Apple’s response to Dash removal from App Store, request for clarification

Written by

First read this morning’s post, about the Dash Mac app being suddenly removed from the App Store.

This afternoon, Dash updated their blog with this chilling message:

Apple contacted me and told me they found evidence of App Store review manipulation. This is something I’ve never done.

Apple’s decision is final and can’t be appealed.

Certainly, only Kapeli (the Dash developer) and Apple know if there was any App Store review manipulation. But this feels heavy-handed. Dash is a tool used by lots of developers. Not only does this hurt Dash, but it hurts the developers who use it. And this is being done, seemingly, without due process.

One thing for sure, there is a big wave of developer response to Kapeli’s blog post and all of it (at least what I’ve seen) is supportive of Kapeli. That should tell Apple to take another look at the evidence. Dash just doesn’t seem like it needs App Store review manipulation.

US regulators open investigation into replacement Samsung Note 7 that caught fire on Southwest flight

Written by

Jordan Golson, writing for The Verge:

Federal regulators are moving quickly to investigate the replacement Samsung Galaxy Note 7 that caught fire on a Southwest Airlines flight today, with the US Consumer Product Safety Commission “moving expeditiously” to find out what happened.

And this, from yesterday’s post when the story first broke:

Green said that he had powered down the phone as requested by the flight crew and put it in his pocket when it began smoking. He dropped it on the floor of the plane and a “thick grey-green angry smoke” was pouring out of the device. Green’s colleague went back onto the plane to retrieve some personal belongings and said that the phone had burned through the carpet and scorched the subfloor of the plane.

That last bit is terrifying.

Supply chain suggests Apple to see better-than-expected holiday season

Written by

From Apple Insider:

In a note to investors obtained by AppleInsider, Daryanani notes Dialog pre-announced positive September quarter results on the back of mobile systems revenue, suggesting strong component orders from Apple. Dialog raised revenue expectations for the past quarter to about $345 million, up 13 percent from previous estimates between $290 million to $320 million.

OK, so far so good. Strong component orders indicate strong sales. Easy peasy.

Here’s the kicker:

Though Dialog failed to delve into specifics, it did say the revenue bump is in part the result of mobile systems orders being pulled forward into the third quarter to accommodate China’s National Day holiday on Oct. 1. Apple, which accounts for 75 to 80 percent of Dialog’s mobile systems revenue, traditionally builds iPhone approximately 60 days out, meaning the pulled-in orders are likely related to the December quarter, Daryanani writes.

The way I read it, this says that the builds for the holiday season were done early to accommodate China’s National Day holiday, which gave an early indicator of the unusual size of holiday orders. I found that kind of interesting.

By the way, according to this Wikipedia article, China’s National Day occurs every October 10th, not October 1. Not sure which is right.

When I asked Siri:

When is China’s national day holiday?

She replied:

National Day is on Tuesday, July 4, 2017.

Hmm.UPDATE: Thanks for the tweets and emails. turns out the holiday referred to above is the mainland Chinese holiday, not Taiwanese holiday.

Search ads start showing up in iOS App Store, early examples not encouraging

Written by

Ben Lovejoy, writing for 9to5mac:

Apple recently started offering developers the opportunity to buy search ads in the App Store, allowing their apps to be shown when users search for particular keywords. Those ads have now started showing up for U.S. users.

The theory is that it allows deserving apps from smaller developers to be seen by more people, giving them a better shot at competing with the big boys. Early examples, though, are not encouraging.

For example, search for Pokémon Go, and you get an ad for Catch ’em, an app which appears to be just copying the idea rather than bringing anything new to the party (below). Other examples posted similarly seem to show ads that are just hijacking popular search terms with me-too apps.

Is there a balance here? Are there stories out there of developers of legitimate apps (as opposed to copycat/land-grab apps) who have benefited from these ads?

Too early to truly draw any conclusions. I would hate to see the app store turn into a steady, muddied stream of ads. That would, indeed, suck.

Apple has unceremoniously removed Dash from the App Store

Written by

Dash is an off-line documentation browser, popular with developers. This morning, it was gone.

From the Dash for macOS blog:

Earlier today, Apple cancelled my developer account and has removed Dash from the App Store.

What Happened? I don’t know.

Read the post for details. But in a nutshell, Apple pulled the app and canceled the Dash developer account, sending an email saying “the account was terminated due to fraudulent conduct”.

This is a story with two major paths: Either the developer did something to deserve the rug being pulled out from under, something worthy of their developer credentials being cancelled. Or there’s a colossal misunderstanding here. I suspect there’s more to this than meets the eye.

Either way, don’t think this is the way this should have played out.

If Steve Jobs walked into Apple Computer now, which products would he nix?

Written by

Yesterday was the 5th anniversary of Steve Jobs’ death. A number of tributes to Steve popped up, including this recode post pulled together by Dan Frommer, highlighting interviews Steve did with Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg at the All Things Digital conference from 2003-2010.

Another bit of writing I enjoyed was this Medium Post entitled We miss Steve Jobs, by Christina Goodwin, Samantha Chaves, and Michael Histen.

One particular question from this post really resonated with me:

If Steve Jobs walked into Apple Computer now, which products would he nix? What’s the “one thing” Apple does well? I don’t have a good answer. That scares the shit out of me.

When Steve first came back to Apple, he famously drew a simple two-by-two grid, labeling the columns consumer and professional, and the rows desktop and portable. He used that grid to winnow the Mac product line down to four models, greatly simplifying the supply chain and sales process and making life significantly less confusing for the consumer.

Would that approach work in today’s Apple? Apple is not the same company that Steve came home to. Apple is now a dominant player, not a straggler searching for its identity. Apple has a vision associated with each product, each product has a distinct position in the ecosystem. And Apple is way profitable.

That said, there are some cloudy points. Which Mac is the light, low-cost laptop champion? Is it the MacBook? The MacBook Air? Is there a future for the Mac Pro?

And where is Apple heading with its connectors? Is MagSafe dead? Is USB-C the power connector of the future? Is the 3.5mm jack going to be removed from future laptops?

Will Apple fix iTunes? Will the Mac App Store and iOS App Store ever play by the same rules (you can sell an app outside the Mac App Store, not so iOS)? Are we heading towards a macOS/iOS singularity?

Just some food for thought.

Yahoo’s official response to Reuters spy report

Written by

Sam Biddle, writing for The Intercept:

After Tuesday’s revelatory story by Reuters’ Joseph Menn that exposed an apparent vast, secret, government-ordered email surveillance program at Yahoo, the company has issued a brief statement through Joele Frank, a public relations firm.

Here’s a link to the Reuters article in question.

Yahoo’s email statement, via Jacob Silber of the Joele Frank communications firm:

Good morning –

We are reaching out on behalf of Yahoo regarding yesterday’s Reuters article. Yahoo said in a statement:

“The article is misleading. We narrowly interpret every government request for user data to minimize disclosure. The mail scanning described in the article does not exist on our systems.”

Best,

The Joele Frank Team

Sam Biddle:

This is an extremely carefully worded statement, arriving roughly 20 hours after the Reuters story first broke. That’s a long time to craft 29 words.

And:

It would mean a lot more for this denial to come straight from the keyboard of a named executive at Yahoo—perhaps Ron Bell, the company’s general counsel—rather than a “strategic communications firm.”

This feels like a disaster for Yahoo.

The origin of the “comic book font”

Written by

[VIDEO]

Phil Edwards, writing for Vox:

Comic book culture is mass culture — even lacrosse moms and field hockey dads who’ve never been in a comic book store can recognize the “comic book font.”

But calling it a font is a misnomer — as the above video shows, this distinctive style of handwriting is an aesthetic shaped by culture, technology, and really cheap paper.

Watch the video, embedded in the original post.

Google Assistant will live in three places, each with different features

Written by

[See original post for VIDEO]

Jacob Kastrenakes, writing for The Verge:

Nailing down exactly what the Google Assistant is capable of can be strangely difficult right now. That’s because Google currently has three different ways to use the Google Assistant. Google says it’s the same Assistant in each place, but it can (and can’t) do different things depending on where you use it.

  • Google Assistant on Google Home (the new speaker)
  • Google Assistant on Pixel (the new phones)
  • Google Assistant on Allo (the new-ish chat app)

At its core, Google Assistant is a model of you, with threads through your life, your calendar, your photos and other media, your travel plans, food ordering habits, etc. Each of these examples is a window into your Google model and a well-defined read and write access to that model.

One of the challenges to creating this sort of model is the ability to keep that model online and distributed. Ideally, you’d be online with a super-fast net connection with secure, unlimited storage at all times. That would mean storing your model in a central repository and giving access to the various assistants as needed.

But real life imposes limits such as limited net access, limited storage, and different form factors. Getting all these pieces to play together is a daunting challenge.

Notably, Apple has been meditating on this problem since the early days of the Mac. Check out this Knowledge Navigator video from 1987. This is an incredibly complex problem, and solutions are still in their infancy. Fascinating to watch this unfold.

Apple discontinues third-generation Apple TV, removes it from online store

Written by

Chance Miller, writing for 9to5mac:

The gradual death of the third-gen Apple TV is continuing this evening, as Apple has officially discontinued the device. In an email sent out today to employees and education partners, obtained by 9to5Mac, Apple confirmed that it is discontinuing the device, shifting its focus entirely to the fourth-gen, tvOS-powered model and possibly a new model.

I have a third-gen Apple TV and it still works well. Perfect solution to add Netflix, Hulu, etc. to a lower-use TV. If I could get another one at a heavily discounted price, I’d snap it up in a heartbeat.

One thing Google’s Pixel offers that Apple doesn’t

Written by

From the fine print at the bottom of Google’s official Pixel Phone page:

Unlimited backups for photos and videos taken with your Pixel. Requires Google account. Data rates may apply.

There are a number of fronts in the battle between Google and Apple for the hearts and minds of smartphone users. One well-defined line in the sand is for media storage. Do you pay a monthly fee for an iCloud account to store your photos, as well as updates and backups?

Google has thrown down the gauntlet, offering free unlimited media storage for Pixel buyers. This move will be difficult for other Android phone manufacturers to match, since the photos go to Google’s servers, even if the phone is made by, say, Samsung.

Apple does control the entire path from camera to photo storage. The question is, will Apple address this challenge directly?

Hey Apple, what’s the scheduling conflict?

Written by

Philip Elmer-DeWitt, writing for Apple 3.0:

Apple has moved up by two days its final quarterly earnings call of fiscal 2016 due to what Apple Investor Relations calls a “scheduling conflict.”

What’s the conflict? Why Tuesday Oct. 25 and not Thursday Oct. 27? Apple didn’t say, and reporters’ inquiries (including mine) were met with silence.

And, among the rumors encountered for the change:

The best guess for the date shift, in my book, was also the most popular:

A launch event for new Macs

Just food for thought, here are the October events since 2010:

  • Oct 20, 2010, Wednesday – Back to the Mac
  • Oct 4, 2011, Tuesday – iPhone 4s
  • Oct 23, 2012, Tuesday – iMac, iPad 4th Generation, iPad mini, Mac mini and MacBook Pro 13 inch
  • Oct 22, 2013, Tuesday – iPad Air, iPad mini with Retina display
  • Oct 16, 2014, Thursday – iPad Air 2, iPad Mini 3, 27-inch iMac

Notably, there was no October event last year.

That new Google phone isn’t water resistant, and I’m sure you can guess why

Written by

At the heart of Google’s new marketing campaign is a razor sharp jab at Apple:

3.5mm headphone jack satisfyingly not new

That headphone jack is an ingress point for water. Obviously, that’s a problem that can be solved (as Samsung does), but Google chose not to, and made a point of chastising Apple for going down that road.

Google is pouring on the marketing here. Spend a few minutes with the official Pixel page. Is this hype, or is this progress?

UPDATE: This is one of those posts where I just shouldn’t have hit enter. Lots of pushback, deservedly so, but we don’t delete posts, so all I can do is say I’ll try to do better.

Google’s new phone, with a not-so-subtle jab at Apple

Written by

[VIDEO in the main post] Google’s new phone, introduced with this text:

Introducing Pixel, a new phone by Google. It has the highest rated smartphone camera. Ever. A battery that lasts all day. Unlimited storage for all your photos and videos. And it’s the first phone with the Google Assistant built in.

And:

With a best-ever 89 DxOMark Mobile score, Pixel’s camera lets you take brilliant photos in low light, bright light or any light.

And:

  • f/2.0 Aperture – For bright, even photos.
  • Large 1.55μm pixels – For great shots in any light.
  • 12.3MP – For sharp, crisp images.

I’ll leave it to the camera pros to do a side-by-side comparison between the Pixel and the iPhone 7 Plus cameras. Bold claim, though.

Oh, and right there in the middle of the video:

3.5mm headphone jack satisfyingly not new

Yeah, we know who that was aimed at.

Circle, Square, and Venmo: Payment apps let you pay via iMessage

Written by

Glen Fleishman, with a little help from Josh Centers, walks through the payment apps that work inside the iMessage infrastructure. Learned a lot, all very interesting, but found this telling:

We’re still in the early days of iMessage apps, but two prominent payment apps have added iMessage integration: Square Cash and Venmo. A third, Circle, was launched on multiple platforms by entrepreneurs with deep Internet roots. Oddly, PayPal hasn’t yet updated its app to support iMessage payments, but the company often lags putting improvements in its native software.

Is this a wait-and-see on PayPal’s part? They’ve clearly opened a door to the competition. Or perhaps iMessage support is just not that big a deal in the larger world of payment processing.

A song created by artificial intelligence

Written by

[VIDEO]: Chris Mench, writing for Complex:

Scientists at Sony’s CSL research lab unveiled a new track called “Daddy’s Car.” If that sounds bizarre to you, you’re not wrong. Although the song sounds like any run-of-the-mill track, it’s actually created by the artificial intelligence software Flow Machines. The software draws from a massive database of songs to compose its music, combining small elements of many tracks to create new compositions. All someone has to do to create a song is choose a style of music or artist from the database and the software will make the score for them. The most represented genres are jazz and pop, but all types of music are represented. In this case, a musician named Benoît Carré wrote the lyrics and arranged the music.

The song is embedded in our main post. Take a listen. Even if this style of music is not your cup of tea, set that aside and listen to the changes and harmonies. There’s a lot of derived musical techniques at work, all playing very softly together. No edge, no instrumental expression, but lots of vocal shifts. I’m hearing Beatles and XTC.

To me, this is a harbinger of things to come. Our robotic overlords have their sights set on our music streaming revenue.

Some love for the iPhone 7’s new home button

Written by

Jeff Benjamin, writing for 9to5mac, goes into a fair amount of detail on the new iPhone 7 home button. If you’ve not yet had the chance to play with one, this post will answer a lot of questions.

The Home button on the iPhone 7 feels more responsive than the old mechanical Home button, as long as you ensure that you make skin contact with it.

To me, the home button feels different, even odd, because the underlying mechanism is completely different. Rather than a directly coupled microswitch which clicked as you pressed it, the new mechanism relies on a circuit to activate a taptic engine lying underneath the home button.

I get the slightest feeling of delay from the moment I apply pressure to the home button to the moment when I actually feel the vibration from the taptic engine. This could be my imagination, the way my brain translates that different feel, but it certainly will take some getting used to.

Because the new solid state Home button requires skin contact to register presses, this makes interacting with the Home button through non-capacitive gloves or other barriers a non-starter. It also means that you can no longer click the Home button with your fingernail, a practice that many of us with soiled hands have relied on in the past.

I’ve also used my fingernail to press the button without unlocking the phone, just to see the lock screen. Again, just something to get used to.

Yes, the Home button has changed and the change may feel odd at first, but after you get used to it, it’s much better. Going back to the mechanical Home button on my iPhone 6s now feels weird. I’ve simply come to the realization that the new Home button isn’t bad at all, it’s just the way that a Home button on an iPhone 7 is supposed to feel.

The big win here is waterproofing resistance, something the old design would not have supported. So get used to it we will.

Apple Campus 2 drone footage

Written by

[VIDEO]: Matthew Roberts updated his monthly Apple spaceship campus footage. Great stuff.

MacOS Sierra: Using “About This Mac” to clean up your hard drive

Written by

Matt Gemmell tweeted:

Do like the new macOS Sierra thing where you can find which apps/docs/etc you’ve not used in a while.

Embedded in the tweet was an image, showing his Mac after he launched About This Mac and tapped the Storage tab. Like so:

  • Choose “About This Mac” from your Mac’s Apple menu.
  • Tap the Storage tab
  • Tap the Manage… button

Lots of things you can do here. For starters, you can tap Applications (in the sidebar), then tap the Last Accessed header to list Applications in reverse order, which will show you the apps you haven’t accessed in a long time. The longest neglected app I found on my Mac was iPod Software 2.1 Updater.app, which I haven’t touched since 2003.

Before you start deleting old stuff, you might read through the responses to Matt’s tweet, especially the cautions from Kirk McElhearn about deleting Microsoft Office related apps.

And, of course, be sure you back up your Mac before you even think about deleting anything.

The one thing to do to make your MacBook Pro live longer

Written by

Keir Thomas walks through the process of rebonding/regreasing his MacBook Pro’s heatsink. Is this necessary? Will it extend the life of your MacBook Pro? Keir says yes, and he’s got the tech chops to make this look relatively easy.

Though I love getting my hands dirty, I think I’ll hold off on this one until I get my hands on a new MacBook Pro. That said, I found this post and the accompanying pictures fascinating and well worth the read. And, sure enough, his MacBook Pro runs much cooler after his tweaking is done. Cool.

The iPhone 7 finishes last in flawed Which battery life tests

Written by

Blog “Which? Tech Daily” ran the HTC 10, LG G5, Samsung Galaxy S7, and the Apple iPhone 7 through a series of battery tests.

The most notable difference:

Whilst the iPhone 7’s 712 minutes of call time (nearly 12 hours) may sound acceptable, the rival Samsung Galaxy S7 lasted twice as long – and it doesn’t even have the longest lasting battery. The HTC 10 lasted an incredible 1,859 minutes (that’s almost 31 hours).

And:

So just why does the iPhone 7 have such a poor battery life? It may sound obvious, but the majority of the fault lies in its comparatively tiny cell. Smartphone batteries are measured in milliampere hours (mAh). The iPhone 7 has a 1,960mAh battery, whilst the HTC 10 has a 3,000mAh battery: it should hardly be surprising that one battery nearly half the size of another offers roughly half as much charge.

So was this a fair test? Is call time a fair measure of battery life? In browsing/email testing, the battery life was much closer, though the iPhone still finished last.

To me, the bottom line is a battle between thinness/weight and battery life. I rarely have to recharge my iPhone battery during the day. So, for me, the thinness of my iPhone is worth the shorter battery life.

UPDATE: The test compares the iPhone 7 (138.3mm x 67.1mm) against the HTC 10 (145.9mm x 71.9mm), the Samsung Galaxy S7 (142.4mm x 69.6mm), and the LG G5 (149.4mm x 73.9mm). All three competing phones are a fair bit larger than the iPhone 7. Bigger phone equals bigger battery. Thus the addition of the word “flawed” to the post’s title.

iOS 10, the Phone app, and automatic voicemail transcription beta

Written by

If you are using iOS 10 and have not yet encountered automatic voicemail transcription, take a minute and open the Phone app and tap the Voicemail tab.

Tap on a voicemail and you’ll notice that, in addition to the playback controls, there’s now a textual transcription of each message. Though the quality of the transcription can be spotty, it’s usually good enough to get a basic sense of the message.

The service is a beta, which gives me the sense that we’ll see needed improvements to transcription accuracy over time.

Lory Gil pulled together this nice how-to on various aspects of working with iOS 10’s voicemail transcription.

The garage where Apple was born and other tech birthplaces

Written by

On my recent visit to silicon valley, I had the chance to visit the garage where Apple was born, Steve Jobs’ childhood home in Los Altos. Read the main post for some pictures and a link to a map showing other silicon valley startup sites.

Angry customer smashes iPhones, Macs in French Apple Store

Written by

[VIDEO]: From Mashable:

As other people try to stop him, the guy, believed to be in his thirties, shouts:

“Apple is a company that ‘violated’ European consumers’ rights. They refused to reimburse me, I told them: ‘Give me my money back’. They said no. So you know what’s happening? This is happening!” – before wrecking another iPhone.

Amazing to me that no one tried to stop him.

Apple Campus 2, ground level footage

Written by

[VIDEO]: This past weekend, I had the chance to swing by the Apple Campus 2 (the so-called spaceship campus) construction site. I took a quick bit of footage from one of the side roads. I think it gives a real sense of just how big the main building really is. The drone flyovers give a sense of relative scale, but up close the building feels massive.

If you want to watch the video in full screen mode, be sure to click the YouTube link on the bottom of the video frame first. You’ll get a higher resolution version of the clip.

Aetna goes all-in on Apple products, including free Apple Watch for all employees

Written by

From the Aetna press release:

Beginning this fall, Aetna will make Apple Watch available to select large employers and individual customers during open enrollment season, and Aetna will be the first major health care company to subsidize a significant portion of the Apple Watch cost, offering monthly payroll deductions to make covering the remaining cost easier.

In addition to the customer program, Aetna will provide Apple Watch at no cost to its own nearly 50,000 employees, who will participate in the company’s wellness reimbursement program, to encourage them to live more productive, healthy lives.

That is a remarkable endorsement and speaks to the future of the Apple Watch.