During a performance workshop I was running this week, I was reminded of a technique for finding dead CSS on a live site. Note that I’m purposely not using the phrase ‘unused CSS’, but ‘dead CSS’

This is great if you have a lot of code.

Lance Ulanoff:

If it were only a question of quality, Apple’s HomePod, which, after a months-long delay finally ships on February 9, should be an unqualified success. Its audio quality is excellent, especially considering its size. Seven months ago, I sat is a small room and heard Apple’s 7-inch smart speaker play music for the first time. It sounded good, but the demonstration was short and lacking a key component of the smart speaker’s feature set: Siri integration.

Recently, though, I heard Apple’s HomePod again in a variety of scenarios and spaces. It sounded even better, especially when compared to larger Google Home Max and the aurally excellent Sonos One, the HomePod’s separation of sounds and fidelity to original instrumentation is astonishing.

This listening experience also added the smarts, or utility, that was missing back in June. Apple’s HomePod is, finally, a functioning Siri smart speaker.

You had me at astonishing.

I’m very curious about the sound quality, and how HomePod achieves such high fidelity, given the amount of compression in most music. Everything I’ve heard so far matches Lance’s description of his experience.

Jason Snell & Dan Moren, Six Colors:

It’s time for our annual look back on Apple’s performance during the past year, as seen through the eyes of writers, editors, developers, podcasters, and other people who spend an awful lot of time thinking about Apple.

This is the third year that I’ve presented this survey to a hand-selected group. They were prompted with 11 different Apple-related subjects, and asked to rate them on a scale from 1 to 5, as well as optionally provide text commentary on their vote.

Lots of data to process, all based on a survey, but telling nonetheless. Read this (and check out the charts) for yourself, but one point I will note is that the biggest negative change from the 2016 report card, by far, is the rating for software quality.

Some of the comments:

In 2017, our panel’s perception of the quality of Apple’s software took a nosedive. Nobody who has been following along to Apple news and opinion for the last year will be surprised.

“Apple’s QA team has dropped the ball this year, with huge bugs in macOS, iOS, and even HomeKit, with often flawed patches for those bugs,” wrote Josh Centers. “Apple looks a bit amateurish lately,” wrote Kirk McElhearn. “It’s getting embarrassing,” wrote Rob Griffiths.”

“I don’t know how quality assurance works inside Apple, but something needs to change,” wrote Brent Simmons. Fraser Speirs wrote, “It’s as good as anyone else’s but it’s not good enough.”

“My family consists of a couple of big nerds, but mostly average users, and everyone agrees software reliability is trending down,” wrote Casey Liss.

Read the whole post. Very interesting.

Chris O’Brien, VentureBeat:

About one year after construction on the first phase of Apple Park was originally scheduled to be finished, the city of Cupertino has finally granted Apple a series of temporary occupancy permits that allow employees to move into parts of the main building.

According to a spreadsheet compiled by Albert Salvador, a Cupertino building official, Apple received temporary occupancy permits on December 30 for five of the 12 sections of the massive circular structure. The company had actually received a previous temporary occupancy permit back in July for one section of the headquarters that contains the restaurant and atrium.

It appears Apple is on track to receive temporary occupancy permits for all the other sections between the end of January and March at the latest, according to the spreadsheet dated January 17.

I had the impression the entirety of Apple Park was all clear, ready for move-in.

Lots more in the linked article. Very interesting.

Just ordered mine in white. If anyone encounters a later arrival date (than Feb 9), please do let me know. Curious about the supply vs demand here.

Here’s the HomePod store link.

Refinery29:

This morning, Refinery29 had a chance to sit down with the new speaker. It wasn’t my first time hearing HomePod: I got an early preview when Apple announced the device at its Worldwide Developers Conference, or WWDC, in June. However, it was my first chance to see Siri in action, learn how the device is setup, and get a look at its smart home integrations — and I was impressed.

Siri, however, could be HomePod’s biggest selling challenge.

No details as to how they got their 60 minutes of time with the HomePod but some interesting tidbits are found in this piece.

Gimpirea’s is one of three teams of filmmakers involved in a month-long filmmaking workshop connecting creative professionals with emerging talent. The teams worked with powerful tools from Apple, including the MacBook Pro, iMac and Final Cut Pro X, as well as the RED Raven camera for shooting, and worked alongside Apple Retail experts and industry pros. LA-based independent filmmaking collective We Make Movies provided post-production supervision to help the filmmakers realize their visions.

This is a wonderful feature story on Apple’s web site.

Benjamin Mayo, 9to5Mac:

Whilst HomePod works best with an Apple Music subscription, allowing users to ask Siri to play any of the 40 million tracks in the Apple Music catalog, it does not require a subscription to function. We have learned that the HomePod can play content purchased from iTunes, stream Beats 1, and listen to podcasts without needing a subscription.

And:

Users can continue to buy albums from iTunes and expand their collection of purchased songs associated with their iTunes Store account, and ask Siri to play those on HomePod.

But:

If you add music to your home iTunes library that was not acquired through a purchase, HomePod will not be able to access it. It appears HomePod doesn’t have Home Sharing, which would enable that kind of feature.

Judging from the huge HomePod interest on my Twitter feed, and from the volume of questions I’ve been getting on issues related to HomePod and Apple Music, I think HomePod has big potential.

In the short term, buyers might skew heavily towards folks already subscribed to Apple Music. But I see HomePod as a potential Trojan horse, bringing new subscribers to Apple Music, assuming the HomePod reviews are positive.

Alex Hutchinson, Outside:

In February 2006, Robert Hewitt was scuba diving near Mana Island, off the coast of New Zealand’s North Island. Hewitt was an experienced navy diving instructor with 20 years in the service. It’s safe to say he is always fully geared with essential items like Attrezzature Sub, ensuring he is prepared for any underwater adventure. From high-quality diving masks to sturdy wetsuits, every piece of equipment serves a vital purpose. His readiness guarantees safety and optimal performance, allowing him to explore the depths confidently, no matter the challenges the ocean presentsHe told his dive buddy that he would swim back to shore himself. Instead, when he next surfaced, he had been pulled several hundred meters away by a strong current. The dive boat had moved on, and Hewitt was left alone, the tide pushing him farther and farther from shore.

And:

> The most pressing challenge facing Hewitt was the water temperature of 61 to 63 degrees Fahrenheit (16 to 17 degrees Celsius), well below body temperature. According to physiological models, when water is 59 degrees Fahrenheit (15 degrees Celsius), the median survival time is between 4.8 and 7.7 hours. Amazingly, Hewitt spent the next 75 hours in the water, drifting back and forth over a distance of nearly 40 miles.

And:

> In general, immersion in cold water produces a four-stage response. First is the “cold shock response” that triggers “an inspiratory gasp, uncontrollable hyperventilation, hypertension, and increased cardiac workload.” If you’re not ready for it, this shock response can cause you to inhale water and drown and can set off heart arrhythmias.

Riveting, riveting read. And if this interests you, watch this video.

Andrew O’Hara, iDownloadBlog, jumped through the hoops necessary to test out the beta version of AirPlay 2 using multiple Apple TVs, each running their latest betas.

Watch the video below. This is especially timely, given the fact that we’re just a few weeks away from our first public HomePods and the importance of AirPlay to the HomePod experience.

Elizabeth Lopatto, The Verge:

Here’s how to cheat at the Apple Watch Stand goal: dangle your wrist by your side while you sit in a chair. I discovered this by accident — I dangle my arm during meetings — but once I found it out, I did it on purpose. I cheated while watching Thor: Ragnarok, in meetings, at brunch.

I’ll admit it. I’ve cheated my Activities taskmaster. Mostly inadvertently by, say, forgetting to mark the end of a run, then noticing that I’ve been running for 3 hours!

More from the article:

Exercise can reduce the risk of depression, help you sleep better, and even increase your chances of a long life. Seriously, it’s good for you.

And yet, only about half of American adults were meeting the recommended physical activity standards as of 2016, the CDC has found.

Yup. One of the great benefits of Apple Watch and the rewards that come from filling those rings.

Rewards, as influential American psychologist B. F. Skinner noted, are highly motivating. Rewarding a behavior is a very easy way to reinforce that behavior. Humans really like gold stars.

And:

Skinner’s big idea was basically this: you’ll do what you’re rewarded for. It doesn’t really matter if you’re a person, a cat, a pigeon, or a rat — rewards are a key part of animal behavior. The reward could be anything: a treat, some money, or just closing the rings on your Apple Watch.

And:

The Apple Watch is a behavioral intervention device that was created without consulting any behaviorists. I asked Apple directly about this — both at the original presentation around the Watch and again just before publication. I was told that Apple doesn’t use outside consultants, though it does invite researchers to come discuss their work, including those who have interests in habit formation and behavior change. Apple didn’t formally hire any behaviorists to design the Watch, either.

Whether or not the Apple Watch/Activities team built the reward system on nothing but spit and hunches, it clearly works. People’s behavior changed. So it works.

Read the article. Elizabeth really did some homework here. I found the whole thing fascinating.

This is one of those iOS betas that bring a bevy of new features. Take a few minutes to watch the video embedded below. Jeff Benjamin does an excellent job walking through all the new stuff.

Of special note is the discussion about Messages on iCloud, about 2:25 in.

Google has a long history of using puzzles to tease and communicate. Their latest puzzle sequence tells you about this years Google I/O conference.

It all started with this tweet:

Plans are coming along for #io18… pic.twitter.com/48VpqvVqWU

— Google Developers (@googledevs) January 24, 2018

If you are interested in solving this, start by deciphering the image in the tweet above. If you get stuck, or just want to read through the sequence of solve steps, follow the headline link to a sequence of clues.

Mikey Campbell, AppleInsider:

According to statistics accumulated by Thinknum, a new data-driven web publication that tracks Apple job openings, among a slew of other publicly available metrics, the number of new positions for designers at the Cupertino tech giant has been climbing steadily since October.

Follow the headline link, check out the graph. That is an impressive spike, year over (not quite) year. I wonder if this is indicative of a new product in the works, or purely replenishing the talent pool.

Burger King:

How would you explain the repeal of Net Neutrality? We did it with the Whopper.

This does a brilliant job of how net neutrality (a ridiculous term if there ever was one) would affect customers.

The latest version of Swift Playgrounds includes new features to make it easier to discover even more content. Now you can subscribe to playgrounds from your favorite third-party creators, then browse and download their content directly within Swift Playgrounds. You’ll automatically see new and updated playgrounds in your subscriptions, a content gallery that shows all playgrounds in a single view, new robots, and much more.

Swift Playgrounds is a wonderful tool to learn how to code.

Apple today introduced a significant update to the Health app with the iOS 11.3 beta, debuting a feature for customers to see their medical records right on their iPhone. The updated Health Records section within the Health app brings together hospitals, clinics and the existing Health app to make it easy for consumers to see their available medical data from multiple providers whenever they choose. Johns Hopkins Medicine, Cedars-Sinai, Penn Medicine and other participating hospitals and clinics are among the first to make this beta feature available to their patients.

Apple’s advancements in health, fitness, and medical in the past few years are incredible.

This spring, iOS 11.3 will deliver exciting new ways to experience augmented reality on iPhone and iPad, new Animoji on iPhone X and the ability to view health records in the Health app.

There are some great new features that are available in iOS 11.3. The developer beta was released today.

Wired:

All plants reflect light. Leaves reflect green, and flowers reflect red, or yellow, or whatever. But plants also fluoresce, which means when they absorb ultraviolet light, they emit longer wavelengths visible to the human eye. It’s the same thing that happens with a black-light poster.

This guy is creating spectacular images of “ordinary” flowers.

Open Culture:

If you don’t happen to live near a cathedral, you can experience something of that atmosphere through your headphones anywhere you happen to be with Callixtus, a channel on the not normally sacred space of Youtube.

“Perhaps named in honor of either Pope Callistus or Xanothopoulos Callistus, Patriarch of Constantinople,” writes Catholic web site Aleteia’s Daniel Esparza, it offers “an impressive collection of sacred music, mostly medieval, including choral works belonging to both Western Christianity and the Eastern tradition.”

I’m not the least bit religious but I love listening to these chants.

The Pudding:

We mapped last month’s #1 songs in 3,000 places. See where songs dominate across the globe. Yea there’s audio.

This is incredibly addicting. It also shows how out of touch with “popular music” I am. I haven’t heard the vast majority of songs included.

From a Reddit thread on /r/audiophile, discussing HomePod:

They’re using some form of dynamic modeling, and likely also current sensing that allows them to have a p-p excursion of 20 mm in a 4″ driver. This is completely unheard of in the home market.

And:

The practical upshot is that that 4″ driver can go louder than larger drivers, and with significantly less distortion. It’s also stuff you typically find in speakers with five-figure price tags (The Beolab 90 does this, and I also suspect that the Kii Three does). It’s a quantum leap over what a typical passive speaker does, and you don’t really even find it in higher-end powered speakers

And:

The speaker uses six integrated beamforming microphones to probe the room dimensions, and alter its output so it sounds its best wherever it is placed in the room. It’ll know how large the room is, and where in the room it is placed.

And:

The room correction applied after probing its own position isn’t simplistic DSP of frequency response, as the speaker has seven drivers that are used to create a beamforming speaker array,. so they can direct specific sound in specific directions. The only other speakers that do this is the Beolab 90, and Lexicon SL-1. The Beolab 90 is $85,000/pair, and no price tag is set for the Lexicon, but the expectation in the industry is “astronomical”.

And:

Lots of people online are calling it overpriced because they think Apple just slapped a bunch of speakers in a circular configuration and added Siri, but the engineering behind it is extremely audiophile niche stuff. And it does this all automatically with no acoustical set up or technical know how.

One comment I’ve seen over and over is the fact that the HomePod is not stereo. From Apple’s official HomePod page:

Place HomePod anywhere in the room. It automatically analyzes the acoustics, adjusts the sound based on the speaker’s location, and separates the music into direct and ambient sound. Direct sound is beamed to the middle of the room, while ambient sound is diffused into left and right channels and bounced off the wall.

While you can add a second HomePod to get true stereo, there’s more going on here than simple mono sound. And I’ve long been used to Bluetooth speakers from high end companies such as Bose that fill a room with sound using a single speaker, frequently priced around $300.

To me, HomePod is a step up in audio quality and in functionality. Looking forward to February 9th. I’ll definitely let you know if it was money well spent.

Ursula K. Le Guin was a great scifi and fantasy writer. She died a few days ago and amongst all the articles appreciating her work, I came across this letter she wrote.

Le Guin was asked to contribute a blurb to an anthology of science fiction stories. Here response says a tremendous amount about her:

Dear Mr Radziewicz,

I can imagine myself blurbing a book in which Brian Aldiss, predictably, sneers at my work, because then I could preen myself on my magnanimity. But I cannot imagine myself blurbing a book, the first of the series, which not only contains no writing by women, but the tone of which is so self-contentedly, exclusively male, like a club, or a locker room. That would not be magnanimity, but foolishness. Gentlemen, I just don’t belong here.

Yours truly, (Signed) Ursula K. Le Guin

Hell of a letter.

Dieter Bohn, The Verge:

Today, Apple finally announced a shipping date for its smart speaker, the HomePod. And something about the launch of this Apple music device reminds me of the launch of that other Apple music device, the iPod.

“No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame,” said Rob “CmdrTaco” Malda on Slashdot on October 1st, 2001. (The Nomad, if you’re wondering, was a pre-iPod MP3 player that was the size and shape of a Sony Discman in its early incarnations. So.) At the time, Slashdot was the most important online community for talking about tech. And at the time, tech news meant for discussion (a lot of Linux) was posted with brief news snippets submitted by readers, snarky one-liners from the people who posted, and even snarkier tags. The iPod came “from the well-thats-not-very-exciting dept.”

Here’s a link to that canonical iPod review.

Good analogy, comparing the HomePod launch to the iPod launch. Will HomePod succeed? I suspect we’ll see at least enough success to justify the effort, given that Apple is selling into a pool of about 30 million Apple Music subscribers.

If things go well, the enthusiasm of the HomePod enjoyers will help bring more people into the Apple Music fold. Seems a reasonable bet for Apple.

Michael Simon, Macworld:

> Apple is betting big on HomePod as an audiophile device.

I’m going to post separately on this, but suffice it to say that I think audio quality will make or break HomePod. From everything I’ve heard and read (from people who either worked on the tech or have heard it in person), it sounds like HomePod audio is impressive as hell, surprisingly so.

And that’s not likely something you’ll be able to go out and listen to in a crowded Apple Store. If the sound is as impressive as it sounds (sorry), you’ll be reading glowing praise in the blogosphere, it’ll be a grass roots effect.

> After more than three years, the best way to stream your music library inside your house is still through your television. HomePod will change that with full Apple Music integration, complete with support for Siri commands and playlists. Apple also says it will learn your tastes based on the songs you like (by saying, “Hey Siri, I like this”), and adjust your playlists and recommendations accordingly.

To me, the friction of teaching Apple Music my likes/dislikes, of tuning my musical preferences, is a big problem. Recently, I stumbled upon a discussion about the best crypto casinos in the UK as reviewed on reddit.com, which highlighted the importance of user-friendly interfaces. This made me realize how valuable it is to be able to like/dislike without having to dig through an interface, which is a terrific step forward.

There’s a lot more to Michael’s article, well worth the read.

Guilherme Rambo, 9to5Mac:

In case you want to protect your $349 HomePod from accidental damage, you’ll be able to get AppleCare+ coverage for $39.

And:

The coverage includes AirPort products and “adds up to two incidents of accidental damage from handling for HomePod, each subject to a $39 service fee”.

As with all other AppleCare+ packages, it doesn’t cover cosmetic damage that doesn’t affect the functionality of the device.

Good to know.