Turn on your volume, jump to this tweet, and click to watch.

And if this open doesn’t mean anything to you, here’s the original. Pretty well done.

Juli Clover, MacRumors:

iPad Pro models set to be released in 2018 will come equipped with a TrueDepth Camera and will support Face ID, KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo told investors in a note this morning.

Kuo believes Apple will add TrueDepth cameras to the iPad Pro to introduce a user experience that’s consistent with the iPhone X and boost competitiveness. With all high-end iOS devices equipped with TrueDepth Cameras, “ecosystem development” will also benefit.

Here’s the quote from Ming-Chi Kuo:

We predict iOS devices to be equipped with TrueDepth Camera in 2018F will include iPhone X and 2018 new iPhone and iPad models. Because of this, we believe more developers will pay attention to TrueDepth Camera/ facial recognition related applications. We expect Apple’s (US) major promotion of facial recognition related applications will encourage the Android camp to also dedicate more resources to developing hardware and facial recognition applications.

Love the notch. Embrace the notch.

Nellie Andreeva, Deadline:

I have learned that Apple has pulled the plug on an Elvis Presley biopic series from The Weinstein Company in light of the controversy that has engulfed TWC since last week’s explosive exposé about its co-founder Harvey Weinstein.

The article has a gossipy tone, this falls under the category of “a little birdie told me”, but it is both interesting and believable. The Weinstein Company is doing everything they can to distance themselves from this scandal.

If this story is true, Apple is bailing early in the life of the series, and pulling the plug on something that predates their deal with Jamie Erlicht and Zack Van Amburg (the team they brought in to run the Apple video division).

Alex Kantrowitz, BuzzFeed News:

A “save for later” option is coming to Twitter.

The company is working on a bookmarking tool that will allow you to save Tweets and return to them in a dedicated section the product, its head of product Keith Coleman said in a tweet Monday.

Here’s a tweet showing the current design in action:

For Hack Week @Twitter we started developing #SaveForLater. Here’s the early prototype that we put together in a week, which is likely to change. pic.twitter.com/c5LekvVF3l

— jesar ? (@jesarshah) October 9, 2017

Tap the play button in the center of the tweet to watch this prototype video.

In a nutshell, you tap the ellipsis below a tweet to bring up a Add to Bookmarks button, saving the tweet for later.

Pierrick Calvez:

Typography is the technique of arranging type for effective communication and a bit of delight.

Fun exercise in typography with concrete examples. If you’re not a design nerd steeped in this stuff, there are many good points to keep in mind.

AdWeek:

When it comes to the world of technology design, few are revered more than Jony Ive, Apple’s chief design officer. However, apart from being the voice of product launch videos, he rarely talks publicly about his ideas or his work.

Speaking at The New Yorker’s TechFest this afternoon in conversation with David Remnick, Ive discussed Apple’s design process, his own preferences and how even he thinks using your phones too much might not always be the best idea.

Even when I can’t parse what he’s talking about, I always like reading and hearing Ive’s thoughts on design.

Wired:

For all we like to worry about how much of life happens on the internet now, a lot of life happened on AIM. Friendships and relationships started, ended, and often took place mostly in a chat window. It always started the same way: one person waiting for the other’s name to pop up on their Buddy List, then trying to wait at least a few seconds before chatting them so as not to seem desperate. Long before group texts, we planned life on AIM.

I’d bet the vast majority of us haven’t logged into AIM in years but we also felt a small tinge of regret with the announcement.

iMore:

Apple has released a version of iTunes for Volume Purchasing Program (VPP) customers that need to deploy apps within their business through iTunes. This version, iTunes 12.6.3, features support for managing iOS apps within iTunes. As noted by Apple, this version of the app can be installed over a newer version like iTunes 12.7.

Whether you like the “new” iTunes or not, it’s always nice to have options. I’ll be downloading this version ASAP.

Oisin Prendiville:

Ideally, experiences that users have in one app should stand to benefit them in others. As a community of developers and designers we should be looking to agree upon shared best practices to provide a consistent user experience. There’s an opportunity here to help users understand and embrace drag and drop as a powerful way to interact with touch devices, just as they have on the desktop for years.

This is a great article with video examples on how things work. Oisin recently released Castro 2.5 with his implementation on how it all should work.

Thanks to Hullo for sponsoring the Loop this week. A hot, sweaty, flat pillow will wake even the deepest sleeper. Soft traditional pillows collapse under the weight of your head which can cause strains in your neck, shoulders and back. They also retain body heat, which can make sleep uncomfortably warm. It’s time to abandon tradition and try something new!

Have You Ever Slept on a Buckwheat Pillow?

They’re totally different than the soft spongey pillows you’re used to. A buckwheat pillow is sort of like a beanbag for your head. Their unique and firm support simply can’t be matched by traditional pillows. The buckwheat hull filling will perfectly conform to the shape of your head and neck, providing comfortable support all night long. Buckwheat pillows also allow air to move freely though your pillow, preventing uncomfortable heat build up. Sleep on the cool side of the pillow all night long!

Try our buckwheat pillow, Hullo, for 60 nights. If it’s not for you, ship it back to us it for a full refund.

Futuremark:

Last week, a story went viral that claimed Apple was intentionally slowing down older iPhones to push people to buy its latest models. The claim was based on data which shows Google searches for “iPhone slow” spiking dramatically with the release of each new model.

And while plenty of reputable sites debunked the logic of that claim, no one looked at actual performance data to tell the true story.

Fortunately, we have plenty of real-world data we can use. Since 2016, we have collected more than a hundred thousand benchmark results for seven different iPhone models across three different versions of iOS.

These benchmark results provide a unique insight into the everyday performance of each iPhone model over time. And, as you’ll see, there are no signs of a conspiracy.

This is a charge that has been leveled at Apple since the released the second iPhone.

The Mac Observer:

Your iPhone is a powerful communication device, so what if you want to play or record some of the audio from it through your Mac—like maybe for a podcast you’re recording. Turns out it’s easy and your Mac can even see your iPhone as just another audio input source. Read on to learn how to set it up.

Very clever and useful hack for us podcasters.

I absolutely love my Les Paul guitars, but Gibson as a company has treated its employees and artists like shit for many years.

An important note if you upgraded to High Sierra and use Line 6 music gear.

Thanks to Bombich Software for sponsoring The Loop this week. Bombich Software has released Carbon Copy Cloner 5, an upgrade to its bootable backup software for macOS. The upgrade features scheduled task grouping and sorting, guided setup and restore, task history trend charts, a health check for backups, advanced file filtering, and includes hundreds of improvements and fixes.

Carbon Copy Cloner 5 requires macOS 10.10 or later and will be compatible with APFS and Apple’s macOS 10.13 High Sierra release this autumn. A full-featured thirty day trial version is available.

Carbon Copy Cloner is an app that I’ve used for years, in fact, since it was first released. The new version goes a long way to make the software easier to use, while still adding more advanced features.

You can get 15% off Carbon Copy Cloner until September 3 by using the code LOOPINSIGHT at checkout.

Apple today announced that Katherine Adams, formerly senior vice president and general counsel of Honeywell, will join Apple as general counsel and senior vice president of Legal and Global Security, reporting to CEO Tim Cook and serving on Apple’s executive team.

The company also announced Bruce Sewell, who has served as Apple’s general counsel since 2009, will be retiring at the end of the year.

Bruce did a great job defending and promoting Apple’s principles as General Counsel. Katherine Adams seems to have the same values as Tim Cook and will make a worthy replacement for Bruce.

Reuters:

On its website on Thursday, China’s state-backed ThePaper.cn cited an iPhone buyer surnamed Liu as saying his newly purchased iPhone 8 Plus arrived cracked open on Oct. 5. There was no sign of scorching or an explosion.

Liu told ThePaper he bought the handset through online marketplace of JD.com Inc. He said he did not charge the new device and returned it to the seller.

Pictures taken by Liu and displayed on ThePaper’s website showed an iPhone 8 plus split open along the side featuring the sim card holding, with the phone’s internal parts visible.

Puzzling. Just enough cases to make this more than a one-off, but does not appear to be widespread. Should be easy enough to tell if this is an issue with a specific part of the supply chain.

Apple press release:

Hundreds of new emoji, including more emotive smiley faces, gender-neutral characters, clothing options, food types, animals, mythical creatures and more, are coming to iPhone and iPad with iOS 11.1.

The new emoji are gorgeous. To me, they harken back to the days of skeuomorphism. Jarring to see the shiny, shadowed, 3D emoji next to the intentionally flat iOS interface. Which way are we going?

No matter, head over to the Apple press release, check out the emoji for yourself. A vampire!

Kate Conger, Gizmodo:

To improve functionality between Uber’s app and the Apple Watch, Apple allowed Uber to use a powerful tool that could record a user’s iPhone screen, even if Uber’s app was only running in the background, security researchers told Gizmodo. After the researchers discovered the tool, Uber said it is no longer in use and will be removed from the app.

My head is spinning. How was this allowed to happen in the first place and how was the tool not monitored, removal tracked and forced by Apple?

More:

The entitlement isn’t common and would require Apple’s explicit permission to use, the researchers explained. Will Strafach, a security researcher and CEO of Sudo Security Group, said he couldn’t find any other apps with the entitlement live on the App Store.

I’d love an official comment by Apple on this. Was this a one time thing? Is this common practice?

Electronic Frontier Foundation blog:

Turning off your Bluetooth and Wi-Fi radios when you’re not using them is good security practice (not to mention good for your battery usage). When you consider Bluetooth’s known vulnerabilities, it’s especially important to make sure your Bluetooth and Wi-Fi settings are doing what you want them to. The iPhone’s newest operating system, however, makes it harder for users to control these settings.

We’ve discussed the Control Center controls and icons in this Loop post.

In a nutshell, when you tap the WiFi or Bluetooth icons in Control Center, you’ll drop/restore the current connection, but without turning off the respective radio. And that’s the EFF’s complaint.

Instead, what actually happens in iOS 11 when you toggle your quick settings to “off” is that the phone will disconnect from Wi-Fi networks and some devices, but remain on for Apple services. Location Services is still enabled, Apple devices (like Apple Watch and Pencil) stay connected, and services such as Handoff and Instant Hotspot stay on.

All true.

Apple’s UI fails to even attempt to communicate these exceptions to its users.

A small point, but I disagree with this. Once you see the difference between the off icon state and the disconnected state, it’s clear what’s going on. There’s also helper text, like “Disconnected from XXX”, where XXX is your WiFi network name.

The more important issue:

It gets even worse. When you toggle these settings in the Control Center to what is best described as”off-ish,” they don’t stay that way. The Wi-Fi will turn back full-on if you drive or walk to a new location. And both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth will turn back on at 5:00 AM. This is not clearly explained to users, nor left to them to choose, which makes security-aware users vulnerable as well.

The only way to turn off the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth radios is to enable Airplane Mode or navigate into Settings and go to the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth sections.

My two cents? Make the controls default to the safest possible behavior, then expose settings that allow me to go to a more relaxed, less secure state for a specific benefit (battery savings, better communications, etc.)

UPDATE: As pointed out by my unrelated name-sharer and Loop reader Jason Mark, Airplane Mode does not impact the WiFi or Bluetooth radios, as EFF claims. An easy mistake, but worth clarifying. Give this a try on your iOS 11 device.

Dave Hamilton has some good info on how we can expect Sonos to work—or not—with Apple Music.

A pig, a pen, and lifelogging.

Here’s a humorous look at Google’s announcements yesterday.

Pop on some headphones and take some time to explore. This is pretty much every musical genre I’ve ever encountered.

For most (but not all) genres, a click on the name will play a short snippet example. Click on the arrow to the right of the name and you’ll go to that genre’s page, with a pretty significant listing of artists in that space.

Click on an artist, you’ll hear a snippet. Click on the arrow to the right of the artist, you’ll go to that artist’s Spotify page.

From the footnote:

This is an ongoing attempt at an algorithmically-generated, readability-adjusted scatter-plot of the musical genre-space, based on data tracked and analyzed for 1536 genres by Spotify. The calibration is fuzzy, but in general down is more organic, up is more mechanical and electric; left is denser and more atmospheric, right is spikier and bouncier.

And (my favorite):

Be calmly aware that this may periodically expand, contract or combust.

I absolutely loved playing with this. Was thinking, I wish Apple Music offered me a system like this for music discovery. I know there are apps that do this, but none has access to my “For You” data. I’d love to spend some time in a tree like this, personalizing and improving my “For You” model so Apple Music actually has a true sense of what I like.

Fantastic collection from 9to5Mac’s Benjamin Mayo. Even if you know every single one of these, this makes an excellent refresher.

Ryan Whitwam, Android Police, quoting the Pixel 2 product page fine print on the Google Store:

Free, unlimited original-quality storage for photos and videos taken with Pixel through the end of 2020, and free, unlimited high-quality storage for photos taken with Pixel afterwards.

There’s been a lot of discussion about exactly what this means. At the very least, if you want to keep taking uncompressed, original-quality pictures past the cutoff date at the end of 2020, you’ll need to start paying for storage. What is unclear is what that means for all the original-quality photos you’ve already placed on the Google Photos servers. Will they continue to be stored for free? Will you have to pay for those, too?

To be clear, I have no issue paying for the storage. Apple, after all, charges for iCloud storage already. Just looking for clarification.

Someone at Google know the details? Please let me know and I’ll update the post.

[H/T Oliver Thomas]

UPDATE: Someone at Google reached out to clarify this issue. As fair a response as I could have hoped for. Here’s the Q&A:

• Me: If I have original-quality photos stored for free, what happens to them once the end of 2020 deadline passes? Do they get deleted? Compressed? Do they stay there but I lose access to them unless I pay for enough storage so they fit?
• Google: They remain at original quality, for free. The change is only for taken photos thereafter.

As I read this, you can take all the original-quality (non-compressed) photos you want and they will always be available, non-compressed. Once the deadline passes, you’ll have a decision to make that only impacts photos taken after the deadline. Those post-deadline pics will be limited by the tier you choose after the deadline. Make sense?