Business

Reddit: Apple reserving China air-freight for upcoming weeks

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This is not really news, any more than the fact of Apple holding a September event is news. Both are connected, obviously, and both come like clockwork. But I did find this interesting:

My mom is an import / export broker and told me they were notified that Apple has reserved almost all air freight going from China -> USA for the upcoming weeks. And the note was “Product Launch” so either they’re placing iPhones in the states, or there is something else happening.

And, from the comments:

The funny thing is, those iPhones seriously add up in terms of value per cubic meter.

Imagine a regular living room, maybe 6 x 6 meters, with 2.75 m ceilings. That’s 99 cubic meters of space. An iPhone X box is 16x5x8.8 cm which translates to 704 cubic cm, or 0.000704 cubic meter.

So your average living room can hold over 140,000 iPhone X boxes. That’s a cool $140M of retail value right there.

Imagine the value of a cargo plane filled with iPhones.

The 23 best movies of the 2000s

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This is an excellent list. Nitpick away, but I’m betting there’s something new and delightful for you here.

My three favorites from the list:

  • Spirited Away: If you’ve never experienced a Studio Ghibli film, this is a great starting point. On my personal list of all-time great films. From the writeup:

Japanese anime director Hayao Miyazaki seems unable to make anything but masterpieces; still, this epic tale of a young girl separated from her parents and thrust into a magical world, stands as his greatest — not only for its transporting visuals but for its bracing sense of adventure, terror, resilience and heroism.

  • Michael Clayton: Talking truth to power, personal growth, with just a sprinkling of a “caper” film, this is George Clooney at his best. From the writeup:

If movies can be evaluated as sums of their parts — script, performance, design, editing and sound — then this legal thriller is sheer perfection.

  • Children of Men: This was made in 2006, but it might well be talking about today. From the writeup:

Alfonso Cuarón’s adaptation of the P.D. James novel evinced the perfect balance of technical prowess, propulsive storytelling, complex character development and timeliness when it was released in 2006. But its depiction of a dystopian near-future – what we ruefully now call the present — has proved to be not just visionary but prophetic. Its predictive value aside, it stands as a flawless movie — a masterwork of cinematic values at their purest, with each frame delivering emotion and information in equally compelling measure.

I love this list, not just for the movies it surfaces, but for the descriptions. Well done.

Apple removes 14 Apple Watch bands from website, many others ‘sold out’ ahead of September event

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Mitchel Broussard, MacRumors:

We’re just under one month from Apple’s annual September iPhone event, which should also see the debut of the Apple Watch Series 4. Alongside each new edition of the Apple Watch, Apple typically updates its array of band accessories with new colors and styles. Echoing shortages from previous years, it appears that numerous Apple Watch bands have either been removed or are currently unavailable to purchase on Apple.com ahead of next month’s event.

Very curious what Apple has up its sleeve for the next Apple Watch. Thinner? Smaller bezel? New sensors? Improved heart-rate monitoring?

You can no longer sign up for Netflix via its iOS app

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Gadgets360:

Netflix is not letting people sign up for its service via its app for iPhone and iPad. The Netflix iOS app also isn’t allowing people to log in with accounts where the subscription has lapsed and no credit or debit cards are linked to the Netflix account, Gadgets 360 has discovered. This means there is currently no way for users of iOS devices to pay for Netflix via the payment method saved on their Apple ID, unless they signed up to do so in the past.

Tricky situation. Netflix is choosing to keep the 30% Apple would normally take as a fee, and sacrifice the ability for users to sign up for accounts in iOS.

I just signed up for a new Netflix account in iOS Safari, so that still works. Presumably, Apple does not get 30% of that fee.

I’m guessing Apple will not kick Netflix off the iOS App Store. Existing subscriptions continue to be a cash cow for Apple and the availability of Netflix is politically important for iOS and Apple TV.

Will this set a precedent for other, Apple burdened subscription services? Interesting.

UPDATE: From this AppleInsider post:

Since Aug. 2, testing of the idea has been taking place in 33 countries, Netflix confirmed to TechCrunch. Some of the bigger test markets include Canada, France, Germany, Great Britain, India, Italy, Japan, and South Korea.

The company in fact said that it’s been testing since June, but began in just 10 countries. All new or resubscribing Android users have been unable to use Google Play for billing since May.

Apparently, you can still sign up for a new account in the US, but seems like this move is in the works. [H/T Mike Wuerthele]

The number of days between purchasing my 2018 MacBook Pro and the spacebar starting to get stuck?

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Feh.

Hate to hear this. Had high hopes that the MacBook keyboard issues were behind us. I will add that my son’s machine (a 2017 model purchased earlier this year) has the same issue.

Check out the article URL, a nice little side comment in those last 13 characters.

One final note: Check out this video showing a warranty-voiding fix to the spacebar problem. Fascinating, but definitely not something you want to try at home.

Guessing the date of the Apple’s September iPhone event

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Rene Ritchie, iMore:

Since iPhone 5, Apple has announced every new iPhone during a special event held the first or second Tuesday or Wednesday of September.

Rene lays out the dates of Apple’s September events since 2013 and makes his best guess:

It’s likely we’ll see this year’s event on or around Wednesday, September 12.

And this from John Gruber:

I have no inside information on this, but September 12 is definitely my guess, for all the same reasons Ritchie mentions. Since moving iPhone intro events to September in 2012 with the iPhone 5, they’ve had three events on Tuesdays and three on Wednesdays. For whatever reason, I don’t think they like Thursdays.

I do love this game, for some reason. Part of it, for me, is that this kind of guessing hurts no one and does stoke the embers for the event without revealing something that would diminish the event.

September 12th sounds good to me.

Outfoxing iMovie to set a default movie resolution

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Josh Centers, TidBITS:

We’ve been trying to incorporate screencasts into more of our articles here at TidBITS—there are times when a short video conveys some point better than any number of screenshots. As far as tools go, ScreenFlow is the gold standard, but QuickTime Player can record screen actions and iMovie is a decent video editor. And both come with all Macs for free, so that’s where we’re starting.

But I recently stumbled across an infuriating problem: no matter what I did with my original screen recordings, I couldn’t use File > Share > File in iMovie to save a video file at a resolution higher than 720p.

Solid detective work by Josh Centers, as he works out a kludge to get a better iMovie resolution. But even better, his bit of hackery stuck and he now has reset the default iMovie resolution to something much more usable.

Even if you don’t use iMovie, you never know when the need will arise. Take a read through this, just to get a sense of the technique.

And:

I don’t want to sound ungrateful, since iMovie is an impressive tool to be bundled with the Mac for free, but hacks like this shouldn’t be necessary.

Yup.

iPad explodes in Apple Store Amsterdam, store cleared

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Here’s a translation of the body of the article, from the Dutch, courtesy of Google Translate:

An iPad has exploded in the Amsterdam Apple store. Three employees were affected by their airways. The store has been evacuated.

Cause is probably a leaking battery. The fire brigade told the local broadcaster AT5.

Employees of the store have immediately placed the iPad in a container with sand. The employees who suffered from the airways were checked by the ambulance staff. The Apple Store, which is located at Leidseplein, has been aired by the fire department.

As far as I can tell, this story is the source of all the other coverage I’ve encountered. As always, if possible, I like to go to the source and read these sorts of things for myself.

As to the word explodes in the title and story, that’s the translation direct from Google. Was there an actual explosion? Was this more of a sizzle and pop than a boom or bang? Hard to say. Grain of salt.

Apple’s best media moves

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Dan Moren, writing for Macworld, digs into the Apple TV’s TV app, the Movies Anywhere service, and Apple’s Apple Books rewrite.

The whole piece is worth reading, but a few nuggets:

The big question mark hanging over it all is what exactly will happen when Apple’s own video streaming service launches. Will it take over the [TV] app, pushing the rest of your content aside? Or will it be content to share a place on equal footing with the other partners? For customers’ sake, I certainly hope for the latter.

I use my Apple TV all the time, but never use the TV app, mostly because of the lack of Netflix integration. If Apple can get Netflix buy-in, and avoid overwhelming the TV app when they fold in their own Apple-branded content, the TV app will become my first stop when I switch to my Apple TV.

At this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple unveiled a major overhaul to its ebook platform, including a graphical update to the reading apps, a better store experience, and reading features that take aim at Amazon’s own Goodreads service.

That’s good because Amazon does continue to dominate the market and has little in the way of competition, and Apple is one of the few companies big enough to seriously challenge it. The real question is if Apple can do anything compelling enough to draw market share from Amazon.

I’ve long been an Amazon Kindle reader. I buy all my books from the Kindle store, do most of my reading on my iPad. But this new version of Apple Books has my attention. A central issue for me is the ability to share books with my family, something Amazon only recent started offering. Apple’s deal is much simpler, is already in place for me, and the Apple deal has none of Amazon’s limits.

Ingenious BMW theft attempt

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Marc Rooding, Medium:

During that night, my girlfriend and I were fast asleep, when at 03:45 the doorbell rang. We looked at each other dazed. I got out of bed and attempted to journey downstairs in my boxers when the doorbell rang again. Before opening the door I went into the living room to gaze out of the window. A police car with 2 policemen was standing in front of our house. I opened the door and was welcomed with the question whether I owned a BMW with a specific license plate. They said that a car burglary had taken place.

Read the story. Short version, the thieves tried a new approach that might signal a new wave of auto theft techniques. If nothing else, this will give you something to be aware of, if your car is ever broken into, but nothing appears to be taken.

Michael Tsai’s collection of comments about Twitter’s #BreakingMyTwitter email

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Michael Tsai collected a variety of comments and links about the #BreakingMyTwitter changes Twitter just made that broke 3rd party Twitter clients. There’s just a ton of great reading here.

I would start with this blog post from Twitter’s own Ron Johnson trying to explain Twitter’s intentions.

One take missing from Michael’s collection is this post from John Gruber, which specifically addresses his preference for his 3rd party client of choice, Tweetbot (which I use as well).

One thing that struck me is this bit, from the end of John’s post:

When Rob Johnson shared his email this morning about Twitter and third-party clients, he did so by tweeting two screenshots of the message. Those screenshots show he uses a third-party email client on his iPhone. So my simple argument to Johnson is this: I prefer a third-party Twitter client for the same reason you prefer a third-party iOS email client. One size doesn’t fit all.

Exactly.

Using Photos to sync photos of an event from different sources

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Jason Snell, Six Colors:

I went to a wedding in London over the summer, and as you might expect at an event full of techy people, I ended up with hundreds of photos of the event from numerous sources—at least six. I imported them all into my Photos library and then discovered that they were all mixed up—the bride walking down the aisle, immediately followed by dancing at the reception, followed by the exchanging of vows.

This happens to me every time I get photos from other folks and try to mix them with my own photos of the same event. This is especially true when I travel with a group, and we each have our own view of the same series of locations.

The issue, for the most part, is the time stamps and device clocks:

Most cameras embed time data on every file they take, which is great, but whenever I try to mix photos from multiple sources in one place, I end up discovering all the ways that the clocks don’t match. For some of them, the clock is right but the time zone is wrong. For others (especially non-cellular devices that rely on a human to set their clock correctly) there are a few minutes of drift. For still others, there’s a time but not a time zone embedded.

Though this is less and less an issue as more and more photos are taken with clocks set by servers, there are still time zone issues, as well as photos taken using regular cameras.

Take the time to make your way through Jason’s post. If nothing else, I appreciate the walkthrough of smart albums and what they can do for you. Great stuff.

Apple reassures customers after Australian media reports hack by teen

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If you haven’t heard about this story, here’s yesterday’s Loop post. Shocking stuff.

Apple’s reassuring response:

An Apple spokesman said the company’s information security personnel “discovered the unauthorized access, contained it, and reported the incident to law enforcement” without commenting further on the specifics of the case.

“We … want to assure our customers that at no point during this incident was their personal data compromised,” the spokesman said.

That last is so good to know.

Google confirms it tracks users even when ‘Location History’ setting is disabled

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Andrew O’Hara, Apple Insider:

Google updated help center documentation Thursday to clarify its location data collection policies, changes made in light of recent revelations that the firm’s apps and website continue to harvest user information even when a global “Location History” setting is disabled.

Here’s a link to the updated Google help page. Read it for yourself.

You can listen to full music on Apple Music after logging in on the web interface

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Here’s a link to the song Everytime (A Cappella) for you to try for yourself.

I clicked the link on my Mac, logged in to the page that appeared, and was able to listen to the song in my browser, without jumping to iTunes.

According to the Reddit comments, this seems to have appeared sometime after WWDC. It also appears that there is a 3rd party API so people can build their own web-based music players. The API might still be in beta, though I tested the above link on the public release of High Sierra.

Interesting.

UPDATE: Here’s a post from Kirk McElhearn about all this from back in June, when it first became available.

Google updates their cloud storage pricing

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Tim Hardwick, MacRumors:

The new plans include 100GB storage for $1.99 a month, 200GB for $2.99 a month, and 2TB for $9.99 a month (down from $19.99). The free 15GB for non-paying users remains. There’s also a new family option for divvying up a single storage plan amongst up to five members.

And Apple:

Apple’s iCloud monthly storage plans aren’t so different: they start with 5GB free storage for non-paying users, then offer 50GB for $0.99, 200GB for $2.99, and 2TB for $9.99.

To me, 5GB might as well be zero. The smallest configuration for Apple’s most popular phone, the iPhone X, is 64GB. What does that 5GB offer for a 64GB phone? It seems paltry. To me, this is stingy and bad optics.

At the very least, I think Apple should match Google’s free 15GB and unlimited free photo storage. Even better, raise that bar. As is, this feels like nickel and diming people who are spending as much as $1,000 for a phone.

Apple’s growth story

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Neil Cybart:

There are three drivers behind Apple’s return to revenue growth:

  1. iPhone. The average selling price (ASP) of iPhone is up $100 year-over-year.
  2. Services. Apple is seeing strong revenue growth from the App Store, licensing, and AppleCare.
  3. Wearables. Apple’s wearables platform is gaining sales momentum as Apple Watch and AirPods go mainstream.

Lots of interesting detail in the article. On that last bullet, I am seeing Apple Watch and AirPods everywhere now.

When I am out running, I see more and more other runners with AirPods in their ears. Mainstream is the right term here.

On a related note, I get why Apple sticks with white as the only color. As was the case when the iPod first started, those white headphones were incredibly important to the branding. I see AirPods white as a similarly important brand marker.

Inside the iPhone repair ecosystem: Where do replacement parts come from and can you trust them?

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Juli Clover, MacRumors:

There’s a thriving market for unofficial, aftermarket iPhone parts, and in China, there are entire massive factories that are dedicated to producing these components for repair shops unable to get ahold of parts that have been produced by Apple.

The entire Apple device repair ecosystem is fascinating, complex, and oftentimes confusing to consumers given the disconnect between Apple, Apple Authorized Service Providers, third-party factories, and independent repair shops, so we thought we’d delve into the complicated world of Apple repairs.

Terrific, fascinating read.

HQ Trivia expands beyond mobile with new Apple TV app

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Variety:

HQ Trivia is taking a leap to bigger screens: The mobile quiz show startup has launched an app for Apple TV. The company announced the new app on Twitter Tuesday.

The new app makes it possible to both watch the daily quiz show as well as vote with the help of the Apple TV’s remote control.

HQ Trivia is a clever idea, a game show that comes to your iPhone, replete with entertaining hosts and witty patter. It’s got a social component and works well with a group of people.

Porting it to Apple TV is a good idea, but it could be even better. As is, it is simply one more device on which you can play. Instead of playing on your phone, you play on your TV. That’s fine.

But I’d love a version that brings the banter off-line, like the excellent Jackbox Party Pack games. If you’ve got a group of friends coming over, I’d suggest giving these a try. Fun will be had.

Apple is beefing up a team to explore making its own health chips

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CNBC:

Apple has a team exploring a custom processor that can make better sense of health information coming off sensors from deep inside its devices, job listings show.

Here’s an Apple job listing for a Sensor ASIC Architect (ASIC being Application-specific integrated circuit).

Building custom chips for narrow functions can help Apple add new features and improve efficiency of its hardware while protecting its intellectual property from would-be imitators.

Rene Ritchie just posted an excellent Vector episode that talks about Apple’s chip ambitions. Apple’s chip investments are paying dividends and they are slowly specializing, expanding their proprietary chips, bringing capabilities to future products that other companies cannot simply copy.

Verizon, 5G rollout, and partnership with Apple and Google

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Bloomberg:

Verizon Communications Inc. announced deals making Apple Inc. and Google its first video providers for a superfast 5G wireless service the company plans to launch in four cities later this year.

And:

With the introduction, Verizon will provide 5G customers either a free Apple TV box or free subscription to Google’s YouTube TV app for live television service, according to people familiar with the plan.

This partnership is a big, legitimizing win for Apple TV. But I’m still not sold on 5G.

5G has limitations. It requires major infrastructure, expensive network hardware to propagate the signal, meaning it will be prohibitively expensive to be able to serve rural areas, is ideally suited for dense urban areas.

Also:

High-frequency 5G radio signals are easily disrupted by rain and foliage and remain commercially unproven. But if successful, the technology could lead to as much as $200 billion a year in industry-wide development spending.

I have high hopes that some form of high speed wireless will eventually replace wired service, make broadband more widely available and, most importantly, bring competition to the marketplace, give consumers more choices.

Motherboard on the iPhone 7’s so-called Loop Disease

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Motherboard:

For the past six months, Cerva has been receiving large numbers of iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus devices—often 10 to 15 per week—with a similar issue: one of the pads that connects the audio chip, which is located on the motherboard near the SIM card tray, has come loose.

And:

The early symptoms are a grayed-out Voice Memos icon, a grayed-out “speaker” button during phone calls, or intermittent freezing. Eventually, the phone can get stuck on the Apple logo instead of powering on. Cerva calls the issue “loop disease,” in reference to “touch disease,” a similar issue that affected thousands of iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus units starting around 2016.

And:

The fix, Jones and Cerva agreed, is straightforward: they remove the audio chip, then solder a small segment of wire underneath it to repair the connection. Cerva can complete the repair in just 15 minutes, he said; Jones said that a qualified shop should be able to carry out the repair for between $100 and $150.

If you have, or know someone with an iPhone 7 or iPhone 7 Plus, read the article and check out the image (with the greyed out Speaker icon) towards the bottom of the article.

The iPhones 7 were released in September 2016.

New Samsung Galaxy watches are still much larger than Apple watches

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John Gruber, commenting on the new wave of big, clunky, Galaxy watches from Samsung:

Samsung is sticking with round faces — you certainly can’t call these ripoffs of Apple Watch. But I think that’s a mistake for a digital watch. At 42 and 46mm, both sizes are much larger (and heavier) than Apple Watches. Because Apple measures its watches vertically, they sound closer in size than they actually are. A 42mm Apple Watch is 36mm wide, and a 38mm Apple Watch is just 33mm wide. Apple remains the only company making smartwatches for women and men with small wrists.

I do wish my Apple Watch was thinner. The weight is not an issue for me, but I can imagine a thinner future Apple Watch, still rectangular, but with a gently curved body that matches the curved wrist surface on which it sits.

What I can’t imagine is ever moving to a bigger, clunkier smartwatch.

Millions of Android devices are vulnerable right out of the box

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Wired:

Security meltdowns on your smartphone are often self-inflicted: You clicked the wrong link, or installed the wrong app. But for millions of Android devices, the vulnerabilities have been baked in ahead of time, deep in the firmware, just waiting to be exploited. Who put them there? Some combination of the manufacturer that made it, and the carrier that sold it to you.

And:

“The problem is not going to go away, because a lot of the people in the supply chain want to be able to add their own applications, customize, add their own code. That increases the attack surface, and increases the probability of software error,” Stavrou says. “They’re exposing the end user to exploits that the end user is not able to respond to.”

This problem is an end result of Android allowing third party companies the ability to modify the source code. An example:

Take the Asus ZenFone V Live, which Kryptowire found to leave its owners exposed to an entire system takeover, including taking screenshots and video recordings of a user’s screen, making phone calls, reading and modifying text messages, and more.

This is a fascinating read. This loss of centralized security control is yet another thing that keeps me in the Apple ecosystem. I do recognize that macOS, iOS, et al have flaws, but the centralized security model (All the system software comes from Apple, not a third party) and the commitment to privacy do make me feel safer.