The Outline:

You knew Apple’s reality show Planet of the Apps — in which entrepreneurs present their app ideas to celebrity advisers and then a panel of investors in the mode of Shark Tank — was bad. But did you know just how bad? Dubious ethics, terrible advice, heavy-handed branding, and the sense that no one knows what the hell they’re doing: Here is a comprehensive guide to Apple’s Planet of the Apps, available exclusively through Apple Music.

Minor quibbles aside, it’s hard to disagree with the criticism in the above video. Regardless of whether it’s Apple producing it or not, it’s simply not a good TV show. But because it’s Apple, it’s really disappointing that Planet of the Apps is such bad TV. We expect so much better from Apple and the talent they have access to, both inside the company and in Hollywood.

Product Hunt:

Have you ever wondered what products or apps you’re missing out on? It’s easy to find the most popular ones in a particular category—but what about the hidden gems? One of Product Hunt’s community members David Spinks has the same question. So, he asked other users: What’s one app you use a lot that most people don’t know about?

Actually, you probably do know about most of them but there might be one or two gems here you haven’t discovered yet.

Recode:

Apple’s first iPhone was released 10 years ago this week — on June 29, 2007. While it wasn’t the first smartphone, it leapfrogged far beyond the competition and launched the mobile revolution. Few industries or societies have been left unchanged.

Here are 10 charts that show some of the profound effects the iPhone-led — and Google Android-fueled — mobile boom have caused over the past decade.

The full history of the iPhone has yet to be written but it’s remarkable how much this one device has literally changed the world in the previous ten years.

Lots of detail. Fascinating look back.

Yes, please.

J. M. Manness, writing for Seeking Alpha [Free Regwall] digs into the importance of augmented reality (AR) and how Apple’s approach is so groundbreaking. J. M. does a terrific job explaining the technical issues involved in AR, as well as why Apple’s approach has opened the floodgates for developers (and leapfrogged Apple over Google in this area).

A few tastes:

Essentially, an API does all the hard work for the programmer. This is true here probably more so than in any other API. ARKit provides services for each of the problems listed above. In each case, the incredible work of interpreting the real world scene, all the artificial intelligence programming that has been done, all is hidden under the hood, and the programmer just needs to request a description of nearby surfaces. Placing the model into the scene will subject it to the automatically detected light sources and resize it as it is moved in relation to the viewer, or the user moves the viewing device around it.

And:

In one how-to-program video, Brian Advent shows us how to make a simple game that places the sample spaceship at a random point in the viewing field. The user then touches the screen, and if you touch the ship, then it disappears and a new one comes up. Brian builds the app and runs it literally in less than 20 minutes.

A simple concept, but one that goes to the core of the issue. Apple made it easy for developers to harness the power of AR. ARKit solves all the technical issues, including lighting and placement, movement and permanence in space.

If you are interested in AR, take a minute to register a Seeking Alpha account (it’s free) and read the linked article. I’d search for the section called “WWDC” and start there.

Nicole Perlroth, New York Times:

> The strike on IDT, a conglomerate with headquarters in a nondescript gray building here with views of the Manhattan skyline 15 miles away, was similar to WannaCry in one way: Hackers locked up IDT data and demanded a ransom to unlock it.

The Wanna Cry attack made huge headlines. The IDT attack did not.

> But the ransom demand was just a smoke screen for a far more invasive attack that stole employee credentials. With those credentials in hand, hackers could have run free through the company’s computer network, taking confidential information or destroying machines.

This is a huge issue. The premise is, there are many of these attacks and they are almost all undiscovered, allowing the attacker to build up a treasure trove of employee credentials. The attack was allegedly carried out using cyberweapons stolen from the NSA.

> Scans for the two hacking tools used against IDT indicate that the company is not alone. In fact, tens of thousands of computer systems all over the world have been “backdoored” by the same N.S.A. weapons. Mr. Ben-Oni and other security researchers worry that many of those other infected computers are connected to transportation networks, hospitals, water treatment plants and other utilities. If you are concerned with network security and looking for an identity governance and administration system that evaluates each access request according to a predetermined policy and/or a set of criteria based on analytics, then you might want to check out the Saviynt Inc. webpage to learn more.

Lots more to this story, including one person’s quest to hunt down the perpetrator. Terrific read.

More evidence in favor of Apple’s commitment to not adding a back door to modern versions of iOS, as well as a firm argument for Apple’s approach to OS distribution. A major part of the problem is the flood of old, unpatched flavors of Windows and Android out in the wild.

Elle:

On Valentine’s Day in 1967, when feminism was sorely needed but had not yet ripened into a movement, a trim, dignified 25-year-old African American woman named Aretha Franklin walked into a New York City recording studio. Franklin’s idea was to take “Respect,” a song Otis Redding had released two years earlier as a man’s strident plea to his lover, and transform it into a woman’s sexy exhortation for human dignity. Pounding the piano righteously, with the legendary Muscle Shoals rhythm section (flown to New York for the session) behind her, Franklin sang the hell out of the song, and she spelled out its titular demand—letter by letter by letter.

I’m not usually a fan of remakes but Franklin’s incredible version of the song blows away the original.

Macworld:

The iPad Pro has finally reached a tipping point for photographers. The improved hardware in the just-released iPad Pro models, plus software improvements in iOS 10 and the upcoming iOS 11, make the iPad Pro (mostly) fullfill the potential of the iPad as a true photographer’s companion.

All of this isn’t to say that the iPad Pro can completely supplant a Mac for most photographers.

I’m looking to replace my older iPad with a Pro for the reasons Carlson lists in his piece. It really is very close to being a Mac replacement for some photographers.

Radio Garden uses a Google Earth interface that allows you to roam the planet and click on radio stations around the world.

This is fun to play with, though I wish the collection of stations was larger, more inclusive. But worth a look.

Every time I watch an iOS 11 tutorial, I get a larger appreciation for how big a leap forward this latest rev is. In this one, Jeff Benjamin talks through the process of taking and managing screenshots in iOS 11.

Yesterday, we embedded a video pulled together by David Pogue on the 4 people Steve Jobs handpicked to review the original iPhone.

David Pogue also wrote a cover story for CBS News with a broader embedded video, which includes bits of the “4 original iPhone reviewers” piece, but goes further, including an interview with Bas Ording, an iPhone engineer who helped pull together the original touch screen mechanics.

Matt Birchler:

Auto updates only happen when you are connected to Wifi, but iOS won’t stop you from updating on cellular if you tap the update button. The fact that someone could blow through 10% of their monthly data plan (2GB) just by updating Snapchat and Messenger once. This could be tough if you do it once, but Facebook updates Messenger all the time. They’ve updated the app 5 times in the past month, which could work out to upwards of 400-500 MB over just a month.

And:

“App thinning” is not a magic bullet that erases this problem though, as Facebook Messenger, which shows as being 154 MB, still downloaded 99MB of data for its update.

And:

So are giant app sizes a problem? Yes. Do delta updates allow these updates to use less data? Yes. Do delta updates make these large apps a non-issue? Hell no!

And from this Washington Post article, titled It’s not just you: Your iPhone storage isn’t going as far as it used to:

Apple has announced some features that may be able to help with this problem down the line. In iOS 11, due out in the fall, there is a feature that lets you “offload” apps you use less often — deleting the apps themselves from your phone, but retaining enough data so that you don’t have to set them up again.

Screens are getting larger, pixels denser, which means the resources used to support those bigger/denser screens are growing larger. Add to that the steadily increasing complexity of Apple’s SDKs, and it is clear that device storage availability continues to be a tricky balancing act.

But this is “same as it ever was”. Ever since the dawn of the modern computing era, memory and drive size was always a constrained resource and memory and drive sizes grew and software techniques were developed to meet demand with every new generation.

David Pogue:

Only four people outside of Apple already had iPhones. They were the four tech writers Apple had chosen to review the phone: Steven Levy, then of Newsweek; Ed Baig, of USA Today; Walt Mossberg, then of The Wall Street Journal; and me, then of The New York Times.

For my “CBS Sunday Morning” story honoring the iPhone’s 10th anniversary, the four of us got together—for the first time ever on camera—at Yahoo’s New York office. To reminisce, to schmooze, and to reveal long-held secrets. Here’s an edited transcript of that conversation.

In the embedded video, look for a (hairless!) yours truly at 2:15.

Apple:

Canadians may be famous for saying we’re sorry, but when it comes to building great apps, there’s no need to apologize. Canada is home to some of the world’s greatest talent, and we’re thrilled to celebrate these inspiring creators as part of Canada’s 150th birthday. Scroll down to explore the list of Canadians’ 150 most-downloaded apps and games of all time!

Canada turns 150 years old next week and this page highlights some great apps made by my fellow Canadians.

The Postal Service will soon release a first-of-its-kind stamp that changes when you touch it. The Total Eclipse of the Sun Forever stamp, which commemorates the August 21 eclipse, transforms into an image of the Moon from the heat of a finger.

That is very cool.

Music industry sources say the carmaker has had talks with all of the major labels about licensing a proprietary music service that would come bundled with its cars, which already come equipped with a high-tech dashboard and internet connectivity.

I understand most of what Elon Musk tries to do, but I don’t get this one. He should integrate all of the big services into the cars and let the customers choose. Making a new music service doesn’t seem to solve a problem for consumers.

BlackBerry Ltd reported first-quarter sales that missed analysts’ forecasts due to an unexpected drop in its high-margin software and professional services sales, sending its shares down more than 10 percent in early morning trade.

BlackBerry is the perfect story of how a once powerful company thought so much of itself that it basically collapsed.

With construction on the new Chicago outlet winding down, construction workers briefly put an Apple logo on the top center of the building, making it resemble an enormous MacBook Air, at least temporarily.

That’s pretty cool.

More than one thousand current Uber employees have signed a letter to the company’s board of directors, asking for the return of deposed CEO Travis Kalanick “in an operational role.” One of its venture capital investors also is chiming in, with a similar message.

About 1,000 employees have signed the letter so far—that’s about 10% of the company’s employees.

Apple is proud to support LGBTQ advocacy organizations working to bring about positive change, including GLSEN, PFLAG and The Trevor Project in the U.S. and ILGA internationally. A portion of the proceeds from Pride Edition band sales will benefit their important efforts.

Today I Found Out:

What happens to clothes after being dropped off at the dry cleaners is a mystery to most. We know that our clothes come back a whole lot cleaner than when we dropped them off, but how? And who first got the bright idea to clean clothing without water?

Did you know dry cleaning isn’t actually dry?

Ars Technica:

The rise and fall of FireWire—IEEE 1394, an interface standard boasting high-speed communications and isochronous real-time data transfer—is one of the most tragic tales in the history of computer technology. The standard was forged in the fires of collaboration. A joint effort from several competitors including Apple, IBM, and Sony, it was a triumph of design for the greater good. FireWire represented a unified standard across the whole industry, one serial bus to rule them all. Realized to the fullest, FireWire could replace SCSI and the unwieldy mess of ports and cables at the back of a desktop computer.

Yet FireWire’s principal creator, Apple, nearly killed it before it could appear in a single device. And eventually the Cupertino company effectively did kill FireWire, just as it seemed poised to dominate the industry.

For those of us old enough to remember SCSI (shudder), FireWire promised to free us from the black art of connecting devices to our computers. The story of its life and eventual death is an interesting one.

Medium seems to continue to grow in popularity as a publishing platform, and as it does, I’m growing more and more frustrated by their on-screen “engagement” turds. Every Medium site displays an on-screen “sharing” bar that covers the actual content I want to read.

I agree completely with Gruber on this.