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67 new emojis have been listed as “draft candidates” for inclusion in the 2018 emoji set, including softball, mango, salt shaker, and a variation of the much-loved pile of poo emoji.

I’ll admit, I laughed.

[Via MacRumors]

Is it just me or does anyone else think this shouldn’t have worked? I can barely get AirDrop to work between my Mac and iPhone when they are two feet from each other.

Boeing has to test their engines for long periods of time in flight. I guess these Boeing pilots decided to liven up the boring work and not just fly around in circles.

I love these odd little stories.

The coming solar eclipse is an almost once in a lifetime experience. Don’t let it be ruined by using substandard equipment and/or dangerous viewing habits.

Spoiler alert: It was an ugly, ugly place.

Apple doesn’t get nearly the credit they deserve for the work they do in accessibility. I know quite a few people with varying levels and kinds of disability and accessibility issues and they all say that, while there’s lots of work to be done, Apple is far ahead of the rest of the industry in their commitment to these users.

Dave here. James Thomson, in a Twitter thread with Steve Troughton Smith, pondering the interface possibilities of the coming iPhone Pro (and I use that name as a shorthand for any and all phones Apple announces next month with a new hardware layout):

https://twitter.com/jamesthomson/status/892868525559304192

This raises an interesting question. If the home button no longer has dedicated real estate but is, instead a fungible, virtual spot, with the ability to be turned on and off, what happens if an app runs full screen? How will you exit the app?

In other words, if a game takes over the full screen, presumably the home button will not be there. What will the user do to force exit the app, to return to the home screen?

To be crystal clear, I don’t see this as a problem. I see this as an interesting puzzle. We don’t know that the home button will disappear, we don’t know that developers will be allowed to grab the full screen without saving room for the home button.

But it’s an interesting question, one that I am quite certain Apple already has a lovely solution for.

As Federico Viticci so eloquently put it:

the next few weeks are going to be so fun – we think we know what the next iPhone is going to be like, but we also know nothing of its software.

Amen.

Amber Rudd (The UK Home Secretary) has said “real people” do not want secure end-to-end encryption on messaging services.

In response, Renate Samson Chief Executive of Big Brother Watch said:

“Suggesting that people don’t really want security from their online services is frankly insulting, what of those in society who are in dangerous or vulnerable situations, let alone those of us who simply want to protect our communications from breach, hack or cybercrime,” she said.

She’s making an argument that fits her agenda. I don’t believe for a minute that people want less security on anything, especially these days.

Costly cyber attacks are having a bigger impact on corporate earnings and are becoming a fact of life for companies as Oreo cookie maker Mondelez, drug maker Merck and others said that a destructive “worm” attack in the last week of the second quarter disrupted operations.

It’s not just the immediate fallout of an attack that hits companies, it’s the earnings too.

iMore has once again put together a transcript of today’s Apple earnings conference call with analysts. If you don’t get a chance to listen to the call, it’s always worthwhile to read Tim’s comments.

Apple on Tuesday posted quarterly revenue of $45 billion, which is up from the $42.4 billion reported in the year-ago quarter. […]

Amazing. If this headline didn’t mean anything to you, this from the Steve Bartman incident Wikipedia page:

The incident occurred in the eighth inning of Game 6 of the National League Championship Series (NLCS), with Chicago ahead 3–0 and holding a three games to two lead in the best of seven series. Moisés Alou attempted to catch a foul ball off the bat of Marlins second baseman Luis Castillo. Bartman reached for the ball, deflected it, and disrupted the potential catch.

That moment was seen as a huge turning point in the Cubs fortunes. Instead of holding on to the lead and moving on to the World Series (at the time, the Cubs had the longest World Series draught in baseball), the Cubs went on to give up 8 runs in the inning, lose the game, then lose the next game, ending their World Series hopes.

This was a huge story at the time, with Bartman’s life being turned upside down. Huge blame was heaped on him by an entire city. Remarkable and terrible.

The Cubs giving Steve Bartman a World Series ring is a terrific act of forgiveness.

Now you can gain even more valuable feedback by inviting up to 10,000 users to beta test your apps before you release them on the App Store.

That’s great.

Ben Bajarin:

The key behavior usages between both assistants is not a surprise since Google is, and will always be, better than Siri at searching the web. Google’s mission is to organize the world’s data and they will do that better than anyone. Therefore their AI agent will always be the best at search. The challenge we have today with consumer sentiment around Siri is with its weakness for general Internet search. If consumers do this regularly and want to use a voice assistant for searching and general information queries, Siri is not going to beat Google. Apple’s challenge is to help consumers understand the jobs where Siri is best.

I agree with Ben with everything in this article. My problem is that I tried to use Siri to schedule appointments and do some of the life duties that it’s supposedly so good at. The problem is, it didn’t work that well, and when something doesn’t work well, I stop using it. That’s what happened with Siri for me.

The new Siri could be the most amazing assistant at managing my life that AI has ever seen, but I’ve lost so much confidence in using it, that I may never find out. Instead of fighting with Siri to get something done, I’ll just manually add an appointment or reminder myself.

My most used Siri command these days is: “Set a timer for 5 minutes.”

Siri does that really well.

“As most of you have probably heard by now, there has been a cyber incident directed at the company which has resulted in some stolen proprietary information, including some of our programming,” HBO Chairman Richard Plepler wrote in a message … Continued

I haven’t had a chance to use these amps, but it looks really nice. Fender has some of the most iconic amps ever made, so if you’re looking for a way to try out some digital models, you should take a look at these.

Some of these episodes look pretty good.

U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh ruled late on Friday that iPhone 4 and 4S users can pursue nationwide class action claims that Apple intentionally “broke” FaceTime to save money from routing calls through servers owned by Akamai Technologies Inc.

This is absolutely ridiculous. Times change, technology moves forward.

To paraphrase The Talking Heads, “Same as it ever was.” Apple has been the leader in this metric almost since the first store opened and it hasn’t even been close for years. Remarkable numbers.

A steeper-than-expected drop in quarterly profit rattled some Amazon.com investors, but Wall Street analysts remained largely bullish about the company’s aggressive spending plans.

This remains one of the most amazing trends in the tech industry. No matter what happens to Amazon, analysts stay bullish. Any other company would be trying to explain that everything is okay, but Amazon gets a free pass every quarter.

Lisa Jackson, Apple’s lead on Environment work, and a group of colleagues went out to dinner one night. They ate, drank, and came up with a plan to ensure almost 1 million acres of forests are responsibly managed by 2020.

This is what I love about Apple—they aren’t just about getting products out to consumers, they think about everything along the way, including the impact they have on the environment.

Cheers, Lisa Jackson!

Apple has finalized terms with Events DC, the official convention and sports authority for the District of Columbia, to lease a portion of the Carnegie Library at at Mount Vernon Square, described as a newly transformed convention and entertainment district in downtown Washington D.C.

That is going to be a beautiful store.

Poor one out for the iPod. I get why they are no longer “needed” in Apple’s lineup but they will always have a soft spot in my gadget-loving heart.

This street art is absolutely brilliant.

After removing the iPod nano and Shuffle, Apple has now adjusted the price of the iPod Touch.

While the company is still selling the iOS-powered iPod touch, the smaller, less expensive media players are nowhere to be found.

I suppose it had to happen at some point.

When markets opened on Thursday, Bezos had a net worth of $90.6 billion, putting him $500 million ahead of Microsoft founder Bill Gates. Amazon stock opened up 1.6% on Thursday, adding $1.4 billion to Bezos’ net worth.

That’s just an incredible amount of money.

I had no idea BuzzFeed was developing and selling hardware and this may be a complete bust but the idea – cooking made easier through technology – is one I can get behind as a beginning cook myself.

Not sexy news but for us old timers who remember the days of Stuffit Expander and the like, this is kind of interesting. The Unarchiver is my app of choice for the job and I’m glad to hear it will continue to exist.