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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
When iOS 11 dropped, one point of discussion was Control Center and the way that the WiFi and Bluetooth buttons were handled. Here’s a link to our explainer.
At its core was the issue of the Bluetooth and WiFi radios not being turned off when the Control Center radios were tapped. Instead, the current connections were dropped, but the radios were left on.
Here’s another wrinkle:
When you tap the Airplane Mode button, iOS remembers your last Bluetooth and WiFi settings and will leave those radios on if they were on last time you were in Airplane Mode.
Note that iOS will not turn on one of the radios if they are off when you enable Airplane Mode.
Give this a try:
Open Control Center, tap to turn on WiFi and Bluetooth
Tap the Airplane Mode button to enable it
Tap WiFi to turn it off
Tap Airplane Mode button to disable it
Tap WiFi to turn it back on
OK, now WiFi is enabled, but Airplane Mode remembers that you want it off. Let’s test that:
Tap to turn on Airplane Mode
Your WiFi radio should shut off, but your Bluetooth radio should stay on.
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.
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).
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
