We Are One: A Global Film Festival is being produced and organized by New York’s Tribeca Enterprises. The YouTube-hosted event will feature programming from 20 top film festivals including the Cannes Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival, Sundance Film Festival, Berlin International Film Festival, Tribeca Film Festival and Venice Film Festival.
Great idea. Can’t wait. The festival will benefit COVID-19 charities, and will run from May 29-June 7.
Deirdre O’Brien, vice president of retail and people, made the disclosure in a weekly video update, according to retail employees familiar with the matter. She didn’t specify which stores or regions, but said “we are continuing to analyze this health situation in every location, and I do expect we will reopen up many more stores in May.”
Tantalizing, but wish there was more detail. Is this a slow regional spread from the Seoul Apple Store that opened earlier this month? Will we see Apple Stores open in the US? UK? EU? Standalone stores first, mall locations last?
This iPhone goes where no iPhone has gone before with “Single Image Monocular Depth Estimation.” In English, this is the first iPhone that can generate a portrait effect using nothing but a single, 2D image.
The new iPhone SE doesn’t have focus pixels, or any other starting point for depth. It generates depth entirely through machine learning.
So the next question is whether Machine Learning will ever get to the point that we don’t need multi-camera devices?
Another great article from the folks at Halide. Well written, well explained.
HBO Max, the forthcoming streaming service from AT&T Inc.-owned WarnerMedia, will be available on Apple Inc. devices when it launches on May 27, the company said on Monday.
Customers will be able to access HBO Max on the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch devices, as well as the Apple TV 4K and Apple TV HD. Customers with second- and third-generation Apple TV models will be able to stream HBO Max content from their iPhone or iPad to their TV with AirPlay.
HBO Max will enter a crowded streaming landscape dominated by Netflix Inc, Walt Disney Co-owned Disney+, and Amazon.com Inc’s Prime Video. It will include 10,000 hours of content from WarnerMedia brands and libraries such as Warner Bros, New Line Cinema and Cartoon Network.
Great news for those of you who can access the service.
Is there such a thing as too much Star Wars? Clearly, somebody out there doesn’t think so, because they’ve completed the insane experiment of split screening all nine episodes of the Skywalker Saga together, so that they all play simultaneously. Is it impressive? Absolutely. Is it strangely mesmerizing? Totally. Can you understand a single word? Not at all.
The video, which is clearly part of an experiment to drive people with ADD completely ’round the bend, was completed by Lucas Hammer on YouTube. It’s an impressive feat that needs to be seen to be believed, so check it out.
If you’re a serious Star Wars junkie then there’s actually a lot of potentially interesting information to glean by watching all nine movies side by side.
It really is weirdly compelling and I’m not even a huge Star Wars fan.
Imran Chaudhri spent over 20 years at Apple and helped create the company’s hero products like iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch. Now on the fifth anniversary of Apple’s highly successful wearable, Chaudhri has shared some neat details on the history of what went into creating the Apple Watch‘s faces and features.
Nice collection of tweets from Chaudrhi, worth scrolling through.
Amazing to think back to that first Apple Watch, entering a crowded, clunky, smart watch market, tiny in comparison to the gigantic mechanical watch market. Oh how things have changed.
iFixit, from the comparison teardowns of the iPhone SE and iPhone 8:
iPhone SE’s cameras, SIM tray, Taptic Engine, and display assembly (including the microphone and proximity sensor) are all swappable with iPhone 8 parts.
And:
That screen should be cheaper to replace than any new iPhone we’ve seen in years. However, as with any modern iPhone screen swap, you will lose True Tone unless you have access to a screen programmer.
And:
Home buttons are still not interchangeable—you’ll need to hold on to your original home button in the event of a repair, substitute an aftermarket home button with no Touch ID, or else pay Apple whatever they ask to fix it for you.
And:
Although the battery looks identical, the battery’s logic board connector differs from the one in the 8, so they don’t fit together. The SE will connect to an iPhone 11 battery, which uses the same connector—but it won’t turn on. And, sadly, this seemingly throwback phone has some very modern Apple roadblocks inside. You can’t even swap one genuine iPhone SE 2020 battery for another without triggering a “not a genuine Apple battery” service warning.
Barriers to self-repair. But at the same time, keyed parts to keep repairs from going wrong. Interesting article.
In Europe, most countries have chosen short-range Bluetooth “handshakes” between mobile devices as the best way of registering a potential contact, even though it does not provide location data.
But they have disagreed about whether to log such contacts on individual devices or on a central server – which would be more directly useful to existing contact tracing teams that work phones and knock on doors to warn those who may be at risk.
Apple and Google are now referring to “contact tracing” as “exposure notification,” which the companies believe better describes the functionality of their upcoming API. The system is intended to notify a person of potential exposure, augmenting broader contact tracing efforts that public health authorities are undertaking.
See also the embedded Exposure Notification FAQ from the Apple/Google team. Can’t help but wonder if the name change from contact tracing to exposure notification was an attempt to ease EU concerns about privacy.
The Macintosh Graphical User Interface was a new idiom. It was the first mass-market implementation of a new system of signs and symbols advocated by Douglas Engelbart; it was a new language that both rationally and by osmosis people started to speak. Once you had touched a Macintosh, you felt in control, and the “interface” of any other device, such as your VCRs or your LaserDisc players, came across as an impossible conversation.
By 1997, when Steve Jobs came back to Apple, 20 to 25 million Macintosh users had become a movement of people speaking the same language, and this because of various reasons:
Apple survived Jobs’s departure in 1985
Macintosh fans were unrelenting evangelists
The Macintosh had an amazing foothold in education, and
Windows, “the enemy,” was trying everything it could to speak Macintosh too.
The history of the Macintosh’s “survival” is fascinating and many of us participated in it in various ways.
I just stumbled upon a working version of the famous #AfterDark screensaver package featuring “Flying Toasters" – remember those? I love them! https://t.co/Ni4B2ieT28
His Girl Friday stands out for many reasons, especially by refusing, unlike many Hollywood pictures written by former newspapermen, to instinctively glorify journalism, a mistake more recent films about the news still make.
Movies don’t get much more classic or screwball than this.
The timing of CES and the people who attended could be more clues, or “ecologic evidence,” about how the virus spread in Silicon Valley at a time when people weren’t paying attention, said Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious disease expert and professor at the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine.
“As a clinician, it was weird to be in the Bay Area to see Santa Clara County being the hotspot,” he said. “You would think it would be San Francisco because there’s tons of people going into [the airport] and a lot of Chinese population, but I think there has to be something else to this.” It will take more research to determine whether CES is that connection, he said.
The conference, a well-known schmooze-fest of tech leaders from around the world, created an ideal environment for a virus to spread, particularly if highly infectious people were present. People jam into convention halls and casinos, share business cards, shake hands and socialize in close quarters with attendees from tech hubs across the United States — largely New York, Chicago, the Bay Area, and Southern California — and at least 63 other countries.
I speculated about this months ago. After all, for those of us who used to attend Macworld Expo, the “Expo Creeping Crud” is a well known “disease.” Almost invariably after attending, many of us would come down with a low grade flu.
According to AirDNA, an online rental analytics firm, new bookings on Airbnb are down 85 per cent; cancellation rates are close to 90 per cent. Revenue generated by Airbnb’s platform in March was down 25 per cent year-on-year, wiping out $1 billion in bookings. With much of the world still on lockdown, those numbers are unlikely to pick up anytime soon.
According GlobalData, an analytics firm, Airbnb could lose a “significant portion” of its host community as a result of the pandemic.
Data from AirDNA shows that of the 1.1 million Airbnb listings in the US, some 600,000 are from hosts that have at least two other listings. Around 600,000 of those 1.1 million listings are also available for more than six months of the year. Both are key indicators of properties that are more akin to hotel rooms than sharing economy holiday rentals.
A lot of things are going to change once this pandemic is over. Will Airbnb still be around? Contrary to its image of “average homeowners just trying to make a few bucks,” Airbnb has become the largest hotel chain in the world with the majority of its hosts’ professional property owners.
A security company which discovered iPhone Mail vulnerabilities claimed that they have been ‘widely exploited’ in real-world attacks. Apple has now denied this claim, stating that it could find ‘no evidence’ that the exploits have been used. Additionally, it says that the vulnerabilities in question cannot bypass iPhone and iPad security safeguards.
Apple has acknowledged the three issues discovered by security group ZecOps, and has patched these in the iOS 13.4.5 beta which should be released to the public soon.
After the news came out last week, Apple has now responded with:
“We have thoroughly investigated the researcher’s report and, based on the information provided, have concluded these issues do not pose an immediate risk to our users,” the Cupertino, California company said. “The researcher identified three issues in Mail, but alone they are insufficient to bypass iPhone and iPad security protections, and we have found no evidence they were used against customers.”
I started using the new Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro this week and it’s one of my favorite accessories that Apple has ever made. Dave and I talk about everything I like so far. We also talk about some of the early reviews of the iPhone SE.
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Have an upcoming video call? Don’t dial-in from your living room — send your transmission from the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon.
StarWars.com is excited to present a galaxy of virtual Star Wars backgrounds that you can use in any online meeting. If you’re home and catching up with friends, talking with family, or an an important work video call, you can now do so appearing as if you’re somewhere in a galaxy far, far away. Choose from Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back‘s Hoth (wampa-free, thankfully), the ruins of the Death Star, and many, many more. Whether you dress as a Star Wars character is entirely up to you. (But we would encourage it.)
If you want to show off your Star Wars fandom, you can’t go too far wrong with these official backgrounds.
I grew up watching Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! every Saturday morning. Much as I loved it, though, the feeble animation and repetitive plots were apparent even to the young me. Whereas characters such as Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny seemed eternal, extending far into the past and future, Scooby-Doo felt like a show just for that particular moment, for my specific childhood.
Fast-forward 35 years or so, and to my astonishment, my children loved it just as much as I had. I probably wound up watching more Scooby-Doo episodes with my kids than I had watched as a kid. Evidence suggests that my experience is not unique. Scooby-Doo, believe it or not, has over the years been the subject of at least 19 TV series (on CBS, ABC, the WB, Cartoon Network, and Boomerang); more than 40 animated films; and two live-action movies in the early 2000s, the first of which grossed $275 million worldwide.
Which raises the obvious question: What on earth is going on? The Washington Post’s Hank Stuever once summed up the cartoon’s message as “Kids should meddle, dogs are sweet, life is groovy, and if something scares you, you should confront it.” But that hardly seems enough for half a century of on-air appeal.
Even as a kid, I hated Scooby-Doo. I’ve never understood its appeal after all of these years.
If you teardown an iPhone SE and an iPhone 8, they look remarkably similar. We know the SE brings big camera and processor upgrades, but watch the video embedded below (it’s short) to get a sense of how much has stayed the same.
I look at my brand spanking new iPhone (which I of course will likely replace in 5 short months) and while I love how it looks, how fast it runs, Face ID, and how good the cameras are, I keep wandering over to the iPhone SE page on Apple’s site and keep looking for the “gotcha” moment. What is the Achille’s heel that makes this actually a bad phone for someone like me who likes the best in phones?
So far, I can’t really find one.
The primary differences are Face ID, screen real estate, extra camera features. Toughest to give up, for me, would be the extra screen real estate. But I like Touch ID (not as convenient as Face ID, but it has its own convenience), and the iPhone SE camera is an excellent camera, I’d guess good enough for most folks.
And the cost saving is significant.
So when I see the $399 iPhone SE with 5 years of likely updates, with a really good single lens camera, and with it’s processor that’s faster than all 2020 $1,000+ Android phones, and will likely still be faster than all 2021 Android phones…well, it just looks like a damn good phone, and it makes it look like we’ve been frolicking around in excess for years now.
If you’ve been looking forward to the Apple TV+ show Defending Jacob or the History of the Beastie Boys documentary, today’s the day. Both are now live.
Directed by Michael Showalter (“The Big Sick,” “The Lovebirds”) and based on the script by Emmy, Golden Globe, BAFTA, WGA Award winner Georgia Pritchett (“Succession,” “Veep”), “The Shrink Next Door” is a dark comedy inspired by true events that detail the bizarre relationship between psychiatrist to the stars Dr. Isaac “Ike” Herschkopf, played by Paul Rudd, and his longtime patient Martin “Marty” Markowitz, played by Will Ferrell. Over the course of their relationship, the all-too-charming Ike slowly takes over Marty’s life, even moving into Marty’s Hamptons home and taking over his family business.
The series is based on this podcast. Sounds like some dark, dark comedy.
Chances are you have recently spent more time in video chats than ever before, and may have jumped on multiple unfamiliar video call applications. Not all meetings have equal security and privacy needs, and sometimes you’re just concerned about everyones’ ability to join the meeting in the first place.
While it’s likely there are many other important considerations at work, we have a few key concerns for the security and practicality of these tools for newsrooms.
Let’s talk through some common video chat applications and how they approach these issues.
The chart at the bottom of this article shows there is no one, perfect app for everyone. Each person and organization needs to balance their needs and wants with the capabilities of the app in question.
With half a decade of perspective, it’s hard to imagine the watch world before Apple dropped their wrist-worn device, bringing more attention to watches than any other single event or product in recent memory. So, with the milestone just a few hours away, now seems as good a time as any to look back over the last few years, through the lens of the Apple Watch.
This is an Apple Watch retrospective written from our perspective, and hopefully, I can convince even the most Apple Watch-skeptical among you to take this journey with me.
The Apple Watch is a very interesting device five years after launch but there’s a very real sense that it will really come into its own over the next five years.
If you feel confused about whether people should wear masks and why and what kind, you’re not alone. COVID-19 is a novel disease and we’re learning new things about it every day. However, much of the confusion around masks stems from the conflation of two very different functions of masks.
Masks can be worn to protect the wearer from getting infected or masks can be worn to protect others from being infected by the wearer. Protecting the wearer is difficult: It requires medical-grade respirator masks, a proper fit, and careful putting on and taking off. But masks can also be worn to prevent transmission to others, and this is their most important use for society. If we lower the likelihood of one person’s infecting another, the impact is exponential, so even a small reduction in those odds results in a huge decrease in deaths. Luckily, blocking transmission outward at the source is much easier. It can be accomplished with something as simple as a cloth mask.
At the beginning of all of this, there was a lot of confusion regarding masks. Now it’s generally accepted that everyone should wear them, even homemade cloth masks, at all times when outside your home. Because, as the story points out, “Models show if 80% of people wear masks that are 60% effective, easily achievable with cloth, we can get to an effective R0 of less than one. That’s enough to halt the spread of the disease.”
If you happen to have an extra $599.95 that you aren’t blowing on black market sourdough starter, then Kodak would like you to buy its 51,300 piece jigsaw puzzle. The company says that this is the “world’s largest commercially available puzzle,” and it will arrive at your doorstep in one 40-pound box that contains 27 individually wrapped bags of anxiety.
“Featuring wonderful, colorful photographs of twenty seven Wonders from around the World, these pictures were taken by professional photographers and then printed using high-performance printing presses,” Kodak says of its beautifully packaged reminder that we’re all just fragile collections of broken pieces.
Ultimately, the smaller puzzles are supposed to be connected to form the World’s Largest Puzzle, assuming that you have a large enough living space, an empty garage, or access to a vacant department store where you can assemble a puzzle that is six feet wide and 28 feet long.
There’s no way I could do this puzzle. It would completely stress me out.
Apple Inc. is planning to start selling Mac computers with its own main processors by next year, relying on designs that helped popularize the iPhone and iPad, according to people familiar with the matter.
The Cupertino, California-based technology giant is working on three of its own Mac processors, known as systems-on-a-chip, based on the A14 processor in the next iPhone. The first of these will be much faster than the processors in the iPhone and iPad, the people said.
And:
Apple is preparing to release at least one Mac with its own chip next year, according to the people. But the initiative to develop multiple chips, codenamed Kalamata, suggests the company will transition more of its Mac lineup away from current supplier Intel Corp.
Take with a grain of salt. It’s a rumor. But a believable one, very believable. So logical that Apple would want their own processors in every device they make.
Add in the recent rumors about Xcode coming to iPad Pro (big grain of salt, but still), and it all seems so inevitable.
Turn off the TV, silent your phone, go to a quiet room and use a stereo that tears down the walls. This is our version of “Won’t Get Fooled Again” by The Who, played in Milano-Linate.
I absolutely love these videos. I can’t carry a tune in a bucket and couldn’t play a musical instrument even if you put a gun to my head but the sheer joy of all of these musicians, young and old, from all different backgrounds, coming together to play these songs is magical. Check out the Rockin’ 1000 YouTube channel for more.
Typical Rene Ritchie video: Lots of detail, story well-told, well-filmed, well worth watching.
Interesting side note: Rene filmed this with chapter markers (they are detailed about 25 seconds in). Though the chapter markers do show up for me (as breaks in the progress indicator at the bottom of the video) in Chrome, they do not show up in Safari. But they do show up for Rene in the same version of Safari (I asked).
Anyone know why this would be? We’re both running the latest public release of Catalina and Safari. Ping me if you know why this is happening.
