Juli Clover, MacRumors:

Enterprising eBay sellers are hoping people who are desperate to play Fortnite will pay high prices for iPhones with the game installed, and there are currently hundreds of iPhone listings on eBay advertising the Fortnite app as a purchase perk.

This seems crazy to me. Can’t imagine anyone actually paying money for this. Puzzled as to what people hope to gain by putting up such outrageous asks. Hoping someone accidentally gets sucked in? Yeesh.

Inc:

Google Chrome has been the most popular web browser on both Macs and PCs for a long time. There’s really no question that compared to what came before, it was a huge step forward and made web browsing a noticeably better experience.

But, and let’s be honest here, Chrome has its problems. It sucks battery life and processing power out of your laptop and it’s definitely not the fastest web browser anymore. It also does far less than other browsers to protect your privacy and keep your data secure.

I know a lot of people who stuck with Chrome, partly for the extensions, partly for the 4K, and in spite of the battery suck.

Which brings us back to macOS 11, and the latest version of Safari, which comes with a bunch of updates that not only make browsing the web faster and safer, but more productive as well.

Make no mistake, all of these changes are a direct assault on Google’s dominance the web. There are very few things you can do online that don’t touch at least one of Google’s services, and Apple would very much like to change that.

Interesting take. Wonder if these new Safari features and efficiencies will be enough do sway users from Chrome back to Safari.

Nice write-up (with lots of clarifying screenshots) from Jeff Johnson on where Apple is going with Gatekeeper and signing on the Mac, especially with the coming of Apple silicon-based Macs.

If you are not a developer, this is still worth a look. Think about the current experience of running an app you downloaded from the internet, as opposed to from the Mac App Store. Apple is slowly tightening the screws, from the olden days of “run whatever you want” to “we highly discourage this practice”.

The sequence of pictures really tells this story.

Porsche:

From the touchscreen display in the Porsche Advanced Cockpit, Apple Music subscribers can stream over 60 million songs ad-free, thousands of curated playlists, and the Beats 1 global livestream with three-year complimentary in-car music streaming in the Taycan. This is the first-ever full integration of Apple Music in any vehicle.

That Beats 1 reference is now dated. But I digress.

Highlights of the collaboration:

• Porsche Voice Assistant: Use custom Porsche voice control to request songs, albums, playlists, or radio stations on Apple Music.
• Discover on Broadcast Radio, Listen on Apple Music: Create your own custom station on Apple Music from any song you find while listening to broadcast radio.
• Exclusive Playlists: Listen to curated playlists from Porsche, only on Apple Music.
• In-Car Streaming Data: Complimentary in-car music streaming for 3 years.
• Up to Six Months Included: New and existing Porsche owners get up to 6 months free of Apple Music.

Also:

Taycan drivers can pair a Burmester High-End Surround Sound System with Apple Digital Masters and enjoy studio-quality sound for an unparalleled listening experience in every journey. Apple Digital Masters delivers music as artists and sound engineers intend it to be heard.

Here’s the details on Apple Digital Masters.

MacObserver:

If you are currently an Apple TV+ and CBS All Access (CBSAA) subscriber, you can get SHOWTIME free. Your subscription status will automatically reflect the new bundle. However, there’s a slight trick involved.

Read the post for the details, one of those things that’s good to know, even if it doesn’t apply to you, on the off chance you know someone it’d help.

From the fine print:

With Apple TV+, add SHOWTIME to CBS All Access at no cost. Without Apple TV+, it’s $20.98/mo.

That’s a pretty penny. Check out the Showtime web site to see what they have to offer.

Some beautiful design here. Heads up, there’s a lot of motion on the page, so keep in mind if that’s an issue for you.

I particularly love the ease-in animation as you move from day to night. Watch the menu bar disappear as you hit that midpoint. Lovely stuff.

Ben Evans:

Apple changed how software development worked, and by doing so expanded the number of people who could comfortably, safely use a computer from a few hundred million to a few billion.

And, three problems Apple took on:

• Putting apps in a sandbox, where they can only do things that Apple allows and cannot ask (or persuade, or trick) the user for permission to do ‘dangerous’ things, means that apps become completely safe. A horoscope app can’t break your computer, or silt it up, or run your battery down, or watch your web browser and steal your bank details.

• An app store is a much better way to distribute software. Users don’t have to mess around with installers and file management to put a program onto their computer – they just press ‘Get’. If you (or your customers) were technical this didn’t seem like a problem, but for everyone else with 15 copies of the installer in their download folder, baffled at what to do next, this was a huge step forward.

• Asking for a credit card to buy an app online created both a friction barrier and a safety barrier – ‘can I trust this company with my card?’ Apple added frictionless, safe payment.

And:

All of this levelled the playing field. You knew you could trust Adobe or EA with your credit card, and you knew you could trust them not to abuse your PC too much. Panic, Rogue Amoeba or Basecamp have accumulated reputations that mean they get trust too, for tech insiders who’ve known about them for years. But what about a random Vietnamese developer who’s made a fun little game about a bird that flaps? The iOS software model removed trust as a problem, and as an advantage for big companies.

And:

When your product has a few points of market share you can make whatever choices you like, but when you dominate the market, other rules start applying. Apple isn’t the pirates anymore – it’s the navy, the port and the customs house. In the last few weeks, Microsoft, Google, Facebook and Epic have been stopped at customs.

Fascinating perspective. Great read.

New York Times:

The stocks of Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft and Facebook, the five largest publicly traded companies in America, rose 37 percent in the first seven months this year, while all the other stocks in the S&P 500 fell a combined 6 percent.

And:

Those five companies now constitute 20 percent of the stock market’s total worth, a level not seen from a single industry in at least 70 years. Apple’s stock market value, the highest of the bunch, is nearly $2 trillion — double what it was just 21 weeks ago.

And:

“Covid was the perfect positive storm for these guys,” said Thomas Philippon, a professor of finance at New York University.

And let’s not forget about the billionaires. Jump to this Statista post and scroll down to the chart showing the massive growth in billionaire wealth since March 18th.

The App Store is designed to be a safe and trusted place for users and a great business opportunity for all developers. Epic has been one of the most successful developers on the App Store, growing into a multibillion dollar business that reaches millions of iOS customers around the world. We very much want to keep the company as part of the Apple Developer Program and their apps on the Store. The problem Epic has created for itself is one that can easily be remedied if they submit an update of their app that reverts it to comply with the guidelines they agreed to and which apply to all developers. We won’t make an exception for Epic because we don’t think it’s right to put their business interests ahead of the guidelines that protect our customers.

Good, there should not be an exception for Epic.

A funky little tip from OSXDaily. This is not how to force reboot your Apple Watch but, rather, how to force quit a misbehaving app.

This is akin to swiping up on an app on your iPhone to force quit it.

Apple:

Apple today announced two new live global radio offerings on Apple Music, now available to music fans in 165 countries. Beginning today, Beats 1, the flagship global radio station, will be renamed Apple Music 1, and two additional radio stations will launch: Apple Music Hits, celebrating everyone’s favorite songs from the ’80s, ’90s, and 2000s, and Apple Music Country, spotlighting country music.

Interesting that Apple has stepped back from the Beats brand here. Note that Apple purchased Beats on August 1st, 2014. I wonder if the Beats 1 branding was part of that contract and time just ran out on that requirement. Pure speculation on my part.

Mark Gurman, Bloomberg:

Consumers currently have a chance to sign up to the warranty-and-support program within 60 days of buying an Apple product. This subscription window is increasing to up to a year now in the U.S. and Canada.

“This gives customers another opportunity to protect their device and have access to all the AppleCare+ benefits,” Apple wrote in a memo to staff seen by Bloomberg News. The company told employees the offer is available to customers who pay for AppleCare+ in full versus monthly payments, or for those that subscribe via installments on the Apple Card credit card.

Keep that change in mind. Looks like you’ll now have up to a year after you buy Apple Hardware to sign up for AppleCare+.

AppleCare is what you get for free, AppleCare+ is what you pay for. Note that you’ll have to have your device screened by an Apple retail employee to make sure it is not damaged before they’ll let you sign up.

Nellie Andreeva, Deadline:

I hear filming on the remaining two episodes started today on the Sony lot in Culver City.

Indie studio Sony Pictures TV has been at the forefront of efforts to safely return scripted series to production. The studio’s CBS show S.W.A.T. became the first broadcast drama to start filming new episodes, Its daytime drama The Young and the Restless has been back in production for weeks, its ABC comedy The Goldbergs is eying a production restart in a week; while studio’s drama The Good Doctor is looking to get filming underway in Vancouver at the end of this month.

I’ve been reading about production on many different projects slowly ramping up, with lots of actor/crew testing, mannequins and family stand-ins subbing for other actors when filming hugs, etc.

Good to hear about more and more shows coming back to life.

Apple:

Apple has ordered its first competition series, “My Kind of Country,” a groundbreaking global search for unconventional and extraordinary country music talent that will be produced by Reese Witherspoon’s Emmy-nominated Hello Sunshine, Jason Owen and Emmy Award nominee Izzie Pick Ibarra. Emmy Award-nominated Adam Blackstone will serve as musical director of the series, which will be executive produced by Done + Dusted.

First competition series? Planet of the Apps will not be forgotten!

“My Kind of Country” will revolutionize the music competition genre with a fresh, new documentary sensibility. The hybrid series will break down cultural and musical barriers in the country music space, inviting innovative musicians to unleash their authentic voices and take center stage.

Apple TV+ continues to flesh out its offerings, expanding its reach while trying to make all shows appealing, in some way or other, to a very wide audience. Difficult road to walk, so far so good.

And if you’ve avoided Ted Lasso because you couldn’t connect to the trailers, ignore them, watch the show. It’s really good.

Apple Inc said on Monday it had expanded a program that provides parts and training to independent repair shops to cover its Mac computers.

Apple initially launched the program last year, but it only covered iPhones, the company’s biggest-selling product. Mac users previously either had to use Apple or an authorized warranty service provider to get fixes with parts directly from Apple.

This is going to make a lot of independent repair shops very happy.

Beginning today, Apple TV+ subscribers in the US can take advantage of a unique benefit — access to a bundle of CBS All Access and SHOWTIME for only $9.99 per month after a seven-day free trial. By subscribing through Apple TV channels, customers can watch content from all three services online and offline, ad-free and on demand, only on the Apple TV app. Through Family Sharing, up to six family members can share the subscriptions to Apple TV+, CBS All Access, and SHOWTIME using just their personal Apple ID and password.

I mention that this was a possibility last week and here it is. I’ll be adding this to my Apple TV+ channels today.

David Shayer, TidBITS:

It was a gray day in late 2005. I was sitting at my desk, writing code for the next year’s iPod. Without knocking, the director of iPod Software—my boss’s boss—abruptly entered and closed the door behind him. He cut to the chase. “I have a special assignment for you. Your boss doesn’t know about it. You’ll help two engineers from the US Department of Energy build a special iPod. Report only to me.”

This is an unbelievable read. But totally believable, since it’s from David Shayer, who worked as a software engineer at Apple for about 18 years. Look him up. Then follow the headline link and read the whole thing.

MIT Technology Review:

At the start of the week, Liam Porr had only heard of GPT-3. By the end, the college student had used the AI model to produce an entirely fake blog under a fake name.

It was meant as a fun experiment. But then one of his posts reached the number-one spot on Hacker News. Few people noticed that his blog was completely AI-generated. Some even hit “Subscribe.”

This is remarkable. AI has come incredibly far, to the point where AI-generated content is indistinguishable from the human created. At least if you don’t look too hard. And that’s part of the issue.

Most people don’t look for signs of fakery. Part of this is how overwhelmed we all are with the river of content that inundates us. And part of this is confirmation bias. We want to believe!

Here’s a link to the fake blog if you want to see this for yourself.

Michael Potuck, 9to5Mac:

One of the exciting features of watchOS 7 is the ability to easily share and download Apple Watch faces with a direct link. But what about thinking bigger than just sharing directly with others? buddywatch is a neat new platform dedicated to sharing, discovering, and downloading new watch faces.

You’ll need the iOS 14 and watchOS 7 betas to share on BuddyWatch but, presumably, we’re just a few months away from the public release of both.

And even if you don’t have either beta installed, you can still check BuddyWatch out.

Google, in their Open letter to Australians:

We need to let you know about new Government regulation that will hurt how Australians use Google Search and YouTube.

A proposed law, the News Media Bargaining Code, would force us to provide you with a dramatically worse Google Search and YouTube, could lead to your data being handed over to big news businesses, and would put the free services you use at risk in Australia.

There is so much to read into these words. There’s a feeling of worry, of being under threat. There’s the sense that Google is warning us, a sense of alarm. And there’s the irony of one of the biggest companies on the planet alerting us about losing our data to “big news businesses”.

Read the piece, draw your own conclusions. But do read about Australia’s News Media Bargaining Code.

From the announcement:

The Government has instructed the ACCC to develop a mandatory code to address commercial arrangements between digital platforms and news media businesses. Among the elements the code will cover include the sharing of data, ranking and display of news content and the monetisation and the sharing of revenue generated from news.

The mandatory code will also establish appropriate enforcement, penalty and binding dispute resolution mechanisms.

The way I read this, the News Media Bargaining Code is trying to shift control of the news back into the hands of the publishers and creators. Is this a good thing? Will this hurt Google and other aggregators? Will this help push money back into journalism? That last bit is what I am hoping for.

This morning, the ACCC (creators of the News Media Bargaining Code) responded to Google’s open letter:

Google will not be required to charge Australians for the use of its free services such as Google Search and YouTube, unless it chooses to do so.

Google will not be required to share any additional user data with Australian news businesses unless it chooses to do so.

The draft code will allow Australian news businesses to negotiate for fair payment for their journalists’ work that is included on Google services.

This will address a significant bargaining power imbalance between Australian news media businesses and Google and Facebook.

A healthy news media sector is essential to a well-functioning democracy.

This is important stuff.

Facebook wants Apple to waive its 30 percent fee taken from in-app purchases or let Facebook process event payments with Facebook Pay, both of which Apple has refused.

“We asked Apple to reduce its 30% ‌App Store‌ tax or allow us to offer Facebook Pay so we could absorb all costs for businesses struggling during COVID-19. Unfortunately, they dismissed both our requests and SMBs will only be paid 70% of their hard-earned revenue. Because this is complicated, as long as Facebook is waiving its fees, we will make all fees clear in our products.”

Facebook is just a creepy company that does everything it can to take advantage of its users for profit. It’s laughable that Facebook is making these claims against Apple.

I laughed so hard when I saw this. I need to buy this person a beer.

Not that bad yet, but they did add Google to the list of lawsuits.

Epic Games has filed suit against Google over alleged antitrust violations, just hours after seeing Fortnite dropped from the both the Google Play Store and iOS App store and filing a similar lawsuit against Apple. Epic’s complaint alleges that Google’s payment restrictions on the Play Store constitute a monopoly, and thus a violation of both the Sherman Act and California’s Cartwright Act.

Epic’s hit game Fortnite was removed from the Google Play Store earlier today.

Idris Elba and Simon Kinberg have teamed up for a yet-to-be-titled spy film, which after an intense bidding war, has landed at Apple.

Elba will star and produce the film, which is described as a “spy movie with romance” set in Africa. Kingberg and Audrey Chon, president of Kinberg’s Genre Films will produce. The film’s script comes from Travon Free, best known for “Black Monday” and “The Daily Show”.

I love spy movies, and I really like Idris Elba, so this should be a great movie for me. This film also shows how Apple is going after a variety of shows and movies instead of focusing on just a couple of genres.

Om Malik:

Uber and Lyft, in response to a California court ruling that all drivers must be reclassified as employees with benefits, are threatening to quit doing business in the state. Putting the news, and the legal posturing of Uber and Lyft aside, the judgment and its possible impact on other gig-economy companies that rely on independent contractors will be a quagmire. But it raises more profound questions that go far beyond these startups, and our society.

Admittedly, there are many more questions than answers right now.