Parker Ortolani, 9to5Mac:

To celebrate the Chinese New Year, Apple has introduced a limited-edition pair of AirPods Pro available in multiple Asian countries, including mainland China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, and Malaysia. This coming new year is the Year of the Ox, and Apple has created an adorable new emoji character to celebrate. On these countries’ home pages, Apple has also added a new custom logo to commemorate the occasion.

Here’s a link to the product page, if you want to check it out for yourself.

And follow the headline link, check out the image with the box and AirPods Pro, check out the box design and “Year of the Ox” icon.

I’m a fan of custom Apple gear, like a rare, event-specific Apple Watch band, or a custom color iPhone.

Reddit:

I ordered an Apple product off of Best Buy and was shipping overnight through FedEx. After a week and a half of checking the tracking number and seeing no update on the FedEx site, I contacted Best Buy and they determined it was lost in the mail and I received a full refund. I used the refund to buy another Apple product from Best Buy at a better deal (opted for pick up this time). A little over a month later the original package arrived at my door.

Is it wrong to right it off as Best Buy/FedEx’s problem and keep the original item?

Read the comments, points made to keep the item. First, that the effort to return it to Best Buy will be a huge hassle, especially mid-COVID. I’ve not got experience with this, hard to say, but I do know that both Apple and Amazon make it very easy to return purchases.

There are arguments that Best Buy is a huge corporation, don’t care about you. They can afford the loss, means nothing to them. And they have insurance.

Can’t get past this. At the very least, I’d notify them, let them decide if it’s worth the hassle to process the return. Depending on the item value, I’ve often been told to keep the mistake, more than it’s worth to return it. Am I naive here?

Just a bit of food for thought.

Stephen Warwick, iMore:

Facebook has continued to warn its business users of upcoming privacy changes to iOS 14 that will ask users to opt-in to tracking through the use of a device identifier for advertising for IDFA.

In an email sent to businesses seen by iMore, Facebook has again reiterated that it disagrees with planned upcoming privacy changes to advertising and tracking in iOS 14. Apple isn’t actually changing tracking, instead, users will have to opt-in to tracking.

And the email itself:

Apple’s requirement that all apps in the App Store show a prompt to iOS 14 users in accordance with their AppTrackingTransparency framework will have hard-hitting implications across targeting, optimization, and measuring campaign effectiveness for businesses that advertise on mobile devices and across the web. Apple’s changes will benefit them, while hurting the industry and the ability for businesses of all sizes to market themselves efficiently and grow through personalized advertising. We believe that personalized ads and user privacy can coexist.

Take it one sentence at a time. That first one is definitely on the money. Not sure how you could argue that it is anything but good for users.

The second sentence starts with “Apple’s changes will benefit them”. Feels a bit disingenuous. This benefits users. If it benefits Apple, it’s only that it makes their gear more attractive for folks who value privacy.

And the last sentence, about coexisting, sure, I’ll buy that. After all, didn’t advertising and computing coexist before all the invisible tracking come into being?

Follow the headline link and scroll through the images. The first one shows an open MacBook, with an iPhone and Apple Watch laid on either side of the trackpad. Both devices were wirelessly charging.

True, the devices would get in the way if you were trying to actually type on your Mac, but if you were doing something else and wanted a quick charge, your open MacBook would make a convenient Qi charger. And would mean one less thing to pack for a road trip (when road trips become a thing again).

The second image is even better. It shows a bunch of Apple devices stacked on top of a closed MacBook. Presumably all of them were charging, though I’d assume multiplestacked devices would slow down the charge time proportionately. But it looks like there are multiple coils, so maybe not?

It’s a patent, not necessarily something in the works, but I do think it’s an interesting idea.

On the off chance you didn’t know this, you can delete an app from inside the App Store update page.

In a nutshell:

• Launch the App Store
• Tap your profile pic (upper right corner) to get to the update page
• Scroll down to the UPDATED RECENTLY section
• Swipe left on an app to reveal the Delete button

Not a big deal, but I do find this useful, an easy way to scroll through apps and delete the ones I no longer use. An alternative to hunt-and-peck in jiggle mode.

Apple:

For products purchased online, including online purchases that were picked up at a store, curbside or express location, you can start a no-contact return at apple.com/orderstatus. For purchases made at an Apple Store, you can return your product within 14 days after the store reopens. Stores that are open for curbside pickup only are unable to complete returns at this time. If your local store has only curbside pickup available, you can return your product within 14 days of the store fully reopening.

If you bought something at your local Apple Store and the store closed or was reduced to curbside pickup only, your return window just got extended.

Go to apple.com/retail to check your local Apple Store’s status.

Apple:

As the world navigated an ever-changing new normal of virtual learning, grocery deliveries, and drive-by birthday celebrations, customers relied on Apple services in new ways, turning to expertly curated apps, news, music, podcasts, TV shows, movies, and more to stay entertained, informed, connected, and fit.

Follow the headline link and just scan through the long scroll. An interesting look at some of the major wins for Apple services, starting with the App Store:

As a result of their efforts, developers selling digital goods and services — which is only a small fraction of the overall commerce the App Store facilitates — have now earned more than $200 billion since the App Store launched in 2008.

That “small fraction of the overall commerce” is just a gigantic number. And (assuming 30% take, not quite exact, but close) if my math is correct, if devs took home $200 billion, Apple’s take was about $86 billion. No small thing. Again, this is all time, since 2008.

The post also digs into Apple Music, Apple TV (huge year for Apple TV+), Apple News, Fitness+, Apple Pay, Apple Books, and Apple Podcasts, with a brief mention of iCloud right at the end.

Interesting read.

These are pins, representing all the various Activity Awards you can earn. As far as I can tell, you can buy any of the awards, so there’s a level of honesty required here.

I found this fascinating, like a museum tour of Apple’s Activity artwork. Not seeing any affiliation with Apple, wondering about that.

Use the Photos iOS 14 widget on your iPhone? If so, you want to read the linked post.

Michael Potuck, 9to5Mac, walks through the process of telling the widget not to display a specific photo, and clarifies where the widget sources those photos from. Good stuff.

Kirk McElhearn, digging into ProRAW:

One of the key elements of raw files is that they are not demosaiced.

Demosaiced? That’s a new term for me.

From the Demosaicing Wikipedia page:

A digital image process used to reconstruct a full color image from the incomplete color samples output from an image sensor overlaid with a color filter array (CFA). It is also known as CFA interpolation or color reconstruction.

Most modern digital cameras acquire images using a single image sensor overlaid with a CFA, so demosaicing is part of the processing pipeline required to render these images into a viewable format.

Many modern digital cameras can save images in a raw format allowing the user to demosaic them using software, rather than using the camera’s built-in firmware.

OK, got it, back to Kirk:

When you open a raw file in an editing, your software processes the file, performing the demosaicing, along with some other processing, and then allows you to then proceed with other edits. Because of this, there are a number of photo editing apps that perform this demosaicing in slightly different ways; photographers choose the app they prefer according to the results (and for other editing capabilities as well).

But Apple’s ProRAW has already done this demosaicing, which means that, well, it’s not a raw file.

This is just the beginning of a long, interesting take on ProRAW. If you are into the camera side of your iPhone, this is definitely worth a read.

Apple:

Apple today announced that Monica Lozano, president and CEO of College Futures Foundation, has been elected to Apple’s board of directors.

And:

Prior to joining College Futures Foundation, Lozano spent 30 years in media as editor and publisher of La Opinión, the largest Spanish-language newspaper in the US, helping shine a light on issues from infant mortality to the AIDS epidemic. She went on to become chairman and CEO of La Opinión’s parent company, ImpreMedia. Lozano continues to serve on the boards of Target Corporation and Bank of America Corporation.

And, way at the bottom of the release:

Lozano is also a former board member of The Walt Disney Company.

Start with this post from Joe Rossignol, MacRumors, titled HomePod Mini Now Works With Select 18W Chargers Following 14.3 Software Update.

Apple includes a 20W power adapter with the HomePod mini, but many customers may have an 18W power adapter from an iPhone 11 Pro or other device.

Point being, if you have an 18W charger and buy a HomePod mini, use the 18W for your HomePod, now you have a 20W for general use.

Moving on to the headline linked post from John Gruber:

The only way to tell Apple’s new 20W charger apart from their old 18W charger is to look at the hard-to-read small print (light gray text on a white background, a veritable crime against accessibility). And even when you read the small print, you have to know that Apple’s 20W chargers say “20W” on them and their 18W chargers aren’t labeled with a wattage. Seriously, Apple’s 18W charger doesn’t say “18W” — the only way to know it’s an 18W charger is to examine the even-harder-to-read smallest-of-small print and know that it’s stated maximum output of “9V × 2A” is 18W. (Their 20W charger is 9V × 2.2A, so it’s really a 19.8W charger.)

First, check that math at the end. Good to know the W=V*A equation.

That aside, amazing that it is so hard to tell the difference between a 20W and 18W charger. Read this, then go look at your chargers, maybe make some labels so you can easily tell which is which.

Moving on:

So on the one hand, because the HomePod Mini includes the 20W charger, it was fine that it didn’t work with the old 18W charger. But on the other hand, if you ever toss the 20W charger into a bag or drawer along with an Apple 18W charger, you needed an extraordinary amount of knowledge to be able to know which charger the HomePod Mini required. Not sure how much work Apple had to put into the 14.3 software update to make the HomePod Mini work with the 18W charger too, but I’m glad they did. It’s too confusing otherwise.

Lots of details here, but update to the latest HomePod OS and you’ll have the ability to swap out the 18W and 20W chargers.

Gruber’s post is worth reading, especially with details on what he discovered about his Magic Keyboard and Apple’s slightly older 29W USB-C power adapter, which looks exactly like Apple’s more recent 30W USB-C power adapter.

Michael Potuck, 9to5Mac:

Along with the shift to Apple Silicon, performing things like a restore is different with M1 Macs compared to their Intel predecessors. Follow along for a look at how to revive and restore M1 Macs, what the difference is, when to use them, and what to try before taking those steps.

Do you know the difference between a revive and restore? If not, give this a quick read, get the basic model in your head so you don’t have to start from scratch when a Mac emergency hits. This is the new way.

Zoe Schiffer, The Verge:

A group of Google workers have announced plans to unionize with the Communications Workers of America (CWA). The Alphabet Workers Union will be open to all employees and contractors at Google’s parent company. Its goal will be to tackle ongoing issues like pay disparity, retaliation, and controversial government contracts.

And:

Arranged as a members-only union, the new organization won’t seek collective bargaining rights to negotiate a new contract with the company. Instead, the Alphabet Workers Union will only represent employees who voluntarily join. That structure will also allow it to represent all employees who seek to participate — including temps, vendors, and contractors (known internally as TVCs) who would be excluded by labor law from conventional collective bargaining.

This seems a pretty big deal. Google’s response:

“We’ve always worked hard to create a supportive and rewarding workplace for our workforce. Of course our employees have protected labor rights that we support. But as we’ve always done, we’ll continue engaging directly with all our employees.”

Which contrasts with this:

The news comes one month after the National Labor Relations Board filed a complaint alleging Google illegally fired two workers who were organizing employee protests. The employees, Laurence Berland and Kathryn Spiers, were organizing against the company’s decision to work with IRI Consultants, a firm famous for its anti-union efforts.

It also follows the firing of prominent AI ethicist Timnit Gebru in December. In a press release announcing the union, the Alphabet Workers Union wrote: “The firing has caused outrage from thousands of us, including Black and Brown workers who are heartbroken by the company’s actions and unsure of their future at Google.”

Here’s the Alphabet Workers Union announcement.

The Mayron Cole piano method is pretty comprehensive. And now it’s free.

If you ever wanted to learn to play piano, these guides and some sort of keyboard are all you need. The guides are available as PDFs, perfect for displaying on an iPad.

If you are stuck at home for some reason, consider learning to play the piano. Definitely satisfying to master a new skill.

Big Sur brings a frustrating interface change to notifications. This post documents the change in great detail. It’s all about the process of dismissing a notification, which is much harder than it used to be, both in terms of fine motor control requirements and low discoverability.

Read the post, see if you agree.

Glen Weldon, NPR:

Wolfwalkers, from Cartoon Saloon, the production company behind 2009’s The Secret of Kells and 2014’s Song of the Sea, isn’t made for kids. Or at least, not just for kids.

Because there are a lot of other thematic elements jostling for elbow room in this tale of young English girl Robyn (voiced by Honor Kneafsey) and her father (voiced by Sean Bean) trying to make a go of it in the pre-colonial Irish town of Kilkenny.

And:

Layered over the anti-authoritarian theme is an ecological one: The town is growing, and Robyn’s father has been hired by the Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell (voiced by Simon McBurney) to clear the wolves out of the rapidly vanishing forest nearby. There’s a healthy dose of feminism in the mix, as well: Robyn only wants to help her father hunt, but her status as a young woman gets her consigned to menial scullery duties. You don’t have to scratch the film’s surface terribly hard to find a queer reading, either: Robyn and her father are desperately trying to blend in, but Robyn’s need for freedom (and her drive to point out to her father that his white-knuckle grip on their assigned hierarchical roles is wrong) endangers them both.

The upshot here is that all this is really well handled, a mix that’s compelling, rather than muddled.

Because of the film’s densely packed themes, you can pick and choose which particular “message” you’ll take away from Wolfwalkers. But whichever you pick, the feel of this hauntingly rich visual feast will stay with you much longer.

This seems a perfect movie to watch with the family over the holidays. On Apple TV+ now.

Unbound for Mac blog:

With the announcement of the App Store Small Business Program, I’ve stopped selling Unbound directly via the web site. I thought it would be worth explaining how I came to that decision.

This is an interesting read, mostly for developers, but also for folks interested in Apple’s business practices.

If you sell a Mac app, you likely either sell it on the Mac App Store or via an eCommerce engine like Paddle. The economics are a big part of the “how to sell” decision.

Paddle takes a much smaller cut than Apple, but requires a time and coding investment. Apple’s move to cut their end for small (under $1M) sellers from 30% to 15% definitely has an impact on the overall math.

Paddle gives you the freedom to update your app when you like, no approval necessary. Apple, obviously, has hoops to jump through, including a notarization process, and restrictions on content.

Paddle makes it easy to do demos, offer coupon codes, etc.

If Apple highlights your App, the exposure can bring a huge spike in sales.

If Paddle suffered a data breach, suddenly I would be on the hook for exposing people’s emails or (God forbid) credit card data. While this has not happened, and I have no reason whatsoever to think Paddle is anything but competent, I’m still much happier trusting Apple’s security practices than any third party. (And if Apple has a security breach, I feel like I’m unlikely to take the blame from customers—the vast majority of them have done business with Apple directly in the past, whether for their computers, phones, or even just iTunes purchases.)

Even apart from a data breach, removing all third parties from the equation is a privacy win for customers—I can proudly tell people the app collects no data whatsoever, whereas Paddle had to “phone home” to validate product keys.

This last bit is something I never considered.

Worthwhile, provocative read.

This ad dropped last month, an homage to Singin’ in the Rain, but designed to sell Burberry product.

I love this ad, wonder how much of this is CGI, how much practical effects. No matter, to me, has all the feel of an Apple ad.

Side note: In the original Singing in the Rain, linked above, that’s Carrie Fisher’s mom at the beginning of the scene.

How many HTML tags can you remember? My score was embarrassingly low, but it was fun anyway.

Dana Mattioli, Wall Street Journal:

Jeff Bezos built Amazon.com Inc. from his garage with an underdog’s ambition to take on the establishment. He imbued staff with an obsession to grow fast by grabbing customers using the biggest selection and lowest prices.

And:

That ethos helps keep Amazon booming. Aggressive competition—including wresting market share from rivals—is often a hallmark of a successful business. It’s also why the tech-and-retail giant is the target of rivals, regulators and politicians who say its tactics are unfair for a company its size, and potentially illegal. As the company has grown, so has its capacity to take on an ever-growing array of competitors.

And:

Executives behind the scenes have methodically waged targeted campaigns against rivals and partners alike—an approach that has changed little through the years, from diapers to footwear.

No competitor is too small to draw Amazon’s sights. It cloned a line of camera tripods that a small outside company sold on Amazon’s site, hurting the vendor’s sales so badly it is now a fraction of its original size, the little firm’s owner said.

And:

When Amazon decided to compete with furniture retailer Wayfair Inc., Mr. Bezos’s deputies created what they called the Wayfair Parity Team, which studied how Wayfair procured, sold and delivered bulky furniture, eventually replicating a majority of its offerings, said people who worked on the team.

The article goes on and on, but you get the idea. The sense here is that Amazon wants to replicate every product it sells, discarding partnerships once they have their own version of that partner’s product.

At what point does this turn into unfair business practice?

Buzzfeed News:

Last Tuesday, Facebook launched what it portrayed as a full-throated defense of small businesses. In taking out full-page ads in major newspapers and creating a webpage encouraging people to “Speak Up for Small Businesses,” the social networking giant argued that a change in Apple’s mobile operating system would decimate family-run enterprises by preventing them from targeting people with online ads.

But:

But while the $750 billion company’s public relations effort has presented a united front with small businesses, some Facebook employees complained about what they called a self-serving campaign that bordered on hypocrisy, according to internal comments and audio of a presentation to workers that were obtained by BuzzFeed News.

And:

“It feels like we are trying to justify doing a bad thing by hiding behind people with a sympathetic message,” one engineer wrote in response to an internal post about the campaign from Dan Levy, Facebook’s vice president for ads.

To me, this is a badly thought out campaign that is fooling no one. Usually, a controversial campaign like this would have champions on both sides. I’ve yet to encounter anyone who’s taken the Facebook side of this debate.