Tim Cook famously said, “If you’ve ever seen what can be created on an iPhone or an iPad with that pencil, it’s really unbelievable.”
As soon as I heard those words, I thought it inevitable that we’d see Apple Pencil support for iPhone.
Bloomberg:
Late in the evening of Sept. 21, X-rays of the innards of the iPhone 8 appeared on Twitter. The images didn’t come from Apple. They were posted by a team from iFixit Inc., a repair-parts, tool and software company in San Luis Obispo, California, that had flown to Australia to take advantage of the 18-hour time difference to buy the new model before it became available in the U.S. When U.S.-based Apple fans woke on iPhone 8 release day, iFixit had a step-by-step guide posted for taking apart the new phone.
Wow! That is commitment.
Over the last decade, the repair culture that spawned generations of driveway mechanics, vacuum-cleaner shops and itinerant TV-fixers has been eroded by manufacturers keen to claim service contracts and revenues. They’ve used intellectual-property laws to restrict access to repair manuals and repair software for products ranging from iPhones to John Deere tractors.
This makes me crazy. I want to be able to fix something that breaks, rather than be forced to buy a new one. To me, the ability to repair my own gear should be a right.
From the interview with iFixit CEO Kyle Wiens:
If you take an iPhone, it’s around $5 in labor that Apple pays Foxconn to assemble an iPhone. It’s far more labor when you take your phone into a repair shop – it might be $50 in labor. And if your phone needs two or three battery swaps over its lifetime, that’s $150 in labor in the U.S. over its lifetime compared to $5 on the manufacturing side.
Making products repairable is better for the environment (less waste, more reusability) and better for consumers (cost and time savings on repairs). This might sound like “get off my lawn” griping, but read the interview, judge for yourself.
BBEdit 12 is now live. It’s a powerful update, with tons of new features.
I had a chance to see a pre-release of this new version and I have to say, it’s incredible how much work Rich and the team did here. My two favorite features? Canonize and Columns.
Canonize is a search and replace supercharger, letting you build a master transformation file filled with all sorts of search and replace commands. You can even Canonize a proper case spelling of a word. So you could ask Canonize to replace all instances of noerr, NOERR, NoErr with noErr by just including noErr in your list.
Columns lets you select, copy, and rearrange columns of text or data. If you ever spend your time mucking around with datasets or delimited text, you’ll love this feature.
These are but two of many new features, the tip of the iceberg.
Here’s a summary of the high points, and a deep dive set of release notes.
On pricing:
BBEdit 12 has a suggested retail price of US$49.99. Owners of BBEdit 11 can upgrade for US$29.99. Owners of BBEdit 10 or earlier (including customers who purchased BBEdit in the Mac App Store) can upgrade for US$39.99.
Anyone who purchased BBEdit on or after March 1, 2017 is eligible to receive a free upgrade.
BBEdit is one of two of my must-have Mac utilities (Keyboard Maestro being the other). A no-brainer upgrade.
Alphabet Inc’s Waymo sought at least $1 billion in damages and a public apology from Uber Technologies Inc as conditions for settling its high-profile trade secret lawsuit against the ride-services company, sources familiar with the proposal told Reuters.
They also want a public apology for stealing their trade secrets.
Ars Technica:
The 3.9-meter wide spacecraft is going on tour again. It won’t be visiting all 50 states but instead a select few cities—Houston, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, and, lastly, for the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing in 2019, Seattle.
Other intriguing objects in the “Destination Moon” exhibit include the visor and gloves Aldrin wore on the Moon’s surface, a shiny lunar sample return container, Michael Collins’ Omega Speedmaster watch, and more. A 3D tour of the spacecraft also highlights graffiti left inside the “Columbia” module by the astronauts. There is also a Moon rock, of course.
One of my biggest thrills in visiting the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum was seeing the Apollo 11 command module. If it comes to a city near you, you owe it to yourself to go to the exhibit.
TidBITS:
I pulled my iPhone 8 Plus out of my pocket and took one exposure, handheld, with the Live Photos feature turned on. And then I applied Apple’s new Long Exposure effect in the Photos app. That’s it. The Long Exposure effect is dirt-simple to use.
Anyone who has used a DSLR to take long exposure shots will look at this technique with a little bit of envy. The iPhone shots aren’t perfect but they are damn good all things considered.
Bloomberg:
The story of the device’s evolution is readily available to anyone willing to crack an old phone open and look at what’s inside.
This is unabashed gadget porn. It won’t be of much value to the average user but, if you’re the kind of person who likes to take electronics apart, this is the page for you.
Chance Miller, 9to5Mac:
As it does towards the end of every year, Piper Jaffray today has released its Fall 2017 edition of “Taking Stock with Teens.” This survey aims to analyze what companies teen shoppers are most interested in, and every time, Apple is one of the top performers.
And:
This time around, 78 percent of teens surveyed claimed to own an iPhone, up from 76 percent during the last survey earlier this year, and 74 percent last year.
And:
The Apple Watch isn’t nearly as popular as the iPhone among teens, but it’s growing. Just 12 percent of respondents claimed to have an Apple Watch, with 17 percent saying they plan to purchase one within the next six months. Last time around, 13 percent of teens had purchase intent while 10 percent already owned an Apple Watch.
To be clear, that’s a move from 10% to 12% owning an Apple Watch, from 12% to 17% with intent to buy. Good growth.
Tim Cook was a guest at the launch of the Oxford Foundry, an entrepreneurial venture founded by the University of Oxford to channel startup efforts by the student community.
Tim’s intro starts at about 28:56. I’d start watching there. The interview starts at about 30:52.
Lots of interesting topics, including Tim’s start in life, his decision to take a role at Apple, and lots about Steve Jobs.
Compelling, worth your time to watch.
Vogue:
> Imagine that you’re out to lunch, and in walks a woman wearing a terrific-looking coat or a silver dress for prom. Who designed it? Did she buy it last season, or is it still on sale? Covertly, you give her coat a quick scan on your smartphone, find out it’s available on Farfetch, and moments later it’s on its way out for delivery. > > According to Apple CEO Tim Cook, that future may not be far off. In a sit-down interview with Vogue, the leader of the world’s most valuable technology company said he is betting big on augmented reality (AR), which he believes will transform everything from runway shows to shopping. “I don’t think there is any sector or industry that will be untouched by AR,” he said.
And:
> It will also take some time before we’ll be able to scan and identify other women’s coats on our phones. Cook says the company has no plans to build the giant database of clothes, shoes and other goods that would make it possible. But Apple does plan to support companies who might embark on such an endeavour, he said.
I do think the ability to point your phone at a product and have it identified, with a shopping link, will have a powerful impact on retail. I suspect that Amazon is perfectly placed to reap the benefits from that technology.
One issue I see is the idea of pointing your phone at someone to take a picture of their clothing or shoes. There’s a high level of creepiness potential there, not sure how that becomes normalized.
From the Pittsburgh Tribune Review writeup:
New technologies are sometimes a selfish endeavor, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak told a crowded Carnegie Music Hall in Pittsburgh on Tuesday.
He built the Apple II, the computer that made Apple a household name , because he wanted color in arcade games.
And:
“Steve made the iPhone, not for you and me. He made it for himself,” Wozniak said of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. “It had to be elegant and simple, which were design flaws.”
And:
Wozniak didn’t hold back on criticisms of Jobs. He said a 2015 movie about Jobs nailed the man’s personality. He put blame for the failures of the Apple III, the Lisa and other products on Jobs.
Read the rest of the article for more on this. While I’ve heard Woz hint at these things before, I’ve never heard of an interview in which he gets so specific on his feelings about Steve Jobs. This article gets into one specific anecdote, but from what I’ve heard, he did relate others on stage.
Apple on Wednesday released iOS 11.0.3 with a couple of important updates for users. According to Apple, the update fixes an issue where audio and haptic feedback would not work on some iPhone 7 and 7 Plus devices. The update also addresses an issue where touch input was unresponsive on some iPhone 6s displays because they were not serviced with genuine Apple parts.
You can download the update by going to Settings > General > Software Update.
Barrons:
Morgan Stanley’s Katy Huberty and her team take a look at Apple today, writing that they raised their revenue and earnings per share estimates by 2% for 2018, and raised their price target $5, to $199.
Their bullishness comes from a couple of factors.
Interesting predictions on a supercycle and Watch demand. I bet they come true.
Petapixel:
Windowed is a simple new app that finally lets you upload to Instagram directly from your Mac or PC desktop.
Created by photographer and programmer Felix Sun, the app is essentially a tiny mobile browser that you can log into Instagram’s website through.
What Windowed does is provide a stripped down mobile browser for computers that’s dedicated to posting photos to Instagram.
I don’t often need to do this but it’s a nice option to have.
Apple:
Forests are a wonderful resource for cleaning air, purifying water, sequestering carbon, and sheltering wildlife. As part of Apple’s commitment to resource conservation, we designed and run a program to address the impact of our use of paper for packaging.
The initiative started with a detailed assessment of Apple’s fiber use, which led to a three-part strategy: (1) use paper more efficiently and, where possible, use recycled paper; (2) source virgin fiber responsibly; and (3) protect and create sustainable working forests.
A link to this PDF showed up in my email box. It’s an interesting document that shows Apple’s wonderfully clever packaging goes hand in hand with a commitment to minimizing their environmental impact.
The Independent:
Apple’s new technology, named ARKit, seemed to arrive at the perfect time. It works by imposing bright virtual objects into the real world – at a time when reality has never seemed darker.
The feature is the kind of world-changing technology that’s on a par with the introduction of the iPhone 10 years ago, Tim Cook tells The Independent. And Apple is standing at the front of it, he says – as another, perhaps more literal, aspect of its long-standing mission to make the world better and a bit more magic.
Apple made an obvious bet on AR vs VR and it looks like it will pay off handsomely for them.
From the Kickstarter page:
The Secret History of Mac Gaming is the story of those communities and the game developers who survived and thrived in an ecosystem that was serially ignored by the outside world. It’s a book about people who made games and people who played them — people who, on both counts, followed their hearts first and market trends second. How in spite of everything they had going against them, the people who carried the torch for Mac gaming in the ’80s, ’90s, and early 2000s showed how clever, quirky, and downright wonderful video games could be.
This looks amazing. I love the cover design. Gorgeous, and emblematic of that old school Mac look and feel. Check out the kickstarter. Hoping this meets its goals.
Dana Blankenhorn, Yahoo! Finance:
Apple is expected to have revenue of $50.94 billion for the September quarter, which is the fourth quarter of its fiscal year, and earnings of $1.86 per share. Margins are expected to be 38%.
Without revenue from services that would not be possible.
Dana is making the case that Apple is morphing into a services company.
More from the article:
The man behind Apple’s retail stores, George Blankenship, says services are also the future of the shopping mall. In his opinion, easy shopping, fast WiFi, and delivery services will make shopping centers relevant for millennials and their Generation Z siblings, and I believe him.
Because Apple owns its own cloud data centers, it can earn maximum margins from this trend. Instead of renting the space it uses for services, it owns the space, with all the tax benefits. Steve Jobs dismissed services as the tail wagging the dog. For Tim Cook, this is the dog.
I find this fascinating. For Steve, the product is the dog, the Mac, iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch, collectively, is the dog. The services are the tail.
Is Apple truly becoming a services company? Is this inevitable, the only way Apple can maintain its momentum, size, and revenue stream?
I was reading a Medium post by John Ganotis, entitled, Siri commands that should work on watchOS, but don’t:
Siri on watchOS is useful for handsfree interactions, especially when one command can skip multiple physical steps. But I’m regularly finding commands that should be feasible with Siri and don’t work. I decided to start documenting them here.
First off, this is an interesting read. I’d think it’d have value for the Siri team, though I suspect they already have a list like this, and that their list is much more comprehensive.
I am a huge fan of Siri. I do think Siri, like most useful technologies, suffers from its own Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. We love it when we first start to use it but, over time, we start to become aware of how incredibly useful it could be. As we move up this Siri needs hierarchy, we become more and more focused on the missing detail, ignoring all the working pieces.
I use Siri constantly. There are plenty of fails, but I keep a model in my head of what works well, what elements of Siri I can count on.
Perhaps my biggest Siri dependence: I constantly ask Siri to schedule meetings, calls, and reminders. I use many variants on time, including things like day after tomorrow, a week from Thursday, in an hour, like that. I also use “when I get home” a lot. Though there are occasional glitches, almost always with Siri understanding my words, I find this technology very dependable.
Scheduling is at the core of the Siri hierarchy. There are many more examples at that level. General queries that are keyword driven and domain specific. Asking about the weather, the result of last night’s baseball game, requests to do well identified things like set a timer or to give directions to a specific address.
The higher you go in the hierarchy, the less dependable Siri will be. The more context comes into play, the larger the domain of possibilities, the higher the odds that Siri will either be unfamiliar with a concept, or that Siri will misinterpret your intentions.
The problem is one of expectations. As visions of what could be, should be possible come into view, the more we expect from Siri. At the same time, as our Apple gear grows ever more sophisticated, the set of possible Siri interfaces grows, and grows exponentially.
I can only imagine how hard the Siri team is working on both keeping up with the growing list of demands, and working on more future-proof, general purpose, AI-driven approaches that can move Siri into the future.
Personally, I find it helpful to think about how hard this problem is, to appreciate what we’ve got, to not get sucked into that vortex of expectation.
Gunseli Yalcinkaya, Dezeen:
Smartify launched at the Royal Academy of Arts in London last week. It has been described by its creators as “a Shazam for the art world”, because – like the app that can identify any music track – it can reveal the title and artist of thousands of artworks.
It does so by cross-referencing them with a vast database that the company is constantly updating.
I love the idea of this app. One key difference between Smartify and Shazam is that the creators/sellers do the database updating in Shazam, while Smartify does the updating themselves. While Shazam is a general purpose solution, Smartify is more collection specific, working with museums, for example, to tag all the items in a specific gallery.
Looking forward to taking it for a spin the next time I’m at MoMA. Wondering if Smartify can handle sculpture and other 3D artforms.
First things first, credit to Google for their response to this issue. This was a technical glitch which they addressed by nerfing all the Home Minis ’til they figure out a fix. An interesting read, nonetheless.
Benjamin Mayo, 9to5Mac:
The Dow Jones newswires had a ‘technical error’ which caused the portal to report several spurious stories including several headlines claiming Google was acquiring Apple for $9 billion, and that the deal was pre-arranged with Steve Jobs in his will.
I get that a technical error caused the stories to flow, but where did they come from in the first place? It’s not like someone accidentally wrote them.
From Dow Jones:
Please disregard the headlines that ran on Dow Jones Newswires between 9:34 a.m. ET and 9:36 a.m. ET. Due to a technical error, the headlines were published. All of those headlines are being removed from the wires. We apologize for the error.
Nope. An error is the release of the stories. But the creation of those stories is something else entirely. This should not be dismissed as a simple mistake.
The CNBC All-America Economic Survey finds that 64 percent of Americans now own an Apple product, up from 50 percent when the question was last asked five years ago. The average American household reports owning 2.6 Apple products, up by a full Apple product from the 2012 survey.
“I cannot think of any other product — especially any other product at a high price point — that has that kind of permeation with the public and level of growth,” said Jay Campbell, pollster with Hart Research, which conducted the survey along with Public Opinion Strategies.
Absolutely incredible when you think about it.
One of my favorite apps on iOS has been updated adding a number of new features, including Drag and Drop.
According to Pixelmator, these are the new features available in the update:
There are also a number of bug fixes in this update.
Netflix Inc said on Tuesday it had received formal approval to start a C$500 million production unit in Canada and sought to quell talk that it had asked for special tax benefits for investing in its first such unit outside the United States.
I don’t understand the criticism. A company should ask for all the deals it can, including tax breaks. If a country, city, state, or province doesn’t want the business, jobs, and investment, someone else will.
Fast Company:
For minimum wage workers, a small emergency can mean financial disaster. A new app called Onward makes it easy for them to automatically set aside a few dollars each week to start an emergency fund.
An app from a new startup called Onward is designed to help low-wage workers steadily save, and also offers a line of credit with relatively low interest rates if someone needs a little extra in an emergency.
While the employer’s participation is key, this is a great way to help the working poor save a little money for the future and is definitely a better alternative than the evil “Payday Loan” companies.
You can ask Siri to do a lot of things with the Apple Music app, and most of them work quite well. I often ask Siri to play the Hard Rock music station and it does. However, I got a nice surprise yesterday with Siri and Apple Music.
Instead of being specific on what I asked to be played, I simply said “Hey Siri, play some music.” What I got was a customized music station that played a collection of my favorite songs. These were different songs than the ones in “My Favorites Mix” and it even setup a station on the “For You” section of Apple Music called “Jim Dalrymple’s Station.”
I was sure I had given Siri this command before, but nothing like this happened. Maybe this is new or perhaps I gave Siri a different command in the past. The station hasn’t shown up on my Apple Music profile page for friends to see yet, but hopefully it will.
Whatever happened, I’m glad it did. I’m really enjoying this new station.
Macrumors:
Apple is teaming up with Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Television and Comcast’s NBC Universal TV production unit to create new episodes of sci-fi series “Amazing Stories,” reports The Wall Street Journal.
Apple plans to create 10 new episodes of “Amazing Stories” alongside Amblin and NBC Universal, with plans to spend more than $5 million per episode. Spielberg is likely to be an executive producer for the new version of the show, according to The Wall Street Journal’s sources.
Money well spent.
Felix Krause:
iOS asks the user for their iTunes password for many reasons, the most common ones are recently installed iOS operating system updates, or iOS apps that are stuck during installation.
As a result, users are trained to just enter their Apple ID password whenever iOS prompts you to do so. However, those popups are not only shown on the lock screen, and the home screen, but also inside random apps, e.g. when they want to access iCloud, GameCenter or In-App-Purchases.
This could easily be abused by any app, just by showing an UIAlertController, that looks exactly like the system dialog.
Even users who know a lot about technology have a hard time detecting that those alerts are phishing attacks.
These dialog boxes pop up all the time and users who aren’t tech savvy can, will and do just type in their passwords without thinking about why they are doing it.
Saw Blade Runner over the weekend. Very impressive movie, but it does beg the question. What the hell is a Blade Runner?
Abraham Riesman, Vulture:
Though the viewer is told in the opening text of Ridley Scott’s 1982 original that “special Blade Runner units” hunt renegade replicants — and though the term “Blade Runner” is applied to Harrison Ford’s Rick Deckard a few times in the film — we’re never given an explanation of where the proper noun comes from. “Blade?” Deckard uses a gun, not a knife or sword. “Runner?” Sure, he runs at times, but not more than the average person might. Blade Runner 2049 has a few scenes that prominently feature scalpels, but they’re not wielded by a Blade Runner. The novel upon which Blade Runner was based, Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, offers no clues: Deckard and his ilk are just cops, never referred to as Blade Runners. The term is impressionistic at best and nonsensical at worst.
Read on for the backstory on the origins of the term and how it found its way to director of the original, Ridley Scott. Fascinating story.