> Apple Inc., facing a resurgence in Covid-19 cases and a fast-spreading new variant, is delaying its corporate return-to-office deadline from Feb. 1 to a “date yet to be determined.”
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> Employees were informed of the move via a memo sent by Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook on Wednesday. An Apple spokesman confirmed the decision to Bloomberg News.
Add to the mix three Apple Store closings (Miami, Ottawa, and Annapolis, Maryland).
Hard to judge whether this is the road to a new normal (masks for many, more vaccines more often, periodic store closings in response to infection upticks) or just a bump in the road.
> Amazon Polly is a service that turns text into lifelike speech, allowing you to create applications that talk, and build entirely new categories of speech-enabled products. Polly’s Text-to-Speech (TTS) service uses advanced deep learning technologies to synthesize natural sounding human speech.
Follow the headline link and click on the various links to get a sense of the voices. Start with Joanna (Standard). Pretty good, but there’s still a bit of uncanny valley there, perhaps in the subtle hesitations you likely wouldn’t expect in someone else’s speech.
Now listen to Joanna (Neural). To me, this sounds much more realistic and is the machine learning version of the same voice.
Good enough to fool you into thinking it’s a real person? Certainly getting closer.
> Today, Apple TV+ announced “El Deafo,” a charming and poignant three-part animated series for kids and families. Based on the No. 1 New York Times best-seller and Newbery Honor-winning graphic memoir, all episodes of “El Deafo” will premiere Friday, January 7, 2022 on Apple TV+.
And:
> “El Deafo” follows perceptive young Cece (voiced by Finigan) as she loses her hearing and finds her inner superhero. Going to school and making new friends can be tough. Having to do both while wearing a bulky hearing aid on your chest? That takes superpowers! With a little help from her superhero alter ego El Deafo, Cece learns to embrace what makes her extraordinary.
Watch the trailer below. Love the story premise, the normalization, representation. Love that all the episodes are dropping at once, too.
> While most of its smartphones feature gold, jewels, or over-the-top designs, the luxury brand’s latest takes on the iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro Max feature a far more understated design and a really cool tribute to the late Apple founder Steve Jobs. For the phone, Caviar’s artists used the unique design of the iPhone 13 Pro and combined it with parts from a first-generation iPhone.
And:
> In the center of the back of the body is a sealed capsule in the shape of Apple’s signature bitten apple with a fragment of the original iPhone 2G motherboard.
And:
> Caviar’s iPhone 2G versions of the iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro Max are limited to 19 pieces and retail for $6,990.
What to get for the person whose Apple Watch Series 1 18kt Edition no longer works.
