Josh Centers, writing for TidBITS:

Telecom giant AT&T is seeking to purchase content giant Time Warner (which is no longer affiliated with Time Warner Cable, see “AT&T Aims to Buy Time Warner for $84.5 Billion,” 24 October 2016). However, the deal could run into regulatory obstacles, with politicians on both sides of the aisle questioning the merger. It also doesn’t help that the Department of Justice is suing AT&T subsidiary DirecTV.

And:

Goldman Sachs is reportedly pushing Apple to make a competing bid for Time Warner, but Apple is resisting. However, I think Apple should consider the possibility. Here are four reasons why.

This is a great, thoughtful read. Should Apple spend the cash to instantly acquire one of the biggest, highest quality content libraries on the planet? Would they burn bridges in doing so, alienate players they are trying to bring to the table?

I find this all a fascinating business.

New York Times:

The messaging app Snapchat allows motorists to post photos that record the speed of the vehicle. The navigation app Waze rewards drivers with points when they report traffic jams and accidents. Even the game Pokémon Go has drivers searching for virtual creatures on the nation’s highways.

And:

After steady declines over the last four decades, highway fatalities last year recorded the largest annual percentage increase in 50 years. And the numbers so far this year are even worse. In the first six months of 2016, highway deaths jumped 10.4 percent, to 17,775, from the comparable period of 2015, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

I don’t see this as alarmist. Clearly, there are more apps each year that are useful and usable while driving. Will we address this before we ultimately make the move to autonomous vehicles? Is there an obligation on Apple and Google’s part to do something about this?

Correct. I joined Apple in January of 1997, almost twenty years ago, because of my profound belief that “the power of the computer should reside in the hands of the one using it.” That credo remains my truth to this day. Recently, I was informed that my position as Product Manager of Automation Technologies was eliminated for business reasons. Consequently, I am no longer employed by Apple Inc. But, I still believe my credo to be as true today as ever.

I’ve known Sal for years, and he is one of the smartest people I’ve ever met. He cared about Apple and the user.

Google Chief Executive Sundar Pichai will meet in Brussels with EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager and Guenther Oettinger, European Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society, as the final stop in a short tour of the continent, spokespeople for Google and the EU confirmed.

Google is some trouble in the EU and the situation could get much worse.

Decent Security:

Routers are in fact small computers running Linux, and they have vulnerabilities and bugs like any computer. This article is a list of the best practices for home router and WiFi security.

Here are some good, common sense things you can do to make changes to your home router.

Wow.

[Via Coudal]

Apple’s in an interesting, but tough spot here. They could be the vehicle to bring original content to your home with Apple TV, or they could add their own original content and battle with Netflix and Amazon.

Pixelmator 3.6 Cordillera brings full support for macOS Sierra and the all-new MacBook Pro Touch Bar, adds Tabs so you can manage your Pixelmator windows with ease, includes a content-aware Smart Refine feature, Deep Images support, and more.

There are a lot of changes in the latest version, including macOS Sierra and Touch Bar support. This is one of the first apps I install on any of my devices.

Fstoppers:

Lemkesoft’s Mac-only GraphicConverter has been around since 1992. Version 10.2 has just been released, and now integrates into Apple’s Photos app. This makes it a great small tool for light editing of images in the Apple ecosystem. Time to quickly review an indispensable little piece of software that doesn’t get much love or recognition.

I’ve been a fan of GraphicConverter for decades. It’s probably the first image editor I ever used on my Mac, back in 1994. The developer has been faithful to the app and the Mac community for more than 20 years. And he’s a really nice guy as well.

io9:

SEQUEL 2 opens on November 30, both online and at the gallery proper. You’ll be able to find it here, and below you can check out a few of the pieces in the show. In each, check out tons of small Easter Eggs that hint at what each artist thinks the sequel could be about.

I’d pay good money to see the sequel to Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

Watch the Tesla Model S as a tester stands in the road, walks into the road, etc. Fascinating.

One of the best technical MacBook Pro Touch Bar reviews I’ve yet read. Lots of detail, pictures, along with the Touch Bar video embedded below.

Nice job by Andrew Cunningham. Lots of little details, especially useful if you are comparing 13″ and 15″ or Touch Bar, non-Touch Bar models.

Want to get a sense of the game? Go here. And be sure to click the arrows on the side of the screen. There’s lots of content here, all designed to whet your appetite for the game.

This is a bit of a long post, too multi-faceted to do it justice with a few call outs. But this one paragraph resonates big time:

To me, an iPad in notebook mode — connected to a keyboard cover — is so much less nice than a real notebook. And the difference is more stark when compared to a great notebook, like these MacBook Pros. There are advantages to the tablet form factor, but no tablet will ever be as nice as a notebook as these MacBook Pros. I also prefer MacOS over iOS for, well, “doing work”. I think I’m more productive on a Mac than I am on an iPad. I can’t prove it, but even if I’m wrong, the fact that I feel like it’s true matters. I always feel slightly hamstrung working on an iPad. I never do on a Mac (at least once I’ve got it configured with all the apps and little shortcuts, scripts, and utilities I use).

I love the idea of the Touch Bar, happy to have more functionality on my Mac. But the key element that keeps me on my Mac is the idea of a pointer I can leave in place. I move my mouse cursor to a spot and it stays there, marking time, at that exact same location, until I move it. Selecting and manipulating, copying and pasting text is another element I find superior in macOS.

I love my iPhone and iPad, use both every day, but for creating content, nothing compares to sitting down at my Mac.

This is one of my favorite iFixit teardowns. More humor, and more surprises (like step 13, where we learn something interesting about the speaker grills, no doubt a basic difference between the 13″ and 15″ models).

Sarah Perez, TechCrunch:

Earlier this year, Apple promised it would clean up its iOS App Store by removing outdated, abandoned apps, including those that no longer meet current guidelines or don’t function as intended. That great App Store purge now appears to be underway, according to new data from app intelligence firm Sensor Tower. The company found that app removals increased by 238 percent in October 2016, with mobile games seeing the most deletions.

Apple had originally stated that the deadline for developers who wanted their outdated apps spared was September 7, 2016. However, Apple didn’t take immediate action during the month in terms of large-scale removals.

That seems to have changed in October, when 47,300 apps were removed from the App Store, Sensor Tower discovered.

And while it’s true that Apple does delete apps on a regular basis, this figure is around 3.4 times higher than the monthly average of 14,000 for the months of January through September.

Apple sent out a letter to developers on September 1 hinting that this day was coming.

Steven Aquino, who writes a lot about accessibility, writing for The App Factor:

As I reported last February, the initial version of Apple Music was mired by a confusing design and, more importantly, less than stellar accessibility. These issues weren’t severe enough to drive me away from the product, but they certainly put a damper on an otherwise solid experience.

Then came good news. With the advent of iOS 10 came an all-new, totally redesigned Apple Music that addressed both of my biggest gripes about 1.0. Streaming and downloaded music are now clearly marked, but the big win for me is the app is much more visually accessible.

And:

From an accessibility perspective, it’s the bigness and boldness that make Apple Music shine in iOS 10. First and foremost, the Dynamic Type is pervasive throughout the app. Headers are ginormous. Whereas previously I had trouble reading Editors’ Notes and track listings, I now can read them fine. The larger text is boosted by the higher contrast, as areas such as the Now Playing screen eschew form for function. It may not look pretty, but the plain background of the Now Playing screen coupled with the large type makes text jump off the screen. This lessens eye strain and fatigue, which happens fast, because I don’t struggle to find things.

There’s lots more to this, both in terms of size (bigger icons are kinder to people with limited vision), and in terms of basic interface improvements (adding demarcations to make it easier to find your way around).

As always, solid insights from Steven Aquino.

PBS:

Hamilton’s America, the documentary film that brings history to vivid life through the lens of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s pop culture Broadway phenomenon Hamilton – winner of 11 Tony Awards and the Pulitzer Prize – explodes onto THIRTEEN’s Great Performances, as the season premiere of the PBS Arts Fall Festival.

If you’re in the US, now is the time to watch this before PBS removes it in a few days. Those of us outside the US don’t get to watch it at all.

Recombu:

Everyone’s favourite nature commentator has been going strong for six full decades, producing a seriously strong body of work. Shows such as Life and Planet Earth have dropped jaws and kept us glued to our sets, and now the BBC has honoured Sir David’s career with the launch of a new app, The Story of Life.

The Story of Life presents over a thousand clips of David in action, across the breadth of his sixty year career. That includes astonishing footage from his latest show Planet Earth II, which you can watch now in glorious 4K. Yep, the bit with the iguana is present and correct.

While we wait for Planet Earth II to be available here in the US and Canada, I’ll happily download this app on Thursday.

Wallpaper.com, on the new book, Designed by Apple in California:

This is a comprehensive and objective portrait of Apple products produced over the past 20 years. ‘It is a book with very few words,’ writes Sir Jony Ive in the foreword. ‘It is about our products, their physical nature and how they were made.’ The pages that follow trace two stratospheric decades of product design with the effortlessness that’s become synonymous with the company.

It is a quiet and elegant work, a high-quality piece of book design, typography and production. It is far from a show-off vanity project. Great care, time – and money – has been spent on making it a paean to good, useful design and manufacturing. It is also of course a paean to Steve Jobs. In the five years since his death, Apple has forged on without him. Designed by Apple in California is a tribute both to him, and to the products that have shaped our future.

What follows is an interview with Sir Jony. Well worth the read.

[H/T @achantra]

When Shazam (macOS) is toggled ‘OFF’ it to simply stops processing recorded data…however recording continues.

Shazam considers it a feature.

[Via MacRumors]

Steven Levy, Editor of Backchannel:

Fortunately, I do not have to make guesses at what’s going on in Apple’s mind. Perhaps motivated by the grumbling in rainbow-fruit land, Apple’s SVP of worldwide marketing Phil Schiller came to the phone last week to decode the company’s motivations, and stridently counter the cavils of the doubters.

And, from Phil Schiller:

“If we were to do Multi-Touch on the screen of the notebook, that wouldn’t be enough — then the desktop wouldn’t work that way.” And touch on the desktop, he says, would be a disaster. “Can you imagine a 27-inch iMac where you have to reach over the air to try to touch and do things? That becomes absurd.” He also explains that such a move would mean totally redesigning the menu bar for fingers, in a way that would ruin the experience for those using pointer devices like the touch or mouse. “You can’t optimize for both,” he says. “It’s the lowest common denominator thinking.”

And:

“This notebook design has been with us for 25 years and that fills a need for many people,” he says. “Having an interactive place where your hands are down on the keyboard is celebrating what makes a notebook a great notebook.”

And:

Another key variable is whether web services will be able make use of the bar. Schiller says only, “There is opportunity for that.” As for now, the Touch Bar pushes you to use Apple’s own browser, Safari. Writing this review now on the Medium online platform, I get word suggestions when using Safari, but not on Chrome.

And, to sum up, from Steven:

I am still not totally convinced that this innovation — and yes, I will call it that — is really transformative, and not just a cool way to save a few seconds here and there.

Lots more to this, a great read.

Bloomberg:

Apple Inc. is weighing an expansion into digital glasses, a risky but potentially lucrative area of wearable computing, according to people familiar with the matter.

While still in an exploration phase, the device would connect wirelessly to iPhones, show images and other information in the wearer’s field of vision, and may use augmented reality, the people said. They asked not to be identified speaking about a secret project.

Apple has talked about its glasses project with potential suppliers, according to people familiar with those discussions. The company has ordered small quantities of near-eye displays from one supplier for testing, the people said. Apple hasn’t ordered enough components so far to indicate imminent mass-production, one of the people added.

If true, it’ll be interesting to see what Apple does differently than Google did with Glass. This is an area where subtlety of design will make all the difference.

My favorite part of this article is the set of Touch Bar screen grabs at the very top. Nice job by Jordan Kahn.

From Apple’s news release:

Apple today announced the release of a new hardbound book chronicling 20 years of Apple’s design, expressed through 450 photographs of past and current Apple products. “Designed by Apple in California,” which covers products from 1998’s iMac to 2015’s Apple Pencil, also documents the materials and techniques used by Apple’s design team over two decades of innovation.

The book is dedicated to the memory of Steve Jobs.

And:

“The idea of genuinely trying to make something great for humanity was Steve’s motivation from the beginning, and it remains both our ideal and our goal as Apple looks to the future,” said Jony Ive, Apple’s chief design officer. “This archive is intended to be a gentle gathering of many of the products the team has designed over the years. We hope it brings some understanding to how and why they exist, while serving as a resource for students of all design disciplines.”

The book is available in two sizes:

• Small (10.20” x 12.75”)
 US$199
• Large (13” x 16.25”)
 US$299

Twenty years takes us back to 1996, the year CEO Gil Amelio made one of the most important decisions of his tenure, starting the process of bringing Steve Jobs back to Apple. The NeXT deal was finalized on February 9, 1997.

Apple news release:

Apple Pay is making it easier and more secure to donate to your favorite nonprofit organizations with just a touch. Apple Pay support for charitable donations kicks off today with nonprofits ranging from global organizations such as UNICEF to startups like charity: water, and more nonprofits will offer Apple Pay over the coming months so their supporters can make easy, secure and private payments.

Giving has never been so simple — by eliminating the need to enter billing and contact info, create an account or fill out long forms to check out, Apple Pay gives nonprofit supporters a way to donate instantly.