Long Reads:

Maps were my entrée into geek life, and they remained the medium through which geekdom moved: beat-up paperbacks handed around between school friends, boxed sets at the local game store — we probably spent about as much time poring over maps as we did reading or dreaming up the stories that took place within the worlds they represented. The science fiction we read did without them, but any cover featuring a dragon, a many-turreted castle, or a woman in a leather bra suggested you’d find a map the moment you peeked inside the book.

Like so many things that once set adolescent geeks apart, reading maps for places that aren’t there has gone mainstream. Nerds and non-nerds alike relish their weekly swoop across the map of Westeros in Game of Thrones’ gorgeous title sequence.

Like the author of this piece, my entree into fictional maps was through Lord of the Rings and I’ve always had a fascination with maps, real and imaginary.

An updated look at Settings > Battery, with some thoughts on hunting down battery sucking culprits.

Jon Brodkin, Ars Technica:

“I am in the middle of a cell phone nightmare,” France, who lives in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, told Ars in an e-mail after three days worth of the calls. “My phone started ringing three days ago and has continued to ring every few minutes since then. Each time it is from a different number… I can’t conduct a client call, can’t text because calls coming in interrupt the process, can’t even take photos for the same reason.”

On the first night, France went to bed, slept for 7.5 hours, and woke up to 225 missed calls, she said. The calls continued at roughly the same pace for the rest of the five-day stretch, putting the number of calls at somewhere around 700 a day.

The first half of this well written Ars Technica piece delves into spam calling and the futility of trying to block those calls. The second half is about solutions, solutions like RoboKiller:

Instead of merely relying on a blocklist, RoboKiller’s technology analyzes the audio fingerprints of calls and can thus block many robocalls from spoofed numbers. Robokiller took first place in a contest the Federal Trade Commission held in 2015 to find the most promising new anti-robocall technologies, and the company has been busy improving its technology ever since.

My understanding is that many of the robocalls we receive are simply attempts to verify that there is a human at the other end of the line. If there is, your number is added to a list, and that list is sold to another tier of more precisely targeted robocallers.

Like many people I know, I’ve stopped answering the phone if I do not recognize the phone number. Seems to me part of the solution would be technology that prevented spoofing in the first place. Yeesh.

The interview is chock full of quotes from Tim. Here are a few:

The reality is that government, for a long period of time, has for whatever set of reasons become less functional and isn’t working at the speed that it once was. And so it does fall, I think, not just on business but on all other areas of society to step up.

And:

“One of the things that hits you,” he said, is “all of the major acts, legislation, that happened during just his presidency.” His eyes widened as he listed some: “You have the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Act, you have Medicare, you have Medicaid, you have several national parks, you have Head Start, you have housing discrimination, you have jury discrimination.”

And:

He was vocal, for example, in criticizing Mr. Trump after Charlottesville in a memo to his staff: “I disagree with the president and others who believe that there is a moral equivalence between white supremacists and Nazis, and those who oppose them by standing up for human rights. Equating the two runs counter to our ideals as Americans.”

And:

“I think we have a moral responsibility to help grow the economy, to help grow jobs, to contribute to this country and to contribute to the other countries that we do business in,” he said.

He added, “I think there’s still probably a more significant group that feels my sole responsibility is to Wall Street.”

And, to the folks who suggest that Tim is running for President:

“I have a full-time job,” Mr. Cook said. “I appreciate the compliment,” he added with a wry look, “if it is a compliment.”

Steve Jobs was a gift. To me, Tim Cook is equally a gift, albeit in a different wrapper. While Steve was the gift Apple needed to launch and then evolve as a company, Tim is the gift Apple needs now, a navigator through increasingly turbulent waters.

Wall Street Journal:

Apple Inc. has scheduled a product-announcement event on Sept. 12, according to people briefed on its plans, reinforcing expectations that the technology giant will release new iPhones and a smartwatch well ahead of the holiday shopping season.

The company is expected to unveil three iPhones, according to other people familiar with its plans. Those include a showcase iPhone to mark the product’s 10th anniversary that is larger and pricier and features an edge-to-edge display and facial-recognition technology, as well as updates to the two iPhone 7 models that started selling last year.

And:

In the past two years it has used San Francisco’s Bill Graham Civic Auditorium, but people close to the company say it is aiming to use the 1,000-seat Steve Jobs Theater on its new headquarters campus.

Here we go. Feels like that part of the rollercoaster where you are still being ratcheted to the top of the ride, not quite at the top, but almost. And you know the ride will be thrilling.

The reveal is two weeks from today.

Ars Technica:

A California judge is dismissing a lawsuit brought by the family of a 20-year-old Minnesota college student who blames Apple for his 2013 death by an iPhone-wielding texting teen.

The dead boy’s family claims that Apple had a legal duty to help prevent texting while driving and that it could have used patented technology it has developed to prohibit motorists from driving while distracted.

Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Maureen Folan, however, took Apple’s side.

I feel for the family but it’s good Apple is not being held responsible. That being said, do you believe Apple (and others) should be doing more to prevent these kinds of accidents?

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.

The NYPD has to scrap the 36,000 smartphones it gave cops over the past two years because they’re already obsolete and can’t be upgraded, The Post has learned.

The city bought Microsoft-based Nokia smartphones as part of a $160 million NYPD Mobility Initiative that Mayor Bill de Blasio touted as “a huge step into the 21st century.”

But just months after the last phone was handed out, officials plan to begin replacing them all with brand-new iPhones by the end of the year, sources said.

It’s baffling that the NYPD went with the Microsoft-based phones in the first place. It was a costly mistake, but at least they’re making the right choice now.

It’s getting to be that time of year again. If you are in the US or planning a visit, this is a terrific resource for catching foliage at just the right moment for optimum glorious fall color.

Slide the slider to get a sense of when the leaf color change is at its peak in your area.

Chuq Von Rospach:

It seems to me Apple fell in love with the technology of the Touch Bar system, which if you dig into it a bit is a stunning piece of engineering, and expected all of us to fall in love with it as well. The problem is: Apple rarely sells things to us based on neat technology, it sells us based on the stories of how that technology will solve problems for us, and right now, the problems a Touch Bar solve for us that we care about being solved are few and far between.

Thoughtful piece on the Touch Bar. Resonates with me.

Dan Moren:

With the announcement this week that CrashPlan was discontinuing its consumer-oriented online backup plans, more than a few users found themselves wondering what steps to take to make sure their data remained safely and securely backed up.

There are, of course, plenty of options for Mac users who don’t want to switch to CrashPlan’s small business backup plans: Backblaze, Arq, and so on. But it also put into stark relief the fact that Mac users miss out on at least one major feature accorded to their iOS-using counterparts: iCloud Backup.

Terrific piece by Dan Moren. I would gladly pay a bit extra for the ability to include my Mac in my automatic iCloud device backup regimen.

Mitchel Broussard, MacRumors:

This year’s Apple leaks have seen an uptick in activity thanks to data gathered from HomePod firmware, as well as internal files in pre-release beta software for iOS 11. Today, the newest piece of information comes from the latter source and concerns new exercises for the Apple Watch.

The leak that keeps on giving.

Jump to this page, scroll down almost all the way to the bottom, then click the various play buttons to hear how Siri’s voice has changed with each new major iOS release.

To my ear, each rev gets higher in pitch, with the iOS 11 version of Siri sounding like a different person entirely than the Susan Bennett voiced Siri we came to know and love.

The iOS 10 version of Siri is a recognizable voice to me, as recognizable as a friend’s voice. The new version sounds a bit impersonal.

From the text above the samples:

For iOS 11, we chose a new female voice talent with the goal of improving the naturalness, personality, and expressivity of Siri’s voice. We evaluated hundreds of candidates before choosing the best one. Then, we recorded over 20 hours of speech and built a new TTS voice using the new deep learning based TTS technology. As a result, the new US English Siri voice sounds better than ever.

I expect the new version is an early wave of the latest voice generation approach used by Apple and that I will get used to this new voice over time.

Apple press release:

> Apple today announced the App Development with Swift curriculum will now be offered in more than 30 community college systems across the country in the 2017-2018 school year, providing opportunities to millions of students to build apps that will prepare them for careers in software development and information technology. The Austin Community College District (ACC), one of the nation’s largest higher learning institutions, will begin offering the course to its 74,000 students this fall. Aside from this, other options like 補習軟件, or tutoring software, can revolutionize college systems by offering personalized academic support to students. Through tailored lesson plans and interactive exercises, this software can address individual learning needs, helping students grasp complex concepts and excel in their coursework. Additionally, it can provide access to a wide range of educational resources, including practice exams, study guides, and multimedia materials, enriching the learning experience beyond the confines of the classroom. Moreover, 補習軟件 can facilitate communication between students and instructors, allowing for real-time feedback and guidance, enhancing the overall learning process. By leveraging technology to supplement traditional teaching methods, college systems can create a more inclusive and supportive learning environment, empowering students to reach their full academic potential and succeed in their academic endeavors.

This is a pretty big get for Apple. Though Swift is open source, it seems fair to say that if you grow up learning Swift, you’re going to want to develop in Swift, and that means building apps for the Apple ecosystem, not to mention a likelihood of buying Apple products. Good stuff.

From this Twitter thread between Laurie Voss and Google’s AMP tech lead, Malte Ubl:

I personally asked for this feature. I have also asked all other browser vendors, of course.

— Malte Ubl (@cramforce) August 24, 2017

Malte says he asked for the sharing translation from AMP back to the canonical URL. Read the whole thread. Interesting.

Brian X. Chen, New York Times:

The iPhone is now in a precarious position. Gone is the thrill of downloading yet another app. It isn’t as exciting anymore if the screens of the gadget get bigger or the device becomes thinner. And the middle age of the iPhone is reflected in its sales, which dipped for the first time last year. It doesn’t help that Apple also faces fierce competition, especially in markets like China and India where people are flocking to cheaper smartphones that are increasingly capable and attractive.

Doomed! Why does the New York Times lead their Apple coverage in such a negative way?

But I digress.

Chief among the changes for the new iPhones: refreshed versions, including a premium model priced at around $999, according to people briefed on the product, who asked to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

John Gruber’s take:

If true, I would wager that means starting at $999, with a higher storage capacity model at $1099 and maybe another at $1199.

Makes sense.

An aside, the price mention is just part of a larger article, quite positive in tone, calling out the elements that keep people buying iPhones, year after year. Weird that it starts with such a negative slant.

Mark Gurman and Anousha Sakoui, Bloomberg:

Apple is planning to unveil a renewed focus on the living room with an upgraded Apple TV set-top box that can stream 4K video and highlight live television content such as news and sports, according to people familiar with the matter.

The updated box, to be revealed alongside new iPhone and Apple Watch models at an event in September, will run a faster processor capable of streaming the higher-resolution 4K content, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the plans aren’t yet public.

And:

In order to play 4K and HDR content, Apple will need deals with content makers that can provide video in those formats. The Cupertino, California-based technology giant has begun discussions with movie studios about supplying 4K versions of movies via iTunes, according to people familiar with the talks.

This September event is going to be jam packed and riveting. So many rumors, so much still to unveil. I wonder if the event will be in the Steve Jobs theater.

Apple today announced plans to build a 400,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art data center in Waukee, Iowa, to better serve North American users of iMessage, Siri, the App Store and other Apple services. Like all Apple data centers, the new facility will run entirely on renewable energy from day one.

“At Apple, we’re always looking at ways to deliver even better experiences for our customers. Our new data center in Iowa will help serve millions of people across North America who use Siri, iMessage, Apple Music and other Apple services — all powered by renewable energy,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “Apple is responsible for 2 million jobs in all 50 states and we’re proud today’s investment will add to the more than 10,000 jobs we already support across Iowa, providing even more economic opportunity for the community.”

Much respect, Apple.

This is a brilliantly executed walk through the process of multitasking on an iPad running iOS 11. Great, great job by David Chartier.

Great find from Federico Viticci:

Very nice: when sharing AMP pages to iMessage or Reading List, iOS 11 Safari automatically removes AMP’s crap from the URL. Go Apple ? pic.twitter.com/aHgSMcofUv

— Federico Viticci (@viticci) August 23, 2017

To me, AMP serves Google and Google only. It does not move the web forward, it just keeps browsing within Google’s ecosystem.

To see this for yourself, start with an AMP URL. Here’s one example. If you open this link in Safari, you’ll see the link is a Google link, not a Verge link.

If you are running iOS 10, when you tap Safari’s share icon and share the link in, say, Messages, the AMP version of the URL will be shared.

If you are running the latest iOS 11 beta, when you share the AMP link in Messages, the unwrapped Verge link will appear. And that’s the way it should be.

Nice find, Federico. Way to go Apple.

Follow the link. Then go into airplane mode. The page should automatically detect that the connection dropped and reload with an explanation.

An interesting experiment.

The Register:

At an academic speech tech conference today (Thursday), Apple researchers will present some of the classic building blocks behind the voice generation of the Siri assistant.

The conference is this week’s Interspeech 2017, in Stockholm.

From the paper Apple presented:

There are two mainstream techniques for industry production development, namely waveform concatenation (i.e. unit selection) and statistical parametric speech synthesis (SPSS). Given a sequence of text input, unit selection directly assembles waveform segments to produce synthetic speech, while SPSS predicts synthetic speech from trained acoustic models. Unit selection typically produces more natural-sounding speech than SPSS, provided the database used has sufficient high quality audio material.

This is a bit jargony, but think of unit selection is having access to a bunch of pre-recorded speech components, and assembling them to make syllables and, from those, words.

On Apple’s approach with Siri:

Most recently, much work has centered on using a statistical model to predict acoustic and prosodic parameters for synthesis and then using these predictions to set the costs in a unit selection system – this is known as hybrid unit selection.

Again, a bit jargony, but Apple’s approach (as I read it, no expert me) is the above mentioned unit selection approach, but backed by a learning system that helps make smart decisions about the underlying sounds to use in constructing specific voicings.

Couple things here.

First, this is fascinating stuff. I studied voice synthesis in college and have always wanted to know more about how Siri really works. I’ve watched Siri change voicings in the move from iOS 10 to iOS 11 and wondered why Apple moved from what sounded like a specific person (Susan Bennett) to a more generic, generated voice. I love all the detail in this paper. I can only imagine that the folks at Samsung are poring over the paper right now, competitive juices flowing.

The second thing is Apple’s decision to publicly open up about such critical technology.

Richmond said Apple’s paper is not breaking new ground and “there are no big surprises” but its strategy of releasing a “modest” number of papers could “work as advertising” for talent by hinting at higher quality research and collaboration happening behind “closed doors”.

Sounds about right. The details in this paper might go far enough to be of interest to the folks they want to hire, but without tipping the details of their Siri secret sauce.

Marc Zeedar, TidBITS:

While the App Store may be a senior citizen in Internet time, as a marketplace, it’s barely out of diapers. But we’ve now reached a point where I believe the App Store will either morph into something genuinely useful or fade away as a fad.

I don’t mean that the App Store itself will go away — it won’t — but it could disappear as a business opportunity for most developers. In this dystopian future, the only profitable apps left will be a handful of entertainment apps by huge companies and “business essential” apps, such as those made by banks or news organizations for their customers.

The looming threat that I see is abandoned apps.

Key here is Apple’s plans to deprecate 32-bit apps in iOS 11. If you’ve invested in an app that the developer has no plans to update, that investment may fall to zero. If it’s a 32-bit game you’ve spent a lot of time with, you’ll no longer have access to the game (it won’t load anymore) and your progress is lost to the ages (unless you stop updating your device).

More importantly, if you’ve embraced iOS as your main OS, any data you’ve created using a 32-bit app will no longer be accessible.

On the Mac, if a developer abandons an app you rely on, you can easily make backup copies and reinstall it if needed. If an app won’t run on a new version of macOS, you can theoretically boot from an older version or run the app in a virtual machine. Worst case, you can usually find a way to at least migrate your data to another app.

In iOS, the situation is different. Because Apple exercises total control over which apps are allowed to run and how you get and install them, there is no way to get abandoned apps to work (short of jailbreaking, which introduces its own set of non-trivial problems).

I can’t imagine Apple isn’t working this problem internally. They’ve certainly given plenty of warning. But the stark difference between the impact of major changes in macOS and iOS are worth thinking about.

Read the rest of Marc’s TidBITS post. Thoughtful stuff.

Samsung is working on a smart speaker that will be launched “soon”, the company’s mobile chief told CNBC, which will pit it against the likes of Amazon, Apple, and Google, in the hotly-contested space.

Of course you are.

Uber Technologies Inc reported on Wednesday that its losses narrowed in the second quarter by 9 percent and ride bookings rose, but the company is still a long way from being profitable.

Damn.