The AirPods are a true engineering marvel, an astonishing array of technology jam packed into the smallest of containers. Take a minute to scroll through the pictures. Remarkable.
Apple, Google respond to fatal crash with promise to add rail crossing warnings to Maps
Daisuke Wakabayashi, New York Times:
Following directions from Google Maps on a smartphone last year, Jose Alejandro Sanchez-Ramirez turned a Ford truck, hauling a trailer, where he thought the app was telling him to go. But he ended up stuck on the railroad tracks at a poorly marked California crossing.
Soon after Mr. Sanchez-Ramirez abandoned the truck, a commuter train barreled into it, killing the engineer and injuring 32 others.
And:
On Monday, after investigating the crash for almost two years, the National Transportation Safety Board issued a safety recommendation asking technology and delivery companies to add the exact locations of more than 200,000 grade crossings into digital maps and to provide alerts when drivers encounter them.
Apple, Google and Microsoft have promised to add rail crossing data to their maps.
Apple offers free next day shipping for orders placed by 2p Friday
Want your Apple gear in time for Christmas? Get an order in the queue by 2p Friday (I’d assume that’s 2p local time) and you’ll get your goods by Saturday. Nice.
Here’s the fine print:
Free two-day shipping is available on all in-stock items purchased through apple.com. Free next-day shipping is available on any in-stock iPhone. Check your bag to find out which items are in stock and see checkout for exact delivery dates. Two-day shipping and next-day shipping are not available on customized Mac and engraved products; for certain order types, including orders paid for with financing or by bank transfer; and to some geographical areas. In-stock items ordered before 5:00 p.m. on a business day will be delivered in two business days; any in-stock iPhone ordered before 5:00 p.m. on a business day will be delivered in one business day.
Outside the US? Check this page and look for a “Free next day delivery” banner at the top of the page.
The Macinbot Classic and some Mac history
Steve Hackett, 512 Pixels, posted a link to an upcoming collectible figure, the 3D printed Macinbot Classic.
If you are into collectible figures, take a look. There’s a reasonably detailed model of the Macintosh Classic, circa 1990, along with a font briefcase and a pet mouse. All very cute.
But the story behind the actual Macintosh Classic makes fascinating reading. The Macintosh Classic came along after Steve Jobs’ ousting, with Apple trying to find their path, exploring both openness (via the Mac II) and low cost (via the Macintosh Classic).
This is all laid out pretty well on the Macintosh Classic Wikipedia page.
AirPods: Your burning questions, answered
Jason Snell answers some questions about the Apple AirPods. Some good info there.
What I learned about my iPhone after switching to the Google Pixel
Khoi, Subtraction.com, on switching from the iPhone to the Pixel:
To be sure, it’s a terrific phone. It has a world class still camera that just about lives up to its hype, and to me the operating system has never felt as united with its hardware as it does in this phone.
As much as I tried though, after living with this device for several weeks I still felt that there were several stumbling blocks to jumping entirely to Android. Whether you consider it lock-in or value-add, Apple’s ecosystem is a powerful argument for sticking with the iPhone.
Interesting read, pulls no punches.
Lexar’s JumpDrive C20i extends your iPhone’s storage capacity
This is a great idea. The Lexar JumpDrive is a short cable with a USB connector on one end and a lightning connector on the other. Plug the USB side into your computer and copy a few movies over to the now connected flash drive.
Click through to the main Loop post for details.
The inside story of Apple’s $14 billion tax bill
Bloomberg:
This story is based on interviews with dozens of officials from the EU, Ireland, and Apple, though most didn’t want to speak on the record discussing sensitive tax matters.
This is a fascinating read. Meet the key players in this drama, with a peek at some of the behind-the-scenes politicking.
Apple appeals EU tax ruling, says it was a ‘convenient target’
Reuters:
Apple has launched a legal challenge to a record $14 billion EU tax demand, arguing that EU regulators ignored tax experts and corporate law and deliberately picked a method to maximize the penalty, senior executives said.
Apple’s combative stand underlines its anger with the European Commission, which said on Aug. 30 the company’s Irish tax deal was illegal state aid and ordered it to repay up to 13 billion euros ($13.8 billion) to Ireland, where Apple has its European headquarters.
This story is far from over. Two forces are pulling hard at Apple. The EU wants maximum tax revenue, and the incoming US government wants Apple manufacturing back in the US.
Reuters: Porsche race car engineer joins Apple
Reuters:
Apple poached the technical director of Porsche’s race car program earlier this year, a company source said on Friday, hiring a project manager who helped engineer the sports car company’s victorious return to the Le Mans endurance race.
And:
[Alexander] Hitzinger helped Porsche, owned by Volkswagen, return to endurance racing and to develop the 919 hybrid sports car from scratch, much in the same way Apple is now looking into building its own vehicle.
Porsche’s new race car won Le Mans and the endurance racing world championship in both 2015 and 2016 using largely unproven technology, which beat far more established rivals.
Germany threatens to fine Facebook €500,000 for each fake news post
Quartz:
The chairman of Germany’s Social Democratic Party, Thomas Oppermann, has suggested a new law that would require companies like Facebook to set up an office in the country that would deal with fake news and hate speech at all hours of the day. According to English-language version of the German news site Deutsche Welle, German legislators are considering whether to institute a policy that if Facebook’s local office did not delete the news item or hate speech within 24 hours, the social network could expect a fine of €500,000 euros ($522,575) per item.
This is problematic on a number of levels. At the very least, who will judge whether a post is fake? Then there’s the sheer volume of posts. And, of course, there are privacy issues: Facebook posts have a variety of privacy levels. To check all posts, will the watchdogs require access to all posts, even the posts restricted to friends?
The idea of eliminating fake news is critical. And this approach might potentially force Facebook to implement a solution of its own. A difficult problem to solve.
Jony Ive gives us a peek inside Apple’s design studio
[VIDEO] Though the video embedded in the main Loop post is intended to promote the book Designed by Apple in California, it also gives a tantalizing glimpse inside Sir Jony’s design studio. Take a look.
Apple AirPod video reviews and unboxing
Chance Miller, 9to5mac, pulled together a nice collection of AirPod review videos. I found them all worth watching, each bringing a different take.
One thing in particular I learned was the value of the long AirPod antennae (the sticks that hang from your ears). They ensure a reliable connection, even at a significant distance. As long as you have line-of-sight to your device, you can get up to 150 feet away.
I love the fact that when you take one AirPod out of your ear, your audio automatically pauses. Solid Siri integration as well.
Apple will charge $69 to replace a lost or broken AirPod
Juli Clover, MacRumors:
After the one-year warranty has expired, Apple will charge a $69 fee for out-of-warranty service repairs. Battery service for AirPods that lose battery capacity is free during the one-year warranty period or $49 out of warranty.
If you lose or damage one of the AirPods or the charging case, Apple will charge $69 for a replacement, regardless of whether or not the AirPods are still under warranty. The pricing in Apple’s support document is U.S. pricing, and will vary based on country.
Interesting that the AirPods do not need to be replaced in pairs. Great technology.
How to save battery when playing Super Mario Run
Nice tip from Christian Zibreg, iDownloadBlog.
Shigeru Miyamoto on Super Mario Run
Chris Kohler, Wired, got the chance to ask Shigeru Miyamoto about Super Mario Run.
One highlight, talking about simply porting Super Mario to iOS:
“I don’t want to do anything that boring. We’ve been making Mario games for a long time, and Mario’s evolved with every new platform.
“For me, it wouldn’t be interesting work to just take the existing Super Mario Bros. game, put it on an iPhone, (and) emulate a plus control pad. That’s not very fun creatively. We’re more interested in looking at how we can be creative with Mario, and design for iPhone in a way that takes advantage of the uniquenesses of that device and the uniquenesses of that input and the features that that device has. For us, that is much more rewarding creative work.”
Super Mario Run is a fantastic game. In my opinion, it is well worth the $10. I hope it reverses the “race to the bottom” iOS game pricing trend, helps make it easier for developers to make a living creating great apps.
Using Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant on the iPhone
Federico Viticci, MacStories, on the new Astra app:
Astra is, effectively, just a large microphone in the middle of the screen. You can sign into your Amazon account, give the app permission to record audio, and start sending messages to Alexa. To record a command, you hold down a Siri-like microphone button and then lift your finger to send a request to Alexa. When Astra displays a ‘Thinking…’ message it is not, in fact, processing your request on its own – the Alexa Voice Service is; Astra is just waiting for a response to speak back to you. Astra is a bridge to Alexa’s cloud brain: there are no visual messages and no interface elements built around Amazon’s assistant. Even the audio responses use Alexa’s standard voice.
This is a breach in Apple’s ecosystem, a way for a competing (and some would say, superior) service to live within the confines of the iOS walled garden. Google Maps is another example.
While Alexa and Astra might leach users away from Siri, Amazon is not a threat to steal users from iOS. But add in Amazon’s Fire TV Stick, which gives users access to Netflix, Amazon Video, etc., at a $40 price point, much, much cheaper than Apple TV’s entry point, and there’s the beginning of a slow erosion.
Florida court says iPhone passcode must be revealed
This is a creepy story, and a troubling result. Bottom line, the court likened a passcode to a strongbox key. Reasoning, if you can be compelled by a court to turn over a strongbox key, you can be compelled to turn over your passcode.
I feel a tide turning here. This case will likely end up in front of the Supreme Court.
HBO to debut documentary on partnership and bond between Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine
HBO press release:
THE DEFIANT ONES, a four-part documentary event, will debut on HBO in 2017, it was announced today by Casey Bloys, president, HBO Programming. Director Allen Hughes (“Menace II Society”) has made an unquestionably bold film about the unlikely but ultimately unbreakable bond of trust and friendship between two street-smart men from different worlds who have shaped many of the most exciting and extreme moments in recent pop culture.
And:
Set amid many of the defining events of the past four decades, THE DEFIANT ONES tells the stories of Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre — one the son of a Brooklyn longshoreman, the other straight out of Compton — and their improbable partnership and surprising leading roles in a series of transformative events in contemporary culture.
And:
Allen Hughes filmed Iovine and Dre over a three-year period in making THE DEFIANT ONES. In addition to extensive interviews with Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine, who speak frankly about their highs and lows, the show includes interviews with such music icons as Bono, David Geffen, Eminen, Nas, Ice Cube, Gwen Stefani, Jon Landau, Tom Petty, Trent Reznor, Snoop Dogg, Bruce Springsteen and will.i.am. The series also features never-before-seen footage from a multitude of recording and writing sessions with Eazy-E, JJ Fad, Stevie Nicks, N.W.A., Tom Petty, Bruce Springsteen and U2, among others.
I will definitely watch this.
Six Colors’ favorite games, and a few of my own
Last week, Six Colors posted a list of their favorite iOS and Mac games. Some fun games on that list.
That got me thinking about some of my favorite games.
One in particular, Nanuleu, came to me by way of this post from John Vorhees’ series of game posts for MacStories. Nanuleu is minimal in design, incredibly easy to learn to play, and strong in subtle strategy. Lots of replay value, and they’ve recently added more content to broaden the experience.
Here’s an App Store link to Nanuleu.
More games I love:
- Kingdom Rush, and all the games in that series. There’s also a version on the Mac App Store, which brings slightly different game boards.
- Plants vs Zombies (still very playable after all this time).
- The Room, and all the games in that series.
- Really Bad Chess, a cursedly wicked twist on chess.
Lots more games, but that list has been the most fun for me.
An old Apple collectible uncovered
James Thomson found himself an old Apple collectible that might be pretty valuable. Start here, then follow the thread.
Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto on working with Apple to create Super Mario Run
Shigeru Miyamoto, in an interview with glixel:
Glixel: What’s it been like working with Apple? How did the partnership for Super Mario Run come about? They’re supporting it a lot more than they usually do with individual games.
Miyamoto: The timing was really fortunate for both of us. On the Nintendo side we’d been talking a lot about going into the mobile space but we hadn’t decided that we were going to make a Mario game for smartphones. As we were talking about what we were going to create we started asking ourselves about what a Mario game would need to be. So we were experimenting with some things and we came up with the base idea, and that’s what we eventually showed to Apple.
Part of the reason we took it to Apple was that in order for us to have the performance we wanted we needed some development support to ensure that the game would run the way we expected. Because Nintendo is always trying to do something unique we also wanted to try and do something different on the business side too. We really didn’t want to do something in the free to play space, but in order to make sure we had the opportunity to do what we wanted [offer a taste of the game for free, and charge $9.99 to unlock the whole thing], we had to talk to the people who are actually running the shop. Naturally the people on the App Store initially told us that the free-to-play approach is a good one, but I’ve always had this image that Apple and Nintendo have very similar philosophies. As we started working together, I found that to be true and they became very welcoming of trying something new.
If you are a gaming fan, take a few minutes to read the interview.
Shigeru Miyamoto is an incredibly influential part of modern gaming’s history. The Super Mario and Zelda franchises are his creations.
The game Super Mario Run carries that DNA, that gaming delight, over to the iPhone. And somehow it does that in a game that only requires a single finger to play.
Unboxing Apple’s ugliest Mac
I had no idea. I have to say, that really is one ugly Mac. That said, ugly is in the eye of the beholder.
It’s time for Safari to go on a memory diet
Kirk McElhearn, writing for Macworld:
Right now, my iMac’s uptime (the time since my last restart) is nearly four days. And Safari is using 6.81GB of RAM, by far the largest memory hog on my Mac. The app itself is using about 1GB, but each tab, each window also uses RAM. You can see this in Activity Monitor (located in /Applications/Utilities), by selecting the Memory tab.
And:
As you can see [in the image in Kirk’s original post], the most egregious RAM user is Google Docs, which requires more than 500MB RAM for a single, blank document. Open a few more Google docs, and you’ll see that number quickly balloon. (It’s not clear whether this is Google’s fault or Apple’s fault.)
A lot of this memory usage depends on how long the pages or tabs have been open. If I launch Safari on my 12-inch MacBook, and open the exact same tabs, it only uses 2.8GB RAM. Of course, if I leave them open for a long time, that RAM usage will increase.
I fired up Activity Monitor on my Mac and tapped the Memory tab. My Safari only used 321MB (Less than 1/3 of Kirk’s 1GB).
I then created a new Google Doc blank document which used 193MB (again, much less than Kirk’s result), and added more Google Doc documents, each of which weighed in at slightly less than the original.
I don’t doubt Kirk’s results, but I suspect that there’s more here than simply Safari being a memory hog. It’d be interesting to see a more controlled experiment, loading known pages in a controlled environment after a fresh restart.
More Apple Store robberies
The Next Web:
San Francisco Police Department has released footage of two recent Apple store robberies in the Bay Area, which took place on November 25 and November 29 (respectively) in the vicinity of Chestnut Street in San Francisco.
The first video captures three perpetrators daringly walk in, grab whatever they can and swiftly storm out – and all of that in the window of less than 15 seconds. Similarly, the second clip catches four men perform the same maneuver with almost identical pace.
In both cases, startled staff and customers merely watch the criminals make off with a bunch of gadgets in their hands.
It’d be interesting to know what Apple is doing about this problem, if anything. Does this fall into the category of nuisance, a small enough loss that Apple writes down the loss and moves on? Is there a stealth effort, after the fact, that tracks down the thieves via a Find My iPhone type mechanism?
Four new, quick cut Apple Watch commercials
[VIDEO] The spots are all 15 seconds long. They each start with footage of someone opening a brand new Apple Watch, overlaid with the all caps message:
THE GIFT OF GO
Each commercial then branches off into quick cuts of going out, playing, running, and dancing. Solid work.
Videos embedded in main Loop post.
How to deal with Mac irritations
Nice collection of problems with solutions from Mac Kung Fu. Bookmark and pass along.
The Apple Mirror
A mirror, with built in display elements, all based on iOS 10.
From the site:
Design includes the time and date in the upper right hand corner and weather in the top left. All apps can be moved around and placed anywhere on the mirror. After 45 seconds of inactivity the mirror goes to sleep (appears as any ordinary mirror), simply tap anywhere to wake back up and resume use. Some useful things you can do with this mirror: Request an Uber, watch Netflix, read the news, control smart thermostat / light bulbs, control Sonos speaker system and more.
Seems to me, there was an Android project a while back that did something similar. Search, search, search. Ah, here it is.
The delicious history of the nation’s oldest Chinese-American restaurant
I would never have guessed that the oldest Chinese restaurant in the US was in Butte, Montana. Bucket list.
Interior photos of the new Apple spaceship campus
These are the first close-up and interior photos I’ve seen of the new campus. This is apparently part of a document that was distributed to employees.