Qualcomm:

The world’s first commercially viable fast charging platform to support more than 100W charging power in a smartphone, Quick Charge 5 is engineered to allow users to charge devices from 0 to 50 percent battery power in just five minutes – representing the fastest mobile phone charging capabilities available.

Compare this to Apple’s fast charge:

Use fast charge with certain iPhone or iPad models. You can recharge your iPhone up to 50 percent battery in around 30 minutes.

That’s a big leap on Qualcomm’s part. Also interesting is that Quick Charge 5 runs cooler as well.

Coming to commercial devices in 2020Q3.

Bowdoin College:

Students will receive an Apple iPad Pro with available Wi-Fi and cellular data connectivity (activated and covered by the College for those students who have internet connectivity needs), an Apple Pencil 2, and the Apple Magic Keyboard for iPad, which includes a trackpad.

And the teachers?

All interested faculty members and the staff who support teaching and learning will receive iPads that use Wi-Fi only to connect to the internet.

This is great. The college is covering the cost of the cell plan for students with no WiFi access. Well done, Bowdoin.

Gilad Edelman, Wired:

ON WEDNESDAY, AFTER a brief delay, the CEOs of Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Apple will testify together in front of Congress for the first time ever. Well, sort of: Thanks to the ongoing pandemic, the executives will appear via video, presumably from some bland settings that belie the fact that the group includes two of the world’s richest people. Even so, the event could be historic, with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos making his congressional hearing debut. The theme: whether the four companies, each among the most valuable in history, have built their economic power, or are using it, in ways that harm American society overall.

Remarkable to think that this testimony will include the richest person in the world, commanded to appear in front of Congress.

And this, on Apple:

The case against Apple should be the simplest to follow, and it is likely to revolve around the App Store. App developers have complained—all the way to the Supreme Court—that the 30 percent cut Apple takes of all revenues from its App Store is unfair. They have also accused Apple of discriminating against or ripping off apps that compete with Apple’s own offerings. The CEO of Tile, which makes hardware and software to help people keep track of things like their keys and wallet, has testified that Apple changed its Find My iPhone app to mimic Tile—and then decided to stop selling Tile products in its stores.

Great take on tomorrow’s hearing.

Apple:

Apple TV+ and Oprah Winfrey today announced “The Oprah Conversation,” a new series that will continue to explore impactful and relevant topics with fascinating thought leaders from all over the world. “The Oprah Conversation” will debut on Apple TV+ on Thursday, July 30.

And:

Filmed remotely and incorporating audience engagement, Oprah will lead timely and intimate discussions with today’s foremost newsmakers, thought leaders, and masters of their craft.

“Incorporating audience engagement.” — I wonder what that means.

First, there’s the question of audience. Surely this can’t be a typical, filmed before a studio audience thing.

And what will the engagement consist of? Will the audience be online, and have the ability to ask questions, a la Inside the Actors Studio?

I’m intrigued.

CNET:

Target stores will be closed on Thanksgiving, the retailer said in a blog post Monday, outlining its plans for the holiday season.

“There’s no question, the holiday season is going to be very different this year,” the post said, explaining that Target will offer its holiday deals throughout the season, starting in October.

“This year more than ever, a joyful holiday will be inseparable from a safe one, and we’re continuing to adjust our plans to deliver ease, value and the joy of the season in a way that only Target can,” CEO Brian Cornell said in the post.

This is a big, brave move by these retailers to make the decision to forgo the biggest sales weekend of the year (Dave corrected me and pointed out they are only closed on Thanksgiving Day. Too much wishful thinking on my part) in favour of customer safety. It’s only July so they could still change their minds though. It will be interesting to see if retailers like Best Buy and Apple follow suit.

Apple:

Join us here on July 30, 2020 at 2:00 p.m. PT / 5:00 p.m. ET to listen to the conference call live.

This will be an interesting report if only because this will be Apple’s first full quarter under the pandemic. They did well during the last quarter but don’t expect huge blockbuster numbers this time around. They will still have sold millions of products and earned billions of dollars though. I think they’ll be OK.

Fall detection, aFib detection, encouraging fitness by closing your rings: These three things alone make the Apple Watch a great, ever improving investment, one that can save your life, and have saved many others.

John Voorhees, MacStories:

Zach Gage has a knack for giving classic games an interesting twist. Sometimes that means turning the rules upside down and inside out like Flipflop Solitaire or Really Bad Chess. Other times, it means removing the tedious and boring parts of games to breathe new life into them, which is precisely what he and Jack Schlesinger have accomplished with Good Sudoku.

Follow the headline link for John’s review. I’ve been playing the hell out of the beta and I can tell you personally:

• It’s become the number one played game on my iPhone
• It’s a great way to learn how to solve a Sudoku

Download Good Sudoku for free, $3.99 to unlock the whole thing.

If you are into puzzles, this is money well spent.

Scroll through the linked post, take a look at all the headphone accessibility accommodations. Good to know what’s there.

Also, a reminder that you can Bluetooth link most hearing aids to iPhones, even some that are not officially marketed as MFi.

Apple:

Apple TV+ was honored today by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences with two Daytime Emmy Awards, and became the first streaming service to win a Daytime Emmy in its first year of eligibility at the 47th Annual Daytime Emmys.

Apple won Emmys for:

• Outstanding Children’s or Family Viewing Programming for “Ghostwriter”
• Outstanding Single Camera Editing for “Peanuts in Space: Secrets of Apollo 10”

I remain bullish on Apple TV+. This is a sign of how seriously Apple is taking this service, an incredible achievement for a service that went live less than 9 months ago.

MacRumors:

A trailer for the second season of Apple Original series “For All Mankind” has today been shared on IMDb, but it has not yet been officially released by Apple.

Apple TV+ trailers and promotional videos are usually shared on the ‌Apple TV‌+ YouTube channel and via the ‌Apple TV‌+ newsroom, but the “For All Mankind” season two trailer has yet to appear on either. It is possible that the trailer has been prematurely uploaded to IMDb today ahead of an official announcement from Apple. A release date for the second season has also not yet been announced.

Very odd to not see this released on the official Apple TV+ YouTube channel as of this writing but it is on the Apple TV+ Facebook page. I watched the first season and, while I don’t think it rose to the level of great TV, I’m still looking forward to season 2.

UPDATE: It is now on Apple TV+ YouTube channel.

Bloomberg:

Intel Corp. Chief Executive Officer Bob Swan spent almost an hour on Thursday discussing an idea that would once have been unthinkable for the world’s largest semiconductor company: Not manufacturing its own chips. Intel’s shares tumbled as much as 18% Friday morning. Outsourcing is the norm in the $400 billion industry nowadays, but for 50 years Intel has combined chip design with in-house production. And until recently, Intel was even planning to churn out processors for others.

“To the extent that we need to use somebody else’s process technology and we call those contingency plans, we will be prepared to do that,” Swan told analysts on a conference call, after the company warned of another delayed production process. “That gives us much more optionality and flexibility. So in the event there is a process slip, we can try something rather than make it all ourselves.”

As the article says, outsourcing is the norm so, in the long run, this is unlikely to hurt Intel significantly. It will be their delays in production that hurt them.

MyHeritage: >Perhaps you have old photos that look grainy or blurred, or photos of large family gatherings with many faces that are too small to recognize clearly. The MyHeritage Photo Enhancer aims to solve these age-old problems and produces phenomenal results that let you see your ancestors more clearly than ever before.

The examples of what the service offers are incredible. If you’ve got old, sepia-toned, poor quality photos, the photo enhancer does an amazing job of bringing out long lost details in the shots. You’ll see pictures of your great-grandparents in ways you never thought possible. As you preserve these precious memories, consider setting up a wedding registry online to start creating new memories that will last for generations. If you’re currently planning your wedding, you may hire wedding photographers Northern Virginia.

To get started, you have to create an account, including giving up your credit card info. But you can skip this step and go straight to the upload page here. You can upload a photo and the site will still ask you to create an account but there’s no need to enter any credit card info. From there, you choose your photo to be enhanced (FYI in my tests, it would only accept JPGs and at least 300 pixels by 300 pixels) and/or colourized.

The results are pretty incredible. I only have one old photo of my father (who I never met) and I ran it through the process and this is the result:

Notice the tiny watermarks on the lower left and right. If you are a paid-up subscriber, those aren’t present. Subscriptions are pricey at $17/month but you can cancel at any time, according to the site. Give it a try yourself but, when you sign up, use a throwaway email address. MyHeritage opts you into a buttload of their emails.

Bloomberg:

Apple Inc. told U.S. employees they can take as many as four hours off with pay on Election Day to vote or volunteer at a polling place.

The policy applies to retail employees and hourly workers and is similar to moves made by other companies, including Twitter Inc. and Uber Technologies Inc. It was announced in a memo to Apple employees seen by Bloomberg News. Election Day is Nov. 3.

“For retail team members and hourly workers across the company, if you’re scheduled to work this Election Day, we’ll be providing up to four hours of paid time off if you need it to get to the polls,” Deirdre O’Brien, Apple’s senior vice president of retail and people, told staff. “If they choose, our teams can also use this time to volunteer as an election worker at one of your local polling stations.”

Great idea but why isn’t this a nationwide law as it is in some third world countries?

VOX:

Earlier this year, the Pentagon released three videos of UFOs recorded by the Navy — one taken in 2004 and the other two in 2015. The videos, which first leaked a couple of years ago, show … well, it’s not exactly clear.

There are various objects — two of which look like aircraft — spinning through the sky and moving in ways that defy easy explanation. As the images bop across the screen, you can hear the pilots’ excitement and confusion in real time as they track whatever it is they’re seeing.

I’m not what you would call a UFO enthusiast, but the videos are the most compelling I’ve ever seen. They seem to confirm, at the very least, that UFOs are real — not that aliens exist, but that there are unidentified objects buzzing around the sky.

Now, do I think aliens are real? Yeah, probably. Are they flying spaceships into our atmosphere? Who the hell knows?

I think this is really interesting in an entirely “thought experiment” kind of way. I do believe there is “alien life” out there but do I believe they’ve visited Earth? No. How about you?

AppleInsider:

Apple is donating its share of earnings from documentary film “John Lewis: Good Trouble” to the National Civil Rights Museum and National Museum of African American History and Culture.

“Representative John Lewis’s life and example compel each of us to continue the fight for racial equity and justice,” said Lisa Jackson, Apple’s vice president of Environment, Policy and Social Initiatives. “This film celebrates his undeniable legacy, and we felt it fitting to support two cultural institutions that continue his mission of educating people everywhere about the ongoing quest for equal rights.”

Lewis was an important figure in the American Civil Rights Movement and this is a documentary everyone should watch.

Wired:

This month marks the 20th anniversary of the Power Mac G4 Cube, which debuted July 19, 2000. It also marks the 19th anniversary of Apple’s announcement that it was putting the Cube on ice. That’s not my joke, it’s Apple’s, straight from the headline of its July 3, 2001, press release that officially pulled the plug.

For one thing, the price was prohibitive—by the time you bought the display, it was almost three times the price of an iMac and even more than some PowerMacs. By and large, people don’t spend their art budget on computers.

That wasn’t the only issue with the G4 Cube. Those plastics were hard to manufacture, and people reported flaws. The air cooling had problems. If you left a sheet of paper on top of the device, it would shut down to prevent overheating. And because it had no On button, a stray wave of your hand would send the machine into action, like it or not.

I was at the Macworld Expo launch of the Cube in 2000 and not to toot my own horn but I (and to be fair, many others) predicted the demise of the Cube as soon as we saw it. Rather, as soon as we saw the eye-watering price of the little box of plastic. Then we saw what the display would cost (and you “had to” buy the display – why would you connect this beautiful cube to an ordinary monitor?) and the prediction was an easy one to make.

That being said, many of us lusted after the Cube – maybe less so when all the issues surrounding it became apparent but nonetheless, like the Twentieth Anniversary Mac, it was less a computer and more of a design statement and a way to show off your cool factor.

TechCrunch:

Streaming media platform Plex announced today it’s further expanding into live TV with the addition of over 80 free live TV channels accessible by free users and subscribers alike. The company had already allowed consumers to capture and record live TV by way of a digital antenna and tuner connected to a Plex media server, but this required investment in additional hardware and involved a more complicated setup process.

The channel lineup includes Reuters, Yahoo Finance, Toon Goggles, Kidoodle TV, KidsFlix, fubo Sports Network, Cooking Panda, DrinkTV, IGN TV, AFV Family, Tastemade, Revry, FailArmy, Dove Channel, Docurama, The Pet Collective, WeatherSpy, Made in Hollywood and others.

While none of these are big names, they expand Plex’s service with a range of free content where you might catch something interesting upon browsing — like a cooking show, old movie, classic TV episode, funny video or kids cartoon, for instance.

There’s not much familiar here but if you’ve already watched everything on Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+, Hulu, Apple TV+, Peacock, etc, maybe you can find something watchable.

TidBITS:

Apple has announced that it is releasing a special version of the iPhone to approved security researchers as part of a new Apple Security Research Device Program (SRD). The SRD, which was originally announced during last year’s Black Hat information security conference, is a standard iPhone with key security controls disabled to allow security researchers to run their own tools. Apple will provide SRDs on one-year renewable loans to researchers who are accepted into the program.

In a private briefing, Apple provided additional details about and background on the SRD program.

I posted yesterday on Apple’s PR regarding the Apple Security Research Device Program and now the guy I trust most on Mac security related issues has posted about his briefing with Apple about these devices. As always, Mogull writes well and in-depth while not being nearly as techy or geeky as the subject warrants. It’s a good read if you have any interest in this kind of program.

DPReview:

Adobe has pushed live security updates for its Bridge, Photoshop and Prelude applications that patch a number of critical vulnerabilities.

ThreatPost says each of the 12 ‘critical flaws stem from out-of-bounds read and write vulnerabilities, which occur when the software reads data past the end of — or before the beginning of — the intended buffer, potentially resulting in corruption of sensitive information, a crash, or code execution among other things.’ Specifically, five flaws were addressed in Adobe Photoshop, three in Adobe Bridge and four in Adobe Prelude.

According to Adobe, no known uses of these critical bugs have been reported in the wild, but you’re going to want to make sure all of your programs are up to date if you don’t have automatic updates installed. All updates can be downloaded via the Creative Cloud desktop app for macOS and Windows computers.

Patch now.

Rolling Stone:

The part of the streaming shell game that I’ve never been able to fully understand — and that has somehow gotten worse with each passing year and each new service debut — is just how bad the user experience is on all of them. It’s been 13 years since Netflix began offering streaming content, with Hulu and others soon to follow, yet the user interfaces consistently seem designed to make finding what you want to see — whether continuing a binge or discovering something new — a Herculean effort. Spend enough time toggling between the services, and you’ll want to quote Hall of Fame baseball manager Casey Stengel trying to make sense of the historically inept 1962 Mets: Can’t anybody here play this game?

Simply put, there are a lot of basic practices that all streamers should be following, and that most of them don’t seem to understand in the slightest. Here’s our four-point plan to optimize user experience.

Like a lot of people since the beginning of (waves hands around) all of this, we’ve been watching a lot more streaming stuff. The user experience is uniformly awful.

9to5Mac:

An analyst of the US contact tracing landscape paints a depressing picture. Not a single US state currently offers an app that uses the Apple/Google coronavirus contact tracing API — and only four states plan to do so.

Others have launched GPS-based apps that raise immediate privacy concerns and are unlikely to see significant adoption, while the majority of states who responded plan to offer nothing at all…

Legal blog Lawfare describes its mission as covering “that nebulous zone in which actions taken or contemplated to protect the nation interact with the nation’s laws” – making an analysis of the state of play of coronavirus contact tracing an ideal topic. The results of that analysis don’t make for cheery reading.

There’s an argument to be made for the fact that until contact tracing is widespread, we won’t get a handle on this pandemic. This patchwork of (non)efforts isn’t helping. Thanks to Michael D for the link.

Gonna stop here for a second and acknowledge the English language/UK-US bias, right off the top.

That said, this is still quite interesting. Before you follow the link, take a guess as to who in the pop universe has the biggest vocal range. Challenge is to name anyone in the top three.