HBO’s The Defiant Ones is a four-part series about the background and intertwined lives that led Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre to Beats and then Apple’s doorstep.
Episode One is in heavy rotation on HBO, with Episode Two airing tonight. Or, you can binge all four episodes on HBO Go.
There’s a lot to enjoy here, especially if you are a fan of the music industry. Pairs nicely with the excellent Straight Outta Compton.
Federico Viticci and John Voorhees have a podcast called AppStories which I quite like. This particular episode is an interview with David Lawrence, the mastermind behind Rehearsal, an app that is used by top Broadway and Hollywood actors (like Kevin Bacon, Clark Gregg – Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Avengers, etc.) to learn their lines.
This is a fascinating listen. One takeaway is that the acting community has settled on iOS as an unofficial standard, enough of one that Rehearsal has never been ported to Android.
Side note, David Lawrence played the Puppetmaster for three seasons on the original Heroes series. Here’s a link to the interview . Enjoy.
Motherboard:
In August 2016, Apple’s head of security Ivan Krstic stole the show at one of the biggest security conferences in the world with an unexpected announcement.
“I wanna share some news with you,” Krstic said at the Black Hat conference, before announcing that Apple was finally launching a bug bounty program to reward friendly hackers who report bugs to the company.
The crowd erupted in enthusiastic applause. But almost a year later, the long-awaited program appears to be struggling to take off, with no public evidence that hackers have claimed any bug bounties.
And at the core of it all:
The iPhone’s security is so tight that it’s hard to find any flaws at all, which leads to sky-high prices for bugs on the grey market.
The question is, are the bugs valuable enough for Apple to raise their bounties to compete with the grey market?
AppleWorld Today:
Future Macs may “wake up” when they detect your presence and take action based on exactly where you are. Apple has filed for a patent (number 20170193282) for “presence sensing.”
The “presence-based functionality” method may include operating the Mac in a reduced power state and collecting a first set of data from a first sensor. Based on the first set of data, the computer determines if an object is within a threshold distance of the Mac.
Some interesting possibilities here. Your Mac could rise to a low-power awareness mode when you are nearby, then power up more fully as more criteria are met. I’d like to see my Mac wake up, bring Safari to the front, then update the specific set of tabs I invariably read through every morning, with one set on weekdays (my Loop prep) and a different set on weekends (my feet up, coffee on the porch reading).
Part of the focus of this patent is more efficient power management. Which would react one way to me watching a video, another to my creating content (by typing/clicking), and another to my turning on some music, then running silent.
Ken Segall:
I get that Intel Inside is one of the most successful marketing campaigns in business history. It’s just that after 36 years, that logo starts to feel more like a pollutant than an advertising device.
Thankfully, Macs have remained 100% free of Intel branding since Apple adopted its processors way back in 2006.
We have Steve Jobs’s sensibilities to thank for this. But how it all happened is a fun little story.
No spoilers, a fun read, another great little Steve Jobs anecdote.
UPDATE: Jump to the main Loop post to see video of the “Stickers” quote.
[H/T John Kordyback]
Check the pictures. These look pretty well done. You can send in your AirPods, they’ll paint them for $99, or buy them direct from the site for $279/$299 depending on the finish.
Pricey, but interesting.
I’ve always been a Strat fan, love these playlists. Here’s a link to the Fender playlist page. Enjoy.
Korea Herald:
The English version of Samsung Electronics’ voice-assistant service Bixby has been delayed because the firm lacks the accumulation of big data, which is key to deep learning technology, according to the company Tuesday.
And:
Bixby is now available only in Korean, although Samsung’s mobile chief, Koh Dong-jin, said in April, “Bixby’s English version and Chinese version will be unveiled in May and in June, respectively.”
Didn’t happen.
“Many engineers in the US are making full efforts to develop the English version. But, (due to geographical and language barriers) their frequent reports to and communication with the management located in Korea makes the progress much slower than developing the Korean version here,” said a source on the condition of anonymity.
I was wondering what had become of Bixby.
Austin Mann, photographer:
Earlier this month, I realized June 29 would mark the 10 year anniversary of the iPhone and began diving into the images I’ve shot with iPhone over the years. As I glanced through the archive, I realized what an amazing journey the last 10 years has been and thought I’d share some of the highlights with you.
Lots of history here. My favorite bit from this dive into the iPhone history rabbit-hole is Austin’s take on the original rollout:
I can still remember the morning of June 29, 2007. I was living in NYC, working at an ad agency, McCann-Erickson. Though I had been following the release of the iPhone and I couldn’t wait to get my hands on one, I knew I couldn’t spend the day in line waiting as I had responsibilities at work.
I arrived at my office, however, and my very cool boss looked at me and said, “Austin, what are you doing here?” I was a little confused as it was a standard work day and I was on time. “What do you mean?” I said. She responded, “It’s iPhone day. You’ve been talking about this for months! Get outta here and go get in line!” I got a big smile on my face, said thanks, and bolted straight to the Fifth Avenue store at about 10AM.
I carried a Leica D-LUX 3 at the time (still love that thing) and shot a few very shaky clips throughout the day and cut them into this quick piece.
Follow the link, watch the video. If you could go back in time, knowing what you know now, that’d be one place to visit (just after you placed your order to buy a ton of Apple stock).
Kathy Chin Leong, New York Times:
City officials and residents say this project is like nothing they’ve seen before. It is even bringing tourists.
Onlookers snap pictures of the spaceship from the streets. TV helicopters circle above. Amateur photographers ask residents if they can stand on driveways to operate their drones, hoping to get a closer look at Apple Park.
And:
The entire project shows off Apple’s obsession with details. The custom windows were made in Germany and are considered the world’s largest panels of curved glass. One pair of glass doors is 92 feet high. The finish on the underground concrete garage, said David Brandt, Cupertino’s city manager, is so shiny it is almost like glass.
“Mind-blowing, mind-blowing, mind-blowing,” the mayor, Savita Vaidhyanathan, said about her visit to the site. “I saw the underground 1,000-seat theater and the carbon-fiber roof. The roof was made in Dubai, and it was transported and assembled here. I love that it’s here and that I can brag about it.”
And:
The price of property in the neighborhood has also become a source of some worry. Sunnyvale and Cupertino, like many other Silicon Valley towns, have had an extended real estate boom, as the tech industry has expanded. Prices in the area really started to rise, real estate agents and residents said, after Apple released its plans.
A three-bedroom, two-bathroom, 1,400-square-foot ranch-style house that cost $750,000 in 2011 has doubled in price. Since Apple said it was moving into the former Hewlett-Packard site, prices have moved up 15 to 20 percent year after year, said Art Maryon, a local real estate agent. Today, bidders usually offer 20 to 25 percent over the asking price.
Fascinating piece.
M.G. Siegler on being asked which iPad is the one to buy:
When pressed, my answer was that for most people, the 9.7″ iPad was probably the one to get. With the latest iterations of the iPad Pro, I think the answer is now much more clear: the new 10.5″ variety is the one to get.
The screen size gap has been closed a bit. The speed gap has been completely erased. The 10.5″ iPad Pro is absolutely amazing.
And:
When you start to use the 10.5″ and then try to go back, you cannot. The 9.7″ iPad feels short and stubby in a way similar to how the 3.5″ iPhone felt after using the 4″ variety. The smaller one now feels like a clown iPad.
And:
Size aside, the screen with its much touted 120Hz refresh rate is incredible. Again, it’s one of those things you have to either be a hardcore iPad user or use a newer iPad Pro versus an older iPad side-by-side to truly appreciate. Everything is just so much smoother.
At first, it’s a little weird. It almost makes some iOS animations like swiping through your app screens feel like how pan-and-scan used to feel on old non-lettered-boxed VHS movies. But this feeling goes away quickly and now it just seems normal. And old, non-120Hz animations now just feel janky.
The recommendation for the 10.5″ iPad Pro seems almost universal. There may be a review that didn’t love it and appreciate the leap forward in terms of product capability, but I have not run across it.
Jason Snell, Six Colors:
This week Apple is unleashing the first public betas of the next versions of its two major operating systems, iOS and macOS, on the world. One of the major areas of improvement in macOS High Sierra is to the Photos app, which is only a couple of years old and has plenty of room to grow. I literally wrote the book on Photos, so it’s been interesting to watch Apple’s replacement for iPhoto as it has grown and changed.
Here’s a look at the changes and new features coming to Photos for Mac as a part of macOS High Sierra.
A brand new editing pane, support for third party editors has been enhanced, and much more. If you use Photos on your Mac, take the time to read through this.
The selling price of an original iPhone is rising. The hype around the 10th anniversary might mark a high water mark, but it might also be just a roadmark on the way to a much higher price. The original iPhone is ripe for speculation.
If it was me, I’d only invest in an unopened original iPhone with a box/shrinkwrap in perfect condition. And as you make your way through the linked article, keep two things in mind:
Sam Byford, The Verge:
Often, using an iPhone in a Japan just straight-up sucked. The missing features hurt, of course, but the bigger problem was that having experienced what life was like in the tightly integrated Japanese mobile ecosystem, moving to the iPhone felt like using a product that simply wasn’t designed for the world I lived in. Because, well, it wasn’t.
How, then, did Apple get to its current position where Japan is one of its strongest and most lucrative markets?
Fascinating inside view of the iPhone’s early days in Japan.
MacDailyNews pulled together some misguided quotes from the early days of iPhone. A few of my favorites:
“We are not at all worried. We think we’ve got the one mobile platform you’ll use for the rest of your life. [Apple] are not going to catch up.” – Scott Rockfeld, Microsoft Mobile Communications Group Product Manager, April 01, 2008
And:
“Apple should pull the plug on the iPhone… What Apple risks here is its reputation as a hot company that can do no wrong. If it’s smart it will call the iPhone a ‘reference design’ and pass it to some suckers to build with someone else’s marketing budget. Then it can wash its hands of any marketplace failures… Otherwise I’d advise people to cover their eyes. You are not going to like what you’ll see.” – John C. Dvorak, Bloated Gas Bag, March 28, 2007
And:
“[Apple’s iPhone] is the most expensive phone in the world and it doesn’t appeal to business customers because it doesn’t have a keyboard which makes it not a very good email machine… So, I, I kinda look at that and I say, well, I like our strategy. I like it a lot.” – Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO, January 17, 2007
Lots, lots more.
Apple:
Apple today introduced new ways customers can enjoy and support America’s national parks next month.
From July 1 through 15, Apple is donating $1 to the National Park Foundation for every purchase made with Apple Pay at any Apple Store, on apple.com or through the Apple Store app in the US. Apple Pay is accepted at select locations in some of the most popular national parks, from Yellowstone and Yosemite to the Grand Canyon and Muir Woods National Monument.
And:
On July 15, Apple Watch users around the world can complete a walk, run or wheelchair workout of 3.5 miles (5.6 km) to earn an award and stickers for Messages inspired by national parks. The distance matches the length of a hike from Old Faithful to Mallard Lake in Yellowstone National Park.
Love this.
Apple:
Apple has enlisted three Canadian artists to help capture the inclusive and optimistic character of their country in A Portrait of Canada, a short film shot on iPhone and released today. Humble the Poet, photographer Caitlin Cronenberg and First Nations band A Tribe Called Red contributed their words, images and music. Their work was combined with photos shot by iPhone users across Canada.
All shot with iPhone, of course.
Eric Jackson, CNBC:
Apple announced recently that it had hired two big Sony TV executives to head up Apple’s original video strategy. It’s the strongest signal yet that Apple has grand plans to offer its own slate of original video content to compete with the likes of Netflix, Amazon and HBO.
Yet as Apple brings more high-quality content to its users, it’s likely to highlight a growing dilemma: Is it going to start offering better services to users with less privacy, or continue offering inferior services with strong privacy?
The title is provocative and, I think, needlessly so. I believe Apple is protecting our privacy, sees that as a fundamental principle. But Eric does make some interesting points, worth reading:
On Ben Thompson’s Exponent podcast from two weeks back — “Fruitful Clapping” — he discusses how Siri stops using your utterances/voice queries after 6 months. That’s problematic to improve Siri’s algorithm. You can’t compare utterances today to utterances a year ago.
And:
Spotify knows what music you like better than you do.
Apple Music gives you the world but doesn’t have that same magical insight into you — but you have better privacy.
And:
Google Photos organizes my photos magically in the background. It delights me that it’s somehow able to recognize my child from ages one to 15 as the same person through facial recognition software. It now has 500 million monthly active users — presumably many on iOS.
Apple’s Photos app makes me tag hundreds of photos of the same person to group them instead of recognizing them. The reason is Apple is doing facial recognition on the device instead of in the server.
These are all excellent points. But don’t dismiss Apple’s privacy protections as hangups. The malware haunting Windows and Android, the exploits based on backdoors that Apple protects against, are all part of the reason I appreciate Apple’s commitment to privacy. This is not a hangup.
But the question here is, where does privacy end and personalization begin? Can Siri know me, know my habits intimately, read and parse all my email, accumulate my personal preferences/habits/even peccadillos, all without breaking my privacy?
To me, that’s the core of the issue. If Apple can do that without selling that information to advertisers, employers, and insurance companies, I’m OK with that.
But where there’s accumulated data, there’s privacy danger. What if some black hat hacks Apple’s servers and uses that information to my detriment? What if an activist investor took over Apple and brought in their own management team, forced them to change their privacy policies?
Good food for thought. Personally, I like that Apple is stepping carefully here. That privacy hangup is one I can live with.
Carolina Milanesi, Tech.Pinions:
If you insist on looking at iOS 11+iPad Pro=PC you might miss the opportunity for this combo to live up to its full potential. I know for many PCs and Macs are synonymous of work and productivity, therefore my suggestion to start looking at the iPad Pro differently is missed on them. Yet, I promise you, there is a difference between wanting to replicate what you have been doing on a PC and wanting to understand if the iPad Pro can fit your workflow or even if it could help your workflow change to better fit your needs.
A lot of ink has been spilled on the topic of making the iPad Pro your main computer, replacing your Mac or PC. But Carolina makes the point that the iPad Pro, combined with iOS 11 (and that’s important), has now evolved into a device with distinct advantages, depending on your workflow.
Drag and drop is a good example:
This is possibly the best example of a feature that despite sharing the same name on the Mac is made zillion times better by touch. It turns something that is cumbersome to do with the mouse in something super intuitive.
And another:
I read many reports and I used to print them out and annotate them, highlight them and then take pictures of them so that I would not file them somewhere safe and never see them again. All those steps are now condensed for a much more efficient and equally productive experience. In this case, it is not about being able to do something I was doing on my Mac. It is, instead, the ability to fully digitize a workflow.
Read the whole thing. This fundamentally changed the way I see the iPad and Apple Pencil. Good stuff.
Patently Apple:
Last week Patently Apple posted a report titled “Apple invents a 3D Depth Mapping Camera for Hand Gesturing Interfaces for Future Macs & Smartglasses.” It’s a recurring theme (one, two and three) from Apple’s PrimeSense team from Israel. Today another such patent filing has surfaced titled “Gesture based User Interface,” based on hand gestures.
There’s more detail in the post and, of course, in the patents themselves. But in a nutshell, 3D mapping cameras and a host of hand gestures are likely in Apple’s future, along with tracking software for your Mac, Apple TV, and Apple Glasses.
[VIDEO] In the video (embedded in the main Loop post), CNN Tech interviewed former iPhone engineer Andy Grignon and others about their experience both working on the first iPhone and in using the prototype as it evolved.
Lots of interesting anecdotes sprinkled throughout. I do love Andy’s description of Steve Jobs and Tim Cook sitting in a meeting, thinking, when they started to rock back and forth, in sync.
Andy Grignon’s official Apple business card lists his title as F**kchop. You can see a copy of it here. He talks about that name, given to him by Steve Jobs, on the video, too.
Jordan Kahn, 9to5Mac:
Apple is looking to hire a “Siri Event Maven” that will serve as Siri’s own personal assistant on events and pop culture happenings trending among humans.
The role will be to make sure that Siri is up to date on all the non-traditional holidays, trending cultural happenings, and events that people might ask about. Apple says the Siri Event Maven will work with the engineers and designers working on Siri “to provide strategic awareness of cultural happenings in the collective zeitgeist.”
Sounds like a fun gig.
Yesterday we posted Matt Gemmell’s take on this iPad Pro-bashing Twitter thread from The Outline’s Joshua Topolsky:
https://twitter.com/joshuatopolsky/status/879512768206053376
Another take, this from John Gruber:
I agree with almost every single word in Topolsky’s thread — but I also think he’s completely wrong.
And:
People like me and Topolsky — and millions of others — are the reason why Apple continues to work on MacOS and make new MacBook hardware. I can say without hesitation that the iPad Pro is not the work device for me. I can also say without hesitation that the iPad Pro with a Smart Keyboard is the work device for millions of other people.
Couldn’t agree more. I live in both worlds, with half my time spent in iOS and half in macOS. I would not want to lose either, but I don’t yet see a clean way to combine them into a unified product.
To me, iOS is clean and simple, sophisticated without being clumsy, heavy, or onerous, a perfect information consumption device.
The Mac is like strapping on a power suit, one designed to let me create all sorts of content and customize my experience with powerful software and hardware add-ons, and with an interface as complex and macro-laden as I want to make it.
I like them both, appreciate having them both, find it easy to move between the two worlds. And if the day comes where iOS does everything I need for both worlds, I’ll gladly go there.
Apple analyst Gene Munster, from his 5 year Apple forecast:
Over the next 10 years, we anticipate that AirPods will be bigger than the Apple Watch as the product evolves from simple wireless headphones to a wearable, augmented audio device. While both AirPods and Apple Watch should continue to grow, we see AirPods contributing about the same amount of revenue as Apple Watch by FY22.
The key is the word augmented. Currently, AirPods are simply a great pair of wireless earpods. But over time, as Siri takes on a larger, more intelligent role in the ecosystem and as Apple moves into AR, the AirPods will have a more central role, acting as a conduit to other devices via more complex gestures and audio commands, and piping augmented audio back into your ears.
Our best guess is that Apple Glasses, an AR-focused wearable, will be released mid FY20. This is based on the significant resources Apple is putting into AR, including ARKit and the recent SensoMotoric Instruments acquisition. We believe Apple see’s the AR future as a combination of the iPhone and some form of a wearable.
Apple Glasses and AirPods are a natural fit.
Lots of detail. Fascinating look back.
Yes, please.
[VIDEO] There are a lot of AR demos out there, including a few measuring tape demos that show how easy Apple has made it to put together an AR app. But the Minecraft demo shown in the video embedded in the main Loop post struck me as a perfect demo of ARKit. Enjoy.
J. M. Manness, writing for Seeking Alpha [Free Regwall] digs into the importance of augmented reality (AR) and how Apple’s approach is so groundbreaking. J. M. does a terrific job explaining the technical issues involved in AR, as well as why Apple’s approach has opened the floodgates for developers (and leapfrogged Apple over Google in this area).
A few tastes:
Essentially, an API does all the hard work for the programmer. This is true here probably more so than in any other API. ARKit provides services for each of the problems listed above. In each case, the incredible work of interpreting the real world scene, all the artificial intelligence programming that has been done, all is hidden under the hood, and the programmer just needs to request a description of nearby surfaces. Placing the model into the scene will subject it to the automatically detected light sources and resize it as it is moved in relation to the viewer, or the user moves the viewing device around it.
And:
In one how-to-program video, Brian Advent shows us how to make a simple game that places the sample spaceship at a random point in the viewing field. The user then touches the screen, and if you touch the ship, then it disappears and a new one comes up. Brian builds the app and runs it literally in less than 20 minutes.
A simple concept, but one that goes to the core of the issue. Apple made it easy for developers to harness the power of AR. ARKit solves all the technical issues, including lighting and placement, movement and permanence in space.
If you are interested in AR, take a minute to register a Seeking Alpha account (it’s free) and read the linked article. I’d search for the section called “WWDC” and start there.
[VIDEO] The Wall Street Journal pulled together a masterful insider’s take, embedded in the main Loop post, on the creation of the iPhone. Great, great, great.
[VIDEO] Every time I watch an iOS 11 tutorial, I get a larger appreciation for how big a leap forward this latest rev is. In this one (embedded in the main Loop post), Jeff Benjamin talks through the process of taking and managing screenshots in iOS 11.