Apple today previewed powerful new privacy protections in iOS 15, iPadOS 15, macOS Monterey, and watchOS 8, which help users better control and manage access to their data. These features represent the latest innovations in Apple’s legacy of privacy leadership, as the company has continually expanded its commitment to privacy and encouraged change across the industry with features like App Tracking Transparency and Privacy Nutrition Labels on the App Store.

This is probably the most important thing Apple announced at WWDC21. Go to Apple’s site and read it all.

Apple today previewed macOS Monterey, the latest version of the world’s most advanced desktop operating system. macOS Monterey comes with new ways for users to connect, get more done, and work more fluidly across their Apple devices. SharePlay, a new feature in FaceTime, lets users share experiences together, and Shared with You makes it easy to discover and enjoy content shared through Messages right in Photos, Safari, Apple Podcasts, Apple News, and the Apple TV app. A major update to Safari features a gorgeous streamlined tab bar and powerful tab organization with Tab Groups, Shortcuts comes to the Mac to automate everyday tasks, and Focus helps users stay on task and reduce distractions. Additionally, Universal Control and AirPlay to Mac are new Continuity features that offer more ways to work effortlessly across Apple devices. macOS Monterey will support the broadest lineup of Macs in history, including the latest iMac, MacBook Air, 13-inch MacBook Pro, and Mac mini, as well as Apple’s Intel-based Macs.

Universal Control is an amazing new feature for those with a Mac and an iPad, but I believe the overall theme of macOS Monterey continues with what I said about iOS and iPadOS: privacy, focus, communication, and productivity. Having all of the devices and OSes work together seamlessly like this is great for all users.

Coherence X4 allows you to turn any website into a chromium-powered app on your Mac. Simply pick a site, enter a name, and pick an icon, and Coherence will turn the app into an isolated application separate from your main browser.

Unlike resource hogging Electron apps, Coherence apps are fully powered and completely customizable. You can use the vast majority of Chrome extensions, customize app assets, and even use features like whitelisting to turn websites like Gmail into an email client that will bump links to your default browser.

Loop readers get 20% off this week when you purchase Coherence X4 at or when you use the promo code ‘LOOPINSIGHT’ at checkout.

You can also try Coherence for 14 days absolutely free or use it as part of your subscription if you’re a Setapp subscriber!

Follow the headline link, check out the Memoji. Not the first time Apple has done this.

Check out this version of Apple’s leadership Memoji from 2018. Amazing to see the improvement.

Joanna Stern, WSJ:

Long ago, a gardener planted an iPhone. “It’s not good for a gadget to be alone,” he said. So he grew crops of iPads, Apple Watches and AirPods, and summoned an iCloud in the sky to connect and replenish them. Many people came to the garden to enjoy its delights. The gardener was happy, until he saw some people wandering out. So he stacked bricks, one atop another, with names like iMessage, Apple Photos, AirDrop, Apple Fitness+ and so on, until they formed a high perimeter. Then the people never left.

And:

Apple Inc. is known for making some of the best tech products but none may be better designed than its “walled garden,” its closed ecosystem of devices and services. And next week, at the company’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference, the walls will get even higher.

And:

Apple’s garden…consists of three areas: hardware, software and services. Whatever Apple devices you’ve got, they all just work in “magical” harmony—or at least they’re meant to. But this magic doesn’t work with Android phones or Windows computers.

And:

A few days with Samsung’s Galaxy S21 phone and new Galaxy Book Pro 360 Windows 10 laptop were all it took to show how Apple’s total control creates a superior experience.

(Watch Joanna’s video below)

John Gruber, from this reaction post:

The people who use the term “walled garden” in this context typically do so as a pejorative. But that’s not right. Literal walled gardens can be very nice — and the walls and gates can be what makes them nice. During discussions in the tech community, parallels have been drawn to platforms like casino online ohne anmeldung, which attract users by offering instant access without complicated registrations, creating their own unique appeal. That’s been a recurring theme in the testimony from Apple executives in the Epic trial. Asked about rules and limits on iOS that Epic presents as nefarious — nothing but tricks to lock users in — Apple witnesses typically responded by presenting them as features. That iOS is wildly popular not despite the “walls”, but because of them.

When I think about the walled garden, I imagine what it would be like if I stopped all subscriptions, stopped paying monthly fees to Apple. For example, what would happen if I stopped my iCloud payments. How hard would it be to convert my iCloud data, my email, photos, video, Messages, etc., into an accessible, easy to navigate set of folders on my local drive?

And though it’s a bit piecemeal, Apple is quite good about supporting that export. For example, here’s how to download all your videos and photos from iCloud. You can do the same with your contacts as well.

As long as I can leave out anytime I like, and take my data with me, I’m good.

Weeks after stepping down as Amazon CEO, Jeff Bezos will take a rocket into space. Gutsy move.

He’s taking his brother onto the first human-crewed Blue Origin flight, taking the risk on himself, putting the ultimate trust in the people he hired to build a safe transport into space.

Check out the video below, as Bezos asks his brother to go with him. Damn.

Apple:

Narrated by Lupita Nyong’o and hailing from Imagine Documentaries, the special is executive produced by Brian Grazer and Ron Howard, and features interviews with friends, family, cartoonists and famous fans of the comic strip, to create a heartwarming portrait of the late “Peanuts” creator Charles M. Schulz.

Watch the trailer below. Fascinating to me how big a shelf life Peanuts has. Snoopy, Charlie Brown, Lucy and the football, all deeply embedded in our culture.

Documentary drops two weeks from Friday (that’s June 25th).

Filipe Espósito, 9to5Mac:

Apple today released iOS 14.7 beta 2 for developers, and while bugs and other weird issues are quite common in beta software, sometimes they can make your device nearly unusable. According to some reports, today’s beta seems to be causing a “SIM Failure” error for iPhone users.

Not enough data to know for sure, but this may be an eSim issue. But that said, if you’ve not yet made the leap, I’d hold off on installing the latest beta until this gets sorted.

I’ve been to Disneyland once, many, many years ago. The new Avengers Campus is calling me back. Definitely a bucket list item for me. The new campus opens tomorrow.

Here’s a link to the official Disney Avengers’ site, with interactive map, and sub-sites for all the attractions.

And below is the official Disney video showing off the campus, along with the opening ceremonies.

Zoe Schiffer, The Verge:

> Apple employees are being asked to return to the office three days a week starting in early September. Tim Cook sent out an email Wednesday informing staff of the change.

And:

> Cook said that most employees will be asked to come in to the office on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, with the option of working remotely on Wednesdays and Fridays. Teams that need to work in-person will return four to five days a week.

And, finally:

> Employees also have the chance to work remotely for up to two weeks a year, “to be closer to family and loved ones, find a change of scenery, manage unexpected travel, or a different reason all your own,” according to the letter. Managers need to approve remote work requests.

Is remote work here to stay?

For most companies, getting folks to come back to the office is an economic and social balancing problem. Pay folks enough, you won’t have a problem getting folks to come to work for you and work on site. The more enticing the work and the work atmosphere, the easier the sell to get folks to leave their nests and come back in. Another thing I need to mention is the importance of a virtual office if you are working from home. I use https://virtually-there.net/virtual-offices/ and it means that I can use a different postal address for all of my businesses, so gives me much more privacy and means that nobody can get my personal home address.

But all things being equal, seems logical that companies that offer all or mostly remote will have a big edge in competing for talent. Many companies were short-staffed due to COVID-19, making it even harder to fill positions. Some companies are turning to temporary workers, like Agent de production roumain, to help meet their needs during this challenging time.

Feels like the pandemic has brought a seismic shift to work at the office model.

My buddy Kirk McElhearn sent me this link.

First things first, look at the thumbnail for the Mac Programming Books section. One of the first books I ever wrote. Which makes me vintage. Do I get a special badge for that?

That aside, there are a ton of high-quality scans here, including a bunch of my books. Not sure how these were done, not sure how I feel about this. This stuff is old, vintage is an appropriate word here, but this is a chunk of my life’s work put up for the taking, without permission.

And that said, I guess I’m OK with that, at least as far as my stuff is concerned. Every one of these editions is long out of print. So enjoy, if any of this floats your boat.

Parker Ortolani, 9to5Mac:

Even though WWDC technically started in 1990, let’s start where things got interesting, which is in 1997. Apple was on the brink and Steve Jobs had just returned to the company following the NeXT acquisition. This was the first time since his return that Steve himself appeared at WWDC.

Parker did a great job pulling this post together. This wonderful collection of prose, pics, and video brought on huge waves of nostalgia.

Reddit:

My wallet was a Gucci branded wallet with about $100 in cash in it and a couple of credit cards, along with my license. I also had enough space in it to stick an Airtag in there (there’s a compartment where it fit easily). I’d initially bought the Airtag as I always lose my things around the house, wallet included.

Anyway, I realized at the end of my workout, about an hour/hour and a half later, that I didn’t have my wallet.

Interesting anecdote about AirTags and Find My.

Hartley Charlton, MacRumors:

Spotted by developer Javier Lacort, the Apple job listing for a Senior iOS Engineer in Apple Music explicitly mentions “homeOS” on two occasions, alongside Apple’s other operating systems including iOS, watchOS, and tvOS.

And, from the job listing itself (emphasis added):

You’ll get to work with system engineers across Apple, learning the inner-workings of iOS, watchOS, tvOS and homeOS, and optimizing your code for performance in ways only Apple can. Come join our team and make a real difference for music lovers worldwide.

The ‌Apple Music‌ Frameworks team owns the technology stack that enables the system-integrated ‌Apple Music‌ experience on all of our mobile platforms: iOS, watchOS, and homeOS.

Great food for thought, guessing we’ll hear more on Monday.

Via iMore, the paper is titled:

Harming Competition and Consumers under the Guise of Protecting Privacy: An Analysis of Apple’s iOS 14 Policy Updates

The paper slams Apple. And includes this bit in a footnote:

We gratefully acknowledge support from Facebook, Inc. in funding this analysis.

Hmm.

Michael Potuck, 9to5Mac:

After launching in 2015 with free unlimited storage and marketing the service around that key feature, Google Photos has become a popular option even for Apple users. However, that’s changing as the company announced last fall that the free unlimited storage is ending on June 1.

That’s today.

Instead of free unlimited storage, a 15GB limit will apply to photos and videos added from June 1, 2021. So your content that’s been previously added will remain safe. However, this will probably make some Apple users reconsider their photo strategy and take a look at the Apple One bundles.

Read the post for specifics on porting over to iCloud, if the math works in your favor. And if you are an Amazon Prime member, take a look at the last unlimited plan standing, Amazon Photos.

Neil Cybart:

Last week, Apple quietly unveiled one of the more remarkable pieces of technology that has been developed in the past few years. AssistiveTouch allows one to control an Apple Watch without actually touching the device. Instead, a series of hand and finger gestures can be used to control everything from answering a call to ending a workout.

If you haven’t seen it, here’s the video showing this off:

Back to Neil:

When Apple unveiled the iPhone in January 2007, Steve Jobs famously said that the iPhone was “literally five years ahead of any other mobile phone.” He ended up being mostly correct. It took the competition a number of years, and a whole lot of copying, to catch up with what Apple had just unveiled.

With wearables, my suspicion is Apple’s lead is longer than five years.

Read the article for the specifics, but Neil makes a solid case. Between Apple’s investments in custom silicon and their ecosystem that let devices play off each other, Apple has built a seemingly insurmountable lead in wearables.

As the University of Nevada, Reno resumes in-person classes in Fall 2021, each member of the incoming freshman class will receive iPad Air at no cost. The University is working with Apple to develop a program that will provide a common learning platform and deliver equal access to technology and digital tools. The new initiative will augment digital literacy and enhance student success and curriculum that can be put to use as students join the workforce.

The university has dubbed the program the “Digital Wolf Pack Initiative” which will see each freshman student receive an iPad Air, Apple Smart Keyboard Folio, Apple Pencil, and a suite of productivity and creativity apps, including Keynote, Pages, Numbers, Swift Playgrounds, GarageBand and other apps.

Faculty will also receive training from Apple so they can be more effective in teaching the students and make sure they get the most out of the program.

The University selected Apple products because of the power of iPad Air and iPadOS, the availability of robust suites of software and apps for productivity and creativity, and best-in-class security and privacy built into the full platform, from hardware to software.

This is exactly what students need. Faculty will be taught how to implement the tools properly and students will reap the benefits of having access to some of the best technology on the market.