An Apple-1 motherboard: labelled Apple Computer 1 Palo Alto Ca. Copyright 1976 on obverse with four rows A-D, and columns 1-18, white ceramic MOS Technologies 6502 microprocessor, 8K bytes RAM in 16-pin 4K memory chips with an additional 4k piggy-packed onto on RAM bank to create 12K of RAM the heat sink removed along with voltage regulators which have been placed onto the metal casing enclosure (which acts as a heat sink), original 3 “Big-Blue” power supply capacitors, firmware in PROMS (A1, A2), low-profile sockets on all integrated circuits, fitted with original Apple cassette interface card lettered with “G” within triangle, above D9 is an added 1702 EPROM ; the metal casing painted green with Datanetics keyboard to front (20 ¼ x 17 x 6in.) ; vintage Viatron monitor model no. 3001-301 (20 x 11 x 9in.) ; in working condition. Provenance: The EPROM and extra RAM added by the first owner; acquired by Frank VanGilluwe III; sold to Andrew “Zack” Zacharias for $300 May 1978.
The auction is scheduled for next Thursday, June 15th.
A week before her husband dies, Lonnie Ali changes the plans for his funeral. The funeral she had envisioned is too big, she thinks. It is too complicated. At her annual meeting with the man who has been doing most of the planning, she says, “Sit down. I have to talk to you about something.”
Her meeting with the man planning her husband’s funeral, Bob Gunnell, takes place right before Memorial Day weekend in 2016. When he goes back to the office on Tuesday, May 31, he tells members of his staff that they’re going to have to scrap a good part of the plan they’ve so painstakingly crafted. Then, after work, he gets a call from Lonnie. “Bob,” she says, “I just want to make you aware that Muhammad has got a little cold. It’s nothing to worry about, but as a precaution I’m going to take him to the hospital to get checked out.”
As sad as it is, this is a wonderfully written piece about Ali. I was lucky enough to meet him years ago during an Apple Masters presentation at Macworld Expo. I had tears ion my eyes when I met him and those tears returned reading this article.
Renowned rock climber Alex Honnold on Saturday became the first person to scale the iconic nearly 3,000-foot granite wall known as El Capitan without using ropes or other safety gear, completing what may be the greatest feat of pure rock climbing in the history of the sport.
He ascended the peak in 3 hours, 56 minutes, taking the final moderate pitch at a near run.
I’ve been an admirer of this guy for years, even if what he does utterly terrifies me. This is an incredible feat. I don’t know I could run 3,000ft on flat ground in under four hours.
Whenever there was a NBA game on NBC between 1991 and 2002, some edit of “Roundball Rock” was played before the game and at the half and wherever else it would fit; in all, it was played more than 12,000 times during the 12-year period in which it was NBC’s NBA theme song, which breaks down to something like 20 times per game. It became so ubiquitous during this period that it is easy to forget that “Roundball Rock” is no longer the NBA’s theme song, and in fact has not been since George W. Bush’s first term in office.
When I saw the headline, I had no idea what it was about. I’ve never associated Tesh with anything in the NBA. But Patrick Hruby said on Twitter, “If you’re a child of the 1990s NBA, I promise you’ll love this.” Well, I am so I checked it out. As soon as I heard the music, I laughed in recognition.
Here’s an idea I tossed out on the latest episode of The Talk Show, while talking with Jim Dalrymple about what Apple might do with the iPad Pro: what if they added a trackpad to the Smart Keyboard?
And:
I’m not talking about adding an on-screen mouse cursor to iOS for clicking and dragging. That’s a terrible idea.
And:
When you’re using the iPad’s on-screen keyboard, you have a crummy (or at the very least sub-par) keyboard for typing but a nice interface for moving the insertion point around. When you’re using the Smart Keyboard (or any other hardware keyboard) you have a decent keyboard for typing but no good way to move the insertion point or select text. Using your finger to touch the screen is imprecise, and, when an iPad is propped up laptop-style, ergonomically undesirable.
Great read. Moving the insertion point and selecting text is one of the least satisfying things about iOS. Not sure this is exactly the right answer, but it is a thoughtful talking point, well worth chewing on.
As the campus came into shape, Muffly — who was granted full-time status as Apple’s senior arborist in 2011 — had to actually get the trees. This task was even harder because the arborist and his small team (he calls them his “elves”) needed more trees than originally estimated. When Jobs presented his plan to the Cupertino City Council in June 2011, he said that Apple would add to the 3,700 existing trees for a total of 6,000. But when Muffly began his work, he realized that nearly all the (non-indigenous) existing trees would have to go.
“It was all junk trees and parking lots here,” he says. “So it was a long process.
There’s a lot to enjoy in this story. There’s the background on Steve Jobs and his history with trees, coupled with the process of selecting trees for Apple Park, with an emphasis on saving and planting native trees. Native trees are built to consume the rainfall for a specific area, grow well in the native soil without supplement. Steve Jobs knew this and hired an arborist who shared his vision.
While exploring Cierva Cove, a glacial bay off the peninsula, a scientist aboard Cornell’s boat became excited by one iceberg in particular. “Everything I was seeing was pretty exciting,” Cornell admits. “This particular iceberg at the time kind of blended in with all the crazy stuff we were seeing.”
But as they approached the mass, which rose about 30 feet out the water, Cornell understood his guide’s excitement. Whereas most iceberg tips are covered in snow or have been weathered by the elements, this one was free of debris, exposing glassy, aqua-green ice with water flowing through it—“almost like an ant colony,” he says.
Hard to argue with the headline. Pretty cool image. And in some ways, this is like seeing an endangered species.
Adam Cheyer was one of the people behind Siri which was acquired by Apple in 2010. Since then, Cheyer has created a next generation voice assistant called Viv which was acquired by Samsung in 2016. Viv is [now] a wholly-owned subsidiary of Samsung with the South Korean titan looking to integrate the technology into future products.
Watch the video embedded at the top of the article. Interesting to hear Cheyer’s point of view. Interesting that he specifically leaves out Google in his list of companies competing in this space.
After President Donald Trump said Thursday that the United States will withdraw from the landmark Paris climate agreement, Apple CEO Tim Cook expressed his disappointment with the decision.
In an email to employees, which was obtained by CNBC, Cook said he had tried to push Trump prior to the decision to keep the U.S. in the agreement.
And here’s the email:
Team,
I know many of you share my disappointment with the White House’s decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate agreement. I spoke with President Trump on Tuesday and tried to persuade him to keep the U.S. in the agreement. But it wasn’t enough.
Climate change is real and we all share a responsibility to fight it. I want to reassure you that today’s developments will have no impact on Apple’s efforts to protect the environment. We power nearly all of our operations with renewable energy, which we believe is an example of something that’s good for our planet and makes good business sense as well.
We will keep working toward the ambitious goals of a closed-loop supply chain, and to eventually stop mining new materials altogether. Of course, we’re going to keep working with our suppliers to help them do more to power their businesses with clean energy. And we will keep challenging ourselves to do even more. Knowing the good work that we and countless others around the world are doing, there are plenty of reasons to be optimistic about our planet’s future.
Our mission has always been to leave the world better than we found it. We will never waver, because we know that future generations depend on us.
Your work is as important today as it has ever been. Thank you for your commitment to making a difference every single day.
Tim
A quote from Trump’s speech:
I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris.
In response, Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto tweeted:
As the Mayor of Pittsburgh, I can assure you that we will follow the guidelines of the Paris Agreement for our people, our economy & future. https://t.co/3znXGTcd8C
Beginning June 6, users of the Waze Carpool app will be able to find rides from Waze drivers already going their way – and vice versa – throughout the state, expanding on a service only available to date in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Sadly, my first thought was to be careful of who you drive with. However, it is an interesting experiment.
Adobe has launched a new way to turn your physical documents into PDFs with editable text, and it’s completely free. The company has released a new mobile app simply called “Scan” for both iOS and Android, and to create a digital copy of a document, you merely have to point your phone’s camera at it.
I rarely need to do this which is why I’ve never paid for an iOS app that does it but for those of you who need to do this kind of stuff, this might be just the ticket. There are the usual privacy concerns though. >
It automatically uploads your scans to Adobe Document Cloud, so you can access them on any computer, phone or tablet.
That may not be something you want, depending on the sensitivity of the documents.
Apple today announced that its global developer community has earned over $70 billion since the App Store launched in 2008. The App Store is home to the most innovative apps in the world and in the past 12 months alone, downloads have grown over 70 percent.
“People everywhere love apps and our customers are downloading them in record numbers,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. “Seventy billion dollars earned by developers is simply mind-blowing. We are amazed at all of the great new apps our developers create and can’t wait to see them again next week at our Worldwide Developers Conference.”
Those numbers are just insane to think about. The types of apps being developed have become more complex in recent years, allowing us to do so much more with our iPhones and iPads. Having powerful hardware is very important, but having a thriving ecosystem of apps to run on the hardware is important too.
Halide aims to be the ideal, elegant middle ground between ‘too simple’ and ‘airplane cockpit,’ peacefully co-existing with the iPhone’s default Camera app and perhaps occupying at least some of the same muscle memory space.
Halide starts out shooting in smart auto mode, but a single tap calls up a manual mode where you can adjust ISO, shutter speed and white balance. The same gestures you use with the iPhone’s native camera work for Halide, though with some variations.
While much of the Mac Tech Media have raved about Halide from Chroma Noir (App Store affiliate link), I really appreciate DPReview’s hands-on description that includes the pluses and minuses, helping me to make a better buying decision.
We spent a week driving the Bolt in upstate New York to get an idea of what it’s like to live with a fully electric car on a daily basis — and whether we’re ready to give up our gasoline-powered people movers just yet.
The video isn’t hugely interesting (it’s not Top Gear after all) but it does point out the challenges of an all-electric vehicle for those who don’t live in a major city. Would you buy a Chevy Bolt?
Apple on Thursday will announce some great new features for Swift Playgrounds, the company’s educational coding app for iPad. With version 1.5, being released on the opening day of its Worldwide Developers Conference on June 5, Swift Playgrounds will feature support for robots, drones and musical instruments. I met with Apple executives and a couple of educators to talk about the news.
Once the update is released, kids will be able to connect to Bluetooth-enabled devices, like robots and drones, within the Swift Playgrounds app and learn to control them using the same fun software environment that they’ve been using for the past year. This version takes kids from moving a character around the iPad screen to actually controlling a physical object in real-life.
All of the companies that Apple partnered with for this new version will provide course material in the Swift Playgrounds app. You can go through the lessons, just as you would before, but you get to see a robot dance, or a drone fly when you execute the code.
At its heart, Swift Playgrounds is all about teaching people how to code. It’s about helping educators engage their students, and it’s a mission that’s been going on at Apple for a long time.
“Education is in our DNA; for 40 years its been in our DNA—those aren’t just words to us,” said Susan Prescott, Apple vice president of Product Marketing for Apps, Markets and Services. “It’s really been important to us to figure out how technology can transform teaching and learning in the classroom.”
Swift Playgrounds has struck a chord with educators, like nothing has in the past. Two educators, Kelly Croy, from Oak Harbor, teaches at the Oak Harbor Middle School in Benton Carroll Salem School District, and Kasia Derza, who teaches at the Mariano Azuela Elementary in Chicago Public School District, have both seen it first hand.
“I don’t believe I’ve ever seen that level of engagement with anything I’ve used in my 26 years of teaching,” said Croy, speaking about Swift Playgrounds.
Croy said students come in during lunch, after school, and they are emailing questions all the time. Derza has seen similar situations with her students, saying that they stay in for recess because they want to finish the project.
“You can see the satisfaction on their faces,” said Derza.
As with everything Apple does, Accessibility is also very important to the company in education.
“We made it a priority to make sure it was absolutely accessible to all kids. We partnered with our accessibility team and they were able to do some amazing things—that’s something we’re super proud of,” said Cheryl Thomas, Apple vice president of Software Engineering Operations.
Apple is working with a number of third-party companies to bring these lessons to Swift Playgrounds. LEGO MINDSTORMS Education EV3, Sphero SPRK+, Parrot’s Mambo, Rolling Spider and Airborne, UBTECH’s Jimu Robot MeeBot Kit, Wonder Workshop’s Dash, and Skoog, are all part of the new version.
Everything that kids code in Swift Playgrounds can control and interact with the sensors and motors to control movement and make a robot dance, or a drone fly and do flips in mid-air. It really is amazing.
What is truly amazing to me is that Swift Playgrounds even exists. Apple doesn’t have to provide this level of support for educators, but they do. In speaking with the Apple executives today, it’s clear that this is deeply personal for the company, and all of the individuals involved in this project.
Swift Playgrounds is a lot of fun to use, and it teaches people quality skills that will help them in the future. This is a great project from Apple, for educators, and most importantly, the students.
I fell down a well of guitar videos yesterday. More specifically, a well of multiple people playing a single guitar. Who knew this was a thing, and that there were so many of them.
I picked three. Please do add your own favorites to the comments.
In a new Apple ad, a thief breaks into “your phone” but struggles to get into an iPhone. Here’s how it plays out in the real world.
I was all set to read about how the ad was wrong, that Android phones were actually just as safe. But:
There are several reasons why iPhones are more secure than the various phones running Android software, according to Mike Johnson, who runs the security technologies graduate program at the University of Minnesota.
Side note: That’s no small-time opinion. The University of Minnesota has one of the best computer science programs in the US.
Moving on:
The old rule about PC viruses seems to be holding true with mobile phones, as well. Android phones make up more than 80% of the global smartphone market, and hackers are more likely to succeed if they write programs for these devices, just because of sheer numbers.
The Windows vs Mac logic. Certainly true.
Plus, he says, the process of “patching” security holes is easier on iOS devices. Apple’s iOS operating system only runs on iPhones, while Alphabet’s Android software runs on phones made by numerous manufacturers. It’s more complicated to deliver patches, or bug fixes, that work across so many device makers and carriers. Android can release a patch, but it won’t necessarily be available on all devices right away.
“Fragmentation is the enemy of security,” Johnson says.
And:
Last year, Wired magazine reported that one security firm was offering up to $1.5 million for the most serious iOS exploits and up to $200,000 for an Android one, a sign that iOS vulnerabilities are rarer.
Add to that Apple’s underlying review process, designed to restrict the use of private APIs, controlling techniques that could end-around Apple’s security processes. Not perfect, but world’s better than the more wild-west Android ecosystem.
The iPhone-maker has started manufacturing a long-in-the-works Siri-controlled smart speaker, according to people familiar with the matter. Apple could debut the speaker as soon as its annual developer conference in June, but the device will not be ready to ship until later in the year, the people said.
There’s more to the post, but that’s certainly the core chunk of news.
Now make your way over to this Daring Fireball post, where John Gruber digs through the Bloomberg piece, making three major points.
The Bloomberg article is long on words, short on actual news, journalism stretched for time. I hate to see this become habit and I certainly do my best to keep my stuff short and to the point (but being an old codger, I do tend to wander occasionally).
This:
The closer we get to the WWDC keynote, the more likely things are to get spoiled. But here we are 5 days out and no one has leaked just about anything about iOS 11 or MacOS 10.13, or what’s going on with this 10.5-inch iPad Pro, or if there’s anything new coming for WatchOS or tvOS. Again, there’s a lot of time between now and Monday morning, but it might be time to give Tim Cook credit for “doubling down on secrecy”.
Excellent point. In the olden days, Apple was a much smaller universe, with far fewer analysts, journalists, and op-ed speculators. To keep secrets in these times is truly an accomplishment. Kudos.
And finally, there’s the question of screen or no screen. From Gruber:
At the end of Gurman and Webb’s report: “Apple’s speaker won’t include such a screen, according to people who have seen the product.” That sets up a delicious claim chowder standoff with Ming-Chi Kuo, who wrote two weeks ago, “We also believe this new product will come with a touch panel.”
I put the question out there on Twitter, what recent products has Apple shipped without a touch screen? My thinking was, are any of these products similar to the Siri speaker concept? There’s the iPod shuffle, the Mac Pro, AirPods, the Airport Express, and the Apple TV.
To me, the Airport Express and the Apple TV seem the closest to the Siri speaker, screen-wise. To configure either of these devices, you use a separate screen. The complexity of the settings is too much for a built-in panel to properly serve.
And if the screen is intended as a feedback device, like a built-in iPad, for showing the weather or playing videos, that seems like a second generation add-on, a secondary SKU. Pure conjecture on my part, but I cast my claim-chowder-registered vote for no-screen.
Apple—the forty-one year old technology company from Cupertino, California—is known for unveiling technology that is often ahead of the curve. Which is to say, once Apple does something, the competition tends to follow suit. Climate scientists will hope this will again be the case as Apple recently unveiled their most eco-friendly store to date. The store will not only be filled with trees, but will operate from a handful of sustainable sources as well. Aptly, the store will be located in Singapore, the greenest city in Asia. With the opening over the weekend, Apple finally opened their first-ever store in Southeast Asia.
If nothing else, click through to the article and check out the picture of that staircase, beautifully crafted from Italian marble. Gorgeous.
We all may have thought that product delivery by drone was the next big Amazon thing. But the future turns out to be a typical retail store in the Time Warner Center off Columbus Circle. Another half dozen are due this year, including a second Manhattan store, on 34th Street.
The speculation is that dozens more are planned nationally and that Amazon, which already handles nearly half of the nation’s book sales, may eventually expand into selling far more products than the books and Kindle electronics the stores currently offer.
And:
Ask a worker about the narrow predictability of data mining, and the reply comes: “It’s data with heart.” Amazon says its recommendations include in-house “curators’ assessments” to add a variable touch to the crowdsourcing.
This seems the future of the brick and mortar, slowly crushing the mom and pops under a massive pile of data.
Uber’s first-quarter loss, excluding employee stock compensation and other items, was $708 million, narrower than the $991 million reported three months earlier, the Journal said.
Bungie’s story rivals gaming’s most volatile, its marriage to Halo growing steadily uneasy under fatigue, hubris and the weight of blockbuster expectation when it wasn’t at risk of being outright consumed from within. Yet like Master Chief, Halo is defined by a devotion to fight: even when it stumbles, the series manages, valiantly, to up the ante. Xbox just wouldn’t exist without it.
I’m not much of a gamer but Halo was so incredible, I bought an Xbox just so I could play it.
…former employees at The Melt, ranging from the top echelons of the company to in-store crew members, tell a complicated story of a company that had to roll out sweeping changes to its initial model after overestimating the competitive advantage of its technology — which proved to be both a source of strength and, at times, a liability.
When I first heard of this “grilled cheese restaurant’ in 2011, I predicted it would be a failure. I think the last paragraph shows why:
“I think if you’re looking for the angle of, like, what went wrong, I would say that nothing went wrong,” Kaplan told me when we last spoke. “But what we did learn is that the quality of the food is the most important reason why someone comes to a restaurant.”
If that’s something you had to “learn” before opening a restaurant, you were destined to fail.
One question: About two minutes in, we see a shot of an outbuilding that looks like a barn, sitting off center on what appears to be a concrete pad. Anyone know what that is? If so, please tweet at me.
I do find it fascinating to watch an architectural vision come to full fruition. This is a beautiful design, incredibly detailed, massive in scope.
Underscoring that Apple Campus 2 is at once one of Silicon Valley’s wildest sketches of the future and a portal to its past, the company has set aside a place on its state-of-the-art campus for the Glendenning Barn, named for a pioneer family whose land became a magnet for tech companies after the blooms faded from their orchards. Constructed in 1916 with planks of redwood, the barn was built to last, though its founders couldn’t have foreseen all that it would withstand: the decline of local agriculture, the rise of big tech and several changes of the guard in Silicon Valley, not to mention Apple’s earth movers.
Thanks for all the response. Love this bit of preserved history.
Several reports have indicated WWDC will introduce several new Apple hardware products alongside the headline software announcements like iOS 11 and macOS 10.13. Today, Eurasian regulator filings (which have proved reliable before) suggest that new iPad and MacBook (Pro?) models are on the way, as has been reported before.
The filings also suggest that a revision to the wireless Apple Magic Keyboard is imminent.
