Business

Apple delays release of first original series ‘Carpool Karaoke’

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Reuters:

A premiere party for “Carpool Karaoke” scheduled for March in Los Angeles was postponed without explanation days before it was to take place. This week, the company again postponed its launch party, which had been rescheduled for Monday.

To me, this is not original content that will make or break Apple’s approach to a cable cutting alternative. Perhaps they are pushing this back to somehow intersect with WWDC.

Video of Steve Jobs’ 2006 visit to the Cupertino City Council

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[VIDEO] This is amazing to watch. My imagination, or do they keep calling him “Mr. Job”? Watch the video in the main Loop post, and watch another video, linked in the post, to a return visit 5 years later. Big change in Steve. Sad to see.

More on updating your old Mac Pro as a capable VR and gaming platform

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Last week, we linked to a post from Daniel Pasco on updating a 2009 Mac Pro:

I turned a 2009 Mac Pro I picked up off of Ebay for $1300 into a superb professional workstation, gaming, and VR platform, simply by adding an SSD drive and a new video card.

Here’s a follow-on post with all the detail on the build, really well written with lots of pictures. Thanks for this Dan, a real service to the community.

Apple Maps gets transit mode for Paris

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TechCrunch:

Apple is finally adding transit options to its Maps app for the city of Paris. Starting today, you can use Apple Maps to calculate itineraries using public transportation.

You’ll find subway, RER and bus lines, and even Transilien lines. Just like in Google Maps, you can look around the map with a new subway layer or you can calculate an itinerary from A to B. If you tap on a station, you can see all the lines leaving this station as well as real time information about the next departures.

Finally, you’ll also find Autolib car sharing stations as well as Vélib bike sharing stations. Unfortunately, it doesn’t say if there are bikes or spaces available.

Surprised that this took so long, but glad the data is finally available.

1981 Nightline interview with Steve Jobs

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The whole thing is fascinating, but the Apple/Steve part kicks in around 4:20. Love how they refer to him as Steven Jobs. It was before he was Steve to all of us.

Note: Someone sent this to me, but can’t for the life of me remember who. Was doing some heavy traveling when it came in. Apologies for the lack of a hat tip.

A real old Mac Pro vs. the coming Mac Pro

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Daniel Pasco, renegade polymath:

I use a 5k iMac for work and am interested in VR production and gaming. Some friends told me to build a dedicated Windows box and others suggested building a Hackintosh, but I was sure there was a better way to get what I wanted.

So I turned a 2009 Mac Pro I picked up off of Ebay for $1300 into a superb professional workstation, gaming, and VR platform, simply by adding an SSD drive and a new video card.

This is a pretty cool idea. Read Dan’s post to see how the machine stacks up as a VR platform (spoiler: very, very well).

But read on, as Dan shifts gears, focusing on the Apple’s coming Mac Pro:

I realized that the corner that Apple has painted us into is just another “sweet solution” (similar to Jobs proposal that we develop web apps for iPhone instead of native apps).

I can do the work that Apple feels is appropriate with a 5k iMac, but the massive pile of external disks and their power supplies stacked up behind it speaks to the adaptions I’ve quietly had to make in order to get it to meet my basic needs.

Apple’s agenda has been to stay focused on its cash cow: the iPhone. As a result it has quietly mothballed some amazing products and technologies along the way, seriously impaired the economics of commercial software sales, and neglected macOS in their efforts to homogenize it with iOS.

Who is this guy? Daniel Pasco is the CEO of Black Pixel, a top development shop. So in my book, he’s earned his opinions.

New York Times: Why you should wait before buying Samsung’s new Galaxy S8

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Brian X. Chen:

When a splashy new smartphone hits the market, consumers often weigh whether to place an order right away or to wait and see how others react to the device.

But with the Galaxy S8, Samsung’s first major smartphone release since the spontaneously combusting Galaxy Note 7 was discontinued last year, there isn’t much of a debate. Your best bet is to wait to buy the roughly $750 device — not just for safety reasons, but also because other uncertainties surround it.

I just can’t help but wonder if this next bit had anything to do with the Times’ take:

Samsung declined to provide an early review unit of the Galaxy S8 to The New York Times

No matter the logic, this does feel a bit like spite. And Samsung, what were you thinking here? You gave a review unit to the Wall Street Journal, but not the Times?

Bloomberg: Apple readies overhaul for iPhone’s 10th anniversary

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Mark Gurman and Min Jeong Lee, Bloomberg:

Apple is preparing three iPhones for launch as soon as this fall, including upgraded versions of the current two iPhone models and a new top-of-the-line handset with an overhauled look, according to people familiar with the matter. For the redesigned phone, Apple is testing a new type of screen, curved glass and stainless steel materials, and more advanced cameras, the people said. Those anxiously awaiting the redesigned iPhone, however, may have to wait because supply constraints could mean the device isn’t readily available until one or two months after the typical fall introduction.

Lots of fascinating details here, all provided by people familiar with the matter.

The best guitar apps

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I’ve become a fan of Brian Sutich’s new guitar blog, Chasing Sound. In this post, Brian takes a look at some of the top guitar-related iOS apps.

The new, improved Google Earth

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Google Earth requires the Chrome browser on the Mac side. I think it’s well worth it. There’s something magical about spinning the globe and slowly homing in on a favorite unexplored spot. The creep in from up in space to the closest zoomed in view is much more continuous, less jarring as you move to different map levels.

Worth a few minutes to explore. Don’t miss the tool bar on the left side of the window. You’ll want to take advantage of that search icon.

How to turn your Mac into a DVR for over-the-air TV

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Glenn Fleishman pulled together this reasonably comprehensive look at options for capturing over the air TV signals and recording them on your Mac. If you’ve thought about cutting the cable cord, this is for you.

Jean-Louis Gassée on Apple, United, and customer service

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Jean-Louis Gassée, Monday Note:

When I was selected to run Apple France more than three decades ago, I had a disdainfully Parisien attitude to customer service. You inserted an interface card backwards and your Apple ][ no longer boots? Well of course it doesn’t…you did it wrong.

After a few combative customer service encounters, I experienced an epiphany: No matter how “wrong” they may be, we’re a prosperous business, we can afford to take care of these situations, but we can’t afford to let unhappy, affronted customers damage our reputation.

The flip side of this Parisien approach?

Whenever a call was escalated to my office, I would immediately offer to buy back the customer’s machine. The offer was always emphatically declined, so we moved on to arrangements for shipment or perhaps a personal appointment at our service shop. Our business concluded, I would ask if the happy caller had children: “Yes…but why?” “For the t-shirts, of course, a small thank-you for bringing your problem to our attention…what sizes would you like?”

Carrots instead of sticks, then bigger carrots. Great read from Jean-Louis. He knows of what he speaks.

On the design of the new (and old) Mac Pro

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Thoughtful post from Marco Arment on the current Mac Pro design, with collected thoughts on where Apple should go with the model currently in the works.

This particular paragraph captured my feelings about the 2013 Mac Pro design:

While minimalism is one aspect of one view of good design, it’s often overused, underconsidered, and misunderstood, resulting in products with surface-level appeal that don’t actually work very well because they were optimized for visual design and minimalism rather than overall real-world usefulness.

And from the wrapup:

There is no single design, no single set of trade-offs, that addresses a large set of pro users: they all want different things, and the only way to serve that with one product line is to have it be extremely versatile and offer a wide variety of configuration options. You can’t do that with a minimalist industrial-design indulgence like the 2013 Mac Pro.

Good read.

How to track and manage your iPhone’s cellular data usage

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Michael Potuck, 9to5Mac:

There are several reasons it may be helpful to track your cellular data usage. You might not have an unlimited cellular data plan right now and may be wondering if you should switch to one, you may be trying to cut down on overage fees, or you might want to discover if you could reduce your current plan and save some money.

You also might be having issues with applications that are using more cellular data in the background than expected. Let’s take a look at a few different ways to track and manage your cellular usage.

Take a few minutes to scan through the post, get a sense of what’s covered. Then pass this along to the folks you support to show them how to keep track of their data usage.

Why Nintendo killed the NES Classic Edition

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Nintendo’s NES Classic Edition is a fascinating case study in marketing. Since Nintendo announced the console in November, they’ve sold almost a million of them in North America, all while maintaining a constant shortage, creating a demand frenzy. Given the simplicity of the product itself (it’s a retro product, no cutting edge parts), I’ve always seen that shortage as artificial.

As we reported Friday, Nintendo has now pulled the plug on the NES Classic, announcing that the last run will ship in April. Nintendo has a successful product, was basically printing money, and they walked away from that particular business.

The question is, why?

[Read on in the main Loop post for the logic…]

In praise of the versatile Mac mini

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Dan Moren, writing for Macworld, starts with this Phil Schiller comment:

“The Mac mini remains a product in our lineup. Nothing more to say about it today,” Phil Schiller told reporters, according to John Gruber.

and then digs into the past and potential future of the Mac mini. Good read.

Interested in building a Hackintosh? Your GPU options just blossomed.

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Jeff Benjamin, writing for 9to5Mac:

I’m currently in the process of building a new Hackintosh rig for 2017, so imagine how surprised and happy I was to hear that Nvidia is working on beta drivers for its GPUs with the latest Pascal architecture. Up until today, I had just settled on being relegated to a Radeon RX 480, or a Maxwell-era Nvidia card.

And:

With today’s announcement, the Hackintosh just got exponentially more appealing. Nvidia’s announcement is positive for a variety of reasons: there’s the prospect of using an eGPU setup with a MacBook Pro, along with future prospects of Nvidia cards powering future Mac Pro hardware.

As I’ve mentioned before, if you do decide to build a Hackintosh, start here.

YouTube won’t allow ads until videos hit 10,000 view threshold

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Starting today, we will no longer serve ads on YPP videos until the channel reaches 10k lifetime views. This new threshold gives us enough information to determine the validity of a channel. It also allows us to confirm if a channel is following our community guidelines and advertiser policies. By keeping the threshold to 10k views, we also ensure that there will be minimal impact on our aspiring creators. And, of course, any revenue earned on channels with under 10k views up until today will not be impacted.

Oh Samsung

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Motherboard:

Last month, the CIA got a lot of attention when WikiLeaks published internal documents purporting to show how the spy agency can monitor people through their Samsung smart TVs. There was a caveat to the hack, however—the hijack involved older models of Samsung TVs and required the CIA have physical access to a TV to install the malware via a USB stick.

But the window to this sort of hijacking is far wider than originally thought because a researcher in Israel has uncovered 40 unknown vulnerabilities, or zero-days, that would allow someone to remotely hack millions of newer Samsung smart TVs, smart watches, and mobile phones already on the market, as well as ones slated for future release, without needing physical access to them. The security holes are in an open-source operating system called Tizen that Samsung has been rolling out in its devices over the last few years.

Got any Samsung devices in your house? Might want to read the details here.

Panic on making a living building apps for iOS vs macOS

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From long time macOS and iOS developer Panic (the folks who produced the excellent Firewatch game, mentioned yesterday):

If you remember, 2016 was the year we killed Status Board, our very nice data visualization app. Now, a lot of it was our fault. But it was another blow to our heavy investment in pro-level iOS apps a couple years ago, a decision we’re still feeling the ramifications of today as we revert back to a deep focus on macOS. Trying to do macOS quality work on iOS cost us a lot of time for sadly not much payoff. We love iOS, we love our iPhones, and we love our iPads. But we remain convinced that it’s not — yet? — possible to make a living selling pro software on those platforms. Which is a real bummer!

The macOS marketplace is so much smaller than that for iOS, it’s much easier to stand out in the crowd, get the word out on excellent work. In addition, the smaller market allows for higher prices, so you can break even selling fewer copies.

Australian regulator sues Apple over alleged iPhone bricking

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Reuters:

The U.S. technology giant “bricked” – or disabled with a software update – hundreds of smartphones and tablet devices, and then refused to unlock them on the grounds that customers had had the devices serviced by non-Apple repairers, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission said in a court filing.

And:

The regulator said that between September 2014 and February 2016, Apple customers who downloaded software updates then connected their devices to their computers received a message saying the device “could not be restored and the device had stopped functioning”.

Customers then asked Apple to fix their devices, only to be told by the company that “no Apple entity … was required to, or would, provide a remedy” for free, the documents added.

From the ACCC’s official post on the matter:

The ACCC alleges Apple represented to consumers with faulty products that they were not entitled to a free remedy if their Apple device had previously been repaired by third party, “unauthorised repairers”. However, having a component of the Apple device serviced, repaired, or replaced by someone other than Apple cannot, by itself, extinguish the consumer’s right to a remedy for non-compliance with the consumer guarantees.

“Consumer guarantee rights under the Australian Consumer Law exist independently of any manufacturer’s warranty and are not extinguished simply because a consumer has goods repaired by a third party,“ ACCC Chairman Rod Sims said.

Tricky issue. Do I have the right to repair my own goods, or have them repaired by a third party of my choosing? If I do go the third party route, should Apple be able to void my warranty? Did Apple intentionally brick the iPhones in question? Core questions.

While you chew on that, consider the related controversy concerning John Deere’s tractor repair policies.

And, more recently, the account of the WiFi garage-door-opener seller who bricked a customer’s garage door after a bad review.

Interesting stuff. Welcome to the future.

Cabel Sasser hilariously roasts Firewatch rip-off

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Firewatch is an excellent game. If you’ve never played it, consider carving out some time. It’s US$19.99 and available on Xbox One, PS4, and on Mac/Linux/PC via Steam. Here’s a link to the website.

If you are familiar to the game, you’ll appreciate this tweet from Cabel Sasser, co-founder of Panic, the folks who published Firewatch, upon encountering an iOS game called New Firewatch:

https://www.twitter.com/undefined/status/849319016418209793

Watch the video. This sort of thing is like weeds in a garden. If there’s no attempt to get rid of them, they overtake and destroy the garden.

iPhone: New iBook is an excellent, detailed exploration of the original iPhone

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I dug into Christoph Kabisch’s new iBook with zero expectations. A look back at the original iPhone? How good could this be?

As it turns out, the book was a fascinating read with lots of detail, both in word and images. I owned the original iPhone, was there when it was announced and rolled out. I thought I remembered the details, but this book made it clear how much slipped out of my memory.

When you read it, be sure to tap on each image. Some move to a larger frame, others are 3D models that rotate.

The book is only 99 cents. Here’s a link. Worth it for the pictures alone. A terrific journey back in time.

UPDATE: Don’t miss the iPhone OS simulator on page 40. Incredible.