Lifehacker:
In the U.S., the eclipse will appear to move across the country from West to East, with the best view starting around 9:05 a.m. PDT in Lincoln Beach, Oregon, according to NASA, and moving southeast throughout the day to end around Charleston, South Carolina at 2:48 p.m EDT.
A lot of folks will be at work and likely unable to go outside to watch the eclipse.
Julian Assange has offered a job to the employee that Google fired for writing the memo on gender differences.
James Damore, the Google engineer who wrote the note, confirmed his dismissal in an email, saying that he had been fired for “perpetuating gender stereotypes.” He said he’s “currently exploring all possible legal remedies.”
I think he’ll have a really difficult time finding another job in Silicon Valley.
Bill Wyman really knows his Pink Floyd. If you are a Floyd fan, lock in your favorite tracks, then dig in, see if your faves made the top 10. Some solid commentary here.
Jeff Benjamin walks through the changes introduced with iOS 11 Beta 5. For the most part, these changes are subtle, which is a good thing, shows stability.
Henry T. Casey:
Not all of your files are meant to be seen by everyone. Your friends and family may not appreciate this truth, but that’s just the way it is sometimes. Luckily, MacBook owners can protect their sensitive files from prying eyes by password protecting specific folders.
Every Mac owner should know how to do this. I only wish Apple would offer a more direct method of password protecting a folder, one that didn’t require the creation of a separately mountable volume. But this solution works and works well.
That said, if you are trying to protect text, as opposed to a set of files, consider placing that text into a note, then locking the individual note. This has the advantage of giving you access to that protected information on your Mac and all your iOS devices.
Here’s Apple’s support doc on adding a password to your notes.
Shira Ovide, Bloomberg:
Since well before Steve Jobs died in 2011, Apple executives have been saying TV entertainment needed a wholesale reinvention and Apple was just the company to do it. Fast forward to 2017, and America’s entertainment is being reinvented. But Apple is barely involved.
And:
More than 1 million U.S. households have ditched cable TV so far in 2017, Morgan Stanley estimates. Tens of millions of people are binge-watching TV shows and movies on Netflix and Hulu without sitting through commercials. Some amateurs on YouTube are making videos that are more popular than many traditional TV series. People in and out of Hollywood are working on letting people screen new movies at home instead of trekking to the multiplex.
This evolution is big. It’s shaking up pop culture. It’s shifting how cars and diapers are marketed. It’s affecting government policy. And Apple is a fringe player in all of this.
And:
Eddy Cue, the Apple executive in charge of digital media, recently said Apple was trying to “do some different things” in entertainment. But it hardly seems that way. After 10 years, Apple TV is pretty much the same.
And:
Amazon, Netflix, Google’s YouTube, HBO, Facebook and others are spending billions of dollars on programming that people can’t watch elsewhere. Many of those newcomers quickly became entertainment powerhouses. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has an Academy Award. Apple is still dabbling in a few web video series for its Apple Music app. One of the first programs, a “Shark Tank”-like competition for app developers, was panned by many reviewers.
This is scorching criticism. Is it fair? That depends. Does Apple have a big reveal coming? The Apple Watch was late to the game and now dominates the market. Is that the sort of move that’s coming? Seems still too early to judge.
Josh Centers wanted to do a TidBITS piece on innovative uses of the MacBook Touch Bar. Things did not go as planned.
Augmented reality is slowly entering our reality. Genesis Motors (Hyundai’s luxury brand) has put their car manual into an AR app. This is just a taste of what’s coming, a nibble of how useful AR can be.
Catching up on my reading list, found these two interesting pieces on Apple Services:
Jean-Louis Gassée, in a Monday Note titled Misunderstanding Apple Services, on the wave of headlines touting Apple Services as a standalone company:
If Apple Services were a standalone company, its $27.8B in revenue would just squeak past Facebook’s $27.6 (although I’m not sure we’re comparing the same four quarters).
And:
Remove “Apple” from “Apple Services”…would this stand-alone “Services” company enjoy the same success were it to service Android phones or Windows PCs?
Apple Services is an important member of the supporting cast that pushes the volume and margins for the main act: Apple Personal Computers. These come in three sizes, small (iPhone), medium (iPad), and large (Mac). If rumors of the addition of a cellular modem true, we may even see the Watch, today an iPhone accessory, added to the cast as the newest and smallest performer.
Everything else that Apple offers has one raison d’être: Fueling the company’s main hardware act without which Apple is nothing.
It’s the ecosystem. Apple Services serves the ecosystem.
The second post is from Ben Thompson, titled Apple and the Oak Tree:
Apple’s attempt at services lock-in is steadily increasing: HomePod supports only Apple Music and Siri, CarPlay supports only Siri and Apple Maps, iOS still doesn’t let one change default applications. None of these decisions are based on delivering a superior experience, the key to Apple’s differentiation with a hardware-based business model; all are based on securing an ongoing relationship with the company that can be monetized over time.
Again, this all makes sense, particularly for the bottom line: every bit of lock-in makes Apple’s business stronger. Stronger, that is like an oak tree.
Ben goes on to relate the fable of the oak tree and the reed. The oak tree represents strength, the reed flexibility. The analogy here is that Apple Services are becoming more locked in. That lock-in brings financial strength, but moves away from flexibility. And the lack of flexibility was the oak’s downfall.
Interesting reads, both.
After decades of selling products—and knowing exactly what people are buying, and when they are buying it—Amazon has started cutting out the middle-man by selling self-produced items. Through its AmazonBasics house brand, it sells all sorts of small items, from iPhone chargers, to batteries, power strips—even foam rollers, backpacks and washcloths. It’s the sort of stuff that you might not be too brand loyal over—who really minds whether it’s a Duracell or a Panasonic battery? Amazon sees that a product is selling well, and may decide to work with manufacturers to make the product itself—it’s a tactic that is already worrying vendors, and can’t bode well for partnerships in the long run. But those are the obvious instances. Now, Amazon is selling products across a wide array of categories, using a host of brands that do not exist outside the confines of amazon.com and do not make it clear that they are Amazon-made products.
This is a common business practice and it’s smart too. I remember one oil company in Canada that would look at what it spent the most money on each year and then either buy the company or do it themselves. Each year, more money stayed within the confines of the main company.
Co-creator and co-executive producer Ben Winston and series executive producer and co-showrunner Eric Pankowski spoke with Billboard about the series that’s set to launch on Apple Music. They called it “A Celebration of the Joy of Music.” I get that.
I was a bit worried about the future of this show, but I’m looking forward to seeing these episodes. At least Apple finally stopped pimping Pharrell, so we won’t have to deal with him.
Female characters appear in superhero comics less often than males — but when they are included, how are they depicted?
I thought there would be a lot of people that would like to read this.
[Via Khoi]
I use Apple Music every single day, so I see all of the good and bad parts of the service. I also get to see the significant improvements Apple has made over time, and while there is still work to be done, the service is getting much better.
I mentioned in February 2016 that Apple’s built-in radio stations were effectively changing the way I listen to music. To a large extent that continues to be the case. Most of the time I will play one of the service’s pre-built stations instead of listening to music in my library.
Hard Rock has been among my favorite stations to listen to because it gives me a nice mix of songs I already know with some new songs. The key to the success of this station for me was the mix—I didn’t want all new songs, but rather I way to deliver the discovery of new music with the familiarity of songs I had heard before. It does this perfectly.
Surprisingly, it was the stations that I knew the music the most that I really didn’t like—Classic Rock and Hair Metal and perfect examples of this. These are the genres I grew up with, so I should basically know every song that was played on those stations. I didn’t.
For a while, those “classic” stations were the best of B-sides you never wanted to hear. For a while, I would skip as many songs as I would listen to, but that has changed.
It seems Apple flipped a switch and realized that classic stations should be playing the best of those genres with only a little bit of discovery. That’s the way those stations should be. The hits of those years have already been set—that’s what people want to hear.
If I’m having friends over and put on Classic Rock or Classic Metal, I want songs that everyone knows, one after the other, hit after hit.
That’s exactly what I get now.
I’ve added more “classic” songs to my library in the last two months than I have in the past three years. That’s a sign for me of how good the stations are getting.
Apple Music is making other changes too. The company recently added “My Chill Mix” to go with “My New Music” and “My Favorites” mixes. These mixes can be the core of your Apple Music experience if you want them to be.
“My Chill Mix” is something I listen to on Sunday mornings with a cup a coffee. It’s based on the genres I listen to the most, so Rock for me. Everyone’s mix will be different and based on the music they love the most. I’ve loved this playlist each and every week.
Apple said when they first launched Apple Music that it’s not just about the song you’re listening to, but the song that comes next. That’s very true. If you’re always wondering if you’ll hate the next song, you never truly enjoy your listening experience. I think they’ve finally got to that point for me.
Is everything perfect? No, but, let’s be honest, it never is.
Apple Music still doesn’t recognize a lot of the music I purchased in my library, which is annoying. I think, given the opportunity, Apple would never have promised that it would match our music library with songs on the service. There are just too many variables to get right like remastered versions of albums, Deluxe versions and other content that doesn’t allow for accurate matching. While Apple is trying, it’s become one of the main sore points for many users.
In addition, I’ve had this strange problem lately that when I play many AC/DC songs from Apple Music, it will only play the live version. I search for “You Shook Me All Night Long” from “Back in Black” and it will play a live version instead. It happens with may songs from AC/DC, across many studio albums. It’s weird.
Even with those couple of issues, you can’t ignore how much better Apple Music is and how significant the changes have been over the past six months. There’s more I’d love to see them do to engage music lovers in the app, but making the service better is a process that they’re clearly working on.
Apple says to “tag #ShotoniPhone to take part.” This has been a great campaign for Apple and being on Instagram will only make it more widespread.
From Revolver:
It all started as a joke. The Sword guitarist Kyle Shutt was smoking weed and talking with his bandmates about how absurd it is that every group that plays slow riffs or evokes feelings of dread get labeled “doom,” even if they sound nothing like pioneers of the genre: Black Sabbath, Pentagram Saint Vitus, Cathedral.
“Man, what if we did a heavy metal Pink Floyd cover band, called it Doom Side of the Moon, and did doom versions of Floyd songs!” he quipped.
Great idea and it turned out really good. You can listen to the album on Apple Music.
Thanks to last week’s inadvertent release of an unredacted build of HomePod’s version of iOS, we know some things that we didn’t know before. One of those things is that the new edge-to-edge iPhone is codenamed D22, and that the OS explicitly supports an iPhone display with hardware resolution of 2436 × 1125 pixels.
I love these resolution articles that Gruber does.
I do like The Rock. These are are kind of fun.
67 new emojis have been listed as “draft candidates” for inclusion in the 2018 emoji set, including softball, mango, salt shaker, and a variation of the much-loved pile of poo emoji.
I’ll admit, I laughed.
iPhone Hacks:
Apple’s official data on the use of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi point out that their range is about 30 feet. But pilots apparently buck that trend quite a bit, and in a big way.
User LouB747 posted a video recently to his YouTube channel, showing that he successfully used AirDrop from his plane, which was cruising at 35,000 feet, to a pilot in another plane, a Singapore Airlines craft cruising at 36,000 feet. The pilot was sending pictures of the plane in flight, and the other pilot, one thousand feet away at least, confirmed receipt of the images over the radio.
Is it just me or does anyone else think this shouldn’t have worked? I can barely get AirDrop to work between my Mac and iPhone when they are two feet from each other.
Thanks to Skeptic, here is an update:
Singapore Airlines told IBTimes UK that the AirDrop stunt definitely didn’t happen. “Our pilot was only replying in jest to the radio message from the captain of the other flight. Photos were exchanged by email later, however,” a spokesperson said.
Boeing has to test their engines for long periods of time in flight. I guess these Boeing pilots decided to liven up the boring work and not just fly around in circles.
You can read more details here.
BBC:
In the middle of a Russian swampland, not far from the city of St Petersburg, is a rectangular iron gate. Beyond its rusted bars is a collection of radio towers, abandoned buildings and power lines bordered by a dry-stone wall. This sinister location is the focus of a mystery which stretches back to the height of the Cold War.
It is thought to be the headquarters of a radio station, “MDZhB”, that no-one has ever claimed to run. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, for the last three-and-a-half decades, it’s been broadcasting a dull, monotonous tone. Every few seconds it’s joined by a second sound, like some ghostly ship sounding its foghorn. Then the drone continues.
Once or twice a week, a man or woman will read out some words in Russian, such as “dinghy” or “farming specialist”. And that’s it. Anyone, anywhere in the world can listen in, simply by tuning a radio to the frequency 4625 kHz.
I love these odd little stories.
American Astronomical Society:
The #1 rule for observing a solar eclipse, or for looking directly at the Sun at any other time, is safety first.
How do you know if your eclipse glasses or handheld solar viewers are truly safe? You need to know that they meet the ISO 12312-2 (sometimes written as ISO 12312-2:2015) international safety standard. Filters that are ISO 12312-2 compliant not only reduce visible sunlight to safe and comfortable levels but also block solar UV and IR radiation. Unfortunately, you can’t check whether a filter meets the ISO standard yourself.
The coming solar eclipse is an almost once in a lifetime experience. Don’t let it be ruined by using substandard equipment and/or dangerous viewing habits.
Mental Floss:
New website Ten Years Ago makes it easy to look back into the weird world of mostly forgotten web history. The site peers into the World Wide Web as of July 28, 2007, showing the now-simplistic-looking early designs of sites like YouTube, Amazon, The New York Times, and reddit.
Ten Years Ago is a useful tool in that it gathers together sites captured on the same day, so you can recreate what you might see if you were trawling the web on that day in July 2007. Back when even Apple, one of the most design-obsessed companies around, had a website that looked a little clunky.
Spoiler alert: It was an ugly, ugly place.
Wired:
My conversation with Mathias Bahnmueller started as pretty much all my phone interviews do. “Can you hear me?” he asked, and I replied affirmatively. Then I asked him the same question. His answer was yes—he could hear me very clearly. And this was a tiny miracle.
The reason I was coming through so clearly is that his over-the-ear device linked to the implant was streaming directly from his iPhone—essentially putting the conversation in his head.
Apple doesn’t get nearly the credit they deserve for the work they do in accessibility. I know quite a few people with varying levels and kinds of disability and accessibility issues and they all say that, while there’s lots of work to be done, Apple is far ahead of the rest of the industry in their commitment to these users.
Dave here. James Thomson, in a Twitter thread with Steve Troughton Smith, pondering the interface possibilities of the coming iPhone Pro (and I use that name as a shorthand for any and all phones Apple announces next month with a new hardware layout):
I’m curious what will happen for full screen stuff where the status bar would be hidden. Hide the home indicator too, and use everything?
— James Thomson (@jamesthomson) August 2, 2017
This raises an interesting question. If the home button no longer has dedicated real estate but is, instead a fungible, virtual spot, with the ability to be turned on and off, what happens if an app runs full screen? How will you exit the app?
In other words, if a game takes over the full screen, presumably the home button will not be there. What will the user do to force exit the app, to return to the home screen?
To be crystal clear, I don’t see this as a problem. I see this as an interesting puzzle. We don’t know that the home button will disappear, we don’t know that developers will be allowed to grab the full screen without saving room for the home button.
But it’s an interesting question, one that I am quite certain Apple already has a lovely solution for.
As Federico Viticci so eloquently put it:
the next few weeks are going to be so fun – we think we know what the next iPhone is going to be like, but we also know nothing of its software.
Amen.
Max Rudberg:
Apple’s accidental release of the HomePod firmware prompted Steven Throughthon-Smith’s to go digging through and uncovering a lot of exciting pieces on the upcoming high-end iPhone, codename D22. Allen Pike then had an interesting take on what that new form factor could mean for the UI.
Max took Allen Pike’s thoughts on the notch and its impact on the nav bar (here’s my summary, with a link to Allen’s brilliant post) and worked up some beautiful, high-res mockups.
Lovely stuff.
[Via MacStories]
Vindu Goel, The New York Times:
At 41 years old, Apple is a respected elder of the tech industry. But rather than easing slowly into retirement, the company is going through another growth spurt.
On Wednesday, Apple’s stock surged 5 percent to a record high of $157.14 after it reported surprisingly strong financial results. It is now worth $822 billion, more than any other company in the stock market.
High praise from the New York Times. Interesting.
But:
For Apple, which is far more dependent on hardware sales than other tech leaders, the recent performance is all the more impressive after its dismal 2016, when quarterly revenue fell for the first time in 13 years and the company’s sales in China dropped through the floor.
There it is. That’s the paper I know and love.
And:
“Wall Street is waking up to the reality that the next great product might not be an Apple car or the TV or the Watch,” said Trip Miller of Gullane Capital Partners, which loaded up on Apple shares when they were below $100. “The services business is the next great product.”
See Jared White’s take on Services. At least the NYT recognized that positive.
Moving on:
“Any product they release this year would be successful. There is pent-up replacement demand,” said Amit Daryanani, a hardware analyst with RBC Capital Markets.
A dismal 2016, and it doesn’t matter what they release, it’s all the pent-up replacement demand, not at all a sign of innovation.
Oh, and two last parting shots:
But he said such growth is unlikely to continue in 2019, when excitement about the new iPhones has faded.
And:
The risk is that customers decide to move on from the decade-old iPhone.
Doomed.
CNBC:
If Apple were a foreign country, CEO Tim Cook might have considerable political clout in the United States.
That’s because Apple owns $52.6 billion in U.S. Treasury securities, which would rank it among the top 25 major foreign holders, according to estimates from the Treasury Department and Apple’s SEC filings released on Wednesday.
Apple would be 23rd in all countries. That’s just one measure of a company’s financial heft, but amazing nonetheless.
Jared White:
It’s very apparent there’s a product category that outshines all others in terms of growth. It’s one Apple has been understandably proud of in their earnings calls for several years now, and that is Services.
And:
The Services category encompasses all the stuff Apple does online, “in the cloud.” Things like the App Store. iCloud. Apple Pay. Apple Music. The iTunes store. In other words, Services is everything you buy from Apple after you buy your initial hardware.
And this business has been exploding.
Jared digs into the details, starting with the vast difference between Apple’s cloud business of 5 years ago and the stellar operation into which that cloud business has evolved.
Another point is the way, as a percentage of the whole, Apple’s services business is increasing as the iPhone business decreases. The point being, Apple’s services growth represents diversification, less (slightly) dependence on iPhone sales. Will there come a day when iPhone sales represent less than 50% of Apple’s total revenue? Seems likely.
Thoughtful read.