After four years of driving in parts of fifteen countries, Apple announced in June 2019 that its imagery collection vehicles had driven “over four million miles”.
And:
What makes this number interesting is that Google has made similar statements about its Street View vehicles over the years. Google first started collecting imagery in 2006 and by mid 2012, its Street View vehicles had driven more than five million miles.
And:
Five million miles over six years (Google) is slower than four million over four (Apple)—and it suggests that Apple has been driving the world faster than Google originally did.
But when it comes to releasing this imagery, Apple has been releasing it much slower.
What follows is an interesting, and quite detailed look at Apple’s imagery rollout in southern Canada and the US. If nothing else, check out the map showing the sparsity of US Look Around coverage (about halfway down the page) vs the map showing US places visited by Apple Maps vehicles vs the map of robust Look Around coverage in southern Canada.
If you swipe up on the Apple Maps interface where maps details are available, you can tap on a “Report” button that lets you flag an accident, a hazard, or a speed check, similar to other mapping apps like Waze.
Interestingly:
Tapping automatically flags your location with no confirmation window, so it shouldn’t be used except in a valid situation.
That does open the door to accidental flagging, but this is crowdsourcing, so it’s not likely a single report will trigger the flag.
You can also say “Hey Siri, there’s an accident” and Siri will send in a report to Apple Maps, and presumably, if enough people file reports, an accident site will show up in the maps app through the crowdsourcing.
The third-generation Apple TV, last made available in 2013, is slowly losing support from third-party app developers. YouTube recently announced that the YouTube channel will disappear in March, and now the CBS All Access channel is also being removed.
And:
The timing coincides with an upcoming shift that will see CBS All Access rebranding as Paramount+. ViacomCBS CEO Bob Bakish said in September that CBS All Access was being rebranded because the Paramount brand is more recognizable. The rebrand will be accompanied by original content designed to lure new subscribers.
And:
Though there will be no app on the third-generation Apple TV, Paramount+ content will be able to be streamed from an iOS device to a third-generation Apple TV.
CBS All Access and Showtime have a bundle deal. Will that deal continue under Paramount+?
On a related note, will we see a new Apple TV this year?
There’s been a steady drumbeat on Twitter recently, a river of tweets about fake/scammy apps on the App Store.
From the headline linked post:
I have spent the last four years of my life working on my very successful app only to have it ruined by scam apps with very obvious fake reviews as well as false advertising claims that Apple does not take action against. I can literally prove they are fake but Apple refuses to take action for undisclosed reasons, allowing thousands of more people getting scammed by these apps day by day.
Follow the link, read the post. This is a detailed breakdown of one developer’s experience, a very specific example that is one of many.
When you’ve read that post, hop over to this Michael Tsai rollup page with comments on another, perhaps more well circulated example.
App Store folks, spend some time reading through the linked comments on Michael Tsai’s page. There are links to examples, stories, and specific thoughts on small ways to address the problem. As is, one might think Apple is looking away. This has got to stop.
Shine on you Crazy Diamond is a seminal Pink Floyd song. There are many, many videos out there showcasing performances by Gilmour, by Floyd, and by other guitarists/performers.
For me, this one is the cream that rises to the top. Gilmour’s guitar sound is clean and pure, the audio capture and mix is excellent, and those background vocals by Crosby and Nash an understated rarity.
Joe Biden had a question for Tim Cook: Why, the then-vice president wanted to know, couldn’t Apple make the iPhone in the U.S.? It was January 2012, during President Barack Obama’s reelection campaign and three months after the death of Cook’s predecessor, Steve Jobs.
And:
As everyone at the dinner well knew, the idea of mass-producing an iPhone, or any advanced consumer electronics, in a domestic factory was an exceptionally tall order. The big Asian contract manufacturers, especially Apple Inc.’s main partner, Foxconn, had built city-size factories in China with armies of hundreds of thousands of skilled laborers. None of that scale existed in the U.S. Chinese factory employees generally worked much longer hours, for a fraction of what even the lowest-paid American workers make.
And:
Biden’s question put Cook, who’d become Apple’s CEO the previous August, in an awkward position. He was the architect of the strategy to outsource Apple’s production to China, a trend of increasing concern for the Obama administration. But Cook was also, as it turned out, extremely effective at deflecting political pressure.
This is just a tiny taste of a fantastic, detail-filled profile of Tim Cook’s Apple stewardship. Great read, worth every minute. Riveting.
Andy Hertzfeld is at the root of the Macintosh tree, part of the small team that brought that original Mac to life. He was also a friend of Steve Jobs and his site Folklore.org is a keeper of the old stories and a rabbit hole that is well worth your time.
Andy recently did an episode of the DNext podcast. It’s not a look back, so much as a sharing of thoughts. I enjoyed every minute of it, thought you might too. You can find DNext in your favorite podcast app as well as by following the headline link.
I’ve been trying to get a handle on this issue for over a month now. The first signs that this is becoming a larger issue came after the macOS Big Sur 11.2 update was made available. People would say that their Big Sur Upgrade failed and found no way to recover.
And:
If you installed the macOS Big Sur Upgrade and you are now stuck in boot loop ending with the error – An error occurred preparing the software update – you are affected by this issue.
Bottom line, make sure you have a good amount of free space on your Mac before you start the install. Personally, I’d make sure I had at least 50GB free. But follow the headline link and scroll to the section titled, How can I prevent this from happening to me?
Struggling to stay on top of client follow-ups and projects by relying on Apple Contacts, Calendar, spreadsheets, Siri reminders and your memory? Daylite to the rescue for all Apple lovers!
Daylite is a native Mac CRM and project management app for teams. Keep track of communication with clients and the status of projects and deals all in one place, even when you are working offline. Sync with your iPhone and iPad when you’re on the go (or on the couch). Compatible with Big Sur and M1-powered Macs, plus enjoy the new sleek look of Daylite in dark mode.
Daylite is designed to work seamlessly with all the Apple features you love:
Integrate with Apple Mail on Mac
Share your Apple Contacts and iCal
Leverage features like Siri & Caller ID on your iPhone
FaceID and TouchID support
Unlike other Web based CRMs that just focus on customer relationships and sales, Daylite takes you through the full customer lifecycle. From meeting prospects & winning business, to managing the moving pieces on projects, all the way through following up for referrals and repeat business, it’s all done in Daylite.
Wayne Goodrich was the producer for every keynote Steve gave after his return to Apple. Before that, Wayne helped him create presentations at NeXT and Pixar. He is writing a book about what it was like on the inside.
A fascinating Q&A with pics and “working with Steve” anecdotes. Great read.
For those unfamiliar, Dolly Parton created a new version of her hit song 9 To 5, cleverly named 5 To 9, as part of a Super Bowl commercial for Squarespace. The country music artist tweeted this evening that if you use Shazam to identify 5 To 9 during the Super Bowl tonight, you’ll unlock a “special surprise” as well as up to 5 free months of Apple Music.
Not sure what the “special surprise” was, but here’s a link to that free 5 months of Apple Music promo. New subscribers only, and it’ll be less than five months if you already have tried a free trial of Apple Music.
I can verify that the five month free trial worked as of this post. If you are interested, best get to it, thinking it will expire at some point.
After being unable to locate one of his AirPods, a Massachusetts man’s trip to the emergency turned it up in an unlikely place.
And:
I went back out in the morning and shoveled [snow] for an hour,” he told WWLP News 22. “When I came in, I tried to drink a glass of water again and couldn’t,” said Gauthier.
Gauthier’s family joked that maybe he’d swallowed it, but the idea felt “too coincidental.” A trip to the emergency room lead to an x-ray, which lead his doctor to discover the AirPod lodged in his esophagus.
I can’t imagine doing this. But there it is, on the X-Ray. Crazy. I wonder if this will impact his warranty.
In the middle of all this misery, you have a group of the most cancerous rent-seekers on earth, aligning to destroy this company GameStop, because they decided it shouldn’t exist anymore.
And it was GameStop! It’s such a visceral symbol for people in my generation. Even for me, in all those bad times growing up, it was always a nice memory just to go to a strip mall, go in the store, check out a game or two. I like GameStop. Everyone remembers going to GameStop. It’s part of what made it such an obvious rallying cry.
That was it for me. I found myself thinking, I didn’t care if I lost every last dollar doing it, I was going to put it on GameStop, just to see them panic for once. Even if for just one moment they have to think about how they’re going to make their payments for their Manhattan apartments, that’s worth it. They’re playing these games while there are people out there who can’t afford Christmas presents for their kids, can’t afford food. What are these families supposed to do?
Follow the headline link, it’s a bit of a long read, but there’s a lot of insight there into how this all unfolded and its seeds in the fund collapses and bailouts back in 2008.
“Hyundai Motor is getting requests from multiple companies for cooperation in joint development of autonomous, electric vehicles but nothing has been decided since it’s in early stage,” the company said, according to a CNBC translation of a regulatory filing.
More specifically:
“Hyundai Motor is not in talks with Apple on autonomous vehicle development,” it added.
And:
Kia Motors also said it was not in talks with Apple.
I’m fascinated by the secrecy of Apple’s auto efforts. Part of this is how long this has been going on, how many people have come and gone on this project, how much attention it has received from the media and, after all this time, how little is known.
I would love to see Apple’s detail-focused design skills applied to a car. But between internal combustion engines vs EV, driven vs driverless, and the move away from car ownership, the evolution/disruption of this space seems to still be a future event. And this is an expensive space to set up in, especially if you buy in and the space changes underneath you.
If you use Apple products, privacy is probably a big issue for you. Apple does everything it can to protect us from companies like Facebook. While Facebook is fighting back the Harvard Business Review looked at how they aren’t being completely honest. Dave and I also talked about Apple and the Golden Globes, and Jeff Bezos decision to step down from Amazon.
On iOS, if you turn on “Limit Adult Website” under Screen Time->Content Restrictions, Safari blocks any website URL containing the word “asian”. Seriously, go try it, it’s unbelievable.
This can’t be true, can it? Give it a try yourself:
Go to Settings > Screen Time
Tap Content & Privacy Restrictions
Enable Content & Privacy Restrictions switch
Tap Content Restrictions
Scroll down, tap Web Content
Tap Limit Adult Websites
Now fire up Safari and search for, say, Asian Food. Here’s the screen shot I got. In a nutshell, it says, “You cannot browse this page because it is restricted.”
Apple needs to fix this and figure out how this happened so it doesn’t happen again.
When Apple announced the transition from Intel processors to Apple Silicon chips, the company offered a custom Mac mini with the A12Z Bionic chip so that developers could update their macOS apps to support the new ARM platform. The company is now asking developers to return these DTK Mac minis as the M1 Macs were introduced in November last year.
And:
As developers had to pay $500 to get the custom Mac mini with A12Z Bionic chip, Apple will offer a $200 credit for each DTK returned. This credit can be used as a discount to buy a new M1 MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, or Mac mini.
Apple made the Developer Transition Kit available so folks could test and update their Mac apps and be ready when the M1 Macs started shipping. Developers paid $500 for the kit and knew when they signed up that they’d have to return them at some point (returning the DTK was specified in the agreement, no surprise there).
Apple is easing the sting of having to return the “rented” DTK with a $200 “one-time use code” credit towards the purchase of an M1 Mac.
One wrinkle: The $200 expires at the end of May. Presumably, WWDC will be virtual again and will occur in June. And if new Macs are announced at WWDC, this means the $200 will not be usable for those Macs. Some developers are notably unhappy.
All in all, I think Apple could have avoided this PR bruise if they would have clearly laid out the specifics when they released the DTK in the first place. You pay us $500, we’ll give you a $200 credit that expires at the end of May when you return the box. As is, I got the sense that people were expecting Apple to send everyone an M1 Mac. An unfair expectation, true, but Apple could have controlled this from the beginning.
The walls of his highly compartmentalized empire have been crumbling for some time. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to be Jeff Bezos (at least by Bezos’s standards). He presides over a collection of properties that spans not only Amazon but The Washington Post, several philanthropies and a space company, Blue Origin LLC, that lags far behind its chief rival, Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corp.
This is a great take on Bezos stepping down and the freedom that offers Amazon without the political weight of The Washington Post and the fractured attention pull of Blue Origin.
“Without personalized ads,” [Facebook] says in its ads and on its website, “Facebook data shows that the average small business advertiser stands to see a cut of over 60% in their sales for every dollar they spend.”
Hmm. Really?
It’s an eye-popping figure, and one that suggests that Apple’s pro-privacy policy is poised to deal a devastating blow to small businesses. But where does the data for this apocalyptic claim come from? And does it hold up under scrutiny?
And:
To properly evaluate this claim, you first need to understand the popular metric that Facebook used here to quantify advertising success: return on ad spend, or ROAS. The metric indicates the amount of revenues associated with advertising — but it does not indicate the amount of revenues caused by advertising.
And:
In its campaign against Apple’s new policy, Facebook is claiming that when it compared the ROAS for campaigns that leveraged personalized information with campaigns that didn’t, it found that small businesses would suffer a 60% cut in revenues if they were deprived of personalized advertising.
That scary-sounding number, however, is almost certainly too high. Randomized controlled trials that compare personalized advertising with no advertising tend to reveal much smaller differences.
Follow the headline link for more of this takedown. I’d be quite happy with a much smaller version of Facebook that allowed me to keep in touch with friends and family without all the privacy busting. I’d even pay for the privilege so I stopped being the product.
Apple was honored with four Golden Globe nominations today for Apple Original films “On The Rocks” and “Wolfwalkers,” and Apple Original series “Ted Lasso,” making history as the first streaming service to receive a nomination in the Best Motion Picture, Animated category in less than a year and a half since its launch. The news was revealed today by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association at the 78th Annual Golden Globes live nominations.
Apple Original Films received its first-ever Golden Globe nominations for a motion picture, including Best Motion Picture, Animated for “Wolfwalkers” and Bill Murray for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in any Motion Picture for Sofia Coppola’s “On The Rocks,” marking his seventh Golden Globe nomination.
Of all of these, I think Apple’s best hopes are for:
Wolfwalkers as “Best Picture – Animated”, though it’s up against Pixar’s Soul
Ted Lasso as “Best Musical/Comedy Series”
Jason Sudeikis as “Best Television Actor – Musical/Comedy Series”
OK, so that headline promises a lot. I was definitely skeptical when I fired up the DailyTekk video (I believe this is the first one of these I’ve shared – won’t be the last).
Between the video’s great vibe/production values and the nature of the tips themselves, this is definitely worth your time. Check it out.
As you likely already know, Jeff Bezos has stepped down as Amazon CEO, moving to Executive Chair of the Amazon Board and replaced as CEO by former Amazon AWS CEO, Andy Jassy.
And here’s a link to Kara Swisher’s tweet sharing Andy Jassy’s email to his AWS team. My favorite bit from that email:
We have unusual leadership depth in AWS that, along with all of you, are the heart of the business — and that doesn’t change. In the meantime, stay giddied up.
Finally, here’s a great video from back in 1997, when Bezos and Amazon were still young, Jeff talking about his vision for his new company. Even back then, feels like he knew what was coming.
The video embedded below is Tim Cook, laying out the case for and Apple’s commitment to privacy at the Computers, Privacy & Data Protection Conference.
macOS Big Sur added many enhancements, and the release of the latest developer beta adds more features to Safari, Apple Music, and other apps.
Included in macOS Big Sur 11.3 developer beta is users’ ability to rearrange the sections on the start page using the customization controls. Developers can also create extensions to deliver experiences on the new tab window.
If you run iPadOS apps on your Mac, Apple now opens those apps on your Mac in a larger and a new preference pane for iOS apps that gives users more control of keyboard commands for touch alternatives.
Reminders can now be sorted by title, priority, due date, or creation date, and they can be manually moved up and down the list or smart list. You can also print your to-do list and mark items off on paper if you wish.
Apple Music features a new Made For You shortcut that shows your personal mixes and Replay Playlists, and Listen Now will show upcoming and live special events based on your musical tastes.
Apple has also added support for the Xbox Series X Wireless Controller or Sony DualSense wireless controller for the gamers out there.
The video embedded below does a nice job showing off the use of an Apple Watch to unlock an iPhone when Face ID is hampered by a mask.
Note that you’ll need both the iOS 14.5 beta as well as the watchOS 7.4 beta for this to work. You’ll also need WiFi enabled on your iPhone (no need to be connected to a network).
Apple today seeded the first betas of upcoming iOS 14.5 and iPadOS 14.5 updates, and while the new software serves as a deadline for when app developers must comply with App Tracking Transparency rules, there are also a handful of other changes worth noting.
Follow the headline link for a detailed list of new features.
The most significant of these new features, to me, was the ability to use your Apple Watch to unlock your iPhone when Face ID is stymied by your mask.
I generally don’t install a first beta on my daily carry iPhone, but this feature pushed me to make an exception. I did the install and I have to say, this beta (at least so far) is rock solid.
If you do install the beta and want to enable Apple Watch unlock:
first you’ll need to install the watchOS 7.4 beta on your Apple Watch (also rock solid for me)
go to Settings > Face ID & Passcode
Scroll down to the new UNLOCK WITH APPLE WATCH section
Tap the Apple Watch switch
Make sure WiFi is enabled on your iPhone (no need to be connected to a network)
I threw on a mask and put this through it’s paces. It works really well. Kudos to the engineering team. Well done.
One reason I am running a bit behind this morning is that I wanted to install macOS Big Sur 11.2, test the issues that have plagued my Mac since I first installed Big Sur. And…
…Huzzah!
All the iCloud/Handoff/Bluetooth/Pasteboard issues have been solved. Everything works again.
Facebook on Monday will begin urging some iPhone and iPad users to let the company track their activity so the social media giant can show them more personalized ads.
The move comes alongside Apple’s planned privacy update to iOS 14, which will inform users about this kind of tracking and ask them if they want to allow it.
I actually have no problem with Facebook’s approach here. I don’t see this as striking back, but more as playing by the rules.
Follow the headline link and check out that pair of iPhone screen shots, about halfway down the page. Facebook is making their case to the user, then asking for permission to do their tracking thing. Key for me is that Facebook’s “learn more” link goes to a page that is honest about what happens to the user’s data.
