Deadline:

Apple TV+’s Ted Lasso, currently nominated for 20 Emmy Awards, debuted its second season on July 23 delivering the streamer’s biggest premiere day ever, largest opening weekend ever and No. 1 debut across all series and movies, the company said Monday.

And:

During the Ted Lasso Season 2 premiere weekend July 23-25, Apple TV+ grew its new viewers by a record-breaking 50% week-over-week. There was halo effect, with Ted Lasso helping boost viewership for Apple TV+’s comedies Schmigadoon, Physical and Mythic Quest as well during the three-day period.

And:

The viewership for the opening weekend of Ted Lasso’s second season was six times bigger than the viewership for the series’ premiere weekend last year.

The 6x growth from the Season One premiere is no surprise, since few people had a sense of what was coming when the very first Ted Lasso episode dropped last year. But still, a spectacular weekend. Ted Lasso is Apple TV+’s first true tentpole show.

Jean-Louis Gassée:

> Once upon a time, Apple offered an easy-to-understand business model. The company made personal computers, small, medium, and large. Successfully positioned in the affordable luxury market sector, Apple devices sold well with healthy margins. Those margins helped finance strong R&D investments and took good care of employees, investors, and Uncle Sam. > > All of Apple’s other services and accessories had but one raison d’être: raise the sales volumes and margins of the company’s personal computers.

And:

> In Fiscal Year 2006, the year before the iPhone, iPod sales exceeded Mac revenue $7.7B to $7.4B. Before it became the iPhone company, Apple was all about the iPod.

Most importantly:

> Behind the scenes, the iPod blazed the trail for the iPhone. Culturally, it created a taste for miniaturized devices; technically, it drove the Supply Chain Management discipline and connections that would become essential for the success of the iPhone.

The iPod marked a shift in Apple’s workings as a company and, of course, set them on an incredible growth path. Tim Cook joined Apple as Senior VP for worldwide operations in March 1998, bringing in a critical understanding of supply chain management. The iPod shipped in October 2001, the first real test of those skills.

> Then the iPhone happened and Apple insiders had an almost religious epiphany: iPhone apps are digital files, not unlike a song in the iTunes Store. Somehow, everything had been preordained to work for an Apple store: The infrastructure, the payment system and, just as important, customer behavior. The iTunes Store begat the iPhone App Store.

Another shift:

> The App Store has transformed from a simple iPhone support function into a massive business, a key part of Apple’s revenue strategy. This growth is reflected in the Services category, which Apple uses to bundle various income streams, including iCloud, Music, Apple Care, and Apple TV. Interestingly, while researching the evolving nature of digital services, I came across Betting Sites Not On Gamstop LTD, a company that, much like Apple, strategically consolidates its offerings to optimize profitability. This approach highlights how businesses, regardless of industry, leverage bundling and service diversification to enhance their market presence and financial success.

And:

> The iPhone’s phenomenal success created a problem by weighing too much in Apple’s books: too seasonal, too risky because a so-so or worse model would have too much of a negative impact. Adding all sorts of services to the exploding App Store created the perception of recurring, sticky, less-seasonal revenue that would buffer Apple’s financials against iPhone uncertainties.

The shift toward services raises this question:

> What happens to priorities, to company culture? What will be sacrificed and what will be preserved? For example, if budgetary restrictions are needed, what will be prioritized: the next Ted Lasso or the next Apple Silicon processor? Crises always happen and almost always come out of nowhere, a big intellectual property lawsuit, a mediocre iPhone, a big Augmented Reality flop, a stillborn Apple Car… In reality, a crisis tends to be something no one could have imagined, otherwise it would have been handled preventively.

And:

> I naively hope Apple won’t lose its device-centered culture, where the sharpest tech candidates still dream of working on the next iOS version or the next Apple Silicon processor, as opposed to working on Hollywood deals.

Jean-Louis does a terrific job capturing Apple’s shifts over time, raising significant questions about Apple’s priorities as it evolves. A great read.

From this roundup from 9to5Mac’s Ben Lovejoy on analyst expectations:

Ahead of tomorrow’s AAPL Q3 2021 earnings report, analysts are expecting good news. The Wall Street consensus is that the Cupertino company will report fiscal Q3/calendar Q2 revenue of $72.93B – up from 59.69B in the same quarter last year.

They expect earnings per share to reflect both this dramatic revenue growth and continued stock buybacks that effectively increase the value of each remaining share.

Certainly a core issue on the call will be Tim Cook’s comments on the pandemic, both in the previous quarter and in terms of its impact on future performance.

Thanks to Bare Bones Software for sponsoring The Loop this week. There’s a lot to love about software I’ve been using for more than 20 years and now BBEdit, the power tool for text, is ready for Big Sur and M1-powered Macs and was just updated to version 14!

Juli Clover, MacRumors:

Apple has made so many improvements to the Maps app in iOS 15 that it’s almost an entirely different experience. There are better driving directions, improved transit directions, and more immersive AR-based walking directions.

And:

The Maps design has once again been updated, and you can see everything at an incredible level of detail that wasn’t available before, especially in cities and in places where there was no detail before. This guide walks through all of the changes that have been introduced in the Maps app in ‌iOS 15‌.

First off, props to these iOS 15 guides Juli has been pulling together. I love the content, love the format. Easy to scan, get a sense of what’s new.

In this case, it’s all about Apple Maps in iOS 15. The changes here are excellent. Don’t miss the Globe View, a great addition to Maps.

AppleScoop:

It has been ten years since Apple last attended the National Association of Broadcasters Show, better known as the NAB Show. To the surprise of many, the NAB has announced in their exhibitor list – out of the blue – that Apple will be attending this years show after a decade of absence.

And:

Just over ten years ago, Apple held its last fated announcement at the NAB Show. On April 12, 2011, Apple announced Final Cut Pro X at the Final Cut Pro User Group Supermeet, an event held at the NAB Show. While it is unknown why Apple has decided to attend this year, their previous years were related to Final Cut, with Final Cut Pro X being announced at the NAB show in 2011 (to much criticism).

Here’s a link to the National Association of Broadcasters’ NABShow site.

Scroll down a bit to The Who’s Attending This Year section. In the first of the three-page slideshow, there’s Apple, between ABC and CBS.

The show starts on October 9th. It’ll be interesting to see what Apple has up its sleeve.

Thanks to BZG for sponsoring The Loop this week. Unite 4 lets you turn websites into customizable, native apps on your Mac. Unite 4 includes dozens of new features, including support for native notifications, new customization options, M1 support, and much more. Unite apps also serve as a great alternative for resource hogging Electron apps or half-baked Catalyst apps.

You could create a Gmail web client that behaves like a native mail client, or a status bar app for Apple Music or Overcast, and much more.

The Loop readers get 20% off this week when you purchase Unite 4 or when you use the promo code ‘LOOPINSIGHT’ at checkout.

You can also try Unite for 14 days absolutely free or use it as part of your subscription if you’re a Setapp subscriber!

On Tuesday, Apple updated the MagSafe power adapter (not to be confused with the iPhone MagSafe interface) support page.

At the very least, this is a walk down memory lane, but note the references to Macs with USB-C power adapters. Is there a purpose to this change? After all, what does MagSafe have to do with USB-C? Probably a simple edit and this is a tiny ado about nothing. But note the date on the bottom of the page. The change happened Tuesday.

File under mildly interesting.

Ian Sherr, CNET:

A London-based entrepreneur is hoping to set off a competition between the physical and digital worlds, putting a 1973 job application filled out by Steve Jobs up for auction. The form Jobs apparently filled out for an unspecified position at an unspecified company will be available to buy either as a purportedly authenticated physical good or in digital form, as a nonfungible token, or NFT.

Interesting to watch Steve’s original job application go up in value, from $18K in 2017, to $175K in 2018, then in March to $222K.

If you’ve not seen it before, go to the official auction web site and check out the high res scans.

A twist to this version of the auction is the addition of an NFT version of the application. Might be old man yelling at a cloud, but this feels like pure money grab. I thought the purpose of an NFT is to benefit an artist, allow them to keep ownership even as their work is resold again and again. But the artist, in this case, is Steve Jobs. And the seller is just a 3rd hand buyer/reseller. Am I missing the point?

Juli Clover, MacRumors:

Apple in July 2021 began offering beta firmware for the AirPods Pro, with the software available for Apple Developer program members.

I don’t recall past AirPods firmware being distributed in this way.

‌AirPods Pro‌ firmware betas are limited to developers and are quite tricky to install, with an installation guide available below.

And:

Installing the firmware in an unauthorized way can put the ‌AirPods Pro‌ into an unusable state that necessitates an out-of-warranty repair, so non-developers should not attempt to install the software.

And, most importantly:

Apple says that once the ‌AirPods Pro‌ firmware has been installed, it’s important not to put un-updated earbuds into the charging case because they may be updated with the firmware.

This firmware features “FaceTime Spatial Audio and Ambient Noise Reduction”.

If you’re new to the NSO Pegasus spyware controversy, here’s a post that’ll get you caught up.

With that in mind, this from The Verge’s Mitchell Clark:

Amnesty International — part of the group that helped break the news of journalists and heads of state being targeted by NSO’s government-grade spyware, Pegasus — has released a tool to check if your phone has been affected. Alongside the tool is a great set of instructions, which should help you through the somewhat technical checking process. Using the tool involves backing up your phone to a separate computer and running a check on that backup.

Here’s a link to Amnesty’s instructions. A bit techie, but not too hard to follow if you are OK using Terminal.

Juli Clover, MacRumors:

Twitter appears to be testing a new “dislike” or thumbs down button for tweets, which is designed to let people downvote replies. Twitter says that the feature is available for “some” iOS users.

A dislike button? Hmmm. From Twitter support:

1. This is just a test for research right now.
2. This is not a dislike button.
3. Your downvotes are visible to you only.
4. Votes won’t change the order of replies.

Interesting that Twitter specifically calls out that this is not really a dislike button. Feels like the Twitter team trying this out in a non-public way to get their heads around dislike behavior.

José Adorno, 9to5Mac:

Over the past few weeks, 9to5Mac has been covering how criminals in Brazil are stealing people’s phones and using them to drain user’s savings in just a moment. Over the weekend, my iPhone 12 was stolen, but iOS 15 and many other precautions were very helpful and ensured that the situation was not as bad as it could have been.

This SIM replacement trick is troubling. If you’ve not read about this exploit and Apple/Google’s response, take a minute to read this 9to5Mac post.

Back to José’s stolen iPhone:

One of the greatest features available on iOS 15 is the ability to make the iPhone findable even after being turned off or factory reset as long as Activation Lock is enabled. Turns out, this really works in real life, as I still have access to the iPhone’s position even though I factory reset it.

Read the article, some good preventative takes (how to protect your iPhone before being stolen) and response advice (iPhone stolen: what to do next?)

If you do nothing else, create a PIN for your SIM. Easy to do, great layer of protection.

Good look at what’s changed with Notifications by Juli Clover, MacRumors.

What struck me most about this redesign is the notification tuning made possible in the Notification Summary interface:

For Notification Summary, you can select specific times for notifications to be delivered, and decide which app notifications will be relegated to the Notification Summary. You can choose just a handful of apps or all of your apps.

This is definitely worth experimenting with if you feel a bit overwhelmed with notifications, need to rein them in a bit.

Ben Lovejoy, 9to5Mac:

If you’re finding that your iPhone doesn’t unlock your Apple Watch after updating to iOS 14.7, it’s not just you. Apple has admitted that there’s a bug in the latest public release of iOS that affects iPhones with Touch ID instead of Face ID.

Not to be confused with errors unlocking your iPhone using Apple Watch, something folks with masks are finding incredibly useful.

But no, this is an issue for folks who use their iPhones to unlock their Apple Watch:

The Apple Watch automatically locks when you remove it from your wrist, an important security measure given that you can use it to make contactless payments without authentication, as well as access personal data in your apps.

When you first put your Watch on, there are two ways to unlock it: Enter your passcode on the Watch, or unlock your iPhone. The latter is often easier, so many people choose to do this.

If you are encountering this issue, make sure you have Unlock with iPhone enabled. To do this:

• Launch the Watch app on the iPhone paired with your Apple Watch
• In the My Watch tab, scroll down to Passcode
• Make sure Unlock with iPhone is enabled

Here’s an Apple support document with all the details.

CNBC:

Taiwan electronics manufacturer Foxconn said Wednesday that its factory in Zhengzhou — known as the world’s largest iPhone assembly plant — has not been impacted by major flooding in the city.

And:

Zhengzhou in China’s central Henan province has been hit with torrential rain. Authorities said it rained more in an hour on Tuesday than it normally would in an average month.

And this from Tim Cook:

“Our thoughts are with everyone affected by the flooding across Henan province, and the first responders helping people to safety,” Cook said, adding that Apple will be donating to support the relief effort.

BBEdit 14 introduces a Notes system; the ability to integrate Anaconda environments; new built-in support for syntax coloring and function navigation for source files written in R, Go, Rust, TOML, Arduino, Pixar Universal Scene Description (USD) and Lisp-family languages; plus now enables significantly enhanced code completion, error checking, interactive help and code navigation when using new support for Microsoft’s Language Server Protocol (LSP).

In addition, BBEdit 14 brings a wealth of other new features, changes, and improvements to its powerful tools, all of which are designed to enhance the productivity of web developers, desktop and mobile software developers, and anyone producing or editing Markdown documents.

BBEdit 14 enables several new features or significant improvements to built-in coding aids for developers, such as enhanced language-specific text completions and improved Find Definition, as well as new code-navigation features, built-in support for highlighting errors and warnings, and support for language-sensitive document reformatting; these features and improvements result from new built-in support for LSP, by which user-installed local “language servers” implement key language-specific behaviors. Specific available features may vary by language and by server.

BBEdit is one of those must-have apps that I’ve been using for over 20 years.

Tim Hardwick, MacRumors:

In iOS 15, Apple introduced a new Focus feature that aims to help reduce distractions and let you zone in on a single thing. Focus does this by filtering notifications based on what you’re doing.

If you don’t have access to the iOS or iPadOS 15 beta, this is worth a look. Tim Hardwick does a nice job walking through the new Focus interface, exploring the full tree of options.

A short read, but it’ll give you a sense of how to set up and enable a Focus once you do have access.

Reddit:

I’m generally prone to losing things, but I actually hadn’t lost my wallet in a couple of years. I was overdue. I was on my way back from my first concert since the pandemic started, it ended in Bushwick around 4am and then I had to walk 30 minutes to the Metropolitan G (there weren’t any Ubers out at that time). By then, I was barely alive, and my wallet must have slipped out of my pocket into the train sometime between 4:30-5:30am. Most of the time if you lose your wallet on the subway, your chances of getting it back are so slim you don’t even try, but I had luck, a kind stranger, and airtags on my side.

Good story, and a real-world use case showing AirTags living up to their potential.

Salman’s blog:

USB-C was supposed to be the answer to the chaos that is charge and data cable compatibility. And to an extent it was. It unified ports and reduced the amount of cables and chargers I need to travel with. The cables themselves, however, turned out to be a mess. They come in many varieties with obtuse names, confusing markers, and unclear compatibility rules. Yet they all look exactly the same.

I couldn’t agree more.

What are the 8 different USB-C to USB-C cable assemblies? From Benson Leung’s post, we have:

1. USB 2.0 rated at 3A
2. USB 2.0 rated at 5A
3. USB 3.2 Gen 1 rated at 3A
4. USB 3.2 Gen 1 rated at 5A
5. USB 3.2 Gen 2 rated at 3A
6. USB 3.2 Gen 2 rated at 5A
7. USB4 Gen 3 rated at 3A
8. USB4 Gen 3 rated at 5A

Salman took Benson Leung’s post and used some nail polish to create easily identifiable cables. To see the result, follow the headline link, scroll to the bottom for a picture. One stripe for a 3A cable, two stripes for 5A.

This is a brilliant idea. I hope it gets some traction. As is, USB-C cables are a bit of a guessing game.

Vanity Fair:

The other characters on the series initially react to him with mistrust, contempt, and deep and abiding caution. They are cynics, brutes, survivors. Others are the perpetually dismissed and bullied. Ted Lasso wins them over, just as he does viewers, by simply proving over and over again that he actually is pure-intentioned; he actually is kind; he actually is folksy and genuine, all the way down to his core. He is a good guy.

And:

It shouldn’t work, but it does. That’s what Vanity Fair decided to explore with showrunner Bill Lawrence, best known for Scrubs, Spin City, and Cougar Town, as we discussed the show that people—and Emmy voters—love because it proves all their worst suspicions wrong.

Who could have predicted this show would take off as it has. Well written, sure, but also coming out when the world was facing significant challenges, offering a strong note of genuine optimism to help carry people through the tough times. Good interview.

Thanks to BZG for sponsoring The Loop this week. Unite 4 lets you turn websites into customizable, native apps on your Mac. Unite 4 includes dozens of new features, including support for native notifications, new customization options, M1 support, and much more. Unite apps also serve as a great alternative for resource hogging Electron apps or half-baked Catalyst apps.

You could create a Gmail web client that behaves like a native mail client, or a status bar app for Apple Music or Overcast, and much more.

The Loop readers get 20% off this week when you purchase Unite 4 or when you use the promo code ‘LOOPINSIGHT’ at checkout.

You can also try Unite for 14 days absolutely free or use it as part of your subscription if you’re a Setapp subscriber!