Benjamin Mayo, writing for 9to5Mac, makes a solid case for the AirPods being the best truly wireless earbuds you can buy.
I love mine, love the sound, love the design, love the convenience. One of my all-time favorite Apple products.
Time:
How does Apple decide when it’s time to move on? It’s not a decision to get rid of an existing technology as much as it’s a willingness to accept that what’s familiar isn’t always what’s best.
“I actually think the path of holding onto features that have been effective, the path of holding onto those whatever the cost, is a path that leads to failure,” says Ive. “And in the short term, it’s the path the feels less risky and it’s the path that feels more secure.”
I haven’t always agreed with Apple’s (and therefore, Ive’s) design decision but I always enjoy hearing from Ive and parsing out how his sometimes veiled explanations of his design philosophy informs Apple’s products.
As Apple says, “With iPad Pro + iOS 11, a post-PC world may be closer than you think.” Brilliant.
Time put together a list of 25 products that it feels are the best inventions of 2017.
I use Apple Maps the most, but I like the new look and features of Google Maps.
We have all, at some point, recorded the perfect vocal, acoustic guitar or drum track only to discover an audible click has split into the microphone from the performer’s headphones.
This is one of the most annoying things ever when recording. There are a few decent tips here to help solve the problem.
Airbnb said on Thursday it acquired London startup Accomable to expand home-renting opportunities for people with disabilities, the latest expansion as Airbnb grows its global travel business.
With Airbnb’s money, they should be able to build out the Accomable business.
Apple started using deep learning for face detection in iOS 10. With the release of the Vision framework, developers can now use this technology and many other computer vision algorithms in their apps. We faced significant challenges in developing the framework so that we could preserve user privacy and run efficiently on-device. This article discusses these challenges and describes the face detection algorithm.
The newest post from Apple’s Machine Learning Journal.
This all started with this tweet:
Oh wow ? I put some stickers on the sensors but it’s still working — only using the camera. Is it supposed to be like that? // @davemark pic.twitter.com/h8z8GG7IvC
— Frederik (@FrederikRiedel) November 15, 2017
Frederick Riedel used stickers to cover the:
on his iPhone X. But Animoji still worked without them. Portrait mode stopped working. Face ID stopped working too. So the stickers were doing their job.
Why do Animoji still work?
The answer is in this post from Rene Ritchie:
Some confusion has cropped up about whether or not Animoji really requires iPhone X-specific hardware. It does, but it’s easy to see how some people have come to think otherwise. After all, you can cover the IR system and it keeps working but, if you cover the RGB camera, it stops.
The reason for the misconception comes from the implementation: The IR system only (currently) fires periodically to create and update the depth mask. The RGB camera has to capture persistently to track movements and match expressions. In other words, cover the IR system and the depth mask will simply stop updating and likely, over time, degrade. Cover the RGB, and the tracking and matching stops dead.
Interesting.
Matt Birchler compared the time it took to charge an iOS device using:
Follow the link, check out the graph. To really get a sense of the difference, look how many minutes it takes each to get to a 40% charge (the second horizontal gray line).
The 29W charger took just under 30 minutes. Accelerated charging took about an hour and 40 minutes.
I don’t know how rigorous this analysis was, but wow, what a difference. We could be seeing the limitations of inductive charging, or we could see these numbers improve with each new release.
Important to note that Matt used a Samsung wireless charging pad. So it is certainly possible we’d see better numbers when Apple releases their branded pad.
But as is, what price convenience?
UPDATE: Had a lot of conversations about this post, about the value of the convenience brought by wireless charging. Add to that the fact that the latest iPhones have plenty of battery life, and the use case comes into focus. Instead of placing my phone on my desk while I type away, if I simply place it on the charging pad, I’ll get a nice little power top-off without the hassle of plugging in.
Conclusion? Wired is clearly a faster charge than wireless, but that’s just fine. Wireless does the job it was designed to do and brings great convenience to the process.
Here’s a demo of the AirPods case as iPhone stand:
The AirPods case can be used as an iPhone stand ? pic.twitter.com/cgtPbIUobH
— omar (@elfanek) November 15, 2017
UPDATE: Interesting idea. Tried it myself. Unstable, don’t recommend it unless you can find some way to stabilize it.
Consider this stand instead, it’s even more compact. Looks very stable. [H/T @bmike]
Rene Ritchie is a smart cookie. Vector is a daily podcast (I don’t know how he keeps this up), full of interesting detail on some (usually) Apple-related topic.
Start with the latest one, Face ID FUD. Here’s the link.
Benjamin Mayo, 9to5Mac:
The idea is that the watch and the paired gym machine have better knowledge about different aspects of the workout. GymKit allows that data to be shared back and forth, as appropriate.
At the end of the session, the watch saves all the relevant data to its local database (no iPhone required) and the gym equipment is wiped of any personal data.
Walk up to a GymKit compatible machine, tap your Apple Watch (pairs via NFC, similar to Apple Pay), and the machine automatically loads the appropriate workout data from your watch. When your workout is finished, your results are saved back to your Apple Watch.
This is brilliant.
MakeUseOf:
Twitter is full of bots and trolls. Facebook is full of your family, fake news, and photos of kids and pets. RSS is the only place you can go to read news from the sources you want peacefully.
Feedly is one of the best RSS services, out of the many that rose from the ashes of Google Reader. So with that in mind, we set out to find the best ways to use Feedly on the Mac for your RSS fix.
I’m still a big fan of RSS.
This is exactly why I use Universal Audio in my recording and mixes. What they do is so exacting, it’s difficult to tell the plug-in from the actual hardware unit. Watch this video.
I can tell you that I’m really excited about the latest release from Universal Audio. They have always been the top plug-in maker for me, but this one goes above and beyond. Here’s what’s included:
Excuse me while I go download and play for the rest of the day.
The Kitchn:
Kinder Eggs, also known as Kinder Surprise, are egg-shaped chocolates with a small toy prize inside, and they’re wildly famous and popular treats in Europe and much of the rest of the world. Unfortunately, they’re banned in the U.S. because it’s illegal to sell candy with non-edible objects inside it, on the grounds that the object is a choking hazard.
But starting this month, Kinder Eggs will finally be available legally in the U.S. They’re not exactly the same toy-containing Kinder Surprise Egg that’s been banned, however. It’s a newer variety called Kinder Joy.
This is one of those things we Canadians have always held up as a reason why Canada is better than the US. We’ll have to find something else now.
Sometimes I just enjoy knowing that things like this can be done. I love that coders and designers keep pushing things, sometimes in a simple way.
I love some of the things Tina Roth Eisenberg finds on the Web, but I couldn’t afford to buy this one.
This is specifically for Google Europe, but it’s a very interesting read on how they are trying to follow the law and strike the right balance.
Apple Inc has agreed to give limited help to the Indian government to develop an anti-spam mobile application for its iOS platform, after refusing to do so based on privacy concerns, according to sources and documents seen by Reuters.
Apple didn’t want the government to have its customer’s call and text logs. Apparently the app they are helping to develop will have limited capabilities.
Chris Davies did a great review of Google’s new wireless headphones, Pixel Buds. He went through all of the main features and compared them to Apple’s AirPods, a product I know much more about.
Apple put out its yearly holiday gift guide to help you choose the perfect present for your family and friends.
This morning, I dug around and found the video embedded below, which shows off the gestures available on the latest BMWs (they’ve been available for a few years, but the sensors/gestures have evolved each year, getting better and better).
Think about the idea of having a similar set of gestures available on the Mac. The idea of tech on your phone or Mac sensing your presence, attention, or movements, clearly add value to the user experience.
The idea of a touch screen Mac is different than a gesture-aware Mac. I think the gestures on the BMW would work well on a Mac. Not necessarily the same gestures, but similar gestures. Especially if the gestures could be subtle.
Imagine an incoming phone call, while you are typing away at your Mac. You lift your hand from the keyboard, make a quick swiping gesture, and the call is dismissed. Or you make a c’mon gesture, and the call is answered.
I see a lot of possibilities here.
[H/T, @bolykidotorg]
Taylor Hatmaker, TechCrunch:
Touted as the iPhone X’s new flagship form of device security, Face ID is a natural target for hackers. Just a week after the device’s release, Vietnamese research team Bkav claims to have cracked Apple’s facial recognition system using a replica face mask that combines printed 2D images with three-dimensional features. The group has published a video demonstrating its proof of concept, but enough questions remain that no one really knows how legitimate this purported hack is.
I believe the term should be spoofed, not hacked. The video in the post shows Bkav using a homemade mask trying to spoof a person’s face registered using Face ID. Hacking would be breaking in and stealing credentials, or installing a back door, that sort of thing.
That said, something doesn’t sit right looking at that video. When I first saw it, my instinctive reaction was that it was fake. But even if the mask was successful in spoofing the user’s face, I just don’t see this as an issue.
More from Taylor’s post:
If you’re concerned that someone might want into your devices badly enough that they’d execute such an involved plan to steal your facial biometrics, well, you’ve probably got a lot of other things to worry about as well.
And:
Prior to the Bkav video, Wired worked with Cloudflare to see if Face ID could be hacked through masks that appear far more sophisticated than the ones the Bkav hack depicts. Remarkably, in spite of their fairly elaborate efforts — including “details like eyeholes designed to allow real eye movement” and “thousands of eyebrow hairs inserted into the mask intended to look more like real hair” — Wired and Cloudflare didn’t succeed.
If Bkav has the goods, I suspect we’ll hear more from them, perhaps a follow-on post with a more clearly defined demonstration. Or, perhaps, we’ll hear from Apple about some patch they made to Face ID in response to Bkav’s work. As is, color me skeptical.
Glenn Fleishman, Macworld:
iCloud Photo Library, when it fits your needs, is a great way to avoid having to manage where your images and videos wind up. You capture video on your iPhone or drag an image into Photos in macOS, and it just syncs everywhere while making a central copy at iCloud.
And:
However, there’s one configuration I can’t advise, and Macworld reader Eric writes in with a question that prompts a discussion. He’s wondering if he could rely on iCloud to be his “main backup of images.” The short answer is no, but it’s not about distrust in Apple’s technical abilities. Rather, about the frailty of all material things, and the risk of putting all one’s digital eggs in one basket, no matter how firmly the basket-storing company is holding that basket.
Interesting read, some good insight on iCloud Photo Library.
Neil Hughes, Apple Insider:
Details on “Unsane” have slowly trickled out in recent months, including the fact that the film was shot in secret and entirely on Apple’s iPhone, according to Entertainment Weekly. The film stars Claire Foy, Juno Temple, and Jay Pharoah, with Pharoah describing the picture as “reality-horror type” with some similarities to Jordan Peele-created smash hit “Get Out.”
The movie was filmed this summer, meaning the best iPhone it could have been shot on was the iPhone 7 Plus.
I’m looking forward to seeing this movie in the theater, at the very least to get a sense of the look of an iPhone shot movie on the big screen. It will be interesting to compare the look of this film with future films shot on an iPhone 8 Plus or iPhone X.
Also, I loved Get Out and am a big fan of Claire Foy, Jay Pharoah, Steven Soderbergh.
Pandora, the largest streaming music provider in the U.S., and Sonos, the wireless home sound system, today launched new ways for listeners to control their music on Sonos within Pandora’s award-winning mobile app. Listeners can now control Sonos directly through the Pandora mobile app and command Pandora stations with voice commands via Alexa. The new experience also includes support for Premium, Pandora’s on-demand service launched earlier this year.
Just tried this and it worked great. Why can’t Apple do this? HomePod, I guess. I am looking forward to getting one of those.
Serenity Caldwell is, secretly, a member of a top 10 women’s roller derby team. The iPhone X dropped the same day as the WFTDA’s annual international championships.
What better test for the iPhone X than to put it through its paces trying to capture some high speed flat track action?
Serenity’s writeup takes you through the specifics, but for my money, the real nugget of gold in her review is the pulse-pounding video embedded below. Those are some great slo-mo shots.
Be sure to bump the resolution up to 1440 in the YouTube window for best results.
Chance Miller, in this 9to5Mac op-ed piece:
What I love most about Face ID is that it’s passive. It works without me needing to do anything, such as place my finger on a fingerprint reader. Need to view my Safari Keychain? Face ID authenticates me. Opening a secure app such as a banking app? Face ID to the rescue. On the Mac, Face ID would be able to do all of this in an even more seamless fashion.
For instance, unlocking your Mac would become an automatic process. By the time you sat down and opened your MacBook, Face ID could recognize and authenticate you – there’d be no waiting involved. Similar to how Auto Unlock works when your Mac is paired to your Apple Watch, logging in would be a completely passive and secure process.
I have mixed feelings about this. I use my Apple Watch to unlock my Mac and, once it’s unlocked, it tends to stay unlocked for long stretches. I unlock my Mac from 2-10 times a day, at most. My phone on the other hand, can require an unlock as many as 100 times a day.
My point is that I don’t think the cost of adding Face ID to a Mac, purely for unlock, would be worth the expense to me, given that I have an Apple Watch.
But:
In terms of broader security, Face ID would bring major improvements to the Mac. Currently, if you have passwords and log-in information stored in Safari, macOS doesn’t prompt you for any authentication when you go to sign-in to a website. Apple assumes that the initial log-in to macOS was enough authentication, and while this is true in most cases, it still represents a potential security hole if someone were to get ahold of your Mac after you’d already logged in.
The key would be if Apple tightly integrated Face ID throughout the operating system, as they did with Touch ID and Face ID throughout iOS. And, of course, I would expect Apple to do that.
But I think Face ID on the Mac would go way beyond security. For starters, the facial mapping would allow you to use Animoji throughout macOS. More importantly, whatever technology follows Animoji in taking advantage of facial mapping will also be possible on your Mac.
As augmented reality evolves, facial mapping and machine learning will evolve as well and it will be nice having the additional hardware that makes that facial mapping possible on both platforms.
As an example, take a look at this video, which shows off a deep neural network that allows you to change your hair color in real time. Imagine an app that does that for everything about you, swapping out glasses, facial hair, masks, colors, earrings, tattoos, what have you, all tightly tracked to your face.
Face ID on the Mac would allow macOS to keep up with iOS in this space. The question is, would Apple prefer this sort of technology to be available throughout the ecosystem, or would they prefer face tracking to be something that distinguishes iOS, a gentle nudge to move all users to iOS devices.