Apple releases Mac iTunes update

It’s a big day for Apple updates. In addition to a number of beta updates released today, Apple also updated iTunes to version 12.4.2. According to the update, it “resolves a playback issue with short Apple Music songs in your Up Next queue.”

You can download iTunes by checking for new updates in the Mac App Store.

Apple’s new beta OS downloads

Developers have access to iOS 10 beta 3, watchOS 3 beta 3, tvOS 10 beta 3, macOS Sierra, and Xcode 8 beta 3. Big day for Apple.

VW Bus bed

Like Tina Roth Eisenberg, I’d take it.

Uber reaches 2 billion rides

Uber hit 2 billion rides on June 18, CEO Travis Kalanick said in a Facebook post, six months after marking its first billion rides. The company, then, completed the same number of rides in six months as it did in the prior six years – due in part to its heavy spending to recruit drivers and passengers, which is made possible by more than $13 billion in funding from investors.

That’s pretty incredible. I use Uber, and Lyft, all the time.

Igloo is a modern intranet. Get it for free [Sponsor]

Igloo is an intranet you’ll actually like. It’s 100% cloud-based, so you’ll always have the latest version and it can be accessed from any device, anywhere. It’s time to simplify work and keep people more connected than ever before.

Is Pokemon success sustainable?

James Surowiecki from The New Yorker takes a look at a question that many people have been asking for the last week—Is Pokemon success sustainable? There are a lot of factors that go into answering this question, but I think it’s too soon to know for sure.

When Yahoo ruled the valley

They were called surfers, and they were a collection of mostly 20-somethings — including a yoga lover, an ex-banker, a divinity student, a recent college grad from Ohio hungry for adventure — all hired by a start-up called Yahoo to build a directory of the world’s most interesting websites.

I remember this so well. I can’t imagine building a directory of the most interesting Web sites by hand, but they did it.

Apple proposes new royalty structure for streaming music services

Apple’s suggested royalty structure would make accounting simpler and more transparent, but it would also make it more costly to run a free service, since streaming companies would have to pay a minimum rate, rather than a percentage of revenue. The current system arguably benefits Spotify and YouTube, since their free tiers don’t generate much revenue compared to paid services.

A big double hit for Apple here: First they look better to musicians and the industry, and second they get to screw Spotify.

Macs: September doesn’t seem right to me

John Gruber on the lack of Mac updates and when they could be coming:

Something unusual is certainly going on. We have to get updated MacBook Pros and Mac Pros soon (September?), right?

I agree completely that there has to be updates coming for various products in the Mac lineup at some point, but September just doesn’t seem right to me. Assuming Apple keeps September as its iPhone event, as its done over the past few years, the company will want to keep the focus on iPhone and nothing else.

If there is a distraction, it would be for the release of iOS, which is complementary to the iPhone. Macs don’t fit in there at all. One of two things would happen: Either the Macs would take away from the importance of the iPhone release, or the Macs would get ignored completely. Neither one of those scenarios are good for Apple or the Mac products.

Steinberg releases free Smart Click metronome app for iOS

Smart Click brings one of the most accurate metronomes to your iOS handhelds. We have paid special attention to its usability and design by providing an easy and quick way to access the app. Smart Click’s easy-to-use interface lets you focus on practicing effectively and improving your ability to play in time. And to make it even better yet this metronome app allows you to choose different time signatures and four types of accents for each beat, including the well-known Cubase click sound. Stay in time — wherever you are!

Steinberg has been in the music industry for years and years. It’s great to see them releasing apps for iOS and further expanding their reach.

iPad Pro and tattoo artists

Tattoo artists are making a gradual conversion to digital, and the iPad Pro is proving to be a catalyst for an industry that so far has only reluctantly let go of ink pens and sketch paper. Pen and paper, after all, has been where the art in tattoo art has originated. The iPad Pro, with the help of the Apple Pencil stylus and some advanced image processing software, may be the first affordable technology that feels authentic enough to move artists away from the familiarity of pen and paper.

This makes perfect sense, but I never even thought of these artists as potential iPad Pro users when it was released.

Learning to trust a self-driving car

“But ultimately the operator of the vehicle is responsible for having some degree of situational awareness. When it comes to autonomous cars, it’s a system. It’s a machine. It’s not making decisions. It’s not aware of everything. It’s simply sensing its environment and responding as it has been trained.”

Great article from The New Yorker, but I completely agree with the above statement that Brian Lathrop, a senior engineer for Volkswagen’s Electronics Research Laboratory, made in the story.

The moment CSS started making sense

The CSS-Tricks team share their moments when CSS made sense. It’s funny, we have have these types of moments, whether it’s design, coding, music or whatever—sometimes it just clicks.

Acoustic guitar capo I bought

I have a love/hate relationship with capos because they often screw up the sound or don’t press evenly on the strings, which also screws up the sound. I recently picked this one up and it works great every time.

Towards zero-touch iOS deployment

Fraser Speirs:

One of my goals for the next deployment is to, well, do it faster. The holy grail of iOS deployment is to “never touch the glass”. That is, to engineer a system whereby the most you ever do to a device is put it in a case and plug it into a cable.

We’re not totally there yet, but Fraser put together a great article on what can be done.

Google: Promoting gender equality through emoji

More than 90 percent of the world’s online population use emoji. But while there’s a huge range of emoji, there aren’t a lot that highlight the diversity of women’s careers, or empower young girls.

Moron

A driver in New York state ran his car off the road and into a tree last night as a result of playing “Pokémon Go.”

I couldn’t care less if they hurt themselves, but an innocent person is going to get hurt by these morons.

Nest Cam Outdoor

I’m glad to see Nest released an outdoor camera—it was definitely something missing from their product lineup.

EU antitrust regulators charge Google

“Google has come up with many innovative products that have made a difference to our lives. But that doesn’t give Google the right to deny other companies the chance to compete and innovate,” European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager told a news conference in Brussels.

This is in addition to the existing charge that search results favor Google’s shopping service.

FBI no longer investigating the D.B. Cooper case

This is one of the most famous cases in American history. To some people D.B. Cooper is a criminal, but to others he is a folk hero. I watched the History Channel on the case this week and they had some compelling evidence, but ultimately not enough to close the case.

USS Hornet Museum

A friend took my son and I to the USS Hornet Museum this week and it was an amazing time. The amount of history on this aircraft carrier was impressive.

Here’s how the Hornet describes itself:

Pokémon GO is now the biggest mobile game in U.S. history

Shooting to the top of the app store on the day it was released, within 24 hours Pokémon GO beat out indie hit Slither.io and Supercell’s heavily promoted blockbuster Clash Royale to become the biggest game of 2016, as measured by daily active users.

Simply incredible.