Chances are, you know the name Alexey Pajitnov. Arguably the most famous game designer to come out of Russia, he gave the world Tetris, which is regularly referred to as one of the greatest video games of all time.
However, the name Vladimir Pokhilko might be less familiar – despite the fact that he is often credited as co-creating the game alongside Pajitnov, and would later work with him on other video games. While Pajitnov continues to live off the fame of his most famous creation, Pokhilko has faded into history.
A quick read, well worth your time if you are interested in the history of video games. Tragic indeed.
From a development perspective the Series 3 is a delight to work with. It is fast, capable and LTE allows a wide variety of new applications.
And:
In daily use the Series 0 is probably “good enough” for many customers, especially with the speed/stability improvements added in watchOS 4, but as a developer I can’t wait until I no longer have to support it.
And:
The Series 3 is being adopted incredibly quickly and just last week became the most popular Apple Watch overall amongst my users with 33% of the overall user-base. The Series 0 is steadily falling, currently at around 24%.
Lots of interesting Apple Watch adoption data in this post. Will Apple drop Series 0 support? I hope Apple continues to offer a path for Series 0 buyers to receive watchOS updates, even if 3rd party apps stop supporting Series 0.
Hawking lost his ability to speak in 1985, when, on a trip to CERN in Geneva, he caught pneumonia. In the hospital, he was put on a ventilator. His condition was critical. The doctors asked Hawking’s then-wife, Jane, whether they should turn off the life support. She vehemently refused. Hawking was flown to Addenbrooke’s Hospital, in Cambridge, where the doctors managed to contain the infection. To help him breathe, they also performed a tracheotomy, which involved cutting a hole in his neck and placing a tube into his windpipe. As a result, Hawking irreversibly lost the ability to speak.
This is a fascinating story, starting with a program that ran on an Apple II, then evolving over the years, all while keeping that original synthesized voice.
Spotify has a new voice search interface that lets you say “Play my Discover Weekly,” “Show Calvin Harris” or “Play some upbeat pop” to pull up music.
If this was an app that someone created as an experiment, that’d be one thing. But this comes from Spotify’s own R&D.
Hard to say what kind of impact this will have on Apple’s music and smart speaker ambitions. After all, Apple Music, HomePod, and Siri are all part of a much larger ecosystem. And though Spotify does dominate the paid music sector, it’s reach does not extend into anything larger. Yet.
I can’t help but think that Spotify would be an enticing partner for Google or Amazon, more so if they built a bridge to marry their musical intelligence (they have access to a massive trove of user data) with intelligent musical speech command processing and, say, Amazon’s Echo installed base.
This is an interesting development, worth keeping an eye on.
A new page on Apple’s website details its efforts to make Macs and iPhones family friendly, including parental controls and other safety features. The move comes as Apple and other tech giants are under fire over whether their products are addictive, especially for children.
We have reviewed the evidence and we believe there is a clear need for Apple to offer parents more choices and tools to help them ensure that young consumers are using your products in an optimal manner. By doing so, we believe Apple would once again be playing a pioneering role, this time by setting an example about the obligations of technology companies to their youngest customers.
Apple’s new page is here. Definitely a step in the right direction, a single stop for learning about tools and resources for keeping your family safe.
To demonstrate the power of iMac Pro, Apple invited a group of renowned filmmakers, CG artists, and motion graphics designers to create a personal piece of work using its advanced technologies. The project was an opportunity for each of them to use this incredibly capable tool to define power through the films they made. From concept development through final preparations for render, iMac Pro proved to be the ultimate creative partner.
How cool must it have been to have Apple come to you and say, “Could you give us a hand with something?”
When you’re researching for travel, Wikivoyage is a great place to start. You’ll get a better sense of a place’s vibe from Wikivoyage’s conversational pages than from Wikipedia’s dry encyclopedic text. Wikivoyage contributors are allowed to insert opinions; they just have to be “fair.”
Wikivoyage pages include lists of landmarks, restaurants, bars, hotels, things to do, and sections like “Understand,” which describes a location’s history and je ne sais quoi, and “Stay Safe,” which tells you where to watch out for pickpockets or scams or other dangers. City pages, like the page for Brooklyn, break down neighborhoods and districts. There are also directions from major airports, trains, and highways.
Whenever I travel, I do research on the city and country I’m going to, no matter how big or small. I like learning new things about new places and Wikivoyage can help a lot.
Next week, at YC’s “demo days,” Nectome’s cofounder, Robert McIntyre, is going to describe his technology for exquisitely preserving brains in microscopic detail using a high-tech embalming process. Then the MIT graduate will make his business pitch. As it says on his website: “What if we told you we could back up your mind?”
So yeah. Nectome is a preserve-your-brain-and-upload-it company. Its chemical solution can keep a body intact for hundreds of years, maybe thousands, as a statue of frozen glass. The idea is that someday in the future scientists will scan your bricked brain and turn it into a computer simulation. That way, someone a lot like you, though not exactly you, will smell the flowers again in a data server somewhere.
This story has a grisly twist, though. The product is “100 percent fatal,” says McIntyre. “That is why we are uniquely situated among the Y Combinator companies.”
At first blush, this seems idiotic but on reading the article, I understand and appreciate the point of the “service”.
Here you have songbird Stevie Nicks, every makeup artist’s worst nightmare, belting out an early version of her song “Wild Heart” during an Annie Leibowitz cover shoot for Rolling Stone in 1981.
This is a little gem. Think about how hard it is to sing when you are sitting down. Stevie Nicks really lets us have it, making the whole thing effortless.
And listen for the other folks joining in. This is off-the-cuff, and wonderful.
Home is both too complex because of the way it splits things into rooms, zones, groups, scenes, and automations and too simple because it lacks features like robust state awareness and, in some places, timers. However, the problems with the Home app run even deeper. They are compounded by a generic UI and complex navigation.
Read John’s post to really get a sense of his point. Or just spend some time trying to edit the HomePod’s now playing queue.
All this said, it is early days still, both for HomeKit and HomePod. Even though HomeKit dates back to iOS 8 (a bit more than two years ago), I see it as still early in the adoption cycle, still in its infancy. As more and more people start using HomeKit compatible gear, the use cases are becoming better defined.
John makes the case that it is time for Apple to re-roll the interface.
Take a look, on the highest resolution screen you have. Beautiful work.
What’s it all mean? Are there clues in this art? The most common thing I’ve heard (and what sprang to mind for me, instantly) is a design language for Augmented Reality.
Now, if we want to play Cupertino-ology, does the graphic offer any hints about planned announcements (like, say, a unified cross-platform set of UI frameworks for Mac and iOS) or it just a cool graphic?
The fastest growing segment in global smartphones isn’t Google’s vision for super-cheap, simple Android phones. Instead, according to new market data, it’s refurbished high-quality phones that carry a desirable brand but can be sold at a more affordable price, a segment where Apple is “leading by a significant margin.”
The low growth of the new smartphone market in 2017 can be partially attributed to the growth of the refurb market. The slowdown in innovation has made two-year-old flagship smartphones comparable in design and features with the most recent mid-range phones. Therefore, the mid low-end market for new smartphones is being cannibalized by refurbished high-end phones, mostly Apple iPhones and, to a lesser extent, Samsung Galaxy smartphones.
This is a pretty interesting development. Apple has added another layer to this market, a layer that it dominates.
I read a number of appreciation articles this morning, but this Wired piece by Adam Rogers was my favorite.
A few highlights:
He and the physicist Roger Penrose described singularities, mind-bending physical concepts where relativity and quantum mechanics collapse inward on each other—as at the heart of a black hole.
And:
His calculations helped show that as the young universe expanded and grew through inflation, fluctuations at the quantum scale—the smallest possible gradation of matter—became the galaxies we see around us. No human will ever visit another galaxy, and the quantum realm barely waves at us in our technology, but Hawking envisioned them both.
And, perhaps my favorite:
He proved time travel didn’t exist by throwing a party for time travelers, but not sending out invitations until the party was over. No one came.
Notably, Stephen Hawking died on Albert Einstein’s birthday and on Pi-day (3.14).
Scott and Mark Kelly are identical twin brothers — at least, they were until Scott spent a year living in space.
When Scott Kelly returned to Earth after a 340-day voyage aboard the International Space Station (ISS) two years ago, he was 2 inches taller than he’d been when he left. His body mass had decreased, his gut bacteria were completely different, and — according to preliminary findings from NASA researchers — his genetic code had changed significantly.
While most of these genetic changes reverted to normal following Scott Kelly’s return to Earth, about 7 percent of the astronaut’s genetic code remained altered — and it may stay that way permanently.
This is all kinds of mind-blowing and may have real consequences as we go forward into space. Thaks to my friend Mike Rose for the link.
Apple Inc and Alphabet Inc’s Google corporate brands dropped in an annual survey while Amazon.com Inc maintained the top spot for the third consecutive year, and electric carmaker Telsa Inc rocketed higher after sending a red Roadster into space.
iPhone maker Apple dropped to 29th from its previous position of No. 5, and Google dropped from 8th to No. 28. Apple had ranked No. 2 as recently as 2016, according to the annual Harris Poll Reputation Quotient poll released on Tuesday.
John Gerzema, CEO of the Harris Poll, told Reuters in an interview that the likely reason Apple and Google fell was that they have not introduced as many attention-grabbing products as they did in past years, such as when Google rolled out free offerings like its Google Docs word processor or Google Maps and Apple’s then-CEO Steve Jobs introduced the iPod, iPhone and iPad.
That reasoning seems odd. What does “attention-grabbing products” have to do with a company’s reputation? Especially given that “film production company The Weinstein Co made its debut at 99th out of 100 on the list”. So – its reputation got better?
There’s something strange going on with the International Photographer of the Year (IPOTY) photo contest. 11 of the 14 photographers listed as judges for the IPOTY 2017 contest say they weren’t asked to judge a single thing before the winners were announced in February (and the other 3 couldn’t be contacted).
IPOTY was founded in 2015 and is a “pay to play” type of competition. The website states that photographers need to pay between $15 to $30 (depending on photographer status and entry date).
On March 3rd, 9 of the 14 judges on the list penned a letter to PetaPixel and other publications, sharing “concerns” regarding the competition. Many of the judges had no idea they were listed as judges, and none of the judges actually judged anything — the winners were selected entirely without the jury’s knowledge or consent.
Another reason to be wary of “photo contests” in general and absolutely avoid paid contests.
Apple today announced it will host its 29th annual Worldwide Developers Conference in San Jose from June 4 through June 8. The McEnery Convention Center will be home to the world’s most creative developer community, who come together every year to share unique perspectives and learn about the future of Apple’s breakthrough products and services.
Every year, WWDC provides an opportunity for millions of developers to learn more about how to create new experiences across Apple’s platforms for iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Apple TV, Mac and HomePod. A broad range of robust developer APIs, including SiriKit, HomeKit, HealthKit, GymKit, MusicKit, ResearchKit, and CoreML, give developers new ways to help users take command of everything from their health and homes, to how they get around, shop and learn. Last year at WWDC Apple debuted ARKit, and since then, developers with apps in every category on the App Store have embraced inventive ways to engage customers with virtual experiences overlaid in the real world.
One of my favorite habits is strolling downstairs in the morning, and asking Siri to play some music while I make coffee, do my morning routine.
Yesterday, I asked Siri to play one of my favorite albums, Keith Jarrett’s The Köln Concert. It’s a terrific morning album and, even though it came out back in 1975, it sounds terrific on HomePod. It’s all about the production.
The problem here is getting Siri to play this album. I started with:
Hey Siri, play the Keith Jarrett album The Köln Concert.
Siri’s response:
Sorry, I couldn’t find Keith Jarrett.
But if I say:
Hey Siri, play Keith Jarrett
Siri does her magic and plays all manner of Keith Jarrett.
Now, you might think this is a complaint about Siri’s ability to parse my spoken words. Not at all. I find Siri to be excellent at translating spoken word to text.
Instead, this is about Siri taking the next leap towards understanding and collaboration. If I asked a friend to play Keith Jarrett’s The Köln Concert and my friend did not understand what I meant, there’d be a couple of important points of interaction:
Did my friend know Keith Jarrett?
Did they understand the reference to the album The Köln Concert?
Does my friend have access to that album?
If it was a friend, I could follow up with some of these questions, and my friend could ask me questions right back. Maybe something like:
Hey friend, play the Keith Jarrett album The Köln Concert.
Sorry, I can’t do that.
Why not?
I know who Keith Jarrett is, but I don’t understand The Köln Concert.
Let me spell that out for you: K-O-L-N C-O-N-C-E-R-T.
Did you mean, The Köln Concert?
Yup, that’s the one. Go ahead and play it.
Spelling aside, I see the basic ability to go back and forth as a critical next step for Siri and, especially for HomePod Siri. And I think homing in on what music you want to play is a perfect sandbox for Siri to play and learn in.
The Apple Music domain is relatively limited. Typically, you ask for a song, an album, or an artist. The back and forth to help you home in on the music you’re seeking is relatively simple. I don’t mean to minimize the effort involved in taking that next step. Programming is hard, especially when you are trying to build something that millions of people will use.
But this might be an excellent place to start. And a bit of back and forth to help find a specific piece of music would, in my mind, greatly enhance the HomePod experience.
Neil Cybart, Above Avalon, in a post discussing Apple’s strategy on controlling sound:
The first iPod commercial highlighted the device’s mobility as the user danced around his house while listening to music via iPod and white earbuds. The kicker was found at the end as he stepped outside the four confined walls of his home and into the outside world without missing a beat. The iPod was about consuming sound not just around the home, but more importantly, outside the home.
Though the commercial is obviously dated (shown by aspect ratio, resolution, fashion, and tech), the sense of how deeply Apple gets music and its importance to people is clear.
StackSocial has curated a collection of ten top apps to help you get the most out of your Mac in 2018. Highlighted by BusyCal 3, HoudahSpot 4, and the toolbar app used at Google and Facebook, uBar 4, The 2018 Mac Essentials Bundle will give your Mac (and you) a productivity overhaul. Get it now for less than $2/app — it’s just $19.99 (Orig. $525). The 2018 Mac Essentials Bundle includes the following:
BusyCal 3 ($49.99 Value) – Customize calendar views to meet your needs
Cargo VPN ($79.99 Value) – Protect your Mac while surfing public WiFi, bypass geo-restricted content, and more
HoudahSpot 4 ($29.00 Value) – Find just about any file (documents, photos, emails) on your Mac
uBar 4 ($30.00 Value) – Customize your Mac’s dock
Cisdem DuplicateFinder ($39.99 Value) – Free up space on your Mac by easily deleting any duplicate files
RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 ($19.99 Value) – Construct and manage your own very theme park
Systweak Anti-Malware ($117 Value) – Detect and remove malware on your Mac
Since 2010, Facebook allows you to download an archive file of all your interactions with the network. It’s a 5-click easy process that your grandmother can do (more details below).
Inside the .zip, lies an ‘index.html’ page that acts as a portal to your personal data. Visually, it looks like an ad-free stripped down version of Facebook that’s actually quite relaxing.
As I’m trying to reduce my exposure to social networks, I decided to take a look at this info.
Read Georges’ post for the details. Better yet, go get your archive from Facebook so you understand just how much Facebook never forgets a single thing you do.
Apple continues to grow it series-programming slate, adding its first animated show.
The digital giant has given a two-season series order to “Central Park,” a musical comedy from “Bob’s Burgers” creator Loren Bouchard and 20th Century Fox Television. Written by Bouchard, Josh Gad, and Nora Smith, the series is described as telling the story of how a family of caretakers, who live and work in Central Park, end up saving the park, and basically the world.
Two seasons, 13 episodes each.
The content pipeline is starting to fill. What’s not clear is how all this new programming will be packaged. Will it be part of the Apple Music subscription? Will Apple Music be segmented? Rebranded? Will a new Apple Media entity be created?
Manjoo wrote about what he learned from his two months away from social media, and dispensed avuncular advice to his readers about the benefits of slowing down one’s news consumption.
But he didn’t really unplug from social media at all. The evidence is right there in his Twitter feed, just below where he tweeted out his column: Manjoo remained a daily, active Twitter user throughout the two months he claims to have gone cold turkey, tweeting many hundreds of times, perhaps more than 1,000.
Manjoo’s piece was widely shared on social media but I read it with my usual dose of hefty skepticism about everything Manjoo writes and he didn’t disappoint. Or rather, he disappointed in exactly the way I knew he would.
Apple today announced it signed an agreement to acquire Texture, the digital magazine subscription service by Next Issue Media LLC, which gives users unlimited access to their favorite titles for one monthly subscription fee.
Texture brings over 200 of the world’s best magazines to life, providing an easy way for users to read high-quality stories and entire issues of their favorite titles. With Texture, users enjoy the magazines they know and love, while discovering new content that fits their passions and interests.
I used Texture back when it originally started up (it was called Next then) and liked the service’s potential, even if I didn’t use it after a few months. It will be interesting to see what Apple does with this going forward.
Josh Centers joins me this week to talk about home automation and all the different things you can do with. We also discuss some of the limitations and the products he’s using in his home with Apple’s iOS.
Viola Desmond was selected for the new $10 bank note by Minister Morneau following an open call to Canadians to nominate an iconic Canadian woman for the next redesigned bank note. A successful Black Nova Scotian businesswoman, Viola Desmond defiantly refused to leave a whites-only area of a movie theatre in 1946 and was subsequently jailed, convicted and fined. Her court case is one of the first known legal challenges against racial segregation brought forth by a Black woman in Canada.
I love the choice of Viola Desmond, and I love the vertical design.
