Business

WSJ: Apple to hold product launch on Sept 12

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Wall Street Journal:

Apple Inc. has scheduled a product-announcement event on Sept. 12, according to people briefed on its plans, reinforcing expectations that the technology giant will release new iPhones and a smartwatch well ahead of the holiday shopping season.

The company is expected to unveil three iPhones, according to other people familiar with its plans. Those include a showcase iPhone to mark the product’s 10th anniversary that is larger and pricier and features an edge-to-edge display and facial-recognition technology, as well as updates to the two iPhone 7 models that started selling last year.

And:

In the past two years it has used San Francisco’s Bill Graham Civic Auditorium, but people close to the company say it is aiming to use the 1,000-seat Steve Jobs Theater on its new headquarters campus.

Here we go. Feels like that part of the rollercoaster where you are still being ratcheted to the top of the ride, not quite at the top, but almost. And you know the ride will be thrilling.

The reveal is two weeks from today.

The life and death of the MacBook Touch Bar

Written by

Chuq Von Rospach:

It seems to me Apple fell in love with the technology of the Touch Bar system, which if you dig into it a bit is a stunning piece of engineering, and expected all of us to fall in love with it as well. The problem is: Apple rarely sells things to us based on neat technology, it sells us based on the stories of how that technology will solve problems for us, and right now, the problems a Touch Bar solve for us that we care about being solved are few and far between.

Thoughtful piece on the Touch Bar. Resonates with me.

Sculpting, painting, using ARKit

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[VIDEO] Watch the video embedded in the tweet in the main Loop post. There’s something groundbreaking here, though I can’t quite put my finger on it. Perhaps it’s the idea of creating 3D models for use in augmented reality apps using augmented reality itself. Fascinating.

Why the Mac needs iCloud Backup

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Dan Moren:

With the announcement this week that CrashPlan was discontinuing its consumer-oriented online backup plans, more than a few users found themselves wondering what steps to take to make sure their data remained safely and securely backed up.

There are, of course, plenty of options for Mac users who don’t want to switch to CrashPlan’s small business backup plans: Backblaze, Arq, and so on. But it also put into stark relief the fact that Mac users miss out on at least one major feature accorded to their iOS-using counterparts: iCloud Backup.

Terrific piece by Dan Moren. I would gladly pay a bit extra for the ability to include my Mac in my automatic iCloud device backup regimen.

iOS 11 Beta points to new Apple Watch workouts: dancing, bowling, skating, many more

Written by

Mitchel Broussard, MacRumors:

This year’s Apple leaks have seen an uptick in activity thanks to data gathered from HomePod firmware, as well as internal files in pre-release beta software for iOS 11. Today, the newest piece of information comes from the latter source and concerns new exercises for the Apple Watch.

The leak that keeps on giving.

Listen to Siri’s voice evolve from iOS 9, 10, and 11

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Jump to this page, scroll down almost all the way to the bottom, then click the various play buttons to hear how Siri’s voice has changed with each new major iOS release.

To my ear, each rev gets higher in pitch, with the iOS 11 version of Siri sounding like a different person entirely than the Susan Bennett voiced Siri we came to know and love.

The iOS 10 version of Siri is a recognizable voice to me, as recognizable as a friend’s voice. The new version sounds a bit impersonal.

From the text above the samples:

For iOS 11, we chose a new female voice talent with the goal of improving the naturalness, personality, and expressivity of Siri’s voice. We evaluated hundreds of candidates before choosing the best one. Then, we recorded over 20 hours of speech and built a new TTS voice using the new deep learning based TTS technology. As a result, the new US English Siri voice sounds better than ever.

I expect the new version is an early wave of the latest voice generation approach used by Apple and that I will get used to this new voice over time.

Apple Park drone video

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[VIDEO] Getting pretty close. Will the September event be held here? Video embedded in the main Loop post.

Apple makes deal with more than 30 college systems to teach Swift

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Apple press release:

Apple today announced the App Development with Swift curriculum will now be offered in more than 30 community college systems across the country in the 2017-2018 school year, providing opportunities to millions of students to build apps that will prepare them for careers in software development and information technology. The Austin Community College District (ACC), one of the nation’s largest higher learning institutions, will begin offering the course to its 74,000 students this fall.

This is a pretty big get for Apple. Though Swift is open source, it seems fair to say that if you grow up learning Swift, you’re going to want to develop in Swift, and that means building apps for the Apple ecosystem, not to mention a likelihood of buying Apple products. Good stuff.

New York Times: iPhone 8 to be priced “around” $999

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Brian X. Chen, New York Times:

The iPhone is now in a precarious position. Gone is the thrill of downloading yet another app. It isn’t as exciting anymore if the screens of the gadget get bigger or the device becomes thinner. And the middle age of the iPhone is reflected in its sales, which dipped for the first time last year. It doesn’t help that Apple also faces fierce competition, especially in markets like China and India where people are flocking to cheaper smartphones that are increasingly capable and attractive.

Doomed! Why does the New York Times lead their Apple coverage in such a negative way?

But I digress.

Chief among the changes for the new iPhones: refreshed versions, including a premium model priced at around $999, according to people briefed on the product, who asked to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

John Gruber’s take:

If true, I would wager that means starting at $999, with a higher storage capacity model at $1099 and maybe another at $1199.

Makes sense.

An aside, the price mention is just part of a larger article, quite positive in tone, calling out the elements that keep people buying iPhones, year after year. Weird that it starts with such a negative slant.

Bloomberg: Apple planning 4K upgrade for Apple TV

Written by

Mark Gurman and Anousha Sakoui, Bloomberg:

Apple is planning to unveil a renewed focus on the living room with an upgraded Apple TV set-top box that can stream 4K video and highlight live television content such as news and sports, according to people familiar with the matter.

The updated box, to be revealed alongside new iPhone and Apple Watch models at an event in September, will run a faster processor capable of streaming the higher-resolution 4K content, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the plans aren’t yet public.

And:

In order to play 4K and HDR content, Apple will need deals with content makers that can provide video in those formats. The Cupertino, California-based technology giant has begun discussions with movie studios about supplying 4K versions of movies via iTunes, according to people familiar with the talks.

This September event is going to be jam packed and riveting. So many rumors, so much still to unveil. I wonder if the event will be in the Steve Jobs theater.

One handed multitasking on iPad

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[VIDEO] This is a brilliantly executed walk through the process of multitasking on an iPad running iOS 11. Great, great job by David Chartier. The video is embedded in the main Loop post.

Beautifully crafted Beats commercial, lead-up to this weekend’s fight

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[VIDEO] This is a marketing piece with a short shelf-life, aimed at people interested in this weekend’s heavyweight fight, focusing on underdog Conor McGregor and his fanbase.

Some argue that the ad is manipulative. That may be, but stepping back, I see it as beautifully filmed and evocative. See for yourself. The video is embedded in the main Loop post.

Latest iOS 11 beta removes AMP wrapper from shared URLs

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Great find from Federico Viticci:

https://twitter.com/viticci/status/900396684844433409

To me, AMP serves Google and Google only. It does not move the web forward, it just keeps browsing within Google’s ecosystem.

To see this for yourself, start with an AMP URL. Here’s one example. If you open this link in Safari, you’ll see the link is a Google link, not a Verge link.

If you are running iOS 10, when you tap Safari’s share icon and share the link in, say, Messages, the AMP version of the URL will be shared.

If you are running the latest iOS 11 beta, when you share the AMP link in Messages, the unwrapped Verge link will appear. And that’s the way it should be.

Nice find, Federico. Way to go Apple.

Apple lays out the details behind Siri’s speech generation

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The Register:

At an academic speech tech conference today (Thursday), Apple researchers will present some of the classic building blocks behind the voice generation of the Siri assistant.

The conference is this week’s Interspeech 2017, in Stockholm.

From the paper Apple presented:

There are two mainstream techniques for industry production development, namely waveform concatenation (i.e. unit selection) and statistical parametric speech synthesis (SPSS). Given a sequence of text input, unit selection directly assembles waveform segments to produce synthetic speech, while SPSS predicts synthetic speech from trained acoustic models. Unit selection typically produces more natural-sounding speech than SPSS, provided the database used has sufficient high quality audio material.

This is a bit jargony, but think of unit selection is having access to a bunch of pre-recorded speech components, and assembling them to make syllables and, from those, words.

On Apple’s approach with Siri:

Most recently, much work has centered on using a statistical model to predict acoustic and prosodic parameters for synthesis and then using these predictions to set the costs in a unit selection system – this is known as hybrid unit selection.

Again, a bit jargony, but Apple’s approach (as I read it, no expert me) is the above mentioned unit selection approach, but backed by a learning system that helps make smart decisions about the underlying sounds to use in constructing specific voicings.

Couple things here. First, this is fascinating stuff. I studied voice synthesis in college and have always wanted to know more about how Siri really works. I’ve watched Siri change voicings in the move from iOS 10 to iOS 11 and wondered why Apple moved from what sounded like a specific person (Susan Bennett) to a more generic, generated voice. I love all the detail in this paper. I can only imagine that the folks at Samsung are poring over the paper right now, competitive juices flowing.

The second thing is Apple’s decision to publicly open up about such critical technology.

Richmond said Apple’s paper is not breaking new ground and “there are no big surprises” but its strategy of releasing a “modest” number of papers could “work as advertising” for talent by hinting at higher quality research and collaboration happening behind “closed doors”.

Sounds about right. The details in this paper might go far enough to be of interest to the folks they want to hire, but without tipping the details of their Siri secret sauce.

The problem with abandoned apps

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Marc Zeedar, TidBITS:

While the App Store may be a senior citizen in Internet time, as a marketplace, it’s barely out of diapers. But we’ve now reached a point where I believe the App Store will either morph into something genuinely useful or fade away as a fad.

I don’t mean that the App Store itself will go away — it won’t — but it could disappear as a business opportunity for most developers. In this dystopian future, the only profitable apps left will be a handful of entertainment apps by huge companies and “business essential” apps, such as those made by banks or news organizations for their customers.

The looming threat that I see is abandoned apps.

Key here is Apple’s plans to deprecate 32-bit apps in iOS 11. If you’ve invested in an app that the developer has no plans to update, that investment may fall to zero. If it’s a 32-bit game you’ve spent a lot of time with, you’ll no longer have access to the game (it won’t load anymore) and your progress is lost to the ages (unless you stop updating your device).

More importantly, if you’ve embraced iOS as your main OS, any data you’ve created using a 32-bit app will no longer be accessible.

On the Mac, if a developer abandons an app you rely on, you can easily make backup copies and reinstall it if needed. If an app won’t run on a new version of macOS, you can theoretically boot from an older version or run the app in a virtual machine. Worst case, you can usually find a way to at least migrate your data to another app.

In iOS, the situation is different. Because Apple exercises total control over which apps are allowed to run and how you get and install them, there is no way to get abandoned apps to work (short of jailbreaking, which introduces its own set of non-trivial problems).

I can’t imagine Apple isn’t working this problem internally. They’ve certainly given plenty of warning. But the stark difference between the impact of major changes in macOS and iOS are worth thinking about.

Read the rest of Marc’s TidBITS post. Thoughtful stuff.

The annoyance and UI divide of push notifications

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Joanna Stern, writing for the Wall Street Journal:

You’ve tried to silence unimportant push alerts but couldn’t figure out the complicated settings. Or worse, you thought you mastered the settings, but trivial messages still manage to sneak through like a mouse in an air vent.

Our attention has become such a precious commodity that apps, social networks and, yes, news outlets have deployed infuriating numbers of pop-ups to conquer it.

“Silence all the notifications!” is not the answer, however. Do I want Facebook to ding me to update my profile? Never. But I sure as heck want to be buzzed by the babysitter watching my newborn.

Notifications are a constant river of pain. But they do have value. The key is tuning them. The post does a nice job walking through some settings to give a sense of what lives where and what you can control.

But the article goes further, raising the point of the big UI divide between Apple’s (and Google’s) notification settings and those more fine tuned settings that live inside the biggest offenders, like Facebook.

The system-wide notification settings are found in the Settings app, listed under Facebook. These enable/disable notifications, and specify the various forms those notifications can take. But the detailed notification settings (notify me when someone likes my post, for example) are buried inside the Facebook app itself.

While this division is logical, Joanna makes this point:

The design of this system is confusing. Apple and Google should make it easier for us to get from system settings to individual app menus. It now takes about four taps to get from an app’s home screen to its notification controls.

And when you get there, you often see a long and messy list. The alternative is worse: a single on-off switch—or no notification control at all. Seriously, Lyft, I know when I need you, so alert me when my driver is arriving, not when there’s a sale on rides.

I think this is two separate issues. Nothing Apple can do about the granularity of an individual app’s notifications. That’s an app design issue.

But Apple could make it easier to get from an app’s notifications settings in the Settings app to the more detailed settings in the app itself. Perhaps via a link you tap in the Settings > Notifications > Facebook page that brings you to the sub-page in Facebook itself to tweak the more detail settings. To me, this consistency would be welcome.

Apple scales back its ambitions for a self-driving car

Written by

Daisuke Wakabayashi, writing for the New York Times:

The company has put off any notion of an Apple-branded autonomous vehicle and is instead working on the underlying technology that allows a car to drive itself.

And:

A notable symbol of that retrenchment is a self-driving shuttle service that ferries employees from one Apple building to another. The shuttle, which has never been reported before, will likely be a commercial vehicle from an automaker and Apple will use it to test the autonomous driving technology that it develops.

And:

Five people familiar with Apple’s car project, code-named “Titan,” discussed with The New York Times the missteps that led the tech giant to move — at least for now — from creating a self-driving Apple car to creating technology for a car that someone else builds. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk publicly about Apple’s plans.

The project’s reduced scale aligns Apple more closely with other tech companies that are working on autonomous driving technology but are steering clear of building cars. Even Waymo, the Google self-driving spinoff that is probably furthest along among Silicon Valley companies, has said repeatedly that it does not plan to produce its own vehicles.

This is the way Apple works. In fact, this is the way any large-scale, R&D based business works. Experiment, build, test, learn, pivot. Rinse and repeat. Sometimes you end up going in a completely different direction.

Research counts on missteps. It’s part of the process.

The tone of this article reads to me as: “Apple screws up royally, they just couldn’t build a car, have to settle for the scraps of building a shuttle for its employees.”

Another take could be, “Apple continues to learn about the auto space, takes another step forward by designing and building an actual, working autonomous vehicle which they will put into use moving employees around their campuses. Amazing that they came so far so quickly. Who knows where they’ll ultimately take this technology?”

Me? I think that second take is closer to reality.

Medium’s new approach to writers making money

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From the Medium blog:

Today we’re launching the first step of an exciting new phase at Medium.

We strongly believe that quality content needs to be paid for by consumers — not advertisers — so creators can do their best work, and to align the incentives of everyone involved. So, since March, we’ve been experimenting with our subscription paywall and putting more and more great stories behind it. But that’s only a drop in the bucket compared to the thousands of fantastic stories published on Medium every day. And, though Medium is an open publishing platform, we haven’t enabled a way for most of our writers to participate in the economics.

Until now.

In a nutshell, Medium is updating their Partner Program to allow writers to be paid by engagement. And how is that engagement measured?

For the creators in the program, each month you will be paid based on the level of engagement your stories get from Medium members. Essentially, we look at the engagement of each individual member (claps being the primary signal) and allocate their monthly subscription fee based on that engagement. This is one of the reasons we love Claps — it helps us measure the depth of appreciation that a member has for each individual post. (For our members, we’re excited to give you more meaningful control over the stories you support. The more claps you give a locked post, the more share of your membership fee that author will get.)

To me, this move was inevitable. The question is, will this amount to more than pennies for all but the most widely read authors? Reminiscent of the music streaming model.

AccuWeather responds to accusations they shared geolocation data without permission

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Yesterday, from a post called Screw you, AccuWeather:

Popular weather app AccuWeather has been caught sending geolocation data to a third-party data monetization firm, even when the user has switched off location sharing.

And Jim’s followup:

How can you ever trust them again? You can’t.

Last night, AccuWeather released this statement:

Despite stories to the contrary from sources not connected to the actual information, if a user opts out of location tracking on AccuWeather, no GPS coordinates are collected or passed without further opt-in permission from the user.

Other data, such as Wi-Fi network information that is not user information, was for a short period available on the Reveal SDK, but was unused by AccuWeather. In fact, AccuWeather was unaware the data was available to it. Accordingly, at no point was the data used by AccuWeather for any purpose.

And

To avoid any further misinterpretation, while Reveal is updating its SDK, AccuWeather will be removing the Reveal SDK from its iOS app until it is fully compliant with appropriate requirements. Once reinstated, the end result should be that zero data is transmitted back to Reveal Mobile when someone opts out of location sharing. In the meanwhile, AccuWeather had already disabled the SDK, pending removal of the SDK and then later reinstatement.

Read the rest of the statement here.

My gut says AccuWeather was caught by surprise here, rather than caught with their hand in the cookie jar. The way I read this, this is an issue with the Reveal SDK, not an intentional act of deception on the part of the AccuWeather app. Disagree?

An illustrated history of iOS

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A fun stroll through history from the Git Tower blog. I LOVE the illustrations. Anyone know who did them?

More treasure from the HomePod firmware

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More digging through the leaked HomePod firmware unearthed two concept videos. Click through to the main Loop post for the embedded tweets.

How to securely dispose of your old Mac

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Kirk McElhearn, Intego blog:

Your Mac contains a lot of personal information, and is connected to a number of Apple accounts. When you plan to dispose of your Mac — whether you sell it, give it away, or send it for recycling — there are a number of things you should do to make sure your data and your accounts remain secure. There are also a few steps you need to take to remove that Mac from Apple’s accounts.

In this article, I go over the 8 steps you should take before getting rid of a Mac.

Some basic, common sense advice here. Bookmark, pass along, especially to folks you know who are relatively new to the Mac.

Why your face will soon be the key to all your devices

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Wall Street Journal:

Forget fiddling with passwords or even fingerprints; forget multiple layers of sign-in; forget credit cards and, eventually, even physical keys to our homes and cars. A handful of laptops and mobile devices can now read facial features, and the technique is about to get a boost from specialized hardware small enough to fit into our phones.

Using our faces to unlock things could soon become routine, rather than the purview of spies and superheroes.

And:

Depth-sensing technology, generally called “structured light,” sprays thousands of tiny infrared dots across a person’s face or any other target.

By reading distortions in this field of dots, the camera gathers superaccurate depth information. Since the phone’s camera can see infrared but humans can’t, such a system could allow the phone to unlock in complete darkness.

And:

Teaching our phones what our faces look like will be just like teaching them our fingerprints, says Sy Choudhury, a senior director at Qualcomm responsible for security and machine-intelligence products. An image of your face is captured, relevant features are extracted and the phone stores them for comparison with your face when you unlock the phone.

As with fingerprint recognition, the facial images are securely stored only on the device itself, not in the cloud. History — from Apple’s battles with domestic law enforcement over unlocking iPhones to Amazon’s insistence that the Alexa doesn’t upload anything until it hears its wake word — suggests companies will use this privacy as a selling point.

My fingerprints don’t change, but moisture, sweat, and dirt can make my fingerprints unreadable to Touch ID. I wonder if a haircut, beard trim, shift in makeup patterns will have a similar impact on facial recognition.

Fascinating read.

Latest iOS beta offers quick way to force passcode reentry

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When you restart your iPhone, you are forced to reenter your passcode to unlock your phone. If your phone is off, this prevents anyone with access to your phone from breaking in.

But with the latest beta (iOS 11 beta 6), Apple added this shortcut:

https://twitter.com/alt_kia/status/898067522234097664

In a nutshell, if you press the power button 5 times quickly, you are sent to the emergency call screen (as you were in previous incarnations). But in the latest beta, Touch ID will no longer unlock your phone, forcing you to reenter the passcode to regain access.

This is a smart add. You can make this move silently, even with the phone in your pocket.

Hollywood, Apple said to mull rental plan, defying theaters

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Bloomberg:

Movie studios are considering whether to ignore the objections of cinema chains and forge ahead with a plan to offer digital rentals of films mere weeks after they appear in theaters, according to people familiar with the matter.

Some of the biggest proponents, including Warner Bros. and Universal Pictures, are pressing on in talks with Apple Inc. and Comcast Corp. on ways to push ahead with the project even without theater chains, the people said.

And:

Deals with potential distributors such as Apple and Comcast could be reached as soon as early next year to sell digital downloads of major films as soon as two weeks after they debut in theaters, the people said.

This seems inevitable, part of the evolution of the content consumption model. Apple is easing into this business on several sides, tweaking their iTunes movie and TV streaming business, as they also build their own content creation business.

I see Apple as the irresistible force here, fueled by the deepest pockets in the biz.

Chipotle’s iPhone app to accept Apple Pay

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PR Newswire:

Deloitte today announced that Chipotle Mexican Grill has selected Deloitte Digital to help transform its mobile customer experience. Deloitte Digital, the creative digital consultancy within Deloitte Consulting LLP, will redesign Chipotle’s iOS and Android ordering apps as part of Chipotle’s focus on digital ordering and enhancing the customer experience. Chipotle plans to launch the new apps in the fall of 2017, with additional channels by the end of the year.

And:

The redesigned mobile experience will also include enhanced payment options including Apple and Android pay.

Whether or not you are a fan of Chipotle, this is a sign of the continued expansion of Apple Pay. Slow and steady.

Face ID anti-FUD: Easing anxiety over the unannounced

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Rene Ritchie, iMore:

Apple hasn’t even announced Face ID, the rumored facial identity scanner that would join or replace Touch ID, the fingerprint identity scanner, on the next generation of iPhones 8, but already we’re seeing a great deal of concern and even fear over how it will and won’t work.

And:

One of the biggest areas of fear, uncertainty, and doubt surrounding a potential Face ID facial identity scanner is that it will make it easier to law enforcement and government agencies to gain access to our devices.

Rene digs into the concern itself (someone could grab my phone and point it at my face to unlock it) and explores the validity of that worry.

A solid read, all the way through. Rene is a smart cookie.

Personally, I see Face ID and Touch ID as roughly equivalent in terms of someone using me to break into my phone. Add to that, Apple has not yet announced such a product. I’d prefer to save my worry for something a bit more tangible.