Patently Apple:
The invention allows the system to extend to a future Apple Pencil for iPhone and through to other accessories that could be charged by a host device. Perhaps the AirPods case sitting on an iDevice.
Imagine an Apple Pencil that can charge on both an iPad and iPhone, and that can be used on both devices. Maybe the Apple Watch could ride on that train as well?
This more complex than AirPower? Maybe not, if this is just a single Qi-coil per device.
[VIDEO] Solid ad, hits all the right feels. Embedded in main Loop post.
Check out these 3D simulating images:
https://twitter.com/jaromvogel/status/1125548156970659840
To see these on your own devices, you’ll need to:
There are more of these on Jarom’s web site. Fun.
I have to say, when I first heard the Google Pixel 3A announcement, I was intrigued. Google has shipped a lot in that $399 package. Was this the phone that was going to temp people to cross the line from Apple’s walled garden into Google’s data collecting machine?
From this New York Times review:
The Pixel 3A lacks some frills you may find in premium devices, like wireless charging and water resistance. But based on my tests, it is a great value. It’s fast and capable with a very good camera and a nice-looking screen — and, yes, especially for this price.
And:
Among the clever camera features is a software mode called Night Sight, which makes photos taken in low light look as if they had been shot in normal conditions, without a flash. Google accomplishes this with some A.I. sorcery that involves taking a burst of photos with short exposures and reassembling them into an image.
I was delighted to see that Night Sight worked well with the Pixel 3A.
And:
The Pixel 3A can also shoot images with portrait mode, also known as the bokeh effect, which puts the picture’s main subject in sharp focus while gently blurring the background. Portrait mode was effective at producing artsy-looking pictures of red flowers in a garden and of my dogs in a field.
And:
Anecdotally, I’ve had better results with portrait mode on the pricier Pixel 3 and iPhones.
Otherwise, normal shots in good lighting consistently looked crisp and clear, with nice shadow detail.
And:
Other features missing from the Pixel 3A include support for wireless charging, a wide-angle lens on its front-facing camera and water resistance. Most of these omissions are negligible.
The way I read this is, the Pixel 3A is a good enough camera. A bit slower than it’s twice-the-price sibling, but good enough for most people.
And the Pixel 3A will be getting far bigger distribution. From Reuters:
The phone will sell in the same 13 countries as the Pixel 3.
And while Pixel devices currently work on T-Mobile, Sprint and U.S. Cellular networks, those U.S. wireless carriers will also begin to sell the phones starting Wednesday, along with Verizon.
And:
Google had discussions with AT&T, another major U.S. carrier, but could not overcome some differences, according to people familiar with the matter. But Google and AT&T continue to discuss the possibility of stocking smartphones in the future, one of the people said.
And from this Verge review:
On the Pixel 3, you get free unlimited backups of the original resolution photos you’ve taken with the phone. The Pixel 3A is limited to free “high quality” backups, and it makes you pay for more storage if you upload too many original quality photos, just like any other phone. I suppose that’s one way to help get to that $399 price, but I think it’s a cheap move.
And this brings us to privacy. In an op-ed for the New York Times, Sundar Pichai pitched Google as the privacy loving company, here to make sure privacy is available to all, not just those who can afford high priced phones from their competitors.
I posted the question on Twitter, asking if people bought Sundar’s pitch. And the universal response was no. Even from Android folks. Google’s business model is based on collecting data to fuel their ad business. Hard to reframe that as “serving the people”.
I see the Pixel 3A as a great little phone. But I see it as the low priced razor. For the razor, the money is in razor blade sales. With the low priced Pixel 3A, the money is in ad sales.
An interesting strategy, Google.
Sundar Pichai, in New York Times op-ed:
Over the past 20 years, billions of people have trusted Google with questions they wouldn’t have asked their closest friends: How do you know if you’re in love? Why isn’t my baby sleeping? What is this weird rash on my arm? We’ve worked hard to continually earn that trust by providing accurate answers and keeping your questions private.
And:
“For everyone” is a core philosophy for Google; it’s built into our mission to create products that are universally accessible and useful. That’s why Search works the same for everyone, whether you’re a professor at Harvard or a student in rural Indonesia. And it’s why we care just as much about the experience on low-cost phones in countries starting to come online as we do about the experience on high-end phones.
And:
Privacy cannot be a luxury good offered only to people who can afford to buy premium products and services. Privacy must be equally available to everyone in the world.
This op-ed is fascinating to me. Feels like Google recognizes Apple’s incorporation of privacy into its brand as a foundational policy. And it feels like Google recognizes how important the issue of privacy has become as a product discriminator.
And, finally, this feels like shots across Apple’s bow. As in, Apple values privacy, but only for the people who can afford their products. With Google’s release of the Pixel 3a, priced at $399, feels like Sundar Pichai is pitching Google, and the pixel, as the privacy-respecting product for the masses.
Anyone buying this?
In a nutshell, you can add up to $200 to your Apple ID account, and Apple will add in a 10% additional credit.
Promotion ends on Friday. Follow the headline link for details.
If you are considering the Powerbeats Pro as an alternative to AirPods, Zac Hall has your back here.
If nothing else, take a look at that image, in the middle, that shows the AirPods case and Powerbeats Pro case side-by-side. Had no idea the cases were so different in size.
Here’s a link to the image of the jacket, front and back.
The jacket brings back memories, the logo on the back reminds me of AppleLink and its successor, eWorld.
Also interesting, in the comments, is the fact that Apple.com was officially registered in 1987 as the 64th .com domain in history.
[VIDEO] The video of the interview is embedded in the main Loop post. Follow the headline link to a transcript of the interview. This is the source of the comment, “We acquire a company on average, every two to three weeks”, that’s been flying around the blogs the last day or so. But the interview is much more than that, and absolutely worth watching.
Drag the Earth around to find your home, zoom in and out. Most importantly, tap that Earth button in the lower-left to reveal all the controls.
[H/T Varunorcv]
The thing that strikes me, absolutely, is that moment, right in the middle, where the music industry hit its height, and Napster stepped in.
I do think Napster was inevitable, and not the cause of the falloff. The availability of MP3 files over the internet made sharing possible, and piracy an obvious result.
Juli Clover, MacRumors:
Former Apple retail chief Angela Ahrendts left the company last month, and ahead of her departure, she sat down to share her thoughts on her experiences at Apple on LinkedIn’s Hello Monday podcast.
Here’s a link to the podcast itself. If you are interested in Angela’s voyage, it’s a good listen, about 30 minutes.
Got a Mac running Mojave? Check out Dynamic Wallpaper Club, browse and download dynamic wallpapers for your Mac. To install the downloaded HEIC files, go to:
System Preferences > Desktop & Screen Saver > Desktop
I’d accumulate all your dynamic wallpapers in a single folder, then click the + to add that folder to the Desktop Folders list.
Great story, with pictures documenting the whole thing. Terrific read. And don’t miss that one pic, in the gallery, of that massive polar bear paw.
[H/T, Varunorcv]
This ran in the New York Times on Thursday. I was on the road, but left it in my queue to post this morning.
This is opinion from the New York Times Editorial Board, doubling down on their (in my opinion) poorly thought through hatchet piece attacking Apple for taking down apps that used mobile device management for ways in which it was never intended.
This feels like the Times Editorial Board was caught on the wrong side of the MDM argument, and switched gears to find another avenue of attack.
At the heart of this new (old) argument:
Even if we take Apple at its word that it was only protecting the privacy and security of its users by removing screen-time and parental-control apps, the state of the app marketplace is troubling. Why is a company — with no mechanism for democratic oversight — the primary and most zealous guardian of user privacy and security?
As a reply to this, consider this response op-ed from Macworld’s Michael Simon:
The Times’ point that Apple shouldn’t be “the most zealous guardian of user privacy and security” just doesn’t hold water. What if the developer of one of these parental control apps had been caught using its permissions to spy on what kids were watching and reading? That would have made much bigger headlines than a handful of disgruntled developers. Apple users take privacy seriously, and they want to know there’s a gatekeeper in place.
I’m not a fan of the timing of the New York Times op-ed, coming on the heels of its wrongly logicked argument about MDM. Feels like a vengeance move.
Jason Del Rey, Vox:
In the fall of 2004, Jeff Bezos’s company was still mostly selling just books and DVDs.
That same year, Amazon was under siege from multiple sides. Some of its biggest competitors were brick-and-mortar chains like Best Buy, which was still in expansion mode at the time, with sales growing 17 percent annually.
And:
Amazon was worth $18 billion at the time.
And:
But 15 years later, Amazon is worth more than $900 billion, compared to just $33 billion for its old foe eBay, which spun off its (more valuable) payment division, PayPal. And the Amazon Prime membership program is perhaps the biggest reason why.
This is a fantastic, behind the scenes look at how Amazon Prime came to be, with interviews with people who were part of making it all happen. Great read.
Ina Fried lays out all the ways that Amazon harvests your personal data. The list is surprisingly long.
Don’t miss the links at the end for what Google, Facebook, Tesla, and Internet people finders know about you.
Hope King, for Cheddar:
I recently took my first ride in a self-driving car while in Phoenix, Arizona, where Alphabet’s Waymo has been operating the world’s first commercial self-driving taxi service since early December.
and:
My trip spanned 4.4 miles and took about 15 minutes. In the car with me was my videographer Doug, a Waymo spokeswoman, and one safety driver at the wheel.
Ready or not, autonomous vehicles are hitting the road. True, these fleets are all staffed with humans behind-the-wheel, and are in a few markets, not nationwide, but they are up and running.
Hope King does a nice job describing the experience, with video snippets, pictures, and well laid out observations.
One quote in particular stood out to me:
I was excited, but I was also a little nervous the entire time.
Imagine if there wasn’t a driver behind the wheel with hands ready to grab the wheel, foot ready to stomp the brake. This is so key. And a reason I do think we’re still far away from a true, autonomous vehicle rollout.
[VIDEO] This is publicity for a contest, where the winner gets to watch the final episode with Game of Throne cast members. But as publicity stunts go, this was pretty fun to watch. Video embedded in main Loop post.
William Gallagher, Apple Insider:
Once you understand how it works —and know the right sequence of steps to go through —then file sharing with iCloud Drive is tremendous when it’s working. It’s just that setting it up is surprisingly confusing, so let’s walk through it.
And:
The way that you share files from iCloud Drive varies slightly between iOS and Mac, but the principle is exactly the same on both. You find your file, choose Share and then specify who you’re sharing it with.
Remember that your file has to be in iCloud Drive and remember that you cannot do this with a folder. You can’t even select two or more files and share those. It’s one file at a time, as tedious as that is.
I really want to use iCloud Drive. But I end up using Dropbox. It’s just easier.
That said, this is a good “how to”, well written, absolutely worth reading, just to know how this works.
From Microsoft’s 2019 voice report:
Another nugget:
In 2018, we found that 23% of respondents currently own a smart speaker with another 30% planning to purchase . In our research in January 2019, we found that 45% of respondents now currently own a smart speaker with an additional 26% planning to purchase one soon.
You can find the report here. It’s an interesting read.
From the Amazon job description:
The Managing Editor, News will work on an exciting new opportunity within Ring to manage a team of news editors who deliver breaking crime news alerts to our neighbors.
Struggling to wrap my head around the implications here. Is this a publicity campaign? Is this part of a data-mining scenario? Is there money in the picture, or is this a pure loss for Amazon, pulled from the Ring marketing budget?
Is this the new crime beat?
New York Times:
In its first-quarter earnings report, Spotify said it had 217 million users around the world, up from 207 million at the end of last year. Of those, 100 million are paying subscribers, compared with 96 million at the end of 2018.
And:
In its most recent quarter, Spotify, which is based in Stockholm, had revenue of 1.5 billion euros, about $1.7 billion. That was a 33 percent increase from the same period a year earlier. It had a net loss of €142 million, or about $158 million.
Apple has about 56 million paid subscribers (the article says 50 million), recently passing Spotify in the US.
And:
Just as Spotify was set to open in India, Warner/Chappell, one of the biggest music publishers, sued the company, saying it had not secured the proper rights to include Warner/Chappell songs. Spotify set up shop in India anyway, saying its use of Warner/Chappell music was allowed under Indian copyright law. The case remains active in an Indian court.
Fascinating to watch this heavyweight battle unfold.
[VIDEO] Exquisite coordination, beautiful imagery, and amazing to see how detailed satellite imagery can get. Video embedded in main Loop post.
Marco Arment, Overcast creator:
Podcast sharing has been limited to audio and links, but today’s social networks are more reliant on images and video, especially Instagram. Podcasts need video clips to be shared more easily today.
I’ve seen some video clips from tools specific to certain podcast networks or hosts, but they were never available to everyone, or for every show. So people mostly just haven’t shared podcast clips, understandably, because it has been too hard.
Not anymore.
And:
With today’s 2019.4 update, you can now share audio or video clips, up to a minute each, from any public podcast. Simply tap the share button in the upper-right corner.
Great feature, huge help for podcasters trying to get the word out. I hope this becomes a standard for all podcast apps, especially this one.
Side note from 512 Pixels on how this feature came to be.
Reddit:
Last year I bought my 82 year old grandmother an iPad. She never owned a smart device before, she never touched a computer and I don’t think she knew what “the internet” was.
It was my fathers idea to get her that iPad. Thanks to me, my dad became a huge fan of Apple devices and since both he and I spend the majority of our time overseas he thought it would be a good idea to get my grandmother an iPad so they could face time and he could show her where he is etc.
TBH I thought it was an incredibly stupid idea. My grandmother is an Eastern European, ex communist country simple, old woman. Imagine old grandmothers from funny “a normal day in Russia” clips and gifs, that’s what she looks like. First 15 years of her life she spent in a village that had no electricity. Over the last 30 years we’ve spent more time talking about her inability to handle a tv remote than anything else.
Read the post for how this played out. I wrestle with this issue a lot. My mom is legally blind and feels cutoff from the world. Try as I might, I can’t find a voice-assisted solution that she can master.
My uncle has vision issues as well, gets around just fine, but also feels cutoff. He used to use email, but age has robbed him of his ability to deal with those complexities.
I wish the iPad had a mode where it could boot into an incredibly simple interface (kiosk style), where there were just a few, dead-simple buttons to press. Big, big buttons, to help people with poor close-up vision.
One could be, take picture, send to Dave. Another could be, look at pictures Dave sent you. That kind of simple interface, with just a few hard-coded, but editable (perhaps via Shortcuts) buttons would bring joy to many folks with vision or cognition issues.
That aside, read the linked story. I love the way that played out.
Rob Pegoraro, Yahoo Finance:
Apple talks a good game on privacy when the rest of the tech industry continues to fumble—with Facebook (FB) at the top of the list based on recent headlines. Most of the time those words come backed by sound and smart design choices, but then there’s AirDrop.
Almost five years after AirDrop’s debut on iPhones in Apple’s iOS 7 release, this file-sharing feature continues to enable abusive behavior by creeps who enjoy sending unsolicited photos to nearby strangers.
AirDrop’s default setting is to limit AirDrops only from people on your contact list. To check this yourself, take a look at Setting > General > AirDrop. The default is Contacts Only.
But, once you open up AirDrop (there are plenty of reasons to – Here’s one) to accept files from non-contacts:
And from then on, AirDrop would remain open to accepting a file from anybody with an AirDrop-compatible Apple device (not just iPhones, but newer iPads and Macs) within Bluetooth and WiFi range. And when a file arrives, AirDrop splashes a preview of its contents across the phone’s screen.
The answer is to turn AirDrop on, momentarily, then close that security hole by turning it back off again.
Rene Ritchie offered up an excellent suggestion here. To paraphrase, Rene suggests that there be a timer on AirDrop. Turn it on and, after a specified period of time, it closes back up automatically.
Rob Pegoraro had the same solution:
The simplest fix would be to have AirDrop’s Everyone setting expire after a few minutes.
Seems like a no-brainer to me.
On Saturday, the New York Times released an article titled Apple Cracks Down on Apps That Fight iPhone Addiction.
As Shawn posted here, Phil Schiller responded to a letter from a MacRumors reader with a detailed rebuttal.
Yesterday, Apple released an official response to that New York Times article, addressing the removal of a number of parental control apps from the App Store:
We recently removed several parental control apps from the App Store, and we did it for a simple reason: they put users’ privacy and security at risk.
And:
Over the last year, we became aware that several of these parental control apps were using a highly invasive technology called Mobile Device Management, or MDM. MDM gives a third party control and access over a device and its most sensitive information including user location, app use, email accounts, camera permissions, and browsing history.
And:
MDM does have legitimate uses. Businesses will sometimes install MDM on enterprise devices to keep better control over proprietary data and hardware. But it is incredibly risky—and a clear violation of App Store policies—for a private, consumer-focused app business to install MDM control over a customer’s device. Beyond the control that the app itself can exert over the user’s device, research has shown that MDM profiles could be used by hackers to gain access for malicious purposes.
There’s more, but that’s the gist of the argument.
Let’s revisit the New York Times article, with Apple’s response in mind:
They all tell a similar story: They ran apps that helped people limit the time they and their children spent on iPhones. Then Apple created its own screen-time tracker. And then Apple made staying in business very, very difficult.
Over the past year, Apple has removed or restricted at least 11 of the 17 most downloaded screen-time and parental-control apps, according to an analysis by The New York Times and Sensor Tower, an app-data firm. Apple has also clamped down on a number of lesser-known apps.
In some cases, Apple forced companies to remove features that allowed parents to control their children’s devices or that blocked children’s access to certain apps and adult content. In other cases, it simply pulled the apps from its App Store.
Some app makers with thousands of paying customers have shut down. Most others say their futures are in jeopardy.
From the New York Times’ presentation, one might get the impression that Apple wanted to own the screen-time and parental control app space, eliminating competition in those areas.
But Apple’s response paints a very different picture. You can see why they responded so quickly to this issue.
One final bit from Apple’s release:
In this app category, and in every category, we are committed to providing a competitive, innovative app ecosystem. There are many tremendously successful apps that offer functions and services similar to Apple’s in categories like messaging, maps, email, music, web browsers, photos, note-taking apps, contact managers and payment systems, just to name a few. We are committed to offering a place for these apps to thrive as they improve the user experience for everyone.
Apple is making it clear that this isn’t about owning a competitive space, but about privacy.
John Gruber:
The first thing to understand is that Luminary is two things: (1) an $8/month subscription service for exclusive original audio shows, from some very well-known people; (2) a podcast app for iOS and Android that you use to listen to Luminary’s own shows and any real podcast. You can use Luminary’s podcast player to listen to regular podcasts without subscribing to Luminary’s service.
And:
This thing with Luminary is a bit rich. On the one side, their own original shows are proprietary and they promote them for being ad-free. On the other, they want to be a podcast player for all regular podcasts, many of which (and most of the ones produced as professional endeavors) are funded by advertising. This spat with The New York Times and Gimlet Media is fascinating because The Times’s The Daily and Gimlet’s shows are indisputably podcasts — their RSS feeds and MP3 files are available for anyone or any client to download over the open web. Luminary isn’t being blocked technically from playing them, they’re being blocked because The Times and Gimlet asked them to, and Luminary agreed to comply. So putting aside (for the moment) whether Luminary’s own original shows qualify as “podcasts”, as a podcast player, Luminary’s app is in the incredibly bizarre position of not playing several very popular podcasts that every other podcast player in the world can subscribe to and play.
The whole thing is, to me, a rich rewarding read. Twitter exploded with complaints about Luminary’s methods (intentional or not), along with a host of podcasters discussing their efforts to remove themselves from Luminary’s service.
A perfect pairing with John Gruber’s explainer is this excellent rollup from Michael Tsai, filled with tweets and details, called Luminary Proxying Podcasts Without Asking.
One last quote from Gruber:
As a side note, I think the $100 million in venture capital that Luminary raised is going to be $100 million flushed down a toilet.
Amazing.
iFixit blog:
After two days of intense public interest, iFixit has removed our teardown of Samsung’s Galaxy Fold. That analysis supported our suspicions that the device provided insufficient protection from debris damaging the screen.
We were provided our Galaxy Fold unit by a trusted partner. Samsung has requested, through that partner, that iFixit remove its teardown. We are under no obligation to remove our analysis, legal or otherwise. But out of respect for this partner, whom we consider an ally in making devices more repairable, we are choosing to withdraw our story until we can purchase a Galaxy Fold at retail.
Our team appreciated the chance to look inside this ambitious device. All new products face challenges—this one perhaps more than most. We’re grateful to have shared a glimpse of how Samsung’s engineers addressed some of those challenges, and we look forward to sharing more as soon as possible.
You can head over to our post on the teardown for some of the “disappeared” highlights.