Joe Rossignol, MacRumors:

Alongside the redesigned iMac, Apple introduced a new Magic Keyboard with Touch ID for fingerprint authentication, which is useful for quickly logging into macOS or confirming an Apple Pay purchase online.

And:

As first noted by Rene Ritchie and confirmed by MacRumors, the Magic Keyboard with Touch ID is fully compatible with all M1 Macs, including the new iMac, 13-inch MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, and Mac mini. If used with Intel-based Macs or other Bluetooth devices, the Magic Keyboard will still function with the exception of Touch ID.

Here’s that Rene Ritchie tweet.

I do all my Loop posts using the previous gen Magic Keyboard. I love the feel of the keys, don’t really mind the squished together arrow keys, the price you pay for a compact, portable keyboard.

Telling that Apple stuck with Lightning for charging and initial setup. Feels to me an indicator that Lightning isn’t going away anytime soon.

If you’ve never used a modern Magic Keyboard, one of its charms is how ridiculously easy it is to pair. Just connect its lightning port to your computer, make sure it’s turned on (the previous gen have a tiny slider switch in the back, green means it’s on) and that’s it. A notification pops up to let you know it’s connected. No need to plug it in again until it runs out of juice.

Kartikay Mehrotra, Bloomberg:

As Apple Inc. was revealing its newest line of iPads and flashy new iMacs on Tuesday, one of its primary suppliers was enduring a ransomware attack from a Russian operator claiming to have stolen blueprints of the U.S. company’s latest products.

Then, about an email exchange with the hackers:

REvil then delivered on its promise to publish data it believes to be Apple’s proprietary blueprints for new devices. The images include specific component serial numbers, sizes and capacities detailing the many working parts inside of an Apple laptop.

A pretty significant security lapse. If those images became public, I wonder how significant the harm would be. A leg up for competitors trying to copy Apple designs? Or more of an annoyance, since the products have been announced, and will ship soon, available to be taken apart and examined firsthand?

Starting in May, listeners in more than 170 countries and regions can sign up for premium subscriptions that include a variety of benefits curated by creators, such as ad-free listening, access to additional content, and early or exclusive access to new series. Listeners will be able to enjoy premium subscriptions from independent voices and premier studios, including Tenderfoot TV, Pushkin Industries, Radiotopia from PRX, and QCODE, to leading media and entertainment brands, including NPR, the Los Angeles Times, The Athletic, Sony Music Entertainment, and many more.

I also like some of the new features coming in an iOS update.

With iOS 14.5, listeners can access a redesigned Apple Podcasts app featuring an enhanced Search tab that provides quick access to Top Charts and categories. Apple Podcasts also features beautiful new pages for every show and episode to make it easier to follow, listen, and share. The new Smart Play button helps listeners automatically start episodic shows from the latest episode and serialized shows from the beginning of each series. Listeners can also now save individual episodes, which are downloaded for offline playback, making it easy to bookmark podcasts to listen to later from Library.

Apple today announced Apple Card Family, an innovative new way for people to share their Apple Card, track purchases, manage spending, and build credit together with their Family Sharing group. Available in the US in May, Apple Card Family allows two people to co-own an Apple Card, and share and merge their credit lines while building credit together equally. Apple Card Family also enables parents to share Apple Card with their children, while offering optional spending limits and controls to help teach smart and safe financial habits. Apple Card Family is designed to help the Family Sharing group achieve a healthier financial life by making it easy to track spending, all on iPhone and with a single monthly bill.

Financial health and building credit is so important for everyone. I have a feeling there are a lot of people that will take advantage of this for themselves and their children.

Apple today introduced AirTag, a small and elegantly designed accessory that helps keep track of and find the items that matter most with Apple’s Find My app. Whether attached to a handbag, keys, backpack, or other items, AirTag taps into the vast, global Find My network1 and can help locate a lost item, all while keeping location data private and anonymous with end-to-end encryption. AirTag can be purchased in one and four packs for just $29 and $99, respectively, and will be available beginning Friday, April 30.

AirTag is probably the worst kept secret at Apple over the last year or so, but it’s still great to see it hit the market. It’s interesting to note that AirTag uses a replaceable battery instead of being rechargeable. Apple says the battery should last over a year with everyday use.

Each AirTag is equipped with the Apple-designed U1 chip using Ultra Wideband technology, enabling Precision Finding for iPhone 11 and iPhone 12 users. This advanced technology can more accurately determine the distance and direction to a lost AirTag when it is in range. As a user moves, Precision Finding fuses input from the camera, ARKit, accelerometer, and gyroscope, and then will guide them to AirTag using a combination of sound, haptics, and visual feedback.

I love Precision Finding. I’ve misplaced my iPhone before and using sound to find is helpful, but nowhere near as accurate and quick as what this will be.

AirTag is designed from the ground up to keep location data private and secure. No location data or location history is physically stored inside AirTag. Communication with the Find My network is end-to-end encrypted so that only the owner of a device has access to its location data, and no one, including Apple, knows the identity or location of any device that helped find it.

AirTag is also designed with a set of proactive features that discourage unwanted tracking, an industry first. Bluetooth signal identifiers transmitted by AirTag rotate frequently to prevent unwanted location tracking. iOS devices can also detect an AirTag that isn’t with its owner, and notify the user if an unknown AirTag is seen to be traveling with them from place to place over time. And even if users don’t have an iOS device, an AirTag separated from its owner for an extended period of time will play a sound when moved to draw attention to it.

Privacy and security. That’s Apple.

The 12.9-inch iPad Pro features a new Liquid Retina XDR display that brings extreme dynamic range to iPad Pro, offering a stunning visual experience with more true-to-life details to the most demanding HDR workflows.

The iPad Pro was already the fastest device of its kind, but now it has the most efficient and powerful computer chip available, the M1, powering it. On top of that, Apple added an XDR display giving pros a level of portable power we could have only dreamed about a few short years ago.

I love this one line in Apple’s documentation.

iPad Pro now includes support for Thunderbolt.

This is huge for users.

Support for Thunderbolt and USB 4 makes the USB-C port on iPad Pro the fastest, most versatile port ever on an iPad, with 4x more bandwidth for wired connections than the previous iPad Pro — up to 40Gbps. Thunderbolt supports 10Gbps Ethernet and opens up a massive ecosystem of high-performance accessories, like faster external storage and even higher resolution external displays, including the Pro Display XDR at full 6K resolution…

I also love Center Stage. The fact that you can move around and the camera will move with you, keeping you in the center of the frame is really cool. I can’t wait to try this out on the new iPad.

The TrueDepth camera system on iPad Pro features an all-new 12MP Ultra Wide front camera designed specifically for iPad, enabling Center Stage, a new experience for video calls. Center Stage uses the much larger field of view on the new front camera and the machine learning capabilities of M1 to recognize and keep users centered in the frame. As users move around, Center Stage automatically pans to keep them in the shot. When others join in, the camera detects them too, and smoothly zooms out to fit everyone into the view and make sure they are part of the conversation.

Pricing and availability:

The 11-inch iPad Pro starts at $799 (US) for the Wi-Fi model and $999 (US) for the Wi-Fi + Cellular model, and the 12.9-inch iPad Pro starts at $1,099 (US) for the Wi-Fi model and $1,299 (US) for the Wi-Fi + Cellular model

There is so much to love about this new iMac.

Apple today introduced an all-new iMac featuring a much more compact and remarkably thin design, enabled by the M1 chip.

The new iMac also includes a 1080p FaceTime HD camera, studio-quality mics, and a six-speaker sound system — the best camera and audio ever in a Mac. Also, Touch ID comes to iMac for the first time, making it easier than ever to securely log in, make purchases with Apple Pay, or switch user profiles with the touch of a finger.

The FaceTime HD camera is especially important these days, but having studio-quality mics and sound system just takes it over the top. Touch ID is one of those features you don’t know you’ve been missing on the Mac until you try to do something that requires it—we’re so used to having Face ID or Touch ID on our iOS devices that it’s so obvious when it’s not there.

A few other notes about iMac:

• Up to 85 percent faster CPU performance, so users can export their favorite video project in iMovie faster than ever, easily work with massive 100-megapixel photos in Lightroom, and compile new apps in Xcode in a fraction of the time.

• Up to 2x faster GPU performance for certain apps like Affinity Photo and Photoshop, and up to 50 percent faster than the most powerful discrete graphics in the fastest 21.5-inch iMac, allowing users to render edits in real time or add complex filters to their photos in a snap.

• The ability to edit up to five streams of 4K footage, or one stream of 8K footage, without dropping a frame in Final Cut Pro.

• Up to 3x faster machine learning in apps that leverage the 16-core Neural Engine in M1.

Availability and pricing:

iMac with 7-core GPU starts at $1,299 (US) and $1,249 (US) for education, and is available in green, pink, blue, and silver. It features an 8-core CPU, 8GB of unified memory, 256GB SSD, two Thunderbolt ports, Magic Keyboard, and Magic Mouse.

iMac with 8-core GPU starts at $1,499 (US) and $1,399 (US) for education, and is available in green, yellow, orange, pink, purple, blue, and silver. It features an 8-core CPU, 8GB of unified memory, 256GB SSD, two Thunderbolt ports, two additional USB 3 ports, Magic Keyboard with Touch ID, Magic Mouse, and Ethernet.

Apple:

Apple today announced the next generation of Apple TV 4K, delivering high frame rate HDR with Dolby Vision and connecting customers to their favorite content with the highest quality. At the heart of the new Apple TV 4K is the A12 Bionic chip that provides a significant boost in graphics performance, video decoding, and audio processing. And with an all-new design, the Siri Remote makes it even easier to watch shows and movies on Apple TV with intuitive navigation controls. Together with tvOS — the most powerful TV operating system — Apple TV 4K works seamlessly with Apple devices and services to magically transform the living room in ways that everyone in the family will love.

And:

With A12 Bionic, Apple TV 4K now supports high frame rate HDR (High Dynamic Range) and Dolby Vision video, enabling fast-moving action at 60 frames per second (fps) to play more smoothly and appear more lifelike than ever before. Apple is working with leading video providers around the world, including FOX Sports, NBCUniversal, Paramount+, Red Bull TV, and Canal+, as they begin to stream in high frame rate HDR. And with high frame rate support in AirPlay, videos shot on iPhone 12 Pro can be displayed in full 60-fps Dolby Vision on the new Apple TV 4K.

And:

Apple TV uses the light sensor in iPhone to compare the color balance to the industry-standard specifications used by cinematographers worldwide. Using this data, Apple TV automatically tailors its video output to deliver much more accurate colors and improved contrast — without customers ever having to adjust their television settings.

This last bit is amazing. You place your iPhone, face forward, up against your TV, and the Apple TV uses your iPhone camera to build a profile it uses to adjust its display to get the optimum image from your TV. Remarkable bit of engineering.

The all-new Siri Remote features an innovative clickpad control that offers five-way navigation for better accuracy, and is also touch-enabled for the fast directional swipes Apple TV users love. The outer ring of the clickpad supports an intuitive circular gesture that turns it into a jog control — perfect for finding a scene in a movie or show. And with its one-piece aluminum design, the new Siri Remote fits more comfortably in a user’s hand.

The new remote is gorgeous. And it adds in power and mute buttons. And it is now easy to tell top from bottom, front from back, even in the dark. Apple delivered a ton of stuff today, but the new Siri Remote might be my favorite bit of all.

A few notes:

• New Apple TV 4K starts at $179
• New Apple TV HD starts at $149
• Order April 30th, available second half of May
• Replacement Siri Remote is $59, compatible with the previous-generation Apple TV 4K and Apple TV HD.

Apple makes it so easy to watch. Click the headline link to watch on device, or the Apple TV app on your Apple TV.

Here’s my take on what we might see today.

Per usual the Apple Store is down, with the traditional “Be right back. We’re making updates to the Apple Store. Check back soon.” message.

What other company can demand such worldwide attention for a product announcement?

OSXDaily:

If you’re unable to resolve any issue that you’re facing with an Apple device or service, you can always get in touch with an Apple Support agent for further assistance. Moreover, you can do this right from your iPhone or iPad.

Nice walkthrough to pass along to folks new to Apple.

Can’t speak to the safety of this site, but it is definitely a rabbit hole of fascinating content.

• Follow the headline link
• Tap the hamburger menu in the upper right corner
• Pick a country, then scroll through a huge set of channels/shows
• Once you find one you like, tap the play button.

It’s a bit hit or miss, listen for audio to know you’ve picked a channel that is currently on air. One locked in, close the options window and start watching.

Glenn Fleishman, TidBITS:

Thirty million US households just received another option for affordable, high-speed home broadband. T-Mobile Home Internet covers that many households, 10 million of which are in rural areas. The company promises an average of 100 Mbps in most areas via its 5G network. Service should average no less than 50 Mbps for any household, including those that are currently only within reach of T-Mobile’s 4G LTE towers.

And:

T-Mobile Home Internet costs $60 per month for unlimited use, with no long-term commitment. There’s also no separate fee for the necessary hardware, which is designed for self-installation.

More and more options popping up for cutting the cable. This is a great read, lots of detail.

The advantage of sticking with cable is bundle pricing. But with so much content available, enough content to fill your days is becoming cheaper and cheaper. If you’ve got Netflix and Apple TV+, you’ve already got a pretty good amount to watch. Add in Disney+ and some over the air local channels and it’s an embarrassment of riches.

There’s a lot to love about software I’ve been using for more than 20 years and now BBEdit, the power tool for text, is ready for Big Sur and M1-powered Macs!

Feels like I am stuck on an old-school Macintosh theme with this morning’s posts, but it’s purely coincidental.

This one uses an emulator to run classic MacOS on an iPad Pro. It looks amazing.

More gorgeous work, this time by Stephen Hackett, sharing the various tones made by old school Macs when they were unable to boot. Don’t miss the Power Mac 6100 car crash.

This is gorgeous work. Follow the headline link, click on each of the pictures below the main image to step through the gallery. That floppy disk is simply amazing.

From this Wall Street Journal article published on Friday:

Apple Music told artists it pays a penny per stream, according to a letter viewed by The Wall Street Journal.

The disclosure, made in a letter to artists delivered Friday via the service’s artist dashboard and sent to labels and publishers, reflects music-streaming services’ increasing efforts to show they are artist-friendly. Apple Inc.’s move can be seen as a riposte to Spotify Technology SA, which last month shared some details of how it pays the music industry for streams on its platform.

Apple’s penny-per-stream payment structure—which music-industry experts say can dip lower—is roughly double what Spotify, the world’s largest music-streaming service, pays music-rights holders per stream.

You can read the full letter in this 9to5Mac post.

The headline link is to a response to the “Apple Music pays twice what Spotify does” narrative. From that Variety article:

The per-stream rate is addressed in a brief paragraph in the letter, which reads in full: “Our average per play rate is $0.01. While royalties from streaming services are calculated on a stream share basis, a play still has a value. This value varies by subscription plan and country but averaged $0.01 for Apple Music individual paid plans in 2020. This includes label and publisher royalties.” (It does not provide details on how that average was reached.)

And:

The first sentence of the WSJ article reads: “Apple Music told artists it pays a penny per stream” — which does not specify who it pays a penny per stream — and while the main headline on the article reads, “Apple Music Reveals How Much It Pays When You Stream a Song,” a secondary headline reads, “Apple Music pays artists twice as much as Spotify per stream.”

OK. So far, looks like Apple pays artists a penny per stream. But read on:

Streaming services rarely pay artists directly: They pay rights-holders, usually labels and publishers, which take their cut and then pay artists their share.

And:

In reality, there are far too many factors involved in streaming royalties to be boiled down to a single, simple formula: In addition to the subscription plan, the country of origin, the number of users on the site and multiple other factors, some labels may have different deals with different streaming services. In one of its veiled digs at Spotify, Apple Music states in its letter that it pays “the same 52% headline rate to all labels”; sources tell Variety that Spotify has different deals with different labels, although specifics were not readily available. (In the U.S., publishing rates are set by the Copyright Royalty Board and ostensibly are the same for all music-streaming services.)

Read the Variety article, draw your own conclusions. Feels like, at the very least, the Wall Street Journal “Apple Music pays artists twice as much as Spotify per stream” take is oversimplifying a complex payment model.

I love this iOS 14.5 privacy walkthrough from Joanna Stern, all the way through. Be sure to jump to about 1:11 in and check out Terrifying Tim Cook. A solid nuts and bolts explainer.

Washington Post:

The iPhone used by a terrorist in the San Bernardino shooting was unlocked by a small Australian hacking firm in 2016, ending a momentous standoff between the U.S. government and the tech titan Apple.

At the time, the general consensus was that the FBI was using an Israeli security firm, well known for this sort of smartphone break-in.

Azimuth Security, a publicity-shy company that says it sells its cyber wares only to democratic governments, secretly crafted the solution the FBI used to gain access to the device, according to several people familiar with the matter.

And:

The identity of the hacking firm has remained a closely guarded secret for five years. Even Apple didn’t know which vendor the FBI used, according to company spokesman Todd Wilder. But without realizing it, Apple’s attorneys came close last year to learning of Azimuth’s role — through a different court case, one that has nothing to do with unlocking a terrorist’s device.

And:

Apple has a tense relationship with security research firms. Wilder said the company believes researchers should disclose all vulnerabilities to Apple so that the company can more quickly fix them. Doing so would help preserve its reputation as having secure devices.

And:

But many security researchers say it’s legitimate to sell these flaws to democratic governments. And the ability of government agencies to unlock iPhones has also spared Apple from direct conflict with these governments. For instance, by unlocking the terrorist’s iPhone, some say, Azimuth came to Apple’s rescue by ending a case that could have led to a court-ordered back door to the iPhone.

I do think it’s true that this solution took the heat off Apple, turned down the dial on Congress’ efforts to force Apple to create a backdoor to the iPhone. But as has been proven time and time again, there’s just no way a back door created for law enforcement would not end up in the hands of black hat hackers.

I do agree with Apple’s take, that researchers should disclose all vulnerabilities to Apple so they can release patches.

The Washington Post story is a fascinating read. Here’s a link to the Apple News version of the article.

Apple:

“Blush” follows the journey of a stranded horticulturist-astronaut’s chances for survival after he crash lands on a desolate dwarf planet. When an ethereal visitor arrives, the once-lone traveler discovers the joy in building a new life and realizes the universe has delivered astonishing salvation.

And:

The inaugural Apple/Skydance short film is written and directed by Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Joe Mateo (“Prep & Landing,” “Big Hero 6”), and shares the storyteller’s deeply personal journey of healing, hope and the undeniably human moments of being rescued by love. Mateo developed “Blush” alongside the Skydance Animation team and the film is produced by Heather Schmidt Feng Yanu (“Toy Story,” the “Cars” trilogy) and executive produced by Oscar® winner John Lasseter (“Toy Story,” “Monsters, Inc.,” “Cars”). “Blush” joins highly anticipated Apple/Skydance features “Luck” and “Spellbound,” and the animated series “The Search for WondLa,” with several more feature films and television series to be announced over the term of the pact.

That is some heavy hitting behind the scenes. Marked as “coming soon”, as of this writing, there was no landing page for Blush in the Apple TV+ search results.

I love the quality of the Pixar shorts that show before every theater showing of a Pixar film (my absolute favorite is here). Hoping Apple TV+ delivers that level of joy in the fruits of this partnership.

OSXDaily:

Ever ended up on a webpage in a different language and wished you could translate it instantly? With the latest versions of Safari for Mac, you can use a native translation feature to convert a webpage from a foreign language to your native tongue.

Happens to me all the time. I tweeted about it here, if you want a short version with instructions to pass along.

If you are in iOS Safari, you’ll find the translate feature under the “aA” button on the left side of the address bar. This is worth knowing about. Give it a try. A good test page is at lemonde.fr.

William Gallagher, AppleInsider:

As part of Apple’s series of health partnerships, the company is working with the University of Washington and the Seattle Flu Study. If accepted onto the coronavirus study program, participants will be provided with an Apple Watch.

Live in the Seattle area? Here’s where you can sign up for the study.

A few days ago, from Mark Gurman’s rumor Apple working on combined Apple TV, HomePod, camera:

The company is working on a product that would combine an Apple TV set-top box with a HomePod speaker and include a camera for video conferencing through a connected TV and other smart-home functions, according to people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified discussing internal matters.

I struggled to wrap my head around this concept. Was this for the TV room? If so, does it replace your existing speakers? If it’s an all-in-one, how do you place a combo camera/HomePod, since both have different placement needs.

Now this from Michael Firth (from a few months ago, well before this rumor surfaced), writing about the need for a camera for your Apple TV:

• The camera doesn’t have to be built-in to the Apple TV itself. It could be a miniaturised version of something like the XBOX Kinect, connected via USB-C and designed to sit neatly aloft your TV.

• When you walk into a room and sit down in front of the TV, the LIDAR scanner could detect your presence and automatically switch the TV on. It can identify you, it can sign into apps based on your identity. The home screen can show custom content for whoever just sat down – if it’s just you on your own, it shows that show you’ve been binge watching. Someone else? It’s their favourite show.

Bing. This clicked for me. This feels like a concept that would be a welcome addition to my TV room. A camera with Apple’s promise of privacy, doing all kinds of clever Apple TV tricks, a quality webcam for FaceTime/Zoom calls, with HomeKit compatibility perhaps.

Still not seeing the HomePod angle, but definitely an interesting take.

Zac Hall, 9to5Mac:

The tech enthusiast in me wants to find a use for every Apple Watch feature, but this can create an overwhelming experience if you’re not intentional about your approach. It’s possible to want to reduce your reliance on the iPhone through the Apple Watch, only to find yourself even more annoyed by interruptions on your wrist.

Identifying utility from the Apple Watch while toning it down when the watch becomes too much has been something I’ve been working through recently. I’ll share where I’ve landed as well as a few feature requests for managing the experience for the better.

Gaining control over your Apple Watch is a decluttering process, removing unneeded apps, and pruning the tree of notifications. Nicely presented, worth reading.

Spotify:

Currently available to eligible users in the U.S., Car Thing enables you to play your favorite audio faster, so you’re already listening to that hit song or the latest podcast episode before you’ve even pulled out of the driveway. Switching between your favorite audio is effortless, allowing you to shift gears to something else as soon as the mood strikes.

And:

Our focus remains on becoming the world’s number one audio platform—not on creating hardware—but we developed Car Thing because we saw a need from our users, many of whom were missing out on a seamless and personalized in-car listening experience.

And:

The limited release of Car Thing is not meant to compete with in-car infotainment systems. Instead, it’s another step in our larger ubiquity strategy.

Here’s a link to Spotify’s ubiquity strategy, in case you just had to know.

As to “Car Thing”, follow the headline link, check out that first image. An odd, extremely specialized product. It mounts on a car vent (very Radio Shack) and purely does audio. Not feeling it.

First things first, watch the video here.

Next, follow the headline link for an incredibly colorful entry into Apple’s college student portal/store. Worth a look, even if you are not connected to a new college hopeful.

[Via 9to5Mac]

Apple:

Premiering globally July 30, 2021 on Apple TV+, this new docuseries will explore groundbreaking technology in music with Paul McCartney, Questlove, King Princess, Dave Grohl, Ad-Rock and Mike D from the Beastie Boys, Charli XCX and more

And:

Ronson explores music’s intersection with artistry and technology in candid conversations with music legends and icons including Paul McCartney, Questlove, King Princess, Dave Grohl, Ad-Rock and Mike D from the Beastie Boys, Charli XCX and more, where he discovers the ways in which these unique tools have influenced their work.

And:

At the end of each episode, Ronson will create and unveil a unique piece of original music using groundbreaking technology and techniques including reverb, synth, auto-tune, drum machines, sampling and distortion.

I’m a bit of a music documentary junkie, will definitely check this out. Sounds a bit like that drum machine documentary, 808. Or the fantastic Dave Grohl documentary Sound City.