Apple

Apple developing their own MicroLED screens for the first time

Written by

Mark Gurman, Bloomberg:

Apple Inc. is designing and producing its own device displays for the first time, using a secret manufacturing facility near its California headquarters to make small numbers of the screens for testing purposes, according to people familiar with the situation.

The technology giant is making a significant investment in the development of next-generation MicroLED screens, say the people, who requested anonymity to discuss internal planning. MicroLED screens use different light-emitting compounds than the current OLED displays and promise to make future gadgets slimmer, brighter and less power-hungry.

Significant innovation drives device sales. A new, innovative screen technology will bring buyers, hungry for the latest and greatest.

And the “less power-hungry” tag will, presumably, translate to longer battery life, or more power for the CPU.

Smart move on Apple’s part. Reduces dependency on other manufacturers, brings more of the full stack in house, and brings a proprietary, desirable technology into their exclusive control.

I wonder where this river of displays will be built. In the US? Subcontracted out to a manufacturer outside the US?

“A frank, smart and captivating memoir by the daughter of Apple founder Steve Jobs”

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Lisa Brennan-Jobs has written a memoir, called Small Fry, due out in September, available for pre-order now.

From the Small Fry book page on Amazon:

Born on a farm and named in a field by her parents―artist Chrisann Brennan and Steve Jobs―Lisa Brennan-Jobs’s childhood unfolded in a rapidly changing Silicon Valley. When she was young, Lisa’s father was a mythical figure who was rarely present in her life. As she grew older, her father took an interest in her, ushering her into a new world of mansions, vacations, and private schools. His attention was thrilling, but he could also be cold, critical and unpredictable. When her relationship with her mother grew strained in high school, Lisa decided to move in with her father, hoping he’d become the parent she’d always wanted him to be.

Small Fry is Lisa Brennan-Jobs’s poignant story of a childhood spent between two imperfect but extraordinary homes. Scrappy, wise, and funny, young Lisa is an unforgettable guide through her parents’ fascinating and disparate worlds. Part portrait of a complex family, part love letter to California in the seventies and eighties, Small Fry is an enthralling book by an insightful new literary voice.

Fingers crossed, hoping this is a great book.

Inside the booming black market for Spotify playlists

Written by

Austin Powell, Daily Dot:

Tommie King could be the next rapper to breakout from Atlanta. He’s well-connected, has obvious swagger, and he’s been quietly building a successful collection of singles on Spotify. His latest, “Eastside (feat. Cyhi the Prynce),” has already clocked more than 110,000 streams, driven largely by its placement on 14 independent playlists.

And:

In the modern music economy, in which streaming services account for nearly two-thirds of the total revenue generated by recorded music, emerging artists are increasingly being tracked via big data. Spotify streams, YouTube views, Twitter interactions, and even Wikipedia searches are all being used to discover the proverbial next big thing. That’s why King’s manager has worked to land his music on a staggering 594 Spotify playlists to date.

And:

There’s just one catch: King essentially paid to be added to those Spotify playlists. He’s one of countless artists who have compensated curators to check out his tracks—or in the case for some of his contemporaries, to be added to specific playlists—to gain valuable streams and attention.

The black market for Spotify playlists is booming. It’s cheaper than you might expect to hack the system—and if it’s done right, it more than pays for itself.

No doubt, Spotify’s playlists are its secret sauce. They’ve quietly built the modern big data equivalent of the Billboard top 100 genre charts.

If the pay-to-play is true, I’m surprised that Spotify would tolerate that behavior. They have an opportunity to own a significant chunk of music’s future. But if they allow artists to buy their way in, they’ll squander that chance, all credibility gone.

Notably absent from this article is Apple (just a single mention, in passing). Is this simple bias? Or is Spotify truly owning this space? Very interesting.

Fitbit CFO: “I have yet to meet anyone who owns an Apple Watch who’s passionate about the product”

Written by

Brett Arends, Barrons:

“I have yet to meet anyone who owns an Apple Watch who’s passionate about the product,” he told investors at the Roth Investment Conference in Laguna Beach, Calif., adding that sales of the Apple Watch have mainly just piggybacked off sales of iPhones.

“If you don’t have an Apple phone, you’re not buying an Apple Watch… [and] 80% of the world is Android, not Apple,” he said.

Someone nudge John Gruber. A good candidate for the claim chowder vault of honor.

Apple Bans Iran from the App Store

Written by

Catalin Cimpanu, Bleeping Computer:

Iranian users have not been able to access Apple’s App Store all day today, in what appears to be a ban put in place by the US company.

And:

Users were not able to connect to the Apple App Store to install or update applications. When visiting the App Store, they were instead greeted with the message “The App Store is unavailable in the country or region you’re in”.

This ban appears to be IP-based. Meysam Firouzi —an Iranian security researcher— told Bleeping Computer that he successfully connected to the App Store while using a VPN, despite having Iran-related details set on his account.

And:

In August 2017, Apple removed all apps created by Iranian developers from the App Store, attributing the move to US-imposed economic sanctions.

Interesting. Wondering if we’ll ever know the behind-the-scenes on this.

UPDATE from Bleeping Computer:

As of around 1 AM EST, Bleeping Computer received a message from Firouzi stating that the App Store was once again accessible in Iran. Apple has still not comment or returned our queries, so we are unsure if this was a mistake or something else that caused the outage.

Apple Watch adoption

Written by

David Smith:

From a development perspective the Series 3 is a delight to work with. It is fast, capable and LTE allows a wide variety of new applications.

And:

In daily use the Series 0 is probably “good enough” for many customers, especially with the speed/stability improvements added in watchOS 4, but as a developer I can’t wait until I no longer have to support it.

And:

The Series 3 is being adopted incredibly quickly and just last week became the most popular Apple Watch overall amongst my users with 33% of the overall user-base. The Series 0 is steadily falling, currently at around 24%.

Lots of interesting Apple Watch adoption data in this post. Will Apple drop Series 0 support? I hope Apple continues to offer a path for Series 0 buyers to receive watchOS updates, even if 3rd party apps stop supporting Series 0.

How Stephen Hawking got his voice back

Written by

Joao Medeiros, Wired:

Hawking lost his ability to speak in 1985, when, on a trip to CERN in Geneva, he caught pneumonia. In the hospital, he was put on a ventilator. His condition was critical. The doctors asked Hawking’s then-wife, Jane, whether they should turn off the life support. She vehemently refused. Hawking was flown to Addenbrooke’s Hospital, in Cambridge, where the doctors managed to contain the infection. To help him breathe, they also performed a tracheotomy, which involved cutting a hole in his neck and placing a tube into his windpipe. As a result, Hawking irreversibly lost the ability to speak.

This is a fascinating story, starting with a program that ran on an Apple II, then evolving over the years, all while keeping that original synthesized voice.

Spotify tests native voice search, groundwork for smart speakers

Written by

Josh Constine, TechCrunch:

Spotify has a new voice search interface that lets you say “Play my Discover Weekly,” “Show Calvin Harris” or “Play some upbeat pop” to pull up music.

If this was an app that someone created as an experiment, that’d be one thing. But this comes from Spotify’s own R&D.

Hard to say what kind of impact this will have on Apple’s music and smart speaker ambitions. After all, Apple Music, HomePod, and Siri are all part of a much larger ecosystem. And though Spotify does dominate the paid music sector, it’s reach does not extend into anything larger. Yet.

I can’t help but think that Spotify would be an enticing partner for Google or Amazon, more so if they built a bridge to marry their musical intelligence (they have access to a massive trove of user data) with intelligent musical speech command processing and, say, Amazon’s Echo installed base.

This is an interesting development, worth keeping an eye on.

Apple adds new Families page, gathering all parental tools in one place

Written by

Ina Fried, Axios:

A new page on Apple’s website details its efforts to make Macs and iPhones family friendly, including parental controls and other safety features. The move comes as Apple and other tech giants are under fire over whether their products are addictive, especially for children.

From this letter to Apple from a collective of Apple investors:

We have reviewed the evidence and we believe there is a clear need for Apple to offer parents more choices and tools to help them ensure that young consumers are using your products in an optimal manner. By doing so, we believe Apple would once again be playing a pioneering role, this time by setting an example about the obligations of technology companies to their youngest customers.

Apple’s new page is here. Definitely a step in the right direction, a single stop for learning about tools and resources for keeping your family safe.

A complete guide to every Apple TV show in development

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Good list. It’d be nice to have this as a constantly updated resource.

As Apple’s media plans mature, seems to me they should add a page to their main site that makes it easy to follow along.

It’s time for a complete Home App makeover

Written by

John Voorhees, MacStories:

Home is both too complex because of the way it splits things into rooms, zones, groups, scenes, and automations and too simple because it lacks features like robust state awareness and, in some places, timers. However, the problems with the Home app run even deeper. They are compounded by a generic UI and complex navigation.

Read John’s post to really get a sense of his point. Or just spend some time trying to edit the HomePod’s now playing queue.

All this said, it is early days still, both for HomeKit and HomePod. Even though HomeKit dates back to iOS 8 (a bit more than two years ago), I see it as still early in the adoption cycle, still in its infancy. As more and more people start using HomeKit compatible gear, the use cases are becoming better defined.

John makes the case that it is time for Apple to re-roll the interface.

Apple puts up gorgeous, animated WWDC graphic

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Take a look, on the highest resolution screen you have. Beautiful work.

What’s it all mean? Are there clues in this art? The most common thing I’ve heard (and what sprang to mind for me, instantly) is a design language for Augmented Reality.

This from John Gruber:

Now, if we want to play Cupertino-ology, does the graphic offer any hints about planned announcements (like, say, a unified cross-platform set of UI frameworks for Mac and iOS) or it just a cool graphic?

That’s an interesting take.

Refurbished, high-end iPhones are suffocating the growth of cheap new Androids

Written by

Daniel Eran Dilger, AppleInsider:

The fastest growing segment in global smartphones isn’t Google’s vision for super-cheap, simple Android phones. Instead, according to new market data, it’s refurbished high-quality phones that carry a desirable brand but can be sold at a more affordable price, a segment where Apple is “leading by a significant margin.”

And from the original study from Counterpoint Research:

The low growth of the new smartphone market in 2017 can be partially attributed to the growth of the refurb market. The slowdown in innovation has made two-year-old flagship smartphones comparable in design and features with the most recent mid-range phones. Therefore, the mid low-end market for new smartphones is being cannibalized by refurbished high-end phones, mostly Apple iPhones and, to a lesser extent, Samsung Galaxy smartphones.

This is a pretty interesting development. Apple has added another layer to this market, a layer that it dominates.

Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference kicks off June 4 in San Jose

Written by

Apple:

Apple today announced it will host its 29th annual Worldwide Developers Conference in San Jose from June 4 through June 8. The McEnery Convention Center will be home to the world’s most creative developer community, who come together every year to share unique perspectives and learn about the future of Apple’s breakthrough products and services.

Every year, WWDC provides an opportunity for millions of developers to learn more about how to create new experiences across Apple’s platforms for iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Apple TV, Mac and HomePod. A broad range of robust developer APIs, including SiriKit, HomeKit, HealthKit, GymKit, MusicKit, ResearchKit, and CoreML, give developers new ways to help users take command of everything from their health and homes, to how they get around, shop and learn. Last year at WWDC Apple debuted ARKit, and since then, developers with apps in every category on the App Store have embraced inventive ways to engage customers with virtual experiences overlaid in the real world.

Looking forward to this!

Siri, HomePod, and a bit of back and forth

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One of my favorite habits is strolling downstairs in the morning, and asking Siri to play some music while I make coffee, do my morning routine.

Yesterday, I asked Siri to play one of my favorite albums, Keith Jarrett’s The Köln Concert. It’s a terrific morning album and, even though it came out back in 1975, it sounds terrific on HomePod. It’s all about the production.

The problem here is getting Siri to play this album. […]

The world’s very first iPod commercial

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[VIDEO] Though the commercial is obviously dated (shown by aspect ratio, resolution, fashion, and tech), the sense of how deeply Apple gets music and its importance to people is clear.

Head over to the main Loop post to watch the ad.

Apple Music hits 38 million paid subscribers

Written by

Reuters:

Apple Inc’s streaming music service now has 38 million paid subscribers, up from 36 million in February, the company said on Monday.

And:

Apple’s number compares to 71 million premium subscribers at the end of 2017 at industry leader Spotify.

And:

Amazon Music Unlimited has 16 million paying subscribers, and Pandora Media Inc has 5.48 million total subscribers.

Eddie Cue shared the Apple Music numbers on stage at South by Southwest in Austin.

Apple orders animated comedy ‘Central Park’ from ‘Bob’s Burgers’ creator

Written by

Daniel Holloway, Variety:

Apple continues to grow it series-programming slate, adding its first animated show.

The digital giant has given a two-season series order to “Central Park,” a musical comedy from “Bob’s Burgers” creator Loren Bouchard and 20th Century Fox Television. Written by Bouchard, Josh Gad, and Nora Smith, the series is described as telling the story of how a family of caretakers, who live and work in Central Park, end up saving the park, and basically the world.

Two seasons, 13 episodes each.

The content pipeline is starting to fill. What’s not clear is how all this new programming will be packaged. Will it be part of the Apple Music subscription? Will Apple Music be segmented? Rebranded? Will a new Apple Media entity be created?

How to change where AirDropped files are saved on your Mac

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This iDownloadBlog post is doubly useful:

  • As advertised in the headline, use it to change the default location for AirDropped files on your Mac.
  • Go through this reasonably painless process to learn about Automator.

Nice job by Joaquim Barbosa. Clever and well written.

Jean-Louis Gassée: Intel fights for its future

Written by

Jean-Louis Gassée, Monday Note:

By declining Steve Jobs’ proposal to make the original iPhone CPU in 2005, Intel missed a huge opportunity. The company’s disbelief in Apple’s ambitious forecast is belied by the numbers: More than 1.8 billion iOS devices have been sold thus far.

And:

One may wonder why then-CEO Paul Otellini didn’t make Apple an offer they couldn’t refuse: Access to Intel’s superior silicon manufacturing technology. At the time, Apple had nothing; Intel held all the cards.

And:

A few years later, after the dramatic rise of ARM-powered smartphones, Intel execs’ faith in Wintel was unshaken: “The temporary advantage these less sophisticated, Windows-less ARM chips are enjoying will be erased by the superior silicon manufacturing process of the x86. It’s nothing…”

Fantastic take on Intel’s Apple hubris. Now Intel is fighting for its very existence.

Steve Jobs at MIT

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[VIDEO] Steve Jobs gave a very informal talk (video embedded in the main Loop post) to a class at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, back in 1992. I’ve not seen this one before.

I have to say, seeing Steve so young and vibrant both thrills me and fills me with sadness.

Alexa, Siri, and a step toward follow-up conversation

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When you ask Siri, Alexa, or Google a question, you have to say the trigger phrase, “Hey Siri”, “Alexa”, or “OK Google”. When you want to follow-up, you have to repeat that trigger phrase.

But that is about to change.

Amazon has rolled out a beta of something it calls Follow-up Mode. From this Amazon Help page:

When you turn on Follow-Up Mode, you can make more requests without repeating the wake word. Follow-up mode is available on all hands-free Alexa-enabled devices. The blue indicator light on the Echo device remains on for a few seconds, letting you know that Alexa is active and ready for your next request.

The idea is, after you say “Alexa”, Alexa keeps listening for a follow-up query until it times out. Notably, follow-up mode does not kick in when:

  • Audio is playing. For example, the device is playing music, books, or you’re on a call through the device.
  • You end the conversation with Alexa. For example, you can say, “stop,” “cancel,” “go to sleep,” or “thank you.”
  • Alexa is not confident you’re speaking to her. For example, if she detects that speech was background noise or that the intent of the speech was not clear.

I’d think this would be relatively simple for Apple to implement for Siri. There’s certainly value when you want to do a sequence of things. But I also think it’d be a big help for Siri’s context analysis, making it more likely that two queries in a row are connected in some way, like so:

  • Hey Siri, what time is my next meeting?
  • What time is the one after that?

Or:

  • Hey Siri, what song is this?
  • What album is it from?

You get the idea. Conversational context is a bit of a holy grail. As is, all three (Siri, Alexa, Google) are still infants, still learning the most rudimentary rules of conversational memory.

Hey, Siri: 142 useful voice commands for Siri

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Jonny Evans, writing for Computerworld, pulled together this extensive list of things you can ask Siri. This is worth a scan, just to make sure you have a sense of Siri’s current range.

How many of these commands will work on HomePod? I tried a number of these, and I was actually surprised by how many did work. Cool.

Swift and its place in the ranking of programming languages

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First things first, this set of rankings is based on data from GitHub and StackOverflow. Read the post for the details on how this data was collected.

There are plenty of other ways to assess the popularity of programming languages, but this seems a reasonable approach.

It’s notable that Swift has tied Objective-C. As the post says:

Finally, the apprentice is now the master. Technically, this isn’t entirely accurate, as Swift merely tied the language it effectively replaced – Objective C – rather than passing it. Still, it’s difficult to view this run as anything but a changing of the guard.

Pass this along to your dev friends.

Apple’s case of dance fever

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Before we dig into the linked post, it might help to know a bit about Ken Segall. From his bio:

Working with Steve Jobs as his ad agency’s creative director for twelve years spanning NeXT and Apple, he led the team behind Apple’s legendary Think different campaign, and set Apple down the i-way by naming the iMac.

That said, here’s Ken Segall, from the linked post:

The Apple story of the week is the new HomePod ad. Four minutes in length, I’m not sure you can call it an ad, but it’s out there and getting mostly positive reactions. Directed by Spike Jonze, psychedelic expanding sets, cool music, emotional dance … what’s not to like?

And:

It’s not that I don’t like it. I think it’s beautifully produced, like all Apple ads. But it does make me feel like I’ve been here before. Or, more accurately, that I’ve been here many times before. Like I’m stuck in an infinite loop of Apple dancing ads.

Over the years, Apple has given us a virtual stream of ads in which music inspires someone to dance. The scenery changes, laws of physics are increasingly challenged, but the basic concept remains the same.

At least that’s been my overall impression. So the new HomePod ad moved me to action. After I finished dancing, I nosed around to see if my memory matched the reality.

At the very least, this is a fascinating walk through the history of Apple’s music advertising. Of course Apple’s ads will have a lot of dance in them. Advertising is a visual medium and if you are pitching music (and lots of Apple’s products involve music in some fashion), dance is a terrific visual storyteller.

So what’s the problem here?

In my opinion, a company like Apple can take two approaches to advertising. It can start thinking about what works for the mainstream audience—like dancing and celebrities (who are also frequently summoned by Apple these days)—or it can use its mass-popularity to take the same risks today as it did when it was the underdog.

The latter is the Apple that captured so many hearts.

And:

The iPod Silhouette campaign changed Apple advertising in a huge way. It was virtually the first Apple campaign that didn’t feature a lot of white space, a gorgeous product shot and clever words. Yes, it was a lot of dance, but it was a totally fresh take on dance.

Fair enough. This is more of a quest for a fresh take, something as groundbreaking and different as the Silhouette campaign.

No matter how you feel about this, scroll through Ken’s post, take a look back at some of Apple’s past ads. Some great stuff there.

How to control HomePod from Mac or iOS

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I’ve been list-building again. Last week, I posted a tweet asking about Things Apple changed, were mocked for, then were copied industry wide.

Yesterday, I tweeted about requests for improvements in the next rev of HomePod and HomePod Siri.

I’ve already gotten a huge wave of feedback. Clearly, people see the potential with HomePod and have some great ideas on making HomePod and Siri interaction better.

All that said, one topic that came up in the Twitter discussion was the ability to control your HomePod experience from your Mac or your iPhone. The idea would be to access the HomePod’s history and current queue, adding and deleting songs to control what’s coming.

Turns out, there is a way to do some of that.

Jason Snell, from this MacWorld article:

The HomePod doesn’t behave like most other Apple devices. Unlike the Apple Watch, there’s no dedicated app. It supports AirPlay, so it shows up in the list of audio sources—but it’s also remote-controllable like an Apple TV. And to configure it, you don’t visit the Settings app, but the Home app. Here’s a quick guide to where and how you can control the HomePod from your iPhone, iPad, or Mac.

In a nutshell, Jason walks you through the process of using the Home and Music apps, and Control Center (on iOS) or iTunes (on the Mac), to connect your iPhone/Mac to your HomePod, remote controlling content on HomePod without using AirPlay.

This feels like a hack to me. I do appreciate the ability to pick a song and add it to the HomePod queue, but I find the process confusing and insufficient.

Give me a HomePod app, please. One that shows the current queue and history, with a simple up next/add to queue feature. The keyword is simple. I shouldn’t need to juggle three different mechanisms, each with a unique and unrelated interface, just to visually manage my HomePod song experience.

Interesting side note: Playing around, I clearly was able to add songs to my HomePod while it was playing and, at the same time, have music playing on my iPhone. Then I powered down my iPhone and my HomePod stopped playing. I was not AirPlaying from my iPhone to my HomePod, yet the iPhone was clearly controlling my HomePod.

With my iPhone off, I asked HomePod Siri to play a song, and she did. When I powered down my iPhone, HomePod took back control. Interesting. And confusing.

UPDATE: With a bit of help from Kyle Gray, I got to the view of my HomePod up-next queue on my iPhone’s Music app. It’s there and it does work. Discoverability aside, I still would like to see a separate queue for my HomePod, one that lives beyond the moment. When I said, “Hey Siri, play Walk the Moon”, HomePod Siri complied, and that wiped the queue I’d constructed.

That said, if I say “Hey Siri, play Perfect Darkness by Fink next”, HomePod Siri will add that song to the queue and I can see that addition on my iPhone.

But if I say “Hey Siri, add some Steely Dan next”, I’ll get a river of Steely Dan songs added to the queue. Would love a “Siri, undo” command.

Prototype Apple Macintosh Portable for sale on eBay

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I’ve been tracking this one wit great interest. From the description:

Up for sale is one of the rarest Apple computers you’ll find. This is a prototype/clear Macintosh Portable (M5126) backlit. I’ve been collecting for many years now and only know of four of these left in the world. All of which, based on my knowledge, exist in private collections i.e. Lonnie Mimm’s, an individual in Europe, this one, my personal collection. This is one of my favorite Apple computers and the fact this is a clear prototype make is unbelievably rare. The chances of one of these coming up for sale again are very low.

And:

The engineer I bought this from worked on the Macintosh Portable project. Another buddy of his, who also worked on the project and was leaving the Apple, said he planned on throwing this prototype out. The person I bought this from literally found it in his buddies trash before he left Apple. The engineer I bought this from kept it in his office until he left Apple and kept it safe for 28 years.

Follow the link, check out the pictures. Beautiful. From what I can tell, this is the prototype of this device, which Apple sold from 1989 to 1991 at the incredibly expensive price of $7,300 (about $14,000 in today’s dollars). Crazy.

As I write this, the prototype has a current bid of $8,100. Don’t tempt me, internet.

Apple rolls out new version of Workflow. Federico digs in to what’s new.

Written by

Federico Viticci, MacStories:

In the first update since November 2017, Apple today released version 1.7.8 of Workflow, the powerful iOS automation app they acquired last year. The latest version, which is now available on the App Store, introduces a brand new Mask Image action, adds support for Things’ automation features, and improves the ability to extract text from PDFs using the company’s PDFKit framework, launched in iOS 11. While the unassuming version number may suggest a relatively minor update, Workflow 1.7.8 actually comes with a variety of noteworthy changes for heavy users of the app.

If you’ve never played with Workflow, take a few minutes and download it (it’s free).

And if you use Workflow, read Federico’s excellent walkthrough of what’s new.

United Healthcare lets you earn $1,000 for meeting Apple Watch daily walking goals

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CNET:

Need an incentive to exercise? Maybe the chance to land an Apple Watch could help.

That’s what UnitedHealthcare is hoping, anyway. The health insurance company is integrating the Apple Watch into its UnitedHealthcare Motion digital wellness program, which gives people access to activity trackers that then allow them to earn up to $1,000 a year if they meet daily walking goals.

And:

After paying tax and shipping, anyone enrolled in UnitedHealthcare Motion can get an Apple Watch Series 3 and have the option to apply earnings from the program toward buying the device. After that, their earnings are deposited into their health savings account or health reimbursement account to help cover out-of-pocket medical expenses.

Great move.