[VIDEO] Rene shares his thoughts on what he’d like to see from Apple where macOS is concerned. Worth watching. Video embedded in the main Loop post.
But to me, the even more worth watching part is the Lion’s share of the open (pun intended), where Rene riffs about all those Apple OS nicknames. A great history lesson, with some OS names you might not have been aware of.
Every so often, I encounter an image and wonder where it comes from. Or, perhaps, I’m looking for the highest possible resolution of an image. Or I’m trying to track down the creator of the image.
I’ve long used Google’s reverse image search for this purpose. If you’ve not gone down that route, pick an image, head to google.com and try to figure out the interface. Once you know how to jump through the hoops (hint, click Images, then click the camera) the interface is still a bit clumsy. Plus, some object to doing a search with Google looking over their shoulder.
Now give TinEye a try. Click the link, and just drag and drop an image (on the Mac) or tap the up arrow (on iOS) to select an image from your camera roll. I especially appreciate the simplicity of the experience on my Mac. Just drop the image on the TinEye home page. That’s it.
Worth knowing about. [H/T Dave Zawislak]
Reddit user:
Last night I accidentally deleted my entire library of photos, many of which are (obviously) very important to me.
What follows is a long slow car crash, a combination of misunderstanding where your original photos are stored and, perhaps, ignoring some error messages that would have prevented this situation.
I post this, not to harp on the confusing language of iCloud (it can be confusing, no doubt), but to point out how this user got their photos back.
First, here’s how deleted the photos were:
After freeing up space by deleting my entire photo library on the Macbook, I look at my phone and realize it’s all deleted there as well. Of course, I had also gone to the “recently deleted” and removed all of them because I was trying to free the space on the Mac.
Yup. Those photos are deleted. A backup of your Mac might help here, but set that aside for now.
I called Apple immediately, and was quickly escalated to something along the lines of a “media specialist for iPhoto and iTunes” – honestly it was a very long title, but something like that. He said they have something called “the magic button” which is a level of iCloud that regular users can’t see. The iCloud file recover function didn’t work for me either btw, forgot to mention that.
A magic button you say! First time I’ve heard of this. Interesting.
After he pressed this “magic button”, all the photos came back into my recently deleted section, and I just restored them back to the library.
That’s worth noting. Me, I keep all my original pictures and music on my Mac, then back up that Mac religiously. I have my original music/photo libraries backed up off site, too.
If you use Twitter, you may have noticed a wave of tweets with built-in audio. Tap on the play button and the poster’s Twitter avatar, embedded in a jittery circle, plays audio.
Twitter blog:
Each voice Tweet captures up to 140 seconds of audio. Have more to say? Keep talking. Once you reach the time limit for a Tweet, a new voice Tweet starts automatically to create a thread. Once you’re done, tap the Done button to end your recording and go back to the composer screen to Tweet.
This is a pretty major step up for Twitter, both in terms of enhancing what can be shared, and in the demand placed on their servers.
Audio tweeting is limited to a small number of testing accounts at the moment but will roll out to everyone in the coming weeks. To see if you have the feature, compose a new tweet. If you see the camera icon to the left of your recent pictures (toward the bottom of your compose pane), you don’t have it yet. When you get audio, you’ll get a little waveform icon to the left of your camera.
I wonder how long it will be until we have video tweets.
Juli Clover, MacRumors:
Apple plans to offer a self-guided activity book for kids to complete, along with live virtual sessions with Apple Store Creatives.
Live sessions, which will be hosted over Webex, will last for 30 to 60 minutes, while the activity book Apple has created is a Pages document that kids can complete at their own pace.
The camp is designated for kids ages 8-12. Visit the official sign-up page to get notified when registration opens.
I got to believe those slots will fill up quickly.
Lots to process here. Start off with this tweet, from Basecamp partner and HEY (email client) creator David Heinemeier Hansson:
https://twitter.com/dhh/status/1272968382329942017
Read the thread followups for the whole story.
Next up, take a read of this explainer from Business Insider.
And with that in mind, check out these two Daring Fireball posts, first here, then here.
There’s been a river of reaction to this situation, some pro Apple (no one is forcing you to put your app on the App Store, but if you do, follow Apple’s rules) and many con (explained in all the links above).
This feels like an inevitable moment of change for the App Store. The question is, will Apple get ahead of the situation and negotiate that change themselves, or will they resist and minimize any change, pay the fine and keep their model as is?
Click the post, then tap the play button. Wait for the model to load, then play. You can rotate the model to see all sides, and pinch to zoom to get closer to the art.
https://twitter.com/spencerlindsay/status/1272618150043848705
I love that Apple is fostering this work. And props to Spencer Lindsay for building this model so we can all see this up close.
Bookmark the headline link. Click to set a reminder. Not that you’d forget, but for some of us a good idea.
Cade Metz, New York Times:
Sitting alone in her bedroom, she stumbled onto an internet video describing a smartphone app called Replika. The app’s sole purpose, the video said, is to be her friend.
Ms. Francola was skeptical. But the app was free, and it offered what she needed most: conversation. She spent the day chatting with the app via text messages — mostly about her problems, hopes and anxieties. The next day, she paid an $8 monthly fee so she could actually talk with it, as if she were chatting with someone on the telephone.
At first blush, this seemed a non-starter. $8 a month for a chatbot?
But reading on, and chewing on the concept, I do get the need here. Loneliness is a powerful, debilitating force, especially in the time of COVID-19. And companionship can be just what the doctor ordered.
The question is, can chatbots cross the uncanny valley, feel real enough that you lose sight of the artificial nature of who you’re chatting with?
Way back in the day, Apple made this amazing concept video called Knowledge Navigator. If you’ve never seen the video, take a few minutes to watch it. It’s from 1987, in the very early days of Macintosh.
The dream was to create an assistant that was completely artificial, but felt human. We are still far from that reality. But the evolution of chatbots seems a slender bridge to that future.
For whatever reason, reminds me of this.
Facebook:
With the US elections less than five months away, today Facebook is launching the largest voting information campaign in American history. We’re building a new Voting Information Center that will give millions of people accurate information about voting, while also giving them the tools they need to register and make their voices heard at the ballot box. Our goal is to help register 4 million voters this year using Facebook, Instagram and Messenger, and help them get to the polls so they can hold our leaders accountable. This goal is double the estimated 2 million people we helped register in both 2018 and 2016.
I am biased here. I am not a fan of Facebook. But I am a fan of any effort to fix the steady drumbeat of false political narrative. And even more a fan of efforts to get people registered to vote.
My initial reaction here was an eye-roll so deep I had to steady myself afterwards. But if Facebook is making an effort to make it easier to register, to give people facts, especially where voting is concerned, how can I be anything but for it?
Make it so, Facebook.
Jump to the linked article, make your way down to the earliest posts, then back up through the series of updates as people worked out what was really happening.
Fascinating watching this unfold. A widespread outage for a major carrier is extremely rare, and cause for concern, especially for those folks in lockdown who depend on their cell service for all contact with the outside world.
Of all the names I’ve seen suggested, my favorite is lockdown-related: macOS Alcatraz.
I wish we had similar naming schemes for iOS, iPad OS, tvOS, etc. Also, remember BHA?
We’ll find out a week from today!
Adobe:
As previously announced in July 2017, Adobe will stop distributing and updating Flash Player after December 31, 2020 (“EOL Date”).
And:
Open standards such as HTML5, WebGL, and WebAssembly have continually matured over the years and serve as viable alternatives for Flash content. Also, the major browser vendors are integrating these open standards into their browsers and deprecating most other plug-ins (like Adobe Flash Player).
And:
Adobe will be removing Flash Player download pages from its site and Flash-based content will be blocked from running in Adobe Flash Player after the EOL Date.
It’s been a long time since I’ve even seen Flash running on a device. When I hear someone talking about Flash, red lights go off in my head, all nostalgia has been pushed aside by thoughts of malware.
Apple:
When the Apple 2020 Worldwide Developers Conference kicks off on June 22 in a new virtual format, a global community of 23 million developers will have the opportunity to join from around the world for free through the Apple Developer app and the Apple Developer website.
23 million developers. That is an amazing number, especially when I think back to that tiny developer universe when the first iPhone SDK rolled out back in March, 2008.
Among them will be 350 Swift Student Challenge winners from 41 different countries and regions. The students were chosen based on their original Swift playground submission, part of Apple’s annual WWDC student challenge, which recognizes and celebrates the next generation of coders and creators.
This is one of my favorite parts of WWDC, the opportunity for the newest generation of developers to show off their skills.
Want to learn to program? Fire up your iPad and check out Swift Playgrounds. It’s a wonderful way to get started.
From a study commissioned by Apple, but independent in nature:
Originally offering approximately 500 apps for the iPhone and iPod touch, the App Store has grown to distribute millions of apps for the full suite of Apple devices (iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, Mac laptops and desktops, and Apple Watch) in 175 countries. Cumulative downloads are in the hundreds of billions.
And:
The goal of this study is to capture total billings and sales generated through app developers’ various monetization strategies. In other words, our purpose is to estimate total billings and sales facilitated by the Apple App Store ecosystem. Our study accounts for billings generated through direct monetization via the App Store and sales generated through monetization outside the App Store.
With that last point in mind:
We estimate that the Apple App Store ecosystem facilitated more than $500 billion in billings and sales worldwide in 2019. More than 85% of that accrues solely to third parties.
Jaw dropping numbers, especially considering how lean times got before Steve Jobs’ return and the rollout of the colorful iMac, the iPod, iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, AirPods, etc.
Apple has really blossomed.
[VIDEO] This is a fun, ongoing project. 50 songs from every year, mashed up into a single song/video (video embedded in main Loop post).
I keep waiting to see when the aspect ratio will change from old-school 4:3 to a more modern 16:9 or the like.
Enjoy.
Over the weekend, Daniel Eran Dilger, writing for AppleInsider, shared a post titled, Apple’s shift to ARM Mac from Intel at WWDC will define a decade of computing.
The whole thing is worth reading, but this bit captured a historic sequence, one that I’m sure Intel regrets:
The first was the iPhone, which Apple initially wanted to power with an Intel-built XScale chip. Intel’s chief executive at the time, Paul Otellini, initially said no to Apple, fearing that its phone project wouldn’t be successful enough to justify Intel’s investment.
That turned out to be wildly mistaken. Within just a couple of years, Apple’s success with the iPhone was so obvious that Intel itself desperately wanted to work with Apple on future mobile products, particularly its upcoming tablet. Intel expected Apple to select its upcoming x86 Silverthorne mobile chip, later renamed as Atom.
But this time Apple said “no” to Intel, and instead initiated the development of a project to build a new customized ARM “System on a Chip” that could power both its upcoming iPad and subsequently iPhone 4. The project was delivered in 2010 as A4.
This definitely goes down in my book as one of the biggest missed bets in tech history.
Jean-Louis Gassée:
From a PR perspective, the transition to ARM looks like a delicate balancing exercise. If Apple announces the move six months before the first ARM-based machines are scheduled to emerge, how will that effect current Mac sales?
A new Mac always raises this question, especially with a new Mac that is more than a speed bump. And more so if Apple releases a Mac that moves from Intel to ARM.
Jean-Louis brings up the fabled story of Adam Osborne, who brought the world the first commercially successful portable computer, but whose company crashed and burned.
In 1983, the polymath entrepreneur managed to kill sales of his creation by promising that its successors, the Osborn Executive and the Osborne Vixen, would be even better, Just You Wait! The pitch was so persuasive that customers did indeed wait. Sales collapsed and so did Osborne’s business.
Some say this is more fable than truth. From the Osborne Wikipedia page:
according to some new sources the real reason for Osborne Computer’s bankruptcy was management errors and insufficient cash flow.
Given how long a lead time Apple is said to be offering from announcement to release, it seems this will not be any more of a concern than previous experiences. Apple is a master of the product pipeline.
On a related note, an imagined hardware Developer Transition Kit (via DF), based on the ARM 12Z and housed in a headless device (Apple TV or Mac mini enclosure). This makes eminent sense to me. Pure speculation, but still.
Speculation aside, a key takeaway is the idea that a first ARM Mac need not replace the entire Mac product line. It might be a laptop. Or it might be a Mac mini. Or it might not even be.
[VIDEO] From the description of the trailer (video embedded in main Loop post):
A love letter to the diverse musicality of New York starring Brittany O’Grady, Sean Teale, Colton Ryan, Shalini Bathina, Kevin Valdez, Phillip Johnson Richardson and Chuck Cooper, “Little Voice” follows Bess King, a uniquely talented performer struggling to fulfill her dreams while navigating rejection, love, and complicated family issues. Featuring original music by Grammy and Tony Award nominee, Sara Bareilles, this is a story about finding your authentic voice—and the courage to use it.
This is mostly a taste of Sara Bareilles performing, with cut together visuals of characters from the upcoming show. No sense of the characters, who they are, what drives the show plot. The barest of teasers. For a show that premieres in just a few weeks, seems like we’d see more of the actual content by now.
The show premieres July 10th. Hoping it’s worth the wait.
Dade Hayes, Deadline:
Looking to streamline its offerings after critics have said they are complicated and difficult to navigate, even for existing customers, the company has also rebranded stand-alone service HBO Now to just HBO. The shift is expected to happen over the next few months.
HBO Go, which launched in 2010, will be removed from primary distribution platforms on July 31 but some online access will continue for a few weeks after that. The unplugging of Go is only in the U.S. Internationally, it will continue to operate, at least for now.
I still can’t wrap my head around the thinking on the HBO streaming plans. HBO, HBO Go, HBO Now, and HBO Max. All of which overlap pretty significantly, and whose names give no real indication of where the overlap ends.
Conner Carey, iPhone Life, in a post from a year back:
The Do Not Disturb function on iPhone allows you to silence all incoming calls, texts, and notifications. Here’s how to bypass Do Not Disturb for individual contacts using a feature called Emergency Bypass. This allows the people designated to reach you on your iPhone even if your Do Not Disturb settings are set to silence calls and texts from everyone.
Obviously, this has been around for a while, but the discoverability is pretty low, thought it worth posting. Here’s the details:
(Note that “Add to Emergency Contacts” is on this page. Not what we’re going for, that’s for the Health app and emergency responders)
Emergency Bypass allows sounds and vibrations from this person even when the ring switch is set to silent, or when Do Not Disturb is on.
Since you’ve come this far, take a minute to visit:
Settings > Do Not Disturb
Note the Allow Calls From setting, which defaults to your Favorites list. Slightly different from Emergency Bypass. This is about phone calls. Odd to me that they are not integrated in some way.
No matter, thought this was worth a visit.
Though this post is written from a software developer’s perspective, it is quite readable even if you’ve never written a line of code. And if you are interested in a potential Arm-based Mac, it’s short and worth your time.
If I had to cherry-pick one highlight:
Assertion: ARM Macs will exclusively run Catalyst apps.
The thinking goes, since major apps like Microsoft Word and Photoshop already have versions on the iPad, it would be a piece of cake for them to recompile and run on MacOS as Catalyst apps.
This would be a serious downgrade for users of these apps on MacOS, and would be a major departure from the way the apps currently behave on MacOS. And even with Catalyst, it’s still a lot of work for an iPad app to look and feel like a Mac app. You’re still going to need a team to make sure everything ports correctly, in addition to adding all the missing functionality that your users would expect to be there. I just don’t see this happening.
WWDC, and the answers it’ll bring, is a week and a half away.
Another milestone. Some tiny thoughts:
First US company? Hmmm. I wonder what other companies have done this. Dig, dig, dig. Ah, here’s a list of publicly traded companies, world-wide, by market-cap.
Number 1, by far, is Saudi Aramco, which passed $2 trillion back in December, in its first day of public trading. Interestingly, Saudi Aramco’s market cap today is about $115B. That’s a pretty astonishing fall. Oil biz.
Next up is Apple, followed closely by Microsoft, just a whisker behind.
Will we one day look back on numbers like these as small? Will Apple hit $2 trillion?
My immediate thought on reading that headline was, “Why one year?”. To get that, here’s Amazon’s actual announcement:
We’re implementing a one-year moratorium on police use of Amazon’s facial recognition technology. We will continue to allow organizations like Thorn, the International Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and Marinus Analytics to use Amazon Rekognition to help rescue human trafficking victims and reunite missing children with their families.
We’ve advocated that governments should put in place stronger regulations to govern the ethical use of facial recognition technology, and in recent days, Congress appears ready to take on this challenge. We hope this one-year moratorium might give Congress enough time to implement appropriate rules, and we stand ready to help if requested.
The headline linked CNBC article expands on this with coverage of IBM exiting the facial recognition business, and lots of other background snippets. Worth reading.
[VIDEO] A few articles I found enlightening, with food-for-thought on what issues are important to consider in the potential (likely?) Mac move from Intel to ARM:
John Gruber takes apart Mark Gurman’s article (the Bloomberg piece that started off this wave), adding in his own thoughts on the question of emulation (see the Rosetta video at the end of this post), Book Camp and virtualization, and the impact this move might have on current Mac sales.
Next up is this TidBITS article from former long-time Apple Engineer David Shayer. A good backgrounder to read. Again, the question of a potential emulator rears its head. Will Windows emulation fall by the wayside in this new wave of Macs?
Last write-up is this piece from The Verge’s Dieter Bohn, What Windows can teach the Mac about the switch to ARM processors. Lots of detail on potential paths here. Will Windows emulation survive such a transition?
And, finally, here’s Steve Jobs (video embedded in main Loop post), at WWDC 2005, announcing the Rosetta emulator, which translated PowerPC instructions to Intel x86 as the app was running. This was a critical step to moving the PowerPC universe to Intel. Jump to about 38:22 in for the start of that part of the video.
Mark Gurman:
Apple Inc. plans to launch a trade-in program for Mac computers next week at its retail stores in the U.S and Canada, adding the devices to an effort already in effect for other products.
The Cupertino, California—based technology giant informed retail employees that the new program will begin on June 15 in the U.S. and June 18 in Canada, according to people familiar with the matter.
Can’t help but think this will help bring along a wave of purchases when (if) the first ARM Macs start shipping. WWDC is less than two weeks away. The ARM Mac question definitely has my attention.
[VIDEO] This side-by-side, pitting Google against Siri, Alex, and Bixby, was interesting to watch (Video embedded in main Loop post).
The question set was limited, so it’s not really a definitive look. It’d be interesting to see an open source effort to create an extensive, defining set of questions to pose, one that could be passed along to the assistant team at any company with a voice assistant in the works.
If I was creating such a question set, I’d definitely push the boundaries, go for fully interactive conversations, with call-backs to previous questions, and questions that require the ability to plumb the depths of apps.
For example, how about questions that explore email and browsing habits, pull up orders from recent purchases, test the ability of the assistant to recall recent messaging conversations.
The tests could show how much “understanding” is going on, but also provide insight into privacy boundaries as well.
Just a thought.
Mark Gurman:
Apple Inc. told staff at its main Silicon Valley headquarters that the first phase of a plan to return to the office will begin on June 15, but stressed that most employees won’t go back for several months at least.
Phase 1 will be “very limited” and workers will only be allowed in the office on certain days depending on their job, the Cupertino, California-based company wrote in a recent memo to staff. More details will be shared later this month, it added.
And:
Apple also reiterated in the memo that it is limiting how many people are allowed in buildings and other work area simultaneously, implementing social distancing, taking temperatures and requiring employees at the office to pass a daily health check.
This approach mirrors other offices planning to reopen this month, limiting personnel both by physical space and by day.
Apple is moving quicker than some other tech companies that focus more on software than hardware. Alphabet Inc.’s Google is slowly re-opening more offices, starting July 6. San Francisco-based Twitter Inc. has said employees can work away from the office forever, while Facebook Inc. expects as much as 50% of its workforce may be remote in 10 years.
I’d quibble with the word “quicker”, purely in that it might read to some that Apple is being overly quick. With their approach, Apple is easing into their reopen with safety in mind.
Mark Gurman, Bloomberg:
Apple Inc. is preparing to announce a shift to its own main processors in Mac computers, replacing chips from Intel Corp., as early as this month at its annual developer conference, according to people familiar with the plans.
The company is holding WWDC the week of June 22. Unveiling the initiative, codenamed Kalamata, at the event would give outside developers time to adjust before new Macs roll out in 2021, the people said. Since the hardware transition is still months away, the timing of the announcement could change, they added, while asking not to be identified discussing private plans.
Take this with a grain of salt, of course, but the answer is less than two weeks away. And the concept of an Arm-based Mac does seem inevitable to me. Not hard to believe this announcement will happen.
Side note: Having been to so many WWDCs in person, this year’s remote event feels jarring to me. I’m excited for the keynote, look forward to seeing how Apple will make this happen, really appreciate the fact that this year is the great leveler, a WWDC that anyone who wants to can attend.
But that said, I’m already missing the Loop Bash, missing the camaraderie, the wee hours talking tech and clinking glasses with old and new friends in person.
Tim Hardwick, MacRumors:
Unlike some Android phones, Apple’s iPhones don’t have a dedicated notification LED that lights up when you get a call, text, or other alert. What iPhones do include is an optional Accessibility feature for the deaf and hard of hearing that blinks the rear camera flash and provides a visual cue for incoming notifications.
Follow the screenshots to see how to turn this on. Definitely worth knowing about.