials and spacecraft parts.
They planned to land the Ap12 Lunar Module (“LM”) about 500 ft away from S3 to minimize the amount of sandblasting that would occur to the S3 as the LM’s big descent engine blew the lunar soil and dust. It turns out 500 ft wasn’t nearly enough!
Wow. Amazing story. Read for the science, stay for the surprising kicker at the end. Thanks to Jason Kottke for the link.
I absolutely love this new Apple Watch ad, appearing in heavy rotation over the weekend. The ad cleverly tells a story, that of a person whose Apple Watch adds to their life, both in usefulness and in fitness.
Follow the headline link for videos of both the robbery, as it took place, and of one of the alleged thieves being tackled and detained by mall security.
Will this be the start of the end of this long string of Apple Store hoodie robberies? It’s interesting to me, and certainly understandable, that Apple Store policy is to take no action to stop the robberies, at least not inside the Apple Store itself.
Be sure to read the comments (there are a lot). There is some interesting detail on what happens to display devices when they leave the store WiFi.
I actually found this teardown even more interesting than the iPhone XS teardown I posted earlier this morning. Mostly, I think, because I have seen so many iPhone teardowns, and relatively few for the Apple Watch.
From the conclusion:
Watch band replacements remain fast and simple, and are even backward-compatible with previous models.
Screen replacements are difficult but do-able—it’s the first thing to come off, and detaches via simple ZIF connectors.
Battery replacements are pretty straightforward, once you’re inside.
While not proprietary, incredibly tiny tri-point screws are a repair hinderance. And they are all over the place.
Several component flex cables are mounted directly to the S4 package, requiring skilled microsoldering to replace.
The resin-encased S4 system makes most board-level repairs impossible.
That third pic in Step 4 is the money shot. Click or tap the image, than click it again or pinch to zoom to really drink in all that detail. Gorgeous.
Follow the headline link, then click on an image to step to the next one.
I’d be interested in hearing about the equipment Tom White used to take these images. I know he used an iPhone 7, but which telescope, and how did he connect phone to telescope?
And I wonder if he would get significantly better results if he used an iPhone XS.
Lots and lots of pictures. If nothing else, take a look at Step 6 (the SIM slot), and Step 12 (the L-shaped battery).
From the conclusions:
Critical display and battery repairs remain a priority in the iPhone’s design.
A broken display can be replaced without removing the biometric Face ID hardware.
Liberal use of screws is preferable to glue—but you’ll have to bring your Apple-specific drivers (Pentalobe and tri-point) in addition to a standard Phillips.
Waterproofing measures complicate some repairs, but make difficult water damage repairs less likely.
Glass on front and back doubles the likelihood of drop damage—and if the back glass breaks, you’ll be removing every component and replacing the entire chassis.
That last bit is an issue. Here’s a post from 9to5Mac that shows off a variety of drop tests. Check out that image at the top, which shows shattered back glass.
Apple rarely discusses succession planning, and when asked about it at the company’s most recent shareholder meeting, Cook said “passing the baton” wisely is one of his most crucial responsibilities. He also said succession planning for all key executive roles has been on the agenda at every Apple board meeting in recent years, though he didn’t identify any potential candidates.
Bloomberg walks through the leadership hierarchy at Apple, offering highlights for each person.
I think succession planning is absolutely critical, especially to ensure that Apple is not derailed or significantly changed if the day ever came where a change in leadership occurred. I found this walkthrough of top personnel fascinating and enlightening.
If you’ve entered your age when you set up your Apple Watch or in the Health app and you’re age 65 and over, this feature automatically turns on.
Nice find by a Redditor on Apple’s Watch Series 4 support pages. As a commenter said, it’s the likeliest explanation of why some reviewers couldn’t trigger it.
