Business

A peek inside Google’s X ‘moonshot factory’

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This is a fascinating glimpse of Google’s R&D organization, known as X. What I found most fascinating, was the coverage of one of the earliest X moonshots, Project Loon:

Loon took the spotlight in the wake of Hurricane Maria, which knocked out power and communications for nearly all of Puerto Rico’s 3.4 million residents.

Before the storm, Project Loon’s team had been working on an AI-based navigation system that can keep high-altitude balloons over a given area for weeks or months at a time to provide aerial internet connections. Peru was the primary testing ground, and Puerto Rico was one of the launch sites. After the hurricane hit, the focus shifted to filling the gap in Puerto Rico. The team quickly worked out arrangements with Puerto Rico’s government and federal authorities as well as AT&T and T-Mobile to boost connectivity.

And:

X says Project Loon is currently providing basic internet connectivity for more than 100,000 people in Puerto Rico.

Loon may not be as well known as Google’s self-driving vehicle project, Waymo, but Project Loon has achieved a real-world impact.

iOS jailbreaking fading away

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Joe Rossignol, MacRumors:

ModMy today announced it has archived its default ModMyi repository on Cydia, which is essentially an alternative App Store for downloading apps, themes, tweaks, and other files on jailbroken iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch devices.

ZodTTD/MacCiti also shut down last week, meaning that two out of three of Cydia’s major default repositories are no longer active as of this month.

And:

The closure of two major Cydia repositories is arguably the result of a declining interest in jailbreaking, which provides root filesystem access and allows users to modify iOS and install unapproved apps on an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch.

I’ve always thought of jailbreaking as a wild west frontier, with few rules, little oversight and, correspondingly, no real way to prevent malware. Jailbreaking also technically violates your iPhone warranty.

But, that said, jailbreaking also brought some interesting, experimental features to iOS. Over time, Apple caught up, bringing the more successful jailbreaking features into the fold.

We’re seeing the end of an era.

Big picture of the iPhone X projected IR dot pattern

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Fascinating project from Oliver Thomas. He bought a high resolution camera that can capture infrared images. He set the camera up on a tripod and shot the IR dot pattern projected by the iPhone X. […]

Putting the iPhone X camera to the test

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This is a terrific piece from Ben Lovejoy, 9to5Mac, a realistic look at the experience of shooting with the iPhone X camera.

I’ve been using the iPhone 8 Plus (similar cameras, but the iPhone X has a slightly faster telephoto f/2.4 vs. f/2.8 – and the X has OIS in both lenses) for the past few days and my experience has been similar to Ben’s.

I will say, I find the iPhone 8 Plus camera to be astonishing.

Take a moment to compare the two images in this tweet. One was taken at the base of Philadelphia City Hall, looking up to the top of a tall tower. Without moving, I took a second shot, pinching out to zoom in on a statue at the top of the tower.

I was floored by the amount of detail in that second shot. Amazing to get this kind of result from a phone that fits in my pocket.

Mark Gurman’s bet: Why Apple’s HomePod is 3 years behind Amazon’s Echo

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Mark Gurman, Bloomberg:

When the $350 gadget debuts early next year (on Friday Apple delayed the launch from December), the HomePod won’t be able to do many of the things the Echo can. Amazon offers thousands of “skills” (voice-activated apps) that let users do a range of things (including buy stuff from Amazon). The Google Home Mini, which debuted earlier this year, is similarly endowed. The HomePod will be mostly limited to playing tunes from Apple Music, controlling Apple-optimized smart home appliances and sending messages through an iPhone.

“This is a huge missed opportunity,” said one of the people, who requested anonymity to discuss an internal matter. Apple declined to comment.

I’m just going to quote this Daring Fireball piece from 2006, which itself quotes a post from the San Jose Mercury News, but Gruber really brought this to fame:

Responding to questions from New York Times correspondent John Markoff at a Churchill Club breakfast gathering Thursday morning, Colligan laughed off the idea that any company — including the wildly popular Apple Computer — could easily win customers in the finicky smart-phone sector.

“We’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone,” he said. “PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.”

This pattern repeats itself over and over again. They’re not going to just walk in. Until they do.

My money is on Apple and HomePod here. This is not casting doubt on Amazon’s Echo or Google Home. But Apple has an obvious advantage, a real barrier to entry for both Google and Amazon. Even if they don’t reveal all their cards from day one, HomePod (and HomePod Mini, if such a thing eventually ships) will have intimate, private API access to the Apple ecosystem.

Silly to bet against that home court advantage.

Jony Ive at the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum next Wednesday

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From the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum event invitation:

Jonathan Ive, Chief Design Officer of Apple, is widely considered the world’s most influential industrial designer and plays a key role in Apple’s status as one of the most recognized and innovative brands in history. As CDO, he is behind all aspects of the look and feel of the iPhone, iPad, MacBook, and Apple watch—as well as major architectural projects like Apple Park—and new ideas and initiatives in development.

He has been described as one of the most powerful people in the world’s most valuable company and is a 2017 honoree of the Smithsonian’s American Ingenuity Awards (the “Golden Globes of intellect”), which honor revolutionary breakthroughs in the arts and sciences, education and social progress. Ive will be joined in conversation by Rick Tetzeli, Editor At Large of Fast Company and author of the bestselling biography Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader.

Sadly, tickets are all gone, but:

  1. There is a waiting list, in case you’ll be in Washington DC next week
  2. Hopefully, Fast Company will video the interview, put it on their web site.

[H/T, The minimaluminiumalistically musing Not Jony Ive]

Khan!!!

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[VIDEO] Click through to the main Loop post. If you are at all a Star Trek fan, watch all the way to the end, well worth it.

This simple AirPods hack can dramatically improve the sound quality

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[VIDEO] Thomas Ricker, The Verge:

Since the AirPods are notoriously leaky due to their open-air design, that got me to thinking: what if I could close the air gap to simultaneously block ambient noises while increasing the bass response? That’s when I found this video on the PoltergeistWorks YouTube channel.

I’ve embedded the video in the main Loop post, will dig through my gear to see if I can get my hands on a pair of foam covers that will fit over the AirPods, give this a try.

I do get the premise. The foam covers will make for a better fit and a tighter seal. The big work is poking the holes in the covers to allow the sensors to work properly. Will that improve the sound? Maybe for some.

Regardless, I found it interesting, thought it worth a share.

How criminals clear your stolen iPhone for resale

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Charlie Osborne, ZDNet lays out one particular attack chain designed to clear your iPhone so they can resell it.

Fascinating, and worth reading, just so you know what might be coming if someone ever gets their hands on your iOS device.

[VIDEO] Jeff Benjamin walks through 15+ iPhone X tips

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[VIDEO] I’m a fan of Jeff Benjamin’s 9to5Mac videos. This one (embedded in the main Loop post) walks through a series of iPhone X tips, all worth knowing.

If nothing else, just knowing how to set up reachability and the ways you can customize the virtual home button make this worth watching.

A new phone comes out. Yours slows down. A conspiracy? No.

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Brian X. Chen, New York Times:

It happens every year: Apple releases new iPhones, and then hordes of people groan about their older iPhones slowing to a crawl.

And:

The phenomenon of perceived slowdowns is so widespread that many believe tech companies intentionally cripple smartphones and computers to ensure that people buy new ones every few years. Conspiracy theorists call it planned obsolescence.

That’s a myth. While slowdowns happen, they take place for a far less nefarious reason. That reason is a software upgrade.

And:

Tech companies make it simple to upgrade to a new operating system by pressing an “update” button, which seamlessly migrates all your apps and data over. While that’s convenient, it isn’t the best way to ensure that things will continue running smoothly.

A better practice is backing up all your data and purging everything from the device before installing the new operating system. This “clean install” works more reliably because the engineers developing operating systems were able to test this condition more easily, Mr. Raiz said.

The premise is that a clean install will clear cruft from your iPhone, make your phone run faster with a newer version of iOS.

Read the article, see if you agree. Is there any truth to this recommendation? Is a clean install going to yield enough of a speedier phone to be worth the effort?

Anecdotal, but I’ve run lots of betas, all via the update mechanism, have never (ok, maybe once or twice in ten years) felt the need to do a clean install.

Interesting article, looking forward to reading the comments.

Interview with Apple’s chip chief, Johny Srouji

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From the Calcalist interview:

“Silicon is unforgiving,” Mr. Srouji said. “My team is already working on the chips you’re going to see in 2020. You make bets. We have the system and the software. We have better knowledge versus external chipmakers about where things are going to end up. Since we own the silicon, we own the software, the operating system and everything else, we deliver, always. We deliver for the exact specification of iOS and nothing else. We don’t have to worry about other operating systems.”

And:

In 2013, Apple acquired PrimeSense, an Israeli company developing hardware for 3D sensing, and many industry observers speculated about the Apple reasoning for the investment. Mr. Srouji said the team from PrimeSense was involved in the development of Face ID as well as other new features for Apple devices.

“The team in Israel is a key part of the overall engineering team in the U.S. and other areas of the world – wherever we have our R&D,” he said. “The things they do are key to any device we ship, to all devices.”

I found every bit of this interview fascinating, especially the insight into incorporating the work being done in Israel with the main body of R&D being done in Cupertino.

Apple starts pushing High Sierra on unsuspecting Mac users

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Adam Engst, TidBITS:

If you’re running macOS 10.12 Sierra or earlier, and do not want to upgrade to 10.13 High Sierra right now, be careful because Apple has started pushing High Sierra to older Macs and making it all too easy to upgrade inadvertently. In short, if you get a macOS notification asking you to install High Sierra, click the Details button to launch the App Store app, and then quit it.

I am not a fan of the TidBITS headline here, but I do get the point. Though the update notification does call out an upgrade to macOS High Sierra, it does look like most other updates. And as many users do when they are confronted with a license agreement or privacy policy, it is very easy to click Install without reading the details.

This is good to know, worth passing along to folks in your community running older Macs.

What happens to Animoji when you cover the TrueDepth camera?

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Frederick Riedel used stickers to cover the:

  • Infrared camera
  • Flood Illuminator
  • Dot Projector

on his iPhone X. But Animoji still worked without them. Portrait mode stopped working. Face ID stopped working too. So the stickers were doing their job.

Why do Animoji still work? Pop over to the main Loop post for the detailed explanation. Pretty interesting.

iOS 11.2 accelerated wireless charging speed vs wired

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Matt Birchler compared the time it took to charge an iOS device using:

  • Stock wired charger
  • Apple 29W charger
  • Wireless charging (available on iPhone 8, 8 Plus, iPhone X)
  • Accelerated wireless charging (New with iOS 11.2)

Follow the link, check out the graph. To really get a sense of the difference, look how many minutes it takes each to get to a 40% charge (the second horizontal gray line).

The 29W charger took just under 30 minutes. Accelerated charging took about an hour and 40 minutes.

I don’t know how rigorous this analysis was, but wow, what a difference. We could be seeing the limitations of inductive charging, or we could see these numbers improve with each new release.

Important to note that Matt used a Samsung wireless charging pad. So it is certainly possible we’d see better numbers when Apple releases their branded pad.

But as is, what price convenience?

UPDATE: Had a lot of conversations about this post, about the value of the convenience brought by wireless charging. Add to that the fact that the latest iPhones have plenty of battery life, and the use case comes into focus. Instead of placing my phone on my desk while I type away, if I simply place it on the charging pad, I’ll get a nice little power top-off without the hassle of plugging in.

Conclusion? Wired is clearly a faster charge than wireless, but that’s just fine. Wireless does the job it was designed to do and brings great convenience to the process.

Rene Ritchie’s Vector podcast

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Rene Ritchie is a smart cookie. Vector is a daily podcast (I don’t know how he keeps this up), full of interesting detail on some (usually) Apple-related topic.

Start with the latest one, Face ID FUD. Here’s the link.

GymKit launches today, automatically syncs workout data between Apple Watch and gym equipment

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Benjamin Mayo, 9to5Mac:

The idea is that the watch and the paired gym machine have better knowledge about different aspects of the workout. GymKit allows that data to be shared back and forth, as appropriate.

At the end of the session, the watch saves all the relevant data to its local database (no iPhone required) and the gym equipment is wiped of any personal data.

Walk up to a GymKit compatible machine, tap your Apple Watch (pairs via NFC, similar to Apple Pay), and the machine automatically loads the appropriate workout data from your watch. When your workout is finished, your results are saved back to your Apple Watch.

This is brilliant.

Watch these BMW gestures and think about bringing them to the Mac

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[VIDEO] This morning, I dug around and found the video embedded in the main Loop post, which shows off the gestures available on the latest BMWs (they’ve been available for a few years, but the sensors/gestures have evolved each year, getting better and better).

Think about the idea of having a similar set of gestures available on the Mac. The idea of tech on your phone or Mac sensing your presence, attention, or movements, clearly add value to the user experience.

The idea of a touch screen Mac is different than a gesture-aware Mac. I think the gestures on the BMW would work well on a Mac. Not necessarily the same gestures, but similar gestures. Especially if the gestures could be subtle.

Imagine an incoming phone call, while you are typing away at your Mac. You lift your hand from the keyboard, make a quick swiping gesture, and the call is dismissed. Or you make a c’mon gesture, and the call is answered.

I see a lot of possibilities here.

You probably don’t need to worry about someone hacking your iPhone X’s Face ID with a mask

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Taylor Hatmaker, TechCrunch:

Touted as the iPhone X’s new flagship form of device security, Face ID is a natural target for hackers. Just a week after the device’s release, Vietnamese research team Bkav claims to have cracked Apple’s facial recognition system using a replica face mask that combines printed 2D images with three-dimensional features. The group has published a video demonstrating its proof of concept, but enough questions remain that no one really knows how legitimate this purported hack is.

I believe the term should be spoofed, not hacked. The video in the post shows Bkav using a homemade mask trying to spoof a person’s face registered using Face ID. Hacking would be breaking in and stealing credentials, or installing a back door, that sort of thing.

That said, something doesn’t sit right looking at that video. When I first saw it, my instinctive reaction was that it was fake. But even if the mask was successful in spoofing the user’s face, I just don’t see this as an issue.

More from Taylor’s post:

If you’re concerned that someone might want into your devices badly enough that they’d execute such an involved plan to steal your facial biometrics, well, you’ve probably got a lot of other things to worry about as well.

And:

Prior to the Bkav video, Wired worked with Cloudflare to see if Face ID could be hacked through masks that appear far more sophisticated than the ones the Bkav hack depicts. Remarkably, in spite of their fairly elaborate efforts — including “details like eyeholes designed to allow real eye movement” and “thousands of eyebrow hairs inserted into the mask intended to look more like real hair” — Wired and Cloudflare didn’t succeed.

If Bkav has the goods, I suspect we’ll hear more from them, perhaps a follow-on post with a more clearly defined demonstration. Or, perhaps, we’ll hear from Apple about some patch they made to Face ID in response to Bkav’s work. As is, color me skeptical.

Why you should not rely on iCloud Photo Library as your only media backup

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Glenn Fleishman, Macworld:

iCloud Photo Library, when it fits your needs, is a great way to avoid having to manage where your images and videos wind up. You capture video on your iPhone or drag an image into Photos in macOS, and it just syncs everywhere while making a central copy at iCloud.

And:

However, there’s one configuration I can’t advise, and Macworld reader Eric writes in with a question that prompts a discussion. He’s wondering if he could rely on iCloud to be his “main backup of images.” The short answer is no, but it’s not about distrust in Apple’s technical abilities. Rather, about the frailty of all material things, and the risk of putting all one’s digital eggs in one basket, no matter how firmly the basket-storing company is holding that basket.

Interesting read, some good insight on iCloud Photo Library.

Director Steven Soderbergh secretly shot new horror movie ‘Unsane’ entirely on Apple’s iPhone

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Neil Hughes, Apple Insider:

Details on “Unsane” have slowly trickled out in recent months, including the fact that the film was shot in secret and entirely on Apple’s iPhone, according to Entertainment Weekly. The film stars Claire Foy, Juno Temple, and Jay Pharoah, with Pharoah describing the picture as “reality-horror type” with some similarities to Jordan Peele-created smash hit “Get Out.”

The movie was filmed this summer, meaning the best iPhone it could have been shot on was the iPhone 7 Plus.

I’m looking forward to seeing this movie in the theater, at the very least to get a sense of the look of an iPhone shot movie on the big screen. It will be interesting to compare the look of this film with future films shot on an iPhone 8 Plus or iPhone X.

Also, I loved Get Out and am a big fan of Claire Foy, Jay Pharoah, Steven Soderbergh.

iPhone X, meet roller derby

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[VIDEO] Serenity Caldwell is, secretly, a member of a top 10 women’s roller derby team. The iPhone X dropped the same day as the WFTDA’s annual international championships.

What better test for the iPhone X than to put it through its paces trying to capture some high speed flat track action?

Serenity’s writeup takes you through the specifics, but for my money, the real nugget of gold in her review is the pulse-pounding video embedded in the main Loop post. Those are some great slo-mo shots.

Be sure to bump the resolution up to 1440 in the YouTube window for best results.

Face ID on the Mac

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Thoughts on the idea of Apple adding facial mapping and Face ID to your Mac. […]

Tip for training Face ID

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Yoni Heisler, BGR:

One of the great things about Face ID is that the data associated with your initial Face ID photo is always being updated to account for even subtle changes in your appearance. That being the case, there’s an incredibly simple way for iPhone X users to train Face ID to work flawlessly across all situations. So if you’ve been noticing that Face ID works great 99% of the time but seems to slip up if you hold up your phone at an angle or from a new distance, we’ve got a solution for you.

And:

The next time you try to unlock your iPhone X with Face ID and it doesn’t take, don’t try to unlock it with Face ID a second time. Instead, enter in your passcode. Doing so effectively tells Face ID to incorporate facial data from whatever new angle or position you happen to be holding your phone in. That being the case, the next time you attempt to unlock your phone from the same position, your phone will unlock immediately.

This is a terrific tip.

Five ways Apple could improve iPhone X usability

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Rene Ritchie, iMore:

I stand by my claim that iPhone X is the best damn product Apple has ever made but that doesn’t mean it can’t and shouldn’t get better. That includes how new features like Face ID, gesture navigation, Control Center access, and Lock screen buttons are currently implemented.

A solid list of ideas, all of them filed as feature request radars, with the radar numbers if you’d like to dupe them yourself.

[VIDEO] Identical twins, Face ID, and that IR dot pattern

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[VIDEO] Oliver Thomas has identical twins and an iPhone X. As you might expect, he made a video testing to see if one twin could unlock the iPhone X registered to the other twin.

The text went pretty much as you’d expect it to. But what I found really interesting was Oliver’s use of night mode in an old night-vision camcorder to capture the IR dot pattern put out by the iPhone X.

In the video, jump to about 30 seconds in and check out the spread of that pattern. It goes pretty wide, so much so that Oliver had to move one of the twins out of the spread to be sure he didn’t get a false positive.

The wide spread shows how far of a face detection reach the iPhone X has.

In addition, at that same place within the video, check out the pattern of the dots on the wall. They almost look like 5-pointed stars, rather than round dots. Is that just my imagination? Is there a shape to the dots beyond simple circles?

In the meantime, check the video for yourself. It’s embedded in the main Loop post.

iPhone X: The Android Central review

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Daniel Bader, Android Central:

Apple calls iPhone X the future of the smartphone, but after using it for a week — and coming from months of Android use — I can comfortably say that it’s a really great phone. In fact, it is the best iPhone to date, and I’ve had a tremendous time with it, but it doesn’t drastically change my opinion of the iPhone as a product, nor of iOS as an ecosystem.

That’s not to say Google and its hardware partners can’t stand to learn a few things from the iPhone X.

Let’s cut to the chase.

As you make your way through this review, keep in mind that this is written by the Managing Editor of Android Central. I found it to be objective, but clearly told from the view of an Android user. Keep that in mind, but do read the review.

The Apple Watch can accurately detect hypertension and sleep apnea, a new study suggests

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Sarah Buhr, TechCrunch:

A new study out from health startup Cardiogram and the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) suggests wearables like the Apple Watch, Fitbit and others are able to accurately detect common but serious conditions like hypertension and sleep apnea.

And:

Sleep apnea affects an estimated 22 million adults in the U.S., with another 80 percent of cases of moderate and severe obstructive sleep apnea undiagnosed, according to the American Sleep Apnea Association. This is a serious condition where the person affected stops breathing in their sleep and can lead to death.

The current process for diagnosing sleep apnea typically requires an overnight stay in a sleep center, where they connect an array of sensors to detect and track your sleeping and breathing patterns. Often, a breathing device is prescribed and fitted, with another overnight to verify that it is working correctly. Every element of this process is expensive, and (at least in the US) is not always covered by health insurance.

Anything the Apple Watch can do to cut down on the inconvenience and expense is a boon.

Here’s a link to the study, in case you want to learn more.