This is just one of a river of iMac reviews that will go live today.

The upshot:

> Sure, there are some other differences between this 24-inch iMac and the 21.5-inch model from 2019 that it’s replacing. There are better microphones and better speakers. There are fewer ports, and some of them have moved around. The screen is bigger and better. The keyboard now has TouchID. But the M1 is the star of the show.

Read on for the pros and the cons (a handful of cons, but no dealbreakers, just things to be aware of before you buy). And if the iMac form-factor is your jam, there are plenty of pros.

Nice, detailed writeup by Monica Chin.

Source: https://bestonlinepokersites.ltd/

A nice little explainer, posted on Reddit, written in an easy-to-read Q&A form.

Lots of detail here, without being intimidating.

John Voorhees, MacStories:

When Apple announced that Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio are coming to Apple Music, it wasn’t entirely clear from the press release whether Lossless Audio would work with AirPods or HomePods. Since then, Apple has confirmed to T3 that AirPods Pro and AirPods Max do not support Lossless Audio.

Short read, with links to various “Apple confirmed” articles. But in a nutshell, no Lossless on AirPods, even Lightning connected AirPods Max, and no Lossless on HomePod either.

I’m still going to find a setup that works, give Hi-Res Lossless a try, see if I can tell the difference.

Start by reading The New York Times piece: Censorship, Surveillance and Profits: A Hard Bargain for Apple in China.

At its heart:

Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive, has said the data is safe. But at the data center in Guiyang, which Apple hoped would be completed by next month, and another in the Inner Mongolia region, Apple has largely ceded control to the Chinese government.

Chinese state employees physically manage the computers. Apple abandoned the encryption technology it used elsewhere after China would not allow it. And the digital keys that unlock information on those computers are stored in the data centers they’re meant to secure.

And:

Internal Apple documents reviewed by The New York Times, interviews with 17 current and former Apple employees and four security experts, and new filings made in a court case in the United States last week provide rare insight into the compromises Mr. Cook has made to do business in China. They offer an extensive inside look — many aspects of which have never been reported before — at how Apple has given in to escalating demands from the Chinese authorities.

Moving on to Gruber’s headline linked take:

It’s a big report, but the above is fundamentally true and gets to the heart of the conflict: physical access to the hardware in the facility is game over. But what’s missing from the whole piece is any serious discussion of what else Apple could do. Apple has no option other than to comply with Chinese law, or else stop selling products in the country.

Both of these are worth reading.

But Gruber has nailed the issue for Apple. What else can they do? They are between a rock and a hard place. If they pull out, they will have a massive manufacturing/supply chain issue.

Apple:

Beginning May 21, customers can get their hands on the all-new iMac, the M1-powered iPad Pro, and the next generation of Apple TV 4K at Apple Store locations and authorized resellers around the world. Customers who already ordered their new products will begin receiving deliveries Friday.

Wondering if they’s have stock of the new Siri Remote, as a standalone product. They could keep ’em on an impulse buy rack, right next to the cash register (yup, I get it, no racks, no cash register, but still.)

Mark Gurman, Bloomberg:

Apple Inc.’s annual worldwide developer conferences cost the company about $50 million a year to put on and the company is building a new center at its Silicon Valley headquarters to assist developers, according to its top App Store executive.

This is from Phil Schiller’s testimony yesterday at the ongoing Epic v Apple court proceedings.

$50 million. That’s a lot. Going to assume (speculation on my part) that that number includes the costs of paying all the engineers for time they contribute to prepping their sessions, as well as for time they spend at WWDC itself. And then, at least in the olden days, there’s the cost of renting the venue, prepping the venue, and staffing the venue.

Those costs surely have come down significantly, now that everything is virtual and held in house.

Another piece of the accounting puzzle that’s changed is the income from the hefty $1,599 ticket price. Multiply that by 5,000 attendees (pre-pandemic) and that’s about $8 million back to Apple.

The second bit of that quote is “the company is building a new center at its Silicon Valley headquarters to assist developers”. Can’t wait to learn about this.

Will WWDC ever return to an in-person event? If so, will it be downsized (like sporting events, with their 25% crowd limits, at least in the short term)? Will this center be designed to replace the in-person labs that are such a critical part of pre-COVID WWDC?

Apple:

Apple today announced Apple Music is bringing industry-leading sound quality to subscribers with the addition of Spatial Audio with support for Dolby Atmos. Spatial Audio gives artists the opportunity to create immersive audio experiences for their fans with true multidimensional sound and clarity. Apple Music subscribers will also be able to listen to more than 75 million songs in Lossless Audio — the way the artists created them in the studio.

And the deeply buried lede:

These new features will be available for Apple Music subscribers starting next month at no additional cost.

More detail, from the announcement:

By default, Apple Music will automatically play Dolby Atmos tracks on all AirPods and Beats headphones with an H1 or W1 chip, as well as the built-in speakers in the latest versions of iPhone, iPad, and Mac.

Great that this will work on all the AirPods, going back to the first generation.

Apple Music will be adding new Dolby Atmos tracks constantly and will be curating a special set of Dolby Atmos playlists to help listeners find the music they love. In addition, albums that are available in Dolby Atmos will have a badge on the detail page for easy discovery.

It’ll be interesting to start digging through the catalog, especially the custom Dolby Atmos playlists, just to get a sense of the changes.

At launch, subscribers can enjoy thousands of songs in Spatial Audio from some of the world’s biggest artists and music across all genres, including hip-hop, country, Latin, pop, and classical. Apple Music is working with artists and labels to add new releases and the best catalog tracks, as more artists begin to create music specifically for the Spatial Audio experience.

As to Lossless Audio:

Apple Music will also make its catalog of more than 75 million songs available in Lossless Audio. Apple uses ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec) to preserve every single bit of the original audio file. This means Apple Music subscribers will be able to hear the exact same thing that the artists created in the studio.

Fantastic. And at no additional cost.

To start listening to Lossless Audio, subscribers using the latest version of Apple Music can turn it on in Settings > Music > Audio Quality. Here, they can choose different resolutions for different connections such as cellular, Wi-Fi, or for download. Apple Music’s Lossless tier starts at CD quality, which is 16 bit at 44.1 kHz (kilohertz), and goes up to 24 bit at 48 kHz and is playable natively on Apple devices. For the true audiophile, Apple Music also offers Hi-Resolution Lossless all the way up to 24 bit at 192 kHz.

And the most critical point about Lossless is hidden in this footnote:

Due to the large file sizes and bandwidth needed for Lossless and Hi-Res Lossless Audio, subscribers will need to opt in to the experience. Hi-Res Lossless also requires external equipment, such as a USB digital-to-analog converter (DAC).

My understanding:

• No extra cost, even for Hi-Res Lossless
• AirPods (even wired AirPods Max) will not handle Lossless
• Special headphone adapter required for both Lossless and Hi-Res Lossless.

I will definitely be exploring this, weigh in once I get my hands on the new tracks.

Can’t wait!

Lance Whitney, Macworld:

There are several reasons why you might not want to hold your iPhone while taking a picture: You need to snap the perfect still photo while your iPhone is on a tripod and don’t want to spoil the shot by jostling it. You’re taking a group photo but also want to be in it. You’re too lazy to lift your finger. Whatever the reason, it’s not a problem. There are actually a few different ways to remotely trigger the shutter button on an iPhone.

This is one of those handy tips that’s great to know. Consider setting up the shortcut (as an easy way to get to know Shortcuts) now, so you have it when the need arises.

John Voorhees, MacStories:

Today, Apple took the wraps off its latest flagship store in the heart of Rome’s Via del Corso shopping district. The store is Apple’s first in Rome’s historic center, although the company has long had a presence in Rome and other parts of Italy, including another flagship store that was opened in Milan in 2018. The new Rome location isn’t open yet but will be soon.

Bucket list. And near the top for me.

But not to be missed: Follow the headline link, scroll about 2/3 of the way down, and check out that gorgeous Apple logo animated GIF. Hoping they find a way to incorporate that into the finished store, even as a hard-to-find Easter egg.

José Adorno, 9to5Mac:

Today, researcher Jane Manchun Wong said the service is going to be called Twitter Blue and, as for now, is priced at $2.99/month.

And:

Twitter Blue will feature a new function called ‘Collections’ which will let users save and organize their favorite tweets into collections to easily find them later.

And, on “Undo Tweet”:

This feature looks a lot like Gmail’s “undo send” button. The app just waits a few seconds before actually sending the message, so this could be what Twitter is planning to launch. As Wong shows, the company is working on the ability to adjust the duration of the undo Tweet timer from 5 seconds to up to 30 seconds.

More detail in the headline linked post. Note that “undo send” is not the same as an edit button. I use Gmail’s undo a fair amount, it’s definitely useful, but only when you realize a mistake/issue within a few seconds of clicking send.

I wonder if you’ll automatically get the blue checkmark if you subscribe, since it is supposed to be about being a verified account.

Kirk McElhearn:

You take good care of your iPhone or iPad, but AirTags aren’t meant to be coddled. If you have one with a keyring, it’ll be in your pocket or purse, getting scratched and bounced around. If you put one in your gym bag, it’ll sit around in the trunk of your car in extreme temperatures in summer or winter. And if you forget one in a pocket, it might go through the washing machine and dryer.

I put a few AirTags through the most grueling stress tests I could find. Here’s what happened.

An entertaining read. The conclusion:

AirTags can stand up to a lot, and they are well designed for most of the extreme conditions they’ll encounter. Don’t worry too much about how you treat them, and, by all means, don’t buy AirTag screen protectors.

Wondering what would happen if you put one of these through the wash. To me, that’d be a fair test.

Zoe Schiffer, The Verge:

Antonio García Martínez is no longer working at Apple hours after employees circulated a petition calling for an investigation into his hiring. Martínez, a former Facebook product manager on the ad targeting team, authored a controversial book about Silicon Valley where he expressed misogynistic views on women.

And:

“We are deeply concerned about the recent hiring of Antonio García Martínez,” employees wrote in the petition. “His misogynistic statements in his autobiography — such as ‘Most women in the Bay Area are soft and weak, cosseted and naive despite their claims of worldliness, and generally full of shit’ (further quoted below this letter) — directly oppose Apple’s commitment to Inclusion & Diversity.”

More than 2,000 employees signed the petition before it was published by The Verge.

All kinds of takes here. For starters, this is the power of the people, and the power of the press.

Props to Apple for acting quickly in response to this petition and Zoe Schiffer’s original Verge article.

From that original article:

García Martínez, who has also written for Wired, was the product manager for Facebook’s ad targeting team from 2011 to 2013. Most of the things the Apple employees have expressed concern about come from Chaos Monkeys itself. (The book is dedicated to “all my enemies.”) The autobiography traces García Martínez going from Wall Street to Silicon Valley. García Martínez has described the book as “total Hunter S. Thompson/Gonzo mode.” The employees, in the petition, view it differently: they say it’s racist and sexist.

But how did this happen in the first place? This mix of Facebook, the ad business, and Chaos Monkeys is toxic. This is clearly a vetting fail. The hope is that Apple homes in on the point of weakness that made this move possible and takes steps to understand why diversity in the workplace is important to prevent such a cultural mismatch from happening again.

Steven Aquino, Forbes:

Until a few weeks ago, the Apple TV 4K had not seen an update since the device was introduced in September 2017. The software it runs, tvOS, obviously has been updated in the time since, but the additions have more iterative than transformative.

And:

As tvOS is build atop an iOS foundation, Apple has adroitly ported a plethora of familiar accessibility features from its mobile software to the living room. For a disabled person who is willing (and able) to pay the Apple TV’s premium price, the investment pays off in spades if one of the reasons for choosing the high-end streamer is gaining access to its best-of-breed assistive technologies.

As far as price is concerned, Google TV wins hands down, with Chromecast priced at $50 and the new Apple TV 4K starting at $179.

Back to Steven:

While it is true tvOS is highly accessible—particularly for reducing cognitive load thanks to its strong family resemblance to iOS—the icon-driven interface still can be problematic. The issue is finding what to watch. For the most part, users have to jump from app to app to app to find content; this can be troublesome if you have a cognitive delay of some sort and can’t easily remember that The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is on Prime Video or that Dickinson is an Apple TV+ property. Apple’s TV app tries to consolidate everything into one place—there’s a reason the TV app is positioned on the “top shelf” by default—but it’s nonetheless still an app. Netflix, for example, infamously refuses to support the TV app; to watch it, you must find the bespoke app.

There’s the rub. If the goal of all the players (Netflix, Amazon, Apple, HBO Max, Paramount+, Peacock, etc.) was to maximize the user experience, every app would operate the same way and would share all info with Apple so there could be one app to rule them all.

Apple has done the best they can here, but if Netflix doesn’t support the TV app, not much Apple can do.

Google TV takes the inverse approach. There are still apps that you can launch, but they’re secondary. Again, Google’s premise is it is better to suggest content to you as opposed to forcing you to seek it out. Granted, the Google TV UI is busier and not as polished as tvOS, but a legitimate argument can be made that it is more accessible. To wit, instead of trying to remember where a show is, Google does it for you. To continue watching something on Netflix is just a few clicks away on the For You screen.

Read on. Great piece from Steven (IMO, he’s the bright shining light at Forbes), exploring accessibility on both platforms, but usability as well, pros and cons on both sides.

José Adorno, 9to5Mac:

In April, Apple officially opened the Find My network to third-party products with Chipolo ONE Spot, Belkin’s SOUNDFORM Freedom, and VanMoof’s latest S3 and X3 e-bikes. Now, the AirTag competitor Chipolo ONE Spot is available to pre-order.

Price is $28 for one, $90 for four. Here’s a link to the preorder page.

Chipolo ONE Spot has a keyring hole that attaches directly to the keyring

Puzzled why the AirTag does not have a keyring hole. Simply so Apple can sell keyring cases?

Although it’s water-resistant, it has an iPX5 rate, which means it can resist a sustained, low-pressure water jet spray, while AirTag has IP67, which can be submerged up to one meter in water for 30 minutes.

Interesting. That might matter if you lose your keys in, say, a lake. Waiting for a story like that to pop up.

Chipolo says this item tracker is “easy to hear” with a speaker that gets up to 120dB.

Not clear how this compares to AirTag (the AirTag tech specs for Speaker simply says, “Built-in speaker”).

As far as I can tell, the ONE Spot does not support NFC, so add that to the list of AirTag differences.

Kirk McElhearn followed up on a video we posted last week, did his own experiment.

A lot of detail here, a fascinating read. One thing that jumped out at me was from a comment posted on Hacker News in response to Kirk’s article:

I just left my dog (her leash has an AirTag on it) with my parents on 5/8, and presumably the leash was sitting in their home somewhere.

They took her to the dog park on 5/9, and got the notification that an AirTag was following them. So I was gone for a little over 24 hours, but they only got the notification after they took the leash with them for a couple hours and then went home.

And:

I believe the 3 days is for the audible beeping when it’s moved, but they haven’t seen that yet and they marked it as “pause safety alerts” so I’m not sure if it’ll still beep.

Here’s a link to the image, showing the notification.

Apple, from this press release:

> Threats have been present since the first day the App Store launched on iPhone, and they’ve increased in both scale and sophistication in the years since. Apple has likewise scaled its efforts to meet those threats, taking relentless steps forward to combat these risks to users and developers alike.

And:

> While it’s impossible to catch every act of fraud or ill intent before it happens, thanks to Apple’s industry-leading antifraud efforts, security experts agree the App Store is the safest place to find and download apps.

And:

> Unfortunately, sometimes developer accounts are created entirely for fraudulent purposes you can learn more from this fraud lawyers Melbourne. If a developer violation is egregious or repeated, the offender is expelled from the Apple Developer Program and their account terminated. Apple terminated 470,000 developer accounts in 2020 and rejected an additional 205,000 developer enrollments over fraud concerns, preventing these bad actors from ever submitting an app to the store.

It’s an interesting read, but it’s a press release, so read with that in mind.

Now follow the headline link to John Gruber’s take:

> There’s nothing curious about the timing of this post — it’s in response to some embarrassing stories about fraud apps in the App Store, revealed through discovery in the Epic v. Apple trial, and through the news in recent weeks. The fact that Apple would post this now is pretty telling — to me at least — about how they see the trial going. I think Apple clearly sees itself on solid ground legally, and their biggest concern is this relatively minor public relations issue around scam apps continuing to slip through the App Store reviewing process.

And:

> Apple is the richest company in the world. If they want to run the App Store with whatever-they-say-goes authority, why should we, as customers, demand anything less than perfection on the fraud and scam front? True perfection they’re never going to achieve, but it sure seems like Apple could be doing better than they are. And they know it.

Hard to argue with Gruber’s logic here. It does feel like Apple could be doing more, especially when they are being handed (from a number of developers) clear evidence of fraudulent apps that they did not catch.

I get that this is a complex problem, both in terms of sheer numbers, and in terms of determining the difference between greedy pricing and outright fraud. Hard, if not impossible, to automate this process.

I’ve said before, feels like Apple could build a team of trusted outsiders (members of the developer program, who’ve been vouchsafed already) who have already shown they can pick out App Store fraudsters that Apple’s review team did not catch. Build a bounty program, or pay them as consultants.

Joe Rossignol, MacRumors:

Based on five legitimate Geekbench 5 results (here’s the fifth) for the fifth-generation 12.9-inch iPad Pro with the M1 chip, the device has average single-core and multi-core scores of 1,718 and 7,284, respectively. By comparison, the fourth-generation 12.9-inch iPad Pro with the A12Z chip has average single-core and multi-core scores of 1,121 and 4,656, respectively, meaning that the M1 iPad Pro is around 56% faster.

That is crushingly fast. That is a bigger leap than the benchmarks comparing the Intel vs M1 MacBook Pro.

Stephen Shankland, CNET:

An industry alliance sponsored by Apple, Google, Amazon and other tech companies will begin certifying smart home devices later this year, a potentially important step toward making the technology easier to develop and use and therefore more widely accepted.

Matter, the name of the alliance, will let smart devices, such as lightbulbs you turn on with Amazon Alexa or a video doorbell you monitor with Google Home, use its logo on their packaging.

And:

Getting all of these devices to get along — especially with Amazon Alexa, Apple Siri and Google Assistant competing to be your preferred interface — can be difficult. Matter is designed to unify the network domain, ensuring devices will work with any of those three main voice control systems. It should work even if you use more than one control system.

This has potential to unify the various standards, or at least raise the likelihood that a smart home device you buy will work with multiple standards from multiple manufacturers.

Here’s a link to Matter’s home page.

Apple:

Based on the best-selling novel by Stephen King, and adapted by the author himself, “Lisey’s Story” is a deeply personal thriller that follows Lisey Landon (Academy Award winner Julianne Moore) two years after the death of her husband, famous novelist Scott Landon (Academy Award nominee Clive Owen). A series of unsettling events causes Lisey to face memories of her marriage to Scott that she has deliberately blocked out of her mind.

Stephen King has an incredible catalog of books turned to TV shows and movies. Just to name a few, there’s Carrie, The Shining, The Stand, Stand By Me, It, The Mist, The Green Mile, Misery, and The Shawshank Redemption. Some all-time great work there, and there’s so much more.

Stephen King has a pretty great track record. I’m definitely looking forward to this one. Lisey’s Story drops on June 4th, three week’s from Friday.

Here’s the trailer.

Joanna Stern is on a roll. This was both interesting and fun.

Reddit:

I had a trip coming up so i was excited to try them. so i attached an airtag to my big checked luggage using the belkin loop accessory. everything went smooth on the way out, i was able to see it on my flight etc. but on my return flight which had a stop in houston a thief decided to just take the airtag off my suitcase? my luggage came out of baggage claim, so they just removed the airtag.

So the thief wanted an AirTag, saw this as a quick way to snag one? Not a sophisticated theft.

i have it in lost mode and activation lock and i can see someone took it to a suburban neighborhood from the airport.

The story doesn’t fill in the ending, but let the police deal with this. Otherwise you might run into a live tiger, roaming the Houston neighborhood.

Joe Rossignol, MacRumors:

Apple recently released a redesigned Siri Remote with a physical clickpad, but if you have an original Siri Remote laying around that you still plan on using, you may be interested in getting an AirTag case for the remote.

Follow the headline link, check out the images. This looks like a great solution that helps you find your remote (if that’s an issue for you), but also adds a feel to the bottom of the remote so you can easily tell, by touch, the front from the back and top from bottom.

Another thing to keep in mind is that, due to the orientation of the AirTag in the case, the loudness of the built-in speaker may be reduced.

Noted. And, of course, this is for the old remote. Still not certain if there’s a way to track one of the new Apple TV remotes.

Christopher Mims, WSJ:

On Friday, Amazon announced it’s expanding its Sidewalk network, which already includes certain Ring Floodlight Cam and Spotlight models, to include Echo devices released in 2018 and after.

Wrote about Tile joining Sidewalk here.

More from Christopher:

Apple and Amazon are transforming the devices we own into the equivalent of little cell towers or portable Wi-Fi hot spots that can connect other gadgets and sensors to the internet. They have already switched on hundreds of millions—with many more on the way. Instead of serving as wireless hubs solely for your own smartwatches, lights and sensors, your iPhones and Echo speakers can help other people’s gadgets stay connected as well—whether you know it or not.

And:

This announcement comes on the heels of Apple’s AirTag introduction. These coin-size trackers can help locate lost items almost anywhere, because they use the company’s Find My network. Each AirTag sends out a low-powered wireless signal, which can be received by the iPhones, iPads and Macs in a given area.

The kicker:

Yes, perfect strangers are using slivers of our bandwidth, as our devices send out and listen to little chirrups of radio chatter that don’t pertain to us. And you’re now able to leverage the radios and internet connection of countless devices owned by other people, too.

Clearly, Mims is painting an ominous picture here. Not saying he is wrong, the Orwellian potential is certainly there. Question is about privacy. Do you trust Amazon in this scenario? Do you trust Apple?

And where do Google/Facebook/Microsoft fit in to this vast mesh network? Are they simply late to the game? Staying out of it?

Derek Hawkins, Washington Post:

He’d been at the Millenia Mall in Orlando for less than an hour when he allegedly zeroed in on the shopper with the bags from Gucci and Louis Vuitton. Now Derrick Maurice Herlong followed closely behind as the man he was planning to rob loaded his purchases into the trunk of a silver Lexus and drove toward downtown, police said.

At some point, the man stopped at a 7-Eleven. That’s when, according to a chain of events described in an arrest affidavit, Herlong and an accomplice took an extraordinary step to ensure they didn’t lose him: They attached a homemade tracking device — an iPhone rigged with magnets — to the bottom of the man’s car.

Then:

Minutes later, the pair cornered the man as he entered a gathering at a nearby apartment, robbing him at gunpoint, stealing his car and fatally shooting another man, 32-year-old Jacaris Rozier, according to police.

Damn. This is kind of an amazing story. Shocking that they risked their iPhone to make this happen. But it wasn’t really their iPhone:

According to the arrest warrant, Herlong laid the groundwork for his alleged crimes weeks earlier at a Panda Express restaurant in another part of town. Investigators said he stole a purse and wallet from a worker there in late January, then used her identification to buy the iPhone at a Metro PCS store.

And:

On Feb. 18, Herlong or someone associated with him activated the phone using an iCloud account in the restaurant worker’s name, according to the affidavit. Investigators said they confirmed the timeline using surveillance footage, receipts and interviews. They also said they found Herlong’s number in the device.

Shocking and terrible.

Amazon:

Tile, a leading finding service that locates millions of misplaced items every single day, will join Amazon Sidewalk beginning June 14, further strengthening your Tile finding experience. Tile uses Bluetooth technology to locate lost items, and with Sidewalk, your compatible Echo devices will be able to extend Tile’s network coverage even further to help you securely locate your misplaced keys, wallets, and other items.

Wondering if this impacts Tile’s antitrust complaints against Apple.

One point that leaps out at me: Apple introduced Find My in 2010. Tile was founded at the end of 2012, more than two years later.

My two cents: A lot of time has passed since Tile was introduced. AirTag seems a pretty natural evolution, not something Apple cooked up in response to Tile.