HomePod arrives February 9, available to order this Friday

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From Apple’s press release:

HomePod, the innovative wireless speaker from Apple, arrives in stores beginning Friday, February 9 and is available to order online this Friday, January 26 in the US, UK and Australia. HomePod will arrive in France and Germany this spring.

HomePod delivers stunning audio quality wherever it’s placed — in any room in the house, playing any style of music. Using just your voice, it’s easy and fun to use, and works together with an Apple Music subscription for a breakthrough music experience, providing access to one of the world’s largest cloud music libraries.

On Siri:

Siri, now actively used on over half a billion devices, has developed a deep knowledge of music and understands your preferences and tastes. And with Siri, HomePod can send a message, set a timer, play a podcast, check the news, sports, traffic and weather, and even control a wide range of HomeKit smart home accessories.

And:

Using Siri to deliver deep knowledge of artists, songs, albums and more, HomePod can handle advanced searches within Apple Music’s catalog, so users can ask questions like, “Hey Siri, when was this song released?” or “Hey Siri, can you play something totally different?” to change the mood. Apple Music subscribers can enjoy a catalog of more than 45 million songs, combined with their entire iTunes library, for online or offline listening — completely ad-free.

On SiriKit:

Through SiriKit, HomePod supports third-party messaging apps, so users can ask Siri to send a message to a friend or colleague using apps like WhatsApp. Reminders, note-taking and to-do list apps like Things and Evernote will automatically work with HomePod, so Siri can set reminders, create a new list, mark items as complete, or create and modify notes. For developers interested in adding SiriKit support, more information is available at developer.apple.com/sirikit.

On setup:

Setup is as easy and intuitive as setting up AirPods — simply hold an iPhone next to HomePod and it’s ready to start playing music in seconds. The Siri waveform appears on the top to indicate when Siri is engaged, and integrated touch controls also allow easy navigation.

The biggest question for me, how will Apple distinguish HomePod from Amazon Echo and Google Home, both priced significantly less. HomePod is $349.

Order it Friday, arrives February 9th.

On rumors of the iPhone X being produced for only one year

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Start off with a quick read of this Apple Insider post: If iPhone X Demand Is Less Than Expected, Analyst Expects It to Be ‘End of Life’ When Replacements Ship.

From the post, this bit about KGI predicting a quick end-of-life for iPhone X:

KGI also expects a trio of iPhone models in the fall of 2018. He predicts the iPhone X will be “end of life” in the summer of 2018, instead of being retained as a lower-cost option in the following year. If this is the case, it would be the first time that Apple has not retained the previous year’s model to allow for a wide range of iPhones available at many price points.

John Gruber shares some insight on this:

This would not be the first time an iPhone flagship model didn’t stick around for a second year. In 2013, Apple introduced the iPhone 5S to replace the iPhone 5, and also introduced the iPhone 5C to occupy the second pricing tier.

The iPhone X was a relatively giant leap in hardware design. The notch took a lot of heat and it seems a logical speculation that Apple is working hard to shrink the hardware footprint and the notch. And that means a new rev of the iPhone X. Once that happens, it’d seem logical to end-of-life the previous version. If the KGI speculation is true. If.

But my favorite part of Gruber’s post is his takedown of a Newsweek article, with the headline:

Is Apple About to Cancel the iPhone X? Poor Sales Mean Device Faces ‘End of Life’”

This article got a fair amount of traction, but it was based on the Apple Insider article quoted above. Headlines. A sharp, cutting tool, dangerous when used poorly.

Follow the link above to Gruber’s post. A worthy read.

Apple adds Apple-designed public bikes to Apple Park campus

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Kif Leswing, Business Insider:

The “ring” building is situated on 175 acres, so it can take a lucky Apple employee as long as 10 minutes to walk from the parking garage to their office.

So Apple will provide 1,000 free bikes and 2,000 bike parking spots on its campus for employees to get from place to place.

Most Silicon Valley tech giants provide free bicycles for their employees, but given Apple’s corporate preferences, its bikes are minimally designed, compared to Google’s rainbow-colored two-wheelers.

It seems Apple settled on a completely chrome, minimalist bicycle design, and ordered a whole lot.

Not new news, but there’s a bit of video and a still shot of the bikes. Interesting to compare Google’s Google-color-scheme bikes to Apple’s minimalist take.

What I wish the iPad would gain from the Mac

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Ryan Christoffel, MacStories:

If you want an iPad to supplement your iPhone and Mac, you can still get one in the $329 “just call me iPad” model introduced last spring. But the bulk of Apple’s iPad efforts of late have centered on making the device a capable replacement for the traditional computer. The iPad Pro and iOS 11 represent a new vision for the iPad. This vision puts the iPad not next to the Mac, but instead squarely in its place. It’s a vision embodied by the question, “What’s a computer?”

If the tagline “What’s a computer?” doesn’t ring a bell, take a moment to watch it.

Two key moments:

  • At about 30 seconds in, our hero does a super-Pro-move to fold up the keyboard. I’ve not yet found someone who can duplicate that move, at least not nearly as smoothly. Wonder how many takes that took.

  • At 55 seconds in, there’s the real payoff. “What’s a computer?” Apple is clearly pitching the iPad Pro as the be-all and end-all in devices.

Ryan’s MacStories post does a terrific job answering that question, painting the differences between a Mac and an iPad with absolutely no snark or venom. This is a wish list, an exploration of what the iPad still needs to cross the “What’s a computer?” divide.

Apple intros Apple Music for Artists

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Billboard:

Today Apple launches Apple Music for Artists, a dashboard designed to provide acts with hundreds of data points giving deep analytical insight into their fans’ listening and buying habits.

And:

The easily navigable dashboard’s home page provides artists with their current number of plays, spins, song purchases and album purchases. The user can specify the time period ranging from the past 24 hours to the 2015 launch of Apple Music.

An Insights panel showcases key milestones via bullet points that highlight such information as all-time number of plays and purchases for specific songs or cumulatively.

And:

Apple Music for Artists debuts more than two years after Spotify, Pandora and YouTube bowed their own artist dashboards. While admittedly a late entry, Apple hopes to make up for its tardiness with the depth of information available, level of transparency and the ease of use provided by the clean user interface.

Good news for Apple Music artists.

One side note: The original Billboard headline was “Apple Bows Apple Music For Artists to Provide Acts With Deep Analytics Dive”. Took me a few reads to parse that one. Music and Hollywood writers have their own headline language. You’d rarely (if ever) find the word “boffo” in a tech headline. But “Boffo Box Office”? Happens all the time in the Hollywood press.

When Hollywood folk check out the tech blogs, do they see the same alien language?

Woman runs through landscape of iconic album covers in Pandora ad

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This ad (embedded in the main Loop post) ran last year, but I just encountered it this weekend, thought it worth sharing.

I feel like the days of iconic album covers are all in the past. It’s not that the covers are any less creative, it’s more that I tend to get my music via links or as part of crafted playlists.

At the same time, album art went from 12″ album covers, to less than 5″ for a CD cover, down the the tiny thumbnails we have today.

No matter, enjoy the ad.

iPad: “Attempting data recovery”

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iPhone J.D. legal blog:

The computer asked me if I wanted to update the iPad to the latest version of iOS, and I said yes without thinking much about it. Everything seemed to go fine, but then at the very end I saw an error message that I had never seen before telling me to press the iPad’s home button to attempt data recovery. What the heck? Nervous that I had somehow lost data on my daughter’s iPad, I pressed the button as instructed and crossed my fingers.

I then waited a while while the iPad told me that it was attempting data recovery.

I’ve seen this message, and I’ve heard from a number of other folks who’ve encountered the same issue while trying to apply an iOS update. Here’s a link showing what this looks like.

Seems to me it’d be easy enough to add in some kind of clarifying text to this error message. As is, it is a bit terrifying.

Tim Cook’s take on learning to code vs learning a new language

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This snippet comes from a Guardian interview with Tim Cook:

Cook said: “I think if you had to make a choice, it’s more important to learn coding than a foreign language. I know people who disagree with me on that. But coding is a global language; it’s the way you can converse with 7 billion people.”

From Kirk McElhearn’s response:

I agree with Mr. Cook that coding teaches people logic and many other skills, but suggesting that it allows you to converse with 7 billion people is Trumpian foolishness. (If you follow Mr. Cook on Twitter, you’ll notice that he occasionally posts tweets in languages other than English. His minions clearly give him the texts, but it’s surprising that he doesn’t post code to converse with his Twitter followers.)

At a strictly surface level, I think Kirk has a point. Clearly, programming languages are not intended as conversing languages. You’d never chat with someone in Swift.

But digging in a bit, I took a different meaning from Tim’s comment. Programming languages are a common currency, a common language shared by many different cultures.

That said, is it more important to learn coding than a foreign language?

Food for thought.

iPhone X ad: “I am the greatest”

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[VIDEO] This iPhone X ad (embedded in the main Loop post) reached back in time, editing together snippets from a comedy album Muhammad Ali created early on in his professional boxing career, before he changed his name. The album was released under his birth name of Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr., back when the world was first learning about “The Greatest”.

The snippets used in the Apple ad are from the second track on the album.

Here’s a link to the album’s Wikipedia page.

Checking out Amazon Go, the first no-checkout convenience store

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Glenn Fleishman, Fast Company:

Every part of the U.S. has a different local term for a convenience store: the bodega, the corner store—even “the Wawa,” a chain name that Northeasteners use generically. Now Amazon wants to extend its brand to the notion of a grab-and-go shop with Amazon Go, a store that literally lets you grab and go.

And:

Amazon Go works like—well, like a physical manifestation of Amazon’s 1-Click checkout, where you “click” by taking an item off a shelf. On arrival, you launch the Go app, which comes out today for iPhones and Android phones and connects to your Amazon account. It displays a 2D code that you scan at one of several glass security gates. The code identifies you to the store and opens the gate.

And:

Once you’re in, AI algorithms start to track you and everything you pick up and keep. You can bag your items as you go if you so choose, and need interact with an employee only if you’re buying alcohol, in which case an associate standing in the liquor area will check your ID.

And:

I tested the system by picking up a can of LaCroix water and leaving the store. It was a non-event, which is sort of the point. The experience doesn’t feel like an act of advanced technology unless you scan the ceiling and notice the hundreds of matte-black cameras surveying the shopping floor below.

This is the future of retail. Or, at least, a major step along that path. Two things occur to me:

  • This is a direct example of AI eliminating the need for specific jobs. Clearly, there are plenty of employees in the chain here, both in building out the store and designing and coding the AI itself. But those jobs are front loaded. Once the stores are built, and the AI in place, this will require very few people to run.

  • What happens if someone gets hold of your Amazon login info and goes on a spree through a store? If someone uses my credit card fraudulently, my credit card company covers me 100%. Does Amazon have a similar policy?

This is a great read.

Disney hires Apple veteran to launch its Netflix killer

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Variety:

Disney announced last summer that it plans to launch an ESPN-branded direct-to-consumer offering early this year, followed by a Disney-branded service in 2019. To power the service, Disney acquired a large stake in the streaming solutions provider BAMTech for $1.58 billion last year.

And:

Disney’s BAMTech Media has hired former Apple and Samsung executive Kevin Swint as SVP and GM, Disney SVOD Service, to build, and ultimately run, the company’s upcoming Netflix competitor.

Netflix killer? I don’t think so. But they will make life just a bit harder for Netflix:

To prepare for the launch of its own subscription video business, Disney announced that it won’t renew its distribution agreement with Netflix.

Presumably, that will also include the content they will acquire in the Fox deal.

For the first time in over 20 years, Office is built from one codebase for all platforms

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A new version of Microsoft Office 2016 just shipped (release notes here).

What really caught my eye was this tweet from Microsoft’s Erik Schwiebert:

https://twitter.com/Schwieb/status/954037656677072896

As Erik says, that is a massive code realignment. My 2 cents, this is good news for all Mac Office users. The Office experience will now have more consistency across platforms, and there’s more of a chance for new features to make their way to the Mac at the same time as they appear on Windows.

Side note: Office 365 subscriptions give you the opportunity to keep up with the latest version of Office at no extra cost. A license to a specific version of Office does not. When Office 2019 is released (presumably, later this year), Office 2016 users will have to pony up for a new license. Office 365 subscribers will have the opportunity to upgrade as part of their subscription.

Apple overhauls App Store web interface with new iOS-like design

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Chance Miller, 9to5Mac:

Apple today has rolled out a major redesign for the App Store web interface. The new redesign replaces the dated and clunky interface that previously housed the App Store on the web

The new redesign takes cues from the all-new App Store in iOS 11, which offers larger images, a focus on curation and reviews, and more. On the new webpage, you’ll see a larger app heading, preceded by “This app is only available on the App Store for iOS devices.”

To see this for yourself, here’s a link to today’s iOS app of the day, MUBI. Open the link on your Mac.

As Chance points out, there’s now a big warning towards the top of the page (blue background) telling you you have to go to the iOS App Store if you want to buy the app.

While the refreshed look is nice, it still feels like a broken marketing link, forcing me to switch devices (from my Mac to my iOS device) and type in the name of the app in an iOS App Store search field to find the app and make a purchase.

And this, from Craig Grannell, in a post entitled Apple’s App Store Preview needs to steal some ideas from Google Play:

It’s 2018. Apple has Apple Pay. If I’m sent to An App Store Preview page after reading an article about an amazing new iOS app, I should be able to buy it there and then, and send it to my iOS devices. Likewise, if I’m on my iPhone, I should be able to buy and send an iPad-only app to my iPad (or vice-versa). I shouldn’t have to remember it later, by sending myself an email or note.

There’s clearly a reason Apple is doing this. But to me, it’s just as clear that this is adding friction to the purchase process.

Jeff Bezos, margins, and the future of retail

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Benedict Evans, from a terrific read entitled TV, retail, advertising and cascading collapses:

When Sears and Macy’s go bust, how many malls do they take with them, and how many other retailers that might have been doing fine on their own will go or lose a lot of their footprint because of that? And, where were those retailers advertising? What was their TV budget? How much of this is self-reinforcing – the more you buy online, the more you buy online?

And:

Suppose you go on eBay and buy the last ten years’ of Elle Decoration and drop it into Google Brain, and then wave your phone at your living room and ask what cushions or lamps you would like?

And:

Suppose I put a bunch of HD cameras in the right parts of Berlin and Brooklyn and track what people are wearing, entirely automatically, and then see what of that shows up in middle America in a year, and then apply that pattern matching to what people are wearing in Berlin now?

And:

There’s a famous Jeff Bezos quote that ‘your margin is my opportunity’ – right now Amazon is building a billion dollar ad business in its own search results, but I suspect he also looks at the $500bn that’s spent every year on advertising and the further $500bn that’s spent on marketing and sees money that should be going to lower prices and same-day or 1-hour delivery.

The mechanics of retail are changing. Margin (simplistically put, what Apple charges for an iPhone minus what they pay to create that iPhone) is critical to a company, necessary for them to prosper, grow. The slimmer the margin, the thinner the ice on which that company skates.

In “your margin is my opportunity”, Bezos sees disruption in large margins. He does not need to advertise products. The company that creates the product pays for the advertising/marketing out of their margins. An opportunity indeed.

Safari 11 tips and tricks

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Apple Insider pulls together the details on what’s new with Safari 11 on both iOS and macOS. Don’t miss the video embedded at the top of the Apple Insider post.

The end of the conference era

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Marco Arment:

Having attended (and sometimes spoken at) many of these conferences over the years, I can’t deny the feeling I’ve had in the last couple of years that the era of the small Apple-ish developer-ish conference is mostly or entirely behind us.

And:

It’s getting increasingly difficult for organizers to sell tickets, in part because it’s hard to get big-name speakers without the budget to pay them much (which would significantly drive up ticket costs, which exacerbates other problems), but also because conferences now have much bigger competition in connecting people to their colleagues or audiences.

Marco digs into the why’s of this change. Good read.

The best smart thermostats of 2018

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If you are in the market for a smart thermostat, this is a solid read. The Ecobee4 and 3rd generation Nest are editor’s choices.

Inventec begins shipping long-awaited HomePods

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Taipei Times:

Inventec Corp, one of the two assemblers for Apple Inc’s HomePod, has started shipping the US company’s long-awaited “smart” speaker with an initial shipment of about 1 million units, industry sources said.

I’m really interested in learning what features will ship with this first version of HomePod.

Obviously, the music capabilities will be first and foremost. But how much of Siri will be available? Will HomePod’s Siri be limited in any way? Will HomePod’s Siri domain be more detailed when it comes to music?

How will updates be handled? Will HomePod be linked to my iPhone, with a HomePod app for handling settings/updates like my Apple Watch?

How will HomePod distinguish itself from existing products like the Amazon Echo and Google Home? What is the value proposition here? How would a consumer justify the extra cost?

I’m very much looking forward to getting one, seeing all this for myself.

The fascinating history of the trackball. Thanks, Canada!

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Tedium:

So, as it turns out, before the virtual bowling alley borrowed something from the trackball, the inventors of the trackball borrowed something from the actual bowling alley—specifically, the Canadian variation of it, called 5-pin bowling.

And:

The [trackball] is Canadian through and through, a project formulated at the behest of the Royal Canadian Navy by Ferranti Canada, as part of a much larger project—a military information system called Digital Automated Tracking and Resolving, or DATAR.

And:

“Think about the state of play in the computer world in 1952. There were only a handful of operating computers in the world. Almost all were unreliable. There was no common software language… pulse rates were only 50-100kHz. The idea of using a ball to control a cursor which could intervene and change program execution was a million miles ahead.”

This is a terrific look back at a device that changed the path of computing. [Via The Overspill]

Tim Cook talks new Apple site, tax repatriation, battery kerfuffle, and more

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[VIDEO] Watch the videos embedded in the main Loop post, two different takes on the same interview. If you only watch one, watch the second. It’s a bit more detailed, longer stretches of Tim talking.

One takeaway from all this: Tim is earnest. When he talks about Apple’s intentions regarding the battery snafu, I believe he means what he says, and I believe what he says is true.

New York Times: It’s time for Apple to build a less addictive iPhone

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Farhad Manjoo, New York Times:

Tech “addiction” is a topic of rising national concern. I put the A-word in quotes because the precise pull that our phones exert over us isn’t the same as that of drugs or alcohol. The issue isn’t really new, either; researchers who study how we use digital technology have for years been warning of its potential negative effects on our cognition, psyche and well-being.

What is new is who has joined the ranks of the worried. Recently, a parade of tech luminaries, including several former Facebook employees, have argued that we’re no match for the sophisticated machinery of engagement and persuasion being built into smartphone apps. Their fears are manifold: They’re worried about distraction, productivity, how social networks alter our emotional lives and relationships, and what they’re doing to children.

And:

I got to thinking about Apple’s responsibility last week when two large investors wrote an open letter asking the company to do more about its products’ effects on children. I was initially inclined to dismiss the letter as a publicity stunt; if you’re worried about children and tech, why not go after Facebook?

But when I called several experts, I found they agreed with the investors. Sure, they said, Apple isn’t responsible for the excesses of the digital ad business, but it does have a moral responsibility to — and a business interest in — the well-being of its customers.

I am not sure I agree with Farhad’s allegation of Apple’s moral responsibility, but I think this article is worth reading. More and more, the world is stumbling around, staring at their phones and losing their connections with each other, losing touch with their humanity.

Is this Apple’s fault? I don’t think so. I think blame, in general, is not helpful, and I also think we were heading down this road as technology evolved, whether Apple was there to steer us or not.

One more quote from the article:

There’s another, more important reason for Apple to take on tech addiction: because it would probably do an elegant job of addressing the problem.

“I do think this is their time to step up,” said Tristan Harris, a former design ethicist at Google who now runs Time Well Spent, an organization working to improve technology’s impact on society.

“In fact,” Mr. Harris added, “they may be our only hope.”

Just me, or did this immediately spring to mind for you, too?

TWiT is suing Twitter, alleging breach of contract and copyright infringement

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Megan Rose Dickey, TechCrunch:

TWiT, officially known as This Week in Tech, is suing Twitter. The audio and video media platform alleges breach of written contract, breach of oral agreement, intentional interference with prospective economic advantage and trademark infringement.

As the story goes, Twitter co-founder Evan Williams had previously told Leo Laporte Twitter was simply a text-based microblogging service, the lawsuit states.

And:

As the lawsuit alleges, what happened on Twitter — short, 140-character bursts of text — was very different from the audio and video TWiT produced on its platform. In 2009, however, Laporte felt concerned that Twitter was going to move in on TWiT’s audio and video, the lawsuit states. That’s when Laporte allegedly reached out to Williams, who told Laporte “we’re not expanding to audio or video under the Twitter brand,” the lawsuit states.

This Week in Tech started as a roundtable discussion at MacWorld Expo, back in 2005. Twitter started in March of 2006. So it’s clear which came first.

That said, in all the time I’ve been aware of both, I’ve never once confused TWiT with Twitter.

And that said, it sounds like the core issue here is an alleged oral agreement. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Some pain points in the iOS 11 Music app

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Yesterday, we posted an article titled, Apple Music and the loss of the album.

As a result of that discussion, I became aware of this post from a few month’s ago, a piece by Dave B on pain points in the iOS 11 Music app.

Dave does a nice job digging through Apple’s music experience, and I hope that folks on the Apple Music team take a few minutes to read through this post, if they haven’t already. Some terrific food for thought.

High School Senior Rebecca Kahn emails Tim Cook for interview. Tim said sure.

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Rebecca Kahn:

The process began when my computer class teacher at Porter-Gaud challenged us to interview a person of interest in technology and present what we learned.

And:

It was my senior year, and I wanted to interview not just a real leader in technology, but one whose philosophy and ideas about life were motivating as well. As soon as the assignment was announced, one name immediately came to mind: Apple CEO Tim Cook. He is not just in charge of the world’s largest tech company, but he personally advocates and stands up for things he believes are right. He travels the world and meets with political and innovative leaders. What was the likelihood of him even responding to me?

I love this story.