Melissa Repko, CNBC:

Target wants to give shoppers another reason to skip trips to the mall: It’s adding mini Apple stores to some locations, with more space devoted to iPhones and other popular gadgets.

The retailer said Thursday that the shops will open in 17 Target stores this month, and it plans to expand to more locations in the fall. Target already sells Apple merchandise, but the shops will double the tech company’s footprint inside of each store, include more accessories and have staff with specialized training from Apple.

Interesting experiment, reminiscent of Apple’s BestBuy partnership.

Also, take a look at Apple’s new Target web site presence.

Emily VanDerWerff, Vox:

Ted Lasso is way more than just a (quite good) cult TV show. It’s also a window into a handful of pop culture trends that have swirled together into one unassuming little package. Ted Lasso isn’t just a show about a coach who cares about his players more than wins and losses. It’s also a show about the way we wish the world would be.

And:

I would argue “comfort food TV” goes beyond shows that make you feel warm and fuzzy inside, because it’s relatively easy to pour on the saccharine sweetness and much, much harder to evoke the feeling of safety that comfort food TV inspires.

The phrase “comfort food TV” captures Ted Lasso perfectly. And Ted Lasso succeeds brilliantly in a category that is incredibly difficult to pull off.

But Emily’s article dive’s much deeper than a discussion of comfort food:

Ted Lasso also presents an idealistic view of how the powerful rich white cis straight men who our American system so privileges could and should carry themselves. Ted Lasso overcomes everybody’s resistance through being a genuine and nice man. But that, perversely, speaks to the privilege he has within the system he is part of.

And:

When Parks and Recreation tried the same with Leslie Knope (a powerful and eventually affluent white cis straight woman), it always had to couch her persistence in tones of “Sure, she’s annoying, buuuut …” Ted Lasso takes a few faint stabs at “people roll their eyes at Ted!” but by the middle of its first season, he’s won over even the press that taunted him mercilessly when he took over the team. It’s a bit wild, and again, it’s clearly a fantasy. But it’s a fantasy that speaks to something people long for right now.

If you are a Ted Lasso fan, or a TV nerd (like me), carve out a bit of time to read the whole thing. Does a great job explaining the genius of Ted Lasso.

Jason Snell, Macworld:

Apple ignited the legal music-download revolution with iTunes, led again by dropping copy-protecting DRM from its music downloads, and in 2007 led a major upgrade in digital-music quality with the launch of iTunes Plus.

But more than a decade later, the company finds itself as a music-streaming laggard, to borrow a term that Steve Jobs used to throw around a lot. When it comes to music quality, Apple’s not streets ahead—it’s streets behind.

And:

This week Spotify became the latest music service to jump on the high-quality audio bandwagon, joining Amazon, Tidal, and other services in offering lossless audio to subscribers.

I would definitely pay extra for a lossless Apple Music. The majority of my music listening is done via my AirPods Pro and the inherently bitrate limited Bluetooth AAC codec. So lossless audio would not have real value in that particular listening mode.

BUT:

I also listen to music through my HomePod, through my Apple TV, and through my Mac speakers. Those modes are not inherently limited by codec.

No doubt, Apple knows how many people would pony up for lossless audio (they’ve gone down this road before). Question is, is there enough revenue out there to justify the expense of bringing it to market.

Interesting read from Jason Snell, especially the discussion of “Going beyond lossless”.

Michael Potuck, 9to5Mac:

The tried-and-true copy/paste combo is a staple of productivity but that can grind to a halt when you need to quickly grab text from the real world or existing screenshots and pictures. Read along for how to convert iPhone images to text available right on your clipboard.

This is one of those things that is a wonder once you add an app like this to your stable.

Take a look at the screenshot in Michael’s article to get a sense of how you might use something like this. It really is a nice tool to have.

A nit, but I would change the headline, since this is more of a here’s a great iPhone app, here’s a great Mac app, not so much a rundown of iPhone apps. But that aside, worth a look.

John Gruber:

In my piece yesterday about email tracking images (“spy pixels” or “spy trackers”), I complained about the fact that Apple — a company that rightfully prides itself for its numerous features protecting user privacy — offers no built-in defenses for email tracking.

A slew of readers wrote to argue that Apple Mail does offer such a feature: the option not to load any remote resources at all.

And:

What Hey offers — by default — is the ability to load regular images automatically, so your messages look “right”, but block all known images from tracking sources (which are generally invisible 1×1 px invisible GIFs).

Consider Apple Mail’s nuclear option vs HEY’s nuanced, researched approach.

More from Gruber:

Apple should do something similar: identify and block spy trackers in email by default, and route all other images through an anonymizing proxy service. And, like Hey, they should flag all emails containing known trackers with a shame badge.

Great idea, fascinating read.

It all started with this tweet:

People with an M1 mac, please run `brew install smartmontools && sudo smartctl –all /dev/disk0` and report back (and what kind of usage you make of the machine, especially RAM).

I'm at <600GBW on my MBP, but I don't use it heavily. https://t.co/LbhE9p7FiK

— Hector Martin (@marcan42) February 15, 2021

Took about 10 days to reach critical mass, but then off to the races, with headlines like:

Apple M1 Macs appear to be chewing through their SSDs

And:

Apple M1 Mac users face severe SSD degradation

Back to the SSDs:

In a follow-on tweet in the same thread (also 10 days ago):

Just to be clear: This is definitely a bug. It’s software. It’s macOS behavior. It can be fixed.

Folks have reported encountering the problem on Intel Macs as well. So clearly not an M1-specific issue. To me, feels more like a Big Sur issue. And it might be an issue with the reporting system, not with the SSD. Big grain of salt required.

Worth surfacing, for sure. Hopefully, Apple can address this, offer up an explanation and a patch, if required.

From Fry’s updated home page today:

After nearly 36 years in business as the one-stop-shop and online resource for high-tech professionals across nine states and 31 stores, Fry’s Electronics, Inc. (“Fry’s” or “Company”), has made the difficult decision to shut down its operations and close its business permanently as a result of changes in the retail industry and the challenges posed by the Covid-19 pandemic.

And:

The Company ceased regular operations and began the wind-down process on February 24, 2021.

Folks on the east coast might be wondering what this is all about. Fry’s Electronics was at the heart of Silicon Valley itself, a big box electronics retail wonderland for entrepreneurs that opened its doors in Sunnyvale, California back in 1985.

As to the cause of their door-closing, seems to me COVID-19 was the final nail, that Amazon was the driving force.

Sad to see Fry’s go. End of an era.

Malcolm Owen, AppleInsider:

A HomePod could potentially help save lives without getting into contact with other people, with Apple looking into 360-degree radar systems that can detect vital signs and medical conditions of individuals.

And:

In a patent granted by the US Patent and Trademark Office on Tuesday entitled “Electronic device with circular radar-antenna array,” Apple envisions a system that could potentially provide more accurate positioning data, as well as other information.

This is fascinating. Not clear just how sophisticated a system this patent might yield, but definitely feels like HomePod might evolve into a sensor, providing intel to HomeKit and HealthKit.

BBC News:

Apple has acquired about 100 companies over the last six years, the company’s chief executive Tim Cook has revealed.

That works out at a company every three to four weeks, he told Apple’s annual meeting of shareholders on Tuesday.

And:

Most often, Apple buys smaller technology firms and then incorporates their innovations into its own products.

And:

Measured by value, Apple’s acquisitions are actually far more restrained than those of many of its tech rivals. Microsoft paid $26bn for LinkedIn, Amazon paid $13.7bn for Whole Foods and Facebook paid $19bn for WhatsApp.

Apple’s ten largest purchases put together would still be worth far less than any of those deals.

Not big news, but if you follow the headline link and scroll, you can scan through a list of some of those acquisitions/aquihires.

Mikael Thalen, Daily Dot:

The internet will get a chance to remotely control one of Boston Dynamics’ $75,000 “Spot” robots this week thanks to a mysterious startup company. Not only that, the robot will even come equipped with a paintball gun for added mayhem.

And:

On Wednesday at 1pm ET, MSCHF will unleash Spot inside a small art gallery at its headquarters in Brooklyn. Users who visit the campaign’s website will get a chance to commandeer Spot for two minutes before another user somewhere in the world takes over.

There’s a picture of Spot with paintball gun attached via the headline link. The world wants this. I guess?

This is a nice little resource, built and maintained by Michael Steeber, worth a moment of your time. In a nutshell, it’s a deep dive into all the elements that make up the Apple Store.

For example, follow the headline link, tap on Boardroom, you’ll go to a page that introduces the concept of an Apple Store’s Boardroom (have you ever seen one?), with a few images, and a link to a detailed Boardroom article.

From Musically’s live blog of Spotify’s Stream On event:

Hellman talks about ‘Discovery Mode’ – the feature where artists or labels can pay to have songs surfaced in Spotify’s radio and autoplay features, in exchange for a lower royalty rate. That caused some controversy when announced, so it’s interesting to hear Hellman’s claim today: labels taking part in the tests have “been able to find new listeners and grow audiences for artists on their roster: during pilot testing, on average Discovery Mode has helped these labels grow streams by 30%, resulting in higher royalty payments for artists opted into the test”.

“Hellman” is Charlie Hellman, part of Spotify’s artist tools team.

Discovery Mode sounds like a great deal, on the surface. Take a lower royalty rate, and you’ll get more plays. Even if you get more money in the short term, this seems like a bad thing for artists.

Here’s why: As artists take the lower royalty rate, especially if they get a lot of plays, the overall royalty rate will go down. This hurts artists as a whole. And saves Spotify money. Their total payout pool for artists goes down.

And what if an artist takes the chance, opts in to the lower royalty rate, and they end up not getting more plays. Will Spotify move them back to the higher default royalty rate in that case?

One more concern here is a lack of transparency to the listener. If you are listening to a Spotify stream, will you hear a disclaimer on a playlist for songs that take the lower royalty rate for the promotion of Discovery Mode?

Ben Lovejoy, 9to5Mac:

We today got a more detailed report about what to expect in terms of 2021 MacBook Pro ports, with noted Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo saying we should expect both an HDMI port and an SD card slot. Coupled to his earlier report of a new MagSafe power port, that’s a pretty dramatic change to the current models, which have just USB-C ports and a headphone socket.

If Apple adds any/all of MagSafe, SD Card slot, HDMI to the rumored 2021 MacBook Pros, I can imagine they’ll sell more units (rumor mill says 25%-30% expected sales increase). And I can’t imagine someone turning away from the new MacBook Pros because they have too many ports.

Back to Ben:

But whether that’s an IO dream or nightmare depends on how Apple plans to implement the change.

Where’s the down side?

So one very real possibility, as raised by my colleague Benjamin Mayo earlier, is that the new ports come at the cost of reducing the number of USB-C ones. In which case I and others like me will be unhappy, as we’d be swapping out one or more multifunction ports – whose abilities include power and video connections – for single-function ones.

That’s a fair concern. But I think that ship has already sailed. I’ve been living with a 2020 MacBook Air with only two Thunderbolt / USB 4 ports. While I would like more ports, I’ve gotten used to living with two. I’ve got a hub that adds more ports that I rarely touch (mostly comes up when I want a peek at an SD card or flash drive). When I plug in my external display, I use the display’s built-in ports instead of a hub.

I can live with two USB-C ports. As long as Apple doesn’t go lower than two, but adds in extra ports, I’ve got no complaints. Though that does add more places for spilled coffee to go where it shouldn’t, but that’s on me.

Would I pay more for four USB-C ports, plus the extra ports? Not sure. An embarrassment of riches, that.

Howard Oakley:

One document every serious Mac user should read and refer to repeatedly is the Platform Security Guide, which Apple has just revised to give all the gory details of how M1 Macs start up. In the course of doing that, it reveals that these new models have a boot mode which doesn’t appear to be documented anywhere else, but which could prove a Mac-saver: Fallback Recovery OS.

Here’s a link to Apple’s Platform Security user guide.

More from Howard:

If you need your M1 Mac to enter 1 True Recovery (1TR), Recovery Mode, but that fails, there’s a second copy of the software required for 1TR “for resiliency”. To boot into that, instead of just holding the Power button until 1TR starts loading, you should “double-press and hold the power button”, according to the guide.

In practice, I’ve found this requires you to press the Power button twice in rapid succession, and on the second press, instead of releasing the button, hold it pressed until recovery options are reported as loading. This works reliably on an M1 MacBook Pro, but I’ve so far been unable to get it to work at all on my M1 Mac mini, but maybe I’m just not doing it right.

If you are responsible for the maintenance of an M1 Mac, this is worth a read and a bookmark.

Google blog:

Starting today, the Apple TV app, including Apple TV+, is now globally available on the new Chromecast with Google TV, with more Google TV devices to come.

And:

With Google TV in the U.S., you can browse Apple Originals in your personalized recommendations and search results. And with Google Assistant, you can also use your voice to ask Google to open the Apple TV app or play an Apple Original title. If you aren’t ready to watch right away, you can add Apple Originals to your Watchlist for later. These features will roll out globally in the coming months.

This does raise the question: Is there still a reason to buy an Apple TV?

One clear reason, for me, is trust. Do you care what Google does with your tv viewing habits? Do you trust them with your access credentials? If trust is not an issue for you, take a read of this Twitter thread from Steven Aquino, one of the first takes I’ve seen on the move from tvOS to Apple TV on ChromeCast.

I’m definitely going to give this a try.

Chance Miller, 9to5Mac:

The new Thunderbolt 4 and USB-C cable from OWC connects with USB-C on both ends and is certified for Thunderbolt 4, Thunderbolt 3, USB 4, USB 3.2, USB 3.1, USB Power, and more. The company also says that you get 100% of both the maximum power allowed and the full data capability supported from/between any USB-C port-equipped device and host.

This is one of the things I dislike about USB-C and HDMI. Two identical looking cables can have wildly different innards, vary widely in the functionality they support, data they transport.

I wish the connectors supported some form of color coding (think RGBIV resistor color bands) that tell you at a glance what functionality the cable will support.

This is just super fun. Follow the headline link, scroll through the list of cities, pick one, and you’re instantly driving around the city.

If sound is on, turn on street noise and click through the local radio stations. So great!

Jason Snell:

One of its most colossal flops, the Power Mac G4 Cube, was famously put “on ice” rather than retired, in a press release that fantasized that it might eventually return.

And:

Considering that pride, what happens when the company decides that many of the decisions it made a few years earlier were mistakes, actually? What does it look like when Apple makes a strategic retreat?

It feels like we’re about to find out.

And:

So here we are in early 2021, with a strong possibility that Apple is about to undo most of the big changes it made to the MacBook. The Touch Bar is rumored to be a goner, MagSafe is reportedly returning, and Apple may be adding other I/O—HDMI? an SD card slot?—to the MacBook Pro as well.

A very interesting look at Apple’s history of handling product retreats. Will we see the return of MagSafe for Mac? Will non-USB-C ports return to the high-end MacBook line? Will a new generation of M1 make its debut at this year’s WWDC? Good times for the Mac.

Gambling Industry News:

Apple faces a new $5m class action lawsuit filed by a group of over 100 social casino game players, many whom are fans of Canada sports betting apps. This is the second lawsuit of its kind filed against Apple so far this year, however, this particular lawsuit is focused on Zynga’s poker and casino apps.

The lawsuit was filed in US District Court for the Northern District of Columbia and alleges that Apple is making a profit from illicit gambling apps that have in-game purchases.

Lots of lawsuits filed against Apple. This one struck me as particularly interesting in that it attempts to pierce Apple’s App Store protections, protections that shield Apple as a vendor of goods, not a creator of those goods.

If they lose this lawsuit, will that open a liability crack for those scam subscription apps that make their way into the App Store?

YouTube blog:

Every year, increasing numbers of people come to YouTube to launch their own channel. But we know there’s still a huge amount of people who find the bar for creation too high. That’s why we’re working on Shorts, our new short-form video tool that lets creators and artists shoot snappy videos with nothing but their mobile phones.

Here’s a link to the Shorts blog announcement from last September.

Back to the YouTube blog:

Currently, Shorts is available in beta in India. Since the beginning of December, the number of Indian channels using Shorts creation tools has more than tripled, and the YouTube Shorts player is now receiving more than 3.5 billion daily views globally. In the coming weeks, we’ll begin expanding the beta to the US, unlocking our tools to even more creators so they can get started with Shorts.

3.5 billion daily views. That’s no small competitor for TikTok. Especially considering Shorts is an India-only beta.

Follow the headline link for the full list, or this link to get right to the decade old Apple front page.

Just me, or did Apple use to have much more focus on beautifully manicured hands?

This is fun. In the latest iOS beta, fire up Music and bring up a song’s lyrics. You can tap to select multiple chunks (here’s a tweet with a couple of screen grabs from my explorations), then use the share interface to send the lyrics on your favorite social media.

Even better, check this out:

You can also select multiple lines of text from the special share lyrics screen and create longer cards for Instagram/iMessage. (Up to 5 lines.) This is really well done. pic.twitter.com/Z8VFOpe6iZ

— Federico Viticci (@viticci) February 17, 2021

If you share on Messages/Insta, a playable version of the song centered on those lyrics will appear on the receiving end, assuming the recipient has the latest beta.

Love this.

Gruber:

I’d like to think that no one has made more hay over Ed Colligan’s infamous “PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in” quote — just a few weeks before the unveiling of the iPhone — than yours truly.

Absolutely fair.

So I feel like I’m in a position to declare that these remarks by Herbert Diess are not an Ed Colligan moment. Ed Colligan, as the CEO of Palm, should have known that in 2006, the future of phones was gadget-like computers, not the computer-like gadgets the industry (including Palm) had been making until then.

And:

Apple hasn’t shown anything that suggests they’ll be good at designing and producing cars. The dashboard interface? Sure. But the car part of the car? Nothing Apple has ever done is like that. I’m not betting against them, but I don’t think Diess’s remarks are the least bit clueless.

Also fair. To me, complex as the car market is, if Apple does dive in, I’d suggest that all these years of rumored behind the scenes learning will emerge as a brand new take, unlike anything that already exists.

If you are interested in a potential Apple car, take a few minutes to read Gruber’s post. My favorite bit is his quote of this Robert Cassidy tweet:

Apple doesn’t do overnight. They walk into your market, and a few years in you realize they’ve quietly redefined your market and now you’re years behind.

That’s the part that VW should be afraid of.

Take a look at the new emoji coming with iOS 14.5.

Two notable highlights:

• The blood is removed from the syringe emoji, making it more representative of vaccines
• The headphone emoji moves from a more generic headphone to a very specific AirPods Max

One thing I find interesting about moments of emoji change is that if I text, say, a headphone emoji from the new beta and you receive it on the latest public iOS release, you’ll see the old headphones even though I sent the AirPods Max.

If you are interested in the history of Apple emoji, you might enjoy Emojipedia’s Who Created The Original Apple Emoji Set?