Yearly Archives: 2015

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A bit of devastating news.

iMore:

The company has just posted three new TV commercials for Apple Music, each one focusing on using the service to discover new artists.

This was one of the promises Apple made when they first announced Apple Music. But I don’t know that these ads are compelling enough to make someone who is not a subscriber become one.

CNET:

Sam Galloway, the University of Auckland student who shot the film, said in the description of his YouTube video that he was on a spear-fishing trip in waters off the coast of Little Barrier Island when he and a friend came across the killer whales.

Some of the younger ones were actually quite friendly.

“The larger ones weren’t very interested in us,” Galloway wrote, “but the calves came in for a close look.”

I’m lucky enough to live on the West coast of Canada where Orca spotting is very common this time of year. They are magnificent animals regardless of whether you see them from a boat or the water like these lucky guys did.

Billboard:

The station is a fusion of old-school and futurism that reminds some of college radio, some of the BBC and some of the halcyon early days of FM. At its helm stands Zane Lowe, 41, the effusive, hyper-verbal, New Zealand-born former tastemaker-in-chief for the BBC’s Radio 1, who, as Beats 1’s “special creative and lead anchor,” is charged with programming the station, which so far has been exciting, chaotic, attention-grabbing and unpredictable… apparently just the way his bosses (low-key, retiring people with surnames like Iovine, Reznor and Cue) want it — and so far, so do listeners.

I don’t think it goes as far as reminding me of college radio (after all, my college radio was a freaky mess) but it certainly has opened my ears to artists I hadn’t considered listening to. For all of the problems I and many others have with Apple Music overall, Beats 1 remains a daily listen for me.

Benedict Evans:

None of these are killer apps or ‘use cases’. All of them could be done with your phone. They’re just better with a watch.

This really sums up how I feel about the watch’s UI.

Six additional stainless steel links for wrists that exceed 205mm.

I can say from experience that it’s very easy to add or remove links to the Link Bracelet.

Apple has introduced a new feature for iCloud on the web that allows you to restore deleted items. Not only can you recover files that you’ve deleted, but also restore contacts, calendars, and reminders. This new feature also shows you how long it will be until those items are permanently deleted if you choose not to restore them.

Great feature.

For example, even with Cortana and searching the Web from the Start menu disabled, opening Start and typing will send a request to www.bing.com to request a file called threshold.appcache which appears to contain some Cortana information, even though Cortana is disabled. The request for this file appears to contain a random machine ID that persists across reboots.

As the article notes, it appears to be harmless traffic, but it still shouldn’t happen.

LA Times:

The world’s most popular streaming service revealed on Friday that the world’s most powerful man, President Obama, and his administration have launched an official channel on Spotify, and will be contributing playlists to the service. The president released the contents of his first two playlists on Friday through his @potus Twitter account.

I’ve been listening to these playlists all day. I’d like to think POTUS himself picked these songs but, regardless, there’s some great tunes on them.

Realmac Software’s Daniel Counsell revisits a topic that’s been discussed for years, but still not addressed by Apple: Paid upgrades in the Mac App Store.

Thanks to Pad & Quill for sponsoring The Loop this week. I own a number of their products and they are all top quality.

From Kari (Mrs PQ):

Pad & Quill is passionate about designing and crafting unique leather bags, accessories and cases for Apple products. We employ the best leathers, canvas and various materials to make products that are beautiful, functional, durable and ageless. Our craftsmen exemplify the heart and soul of our company and we celebrate their skill by inviting each artisan to sign each Leather Bag or Apple Watch Bands as it is completed for you, our customer.

I love this interview. Marc talks about some of his favorite, and not so favorite, things in life.

Without comment, the U.S. Federal Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Samsung’s bid to reconsider a previous ruling largely backing Apple — leaving the U.S. Supreme Court as the only legal option left for Samsung to try to overturn hundreds of millions of dollars in damages it now owes Apple in their ongoing patent feud.

Good. Make the scumbags pay already.

In May, engineers from Apple’s secretive Special Project group met with officials from GoMentum Station, a 2,100-acre former naval base near San Francisco that is being turned into a high-security testing ground for autonomous vehicles.

Very interesting.

Happens to me every day.

Macworld:

I recently made some suggestions about how you can manage a classical music library in iTunes. Apple Music, however, can be even more of a challenge for listening to classical music. This isn’t surprising; the music streaming model is designed around the “song” rather than multi-movement works, such as symphonies and sonatas. Here are a few tips to help you listen to classical music more efficiently.

I like classical music at times but am no means an aficionado. This article may help some of you who are get through the ins and outs of classical on Apple Music.

Above Avalon:

The tablet market is in complete disarray. Only five short years ago, the iPad helped jumpstart the category, ushering in multi-touch computing and the modern-day app revolution to large-screen devices. Today, there has never been a time when the tablet market faces so much unknown.

A quick look at iPad and tablet shipment data would show that things have gotten bad in recent quarters. However, in reality, things are much worse than quarterly shipment data would suggest.

I think Apple sees this as a good problem to have. They are still selling lots of iPads, are still the market leader and still have the opportunity to control the future of tablets.

But there’s no doubt the market for tablets like the iPad has cratered, due in no small part to large screen iPhones. I know my iPad is only used as a bedside alarm clock now because the iPhone 6 plus has taken over almost all of the functionality I needed and wanted in the iPad. It’s going to be fascinating to see how and if Apple can do anything about this problem or if the iPad will go down as the most successful “failed” product Apple has ever produced.

The Bloggess:

When I was little my favorite places were libraries. You weren’t expected to speak, which was heaven for a shy girl with an anxiety disorder. Thousands of small secret stories were hidden in plain sight all around you, just waiting to be held in your hands and discovered.

As a small girl in rural Texas, I knew that the best chance I had of seeing worlds that would never be open to me, and meeting fantastic people I’d never be bold enough to speak to was through books. I was able to see places that exist (or that had existed, and or that would never exist) through the words of the storytellers whose worlds had been bound up and shared and protected through generations of docent-guardians who called themselves “librarians”.

I still remember when I was first allowed to go on the bus by myself to the Halifax Public Library. There was a huge (to a ten year old) sculpture of Winston Churchhill you had to pass by. The library was a sanctuary to a shy, fat little kid.

No one picked on him there and he could indulge his love of reading. His family couldn’t afford many books but the library let him read anything he wanted to. It’s where he discovered science fiction, history and travel – all things that took him away from his boring, scary life and into the great big world he knew was out there. That little boy still loves libraries and, when he went back home for a visit last year, he made a point to go the library and say hello to Winston — just like he did when he was a kid.

Tim Cook:

Diversity is critical to innovation and it is essential to Apple’s future. We aspire to do more than just make our company as diverse as the talent available to hire. We must address the broad underlying challenges, offer new opportunities, and create a future generation of employees as diverse as the world around us. We also aspire to make a difference beyond Apple.

Great progress.

Graham Cochrane is doing a series a videos showing users how to mix a song. I always like watching these types of videos—every audio engineer has their own way of doing things, but I usually pick up a tidbit from everyone.

Apple posted a support document showing users how to install or upgrade to Windows 10.

Jim and Merlin talk about beta software, bass players, and how to minimize stress while traveling.

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To be clear, I haven’t used this, but a reader wrote and said it’s very fast and does the same thing as Ghostery. It’s always good to have an alternative.

Here is the company’s new Gear S2 smartwatch interface.

Apple released iTunes 12.2.2 this morning with a number of updates aimed specially at problems people have had with Apple Music. Here’s what’s new in this version:

Macworld:

Check out Ghostery, a Safari extension (also available for Firefox, Chrome, and Internet Explorer). With Ghostery installed, whenever you visit a Web page that uses such tricks to track, you’ll briefly see a box listing all the services that are tracking your visit to that page.

Click the Ghostery icon in Safari’s toolbar, and you get a detailed list of each of those service along with the specific script(s) each is using on that Web page. Click a script to view it in a new Safari tab or window. Click the More Info link next to a service to view Ghostery’s page for that company, which includes information about the company; contact information; a link to the company’s full privacy policy; and a summary of the types of data the company collects, how that data is shared, and how long it’s retained.

I’ve been using Ghostery for a while and really like the way it reminds me of just how much tracking is going on and it shows you just how ridiculous the situation has gotten. One page I visited had 54 trackers on it. Needless to say, it was a painfully slow web site.