Adobe:

As previously announced in July 2017, Adobe will stop distributing and updating Flash Player after December 31, 2020 (“EOL Date”).

And:

Open standards such as HTML5, WebGL, and WebAssembly have continually matured over the years and serve as viable alternatives for Flash content. Also, the major browser vendors are integrating these open standards into their browsers and deprecating most other plug-ins (like Adobe Flash Player).

And:

Adobe will be removing Flash Player download pages from its site and Flash-based content will be blocked from running in Adobe Flash Player after the EOL Date.

It’s been a long time since I’ve even seen Flash running on a device. When I hear someone talking about Flash, red lights go off in my head, all nostalgia has been pushed aside by thoughts of malware.

Apple:

When the Apple 2020 Worldwide Developers Conference kicks off on June 22 in a new virtual format, a global community of 23 million developers will have the opportunity to join from around the world for free through the Apple Developer app and the Apple Developer website.

23 million developers. That is an amazing number, especially when I think back to that tiny developer universe when the first iPhone SDK rolled out back in March, 2008.

Among them will be 350 Swift Student Challenge winners from 41 different countries and regions. The students were chosen based on their original Swift playground submission, part of Apple’s annual WWDC student challenge, which recognizes and celebrates the next generation of coders and creators.

This is one of my favorite parts of WWDC, the opportunity for the newest generation of developers to show off their skills.

Want to learn to program? Fire up your iPad and check out Swift Playgrounds. It’s a wonderful way to get started.

From a study commissioned by Apple, but independent in nature:

Originally offering approximately 500 apps for the iPhone and iPod touch, the App Store has grown to distribute millions of apps for the full suite of Apple devices (iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, Mac laptops and desktops, and Apple Watch) in 175 countries. Cumulative downloads are in the hundreds of billions.

And:

The goal of this study is to capture total billings and sales generated through app developers’ various monetization strategies. In other words, our purpose is to estimate total billings and sales facilitated by the Apple App Store ecosystem. Our study accounts for billings generated through direct monetization via the App Store and sales generated through monetization outside the App Store.

With that last point in mind:

We estimate that the Apple App Store ecosystem facilitated more than $500 billion in billings and sales worldwide in 2019. More than 85% of that accrues solely to third parties.

Jaw dropping numbers, especially considering how lean times got before Steve Jobs’ return and the rollout of the colorful iMac, the iPod, iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, AirPods, etc.

Apple has really blossomed.

MacRumors:

Apple today launched its annual “Back to School” promotion in the United States and Canada. After five years of offering free Beats, Apple this year is offering free AirPods with the purchase of an eligible new Mac or iPad.

Qualifying students and educators can receive free second-generation AirPods with a wired charging case with the purchase of a new MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, iMac, iMac Pro, iPad Pro, or iPad Air. During the checkout process, it it also possible to upgrade to second-generation AirPods with a wireless charging case for $40 or to AirPods Pro for $90.

As usual, the deals aren’t at “OMG MUST BUY!” levels but, even if your kid isn’t physically going back to school in the fall (they haven’t made that decision yet in many places), you still might be getting them new gear. And a free set of AirPods or a few bucks off AirPods Pro is nothing to shake a stick at.

The Awesomer:

Musician Leo Moracchioli rarely busts out the trumpet for his metal and hard rock cover versions of popular songs, but in the case of Robert Palmer’s 1985 hit Addicted to Love, it was the best way to do the song justice. Though Leo’s video seems to be a little light on long-legged models in slinky black dresses.

Moracchioli says on his Patreon site, “I do music covers on YouTube where I record, mix, master, film and edit the videos myself.” I’m not generally a fan of covers but he does a great job on this classic tune.

TechCrunch:

A week before kicking off WWDC, Apple introduced a pair of upgrades to its pro-level hardware lines. Both the 16-inch MacBook Pro and the Mac Pro desktop are getting select internal upgrades, starting today.

On the notebook front, the 16-inch model gets an additional graphics configuration. The addition of the AMD Radeon Pro 5600M GPU marks the best graphics performance yet for the notebook line, marking up a 75% speed increase over the the next-highest configuration, the Radeon Pro 5500M.

Apple also just rolled out a new feature designed to make it easier for users to upgrade the Mac Pro. A new SSD kit is designed for user-installation, featuring 1, 2, 4 and 8TB storage modules.

These upgrades are a welcome addition to the machines I dream about but will never be able to afford.

Macworld:

Apple sheds the past as necessary to provide new features in its products. With macOS 10.15 Catalina, Apple gave up on 32-bit software after two years of Apple warning about that event coming. That meant iPhoto and a host of third-party apps could no longer be used after upgrading. But less remarked upon were video formats that relied on software components Apple had never updated to 64-bit compatibility.

There’s a long list of formats dropped in last fall’s macOS update, and it includes faves from years past: RealVideo, DivX, Sorenson 3, FlashPix, and many great hits that eventually were superseded by improved encoders.

This is one of those issues that, even though Apple warned users for several years ahead of this transition, still might catch less tech-savvy customers out.

Reelgood:

With new streaming services launching left and right, we know firsthand just how easy it can be for consumers to get confused and overwhelmed. As evidenced by the steady growth of users flocking to streaming aggregators like Reelgood, people are subscribing to multiple services for their entertainment needs. But are you really getting your money’s worth out of all these platforms?

To help you make a better-informed decision, Reelgood ran the numbers on the six major streaming services — Netflix, HBO Max, Prime Video, Hulu, Disney+, and Apple TV+ — to find out which one is the best bang for your buck.

Interesting data presented. While I knew Apple TV+ would be low on this totem pole, I was surprised to see how high Amazon Prime Video was.

Over the weekend, Daniel Eran Dilger, writing for AppleInsider, shared a post titled, Apple’s shift to ARM Mac from Intel at WWDC will define a decade of computing.

The whole thing is worth reading, but this bit captured a historic sequence, one that I’m sure Intel regrets:

The first was the iPhone, which Apple initially wanted to power with an Intel-built XScale chip. Intel’s chief executive at the time, Paul Otellini, initially said no to Apple, fearing that its phone project wouldn’t be successful enough to justify Intel’s investment.

That turned out to be wildly mistaken. Within just a couple of years, Apple’s success with the iPhone was so obvious that Intel itself desperately wanted to work with Apple on future mobile products, particularly its upcoming tablet. Intel expected Apple to select its upcoming x86 Silverthorne mobile chip, later renamed as Atom.

But this time Apple said “no” to Intel, and instead initiated the development of a project to build a new customized ARM “System on a Chip” that could power both its upcoming iPad and subsequently iPhone 4. The project was delivered in 2010 as A4.

This definitely goes down in my book as one of the biggest missed bets in tech history.

Jean-Louis Gassée:

From a PR perspective, the transition to ARM looks like a delicate balancing exercise. If Apple announces the move six months before the first ARM-based machines are scheduled to emerge, how will that effect current Mac sales?

A new Mac always raises this question, especially with a new Mac that is more than a speed bump. And more so if Apple releases a Mac that moves from Intel to ARM.

Jean-Louis brings up the fabled story of Adam Osborne, who brought the world the first commercially successful portable computer, but whose company crashed and burned.

In 1983, the polymath entrepreneur managed to kill sales of his creation by promising that its successors, the Osborn Executive and the Osborne Vixen, would be even better, Just You Wait! The pitch was so persuasive that customers did indeed wait. Sales collapsed and so did Osborne’s business.

Some say this is more fable than truth. From the Osborne Wikipedia page:

according to some new sources the real reason for Osborne Computer’s bankruptcy was management errors and insufficient cash flow.

Given how long a lead time Apple is said to be offering from announcement to release, it seems this will not be any more of a concern than previous experiences. Apple is a master of the product pipeline.

On a related note, an imagined hardware Developer Transition Kit (via DF), based on the ARM 12Z and housed in a headless device (Apple TV or Mac mini enclosure). This makes eminent sense to me. Pure speculation, but still.

Speculation aside, a key takeaway is the idea that a first ARM Mac need not replace the entire Mac product line. It might be a laptop. Or it might be a Mac mini. Or it might not even be.

Dade Hayes, Deadline:

Looking to streamline its offerings after critics have said they are complicated and difficult to navigate, even for existing customers, the company has also rebranded stand-alone service HBO Now to just HBO. The shift is expected to happen over the next few months.

HBO Go, which launched in 2010, will be removed from primary distribution platforms on July 31 but some online access will continue for a few weeks after that. The unplugging of Go is only in the U.S. Internationally, it will continue to operate, at least for now.

I still can’t wrap my head around the thinking on the HBO streaming plans. HBO, HBO Go, HBO Now, and HBO Max. All of which overlap pretty significantly, and whose names give no real indication of where the overlap ends.

TidBITS:

Persistent rumors suggest that Apple will switch from the Intel x86 processors in current Macs to ARM processors like Apple’s A series of chips that power iOS devices. Apple has said nothing about such a transition, but that’s par for the course for Apple.

Apple has successfully switched the Mac’s processor twice before. In 1994, Apple moved from the Mac’s original Motorola 68000 processors to IBM PowerPC processors. And in 2006, the company ditched the PowerPC in favor of Intel x86 processors. Both transitions were fairly smooth due to years of testing—Apple maintained a version of Mac OS X running on Intel chips years before the first Intel Macs shipped. Apple almost certainly has a version of macOS running on ARM right now, in some secret lab.

I don’t have any inside information on whether Apple is working on ARM-based Macs. But let’s look at the pros and cons of switching from Intel to ARM.

Given where Apple is at and where it seems to want to be, there’s no case needed to be made from the company’s point of view. All that’s left is implementation. And Apple is not “working on” ARM-based Macs. That part is done. They have them. They work. And they are fast.

MacRumors:

Most iPhone users will be aware of their device’s built-in calculator, but not everyone will know some of the tricks that you can perform with the app that can save you time. Here are some of our favorite tips.

I’m not a heavy user of the iPhone calculator but there are a couple of tips here I can definitely use.

The Next Web:

A thousand days is a mighty long time. That, friends, is the average lifespan of a hamster. And it’s also the amount of time since the launch of current Apple TV. Roughly.

Yes, the 5th generation of the Apple TV (AKA the newest 4K one) was released all the way back in September 2017. September 2017. The current Apple TV is as old as that mysterious jar of sauce in the back of your fridge.

Despite that, the current Apple TV easy to use, AirPlay is still fantastic, and it’s a much better experience than Android TV.

In other words, okay-ish-ness personified.

This isn’t a bad thing in itself, I just want more.

After listening to the latest Dalrymple Report, this article seemed apropos. There’s certainly an argument to be made that the Apple TV hardware is, for the most part, “good enough” and Apple should focus on making the UX and software better.

MacRumors:

Real-time transit information in Apple Maps has been expanded to multiple countries and metropolitan regions, Apple today confirmed in an update to its Feature Availability page.

In addition to regular public transport information, Apple now highlights several regions in which transit information is displayed in real time. These include the whole of Canada, England, the Netherlands, Scotland, Sweden and Wales, as well as 32 metropolitan regions in Australia, China, and the United States.

Meanwhile, support for Apple’s “Nearby” feature has been expanded and is now available in the following 31 countries: Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Croatia, Czech Republic, El Salvador, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Macau, Mexico, Montserrat, New Zealand, Norway, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Republic of Korea, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey and Vietnam.

Maps now even includes transit directions for my little Canadian town of 6,000.

Drivers working for ride-hailing services such as Uber Technologies Inc and Lyft Inc will be considered employees under California’s new gig worker law, the state’s leading industry regulator said on Thursday.

The decision, by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), which regulates ride-hailing companies across the state, comes six months after a state law took effect that makes it tougher for companies to classify workers as contractors rather than employees. The latter designation exempts them from paying for overtime, healthcare and workers’ compensation.

This looks like it’s done, but the two sides have been battling for the last few years on the issue. I wouldn’t be surprised to see more lawsuits in the future.

TechCrunch:

Before June each year, content and media platforms in China anxiously anticipate a new round of censorship as the government tightens access to information in the lead-up to the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown.

This year, Chinese users lost access to two podcast apps — Pocket Casts and Castro Podcasts. Neither app is searchable within Apple’s Chinese App Store at the time of writing.

Pocket Casts, which was acquired by a group of American public radio companies in 2018, tweeted that it “has been removed from the Chinese App Store by Apple, at the request of the Cyberspace Administration of China,” the country’s internet watchdog.

When Pocket Casts asked for clarification, Apple’s app review team told the podcast firm to contact the CAC directly, an email seen by TechCrunch showed.

Apple continues to be embarrassed by its inability to fight back against the Chinese government’s censorship.

The Verge:

Adobe is launching a new app today called Photoshop Camera that’s filled with a bunch of very elaborate filters that can change your face and the world around you. Some of the filters are really impressive: several identify the sky behind you and replace it with perfect clouds or a magical moon; another puts you inside a Black Mirror-esque glitchy world; and another makes you look like you’re in a comic book.

The app is available for free and works on both iOS and Android (though only recent Pixel, Galaxy, and OnePlus models are officially supported for the latter). Adobe launched a preview of the app in November.

Photoshop Camera has little to do with Photoshop beyond the fact that both have to do with photos and both of them are apps. You can do some basic photo editing here — adjust contrast, exposure, saturation, and so on — but mostly you’re meant to snap a picture, filter it, and leave. If you want to make adjustments, there’s a magic wand button that automatically dials in changes for you so you don’t have to worry about the actual settings.

I was a beta tester for PS Camera (as it was then called). Whether you’ll like the app I think depends greatly on whether or not you want “insta-worthy” (ugh – I hate that term) photos or not. I found it to be fairly simplistic and over the top. Not the “Camera” app I was expecting and hoping for from Adobe.

Adobe CTO Abhay Parasnis said in an interview with The Verge that Photoshop Camera is “the next one in that journey for us.” I really hope not.

AppleInsider:

Apple CEO Tim Cook and company will launch the 2020 WWDC with a “special event keynote” on June 22, at 1 PM Eastern Time — with sessions following on how to build “the next generation of apps.”

Apple says that the 2020 WWDC will be the “biggest WWDC to date, bringing together the global Apple developer community of more than 23 million in an unprecedented, virtual way.” Leading off that unique gathering is the “Special Event Keynote.”

The keynote will stream live from Apple Park on Apple.com, the Apple Developer app, the Apple Developer website, the Apple TV app, and YouTube, and will also be available for on-demand playback after the conclusion of the stream.

This might just be Apple’s most interesting and important WWDC ever.

Ars Technica:

The breadth of section 230’s immunity is historically unprecedented. While earlier legal doctrines had limited the liability of bookstores and other distributors, it hadn’t granted them the kind of total immunity that online providers now enjoy. A bookstore could still be liable if there was proof it knew it was publishing an obscene or defamatory book. By contrast, Internet providers are immune even if they know about illegal content on their sites and leave it online.

It’s hard to imagine sites like Yelp, Reddit, or Facebook existing in their current form without a law like Section 230. Yelp, for example, is regularly threatened by business owners for allegedly defamatory reviews. Section 230 allows Yelp to basically ignore these threats. Without Section 230, Yelp would need a large staff to conduct legal analysis of potentially defamatory reviews—a cost that could have prevented Yelp from getting off the ground 15 years ago.

The article quotes Eric Goldman, a professor at the Santa Clara University Law School, as saying, for better or worse, “…this rule made the modern Internet possible.”

Today, we @playgroundAI release our first product, Anonymous Camera. Designed together with investigative journalists, it lets you anonymise photos and videos in real time, locally on device. All IAP proceeds go towards @BlackVisionsMN and @UR_Ninja. pic.twitter.com/EfU0hCxpoc

— Aaron Abentheuer (@aaronabentheuer) June 11, 2020

I’ve been playing around with this app and it works mostly as advertised. I say mostly because if you move too quickly, the blur can’t keep up. Hopefully, you’ll never have to use this app but it’s good to know it’s available. Also, if you’d like to blur photos automatically, I found a Blur Faces iOS extension. The downside of this extension is the blur doesn’t sem customizable. In my testing, I saw that I could still recognize the faces of people I knew. The other issue is the extension sends the photos off of your phone to be blurred, creating security and data integrity issues.