Scott Stein, on sending SMS texts via his cellular Apple Watch:
I have experienced some quirks, particularly with text messages, and investigating them revealed some limitations in how the Apple Watch handles its wireless interactions.
And:
The Apple Watch really, really wants your phone to be powered on somewhere, connected to Wi-Fi or LTE. That location doesn’t have to be anywhere near the Watch, however. Your iPhone can be sitting on your nightstand at home, and you could be 50 miles away — though, obviously, someplace that still has cellular coverage.
The different scenarios are subtle. Scott does a nice job of laying out the rules. And here’s an Apple support page that addresses these issues, though I think Scott’s writeup better addresses the scenarios involving SMS.
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai, via this press release:
“In recent years, I have repeatedly called on the wireless industry to activate the FM chips that are already installed in almost all smartphones sold in the United States. And I’ve specifically pointed out the public safety benefits of doing so. In fact, in my first public speech after I became Chairman, I observed that ‘[y]ou could make a case for activating chips on public safety grounds alone.’ When wireless networks go down during a natural disaster, smartphones with activated FM chips can allow Americans to get vital access to life-saving information. I applaud those companies that have done the right thing by activating the FM chips in their phones.
“Apple is the one major phone manufacturer that has resisted doing so. But I hope the company will reconsider its position, given the devastation wrought by Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria. That’s why I am asking Apple to activate the FM chips that are in its iPhones. It is time for Apple to step up to the plate and put the safety of the American people first. As the Sun Sentinel of South Florida put it, ‘Do the right thing, Mr. Cook. Flip the switch. Lives depend on it.’”
Apple’s response, as told by Rene Ritchie and Phil Schiller, via Twitter:
Statement from Apple regarding calls for FM radios to be enabled on iPhones. (Recent models don’t have them.) pic.twitter.com/xwggMNtjhq
Apple Music tells Billboard that it now counts well over 30 million paying subscribers, helping fuel a 17 percent revenue jump for the U.S. recorded-music business in the first half of 2017 over the same period a year ago, according to the RIAA. Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs issued a report in August predicting that subscription streaming would drive the global record business to nearly triple to $41 billion by 2030.
And:
[Iovine] is working to crack what he sees as the music industry’s biggest challenge: how to inject enough “soul” into subscription streaming services so that fans will pay $10 a month instead of listening to their tunes on free services, which are also growing fast.
To do it, he’s relying on BBC Radio 1 veteran Zane Lowe, now creative director and L.A. anchor for Apple Music’s free radio service Beats 1, and Apple Music head of content Larry Jackson, a former A&R executive at Interscope and other labels. All three are focused on creating exclusive content, from films and ads to radio shows and glossy magazines, to help artists tell the stories behind their music in an age of shrinking attention spans and fast-changing playlists.
To me, the biggest issue with Apple Music is the depth of the user experience. For example, with For You, the on-boarding is primitive, at best. I never felt steered towards my deepest musical tastes. And as I listened to music, even as I diligently favorited my best loved tunes, I never felt that For You really got me.
And there’s no real way to get under the hood, to see what Apple thinks I really love. No way to tap, drag, select, to tune my For You model to really get those recommendations in line with my personal tastes.
Don’t get me wrong. I really do love Apple Music. I use it every day and appreciate being able to call up most any song I can think of on a moment’s notice. But Jimmy is right on. There’s so much Apple can do here to make Apple Music superior to any other service.
Two things I want?
A music recommendation engine that is easy to use, that I can tune, and that really gets me.
Better sharing, with better linkage to social networks so the sharing can ride on the social links I’ve already built. Why reinvent my graph of friends when I’ve already done that work?
The new Xcode 9.1 beta has also been released by Apple today with support for the new operating system updates: iOS 11.1, watchOS 4.1 and tvOS 11.1. It also includes a more fully-fledged iPhone X simulator, which demonstrates the new lock screen and home screen experiences.
There are also some onboarding videos, for things like activating Siri or revealing Control Center, which will be shown to iPhone X users upon setup.
Benjamin does a great job pulling together these inside looks at the iPhone X experience. Read his article, there’s a lot to it.
Here’s just a taste, a pair of onboarding videos, two different results when you swipe up from the bottom, one with a pause and one without, courtesy of Guilherme Rambo:
Remember I talked about onboarding videos when setting up the iPhone X? Here's the first one. pic.twitter.com/Fe5t3s8lgo
The world’s biggest company is officially taking meetings as everyone from Jennifer Aniston to Steven Spielberg salivates over selling the first big show. One studio chief says, “Who wouldn’t want to be the ‘Mad Men’ or ‘House of Cards’ on Apple?”
And:
Though Apple isn’t looking to replicate the pace or scale of rival Netflix’s $6 billion annual spend, it is eager to be in the prestige content business in a significant way. Per multiple sources briefed on the company’s plans, its executives are looking for big, smart, splashy dramas, with at least one citing Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad and The Crown as models. And though there are still plenty of questions — first and foremost, how will an Apple show be distributed? — talent is lining up to provide options.
And:
At press time, the company had bids out on only a handful of projects, including an update of Steven Spielberg’s 1980s sci-fi, horror, fantasy anthology series, Amazing Stories, and a morning show drama starring Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon, according to several involved.
Apple is entering new territory here. The good news is, they’ve long proved they can take on something completely new, dig in, learn the critical lessons, then produce quality product. Given what we’ve seen so far, it’s certainly fair to be skeptical, but I like the moves Apple is making and look forward to watching them master this space.
Through exclusive interviews with actors, family, and the filmmaker himself, this unprecedented documentary pulls back the curtain on the remarkable career of Steven Spielberg. Featuring Leonardo DiCaprio, Martin Scorsese, Liam Neeson, and many more.
Spielberg is one of the most consistently excellent directors on the planet. He’s certainly one of the most entertaining storytellers, a real master of his craft. As you watch the trailer, below, think about the sheer number of great movies he’s brought to life.
As I’ve argued on Twitter, his batting average is not the best among directors, but to me, his overall body of work belongs at the top.
When Face ID detects and matches your face, iPhone X unlocks without asking for the device passcode. Face ID makes using a longer, more complex passcode far more practical because you don’t need to enter it as frequently.
If Face ID was able to eliminate the passcode completely, users could use long, impossible to memorize strings, just as they would with strong passwords combined with a password manager. But the fact that you have to memorize the passcode (you won’t have to use it much, but you’ll still encounter situations where you’ll need it) limits the complexity. Not a complaint, just an observation.
Here’s when a passcode is still required:
You can always use your passcode instead of Face ID, and it’s still required under the following circumstances:
The device has just been turned on or restarted.
The device hasn’t been unlocked for more than 48 hours.
The passcode hasn’t been used to unlock the device in the last 156 hours (six and a half days) and Face ID has not unlocked the device in the last 4 hours.
The device has received a remote lock command.
After five unsuccessful attempts to match a face.
After initiating power off/Emergency SOS by pressing and holding either volume button and the side button simultaneously for 2 seconds.
And:
The TrueDepth camera automatically looks for your face when you wake iPhone X by raising it or tapping the screen, as well as when iPhone X attempts to authenticate you to display an incoming notification or when a supported app requests Face ID authentication. When a face is detected, Face ID confirms attention and intent to unlock by detecting that your eyes are open and directed at your device; for accessibility, this is disabled when VoiceOver is activated or can be disabled separately, if required.
This is what’s encrypted and saved in the iPhone X Secure Enclave:
The infrared images of your face captured during enrollment.
The mathematical representations of your face calculated during enrollment.
The mathematical representations of your face calculated during some unlock attempts if Face ID deems them useful to augment future matching.
There’s a lot more in the white paper, including some detail on Apple Pay, and third party access to Face ID.
“Companies often claim to have ‘anonymized’ your location history by taking your name off it,” says Peter Eckersley, the chief computer scientist of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “But that is totally inadequate because you’re probably the only person who lives in your house and who works in your office, and it’s easy for any researcher or data scientist to look at a location trace and figure out who it belonged to.”
If you gave someone my location data, completely scrubbed of any identifying info other than geo-coordinates, it would be simple for them to turn that into my name, address, phone number and, with a bit of work, even more personalized information.
If my location data includes a stop at a house, especially if I only stop at one house, chances are good that’s my house. A simple lookup in a public tax database and they’ve got me, and a wealth of info about me.
Apple has always emphasized their belief in privacy. This update of their site makes that much clearer, with a focus on tentpole issues. There’s a lot of detail on this subsite. Apple’s commitment to privacy is strong and well laid out.
Amazon announced last night that Google had pulled its YouTube app from the former’s Echo Show device, the company’s first screen-based voice speaker. YouTube was one of very few video options available on the Echo Show, with Amazon’s own Prime Video being the main alternative.
Amazon has something Apple wants and seeks to emulate in Prime Video. Amazon wants to protect Prime Video, is using its storefront power to horsetrade with Apple, swapping Apple TV presence on Amazon.com for a Prime Video app on Apple TV.
Google and Amazon are fighting a different battle. At the very least, there’s Google Home vs Amazon Echo. But there’s a subtle shopping competitiveness as well, with both trying to work into the first place consumers go when they want to make a purchase.
All of this might have nothing to do with why Google pulled YouTube (the claim is that Amazon’s implementation broke YouTube’s terms of service). It might have more to do with ads and tracking than anything else. But make no mistake, each pairing is its own chess match.
Apple has released macOS 10.13 High Sierra, the newest operating system for Mac. To improve High Sierra security when installing system software (such as UAD drivers), the software must be explicitly allowed to load in the Security & Privacy pane within macOS System Preferences.
These are my most used audio plug-ins, so compatibility is a must for my music machine.
Apple has released a small update to its recently released iOS 11 on Wednesday. Go to Settings > General > Software Update on your device to download the latest. Apple says the update provides “bug fixes and improvements.”
Many websites and applications these days are designed to trick you into doing things that their creators want. If you ever used Booking.com, you probably noticed (and hopefully resisted!) some ways it nudges you to book whatever property you are looking at.
You’ve undoubtedly seen these kinds of tricks on many other websites. Be aware of how they try to convince you to “BUY NOW”.
For a host of issues, like vaccine safety, climate change, and GMO foods, public opinion is a poor match for our scientific standing. That dissonance has led a lot of people to ask how we could do better at getting scientific information out to the public. But the Pew Research Center decided to ask a related question that’s just as important: where’s the public getting its scientific information now?
The answer, disappointingly, is that most people in the US aren’t getting any scientific information at all.
While this study is on Americans, there’s no reason to believe other countries would do any better. Many of us seek out more information about our favorite sports team than we do science news.
Twitter is experimenting with a change to the character limit, moving the limit from 140 to 280 characters. They are slowly rolling this out to selected accounts, with no clear commitment, yet, to rolling this out to the universe.
Trying to cram your thoughts into a Tweet – we’ve all been there, and it’s a pain.
Interestingly, this isn’t a problem everywhere people Tweet. For example, when I (Aliza) Tweet in English, I quickly run into the 140 character limit and have to edit my Tweet down so it fits. Sometimes, I have to remove a word that conveys an important meaning or emotion, or I don’t send my Tweet at all. But when Iku Tweets in Japanese, he doesn’t have the same problem. He finishes sharing his thought and still has room to spare. This is because in languages like Japanese, Korean, and Chinese you can convey about double the amount of information in one character as you can in many other languages, like English, Spanish, Portuguese, or French.
We want every person around the world to easily express themselves on Twitter, so we’re doing something new: we’re going to try out a longer limit, 280 characters, in languages impacted by cramming (which is all except Japanese, Chinese, and Korean).
And:
Although we feel confident about our data and the positive impact this change will have, we want to try it out with a small group of people before we make a decision to launch to everyone.
Read on for the logic behind this change. But the change is in the wild, so you will likely see 280 char tweets in your stream.
This BBC article covers the change and includes some cheeky tweets in response to the change. My favorite is this one.
Want to try your hand at a 280 character tweet? It’ll take a bit of work, but I’ve jumped through the hoops myself (here’s my test tweet) and it works. No guarantees Twitter won’t close this loophole.
Here’s a link to The Next Web post [H/T Ben Lovejoy – Nice find, Ben!] that lays out the technique. In a nutshell, you fire up Chrome, open up the TweetDeck web client, open the Snippets editor, paste in some code and bam, you’ve now got 280 characters to play with.
Have fun, and feel free to tweet at me in all your 280 character glory.
First things first, take a look at the video embedded below, a Fox News interview with Bill Gates. Jump to about 11:28 in, where Bill is asked about his “famously tempestuous” relationship with Steve Jobs and the new iPhone.
With that in mind, this is John Gruber, from the linked Daring Fireball post:
I say this with no snark intended: who would have guessed 10 years ago that Bill Gates would be using a personal computing device running a non-Microsoft OS? Or really, an OS that didn’t have “Windows” in the name?
And:
While I’m at it, it occurs to me that Apple is the only company left where all its employees are using only systems made by their own company.
Downloading and installing a new OS gives you the opportunity to do some major house cleaning if you so desire. If you feel like you’d like a fresh start with macOS High Sierra, you can always opt to do a clean install: Just follow the steps below, even if you’ve already installed macOS High Sierra.
A clean install does give you a chance to shake out the leftover cruft from legacy installs. Me, I always keep several copies of backups, untouched, so I can go back and retrieve old apps/data I was sure I’d never need again.
The Apple TV is back for sale on Amazon after a two-year hiatus – a move that was expected following Apple CEO Tim Cook’s announcement in June that Amazon’s Prime Video app would arrive on Apple TV later this year. The two companies had clearly come to an agreement that benefitted their mutual interests – for Amazon, that meant getting its streaming video app onto Apple TV devices; and for Apple, it meant getting its streaming media player on Amazon.com’s retail site again.
Except, as of this writing, the Apple TV is no longer on Amazon. I just did a search for “Apple TV” in quotes and without quotes, and got no love.
The Apple TV clearly had popped into stock over the past few days, but now it is not showing up at all. Not clear if this is related to negotiations related to the Amazon Prime Video app for Apple TV, or perhaps having something to do with pricing on 4K movies on Amazon.
For many of us, they are the last thing we look at before sleep each night, and the first thing we reach for upon waking. We use them to meet people, to communicate, to entertain ourselves, and to find our way around. We buy and sell things with them. We rely on them to document the places we go, the things we do and the company we keep; we count on them to fill the dead spaces, the still moments and silences that used to occupy so much of our lives.
For all its ubiquity, though, the smartphone is not a simple thing. We use it so often that we don’t see it clearly; it appeared in our lives so suddenly and totally that the scale and force of the changes it has occasioned have largely receded from conscious awareness. In order to truly take the measure of these changes, we need to take a step or two back, to the very last historical moment in which we negotiated the world without smartphone in hand.
The smartphone is arguably the single most important “gadget” in the history of the world. For many of us, it affects and informs almost every aspect of our lives.
Autoplay video: The bane of the web. You either hate them, or are completely disgusted by them. Fortunately, with Safari 11 in macOS High Sierra (Safari 11 is also available for macOS Sierra), you can easily disable autoplay video and surf the web in relative peace.
Here’s how to stop autoplay videos in Safari 11.
I hope Macworld sees the irony in posting this tidbit.
Just ahead of the macOS High Sierra update, Bjango released iStats Menus 6, an update to its comprehensive suite of tools that sit in your Mac’s menu bar and monitor its systems and now, even the weather. With highly customizable notifications, iStat Menus is an excellent way to know what’s going on with your Mac and to be alerted if a problem is on the horizon.
There was a time when I needed/loved the level of detail iStat provided. If you do, the new version looks pretty cool.
After updating your iPhone to iOS 11, you may have noticed that your photos are all .heic files instead of the ubiquitous .jpeg. If you’d rather go back to shooting JPEG for now until you feel more ready to make the switch, it’s actually extremely easy to do.
The new .heic format seems great but without widespread adoption, many users might want to switch back to the more common/compatible JPEG format.
This is a detailed review, definitely a solid place to start learning about macOS High Sierra.
Before you update, you might want to read the section on APFS, the Apple File System called A one-way ticket to APFS-ville (if you have an SSD).
The High Sierra installer does do one major thing that the Sierra installer didn’t do. Behind the scenes, it converts your boot partition from the longstanding HFS+ filesystem to the new APFS.
Well, it does that for most Macs, anyway.
Though most people will never even know what’s happening, there are plenty of caveats and details to know about how the APFS conversion happens, the cases when it doesn’t happen, and why it doesn’t happen when it doesn’t happen.
Read this section, consider your Mac’s particular configuration. Do you have a spinning hard drive? Do you have an SSD that you installed yourself? Do you have a Fusion drive setup? None of these are dealbreakers, but it’s worth spending the time to read about these cases before you do the upgrade.
Upgrading to High Sierra brings a new and significant security feature: your Mac will automatically check its EFI firmware. In a series of tweets, Xeno Kovah, one of the three engineers responsible for the new tool, has outlined how this works.
The new utility eficheck, located in /usr/libexec/firmwarecheckers/eficheck, runs automatically once a week. It checks that Mac’s firmware against Apple’s database of what is known to be good. If it passes, you will see nothing of this, but if there are discrepancies, you will be invited to send a report to Apple.
And:
eficheck depends on a small local library of ‘known good’ data, which will be automatically and silently updated if you have security updates turned on in the App Store pane.
That checkbox is in the App Store pane in System Preferences and should be checked by default.
macOS High Sierra, released to the public today, could be impacted by a major security flaw that could allow a hacker to steal the usernames and passwords of accounts stored in Keychain.
The timing of this reveal is terrible, as it coincides with the release of macOS High Sierra. I know a number of people who have held off updating for just this reason.
Don’t let this story stop you from updating:
This exploit is said to effect earlier versions of macOS as well. If you are on Sierra and considering updating, you are already as vulnerable as you would be if you updated.
Apple is said to be working on a fix and Patrick Wardle has said he will not release details of the exploit until the fix patch is available.
Add to that:
For this vulnerability to work, a user needs to download malicious third-party code from an unknown source, something Apple actively discourages with warnings about apps downloaded outside of the Mac App Store or from non-trusted developers.
To be clear, do your research and a full backup before you update. I’ve done my homework and, once I finish this morning’s Loop posts, will hit the return key and start my update. I will definitely update on Twitter as I go. Hopefully, the update will be trouble-free. Fingers are crossed.
