There’s an Apple Store targeting crime wave going on in the San Francisco Bay area.

Click through to the article, watch the video. Security guards politely open the doors for the alleged thieves, then one of those same alleged thieves holds the door for the fleeing gang. It’s all so bizarre.

And technically, I suppose this is burglary, not robbery. Just saying.

Petapixel:

Canon has officially unveiled the new EOS R, the company’s first full-frame mirrorless competitor.

At the core of the EOS R is a 30.3-megapixel full-frame CMOS sensor with an ISO range of 100-40000 (expandable to 50-102400), backed by a DIGIC 8 image processor. There is a low pass filter in front of the sensor that helps combat moiré patterns at the cost of slightly reduced sharpness. The camera has an 8fps continuous shooting speed (for bursts of up to 100 max-quality JPEGs, 47 RAW, or 78 C-RAW), a shutter lag is as short as 50 milliseconds, and a startup time of 0.9 seconds.

After last week’s announcement of the Nikon Z7, we knew this was coming. I can’t wait for the head to head reviews of them both.

Russell Wilson:

Every Saturday morning, my family would go to the grocery store, and I only had one thing on my mind. I’d hop up onto the front of the cart like I was the captain of a pirate ship or something, and I’d point my mom in the direction of Aisle 9.

But she wasn’t having it. First we had to get the boring stuff. Veggies. Bread. You know, all that stuff.

Then we’d finally get to Aisle 9, and it was on.

The greatest aisle in the world.

The cereal aisle.

This story doesn’t go the way you think it does. I took my “new” 12-year-old son to his first day of high school yesterday. It’s the first time I’ve had the honour of doing that. Walking home, I shed a couple of tears – of happiness, of pride and just a little bit of fear. In that moment, I realized, “Holy crap – I’m a father now. I’ve got responsibilities towards this kid. I’ve got to help him grow up to be the man he wants to be.” Russell Wilson is lucky he had a dad to help show him the way. Not all kids do.

Skype:

When we added video to Skype calls over ten years ago, the ability to share important moments with loved ones took a big step forward. Today, we’re introducing call recording to help capture special moments in a Skype call with your loved ones or record important meetings with your colleagues.

As soon as you start recording, everyone in the call is notified that the call is being recorded—so there are no surprises. If you are on a video call, Skype will record everyone’s video as well as any screens shared during the call. After the call, you can save and share the recorded call for the next 30 days.

I don’t use Skype for my podcasts but I know a lot of podcasters do so this may come as welcome news to them and other users of the application.

MacPaw:

Hey Mac users, we’ve got an app premiere for you. Our new baby, CleanMyMac X has just been born. Why calling it X? Firstly, because this year it’s our 10th anniversary and the X is our tribute to that and the first CleanMyMac created by Oleksandr Kosovan back in 2008. Next up, we believe this version is much more than another numerical in the line — it is X times better.

In general, I hate these kinds of apps. I simply don’t trust them to do it properly or to not screw up my system. But, I’ll tell you a story.

I’ve been having an issue with one of my external drives for a month. It’s not a crucial thing. Just annoying. Ran Disk Utility First Aid on the drive and “nothing was found”. This AM, I did a full backup of my system (told you I don’t trust these apps) then I ran CleanMyMac X. It solved the problem immediately as well as doing all the other cool things CleanMyMac does. This is not a review of the product (I haven’t put it through its paces yet) but I like the look and UI of the app as well as the ease of use through MacPaw’s Setapp,

Ken Kocienda:

When I started working with a small team of engineers and designers at Apple in late 2005 to create a touchscreen operating system for Purple—the codename of the super-secret skunk works project that became the iPhone—we didn’t know if typing on a small, touch-sensitive sheet of glass was technologically feasible or a fool’s errand. In those early days of work on Purple, the keyboard was a daunting prospect, and we referred to it, often quite nervously, as a science project. It wasn’t easy to figure out how software might come to our rescue and how much our algorithms should be allowed to make suggestions or intervene to fix typing mistakes. I wrote the code for iPhone autocorrection based on an analysis of the words we type most commonly, the frequency of words relative to others, and the errors we’re most likely to make on a touchscreen keyboard.

More than 10 years after the initial release of the iPhone, the state of the art now is much as it was then. Even with recent advances in AI and machine learning, the core problem remains the same: Software doesn’t understand the nuance of human communication.

Interesting piece. This is part of the publicity effort to promote Ken’s new book, Creative Selection, which went on sale yesterday. Looking forward to reading this.

How running a beta of iOS 12 got one Reddit user a free replacement for their damaged iPhone X.

Ben Lovejoy, 9to5Mac:

Apple is likely to establish a technical lead over most smartphone brands as the company moves to a 7nm process for the A12 chip that will power this year’s flagship iPhones. That lead could last well into next year.

And:

This leaves only Apple chipmaker TSMC with 7nm process capabilities, though Samsung has announced plans to develop its own 7nm process in an attempt to win back some of Apple’s A-series chip business. Apple used to split its chip orders between Samsung and TSMC, but the Taiwanese chipmaker beat Samsung to a 10nm process, and has been Apple’s sole supplier since the iPhone 7.

Fascinating. A smaller gap between chip elements means more elements per chip, faster data flow, less heat, and more energy efficiency.

Being first in this particular space to 7nm seems a big deal. That said, Huawei has a 7nm-chip-based phone said to ship in October, and Samsung is hard at work on their own 7nm chip, said to ship in early 2019.

As we move close to the official release of iOS 12, Apple has updated their official iOS adoption tracker. 85% of active devices, as measured by the iOS App Store, are using iOS 11, as shown in the pie chart below.

As we always do when Apple updates their numbers, let’s take a look at Android’s official adoption rate numbers. Here ya go:

The two most recent versions of Android are Android 9 Pie (officially released on August 6th) and Android Oreo (August 21, 2017). As you can see, Pie has not yet made a dent in the universe and Oreo is approaching 15% (when you combine Oreo 8.0 and 8.1).

What a difference between the two platforms. The largest issue caused by this fragmentation is the inability to get critical updates out to the masses. Apple is about to release a brand new OS, and it will work on the vast majority of iPhones in the wild. And there are no carriers or third party manufacturers that stand in between users and their updates.

Amazon’s total market value passed $1 trillion on Tuesday, following Apple’s ascent into 13-digit territory at the beginning of August. Amazon and Apple now make up more than 8% of the entire value of the S&P 500, according to Howard Silverblatt, senior index analyst for S&P.

Amazon is, for the most part, a trusted brand by consumers. With its expansion into selling almost anything you can imagine, and the availability of quick shipping, many people will just default to shopping on Amazon these days. I don’t see that changing anytime soon.

Mercedes showed on Tuesday how it is “aggressively” gunning for top spot in upscale battery cars market currently dominated by Tesla, as it unveiled the EQC, its first fully electric car, at an event in Stockholm.

I love Mercedes. To me that brand is all about excellence in everything it does and every car it produces. More than loving the vehicles, I trust Mercedes—they are safe, long-lasting, and technologically advanced. If I were looking for an electric vehicle, that’s the company I would look to first.

Snarky headline, but Gruber has a point:

The almost complete lack of attention paid to this story exemplifies the niche status of Google’s Pixel phones — which is sad, considering that they’re indisputably among the best Android phones.

Short of posts like this, chances are you were not aware that this happened.

Chances are excellent that if one of the new iPhones was left in a Lyft, the internet would have exploded, and someone at Forbes would have written a headline connecting the event to a confirmation of Apple’s demise.

Here’s a link to the original Verge post. If you care.

C. Scott Brown, Android Authority:

When the opportunity came up here for a writer to switch to an iPhone for a week to see what it’s like, I jumped on it. I figured this would be a way to put my convictions to the test. Is Android really better for me than iOS, or have I just become complacent and comfortable with Android?

I like the premise. But the execution was flawed.

Take a few minutes to make your way through the article. Scott clearly likes a lot about the iPhone, highlighting lack of clutter, the rewrite of the iOS App Store, iPhone’s superior Bluetooth implementation, and the ease of use of the Camera app.

But one dealbreaker for Scott:

The horrible layout of the keyboard makes you need to do not one, not two, but three taps to insert a comma in a sentence. First, you tap the keyboard-swap button, then you type a comma, then you hit the button to go back to the main keyboard.

Three strokes to use probably the second-most-used punctuation mark in the English language.

But as I pointed out in this tweet this morning, there’s a quicker way to type a comma. Press and slide the number (123) key, release on the comma, and you remain in the alphabetic keyboard. Fast and, once you know about it, easy.

The issue here is low discoverability. And, to me, the flaw in Scott’s experiment was tweeting out his concerns, to see if there are shortcuts (like the comma shortcut) or other solutions with the issues he raised, before he published.

All that said, this was an interesting read for me. There are clearly things iOS does better and things Android does better. Another example Scott raised was the way Android groups Notifications. If only he’d asked. This is a feature Apple has in place in the iOS 12 beta, coming soon to iOS devices everywhere. And iOS’s lack of fragmentation means anyone with an iOS device can get it, either by trying the public beta or waiting a few weeks for the release. No need to wait for a carrier update that might never come.

And those keyboard shortcuts? They’ve been around a long, long time. But if that comma thing was new to you, check out this terrific post (from 2016!) chock full of gems like this.

Ben Lovejoy, 9to5Mac:

Thieves have raided the fifth Bay Area Apple Store in less than two weeks, grabbing around $50,000’s worth of display products in less than 30 seconds.

It’s also the fourth time than this particular store has been robbed

And:

Display devices are automatically rendered useless once they leave the store Wi-Fi, but it may well be that thieves are able to sell the devices to people who fail to check them, or that they are broken for parts.

First, I loved the use of the word fortnight in the headline. Made me smile.

Trying to wrap my head around the money trail here. Is there an iPhone parts black market? If so, there’s got to be a lab somewhere where they pull these phones apart. Are the parts that lucrative?

Is it possible the thieves have some way to defeat the Apple security measures and are reselling the devices?

And, finally, this is the fourth time this store has been robbed. Need someone watching the front door for people in cinched hoodies. Maybe some machine learning to watch the front door, ring an alarm if it can’t detect a face.

Apple:

Apple has determined that a very small percentage of iPhone 8 devices contain logic boards with a manufacturing defect. Affected devices may experience unexpected restarts, a frozen screen, or won’t turn on. Apple will repair eligible devices, free of charge.

Affected units were sold between September 2017 and March 2018 in Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Macau, New Zealand, and the U.S.

If you’ve got an iPhone 8 and you are experiencing these sorts of issues, follow the link and enter your iPhone serial number to see if your device qualifies for the program.

Mark Gurman, Bloomberg:

Apple Inc. disclosed in a filing with the California Department of Motor Vehicles that one of its autonomous test vehicles was involved in a crash.

This is the first time a collision involving an Apple autonomous vehicle has been reported by the California DMV. The car, a Lexus SUV in self-driving mode, was rear-ended by another vehicle when it was preparing to merge onto a highway.

The Apple self-driving car was rear-ended, so this is not a flaw or weakness in Apple’s Project Titan. To me, it is a reminder that Apple operates, as much as possible, in stealth mode.

Will Apple build their own Apple Car, or focus on building software and hardware technologies that can be incorporated by more traditional automakers? If this sort of thing interests you, take a few minutes to make your way through this excellent rollup of what we know about Project Titan.

IEEE Spectrum:

Studies show that the amount of data being recorded is increasing at 30 to 40 percent per year. At the same time, the capacity of modern hard drives, which are used to store most of this, is increasing at less than half that rate. Fortunately, much of this information doesn’t need to be accessed instantly. And for such things, magnetic tape is the perfect solution.

Seriously? Tape? The very idea may evoke images of reels rotating fitfully next to a bulky mainframe in an old movie like Desk Set or Dr. Strangelove. So, a quick reality check: Tape has never gone away!

I bet the vast majority of people have no idea what magnetic tape storage is but that the vast majority of The Loop readership not only knows but has used it in the past and maybe still does.

After some years spent traveling the world, NetNewsWire is now back where it started! It’s my app again.

We’ve kept its room ready for all these years. And I am thrilled to welcome it home.

This is great news! I was a NetNewsWire user for many years and I can’t wait to see what Brent is going to do with it.

CNBC:

Warren Buffett is still a big believer in Apple.

The Oracle of Omaha was asked if he bought more shares in the technology giant after the end of the June quarter. “We bought just a little [more],” he said Thursday on CNBC in an interview with Becky Quick. Buffett explained that he loves Apple as an investment due to the power of its brand and ecosystem, not its short-term financial results.

“I do not focus on the sales in the next quarter or the next year,” he said. “I focus on the … hundreds, hundreds, hundreds millions of people who practically live their lives by it [iPhone].” He also called the iPhone “enormously underpriced,” saying that it’s worth far more than the $1,000 Apple charges.

“I have a plane that costs me a lot, a million dollars a year or something of the sort. If I used the iPhone — I use an iPad a lot — if I used the iPhone like all my friends do, I would rather give up the plane,” he said.

Shut up, Warren. I can barely afford an iPhone as it is.

Jason Kottke:

While sifting through boxes upon boxes of the original tapes for Yoko Ono, engineer Rob Stevens discovered something truly remarkable that had gone unnoticed all these years. “Early 2016, during the gestation period of this project, I’m in the Lennon archives with my people going through tape boxes that have labeling that’s unclear, misleading, or missing entirely”, says Stevens. “There’s a one-inch eight-track that says nothing more on the ‘Ascot Sound’ label than John Lennon, the date, and the engineer (Phil McDonald), with DEMO on the spine. No indication of what material was on the tape. One delicate transfer to digital later, the “Imagine” demo, subsequently enhanced superbly by Paul Hicks, appears within this comprehensive set. It was true serendipity.”

Listen for yourself.

William Gallagher, Apple Insider:

Yes, AirPods are clearly for playing music but you can rapidly choose where that audio comes from —and just what happens when you tap on the AirPods. AppleInsider details all the options.

This article goes beyond simply listing all the options you can assign to taps to each ear. For example, there’s this little nugget:

Just opening the AirPod case tells the iPhone to pay attention and shows battery information. You get the current charge of the case and an average of that for the two AirPods. Put one AirPod in your ear and now you get the individual battery charge for each one.

It’s worth checking this instead of relying on that average, too, because very often the two AirPods will have different levels of charge. Even though you always charge them in the case together, one may be significantly lower than the other.

That’s because one of them may have been acting as a microphone when you’ve received phone calls.

That last bit is pretty interesting and does explain why I sometimes have wildly different charge in my left and right AirPods.

Good post, worth a read.

Are you an avid reader? Check out the linked Reddit thread. In a nutshell, you’ll want to download the Libby app, which will connect to your local library and let you check out digital books and read them on your iOS device.

Convenient and free. All you need is a library card.

Bloomberg:

For the past year, select Google advertisers have had access to a potent new tool to track whether the ads they ran online led to a sale at a physical store in the U.S. That insight came thanks in part to a stockpile of Mastercard transactions that Google paid for.

But most of the two billion Mastercard holders aren’t aware of this behind-the-scenes tracking. That’s because the companies never told the public about the arrangement.

And:

The company said people can opt out of ad tracking using Google’s “Web and App Activity” online console. Inside Google, multiple people raised objections that the service did not have a more obvious way for cardholders to opt out of the tracking, one of the people said.

Off the top of your head, any idea how to find Google’s “Web and App Activity” online console?

Start off on this page: https://myaccount.google.com.

If you’re not already logged in, you’ll need to do so. Next, make your way to the “Person info & privacy” section and just start looking around, getting a sense of the options Google offers for managing your data. At the very least, be sure to check out the “Ad settings” page. Do this for each of your Google accounts.

The Kid Should See This:

This low-flying plane isn’t just taking a scenic ride. It’s about to stock the lake it’s flying over with up to 1,000 native fish… by dropping them from the sky. It’s a strategy that’s been used since 1956, a more efficient option than hiking by foot to the lakes with fish in large buckets.

According to Utah’s Department of Natural Resources, via Pattern, more than 95% of the fish survive the drop. Hallows explains, “They kind of flutter down, so they don’t impact very hard. They flutter with the water and they do really well.”

This is one of those things where your initial reaction is, “WTF? That can’t be a good thing!”

On Thursday, Apple announced the date for its special event and now they have released the web page where those of us not lucky enough to get press invites and be in attendance can watch the livestream. And, if you need a reminder, you can add it to your calendar.

The Atlantic:

Harland is the first name of Kentucky Fried Chicken’s founder (and now mascot), Colonel Sanders, and the company announced on Wednesday that it will award $11,000 to the first baby born on September 9, Sanders’s birthday, bearing the name Harland. Per a press release, the gift of $11,000 is “in honor of KFC’s 11 herbs and spices” and is intended for the newborn Harland’s college tuition.

In other words, there might soon be a child whose naming rights were effectively purchased by a company that sells fast food. It is sad to think of the conversation young Harland’s parents might someday have with him, explaining that he is named for the respected patriarch not of his family but of the company that makes the Double Down.

Marketing has never been a principled business, but KFC’s offer seems a new low.

Anyone participating in this offensive stunt should be visited by Child Protective Services to see if they are actually fit to parent.