Steven Aquino, responding to Marco Arment’s fixing the MacBook Pro post, specifically this point Marco made about the Touch Bar:

Sorry, it’s a flop. It was a solid try at something new, but it didn’t work out. There’s no shame in that — Apple should just recognize this, learn from it, and move on.

From Steven’s response:

Arment’s recommendation that Apple “back away from the Touch Bar” reiterates a popular sentiment in the Apple community: in blunt terms, the Touch Bar sucks. I’ve read many articles and heard many podcasts where prominent members of the community deride the feature and question its future. These criticisms, while legitimate, sting me personally because I like the Touch Bar.

Read on for the details, but I agree. Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. The Touch Bar is an important concept. Let it evolve into the thing it was born to be.

Marco Arment:

There’s a lot to like about the new MacBook Pros, but they need some changes to be truly great and up to Apple’s standards.

Here’s what I’m hoping to see in the next MacBook Pro that I believe is technically possible, reasonable, widely agreeable, and likely for Apple to actually do, in descending order of importance:

On the newer, butterfly keyswitches:

Butterfly keyswitches are a design failure that should be abandoned. They’ve been controversial, fatally unreliable, and expensive to repair since their introduction on the first 12” MacBook in early 2015. Their flaws were evident immediately, yet Apple brought them to the entire MacBook Pro lineup in late 2016.

After three significant revisions, Apple’s butterfly keyswitches remain as controversial and unreliable as ever.

No matter how you feel about the feel of the butterfly keyswitch, reliability and cost of repair are real issues. To me, butterfly or scissor design, Apple should stand by their keyboard design. If it’s true that the butterfly keyswitches are breaking far more frequently than their scissor predecessors, Apple should acknowledge this and extend warranty support for the keyboards, repair them free of charge for, say, two years.

On the placement of the arrow keys on the new keyboards:

The Magic Keyboard only needs one change to be perfect for the MacBook Pro: returning to the “inverted-T” arrow-key arrangement by making the left- and right-arrow keys half-height again. This arrangement is much more natural and less error-prone because we can align our fingers by feeling the “T” shape, a crucial affordance for such frequently used keys that are so far from the home row.

Yup.

On Apple branded USB-C hubs:

Apple’s most full-featured USB-C accessory is downright punitive in its unnecessary minimalism: one USB-C passthrough, one USB-A (a.k.a. regular/old USB), and an HDMI port that doesn’t even do 4K at 60 Hz — all for the shameless price of $80.

Instead of giving us the least that we might possibly need, this type of product should give us the most that can fit within reasonable size, cost, and bandwidth constraints.

How can you argue with this?

USB-C is great, but being limited to 2 or 4 total ports (including power) simply isn’t enough. Even if you adopt the USB-C ecosystem, these MacBook Pros are more limited than their predecessors

On the Touch Bar:

Sorry, it’s a flop. It was a solid try at something new, but it didn’t work out. There’s no shame in that — Apple should just recognize this, learn from it, and move on.

Not sure I agree with this. As is, the Touch Bar might not be exactly right, but it is a concept that some people do find useful, even invaluable. I think of Touch Bar as more an early adopter work in process, a MacBook element that will evolve into something we all grow to love.

And on charging:

I’d like to see them bring back the charging LED on the end of the cable, and the cable-management arms on the brick. These weren’t superfluous — they served important, useful functions, and their removal made real-world usability worse for small, unnecessary gains.

Amen. I miss the charging LED, especially.

Thoughtful work from Marco, well worth the read, a terrific conversation starter.

This is a fascinating glimpse of Google’s R&D organization, known as X. What I found most fascinating, was the coverage of one of the earliest X moonshots, Project Loon:

Loon took the spotlight in the wake of Hurricane Maria, which knocked out power and communications for nearly all of Puerto Rico’s 3.4 million residents.

Before the storm, Project Loon’s team had been working on an AI-based navigation system that can keep high-altitude balloons over a given area for weeks or months at a time to provide aerial internet connections. Peru was the primary testing ground, and Puerto Rico was one of the launch sites. After the hurricane hit, the focus shifted to filling the gap in Puerto Rico. The team quickly worked out arrangements with Puerto Rico’s government and federal authorities as well as AT&T and T-Mobile to boost connectivity.

And:

X says Project Loon is currently providing basic internet connectivity for more than 100,000 people in Puerto Rico.

Loon may not be as well known as Google’s self-driving vehicle project, Waymo, but Project Loon has achieved a real-world impact.

Joe Rossignol, MacRumors:

ModMy today announced it has archived its default ModMyi repository on Cydia, which is essentially an alternative App Store for downloading apps, themes, tweaks, and other files on jailbroken iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch devices.

ZodTTD/MacCiti also shut down last week, meaning that two out of three of Cydia’s major default repositories are no longer active as of this month.

And:

The closure of two major Cydia repositories is arguably the result of a declining interest in jailbreaking, which provides root filesystem access and allows users to modify iOS and install unapproved apps on an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch.

I’ve always thought of jailbreaking as a wild west frontier, with few rules, little oversight and, correspondingly, no real way to prevent malware. Jailbreaking also technically violates your iPhone warranty.

But, that said, jailbreaking also brought some interesting, experimental features to iOS. Over time, Apple caught up, bringing the more successful jailbreaking features into the fold.

We’re seeing the end of an era.

Mental Floss:

On December 9, 2012, shoppers expecting a traditional IKEA shopping excursion got something else. Sprinting between cars in the store’s adjacent two-level parking garage was a primate decked out in a tailored faux-shearling coat and a diaper. Barely a foot tall, the gimlet-eyed creature scanned the growing crowd around him looking for any sign of his keeper. Several of them snapped his photograph.

In less than an hour, animal services would arrive to collect him. In less than nine hours, he would become an international news story.

I remember when this happened in 2012 and thinking was a really weird story. This oral history shows it was even weirder than I imagined.

9to5Mac:

Less than five miles from Cupertino, nestled in the shadows of the newly-opened Apple Park, construction crews are quietly putting the finishing touches on another massive development project built under guidance from Apple. A striking architectural feat when viewed from any angle, Sunnyvale’s new “Central & Wolfe” campus will open in its doors to thousands of Apple employees in early 2018. 9to5Mac stopped by the future campus to see how the new buildings are shaping up.

I actually had no idea Apple was building a 2nd spaceship.

The Outline:

For a while, spam — unsolicited bulk messages sent for commercial or fraudulent purposes — seemed to be fading away. The 2003 CAN-SPAM Act mandated unsubscribe links in email marketing campaigns and criminalized attempts to hide the sender’s identity, while sophisticated filters on what were then cutting-edge email providers like Gmail buried unwanted messages in out-of-sight spam folders. In 2004, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates told a crowd at the World Economic Forum that “two years from now, spam will be solved.”

But it’s 2017, and spam has clawed itself back from the grave. It shows up on social media and dating sites as bots hoping to lure you into downloading malware or clicking an affiliate link. It creeps onto your phone as text messages and robocalls that ring you five times a day about luxury cruises and fictitious tax bills.

I’m sure many Loop readers will say they have few issues with spam but that’s probably because we’re tech savvy enough to take measures to avoid it. But average users are not so lucky.

Longreads:

On Thanksgiving Day, 1942, an audience stuffed full of holiday cooking settled into the plush seats at the Hollywood Theatre on New York’s Fifty-First Street to watch the premiere of Casablanca, a new film from Warner Brothers. With few Americans knowing Casablanca was a city in French Morocco — let alone how to find it on a map — the studio banked on audiences’ love of wartime intrigue, along with the star power of Bogart and castmates Claude Rains and Paul Henreid, to sell the film.

Casablanca made its debut two-and-half years after Germany marched into France, triggering a massive refugee exodus. As the Nazis advanced, the population of France fled south, hoping to avoid being swallowed up by Hitler’s burgeoning empire. Hungarians, Poles, Russians, Austrians, and Spanish Republicans who had fled their homelands to seek sanctuary in France before the war, once again found themselves on the run. Thousands would end up in Casablanca.

Casablanca is my favorite movie of all time and, while I knew the circumstances were based in fact, this story goes much deeper.

Vox:

Some cities in Europe are undergoing a fascinating transformation: they’re getting rid of all of their road signs.

For us in North America, this might be a terrifying thought. But we’ve all seen video of traffic, particularly in Asia, where masses of people, buses, cars, and motorcycles all seem to be able to manage. The video points out that where this has been tried, pedestrian accidents have fallen sharply. But it also points out how these traffic controls don’t serve disabled communities very well.

Wired:

txt.fyi has no social mechanics. None. No Like button, no Share button, no comments. No feed showing which posts are most popular. Each post has a tag telling search engines not to index it, so it won’t even show up on Google. The only way anyone will see it is if you send them the URL or post it somewhere. txt.fyi is a tool for putting stuff online—but without the usual features to help something become a pass-around hit.

I call it antiviral design.

I’m a big fan of “antisocial” media. I don’t track stats, I don’t care if someone “likes” what I post and I have no idea how many followers I have on Twitter (and don’t care). Whatever I post on social media, I post because I like it, not because I care what anyone else thinks.

This might be a tool for people who just want to get thoughts online without having to worry about all the detritus that comes with it. My fiance (soon to be wife!) is semi-interested in blogging but has zero interest in learning about SEO, WordPress, HTML, etc. This might be the perfect site for her.

Fast Company:

Despite Wall Street’s pessimism, industry leaders sound downright bullish on the future of traditional retail.

What we’re seeing now, industry executives say, is a rational, albeit painful, course correction. One study from retail-research firm IHL Group found that a mere 16 chains, including Radio­Shack and Payless, account for nearly half of all store closings, and that there will be a net increase of more than 4,000 stores in 2017 and 5,500-plus in 2018.

While it feels like “everyone” is shopping online and retail is on its death bed, this story says it’s not as bad as what it may seem.

I may be an outlier but I still like going to the mall (on occasion) and walking around, if only for the people watching.

Gizmodo:

Have you ever sat down to watch that film that critics are raving about only to be massive unimpressed? Sure, Mark Kermode might have loved The Florida Project, but let’s be honest – what it really needed was a few more car chases and explosions to liven things up.

In fact, it often seems like critics and ordinary cinema-goers are at loggerheads: They want beautifully crafted tales about people in the olden days having feelings, which elucidates universal truths about the human condition. While we want massive robots hitting other robots.

This kind of stuff always fascinates me – how critics can love or hate a movie but audience reaction is the complete opposite. I first noticed this when I saw Naked Lunch and Barton Fink in 1991. Critics loved the two films so I saw them for that reason alone. I hated both of them.

But then again, I hated Forrest Gump so go figure.

Smartphone maker Apple Inc and its biggest manufacturing partner on Wednesday said that a small number of students were discovered working overtime in its Chinese factory, violating local labor laws.

Many of the headlines surrounding this story seem to indicate that Apple was caught forcing students to work like slaves. The truth is, Apple has held the companies it works with to a higher standard than anyone else when it comes to helping the workers.

As you would expect, Amazon has Black Friday deals on a ton of items. This page will help get you started.

This is a great article by Steven Aquino on how Face ID stacks up in his uses on the iPhone X.

Research by Apple Inc computer scientists on how self-driving cars can better spot cyclists and pedestrians while using fewer sensors has been posted online, in what appears to be the company’s first publicly disclosed paper on autonomous vehicles.

So interesting that Apple would do this.

The Atlantic:

The top-scoring panoramic photos entered in the eighth annual Epson International Pano Awards have just been announced. The contest is meant to showcase the best work of panoramic photographers around the world.

Enjoy these wide images of our natural and human-built worlds on the largest screen available to you.

There’s approximately a million “photo contests/awards” nowadays and I avoid posting about most of them but these images are spectacular and I had to share. Thanks to John Kordyback‏ for the link.

This is a terrific piece from Ben Lovejoy, 9to5Mac, a realistic look at the experience of shooting with the iPhone X camera.

I’ve been using the iPhone 8 Plus (similar cameras, but the iPhone X has a slightly faster telephoto f/2.4 vs. f/2.8 – and the X has OIS in both lenses) for the past few days and my experience has been similar to Ben’s.

I will say, I find the iPhone 8 Plus camera to be astonishing.

Take a moment to compare the two images in this tweet. One was taken at the base of Philadelphia City Hall, looking up to the top of a tall tower. Without moving, I took a second shot, pinching out to zoom in on a statue at the top of the tower.

I was floored by the amount of detail in that second shot. Amazing to get this kind of result from a phone that fits in my pocket.

Mark Gurman, Bloomberg:

When the $350 gadget debuts early next year (on Friday Apple delayed the launch from December), the HomePod won’t be able to do many of the things the Echo can. Amazon offers thousands of “skills” (voice-activated apps) that let users do a range of things (including buy stuff from Amazon). The Google Home Mini, which debuted earlier this year, is similarly endowed. The HomePod will be mostly limited to playing tunes from Apple Music, controlling Apple-optimized smart home appliances and sending messages through an iPhone.

“This is a huge missed opportunity,” said one of the people, who requested anonymity to discuss an internal matter. Apple declined to comment.

I’m just going to quote this Daring Fireball piece from 2006, which itself quotes a post from the San Jose Mercury News, but Gruber really brought this to fame:

Responding to questions from New York Times correspondent John Markoff at a Churchill Club breakfast gathering Thursday morning, Colligan laughed off the idea that any company — including the wildly popular Apple Computer — could easily win customers in the finicky smart-phone sector.

“We’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone,” he said. “PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.”

This pattern repeats itself over and over again. They’re not going to just walk in. Until they do.

My money is on Apple and HomePod here. This is not casting doubt on Amazon’s Echo or Google Home. But Apple has an obvious advantage, a real barrier to entry for both Google and Amazon. Even if they don’t reveal all their cards from day one, HomePod (and HomePod Mini, if such a thing eventually ships) will have intimate, private API access to the Apple ecosystem.

Silly to bet against that home court advantage.

From the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum event invitation:

Jonathan Ive, Chief Design Officer of Apple, is widely considered the world’s most influential industrial designer and plays a key role in Apple’s status as one of the most recognized and innovative brands in history. As CDO, he is behind all aspects of the look and feel of the iPhone, iPad, MacBook, and Apple watch—as well as major architectural projects like Apple Park—and new ideas and initiatives in development.

He has been described as one of the most powerful people in the world’s most valuable company and is a 2017 honoree of the Smithsonian’s American Ingenuity Awards (the “Golden Globes of intellect”), which honor revolutionary breakthroughs in the arts and sciences, education and social progress. Ive will be joined in conversation by Rick Tetzeli, Editor At Large of Fast Company and author of the bestselling biography Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader.

Sadly, tickets are all gone, but:

1. There is a waiting list, in case you’ll be in Washington DC next week
2. Hopefully, Fast Company will video the interview, put it on their web site.

[H/T, The minimaluminiumalistically musing Not Jony Ive]

Hackers stole the personal data of 57 million customers and drivers from Uber Technologies Inc., a massive breach that the company concealed for more than a year. This week, the ride-hailing firm ousted its chief security officer and one of his deputies for their roles in keeping the hack under wraps, which included a $100,000 payment to the attackers.

They simply neglected to tell anyone they had been hacked. There is nothing this company won’t do.

The head of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission unveiled plans on Tuesday to repeal landmark 2015 rules that prohibited internet service providers from impeding consumer access to web content in a move that promises to recast the digital landscape.

I don’t understand how they think this is a good thing.

Vice:

From Michael Jackson to Whitney Houston, Bruce Springsteen to Queen, few have ever captured legendary musicians quite like photographer and photojournalist Neal Preston. Over the course of his 48-year career, the New York–born, self-taught shutterbug witnessed the rise of rock ‘n’ roll and the global culture shifts that came with it.

You’ve probably never heard his name but I guarantee you’ve seen his images. I love the disdain he shows for present day, digital photographers and the bloodless way they talk about their work. I see a lot of his images and think, “Well, they couldn’t have been that hard to get” until I realize, he was shooting his iconic shots using a film camera. I could never get those shots.

Motherboard:

The idea of websites tracking users isn’t new, but research from Princeton University released last week indicates that online tracking is far more invasive than most users understand. In the first installment of a series titled “No Boundaries,” three researchers from Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy (CITP) explain how third-party scripts that run on many of the world’s most popular websites track your every keystroke and then send that information to a third-party server.

Some highly-trafficked sites run software that records every time you click and every word you type. If you go to a website, begin to fill out a form, and then abandon it, every letter you entered in is still recorded, according to the researchers’ findings.

This list of the websites that do this should make you very, very angry.

MacStories:

However, long-form writing is a different animal altogether that benefits from a project-based approach that also includes tools for planning, organizing, researching, and tracking. Today, Literature and Latte released version 3.0 of Scrivener for macOS with a long list of new features that cements its spot as one of the premier project-focused apps available on the Mac for long-form writing.

Scrivener isn’t just for book writers, but the features that cater to them are what sets the app apart from other text editors.

I no longer write long-form but I would have loved this app in college and almost every long-form writer I know uses and loves Scrivener.

Many people realize that smartphones track their locations. But what if you actively turn off location services, haven’t used any apps, and haven’t even inserted a carrier SIM card?

Even if you take all of those precautions, phones running Android software gather data about your location and send it back to Google when they’re connected to the internet, a Quartz investigation has revealed.

Damn, Google.