Yearly Archives: 2015

The Verge:

On the sidelines of Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference, marketing SVP Phil Schiller has spoken to Daring Fireball’s John Gruber for a live episode of his The Talk Show podcast. The full interview hasn’t been posted yet, but it’ll be worth checking out for Apple fans when it is — Gruber asked Schiller about a few things that have become hot topics among the company’s community of users and developers.

Can’t wait to see the video. If Twitter is any indication, it was quite the surprise and quite the interview. Kudos to Gruber for scoring a big one.

Billboard:

Apple Music, which launches on June 30 with an arsenal of 30 million songs, has been in the works for more than a decade, says Iovine, who first started talking to the Cupertino-based giant on the heels of the iTunes launch in 2003. Now, it’s a reality, boasting on-demand streaming (with an offline component, to help stem the decline of downloads), a 24-hour human-curated radio station (helmed by former BBC DJ Zane Lowe) and a connect function that facilitates direct-to-fan engagement.

It’s a massive undertaking whose impact is sure to be felt almost instantaneously thanks to the 800 million credit cards Apple already has on file. With a click, users can sign up for $9.99 a month — or $14.99 for the family plan, which allows up to six accounts — price points that, Cue says, took much deliberation.

These interviews are always interesting not only for what they say but what they don’t say. Notwithstanding Iovine’s “unpracticed” appearance and Eddy Cue’s dancing during WWDC, these two guys are the brains and the engine behind the new service.

Apple:

Student Winners – Elementary Minute for iPhone, jump-O for iPhone

Design Award Winners – Shadowmatic, Metamorphabet, Robinhood, Affinity Designer, Crossy Road, Fantastical 2, Does not Commute, Vainglory, Pacemaker.

I always love this list because, if nothing else, the vast majority of these award winners are gorgeous looking apps.

ZDNet:

With iOS 9 Apple is making a direct play for Android users with an app to help them migrate their data and apps to the iPhone.

The new app, called ‘Move to iOS’ will be released this fall with iOS 9 and is one of two apps targeting the Android platform, the other being Apple Music.

According to Apple, the apps will allow Android users the ability to securely transfer “contacts, message history, camera photos and videos, web bookmarks, mail accounts, calendars, wallpaper, and DRM-free songs and books” wirelessly to an iPhone.

Great move by Apple to make this process as easy, painless and efficient as possible.

Six colors:

Now that the main show is over, I’ve combed through Apple’s site and press releases to try and find more about those details that didn’t make the cut for the presentation, as well as those announcements that may have been glossed over.

Dan has a good overview of yesterday, recapping what was and wasn’t announced. He caught a bunch of little stuff I missed or that Apple didn’t even mention during the keynote.

Nieman Lab:

The big news — and pitched as one of the biggest new features in iOS 9 — is an app called News. It’s an awful lot like Flipboard — though the power of being installed on every iPhone and iPad is obviously huge.

The presentation features all the same sort of bells and whistles we’ve seen in Facebook’s Instant Articles — animations, swipe-able photo galleries, fluid movement. And it promises, like other aggregator apps, to get better with time, as it learns which sorts of articles you’re interested in.

Its importance remains to be seen. I don’t necessarily think “Apple just sherlock’ed Flipboard” but, depending on how news organizations take to this, it will be another medium to publish rich content on. I’m interested to see whether or not average people will be able to create “magazines” with these tools.

John Welch:

WEDR, and its DJs taught me things. Like what funk was. What soul was. Not the calm, whitewashed things you saw on TV when they trotted out Ray Charles for yet another rendering of “Georgia on My Mind” or “Hit The Road, Jack”. But the deep dirty funk. It’s where I first heard Prince, Earth, Wind, and Fire, and so many other artists.

But here’s the thing: WEDR and the DJs were the only way I was going to hear that. My friends were all into either Zeppelin & Pink Floyd, or Disco. From them, I’d have never heard this stuff.

My friend John Welch makes a great point about Apple Music and Beats 1. Like him, I’m interested, if not excited, by what Apple and their DJs come up with. Like John, I’m of an age when DJs mattered. Maybe Apple can bring that age back.

Ars Technica:

All of the Apple Watch’s third-party applications so far have used WatchKit, a small SDK that limits apps’ functionality and UI and restricts them from using all the watch’s underlying hardware. At its WWDC keynote today, Apple announced that it would be moving beyond WatchKit and giving its third-party developers a more capable, native SDK that can take advantage of more of the Apple Watch’s features.

With WatchOS 2 and the native SDK, third-party apps will be able to do more of the things that Apple’s first-party apps can do.

This is a really big deal, akin to the launch of the App store the year after the original iPhone launch. It’s going to make the Apple Watch app ecosystem positively explode.

Macworld:

On Monday morning at WWDC, Apple CEO Tim Cook revealed new enhancements to iOS 9, calling it “the world’s most advanced mobile operating system.” Among the key features are a major Siri update, deep-dive transit Maps and a ton of useful user-experience improvements.

According to Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering who led the iOS presentation and demo, Apple wants to add “intelligence throughout the user experience.”

Watching the keynote, I thought the same thing – Siri will not only get more “intelligence” but, for me, a lot more functionality.

Re/code:

Apple today introduced the next version of its Mac operating system, OS X El Capitan, focusing on two key areas of improvement: Experience and performance.

Mac OS X El Capitan is available to developers today, and will be released to the public in the fall as a free download.

I’ll get it just for the cool “find my cursor” feature.

Apple:

WWDC15 is the epicenter of change. Experience the keynote live today at 10 a.m. PDT.

Apple has already begun posting photos from outside the Moscone Center.

This year, Microsoft is making major investments in developer and cloud tools to move beyond Windows and bring great support to iOS developers and other popular platforms. As part of this focus, Microsoft is sponsoring Altconf this week and will be there to show you some of the cool new services and free tools to help you take your apps to the next level.

I also want to thank Microsoft for sponsoring the Beard Bash party on Monday June 8th. Life may run on code, but we all know developers run on beer.

If you cannot attend Altconf or the Beardbash, you can learn more about what is possible at http://AnyDevAnyApp.com.

Mashable:

The day before Apple kicked off its annual Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC), the company hosted a special orientation session for the recipients of its WWDC Scholarship Program — with a special surprise guest, CEO Tim Cook.

Cook, who surprised the scholarship winners by making an appearance at the orientation session. He looked at apps, talked to the winners and took selfies.

Good interview.

Future Sonics is hands down the best in the industry. This is the company that invented professional Ear Monitors, and they continue to care about your ears and the quality of sound you hear. I’m getting these.

HTC today introduced a 24-karat gold limited edition of the HTC One M9. There’s just a slight problem: One of the three photos depicting the new smartphone was taken with an iPhone.

The most unfortunate photo taken in a while.

I love shopping on The Music Zoo Web site. I want all of these.

It’s become somewhat of a tradition now—the AltBeardBash at WWDC is in its fourth year, and we have big plans for the event next week.

As with previous years, entertainment will be provided by the Amazing Embarrassonic Human Karaoke Machine—these guys truly are amazing.

While the party is an invite-only event, I always hold a few tickets for readers of The Loop and listeners of my two podcasts, The Dalrymple Report with Merlin Mann and Amplified. So, if you’ll be in San Francisco for WWDC and would like to attend the party on Monday night, send me an email and I’ll see what I can do. I can’t guarantee entry, only that you’ll have a chance to come—as you can imagine, it’s a packed place.

We have three great sponsors for this year’s party:

• Pixelmator
• Microsoft
• UserTesting

Thanks to those companies for all the support.

BBC:

Closely related to sharks but with long, flat bodies and wing-like pectoral fins, they are ideally suited to swooping through the water yet seem equally at home in the air, so much so that they have earned the name “flying rays”.

Mobula rays can reach heights of more than two metres (6ft 6ins), remaining airborne for several seconds, but their landings are much less graceful, creating a loud bang as they belly-flop back into the sea.

The video on this page is spectacular. I’d love to go scuba diving with this group but I’d be afraid of a 5.2 m (17 ft), 2,000 lbs ray landing on me.

Deal with it.Thanks to Bold Poker for sponsoring The Loop this week.

Bold Poker: Deal with it.

I’ve been a Marshall guy forever, but those new Marshalls can’t touch what Boogie is doing. I’m getting one of these Mark Five 25 amps. I’ll post my thoughts.

Jim and Dan talk about next week’s WWDC, Apple’s interest in music and television, and more.

Deluxe editions of Led Zeppelin’s final three studio albums: Presence, In Through The Out Door, and Coda will be released in July. As with the previous deluxe editions, all three have been newly remastered by guitarist and producer Jimmy Page and are accompanied by companion audio comprised of previously unreleased music related to the original release selected and compiled by Page.

Jimmy has done a good job on remastering some of the band’s other works, so this should be worth picking up.