I haven’t been able to find a list of channels the new service will offer, but it seems clear they are going after PlayStation Vue and Sling TV.

Secrets is now Free on the App Store! Secrets is a simple, secure password manager for Mac and iOS. It leverages industry standard encryption algorithms to provide secure storage and macOS and iOS native features to facilitate automatic filling of logins in the browser.

Version 2.0 is the culmination of months of testing in the real world. Bugs have been squashed, important features have been added and polish has been applied throughout. With this new version you can use Secrets and all of its features for Free with up to 10 items.

Download it now on the App Store or the Mac App Store.

Writing Cooperative:

When I started writing, I didn’t use any tools. All I had were my laptop, notes, and head. I thought that was all you need to publish something great, which is true. That is all you need. But the time and work you invest into one post isn’t enough to become an influential writer — it actually takes many exceptional posts to build a fan base who can’t wait to read your next piece.

I’ve been blogging for 1 1/2 years now and tried hundreds of tools to accelerate my success on blogging. Most of them I’d cut out from my life. A few I’d saved. What I’ll be sharing here are the special few I still use in my everyday writing.

I don’t know about irresistible but there are several tools on this list that some of you may be able to use to help your blogging in the New Year.

Jason Snell, writing for iMore:

Scripting and automation have been in the conversation lately, owing to Apple’s reported disbanding of the macOS team responsible for them and the departure of scripting advocate Sal Soghoian from the company last month.

They sounds like arcane, abstract concepts. And to be sure, scripting and automation are the sort of feature that’s used by more like 5% of users rather than 50%. But in pondering Apple’s possible shift in automation strategy, I began to consider all the ways I use it in my working life.

It’s amazing how many opportunities there are to add automation to your day-to-day workflow. I use Keyboard Maestro for most of my automation, typically creating a hot key that launches an application, or wrapping a specific sequence of clicks/drags/typing into a macro I can launch with a single hot key.

Read the article, even if you don’t think about automation. The post is well written, relatively short, and does a great job conveying the value of automation.

Dave Hamilton, writing for The Mac Observer, explains the basics of WiFi Mesh Systems and compares three popular solutions.

If you manage a network (even a home network) with a lot of devices, this is worth reading.

San Francisco Examiner:

Computer systems at San Francisco’s transit system, Muni, have been restored following a malware attack on Friday afternoon.

Payment systems across the agency’s subways read “OUT OF ORDER” in large red digital letters at Powell Station, Embarcadero Station and other stations across The City following the attack.

On Friday and Saturday, computers in station agents’ booths across the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency displayed “You Hacked, ALL Data Encrypted. Contact For Key([email protected])ID:681 ,Enter.”

Sidebar: We are on the cusp of quantum computing, which will potentially make computers capable of easily solving sophisticated problems used as the basis of today’s encryption. And that will mean more hacking, but could also mean sophisticated tools to break ransomware. Depends who gets there first.

I’ve long been a fan of Marcus Conge’s work. Now he’s embedded some of his best stuff in a web site. Check it out.

And if you’ve got the need, he’s currently taking on work (see the Hire Me section at the bottom left).

co.design:

Apple debuted TrueType in 1991, and to make sure it became a ubiquitous standard, it even licensed it to Microsoft, which introduced TrueType fonts with Windows 3.1. Quite suddenly, it became possible for millions of computer owners to display and use rich, sophisticated, and scalable typefaces created by the world’s greatest type designers and type foundries.

I remember the first demos of this system when it came out and being blown away by the possibilities it opened up to those of us in desktop publishing.

Aaron Douglas:

How do I prevent this from happening in the future? How the hell did it happen? Turns out it’s Apple again – thinking they know better for how you want to use e-mail and calendars. Thankfully there is an option to prevent the forced invites.

These calendar invites aren’t coming from some magic hacked portal in your phone. The invites are coming as e-mails into your iCloud.com e-mail account and then being automatically converted into in-app push notifications to both iOS and macOS. Once that’s done the original e-mail is deleted. Gone. Poof. Magical, yet stabby.

I’m seeing a lot of reports of this. Hopefully, this can put an end to it.

MY thanks to Hullo for sponsoring The Loop this week.

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Fast Company:

It opens in a snow-covered, remote mountain town. A man with a deep, gravelly voice is recording a music box tune on his iPhone. This guy looks familiar, in more ways than one. As he trudges through the snow to pick up a package, it becomes clear it’s the legendary Frankenstein (and Brad Garrett under some pretty heavy make-up) making some mystery preparations. As he makes his way to the town square, it soon becomes apparent Frankenstein is getting up the courage to offer up his own special festive contribution proceedings.

In the end, we get a message of inclusion and hope, topped with the tagline “Open Your Heart to Everyone.” It’s a message not unfamiliar to holiday advertising, but one that hits an especially strong chord amid the post-election uproar. This is the fourth year in a row that Apple has welcomed the Christmas season with a very British-flavored approach to the holidays—one that aims for your heartstrings as much as your wallet.

In one of his first interviews since joining the company late last year, I spoke to Vice President of Marketing Tor Myhren about the strategy behind the new holiday spot.

The pedant in me wants to remind everyone that “Frankenstein” was the creator’s name. The monster didn’t have a name. Don’t worry – I’ll see myself out.

9to5Mac:

When the first teardown of Apple’s new 2016 MacBook Pro was published earlier this month, a couple notable changes were spotted related to the machine’s SSD. Components for the SSD are now soldered onto the logic board, which likely allows for some design and thinness enhancements, but hurts overall repairability. On top of not being upgradeable, some speculated that meant that if the logic board fails, your data is gone with it. Not necessarily.

Apple never guarantees that it will be able to recover your data, but it recognizes that having a non-removable SSD makes things more difficult for users, so it’s providing Apple stores and service providers with this tool to help customers.

The non-removable nature of the SSDs in the new MBPs is a huge pain for tinkerers and those who have issues but it’s good Apple is at least looking for ways to make it a bit less so.

flashbak:

This is an example of where the food might actually have tasted just fine (depending on your tastes), but, before the advent of the “food stylist”, things often looked ghastly in their advertisements. We’ve become so accustomed to highly-polished, Photoshopped food presentation, that food in vintage advertising just looks unpalatable.

Here are some adverts from decades past where the food may or may not have tasted fine, but the presentation makes things look downright inedible by today’s standards. Bon appetit!

Caution: Some of these are so awful, it may put you off your Thanksgiving turkey.

TidBITS:

If you’ve been feeling as though Apple’s heart isn’t in moving the Mac forward these days, you’re not alone. The new MacBook Pro models have taken widespread criticism, Apple has provided no roadmap for the future of its desktop Macs, and most recently, the company eliminated the position of Product Manager of Automation Technologies, presumably seeing it as unnecessary. High-end creatives have despaired about Apple’s lack of attention to their needs, and the mood among many of the consultants and support professionals at last week’s MacTech Conference was downbeat.

So what could explain Apple’s increasing marginalization of the Mac, particularly in the pro market? The culprit is clearly the iOS platform, and the iPhone in particular. But the reason why it’s happening has more to do with a structural fact about the company that Apple will have to change if the Mac is to get the attention it needs to thrive.

Those of us who “love” our Macs or need them to make a living certainly have trepidation with the seeming lack of direction Apple is showing with the Mac. I don’t think it’s all doom and gloom or that the Mac is going away any time soon though.

AppleInsider:

“Tim, you know one of the things that will be a real achievement for me is when I get Apple to build a big plant in the United States, or many big plants in the United States,” recounted Trump to the New York Times. about the recent call with the Apple CEO. “Instead of going to China, and going to Vietnam, and going to the places that you go to, you’re making your product right here.”

“I think we’ll create the incentives for you, and I think you’re going to do it,” added Trump. “We’re going for a very large tax cut for corporations, which you’ll be happy about.”

I’m pretty sure Tim Cook doesn’t care about helping Trump in the way he describes. But very few people believe it would ever be possible, incentives or not, to build iPhones stateside. There are too many moving parts in Apple’s supply chain.

CNET:

When I was a kid, one thing I always had trouble wrapping my head around was how fighter pilots with propeller planes would shoot their machine guns through the propeller. I later learned it was all about timing the shots so they wouldn’t interfere with the propeller by syncing up the gun and propeller mechanically. But knowing something is a lot different from seeing it.

This is one of those things that fascinated me as a kid and when I found the solution, I thought it was an utterly brilliant use of technology.

Macworld:

With every release of a new iPhone powered by another cutting-edge processor designed by Apple, the rumbling grows. It’s amplified by the perception that the Mac is being delayed and hamstrung by the moves of the Mac’s chip supplier, Intel. It’s the theory that, one of these days, Apple is going to break from Intel and power its Macs with an Apple-designed processor related to the ones in the iPhone and iPad.

And it’s true, the Mac is no stranger to a processor transition. It’s happened three times in the 32-year life of the Mac, so roughly once a decade.

It could definitely happen. I don’t want to say that it won’t, because Apple’s desire to chart its own course and not be beholden to other companies for key parts of its products is well known. Having proven itself a capable chip designer with the A series, Apple could very well dump Intel and strike out on its own.

But I don’t think Apple will.

I would strongly disagree with my colleague, Mr Snell. I think Apple will eventually do this. But not for at least 5 years.

Information is Beautiful:

Scene-by-scene breakdown of Hollywood films. Explore your favorite “based on a true story” films scene-by-scene, beat-by-beat and test their veracity on a data level.

I love movies but anyone who knows me knows I can be a real PITA when it comes to historical accuracy. This website is a data gold mine for pedantic bastards like me.

I see why some people think Designed by Apple in California could be Ive’s goodbye to Apple. But it feels to me like Ive’s heartfelt goodbye to his best friend and colleague, five years gone. I don’t think Jony Ive is going anywhere.

I agree with Gruber on this. Although, I do think Jony is taking a higher level view of design for Apple these days.

According to industry sources on Nov. 21, the Korean tech giant plans to launch a new glossy black version of the flagship smartphone early next month.

Of course they will.

Appleinsider:

Schiller in a brief response to an article published by developer Ben Slaney explained Apple’s decision to use speedy and efficient LPDDR3 memory, of which Intel’s latest processors can handle up to 16GB, was in large part due to battery life concerns.

“The MacBook Pro uses 16GB of very fast LPDDR memory, up to 2133MHz,” Schiller said. “To support 32GB of memory would require using DDR memory that is not low power and also require a different design of the logic board which might reduce space for batteries. Both factors would reduce battery life.”

The response clarified an error in Slaney’s attempt to explain why MacBook Pro with Touch Bar models maxed out at 16GB of RAM, which claimed the LPDDR3E specification tops out at 1866MHz.

These comments from Schiller point very clearly to Apple’s focus and direction when it comes to their laptops.

Great review of CarPlay from John Vorhees, writing for MacStories. Good and the bad. Interesting that this is one of the few cases where Apple is forced to build a software experience on someone else’s hardware.