About three-quarters of King County drivers surveyed around the first anniversary of the state’s new distracted driving law feel they can text while driving and not crash.
The survey also revealed that while drivers in King County acknowledge that using a phone while driving is dangerous and understand it’s illegal, many are still reluctant to put their phone away.
More than 70 percent of the 900 King County drivers surveyed viewed texting or emailing by others while driving as a very serious personal threat, but 75 percent of drivers believe it’s very unlikely that they will crash their vehicle by texting while driving.
This was a study done in the Seattle area but there’s no reason to believe the results would be much different anywhere else. People in cars are remarkably stupid when it comes to judging their ability to multitask in general and even worse when it comes to using their cell phone in the car.
I’ve said it before, but I love Charvel guitars. Some of my favorite players have used Charvel over the years and even though I have 26 guitars, I’ve never owned a Charvel. This is one I find really interesting. Look at the video on the bottom of the page and listen to how versatile this instrument can be.
Last week a video appeared on the Web from David Lee showing how the new MacBook Pro would throttle down speeds when it got hot under processor loads. Apple told me that the issue Lee was experiencing has been identified and is being fixed today.
As you can imagine, when Apple heard about the problem, they contacted Lee and worked with him to isolate what could be causing the thermal throttling. After extensive testing, they did find the issue, and luckily it wasn’t a hardware issue, but rather a software bug in the firmware.
“Following extensive performance testing under numerous workloads, we’ve identified that there is a missing digital key in the firmware that impacts the thermal management system and could drive clock speeds down under heavy thermal loads on the new MacBook Pro,” An Apple representative told me. “A bug fix is included in today’s macOS High Sierra 10.13.6 Supplemental Update and is recommended. We apologize to any customer who has experienced less than optimal performance on their new systems. Customers can expect the new 15-inch MacBook Pro to be up to 70% faster, and the 13-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar to be up to 2X faster, as shown in the performance results on our website.”
The bug affects the Core i9, Core i7, and the 13-inch models, so you should install the supplemental update when it comes out this morning.
As Apple said in its statement, all of the performance benchmarks on its website are accurate. The company said that you needed the right combination of workloads for the bug to manifest itself and in all of their testing, they never encountered the problem.
In fact, many people using the MacBook Pro probably wouldn’t have seen the bug manifest itself at all because they didn’t have that perfect storm of extended heavy workloads to make it happen.
As it turns out, the fix for this is straightforward and can be applied to all users very quickly.
Yep. That’s a teeny, tiny spider, wedged between the screen and the glass. 1600 pixels from the right edge of the screen, 840 pixels down. The size of one of the red/yellow/green stoplight buttons on the left side of my window’s title bars. A 20-by-20 pixel area covered by the body of a spider.
And:
You may be saying to yourself, how bad is it, really? Can’t you live with a spider in your display at all times? The answer, after one week, is… no, I don’t think I can. Not if I can avoid it.
Jump to Jason’s post for a picture. And no, I couldn’t live with this either. No chance.
You may not even have noticed that your Mac is now running APFS. To find out, open Disk Utility, click your startup disk in the sidebar, and look under the disk name.
As Jeff suggests, take a minute to launch Disk Utility, click on your startup disk and look at the text underneath the volume name. Mine says “APFS Volume • APFS (Encrypted)”.
This is a terrific read, chock full of detail on APFS, but very readable. And the fact that the transition to APFS has been so seamless for so many says a lot about the APFS engineering team.
I was doing research for a post yesterday and I stumbled on this Stanford University page dedicated to the marketing campaign for the original Macintosh.
Lots of links here, a dive into a wonderful rabbit hole of Apple history.
Gorgeous. Follow the link, check out the images, especially that first one.
This newest Apple destination is in central Milan, just a few blocks from La Scala, the world famous opera house. Two bucket list reasons to visit Milan.
Google has not had any of its 85,000+ employees successfully phished on their work-related accounts since early 2017, when it began requiring all employees to use physical Security Keys in place of passwords and one-time codes, the company told KrebsOnSecurity.
Security Keys are inexpensive USB-based devices that offer an alternative approach to two-factor authentication (2FA), which requires the user to log in to a Web site using something they know (the password) and something they have (e.g., a mobile device).
Security keys have been around for a long time – I used one at an engineering firm I worked at 25 years ago – but I wonder if this kind of implementation will not only become more widely used but maybe trickle down to average consumers? Also, there are security concerns regarding plugging in USB devices at work and how secure those devices are in and of themselves. Still, a step towards a different future of passwords.
Outspoken entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk apparently did not like the way Apple marketed its reality show about apps, “Planet of the Apps.”
“I was on an Apple show, ‘Planet of the Apps,’ Gwyneth [Paltrow], Will[.i.am], Jessica Alba, and me. And Apple didn’t use me or Vayner to do the marketing, and did everything wrong. Apple!” he exclaimed, talking about his eponymous marketing company.
According to Vaynerchuk, one issue was that Apple messed up the marketing for the show — but he kept his mouth shut, despite the fact that marketing is his specialty.
This is just revisionist history. The problems with that show started long before Apple Marketing got involved. I’d argue it started with the hosts, Vaynerchuk included, and just snowballed from there. Face it, Gary – it was a bad TV show.
Reddit user Nucleam pulled together an extensive archive of iOS and Mac wallpapers released over the years, gathered, a bit ironically, in Google Photos.
When you think of companies that violate your privacy online, chances are Facebook is one of the first names that come to mind. But there’s another common app that should: Venmo, the PayPal-owned peer-to-peer payment app that lets people send money to friends, family, and anyone else you need to pay (including, for instance, drug dealers). The payments you make on the app, complete with a cute little emoji or note, are public by default, which means that many users don’t realize just how easy it is for the rest of the world to observe the $35 billion in transactions made on Venmo.
When I first read this, I was shocked. This is such a basic breach of user etiquette, so egregious, I struggled to believe it was true.
But I popped open my Venmo app, jumped over to Settings > Privacy and, sure enough, my Default Privacy Setting was set to Public (Visible to everyone on the Internet).
Why, Venmo? Why would you ever think that the transfer of money would be something I’d want to share with the world? What possible use case is that?
And even if there is a case for public visibility, why make it the default?
If you are not yet running iOS 12, or if you’ve never dug into the new Notification Manager, this is worth your time. Jump to the article if you prefer reading through the changes or watch the video embedded below.
From the CIRP mobile market share report, updated to reflect the quarter ending June 30th:
“Apple improved in part at Samsung’s expense, whose share of activiations declined relative to both last quarter and last year,” said Mike Levin, Partner and Co-Founder of CIRP. “In a quarter without any significant phone launches, Samsung had market share only equal to Apple’s. A year ago, Samsung had a considerably greater share of sales.”
Two interesting points from this report:
Android has about 63% of all mobile phone activations and Apple about 36%.
Apple made some nice gains this last quarter as Samsung’s share shrunk. Apple moved from 31% to 36% of all activations and Samsung dropped from 38% down to 36%.
Interesting charts. It’s clearly an iOS/Android world. Windows Phone never had a chance.
It’s a team-up that nearly didn’t happen. The movie gives disgraced ex-cop Jack has five days to bring the Duke from New York to LA to collect a big reward that will allow him to open up a coffee shop, while the Mob accountant tries to avoid being murdered in prison by drug dealer Jimmy Serrano (Dennis Farina, in the best performance of his career), from whom he stole $15 million to give to charity. De Niro, who had been looking to do a comedy after a 15-year run as Hollywood’s most intense method actor, only took the role as a consolation prize when he lost out to Tom Hanks for the lead in Big.
Paramount was originally set to make it as director Martin Brest’s big follow-up to Beverly Hills Cop. But the studio wanted to tweak George Gallo’s script to make the Duke a woman (the Duchess?) played by Cher, hoping to generate some sexual tension. Brest said no to that, and to having Robin Williams play the part, because he’d been so dazzled by Grodin’s audition opposite De Niro. At that point, Paramount abandoned the project altogether and it wound up at Universal, whose executives approved the unconventional casting.
My Australian wife had never seen this movie (as the story notes, it bombed at the box office) so we watched it a few weeks ago and she nearly wet herself laughing. De Niro is utterly brilliant in this comedic role (as is the sadly late Dennis Farina) and Grodin is wonderfully neurotic and annoying.
There’s still one major place that Apple could stand to relax its rules: letting users choose default apps for tasks like mail, calendaring, and web browsing. For users, the benefits of choosing default apps is obvious.
Not everybody is going to switch to a third-party app if this happens. Most people probably are probably happy enough with the defaults. But for those folks who want a feature that Apple’s apps don’t currently have—like snoozing mail message alerts or sync between Chrome on iOS and your PC—the choice to use that app as the default should be available.
As a photographer, I’d love to be able to change the default photo app and I’d love to change the default mapping behaviour to a different app as well. The vast majority of users are unlikely to ever do this but for “power users” of one sort or another, it would be a nice feature.
Earlier this month, the co-working juggernaut announced that it was essentially going vegetarian. The company will no longer serve red meat, pork or poultry at company functions, and it will not reimburse employees who want to order a hamburger during a lunch meeting.
Uncomfortable as the new dietary policy may be, Mr. McKelvey said WeWork is only just getting started. The company is phasing out leather furniture, single-use plastics and is going carbon neutral. In time, he said, the company will evaluate its consumption of seafood, eggs, dairy and alcohol.
“We could have introduced a series of nudges, but then we wouldn’t be having this conversation,” Mr. McKelvey said. “And awkward conversations are how we learn.”
Oh, I think we’d learn a lot from the “awkward conversation” I’d have with my boss if he told me I couldn’t eat meat at work.
“You’ll be the person eating carne asada while everyone else is eating the lettuce bowl.”
On July 20, 1969, 49 years ago today, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the Moon, took a walk, and returned safely to Earth a few days later. And the whole thing was broadcast live on television screens around the world.
For the 40th anniversary of the landing in 2009, I put together a page where you can watch the original CBS News coverage of Walter Cronkite reporting on the Moon landing and the first Moon walk, synced to the present-day time. Just open this page in your browser and the coverage will start playing at the proper time.
If you want to experience it the way “those old folks did”, start watching at 4:10pm ET this afternoon.
Specifically, the concessionaire is testing the use of Apple Business Chat to allow iPhone-equipped fans in certain sections of the ballpark to order water and beer from their seats.
And
To order, a fan would first open the iPhone camera app and scan the QR code on the seat back. That will launch prompts on the iMessage text screen to place the order, which is then completed with Apple Pay. The drink will be delivered supposedly shortly after.
Okay, I like this a lot. I’ve been to San Jose Sharks games where they take your order at the seat and deliver the food, but it’s a hit a miss type of thing. This seems a lot more likely to be successful, and let’s face it, it’s really cool.
The phone looks like an iPhone X. It has the same form factor, most of the same detailing, no home button, the same volume rockers and side buttons, a working Lightning port, and the same speaker holes on the bottom of the phone. It also has pentalobe screws on the bottom of the device, just like an iPhone.
When turning the phone on, the Apple logo shows up, and it boots to something that looks very much like iOS. It has the same default lock screen that the iPhone launches with, and you can launch the camera or flashlight from it. It uses the same logos, appears to have the same default apps, and generally seems as though you are using an iPhone.
It quickly became clear this isn’t iOS, though.
While I wouldn’t use one of these even if you paid me the $100, it’s still very interesting to see what these fake iPhones can and can’t do.
Cool. But to me, even cooler, is this video Collins made about follow-foils. Around since the 1950s, follow-foils roll in mid-air, riding on an updraft you create simply by walking along with a piece of cardboard. If you’ve never seen one, watch the video. Fun.
The 2018 MacBook Pro keyboard is a wealth of secrets—it just keeps surprising us. Just when we think we’ve exhausted one vein of tasty tech ore, we find something new. And today, we bring this trove to you.
And:
We pumped this keyboard full of particulates to test our ingress-proofing theory. We started with a fine, powdered paint additive to add a bit of color and enable finer tracking (thanks for the tip, Dan!). Lo and behold, the dust is safely sequestered at the edges of the membrane, leaving the mechanism fairly sheltered. The holes in the membrane allow the keycap clips to pass through, but are covered by the cap itself, blocking dust ingress.
And:
On the 2018 keyboard, with the addition of more particulate and some aggressive typing, the dust eventually penetrates under the sheltered clips, and gets on top of the switch—so the ingress-proofing isn’t foolproof just yet.
I do appreciate the testing, good to know the threshold at work here. Bottom line, don’t dump a bunch of powder or sand on your keyboard and you should be fine.
If you want a more traditional, picture-laden keyboard teardown, iFixit has that too.
And on a related note, here’s John Gruber’s take on the legal/marketing side of the new keyboard, and the quieter vs. better at keeping out debris language.
‘Songwriter’ is an intimate and personal look into the writing process of one of the world’s biggest artists – Ed Sheeran. Filmed by Murray Cummings, ‘Songwriter’ details the creation of Sheeran’s third studio album ‘÷’ and gives authentic insight into his life through never-before-seen home videos. Witness his creativity firsthand, from the very first chord to the finishing touch – the sounds become the songs on August 28, exclusively on Apple Music.
I love videos that show a song being written, then produced. This looks like it gives a good sense of the entire process.
This turned out to be fascinating. A bunch of company-specific ant emoji, all critiqued and rated.
Gonna share three with you:
Apple: Beautiful big almond eye, realistic and full of expression as she gazes gently at you. Elbowed antennae and delicately segmented legs and body. Gorgeous pearlescent sheen like she is glowing. This ant moisturizes. This ant is round and huggable. This ant is a star. 11/10.
Samsung: This ant has an unexplained, double-jointed thorax, and no evidence of a waist. Her four-footed pose suggests that she a centaur rather than an ant. Centaur ants would be cool. I’m not sure what was intended here. 2/10.
Twitter: Were you even trying. 0/10
Follow the link to see the reviews in place with the emoji images. Great!
Here’s a clever new twist on an old email scam that could serve to make the con far more believable. The message purports to have been sent from a hacker who’s compromised your computer and used your webcam to record a video of you while you were watching porn. The missive threatens to release the video to all your contacts unless you pay a Bitcoin ransom. The new twist? The email now references a real password previously tied to the recipient’s email address.
The basic elements of this sextortion scam email have been around for some time, and usually the only thing that changes with this particular message is the Bitcoin address that frightened targets can use to pay the amount demanded. But this one begins with an unusual opening salvo
I received this email scam as well but it didn’t worry me. While it was a password I’d used in the distant past, now that I use 1Password, I knew it wasn’t to anything I still use.
The Tour de France is probably the most physically demanding major sporting event in the world. Over 23 days and 21 stages, riders burn an average of roughly 5,000 calories per day, which is almost twice as much as a pro marathon runner might burn in a single race, and all the while they must maintain a sharp mind, marking their opponents and working with teammates to go fast as efficiently possible before their bodies cave in.
Cycling a grand tour is as much a fight against one’s own body as it is against opponents. Quite literally, cyclist’s bodies begin fighting back after the first week. Riders begin to lose muscle, their immunes systems tank, and they practically have to force feed themselves in order to maintain the baseline system functionality to climb, let’s say, Alpe d’Huez.
Yes, cycling has a doping problem, but it’s hard to blame athletes who are putting their bodies through very real trauma for looking for some kind of shortcut. Humans shouldn’t do their bodies what Tour riders do to theirs. And indeed, it’s hard to believe some riders aren’t aliens, with their bird-like frames and gaunt features.
As corrupt as pro cycling may or may not be (hint: it is), I still love watching the Tour de France, not just for the beautiful scenery but in sheer awe and admiration for what these athletes put themselves through.
For more than two years, a small and stealthy group of engineers within Google has been working on software that they hope will eventually replace Android, the world’s dominant mobile operating system. As the team grows, it will have to overcome some fierce internal debate about how the software will work.
The project, known as Fuchsia, was created from scratch to overcome the limitations of Android as more personal devices and other gadgets come online. It’s being designed to better accommodate voice interactions and frequent security updates and to look the same across a range of devices, from laptops to tiny internet-connected sensors.
Fantastic read. I hope Fuchsia solves the security problems and offers privacy options absent from Android.
The company must also settle some internal feuds. Some of the principles that Fuchsia creators are pursuing have already run up against Google’s business model. Google’s ads business relies on an ability to target users based on their location and activity, and Fuchsia’s nascent privacy features would, if implemented, hamstring this important business. There’s already been at least one clash between advertising and engineering over security and privacy features of the fledgling operating system, according to a person familiar with the matter. The ad team prevailed, this person said.
