Apple:

Starting May 25, Apple will introduce security changes that prevent older Windows PCs from using the iTunes Store. If you have Windows XP or Vista PC, your computer is no longer supported by Microsoft, and you’re not able to use the latest version of iTunes.

And:

Also beginning May 25, security changes will prevent Apple TV (1st generation) from using the iTunes Store. This device is an obsolete Apple product and will not be updated to support these security changes.

Not sure which Apple TV model you have? Here’s a helpful guide. Note that the 1st gen Apple TV is silver.

The Verge: >Zero has been occasionally described as the “Tesla of motorcycles,” and last year’s model DS ZF6.5 as the “Model 3 of motorcycles.” When you’re one of the only electric motorcycle manufacturers in the game, it’s frankly hard to avoid these comparisons. But after climbing aboard a DS ZF6.5 late last year, I got the sense that it wasn’t all just hot air. > >It was a short ride, so the scope of these impressions is limited. Additionally, the proverbial ink of the “M” on my license was still so fresh that the excitement of showing it to people hadn’t worn off. Truly, all I wanted to get out of my first test ride of the DS ZF6.5 was a sense of what it feels like to slip through the city on a sleek, futuristic bike.

I’ve test-ridden a previous model of the Zero and they are fun, if weird, to ride. I’ll take issue with the author’s statement of, “I was cut in front of by drivers who probably would have heard me if I were on a combustion motorcycle.” Not a given at all. I ride a “traditional” bike and have been cut off plenty of times. Noise generating is no guarantee of safety on a motorcycle.

The problem with electric bikes still hasn’t been solved though. While the range (60 miles) is fine for a daily commuter, the cost, at $11,000, is still prohibitively high for the market. There are dozens of new and used bikes that offer much better range and styles for a much lower price. For female leisure riders who like to take their time touring in comfort, the Wisper ebike store has some great deals on ladies ebikes at the moment.

The Cut:

When I was younger, I hated when kids would tear the paper wrappers off of crayons, because I could not tell what color they were without reading it off the wrapper. In a normal box of eight colors, I can tell which one’s yellow, and that’s it. Once you get into the big box with all the shades in between, I don’t know what I’m looking at.

I’ve known a few people who are color blind but this is the best description I’ve read of what dealing with it on a day to day basis is like.

Reuters:

When Apple Inc begins hosting Chinese users’ iCloud accounts in a new Chinese data center at the end of this month to comply with new laws there, Chinese authorities will have far easier access to text messages, email and other data stored in the cloud.

That’s because of a change to how the company handles the cryptographic keys needed to unlock an iCloud account. Until now, such keys have always been stored in the United States, meaning that any government or law enforcement authority seeking access to a Chinese iCloud account needed to go through the U.S. legal system.

Now, according to Apple, for the first time the company will store the keys for Chinese iCloud accounts in China itself.

Apple is caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place on this issue.

TidBITS:

Wireless charging via the Qi standard is not new, but Apple building it into the iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus and iPhone X has been a big boost for the once-somnolent technology.

Shopping for a wireless charger can still be confusing given a proliferation of chargers with a wide range of configurations and capabilities. Along with wattage, here are key factors to take into account.

I think a lot of people might be waiting for Apple to release the AirPower but, until that day happens, here are some units to check out. Personally, I would stay away from the cheap knockoffs I’ve seen on Amazon (some for as low as $10).

And please – let’s not waste time in the comments section with the debate about whether or not these are “wireless” in the true sense. They’re not. That’s been established.

Less than one year after launching YouTube TV, the company is increasing its pricing to $40 per month from $35 per month as it adds Turner’s channels, which include TNT, CNN and TBS, and soon will be adding MLB Network and NBA TV, the company said.

I don’t care much about the $5 a month increase, but if I’m going to try this, I need to have Discovery and ID. They don’t have those yet.

The HomePod is self-balancing, algorithmically adjusting its sound for the environment in which it’s placed.

Me? I like the sound. Have not yet felt the need to tweak it. But I do like a challenge. I came across this article from OSXDaily, which walks you through the process of tweaking your EQ for iOS.

I fired up some music, then went to Settings > Music and tapped EQ. There are 23 different canned EQ settings to choose from. The article recommends Late Night to maximize volume on your iPhone. Give that a try if you listen to music out of your iPhone speakers frequently.

Thought I’d try to AirPlay that EQ to HomePod.

With the music still playing, I went to Control Center, tapped the upper-right corner of the music player (bringing up AirPlay), and selected my HomePod. The music played, but when I tapped the various EQ settings, no change.

I went to iTunes on my Mac, launched System Preferences > Sound and tapped my HomePod. Back in iTunes, I tapped the EQ column in the current song (if you don’t see an EQ column, go to View > Show View Options and tap the Equalizer checkbox). No dice. Changing EQ does not impact HomePod.

This is me noodling, not at all a complaint. I love the HomePod sound. The EQ question comes up often enough, I thought I’d dig in, make sure I understood what was going on. Please return to your regularly scheduled programming.

Some fascinating items. At the very least, take a look at the Steve Jobs job application. This is a nice bit of history, a sense of Steve before Apple.

There’s also a signed Mac OS X manual, a signed newspaper article (I believe it is from 2008, likely for the iPhone 3G – In the pic, you can already see Steve has lost weight), and a photo of the original Apple logo signed by Apple founder Ron Wayne.

[Via 9to5Mac]

Yup, it’s a Kickstarter. And Apple is coming out with a wireless AirPods charging case, possibly shipping sometime soon. But this is a cool idea. It’s a thin sleeve that slides over your existing AirPods case, adding Qi wireless charging. And it’s $20, vs a likely price of $69 for Apple’s still to ship case.

Cathy Locke, Sacramento Bee:

Apple’s iPhone repair and refurbishing center has been identified as the source of apparently inadvertent 911 calls received by Elk Grove police and Sacramento County sheriff’s dispatch centers over the past five months.

Since October, the Elk Grove Police Department’s dispatch center has been receiving about 20 non-subscriber initialized 911 calls per day, said Officer Jason Jimenez, police spokesman. The calls show no service provider for the phone, but the dispatch center has traced them to a cell tower near the Apple campus and determined that they are coming from the phone repair facility, he said.

The calls are coming from inside the house.

And:

Since Jan. 1, Hampton said, the sheriff’s communication center has received 47 uninitialized 911 calls and has been able to document that 30 of those came from the Apple facility.

Testing the iPhone/Apple Watch SOS capability?

A coalition of 22 state attorneys general and the District of Columbia on Thursday refiled legal challenges intended to block the Trump administration’s repeal of landmark rules designed to ensure a free and open internet from taking effect.

I hope this works.

Jason Kottke:

On Tuesday, I woke up feeling a bit tired, uninspired, and just generally not in the mood to tackle my to-do list for the day. I understand myself well enough by now to know how to react to this situation (most of the time) but was curious about how other people deal with such episodes. So I asked on Twitter: “What do you do to get yourself moving when this happens to you?” I got tons of interesting responses, which I’ve organized into some broader categories in the hope that they’ll help someone out in the future.

I may go for a walk and play some guitar today.

Marco Arment:

App developers sometimes ask me what they should do when their features, designs, or entire apps are copied by competitors.

You know, Marco’s conclusions really upset me, but he’s right.

Alex Horton, Washington Post:

In one of the scariest moments in the movie “Jurassic Park,” a pair of intelligent Velociraptors, brought back to Earth by man’s hubris, defy an assumption about their limitations: They open a kitchen door.

Now imagine that the raptors are real, transformed into headless robot dogs that can negotiate stairs, fling open doors with their robotic claws and generally overcome the puny obstacles offered up by the human technicians at Boston Dynamics.

Normally, I’d ignore or modify the sensational headline of the Post article. But it made me laugh and was (kind of) on point. Last week, we posted this video, showing a dog-like robot opening a door. People really did freak out. A bit.

Well, now there’s a follow-up, where a human tries to stop the robot from opening the same door. I fully expected the robot to grab the guy with its claw and drag him to the ground.

Robots are coming. Do not make them mad.

Mark Gurman, Bloomberg:

The model coming as early as this year will let people summon Apple’s Siri digital assistant without physically tapping the headphones by saying “Hey Siri.” The function will work similarly to how a user activates Siri on an iPhone or a HomePod speaker hands-free. The headphones, internally known as B288, will include an upgraded Apple-designed wireless chip for managing Bluetooth connections. The first AirPods include a chip known as the W1, and Apple released the W2 with the Apple Watch last year.

The idea for the water-resistant model is for the headphones to survive splashes of water and rain, the people said. They likely won’t be designed to be submerged in water. The latest iPhones can survive splashes, while the Apple Watch is considered “swim-proof.” Apple’s plans could change or be delayed, the people said. An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment.

Is this enough to make you replace your AirPods with the latest and greatest? What if it came with a wireless charging case that went along with the AirPower wireless charging mat?

These questions aside, what would really drive me to upgrade would be improvements to the audio experience.

Joe Rossignol, MacRumors:

Apple has registered new tablets with the Eurasian Economic Commission this week, suggesting that an iPad refresh is likely on the horizon. The filings, uncovered by French website Consomac, are legally required for any devices with encryption sold in Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Russia.

I buy it, seems a reasonable tree of logic.

Mark Bergen, Bloomberg:

On any given day, there could be a half dozen autonomous cars mapping the same street corner in Silicon Valley. These cars, each from a different company, are all doing the same thing: building high-definition street maps, which may eventually serve as an on-board navigation guide for driverless vehicles.

And:

Autonomous cars require powerful sensors to see and advanced software to think. They especially need up-to-the-minute maps of every conceivable roadway to move. Whoever owns the most detailed and expansive version of these maps that vehicles read will own an asset that could be worth billions.

The motivation for the next maps war is clear. Billions of dollars at stake. This article is a fascinating look at the players and the technological approaches to capturing the next generation of maps.

Just a taste:

The companies working on maps for autonomous vehicles are taking two different approaches. One aims to create complete high-definition maps that will let the driverless cars of the future navigate all on their own; another creates maps piece-by-piece, using sensors in today’s vehicles that will allow cars to gradually automate more and more parts of driving.

And:

These self-driving maps are far more demanding than older digital ones, prompting huge investments across Detroit, Silicon Valley and China. “An autonomous vehicle wants that to be as precise, accurate and up-to-date as possible,” said Bryan Salesky, who leads Argo AI LLC, a year-old startup backed by a $1 billion investment by Ford. The “off-the-shelf solution doesn’t quite exist.”

And:

It’s an expensive ordeal with a payoff that’s years, if not decades, away. “Even if you could drive your own vehicles around and hit every road in the world, how do you update?” asked Dan Galves, a spokesman for Mobileye. “You’d have to send these vehicles around again.”

Unlike conventional digital maps, self-driving maps require almost-constant updates. The slightest variation on the road—a construction zone that pops up overnight, or a bit of debris—could stop a driverless car in its tracks. “It’s the freak thing that happens that’s going to make autonomous not work,” said McNally, the analyst.

Fascinating read.

Above Avalon:

Not too hot. Not too cold. The iPhone is entering a new era that can best be characterized as status quo. The days of huge growth are over, and fundamentals aren’t likely to improve significantly from current levels. However, underlying dynamics found with the iPhone business will likely prevent sales and revenue from dropping precipitously in the near term. We are in the iPhone’s Goldilocks era.

Typical well thought out analysis. Keep this Goldilocks Era idea in mind over the next few cycles. Apple is going to be just fine with iPhone sales, even if they can’t hit the historic heights of years past.

Vogue:

Destinations with a distinct off-season are seeing a growing number of travelers undeterred its periods of poor weather and, in fact, they’re drawn to it. These thrill-seeking travelers are setting out in search of storms—specifically those of the bone-chilling, house-shaking, fire-and-brimstone variety.

The rise of storm tourism has been an unexpected and perhaps counterintuitive phenomenon. When most people plan a vacation, they typically go in search of greener pastures, or at least warmer weather. But more and more places are seeing an uptick in travelers who specifically want to experience big storms at their finest.

I’m not a “storm tourist” – I prefer to be a tourist in warm places like Italy – but there is a real draw, especially from a photography point of view, to these places during storm seasons.

Being from Nova Scotia, we used to love going to Peggy’s Cove during or shortly after a storm to watch the waves crash against the rocks. Tofino, one of the destinations mentioned in the above piece, is relatively close to me. I think we might be making a trip there to see some storms.

Twisted Sifter:

Ekaterina ‘Kate’ Lukasheva is an incredible Origami artist and designer from Moscow, Russia. The artist has had a fascination with puzzles and construction sets since childhood and first discovered origami in her teens. With its intricate folds and geometric patterns, there’s a lot of math in origami and Ekaterina would later graduate with honors from Moscow State Lomonosov University as a mathematician and programmer.

These are stunningly complex and beautiful.

Arturrr:

In early 2017, a conversation with yet another Waze fanboy finally nudged me to start a navigation app experiment. I was skeptical that the Alphabet owned company could meaningfully best its parent’s home grown Google Maps. I was also curious whether Apple Maps had discovered competence since its iOS 6 release.

I thus set out to answer three questions:

• Which navigation app estimates the shortest travel time?
• How does each app over/underestimate travel times?
• Which navigation app actually gets you to your destination most quickly?

Which led to these three conclusions:

• If you want to get to your destination most quickly, use Google Maps.
• If you want an accurate prediction from your navigation app to help you arrive at your destination on time, use Apple Maps.
• If thinking you’ll get to your destination quickly helps to ease your commuter anxiety, use Waze.

Very interesting. Obviously, this is a relatively small sample size. It’d be interesting if there was some way to crowd-source this experiment to come up with a map overlay that showed which solution worked best in a specific area.

World Economic Forum:

Tideglusib works by stimulating stem cells in the pulp of teeth, the source of new dentine. Dentine is the mineralized substance beneath tooth enamel that gets eaten away by tooth decay. Learn more about this innovations with experts from the Eugene Kids Dentist clinic.

If you plan to develop new drugs, you may need to setup a sterile environment to work in. The portable sterile environment units offer an adaptable solution for industries requiring fast setup without compromising on quality. Their versatility makes them indispensable when time-sensitive projects require the utmost cleanliness and control.

The insertion of tooth fillings is one of the most commonly performed procedures by dentists. These materials are used to fill up the holes in your teeth created by cavities. Pentru servicii de protetică dentară, vizitați https://topaltdent.ro/servicii-stomatologice/protetica-dentara/. Fillings have been traditionally made out of metal alloys, but composite fillings are becoming increasingly popular nowadays. Contact an emergency dentist denton if you have urgent concerns about your dental health.

Fillings help to protect teeth that have already been damaged by tooth decay from decaying any further. Once a tooth if filled up, any pain or discomfort associated with the cavity should go away. While silver amalgam fillings are good enough to get the job done, these tend to be more visible in your mouth. Composites, on the other hand, look just like your natural teeth, so people won’t even be able to tell that you have fillings in some of your teeth.

Fillings are also one of the cheapest medical procedures performed. That’s one of the reasons why it’s so important to go to your dentist immediately if you notice any cavities in your mouth. Once the cavity grows to the point that the pulp chamber is compromised, you’re going to end up spending a lot more than fillings cost to save the tooth. In some cases, if the damage is too extensive, you may even need a more significant procedure, such as full mouth  dental implants Turkeyy, which can be a cost-effective option for those looking to restore their smile when traditional treatments are no longer viable.

Moreover, a good dental clinic will not only focus on fillings and treating existing issues but also emphasize preventive care. This includes education on proper oral hygiene practices, such as brushing and flossing techniques, as well as the importance of a balanced diet for maintaining healthy teeth and gums. By partnering with a skilled dentist henderson nv, you can develop a dental care routine that minimizes the risk of decay and enhances your overall smile. Remember, investing in your dental health today will pay off with a brighter, healthier future.

And:

> The team inserted small, biodegradable sponges made of collagen soaked in Tideglusib into cavities. The sponges triggered dentine growth and within six weeks, the damage was repaired. The collagen structure of the sponges melted away, leaving only the intact tooth.

Hell yes.

[Via The Overspill]

Jean-Louis Gassée:

As a testament to Apple’s place in the pantheon of electronics, reviews for a new product from Cupertino come fast and — often — furious. HomePod, Apple’s contribution to the “smart speaker” genre, exacerbates the venomenon, pardon, phenomenon.

And these three rules for evaluating speakers:

First, we must keep in mind the influence of the room and our position in it, how reflective material can make music sound brittle, how carpets and curtains will deaden the sound — or provide welcome balance for an overly bright room.

Second, all speaker comparisons must be double-blind, where neither the person running the test nor the evaluators know which device is on at the moment.

Third, and most important, output level differences matter. Contestant speakers must be carefully equalized to within 1db, because in any comparison the louder speaker will always sound better.

And on tuning a speaker for a specific room:

How well the device can do this depends on the number of microphones (you need at least two for spatial location) and speakers (the HomePod has seven). In theory, more speakers are better, because it means the device will have more control as it adjusts the balance of sound energy. In reality, the smaller speakers — the tweeters — are the most important; lower frequencies impart little directional information, although the computer can still decide to reduce low frequency output in general if the room “booms” too much.

And:

Put less elegantly, in consumer advertising lore we call early adopters “dogs”: They eagerly snarf any new food. This tells us nothing; we need to wait and see if they come back to the pail.

That process, the spreading of Word-of-Mouth, will be complicated by software updates supposed to appear in the next few months — and for ever after that.

Terrific read, lots more than these few pull quotes.

John Gruber:

iOS 11 finally added a long-awaited feature for those of us who care about typographic details: smart punctuation. You can turn this on in Settings → General → Keyboards. When enabled, quotes and apostrophes (like “this” and ‘this’) are automatically turned into their proper counterparts (like “this” and ‘this’), two hyphens in a row (–) are turned into a proper em-dash (—), etc.

I say “finally” because MacOS has had the feature in the standard text editing system for many years, and I can’t think of a good reason why it wasn’t in iOS years ago.

And:

In some recent update to iOS (I think 11.2.5, but it might have been an earlier 11.2.x update), smart punctuation stopped working in Messages — and as far as I can tell, only Messages. Why? My best guess: unintended consequences when sending SMS messages.

I’m kind of shocked that it took this long for smart punctuation (which has been around in the Mac universe forever) to come to iOS. And that take it out, put it back in again Messages story is an interesting wrinkle.

Tim Cook from this FastCompany interview:

Even when we were idling from a revenue point of view–it was like $6 billion every year–those were some incredibly good years because you could begin to feel the pipeline getting better, and you could see it internally. Externally, people couldn’t see that.

On products like iPhone not being embraced right away:

[People said] it could never work because it didn’t have a physical keyboard. With each of our products there’s that kind of story. Over the long haul, you just have to have faith that the strategy itself leads to [financial results] and not get distracted and focus on them.

On distractions:

The priorities are about saying no to a bunch of great ideas. We can do more things than we used to do because we’re a bit bigger. But in the scheme of things versus our revenue, we’re doing very few things. I mean, you could put every product we’re making on this table, to put it in perspective. I doubt anybody that is anywhere near our revenue could say that.

On following into a product category:

I wouldn’t say “follow.” I wouldn’t use that word because that implies we waited for somebody to see what they were doing. That’s actually not what’s happening. What’s happening if you look under the sheets, which we probably don’t let people do, is that we start projects years before they come out. You could take every one of our products–iPod, iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch–they weren’t the first, but they were the first modern one, right?

In each case, if you look at when we started, I would guess that we started much before other people did, but we took our time to get it right. Because we don’t believe in using our customers as a laboratory. What we have that I think is unique is patience. We have patience to wait until something is great before we ship it.

You could make the argument that HomePod followed Amazon Echo and Google Home into the smart speaker market. But as we discussed in the latest Dalrymple Report, the HomePod has been around for a long time, long enough that it could have been a Steve Jobs brainchild.

There’s a lot more to read in this interview. Feels like a deeper look than most Tim Cook interviews.