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Apple TV 4K review

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Solid review from Apple Insider. My concerns are about functionality and price. Read on for details. […]

Nikkei Asian Review: Apple to switch Macs from Intel to ARM

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Nikkei Asian Review, first on Apple rolling their own modem chip:

Two other chip industry executives also echoed Li’s view that Apple will develop its own modem chips or at least boost its related capabilities – a view bolstered by Apple’s poaching top Qualcomm modem chip engineer Esin Terzioglu earlier this year.

But Li added it is was unlikely that Apple could quickly roll out such components within two years. Modem chips have a very high threshold to develop and need to fulfill requirements of different operators worldwide.

A veteran chip industry executive estimates that it would require more than a minimum one thousand engineers to work on such a project.

As far as Macs go:

Core processor chips for the MacBook range is another area Apple is trying to venture into.

Two industry sources say that Apple is trying to cut its dependence on Intel when it comes to notebook chips and instead build those using ARM architecture, referring to the SoftBank-controlled British chip designer.

“Notebooks are becoming thinner, while consumers are demanding better mobility and longer battery life. That gives ARM’s architecture, which is known for its power efficiency, a very good opportunity,” a chip industry executive said.

And:

Apple also aims to design its own chips that could integrate touch, fingerprint and display driver functions, sources say.

“Apple has hired engineers from Taiwan’s No. 1 display-driver chip designers Novatek and panel makers of AU Optronics as it wants to control next-generation display technology and some related key components,” said a Taiwanese chip industry manager.

Apple switching Macs to ARM chips has long been a topic of speculation. And there are significant technical hurdles to overcome. Interesting, but take with a grain of salt.

How to zoom an Apple Map with one finger

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I love this tip. Here’s how to do it:

  • Bring up Apple Maps.
  • Double-tap in the map, but on the second tap, don’t lift your finger. So tap-lift-tap-leave.
  • Now slide up or down to zoom in and out.

This also works with Google Maps but, interestingly, it works the exact opposite way. On Google Maps, slide up to zoom out, down to zoom in.

Here’s an Apple Support document that contains this tip and a ton more iOS 11 chewy goodness. [H/T Fabrice Dubois]

Taiwanese media report iPhone 8 Plus cracked open mid-charge. Take with grain of salt.

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There are pictures of the phone, and of another phone with a similar symptom.

From the article:

So far, the finger of blame is being pointed at the battery. Unconfirmed reports state the iPhone 8 Plus uses the same battery manufacturer, Amperex Technology Limited (ATL), as the Samsung Galaxy Note 7.

But it’s worth remembering a couple of things. Firstly, many of the details surrounding this incident are hazy and unconfirmed. Take them with a grain of salt.

Exactly. If this is a widespread issue, we’ll see confirmed reports. If it’s a few flawed phones, this will quickly die off.

Steve Ballmer, third grade basketball coach

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This piece is interesting, funny, and insightful. He coached his third graders like he ran Microsoft. Fascinating that his players had no idea who he was, beyond being their coach.

Why you may have issues sending SMS texts via Apple Watch Series 3 cellular

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Scott Stein, on sending SMS texts via his cellular Apple Watch:

I have experienced some quirks, particularly with text messages, and investigating them revealed some limitations in how the Apple Watch handles its wireless interactions.

And:

The Apple Watch really, really wants your phone to be powered on somewhere, connected to Wi-Fi or LTE. That location doesn’t have to be anywhere near the Watch, however. Your iPhone can be sitting on your nightstand at home, and you could be 50 miles away — though, obviously, someplace that still has cellular coverage.

The different scenarios are subtle. Scott does a nice job of laying out the rules. And here’s an Apple support page that addresses these issues, though I think Scott’s writeup better addresses the scenarios involving SMS.

Billboard interview with Apple Music team, and two things I really want from Apple Music

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From the preamble from Billboard’s interview with Jimmy Iovine, Larry Jackson, and Zane Lowe:

Apple Music tells Billboard that it now counts well over 30 million ­paying ­subscribers, helping fuel a 17 percent revenue jump for the U.S. recorded-music business in the first half of 2017 over the same period a year ago, according to the RIAA. Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs issued a report in August predicting that ­subscription streaming would drive the global record business to nearly triple to $41 billion by 2030.

And:

[Iovine] is working to crack what he sees as the music industry’s biggest challenge: how to inject enough “soul” into subscription streaming services so that fans will pay $10 a month instead of listening to their tunes on free services, which are also growing fast.

To do it, he’s relying on BBC Radio 1 ­veteran Zane Lowe, now creative ­director and L.A. anchor for Apple Music’s free radio service Beats 1, and Apple Music head of content Larry Jackson, a former A&R ­executive at Interscope and other labels. All three are focused on creating ­exclusive content, from films and ads to radio shows and glossy magazines, to help artists tell the stories behind their music in an age of shrinking attention spans and fast-changing playlists.

To me, the biggest issue with Apple Music is the depth of the user experience. For example, with For You, the on-boarding is primitive, at best. I never felt steered towards my deepest musical tastes. And as I listened to music, even as I diligently favorited my best loved tunes, I never felt that For You really got me.

And there’s no real way to get under the hood, to see what Apple thinks I really love. No way to tap, drag, select, to tune my For You model to really get those recommendations in line with my personal tastes.

Don’t get me wrong. I really do love Apple Music. I use it every day and appreciate being able to call up most any song I can think of on a moment’s notice. But Jimmy is right on. There’s so much Apple can do here to make Apple Music superior to any other service.

Two things I want?

  • A music recommendation engine that is easy to use, that I can tune, and that really gets me.
  • Better sharing, with better linkage to social networks so the sharing can ride on the social links I’ve already built. Why reinvent my graph of friends when I’ve already done that work?

An inside look at the iPhone X lock screen and home screen experience

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Benjamin Mayo, 9to5Mac:

The new Xcode 9.1 beta has also been released by Apple today with support for the new operating system updates: iOS 11.1, watchOS 4.1 and tvOS 11.1. It also includes a more fully-fledged iPhone X simulator, which demonstrates the new lock screen and home screen experiences.

There are also some onboarding videos, for things like activating Siri or revealing Control Center, which will be shown to iPhone X users upon setup.

Benjamin does a great job pulling together these inside looks at the iPhone X experience. Read his article, there’s a lot to it.

Here’s just a taste, a pair of onboarding videos, two different results when you swipe up from the bottom, one with a pause and one without, courtesy of Guilherme Rambo:

https://twitter.com/_inside/status/913096147002171398

https://twitter.com/_inside/status/913096389642657798

Love this.

Apple’s TV strategy becomes clearer as top stars jockey for shows

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The Hollywood Reporter:

The world’s biggest company is officially taking meetings as everyone from Jennifer Aniston to Steven Spielberg salivates over selling the first big show. One studio chief says, “Who wouldn’t want to be the ‘Mad Men’ or ‘House of Cards’ on Apple?”

And:

Though Apple isn’t looking to replicate the pace or scale of rival Netflix’s $6 billion annual spend, it is eager to be in the prestige content business in a significant way. Per multiple sources briefed on the company’s plans, its executives are looking for big, smart, splashy dramas, with at least one citing Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad and The Crown as models. And though there are still plenty of questions — first and foremost, how will an Apple show be distributed? — talent is lining up to provide options.

And:

At press time, the company had bids out on only a handful of projects, including an update of Steven Spielberg’s 1980s sci-fi, horror, fantasy anthology series, Amazing Stories, and a morning show drama starring Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon, according to several involved.

Apple is entering new territory here. The good news is, they’ve long proved they can take on something completely new, dig in, learn the critical lessons, then produce quality product. Given what we’ve seen so far, it’s certainly fair to be skeptical, but I like the moves Apple is making and look forward to watching them master this space.

Apple releases Face ID security guide

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A few bits from Apple’s Face ID Security white paper:

When Face ID detects and matches your face, iPhone X unlocks without asking for the device passcode. Face ID makes using a longer, more complex passcode far more practical because you don’t need to enter it as frequently.

If Face ID was able to eliminate the passcode completely, users could use long, impossible to memorize strings, just as they would with strong passwords combined with a password manager. But the fact that you have to memorize the passcode (you won’t have to use it much, but you’ll still encounter situations where you’ll need it) limits the complexity. Not a complaint, just an observation.

Here’s when a passcode is still required:

  • You can always use your passcode instead of Face ID, and it’s still required under the following circumstances:
  • The device has just been turned on or restarted.
  • The device hasn’t been unlocked for more than 48 hours.
  • The passcode hasn’t been used to unlock the device in the last 156 hours (six and a half days) and Face ID has not unlocked the device in the last 4 hours.
  • The device has received a remote lock command.
  • After five unsuccessful attempts to match a face.
  • After initiating power off/Emergency SOS by pressing and holding either volume button and the side button simultaneously for 2 seconds.

And:

The TrueDepth camera automatically looks for your face when you wake iPhone X by raising it or tapping the screen, as well as when iPhone X attempts to authenticate you to display an incoming notification or when a supported app requests Face ID authentication. When a face is detected, Face ID confirms attention and intent to unlock by detecting that your eyes are open and directed at your device; for accessibility, this is disabled when VoiceOver is activated or can be disabled separately, if required.

This is what’s encrypted and saved in the iPhone X Secure Enclave:

  • The infrared images of your face captured during enrollment.
  • The mathematical representations of your face calculated during enrollment.
  • The mathematical representations of your face calculated during some unlock attempts if Face ID deems them useful to augment future matching.

There’s a lot more in the white paper, including some detail on Apple Pay, and third party access to Face ID.

Even a wee bit of anonymized location data is enough to identify you

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Fast Company:

“Companies often claim to have ‘anonymized’ your location history by taking your name off it,” says Peter Eckersley, the chief computer scientist of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “But that is totally inadequate because you’re probably the only person who lives in your house and who works in your office, and it’s easy for any researcher or data scientist to look at a location trace and figure out who it belonged to.”

If you gave someone my location data, completely scrubbed of any identifying info other than geo-coordinates, it would be simple for them to turn that into my name, address, phone number and, with a bit of work, even more personalized information.

If my location data includes a stop at a house, especially if I only stop at one house, chances are good that’s my house. A simple lookup in a public tax database and they’ve got me, and a wealth of info about me.

Great article.

Apple updates their Privacy page

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Apple has always emphasized their belief in privacy. This update of their site makes that much clearer, with a focus on tentpole issues. There’s a lot of detail on this subsite. Apple’s commitment to privacy is strong and well laid out.

Take a look.

Google pulls YouTube from Amazon Echo

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Jan Dawson, Tech Narratives:

Amazon announced last night that Google had pulled its YouTube app from the former’s Echo Show device, the company’s first screen-based voice speaker. YouTube was one of very few video options available on the Echo Show, with Amazon’s own Prime Video being the main alternative.

Amazon has something Apple wants and seeks to emulate in Prime Video. Amazon wants to protect Prime Video, is using its storefront power to horsetrade with Apple, swapping Apple TV presence on Amazon.com for a Prime Video app on Apple TV.

Google and Amazon are fighting a different battle. At the very least, there’s Google Home vs Amazon Echo. But there’s a subtle shopping competitiveness as well, with both trying to work into the first place consumers go when they want to make a purchase.

All of this might have nothing to do with why Google pulled YouTube (the claim is that Amazon’s implementation broke YouTube’s terms of service). It might have more to do with ads and tracking than anything else. But make no mistake, each pairing is its own chess match.

Bill Gates on Steve Jobs and iPhone, John Gruber on Bill Gates and Android

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First things first, take a look at the video embedded in the main Loop post, a Fox News interview with Bill Gates. Jump to about 11:28 in, where Bill is asked about his “famously tempestuous” relationship with Steve Jobs and the new iPhone.

With that in mind, this is John Gruber, from the linked Daring Fireball post:

I say this with no snark intended: who would have guessed 10 years ago that Bill Gates would be using a personal computing device running a non-Microsoft OS? Or really, an OS that didn’t have “Windows” in the name?

And:

While I’m at it, it occurs to me that Apple is the only company left where all its employees are using only systems made by their own company.

Read the whole post, including the update. Fascinating.

How to do a clean install of macOS High Sierra

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Luke Filipowicz, Lory Gil, iMore:

Downloading and installing a new OS gives you the opportunity to do some major house cleaning if you so desire. If you feel like you’d like a fresh start with macOS High Sierra, you can always opt to do a clean install: Just follow the steps below, even if you’ve already installed macOS High Sierra.

A clean install does give you a chance to shake out the leftover cruft from legacy installs. Me, I always keep several copies of backups, untouched, so I can go back and retrieve old apps/data I was sure I’d never need again.

Good post.

The Apple TV, out, then in, then out on Amazon

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Sarah Perez, TechCrunch:

The Apple TV is back for sale on Amazon after a two-year hiatus – a move that was expected following Apple CEO Tim Cook’s announcement in June that Amazon’s Prime Video app would arrive on Apple TV later this year. The two companies had clearly come to an agreement that benefitted their mutual interests – for Amazon, that meant getting its streaming video app onto Apple TV devices; and for Apple, it meant getting its streaming media player on Amazon.com’s retail site again.

Except, as of this writing, the Apple TV is no longer on Amazon. I just did a search for “Apple TV” in quotes and without quotes, and got no love.

The Apple TV clearly had popped into stock over the past few days, but now it is not showing up at all. Not clear if this is related to negotiations related to the Amazon Prime Video app for Apple TV, or perhaps having something to do with pricing on 4K movies on Amazon.

macOS 10.13 High Sierra: The Ars Technica review

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This is a detailed review, definitely a solid place to start learning about macOS High Sierra.

Before you update, you might want to read the section on APFS, the Apple File System called A one-way ticket to APFS-ville (if you have an SSD).

The High Sierra installer does do one major thing that the Sierra installer didn’t do. Behind the scenes, it converts your boot partition from the longstanding HFS+ filesystem to the new APFS.

Well, it does that for most Macs, anyway.

Though most people will never even know what’s happening, there are plenty of caveats and details to know about how the APFS conversion happens, the cases when it doesn’t happen, and why it doesn’t happen when it doesn’t happen.

Read this section, consider your Mac’s particular configuration. Do you have a spinning hard drive? Do you have an SSD that you installed yourself? Do you have a Fusion drive setup? None of these are dealbreakers, but it’s worth spending the time to read about these cases before you do the upgrade.

High Sierra automatically checks firmware integrity each week

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The Eclectic Light Company:

Upgrading to High Sierra brings a new and significant security feature: your Mac will automatically check its EFI firmware. In a series of tweets, Xeno Kovah, one of the three engineers responsible for the new tool, has outlined how this works.

The new utility eficheck, located in /usr/libexec/firmwarecheckers/eficheck, runs automatically once a week. It checks that Mac’s firmware against Apple’s database of what is known to be good. If it passes, you will see nothing of this, but if there are discrepancies, you will be invited to send a report to Apple.

And:

eficheck depends on a small local library of ‘known good’ data, which will be automatically and silently updated if you have security updates turned on in the App Store pane.

That checkbox is in the App Store pane in System Preferences and should be checked by default.

macOS High Sierra keychain vulnerability should not stop you from updating

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Juli Clover, MacRumors:

macOS High Sierra, released to the public today, could be impacted by a major security flaw that could allow a hacker to steal the usernames and passwords of accounts stored in Keychain.

Here’s the tweet that brought this to light:

https://twitter.com/patrickwardle/status/912254053849079808

The timing of this reveal is terrible, as it coincides with the release of macOS High Sierra. I know a number of people who have held off updating for just this reason.

Don’t let this story stop you from updating:

  1. This exploit is said to effect earlier versions of macOS as well. If you are on Sierra and considering updating, you are already as vulnerable as you would be if you updated.

  2. Apple is said to be working on a fix and Patrick Wardle has said he will not release details of the exploit until the fix patch is available.

Add to that:

For this vulnerability to work, a user needs to download malicious third-party code from an unknown source, something Apple actively discourages with warnings about apps downloaded outside of the Mac App Store or from non-trusted developers.

To be clear, do your research and a full backup before you update. I’ve done my homework and, once I finish this morning’s Loop posts, will hit the return key and start my update. I will definitely update on Twitter as I go. Hopefully, the update will be trouble-free. Fingers are crossed.

Apple’s High Sierra press release

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Nice job highlighting the major features in macOS High Sierra. Don’t miss the section towards the bottom called “Additional app refinements”.

My favorite is the very last one:

Spotlight provides flight status information, including departure and arrival times, delays, gates, terminals and even a map of the flight path

Interesting.

Every single iPhone, bar one

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Nice image. Wish Rene had shot this on a less scratchy surface. Makes me uncomfortable just looking at it. But a great shot.

The missing iPhone? The iPhone X, understandably.

BMW is set to offer a pad to wirelessly charge your car

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The Verge:

According to BMW, the 9.4kWh battery in the 530e can be charged in about 3.5 hours at 3.2kW of power, or close to the level you’d get if you just plugged the car in with a cord.

A BMW North America spokesperson told The Verge in an email that the technology depicted in the video is still in the testing and evaluation phase for the US and Canada. It still needs UL approval, too.

In other countries, BMW plans to launch the wireless charging system early next year, but only on the 530e iPerformance plug-in hybrid sedan.

I wonder if this technology will make its way through other car manufacturers and, eventually, be a standard feature in the garage of all new homes.

Insight into the Apple Watch Series 3 signal meter

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Jeff Butts, MacObserver, sharing info he got from Andrew Woodward, who has his new Apple Watch in hand:

When Mr. Woodward activated his Apple Watch Series 3 LTE and received a text message confirmation, he thought he’d see the green dots on the Watch face. He didn’t, so began the technical support process. After speaking to both his cellular provider and Apple, the thought was that the eSIM was still waiting to be provisioned.

It wasn’t, but Mr. Woodward didn’t realize it until later on in the day. He walked away from his iPhone, beyond Bluetooth and Wi-Fi range. Suddenly the green dots appeared.

Those green dots are the sign that your Apple Watch is flying solo, using its data plan and, likely, using more battery to support the LTE radio.

As you’d expect, the Apple Watch uses the iPhone’s radio whenever possible, saving battery life.

The linked article also walks through the Apple Watch Control Panel interface (swipe up from the bottom of the Apple Watch face), where the “radio tower” icon is white if your Apple Watch is in range of an LTE signal, and green if it’s actually connected and using that connection.

Good stuff.

How Apple built an iPhone camera that makes everyone a professional photographer

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John Paczkowski, Managing Editor, BuzzFeed:

This year the company is particularly proud of these, which boast a marquee “Portrait Lighting” feature that brings a range of professional-looking effects to the already great photos the dual camera system on the iPhone 7 Plus is capable of taking.

This year’s leap, however, feels particularly meaningful.

And:

The camera’s effects don’t rely on filters. They’re the result of Apple’s new dual camera system working in concert with machine learning to sense a scene, map it for depth, and then change lighting contours over the subject. It’s all done in real time, and you can even preview the results thanks to the company’s enormously powerful new A11 Bionic chip. The result, when applied to Apple scale, has the power to be transformative for modern photography, with millions of amateur shots suddenly professionalized. In many ways it’s the fullest realization of the democratization of high-quality imagery that the company has been working toward since the iPhone 4.

i couldn’t agree more. Apple is changing the conversation. It’s no longer a simple focus on the reduction of low-light image graininess, megapixel count, or CCD capacitor thresholds. Apple is creating tools that help people take amazing pictures.

Love this review.

Mastering the iOS 11 app-stacking gesture

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From a larger article on customizing your iOS home screen, Rene Ritchie has a section on rearranging apps on a page. Of all the gestures added to iOS over the years, I find this one (stacking app icons) the most difficult to master. Might be my big oafish fingers, or a subtlety on the tap mechanism itself, but I’ve simply found this mechanism frustrating.

But.

Reading the steps Rene lays out in his post, watching the GIF, and practicing a bit, I finally have it. I think the issue for me was a quick staccato tap to add an icon. Had to hit it just right.

No matter, if you’ve never tried the app stacking thing, give Rene’s article a read.