Lodged with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York by plaintiff Pro Music Rights, the suit focuses on unpaid royalties and ongoing infringement related to 15 registered copyrights covering a clutch of songs.

I have a feeling that there is more to this than meets the eye. Apple is not new to licensing and how the music business works, so it’ll be interesting to see how this progresses.

Graham Cochrane, a freelance recording and mix engineer:

Does anyone even care about rock music, or real instruments like drums and guitars anymore?!

It’s a question that’s been asked and talked about for years. I believe Rock is alive and well, but it is going through some changes that make many people uncomfortable. Graham has some interesting thoughts on the issue.

A German court on Thursday banned Uber ride-hailing services in Germany, arguing the U.S. company lacks a necessary license to offer passenger transport services using rental cars.

Uber also lost its license in London last month. I’m not sure what the path forward is for Uber in Europe, but it doesn’t look promising.

AppleInsider:

Apple on Wednesday announced “Mythic Quest: Raven’s Banquet,” a hotly anticipated comedy series from “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” creators Charlie Day and Rob McElhenney, will debut as an Apple TV+ exclusive in February.

Produced by McElhenney and Day, and co-created by co-created by McElhenney and fellow “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” executive producer Megan Ganz, “Mythic Quest” delves into the challenges of running a successful video game studio, Apple said in a press release today.

This looks utterly ridiculous and I can’t wait to watch it.

Jeremy Olshan, editor-in-chief of MarketWatch:

We are all drowning in a firehose of information at the expense of not only our attention spans but also true understanding. Our industry has a moral responsibility to help readers translate all that information into knowledge. Into wisdom.

This article isn’t specifically about tech journalism, but all journalism. I believe in reporting the truth, without bias, about any topic I write about. You may not agree with me, and that’s okay—in fact that’s healthy. When it comes to reporting on Apple, which I’ve been doing fo 25 years, I find myself in more disagreements with other writers more than ever before. A lot of that comes from me questioning the motives of why a story was written—which are often sensationalized—instead of enjoying the read. We need to help readers understand the information we write about.

The Atlantic:

The past 10 years have been eventful ones, beginning with Iceland’s erupting Eyjafjallajökull volcano and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, through the violent rise of the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, the refugee crisis in Europe, the U.S. presidential election of 2016, the first close-up images of Pluto, the #MeToo movement, an impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump, and so much more.

Warning: There are several very disturbing images in this post but all of them are powerful, important images.

It’s no secret that we’re pretty big fans of machine learning and we love thinking of new and exciting ways to use it in Pixelmator Pro. Our latest ML-powered feature is called ML Super Resolution, released in today’s update, and it makes it possible to increase the resolution of images while keeping them stunningly sharp and detailed. Yes, zooming and enhancing images like they do in all those cheesy police dramas is now a reality!

There is just no way to express how impressed I am with the folks at Pixelmator. They continue to evolve and innovate in a very difficult market.

Future Crunch:

Maybe, like us, you willingly chose to take part in this crazy, collective global experiment: take a nervous system that’s evolved for running away from cheetahs, and give it a big glowing screen showing it all the bad things happening in the world in near real time.

Fortunately, that wasn’t the only news. There were other stories out there, stories of conservation, better health, rising living standards, tolerance, peace, cleaner energy and environmental stewardship. Most of that stuff didn’t make it onto our Facebook feeds though, and that means that what we saw on our screens in 2019 was not the world. It was a negative image of the world, in both the photographic and tonal senses.

Here’s a slightly different picture.

Things are never as bad as we think nor as good as we hoped. H/T to @kottke for the link.

Royal Aeronautical Society:

For the past 70 plus years, nations around the world have attempted to intercept a mysterious hypersonic, high-flying intruder from the North Pole and learn its aeronautical secrets. Our Lapland aerospace Correspondent CHRIS TINGLE reports on the secret effort to counter these annual airspace intrusions.

The intrusion by this unknown vehicle (hereby referred to by its codename Supersonic Atmospheric Northern Transport Aircraft (SANTA) – travelling at incredible speeds in a single 24hrs has been not just a cause of concern for military planners around the world, baffled by this incredible capability – but also by civil aviation experts – concerned about a hypersonic aircraft weaving between scheduled commercial flights. Many suspect the only reason a mid-air collision has not occurred is that the SANTA flights take place at a time of year when scheduled airline operations are quieter.

For over 60 years NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command) has taken on the role of attempting to track through the world’s airspace, provide updates and potentially unlock the secret of SANTA’s amazing aerospace technology and the secret Polar base from which this vehicle (or vehicles) operate. Despite SANTAs predictable schedule and a whole year to prepare defences, its astonishing speed and height have enabled it to outrun and outfly multiple attempts to intercept it.

This is the most wonderfully silly thing you’re likely to read all week. Thanks to @movinmeat for the RT of @RAeSTimR.

Macworld UK:

From now until New Years Eve you can get a six months subscription to Apple Music for free. All you need to do is Shazam something with the Shazam iPhone app. When you do so you will automatically be able to sign up for six months Apple Music for free.

The deal isn’t only open to those who have never subscribed to Apple Music. Apple has confirmed to Macworld that previous subscribers who resubscribe can get three months for free.

Great deal if you’ve never signed up although, while the story says resubscribers can get three months free and the app says “Get up to four months of free Apple Music,” when I went to redeem the code I was only offered a one month free “Apple Music individual membership.” so YMMV.

It’s true. Spent some time roaming the big box stores on-line: Costco, Target, Walmart, Amazon, all sold out.

And on the Apple Store itself? Shipping pushed out until February 2020.

Amazing.

This was fun to look through. Rabbit hole warning.

Joseph Cox, Motherboard:

From across the other side of the world, a colleague has just accessed my Ring account, and in turn, a live-feed of a Ring camera in my apartment. He sent a screenshot of me stretching, getting ready for work. Then a second colleague accessed the camera from another country, and started talking to me through the Ring device.

Earlier today, we posted about the Apple, Amazon, Google alliance designing an IoT open standard. I’d love to see Amazon close up these security holes.

Until then, I’ll limit my video doorbell candidates to those who sign up for HomeKit Secure Video.

There’s been a lot of Twitter griping about the new Mac Pro Geekbench results not being that much better than the 2017 iMac Pro, essentially making the point that the Mac Pro is not worth all that extra money.

If you check out the Geekbench scores, you’ll see that the lowest model of the new Mac Pro scores worse than the top end 2017 iMac Pro.

I priced out the top-end iMac Pro (256GB RAM, top video card) at $13,299. That does include a display, obviously.

I priced out a base model new Mac Pro (went up to 384GB RAM) at $11,999. More RAM, no display.

The pricing seems reasonable to me. And one is the top of its line, the other the absolute bottom of its line. Close enough.

First things first, the headline link takes you to a 6-movie Studio Ghibli collection. Appears to be US only. $100 for all six. A great deal if you are a Studio Ghibli fan.

That said, there are other Studio Ghibli movies in the iTunes Store that are not part of the collection. It’d be nice if you could type Studio Ghibli in one of the many search fields (iTunes Store, TV app on Mac, Apple TV, etc.)

For example, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind is a great movie, not part of the collection, worth exploring.

UPDATE: Zac Hall, 9to5Mac, pulled together links for all the Studio Ghibli films. Nice job, Zac!

Apple:

Amazon, Apple, Google, and the Zigbee Alliance today announced a new working group that plans to develop and promote the adoption of a new, royalty-free connectivity standard to increase compatibility among smart home products, with security as a fundamental design tenet.

This has huge potential. It will be interesting to see if Amazon opens up their Ring doorbell protocol. All the Ring doorbell hacking stories, true or not, are hurting their brand, and likely hurting the overall product category trustability.

Would love to see a path where Apple forces stronger privacy/security, rather than a weaker standard that allows all entrants to play.

Here’s the link to the main alliance page. Note that Apple’s name (all the way at the bottom) is plain text, no logo. Odd.

New York Times:

Just shy of 25 years since its last original installment, the offbeat comic strip “The Far Side” has returned. In a manner of speaking, but please don’t call it a comeback.

“I’m not ‘back,’ at least in the sense I think you’re asking,” said Gary Larson, the cartoonist who created it, via email last week ahead of a website revival. “Returning to the world of deadlines isn’t exactly on my to-do list.”

Beginning Tuesday, the “Far Side” site will provide visitors with “The Daily Dose,” a random selection of past cartoons, along with a weekly set of strips arranged by theme. There will also be a look at doodles from the sketchbooks of Larson, who said: “I’m looking forward to slipping in some new things every so often.”

What a great Christmas present to all of us Far Side fans who have missed Larson’s particular brand of silliness these past 24 years.

The Verge:

How do you replace a legend like Steve Jobs and, at the same time, adapt to the slow decline of your most important, most iconic product? Those were the twin challenges Apple faced in the 2010s. Under CEO Tim Cook, the company has found some answers and flourished financially, but it hasn’t been without a few wrong turns and big changes to the very nature of its business.

In the past decade, Apple has grown huge. Its fiscal 2019 revenues were six times the size of revenues in fiscal 2009. Its new headquarters building is larger than the Pentagon. Each of its five business segments would be a Fortune 500 company on its own.

But what about its products? Its culture?

The apparently-out-of-retirement Mossberg is a good candidate to take a clearheaded look at the “Tim Cook at Apple” decade. I wouldn’t agree with everything Uncle Walt says but there’s no arguing he knows what he’s talking about.

New York Times:

My choices as a doctor in the emergency room are up or out. Up, for the very sick. I stabilize things that are broken, infected or infarcted, until those patients can be whisked upstairs for their definitive surgeries or stents in the hospital. Out, for everyone else. I stitch up the simple cuts, reassure those with benign viruses, prescribe Tylenol and send home.

Emergency rooms respond like overbooked restaurants during a chaotic dinner rush, with doctors pressed to turn stretchers the way waiters hurriedly turn tables. The frantic pace leaves little time for deliberating over the diagnosis or for counseling patients. Up, out.

Private exams on stretchers in hallways, patients languishing without attention for hours, nurses stretched to the breaking point; all of it has become business as usual. I think about this on nights like tonight, when I start my shift inheriting 16 patients in the waiting room. I think about what I will learn that these people need, and about what I will fail to provide.

Reading these kinds of stories is both fascinating and scary.

BGR:

Ryan Reynolds’ new Netflix movie launched on Friday. The Michael Bay action flick 6 Underground features lots of shooting, car chases and fighting. The film has an interesting premise — a tech billionaire fakes his death to right the wrongs of the world with five other highly-trained individuals — and could spawn sequels if it meets whatever targets Netflix has in place for it.

But while it’s great that you can watch 6 Underground from your own home, it’s not a must-see, best-in-class film. Sure, the action is entertaining, as is the humor, but the storyline isn’t perfect, and there are times when it’s difficult and even tiresome to follow. I won’t spoil any of the plot for you, I’ll just say it could have been much better. But maybe we don’t even need a better story from this Bay creation. It’s the fast-paced action that we’re after in 6 Underground. What I will spoil is a hilarious Ryan Reynolds cameo in the film that easily qualifies as one of the best cameos ever.

Full disclosure: 6 Underground is not a good movie. It is a Micheal Bay movie, for better or worse. But the fact that Reynolds filmed this Instagram bit last year and it made it into the finished film is hilarious and so on point for Reynolds.

Been looking forward to this teardown. The most repairable Apple device, by far, though replacement parts might be expensive/hard to find.

Peter Cohen, Harris Craycraft, iDownloadBlog:

iPadOS 13.3 adds Hot Corners, a new feature that works with a Bluetooth mouse. You can set up the corners of your iPad screen to automate actions just like you can on the Mac. Learn how it works in this short video.

Great feature, nicely detailed in the video below.

Interesting interactive post from The New York Times:

When the decade began, tech meant promise — cars that could drive themselves, social networks that could take down dictators. It connected us in ways we could barely imagine. But somewhere along the way, the flaws of technology became abundantly clear. What happened?

The people who brought us this decade explain: Mark Zuckerberg, Edward Snowden, Ellen Pao, Phil Schiller, Kevin Systrom, Brianna Wu, Tyler “Ninja” Blevins, Mike Judge, Jonah Peretti, Diane von Furstenberg, Alex From Target — and many more. (People’s titles in the interviews below, which have been edited for clarity, reflect the roles they had at the time.)

Follow the headline link, click on the stuff that interests you for a popup article, with links to more related content. A definite rabbit hole.

Rewound:

We launched an App that let you customize your iPhone to look like a 2000s era MP3 player. As Rewound grew exponentially across the world from Japan to China to Iran to Russia and the rest of mainland Europe, Apple KILLED it.

Amazing how quickly this app spread. The power of nostalgia. Why did Apple kill it?

1. Copying iPod Design
2. Charging for Apple Music features
3. People would mistake it for Apple product

The company behind Rewound is floating a campaign to fund a new web-based version of the app. Not the same.

Also:

We can’t update the app to get it re-approved without breaking the app for all 170,000+ users.

An interesting feature of the App Store. Apple takes an app down, but they do not take the app off your device.

MacRumors:

Apple today released a new firmware update for the AirPods 2 and the AirPods Pro, though there is no word on what’s new in the refreshed firmware.

‌AirPods Pro‌ were previously using firmware version 2B588, while ‌AirPods‌ 2 were previously using 2A364. Both ‌AirPods Pro‌ and ‌AirPods‌ 2 run firmware version 2C54 following the update.

As far as I know, there’s no way to force a firmware update, but it’s delivered, at some point, over-the-air, when you connect your AirPods to your iOS device.

To check your firmware version#:

Settings > General > About > [Your AirPods Name]

Note that your AirPods won’t appear in the list until they are connected.

Bare Bones Software, makers of BBEdit, is one of my favorite software companies — in fact, I’ve been using BBEdit for more than 20 years. BBEdit has been updated to version 13, and is available in the Mac App Store as a subscription! Same great features. Same user experience. You can subscribe in the Mac App Store or purchase perpetual licenses directly from Bare Bones Software. Also, you can still get great merch, including Classic and Rebus T-shirts, enamel pins, and more in their merch store!

Digital Photography Review:

Nikon recently released the Z50, a compact mirrorless camera that starts at under $900. The company is so confident that photographers will love their product that they’ve recently introduced the Yellow Program. Besides offering expedited shipping upon placing an order with the Nikon store, customers can try out the Z50 for up to 30 days, upon receiving the camera, and return it free of charge if they’re not satisfied with their purchase.

‘We’re so confident that you’ll fall in love with the photos and videos you’ll get with your new mirrorless Z50 camera, especially when compared to the ones you get with your smartphone, we’ll let you try one at home for 30 days. If you don’t fall in love, send it back to us for a full refund, including shipping,’ reads the introductory paragraph to the Yellow Program’s site.

According to Nikon, the Z50 is the smallest interchangeable lens DX-format camera on the market and the first mirrorless camera in the company’s Z series.

This is a great idea. If I was in the market for a “small” DSLR, I’d definitely look at participating in this program.