Tipping point for Apple Pay as majority of UK tills accept limitless payments

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The Telegraph:

Jennifer Bailey, the head of Apple’s payments business, said over half of contactless payment terminals in the UK are now able to take Apple Pay transactions of any value. Most card readers had previously been restricted to £30, the default upper limit for contactless card transactions.

And:

Contactless card payments are limited to £30 to prevent fraud, since they do not require shoppers to enter a PIN.

Apple Pay transactions, which are made by holding an iPhone or Apple Watch against a card reader, are approved using the iPhone fingerprint scanner or watch’s biometric sensors. The extra security allows Apple Pay to make payments of any value, but retailers have had to embark on a programme of terminal upgrades to support them.

“We think the majority of the contactless terminals [in the UK] are now limitless,” Ms Bailey said.

Slow, but steady, steady growth.

iOS 11: Federico’s iPad wishes and concept video

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[VIDEO] Federico Viticci, writing for MacStories:

The iPad needs another bold, daring step towards the future. With iOS 11, Apple has an opportunity to pick up where they left off with iOS 9, forging a new direction for the iPad platform.

Every year ahead of WWDC, I collect some of my thoughts about the current state of iOS and consider where Apple could take their software next.

Federico’s vision, his collaboration with Sam Beckett, is detailed in his MacStories post, with the video embedded in the main Loop post. Frankly, I find the scope astonishing. Watch it full screen at the highest possible resolution. As Federico says, this isn’t a WWDC prediction, it’s a vision of what Federico thinks the iPad could and should be.

Building a Hackintosh for $70

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[VIDEO] This is insane. Faster than the 13″ MacBook Pro with Touch Bar. For $70. Video embedded in the main Loop post.

Three videos to ease you through your Friday

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[VIDEO] Not quite sure how to describe these three videos (all embedded in the main Loop post), other than to say they are all old, all have a groove and they all make me smile. Thanks to the Twitterverse for sharing these.

Painting purchased in 1984 for $19,000, just sold for $110 million

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Bloomberg:

An untitled portrait by Jean Michel-Basquiat sold for $110.5 million at Sotheby’s in New York, setting a record for any American artist. The buyer was Japanese online retail magnate Yusaku Maezawa.

And:

The painting, which had a presale estimate of more than $60 million, was bought at auction in 1984 for $19,000 by the late collectors Jerry and Emily Spiegel.

We were chatting about this purchase yesterday and someone asked how much that 1984 $19,000 was worth in today’s dollars. An interesting question. Take a guess, purely based on inflation. Then go to this inflation calculator and see how close you came.

What do 50 million drawings look like?

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Google:

Over 15 million players have contributed millions of drawings playing Quick, Draw! These doodles are a unique data set that can help developers train new neural networks, help researchers see patterns in how people around the world draw, and help artists create things we haven’t begun to think of. That’s why we’re open-sourcing them, for anyone to play with.

Load the Quick, Draw! data page and click on a drawing to see a ton of sketches of that same subject. The data underlying Google’s Quick, Draw! game is fascinating and it is now open sourced.

Did a mysterious Lost & Found folder just appear on your Mac? It could mean trouble

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[AUTOPLAY, grrr]

Glenn Fleishman, Macworld:

Joseph Pierpoint discovered a folder in his Trash labeled “Lost & Found.” When he opened it, he found it contained over 50,000 files. Worse, “Any attempts to send these files to the Trash are thwarted by interruptions that state that this kind of solution is infeasible for one reason or another.”

Some interesting details here about fsck and the underlying Unix folder named lost+found.

Apple CEO Tim Cook test-drove a device that tracks his blood sugar

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Christina Farr, CNBC:

Tim Cook has been spotted at the Apple campus test-driving a device that tracks blood sugar, which was connected to his Apple Watch.

A source said that Cook was wearing a prototype glucose-tracker on the Apple Watch, which points to future applications that would make the device a “must have” for millions of people with diabetes — or at risk for the disease.

If Apple can crack this problem, a bloodless, continuous, glucose tracking Apple Watch, they’d help a lot of people, sell a ton of Apple Watches at the same time.

Siri’s potential to devalue iOS

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Bob O’Donnell, in this Recode article:

Another fascinating aspect of these digital assistants is that they have the potential to completely devalue the underlying platforms on which they run. If I can use, say, Alexa across an iPhone, a Windows PC, my smart home components and a future connected car, where does the unique value of iOS or Windows 10 go? Out the door.

Head over to the main Loop post for my take on this.

Twitter changes privacy policy, adds new tools. Go check “Your Twitter data”

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Twitter updated their privacy policy. Some highlights from the official Twitter blog post:

Today, we’re announcing a suite of industry-leading tools to give you more access to your information and greater, more granular control over how it’s used. We’ve also updated our Privacy Policy to reflect the improvements that we’ve made to Twitter.

And:

We’re expanding Your Twitter Data to give you the most transparent access to your Twitter information to date, including demographic and interest data, and advertisers that have included you in their tailored audiences on Twitter. Each category of data will be clearly marked, and you will be able to view or modify this data directly.

There’s lots more to read in the blog post, but the changes to Your Twitter Data are worth exploring.

Take a few minutes to look around at all the data Twitter has collected on you. There’s a lot of odd data in my set. For example, here’s the list of languages Twitter has for me:

French, German, Slovenian, Indonesian, Basque, Dutch, Turkish, Spanish, Estonian, Portuguese, Tagalog

That’s certainly not representative. Not sure where these come from. Languages of people who I’ve interacted with?

Also interesting is the list of Interests further down the page. This was somewhat representative of my interests, but not exact. I wonder how this list was built.

Another interesting collection is the “tailored audiences” section. From mine:

You are currently part of 6624 audiences from 1573 advertisers.

Not sure what that means, but if I cared to tailor my advertising experience, there’s a button to “Request advertiser list”. I might dig into that at some point.

Take some time to look over Your Twitter Data. Good to know what choices you have.

Incredible 3-way wooden joint

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[VIDEO] I find the design of this 3-way joint terrifically clever. The narrator does an excellent job explaining and then building out the design. The video is in the main Loop post.

Apple is shoring up Siri for its next generation of intelligent devices

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John Mannes, TechCrunch:

Siri is a critical component of Apple’s vision for the future, so integral that it was willing to spend $200 million to acquire Lattice Data over the weekend. The startup was working to transform the way businesses deal with paragraphs of text and other information that lives outside neatly structured databases.

And:

Apple paid roughly $10 million for each of Lattice’s 20 engineers. This is generally considered to be fair market value. Google paid about $500 million for DeepMind back in 2014. At that time, the startup had roughly 75 employees, of which a portion were machine learning developers.

That math is fascinating. Machine learning seems a fantastic path for developers to explore.

Apple relies on a number of partnerships, including a major one with Yahoo, to provide Siri with the facts it needs to answer questions. It competes with Google, a company that possesses what is largely considered to be the crème de la crème of knowledge graphs. Apple surely has an interest in improving the size and quality of its knowledge graph while unshackling itself from partners.

And:

When you use Siri to search iTunes, the results have to come from somewhere. A knowledge graph makes it possible to draw complex relationships between entries. Today, Siri on Apple TV allows for complex natural language search like “Find TV shows for kids” followed up by “Only comedies.” A surprising amount of information is required to return that request and some of it might be buried in the summaries of the shows or scattered on the internet.

Terrific read. I’ve done some work with neural nets, AI, and machine learning. If I was just starting out, this is definitely where I’d focus, dive deep.

Tim Cook interviewed for Global Accessibility Awareness Day

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John Voorhees, MacStories:

Early last year, James Rath, a young filmmaker who was born legally blind, created a video about the impact Apple products have had on his life. That video caught the attention of Apple.

In the ensuing months, Rath’s YouTube career has taken off and he’s become a strong advocate for the blind.

To mark Global Accessibility Awareness Day, Tim Cook spoke with Rath and two other YouTubers, Rikki Poynter and Tatiana Lee about accessibility. Cook and Poynter, who is deaf, discussed closed captioning and how accessibility is a core value at Apple. Lee talked to Cook about the Apple Watch and its ability to track wheelchair use. Rath and Cook explored the history of Apple’s commitment to accessibility and the democratization of technology.

Follow the link to watch the series of videos.

RIP Blobs: Google redesigns emojis

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Emojipedia:

Having appeared in various shapes and sizes since Android 4.4; the amorphous blob that defined Google’s emoji appearance since 2013 is being retired.

In its place: a redesign of every emoji in Android, coming as part of Android “O” which was announced today at Google I/O.

Follow the link, take a look at the new artwork. It’s certainly an improvement. Given the fragmentation of Android updates, not sure how big an impact this will have.

Also mentioned by Google is functionality which would allow users to download newer emoji fonts to support the latest emojis even on older Android versions.

So that’s something. But it requires specific action on the part of the user. If they’ve not moved to update to a newer phone or newer version of Android, not sure how effective this will be.

Fidget spinner on bass

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[VIDEO] Pretty good technique all the way around. Video embedded in main Loop post.

Apple plans laptop upgrades to take on Microsoft

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Mark Gurman and Alex Webb, Bloomberg:

Apple Inc. plans to announce an update to its laptop lineup at an annual conference for app developers in early June, a move that could help offset new competition from Microsoft Corp. as well as declining iPad sales.

Apple is planning three new laptops, according to people familiar with the matter. The MacBook Pro will get a faster Kaby Lake processor from Intel Corp., said the people, who requested anonymity to discuss internal planning. Apple is also working on a new version of the 12-inch MacBook with a faster Intel chip. The company has also considered updating the aging 13-inch MacBook Air with a new processor as sales of the laptop, Apple’s cheapest, remain surprisingly strong, one of the people said.

Not sure why Microsoft is so heavily featured in this article. This makes it sound like Apple is reacting to a threat, as opposed to simply taking advantage of new processors to update the Mac line, spur sales.

Apple assembles first iPhones in India

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MarketWatch:

An Apple Inc. manufacturer has completed a trial run of the first-ever iPhones assembled in India, in an important step in the U.S. tech giant’s push into the fast-growing South Asian market.

The manufacturing of Apple’s cheapest iPhone model, the SE, was handled earlier this month by Taiwanese contract manufacturer Wistron Corp., which has an assembling unit in the southern state of Karnataka, a state official with direct knowledge of the matter told The Wall Street Journal.

Apple said in a statement that it has begun initial production of a small number of iPhone SE handsets in Bangalore and will begin shipping the Indian-made devices to domestic customers this month. The first devices could hit stores as early as this week or next, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The first step in an important journey for Apple in its quest to grow India market share.

How Google took over the classroom

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From this The New York Times article:

In the space of just five years, Google has helped upend the sales methods companies use to place their products in classrooms. It has enlisted teachers and administrators to promote Google’s products to other schools. It has directly reached out to educators to test its products — effectively bypassing senior district officials. And it has outmaneuvered Apple and Microsoft with a powerful combination of low-cost laptops, called Chromebooks, and free classroom apps.

And, most importantly:

Today, more than half the nation’s primary- and secondary-school students — more than 30 million children — use Google education apps like Gmail and Docs, the company said. And Chromebooks, Google-powered laptops that initially struggled to find a purpose, are now a powerhouse in America’s schools. Today they account for more than half the mobile devices shipped to schools.

Those are some impressive numbers. Kids are growing up with an intimate understanding of how to use Google apps. Apple certainly is a player in this space, both with iPads and low-end MacBooks, but no matter the hardware, a major chunk of our kids are using Google Docs and Gmail.

Apple has iWork apps, has ported them to all the major platforms, true, and there are iCloud versions of the apps. But Google’s approach requires no app downloads, is driven by a link. There are no app installs to manage, just links to share back and forth. I’d argue the overall approach is simpler. For education, that is a vital difference. If a school district switches over from Chromebooks to iPads, there is no compelling reason for them to switch from Google Docs.

Today at your local Apple Store

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Take a few minutes to check out the offerings at your local Apple Store via Apple’s new Today at Apple page. Pick your favorite location, tap confirm, then start scrolling.

Some stores (such as New York’s SoHo Apple Store and San Francisco’s Union Square location) feature concerts and other performances. Most stores have a constant running string of classes, focusing on things like iPhone photography, making music with GarageBand, learning the ins and outs of Apple Music, video editing on your Mac, and lots more.

Good use of space, great for customers. Questions for me: Will the gatherings be compelling enough to draw people in and will Apple find a way to spread the word to draw crowds and keep them coming back.

Apple’s new campus: An exclusive look inside the mothership

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This is a long read, but it’ll fly by. Beautifully crafted with lots of photos (by Dan Winters) and anecdotes (expertly related by long-time Apple historian Steven Levy).

One bit from the very end:

Last December, Cook, Ive, and Apple PR head Steve Dowling met with Laurene Powell Jobs, Steve’s widow. At the time, the campus didn’t have a name. One option was to brand the entire site after the company’s late CEO, but that didn’t feel right. A more intimate honor would come from lending his name to the 1,000-seat theater in the southeast corner of the campus. Not only had Jobs thought hard about what the theater should look like, but it will also be the stage for product launches like those he had so famously made his own. “It’s on a hill, at one of the highest points on this land,” Cook says. “It felt like him.”

And so his name will be on the theater. But anyone searching for Steve Jobs’ finger­prints on Apple Park will find them elsewhere—in the glint off the Ring’s curves, in the sway of the trees, and in the thousands of other details we can and cannot see.

Can’t wait for my first visit.

Some personal photos of Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, many others

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Esther Dyson pulled together this lovely collection of snapshots of people in the PC industry. This is real “back in the day” stuff. Lots of people I didn’t recognize, sprinkled with many I did. I love the young faces of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. And don’t miss Steve Ballmer playing charades.

[Via Dave Winer]

When Apple is 2 years behind you, put your things in order

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Daniel Eran Dilger, Apple Insider, steps through a series of cases where Apple was seriously behind, then overtook the competition. A few examples:

2007: A year prior to Peak iPod, Microsoft announced its own Zune to much fanfare as the “iPod-killer,” just as pundits began imagining in parallel that phones playing MP3s would kill Apple’s iPod empire. Everything seemed so dire for Apple. Zune could do wireless WiFi sync and MP3-playing feature phones appeared to cost much less than an iPod!

However, that year Apple introduced iPhone. Steve Jobs described it as “a widescreen iPod” in addition to a phone and “breakthrough internet device”. Zune staggered along like a zombie until it was terminated while basic phones playing MP3s were blown away by Apple’s “iPod phone” with a real web browser.

And:

2011: Google floated another feature Apple lacked for several years: Near Field Communications, or NFC, used in Google Wallet contactless payments. Google was supposed to rule in this arena, but Wallet failed to ever gain much traction, despite efforts to build out NFC payment infrastructure. Apple didn’t have NFC because it was so behind.

What Apple did instead was rapidly introduce Bluetooth 4 (starting with iPhone 4s) and build out a platform of near-proximity wireless integration between iOS devices, Macs and Apple Watch that was later branded as Continuity. Prior to launching Apple Pay, the company also lined up the dots for Touch ID, building security right into the design of its products.

Apple didn’t introduce Apple Pay until 2014, at least three years behind Wallet. However, the effort Apple put into building foundational support, and its prescience in supporting the much faster Bluetooth 4 rather than NFC for nearby connectivity, launched Apple far ahead of Google in both support for modern Bluetooth and in NFC payments, despite (or perhaps, because of) not being first to rush a loose payment concept to market.

Lots, lots more here. Terrific job, Daniel.

Upcoming Apple Watch to include game-changing health features

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Jonathan S. Geller, BGR:

According to our source, Apple’s sights are now set on the epidemic of diabetes, and the company plans to introduce a game-changing glucose monitoring feature in an upcoming Apple Watch. An estimated 30 million people suffer from diabetes in the US alone, according to the American Diabetes Association, so Apple’s efforts could lead to a historic achievement in the world of health and fitness.

And:

Apple also plans to introduce interchangeable “smart watch bands” that add various functionality to the Apple Watch without added complexity, and without increasing the price of the watch itself. This could also mean that the glucose monitoring feature will be implemented as part of a smart band, rather than being built into the watch hardware.

A smart band is a natural evolution of, extension to the Apple Watch. Each Apple Watch includes a diagnostic six pin port, so there’s already a path for data flow between your existing Apple Watch and a new band.

The newly redesigned Shazam

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Ryan Christoffel, writing for MacStories, walks through the new look for Shazam. I do like the new design. The old one was cluttered, and sometimes confusing.

Your MP3s are going to be just fine

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Three thoughtful responses to yesterdays river of “MP3s are dead” articles.

  1. No, the MP3 Is Not Dead, by Kirk McElhearn.

  2. Your MP3s are going to be just fine, by Hayley Tsukayama for the Washington Post.

  3. “MP3 is dead” missed the real, much better story by Marco Arment.

In a nutshell, your MP3s will not spontaneously combust, the last known MP3 patents have lapsed, AAC is a better format, but the MP3 format is ubiquitous.

Sal Soghoian announces Masters of Automation conference

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Sal Soghoian on the CMD-D conference front page:

Sal here, with something pretty cool to share with you. We’ve started a new conference to bring together the Apple automation and scripting community!

The conference is called CMD-D (pronounced “Command-D”), and it will be held August 9th at the Santa Clara Convention Center. It’ll be a full day of exploring the current state of automation technology on both Apple platforms, sharing ideas and concepts, and showing what’s possible—all with the goal of inspiring and furthering development of your own automation projects.

To assist in this exploration of all things Automation, I’ve invited some of my smartest friends to present sessions focused on their own areas of automation expertise, on macOS and iOS. And, for those new to automation, we’re also planning a Scripting Boot Camp on August 8th.

Some of those friends include Jason Snell, Andy Ihnatko, Jon Pugh, and John Welch. This looks like a great conference.

Messages, iPhone rotation, and that pesky handwriting view

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Grab your iPhone, bring up Messages, tap on the text field to start a message to someone, then rotate your iPhone sideways. Did a giant scribble box take over your screen? If so, this is for you.

A tiny tip, but one that many people seem unaware of. In the lower right corner of that scribble box is a keyboard icon. Tap it, and your Messages screen returns to its normal, rotated self. And that will stay the default rotation view for Messages.

Want to return to the scribble view? Tap the button again (the label changed to a curlicue).

Did Disney ruin Pixar?

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Christopher Orr, The Atlantic:

A well-regarded hollywood insider recently suggested that sequels can represent “a sort of creative bankruptcy.” He was discussing Pixar, the legendary animation studio, and its avowed distaste for cheap spin-offs. More pointedly, he argued that if Pixar were only to make sequels, it would “wither and die.” Now, all kinds of industry experts say all kinds of things. But it is surely relevant that these observations were made by Ed Catmull, the president of Pixar, in his best-selling 2014 business-leadership book.

Yet here comes Cars 3, rolling into a theater near you this month. You may recall that the original Cars, released back in 2006, was widely judged to be the studio’s worst film to date. Cars 2, which followed five years later, was panned as even worse. And if Cars 3 isn’t disheartening enough, two of the three Pixar films in line after it are also sequels: The Incredibles 2 and (say it isn’t so!) Toy Story 4.

This is a scorching, but well-written read. Hard to deny the logic when there’s a sea of Pixar sequels in the works. That said, I loved Inside Out and I’ve heard very positive things about Coco, due out this November.

And that said, the next non-sequel after Coco isn’t due until 2020. Until then, it’s sequels all the way.

10 Years of iPhone — A Developer’s Perspective

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Long time iOS developer Adrian Kosmaczewski lays out the evolution of the iPhone and the App Store from the wild west earliest days through the ten years since.

This is a fantastic read, full of interesting details. No development background required. And smack dab in the middle of it is a book I wrote with Jeff LaMarche, complete with the very first of many fruit cross-sections to adorn Apress’ line of iOS/Mac development books.

I still remember reacting to the first cover shot they sent our way:

“Wait, you want to put a piece of fruit on the cover? Why?”

“It’s Apple related. So fruit. Get it?”

Many, many arguments later, that fruit cover stuck and turned out to be iconic in its own small way. The book sold, helped a lot of people get started, so ultimately it did its job. And Jeff and I had a helluva ride.

Apple Park, 1 year recap

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[VIDEO] The latest video (embedded in the main Loop post) from Matthew Roberts, showing off a year of drone footage as Apple Park went from barely under construction to close to completion.