Business

Woz on stage at Carnegie Hall in Pittsburgh

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From the Pittsburgh Tribune Review writeup:

New technologies are sometimes a selfish endeavor, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak told a crowded Carnegie Music Hall in Pittsburgh on Tuesday.

He built the Apple II, the computer that made Apple a household name , because he wanted color in arcade games.

And:

“Steve made the iPhone, not for you and me. He made it for himself,” Wozniak said of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. “It had to be elegant and simple, which were design flaws.”

And:

Wozniak didn’t hold back on criticisms of Jobs. He said a 2015 movie about Jobs nailed the man’s personality. He put blame for the failures of the Apple III, the Lisa and other products on Jobs.

Read the rest of the article for more on this. While I’ve heard Woz hint at these things before, I’ve never heard of an interview in which he gets so specific on his feelings about Steve Jobs. This article gets into one specific anecdote, but from what I’ve heard, he did relate others on stage.

The Secret History of Mac Gaming

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From the Kickstarter page:

The Secret History of Mac Gaming is the story of those communities and the game developers who survived and thrived in an ecosystem that was serially ignored by the outside world. It’s a book about people who made games and people who played them — people who, on both counts, followed their hearts first and market trends second. How in spite of everything they had going against them, the people who carried the torch for Mac gaming in the ’80s, ’90s, and early 2000s showed how clever, quirky, and downright wonderful video games could be.

This looks amazing. I love the cover design. Gorgeous, and emblematic of that old school Mac look and feel. Check out the kickstarter. Hoping this meets its goals.

Steve Jobs, services, and the tail wagging the dog

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Dana Blankenhorn, Yahoo! Finance:

Apple is expected to have revenue of $50.94 billion for the September quarter, which is the fourth quarter of its fiscal year, and earnings of $1.86 per share. Margins are expected to be 38%.

Without revenue from services that would not be possible.

Dana is making the case that Apple is morphing into a services company.

More from the article:

The man behind Apple’s retail stores, George Blankenship, says services are also the future of the shopping mall. In his opinion, easy shopping, fast WiFi, and delivery services will make shopping centers relevant for millennials and their Generation Z siblings, and I believe him.

Because Apple owns its own cloud data centers, it can earn maximum margins from this trend. Instead of renting the space it uses for services, it owns the space, with all the tax benefits. Steve Jobs dismissed services as the tail wagging the dog. For Tim Cook, this is the dog.

I find this fascinating. For Steve, the product is the dog, the Mac, iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch, collectively, is the dog. The services are the tail.

Is Apple truly becoming a services company? Is this inevitable, the only way Apple can maintain its momentum, size, and revenue stream?

The Siri hierarchy of needs

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Thoughts on things that do not work on Siri, and the hierarchy of needs that has evolved leading from what works flawlessly to […]

A Shazam for the art world

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Gunseli Yalcinkaya, Dezeen:

Smartify launched at the Royal Academy of Arts in London last week. It has been described by its creators as “a Shazam for the art world”, because – like the app that can identify any music track – it can reveal the title and artist of thousands of artworks.

It does so by cross-referencing them with a vast database that the company is constantly updating.

I love the idea of this app. One key difference between Smartify and Shazam is that the creators/sellers do the database updating in Shazam, while Smartify does the updating themselves. While Shazam is a general purpose solution, Smartify is more collection specific, working with museums, for example, to tag all the items in a specific gallery.

Looking forward to taking it for a spin the next time I’m at MoMA. Wondering if Smartify can handle sculpture and other 3D artforms.

Dow Jones technical error spreads fake news story of Google acquiring Apple

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Benjamin Mayo, 9to5Mac:

The Dow Jones newswires had a ‘technical error’ which caused the portal to report several spurious stories including several headlines claiming Google was acquiring Apple for $9 billion, and that the deal was pre-arranged with Steve Jobs in his will.

I get that a technical error caused the stories to flow, but where did they come from in the first place? It’s not like someone accidentally wrote them.

From Dow Jones:

Please disregard the headlines that ran on Dow Jones Newswires between 9:34 a.m. ET and 9:36 a.m. ET. Due to a technical error, the headlines were published. All of those headlines are being removed from the wires. We apologize for the error.

Nope. An error is the release of the stories. But the creation of those stories is something else entirely. This should not be dismissed as a simple mistake.

2018 iPad Pro models may feature TrueDepth camera for Face ID

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Juli Clover, MacRumors:

iPad Pro models set to be released in 2018 will come equipped with a TrueDepth Camera and will support Face ID, KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo told investors in a note this morning.

Kuo believes Apple will add TrueDepth cameras to the iPad Pro to introduce a user experience that’s consistent with the iPhone X and boost competitiveness. With all high-end iOS devices equipped with TrueDepth Cameras, “ecosystem development” will also benefit.

Here’s the quote from Ming-Chi Kuo:

We predict iOS devices to be equipped with TrueDepth Camera in 2018F will include iPhone X and 2018 new iPhone and iPad models. Because of this, we believe more developers will pay attention to TrueDepth Camera/ facial recognition related applications. We expect Apple’s (US) major promotion of facial recognition related applications will encourage the Android camp to also dedicate more resources to developing hardware and facial recognition applications.

Love the notch. Embrace the notch.

Deadline: Apple terminates deal for Weinstein Company Elvis series amid scandal

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Nellie Andreeva, Deadline:

I have learned that Apple has pulled the plug on an Elvis Presley biopic series from The Weinstein Company in light of the controversy that has engulfed TWC since last week’s explosive exposé about its co-founder Harvey Weinstein.

The article has a gossipy tone, this falls under the category of “a little birdie told me”, but it is both interesting and believable. The Weinstein Company is doing everything they can to distance themselves from this scandal.

If this story is true, Apple is bailing early in the life of the series, and pulling the plug on something that predates their deal with Jamie Erlicht and Zack Van Amburg (the team they brought in to run the Apple video division).

Twitter working on #SaveForLater tweet saving tool

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Alex Kantrowitz, BuzzFeed News:

A “save for later” option is coming to Twitter.

The company is working on a bookmarking tool that will allow you to save Tweets and return to them in a dedicated section the product, its head of product Keith Coleman said in a tweet Monday.

Here’s a tweet showing the current design in action:

https://twitter.com/jesarshah/status/917538321693261824

Tap the play button in the center of the tweet to watch this prototype video.

In a nutshell, you tap the ellipsis below a tweet to bring up a Add to Bookmarks button, saving the tweet for later.

Coming to Apple Music: Bang! The Bert Berns Story

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[VIDEO] This looks to be a well crafted love letter to an unsung hero of the music industry. This could be a sweet spot for Apple Music, something I’d normally associate with HBO. A bit of a niche documentary, but foundational, something that adds value to my Apple Music subscription, something I can’t get on Spotify.

The film was produced by Bert Berns’ son and premiered at the 2016 SXSW Film Festival to great acclaim. Here’s a review.

Watch the trailer embedded in the main Loop post. Drops on October 24th. My calendar is marked.

China: Another iPhone 8 swollen battery, case opening

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Reuters:

On its website on Thursday, China’s state-backed ThePaper.cn cited an iPhone buyer surnamed Liu as saying his newly purchased iPhone 8 Plus arrived cracked open on Oct. 5. There was no sign of scorching or an explosion.

Liu told ThePaper he bought the handset through online marketplace of JD.com Inc. He said he did not charge the new device and returned it to the seller.

Pictures taken by Liu and displayed on ThePaper’s website showed an iPhone 8 plus split open along the side featuring the sim card holding, with the phone’s internal parts visible.

Puzzling. Just enough cases to make this more than a one-off, but does not appear to be widespread. Should be easy enough to tell if this is an issue with a specific part of the supply chain.

Apple reveals new emoji for iPhone and iPad

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Apple press release:

Hundreds of new emoji, including more emotive smiley faces, gender-neutral characters, clothing options, food types, animals, mythical creatures and more, are coming to iPhone and iPad with iOS 11.1.

The new emoji are gorgeous. To me, they harken back to the days of skeuomorphism. Jarring to see the shiny, shadowed, 3D emoji next to the intentionally flat iOS interface. Which way are we going?

No matter, head over to the Apple press release, check out the emoji for yourself. A vampire!

Researchers: Uber’s iOS app had secret permissions that allowed it to record your iPhone screen

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Kate Conger, Gizmodo:

To improve functionality between Uber’s app and the Apple Watch, Apple allowed Uber to use a powerful tool that could record a user’s iPhone screen, even if Uber’s app was only running in the background, security researchers told Gizmodo. After the researchers discovered the tool, Uber said it is no longer in use and will be removed from the app.

My head is spinning. How was this allowed to happen in the first place and how was the tool not monitored, removal tracked and forced by Apple?

More:

The entitlement isn’t common and would require Apple’s explicit permission to use, the researchers explained. Will Strafach, a security researcher and CEO of Sudo Security Group, said he couldn’t find any other apps with the entitlement live on the App Store.

I’d love an official comment by Apple on this. Was this a one time thing? Is this common practice?

EFF: iOS 11’s misleading “off-ish” Bluetooth, Wi-Fi setting bad for user security

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Electronic Frontier Foundation blog:

Turning off your Bluetooth and Wi-Fi radios when you’re not using them is good security practice (not to mention good for your battery usage). When you consider Bluetooth’s known vulnerabilities, it’s especially important to make sure your Bluetooth and Wi-Fi settings are doing what you want them to. The iPhone’s newest operating system, however, makes it harder for users to control these settings.

We’ve discussed the Control Center controls and icons in this Loop post.

In a nutshell, when you tap the WiFi or Bluetooth icons in Control Center, you’ll drop/restore the current connection, but without turning off the respective radio. And that’s the EFF’s complaint.

Instead, what actually happens in iOS 11 when you toggle your quick settings to “off” is that the phone will disconnect from Wi-Fi networks and some devices, but remain on for Apple services. Location Services is still enabled, Apple devices (like Apple Watch and Pencil) stay connected, and services such as Handoff and Instant Hotspot stay on.

All true.

Apple’s UI fails to even attempt to communicate these exceptions to its users.

A small point, but I disagree with this. Once you see the difference between the off icon state and the disconnected state, it’s clear what’s going on. There’s also helper text, like “Disconnected from XXX”, where XXX is your WiFi network name.

The more important issue:

It gets even worse. When you toggle these settings in the Control Center to what is best described as”off-ish,” they don’t stay that way. The Wi-Fi will turn back full-on if you drive or walk to a new location. And both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth will turn back on at 5:00 AM. This is not clearly explained to users, nor left to them to choose, which makes security-aware users vulnerable as well.

The only way to turn off the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth radios is to enable Airplane Mode or navigate into Settings and go to the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth sections.

My two cents? Make the controls default to the safest possible behavior, then expose settings that allow me to go to a more relaxed, less secure state for a specific benefit (battery savings, better communications, etc.)

UPDATE: As pointed out by my unrelated name-sharer and Loop reader Jason Mark, Airplane Mode does not impact the WiFi or Bluetooth radios, as EFF claims. An easy mistake, but worth clarifying. Give this a try on your iOS 11 device.

Every noise at once

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Pop on some headphones and take some time to explore. This is pretty much every musical genre I’ve ever encountered.

For most (but not all) genres, a click on the name will play a short snippet example. Click on the arrow to the right of the name and you’ll go to that genre’s page, with a pretty significant listing of artists in that space.

Click on an artist, you’ll hear a snippet. Click on the arrow to the right of the artist, you’ll go to that artist’s Spotify page.

From the footnote:

This is an ongoing attempt at an algorithmically-generated, readability-adjusted scatter-plot of the musical genre-space, based on data tracked and analyzed for 1536 genres by Spotify. The calibration is fuzzy, but in general down is more organic, up is more mechanical and electric; left is denser and more atmospheric, right is spikier and bouncier.

And (my favorite):

Be calmly aware that this may periodically expand, contract or combust.

I absolutely loved playing with this. Was thinking, I wish Apple Music offered me a system like this for music discovery. I know there are apps that do this, but none has access to my “For You” data. I’d love to spend some time in a tree like this, personalizing and improving my “For You” model so Apple Music actually has a true sense of what I like.

Google puts clock on free Photos storage

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Ryan Whitwam, Android Police, quoting the Pixel 2 product page fine print on the Google Store:

Free, unlimited original-quality storage for photos and videos taken with Pixel through the end of 2020, and free, unlimited high-quality storage for photos taken with Pixel afterwards.

There’s been a lot of discussion about exactly what this means. At the very least, if you want to keep taking uncompressed, original-quality pictures past the cutoff date at the end of 2020, you’ll need to start paying for storage. What is unclear is what that means for all the original-quality photos you’ve already placed on the Google Photos servers. Will they continue to be stored for free? Will you have to pay for those, too?

To be clear, I have no issue paying for the storage. Apple, after all, charges for iCloud storage already. Just looking for clarification.

Someone at Google know the details? Please let me know and I’ll update the post.

[H/T Oliver Thomas]

UPDATE: Someone at Google reached out to clarify this issue. As fair a response as I could have hoped for. Here’s the Q&A:

  • Me: If I have original-quality photos stored for free, what happens to them once the end of 2020 deadline passes? Do they get deleted? Compressed? Do they stay there but I lose access to them unless I pay for enough storage so they fit?
  • Google: They remain at original quality, for free. The change is only for taken photos thereafter.

As I read this, you can take all the original-quality (non-compressed) photos you want and they will always be available, non-compressed. Once the deadline passes, you’ll have a decision to make that only impacts photos taken after the deadline. Those post-deadline pics will be limited by the tier you choose after the deadline. Make sense?

Details on the iPhone X notch interface

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A detailed post from Max Rudberg, lots of pictures, makes me feel more comfortable with the notch itself and how it might look in different situations.

A few highlights:

Regardless of your feelings for the notch, the reality is that to do a near edge-to-edge screen on a phone in 2017; you need to make place for sensors and speaker. The technology to hide them behind the screen simply is not here. We’ve seen different manufacturers choose different solutions to the problem. This is the one Apple chose, so let’s work with what we got.

That last bit is exactly right. These are the cards we’ve been dealt. Let’s work with that.

The familiar 20 pt tall status bar, the same height it’s been since the first iPhone, is now 44 pt tall on iPhone X.

That’s more than twice the height but, of course, it’s now split in two. Not our space to play with, so no reason for developers to worry through what will fit in the so-called horns.

If nothing else, just scroll through all the examples. This is the (at least short term) future.

[H/T Fabrice Dubois

The amazing story of an emerging GIF empire

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Nicole Laporte, Fast Company, on GIFs and the Emmys:

Then came the night’s biggest, and most controversial, moment: Former White House press secretary Sean Spicer rolled a faux presidential podium onto the stage to deliver a send-up of his infamous “largest audience” speech he gave the day after President Trump’s inauguration. Immediately, the Giphy crew began to splice the scene into GIF form. Part of Giphy’s genius lies in not posting the obvious clip, so Spicer himself wasn’t of much interest. Rather, they surveyed the sea of shocked and bewildered faces in the audience, looking for gold. They found it in Veep‘s Anna Chlumsky, her entire body contorted into an OMG expression—eyes bulging, neck veins popping—as she craned out of her seat for a better view of the strange performance. Within minutes, the editors had the three-second clip uploaded onto Giphy. It began to trend almost immediately. A week after the show, it’d been viewed more than 13 million times.

This is one corner of the future. Keep your eye on Giphy. I predict big things in their future.

In the meantime, this is a fascinating read, all the way through.

Inspiration: Leaving your full time job to become an iOS indie

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John Voorhees just celebrated a major milestone in his life. He left his full time job as a lawyer to dedicated himself to his indie empire, as a developer, podcaster, and blogger. If you’ve ever had similar thoughts, this is an inspirational read.

One tiny nugget, where John talks about that moment when his app got Federico Viticci’s attention:

As the end of 2014 approached, I made a mad dash to finish Blink. By this point, I had managed to get Federico’s attention when I’d posted a late-night teaser video on Twitter of my URL schemes in action. Five minutes later, he sent me a direct message:

And Federico’s response:

Oh man, wow. Please make this universal and let me in the beta as soon as possible! ❤

@viticci November 5, 2014

This is a wonderful read. I have to say, stories like this make me really glad to be a part of this particular community.

MLB pilot program uses iPhone and Apple Watch for contactless stadium entry

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Fitz Tepper, TechCrunch:

Today the MLB announced that the Oakland Athletics are piloting a new NFC ticketing solution which lets fans enter the stadium by tapping their phone (or Apple Watch) to a ticket scanner – just like you’d do to use Apple Pay.

And:

The pilot lasted for a six-game homestand starting Sept. 22nd after iOS 11 launched, and was the first time a professional sports event supported contactless tickets in Apple Wallet.

This is big for Apple Pay, Apple Watch, and Apple Wallet. I’d expect this to roll out to more, if not all teams next season. Just a matter of time before this moves to other sports, as well.

Smart profile of Apple’s commitment to silicon

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Horace Dediu, Asymco:

The Apple A11 Bionic processor has 4.3 billion transistors, six cores and an Apple custom GPU using a 10nm FinFET technology. Its performance appears to be almost double that of competitors and in some benchmarks exceeds the performance of current laptop PCs.

And:

Apple has come to the point where is dominates the processor space. But they have not stopped at processors. The effort now spans all manners of silicon including controllers for displays, storage, sensors and batteries. The S series in the Apple Watch the haptic T series in the MacBook, the wireless W series in AirPods are ongoing efforts. The GPU was conquered in the past year. Litigation with Qualcomm suggests the communications stack is next.

A name you’ll be hearing more and more of is the person who runs this silicon engineering effort for Apple, Johny Srouji. This is a great read.

Who is planning to buy which new iPhones?

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Joe Rossignol, MacRumors:

Of the 832 individuals surveyed, 28 percent said they plan to purchase iPhone X as their next smartphone. An additional 20 percent of respondents said they intend to buy iPhone 8 Plus, while 17 percent will go for iPhone 8.

Lots of intent numbers to process. Small survey size, but not hard to see this as representative.

Interesting to see how many people have their eye on the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus.

Laurene Powell Jobs buying big stake in Wizards, Capitals sports empire

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Washington Post:

Laurene Powell Jobs, a billionaire philanthropist, entrepreneur and president of the Emerson Collective, is buying a significant stake in Monumental Sports & Entertainment, a sprawling $2.5 billion complex that includes the NBA Wizards, NHL Capitals and Capital One Arena, people familiar with the deal said.

And:

Through her sizable investment, Powell Jobs instantly commands an influential position in the male-dominated ownership circles of the “Big Four” professional sports leagues. Very few women’s names stand atop the ownership list of the NBA’s 30 franchises: Jeanie Buss of the Los Angeles Lakers, Ann Walton Kroenke of the Denver Nuggets and Gail Miller of the Utah Jazz.

And:

Powell Jobs, 53, is one of the wealthiest women in the world, estimated to be worth about $20 billion. Much of that comes from her stock in Apple, the iconic company co-founded by her late husband Steve Jobs, who died in 2011. She also owns 4 percent of the Walt Disney Company.

This is a big, bold move by Laurene Powell Jobs, a follow-up to her nonprofit’s purchase of the Atlantic Magazine and bringing her that much closer to the Washington DC area and to the so-called corridors of power.

The “truth” about Amazon Prime Video on Apple TV

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Reddit post from an account named AmazonVideoEngineer:

Wanted to make this throwaway account after yesterday’s debacle. I saw many people get upset so I wanted to issue this warning: do not expect Amazon to launch before October 26th. The app is done, and has been done for months already. However there are a lot of politics going on beyond my pay grade that are pushing the launch back. And just to clarify, October 26 is the earliest I would expect it. Launch could be pushed well into November.

No way to know if this is fake or not, but it is definitely interesting. Read the whole page for back and forth questions with the alleged engineer. Fascinating. Take with a grain of salt.

UPDATE: I’ve been asked about the reference to “yesterday’s debacle”. I am still looking for a response, but I believe the reference is to last week when Amazon dropped the Apple TV from Amazon.com. As of this post, the Apple TV is still MIA on Amazon’s site.

Why Apple should buy Sony

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Frederic Filloux, Monday Note:

Access to superior image sensors, a giant entertainment library and the PlayStation ecosystem… By any measure, Apple acquiring Sony makes a lot of sense.

I’ve heard this argument floated before, but without the “access to superior image sensors” logic. Camera hardware is only becoming more important to Apple and iPhone over time. Interesting post.

Two great new features found in iOS 11 search

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Hat tip to Fabrice Dubois for uncovering these two gems in iOS 11’s search. To bring up the search field, as always, press the home button to return to Springboard (the iOS equivalent of the Finder), then pull down to reveal the search field.

With search open, type in a word and search results will show its definition, like so:

And, even better, the search field is now open to catching spelling errors.

To see this one for yourself, open search and start typing fadebook (note the “d” instead of the “c”) or protos instead of photos.

Not sure when typo handling and definition suggestion first shipped, but they’re both nice to see.