MacRumors:

Apple has posted the first stats for iOS 13 adoption since its launch on September 19th for iPhone.

Apple shared the statistics on the App Store Developers page which was updated today. Apple reports that ‌iOS 13‌ is installed on 55% of all iPhones introduced in the past four years, and 50% of all iPhone devices, as measured by App Store activity.

This year, Apple has broken down the stats between both ‌iOS 13‌ and iPadOS which were launched at different times this year.

Adoption rates are pretty much on par with iOS 12 at the same point in its release.

CNET:

It’s an unfortunate reality that plenty of people still operate vehicles while intoxicated, which can lead to disastrous results for the driver and innocent motorists and pedestrians. “Every day, almost 30 people in the United States die in drunk-driving crashes,” says the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Despite massive public information campaigns to curb drunk driving, the hard fact is there’s still nothing stopping a driver from getting behind the wheel after too much to drink.

Technology is in the pipeline that would prevent anyone over the legal blood-alcohol content level from firing up a vehicle and motoring off. According to Reuters, this includes devices planted in the steering wheel or push-button ignition to measure a driver’s BAC. If the devices detect it’s too high, via infrared lights shined through a driver’s fingertip, it’s no dice to drive anywhere. Another possible solution are sensors to monitor a driver’s eye movement and breath.

Would you support this kind of legislation if the technology was available and worked as expected?

MacStories:

In many ways, the iPhone 11 Pro’s camera system feels like the culmination of over a decade’s worth of judicious, relentless improvements. Not only is the device’s camera the best and smartest Apple has ever shipped, but it also affords the most photographic freedom, allowing non-professional photographers like me to produce amazing shots with minimal effort.

I’m not a professional photographer, but the camera system in the iPhone 11 Pro, combined with the latest advancements in the Camera and Photos apps for iOS 13, makes me excited to go out and take as many pictures as I can again.

So many stories trumpeting the photographic abilities of the new iPhones are accompanied by really awful photos taken by bad photographers. Viticci “cheats” by being able to take shots in a beautiful location that really does a great job of showing off the capabilities of the new camera system.

Fast Company:

What makes Letterkenny special isn’t just that it’s based on the small-town life of creator and star Jared Keeso, but how it manages to combine quirky dialogue, regional slang, rapid-fire joke delivery, near-constant cussing, and endless sh*t talking with a surprising amount of humanity.

It’s also a direct descendant of lovable hoser comedies that stretch back to SCTV’s Bob and Doug McKenzie of the early 80s, up through the Trailer Park Boys of the early ’00s, both of which managed to build massive fan bases by combining Canadiana with down-to-earth, booze-fueled banter. Over the last few years, Letterkenny has grabbed that bottle and run with it.

It’s a very silly show, kind of like a Canadian Seinfeld. Nothing actually happens but it’s fun to watch. And I bet you’ll pick up on the Canadian slang real quick – “Pitter-patter, let’s get at ‘er.”

One of the biggest shows coming to Apple TV+ is The Morning Show, with Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon, and Steve Carell headlining a stellar cast.

But, turns out, the name The Morning Show was already a real life show in Australia, so Apple renamed the down under version of the show to Morning Wars (here’s the official Morning Wars trailer, with the new name spliced into place, but with The Morning Show plainly visible throughout).

Things get a little more complex when the real life Morning Show (check the logo as you watch) interviews the cast of the Apple TV+ Morning Show, but as Morning Wars.

Here’s the video (via Benjamin Mayo):

.@AshleeMullany sits down with the cast of Morning Wars, launching exclusively on Apple TV+! #TMS7 pic.twitter.com/zgXxXxDxaL

— The Morning Show (@morningshowon7) October 14, 2019

Morning Show, as Morning Wars, inside Morning Show. Inception.

All good fun, looking forward to Apple TV+ going live.

Tim Hardwick, MacRumors:

After upgrading to macOS Catalina, you may be surprised to discover a shortcut on your Mac’s desktop to a Relocated Items folder that wasn’t there previously. The generation of this folder is actually normal behavior when upgrading an older version of macOS to Catalina, but we’re highlighting it in this article because a lot of users are confused about why the folder exists and what to do with its contents.

Happened to me. Made my way through a bumpy Catalina install, then encountered this brand new folder shortcut on my desktop.

One key takeaway:

The Relocated Items folder you see on the Desktop is just a shortcut that can be safely deleted. Doing so will not remove the folder or its contents from your hard disk. You can find the actual folder in /Users/Shared/Relocated Items.

But if you’ve done the Catalina install, worth spending a minute reading Tim’s explainer.

This Hollywood Reporter take on Apple TV+ is entertaining, messy, and an excellent read. Though I take every word with a grain of salt, the overall writeup rings true for me.

A few tidbits:

The tech giant outbid Netflix for a soapy morning-show drama that would mark Jennifer Aniston’s return to television. Based loosely on the Brian Stelter book Top of the Morning, the series was to be the flagship for an ambitious new streaming service.

But by that fall, producers were starting to panic. They had only just received the first script from writer and first-time showrunner Jay Carson. Meanwhile, the morning TV landscape was being upended by NBC’s ouster of Matt Lauer over sexual misconduct allegations, and it was becoming clear that the #MeToo movement would need to factor into the plot. Apple, producer Media Res, Aniston and co-star/producer Reese Witherspoon began to ponder making a showrunner change as the early script, sources say, didn’t match the standards of those involved. The group then began to look for a more experienced showrunner — and, in success, a writer who could pen a woman’s experience.

And:

Drive down Washington Boulevard through Culver City and it becomes clear Apple is taking its entertainment pursuit seriously. Construction is underway on a sleek, glass-enclosed office building that will house Erlicht and Van Amburg’s Worldwide Video team, which will make up a significant portion of the 1,000 or so workers Apple expects to employ in the neighborhood by 2021.

And:

While showrunner departures are common — especially with straight-to-series orders increasingly frequent at streamers and upstart outlets — some within the creative community attribute Apple’s early hurdles to its lack of Hollywood savvy. “It’s an interesting place because there’s no history or precedent,” notes one lit agent. “They have no systems in place. Two guys who ran a studio are now effectively running a network. They’ve built a collection of executives who individually are great but are working together for the first time.” Adds one top producer who has worked with the company: “The biggest problem is Apple’s insistence that the industry adapt to them and not the other way around.”

Kitsis doesn’t agree. “While they’re a new network, they’re really not,” he says. “Meaning, from top to bottom, everyone we dealt with was a pro with tons of studio and/or network experience. Some of whom we had actually worked with back in our ABC days, so there was an immediate comfort level for us.”

Lots, lots more. If you’re interested in the “how the sausage is made” side of Apple TV+, this is a great read.

Roku press release:

For the first time ever, Roku users can add the Apple TV app via the Roku Channel Store to discover and watch movies, TV shows and more, including accessing their iTunes video library and subscribing to Apple TV channels directly on Roku devices. Starting November 1, Apple TV+, Apple’s home for all-original shows and movies from the world’s greatest storytellers, will be available on the Apple TV app on the Roku platform.

Even with the absence of a back catalog, Apple TV+ is playing the long game. Lots of press and chess moves, all backed by a long term war chest to take on Disney+, Netflix, HBO, and others.

We are just about two weeks away from the official rollout of Apple TV+. From the linked Apple press release:

Beginning November 1, the first three episodes of “For All Mankind” will be available to watch on Apple TV+. New episodes will continue to roll out weekly, every Friday.

And from this Deadline article:

Ahead of For All Mankind’s series debut on Nov. 1 and premiere event tonight, the space race alt-history drama from Ron Moore has been renewed for a second season, which quietly started production within the past week or so.

And:

It is part of a strategy by Apple to get second seasons of most of its scripted series going ahead of lunch, which helps amortize costs and keep the Apple TV+ pipeline of original content going, avoiding lengthy hiatuses. Beyond The Morning Show, which had been picked up with a two-season order, Apple had not confirmed any renewals. Along with For All Mankind, also reportedly renewed or in the process of being renewed for a second season are such upcoming Apple series as the Jason Momoa starrer See; Emily Dickinson comedy Dickinson, starring Hailee Steinfeld, which Apple brass have been very high on; anthology immigrant comedy Little America; and the Hilde Lysiak young detective drama Home Before Dark.

Apple has a pipeline to fill, a back catalog to create.

PetaPixel:

Sports photographers on the sidelines of games sometimes find themselves a little too close to the action. One NFL photographer had an unexpected meeting with the quarterback recently, and the clip of what happened quickly went viral online.

During the game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Baltimore Ravens on October 6th, Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson got shoved out of bounds and straight into photographer Shelley Lipton.

Instead of hurrying back onto the field, Jackson immediately walked back to Lipton and gave her a helping hand up from the turf.

I’ve been on the sidelines of an NFL game as the “protector” of an NFL Films camera guy and it was terrifying. I’m a big guy but NFL players are huge and heavily armoured. Good to hear this shooter was OK and got the shot.

Backblaze:

Backblaze likes to talk about hard drive failures — a lot. What we haven’t talked much about is how we deal with those failures: the daily dance of temp drives, replacement drives, and all the clones that it takes to keep over 100,000 drives healthy. Let’s go behind the scenes and take a look at that dance from the eyes of one Backblaze hard drive.

After sitting still for what seemed like forever, ZCH007BZ was on the move. ZCH007BZ, let’s call him Zach, is a Seagate 12 TB hard drive. For the last few weeks, Zach and over 6,000 friends were securely sealed inside their protective cases in the ready storage area of a Backblaze data center. Being a hard disk drive, Zach’s modest dream was to be installed in a system, spin merrily, and store data for many years to come. And now the wait was nearly over, or was it?

This is a silly bit of fluff and marketing but it’s fun and reading between the lines is interesting to see how companies like Backblaze go about their business.

CNBC:

Level Lock is a $250 deadbolt enabled with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. It’s essentially a computerized lock that users can control through an associated app. For example, users can unlock their doors through Bluetooth with their phones, or send a text message with a pass to a guest if they need to get into their house.

The idea is to make a high-quality smart lock that discards a lot of the conventional thinking about residential locks, or create a new product from first principles, similar to how Apple approaches the design of a new product by thinking about the experience first.

How many of you have or are interested in “smart locks”? I can see a specific use case for them but, at $250, that’s way too steep for me.

The Print:

Hagibis, which means “speed” in the Filipino language of Tagalog, is reportedly the worst storm Japan has seen in 60 years. However, until just a day before, another flurry of images from Japan was causing immense curiosity on social media: A dark pink, almost purple sky.

While some people sought to derive spiritual meaning from the colour, there’s a simpler explanation for the phenomenon, which is seen as the harbinger of storms.

The storm was devastating and caused great loss of life. A lot of these social media photos “looked fake” or at least over-edited but there’s a scientific explanation for them.

Follow the link, scroll down the the chart. How many adults have a net worth between $1,000 and $10,000? Turns out, that’s the biggest bar on the graph, with 1.7 billion adults.

And the smallest bar on the graph, with a net worth of $100 billion? They list them by name.

Follow the headline link and vote.

I tend to use both. If have a long drive ahead of me, I’ll visit both for route recommendations. If they disagree, it’s usually because one is aware of an accident or traffic problem that the other isn’t.

And if I am looking for a local food recommendation, I’ll look at both, but tend to trust the Google Maps crowd source data, rather than Apple’s Yelp data. Not a fan of Yelp, wish Apple built their own crowd-source food recommendation mechanism, rather than depend on Yelp. I’ve always felt like Apple and Yelp are an odd partnership.

Six lessons from the team that created Luna Display, which got Sherlock’ed by Catalina/iPadOS’s Sidecar. Interesting, informative, and remarkably gracious.

Working out the math of whether or not to update to Catalina? Take a few minutes to step through these quotes Michael Tsai collected from various members of the Mac technorati.

I am writing these words from my Catalina install. Though I did run into some snags with the install, so far my Catalina experience has been rock solid.

If you do decide to make the leap to Catalina: Obviously, do a complete backup before you start, and spend the time digging through the list of your 32-bit apps to make sure there’s nothing on that list that you’ll miss.

To do that:

• Apple menu > About This Mac
• Click the System Report button
• In the sidebar on the left, scroll to Software > Legacy Software

Anything you absolutely need? Check to see if there’s a 64-bit upgrade. Do the upgrade before you install Catalina.

First off:

• Fire up your iPhone, head to Settings > Safari
• Now tap the link that says “About Safari & Privacy…” (it’s the second of these links, just under the Check for Apple Pay switch)
• Scroll down to the section labeled “Fraudulent Website Warning”

At the bottom of that paragraph:

Before visiting a website, Safari may send information calculated from the website address to Google Safe Browsing and Tencent Safe Browsing to check if the website is fraudulent. These safe browsing providers may also log your IP address.

Those words have raised a lot of eyebrows. The headline linked article digs into some history and lays out the concerns. Start off by reading the section “What is “Safe Browsing”, and is it actually safe?” That’ll set the table for why Google’s Safe Browsing is imperfect where privacy is concerned.

Which leads to:

The problem is that Safe Browsing “update API” has never been exactly “safe”. Its purpose was never to provide total privacy to users, but rather to degrade the quality of browsing data that providers collect. Within the threat model of Google, we (as a privacy-focused community) largely concluded that protecting users from malicious sites was worth the risk. That’s because, while Google certainly has the brainpower to extract a signal from the noisy Safe Browsing results, it seemed unlikely that they would bother. (Or at least, we hoped that someone would blow the whistle if they tried.)

But Tencent isn’t Google. While they may be just as trustworthy, we deserve to be informed about this kind of change and to make choices about it. At very least, users should learn about these changes before Apple pushes the feature into production, and thus asks millions of their customers to trust them.

OK, now you’re caught up. Is this a tempest in a teapot or a genuine privacy concern? Looking forward to an official response from Apple.

UPDATE: And here’s Apple’s official statement:

Apple protects user privacy and safeguards your data with Safari Fraudulent Website Warning, a security feature that flags websites known to be malicious in nature. When the feature is enabled, Safari checks the website URL against lists of known websites and displays a warning if the URL the user is visiting is suspected of fraudulent conduct like phishing.

To accomplish this task, Safari receives a list of websites known to be malicious from Google, and for devices with their region code set to mainland China, it receives a list from Tencent. The actual URL of a website you visit is never shared with a safe browsing provider and the feature can be turned off.

Robservatory:

I have no plans to move my main iMac to macOS Catalina, at least for the forseeable future. There are two key apps I use—Fujitsu’s ScanSnap scanner software and the Many Tricks’ accounting app—that are both 32-bit. In addition, there are changes in Catalina relative to permissions that make it somewhat Vista like and slow down my interaction with the system.

There are two things that I wanted to get rid of on my iMac: The notice about Catalina, and the infuriating red dot. At its simplest level, this appears to require just two Terminal commands

This is (yet another) example of Apple’s parochial insistence that “We Know Better.” There’s no reason this notification and popup should not be able to be permanently dismissed.

Amboy Manalo, iOS GadgetHacks:

With iOS 13, you can now quickly reboot your iPhone using Voice Control. If you haven’t set it up, open Settings, head to “Accessibility,” and select “Voice Control,” then tap “Set Up Voice Control” and follow the prompts.

Now, simply say “Reboot Device” (no need to say “Hey Siri” or anything first). When you do, you’ll see a prompt. Just say “Tap Restart,” and your phone will reboot.

This is fascinating and fun to play with. I can definitely see the value as an assistive tech. Take a few minutes and go through the steps, try this for yourself.

My bet is, somewhere there’s an official set of Voice Control verbs out there. Wondering if that list corresponds to a similar list for, say, Shortcuts.

UPDATE: To learn more, dig into this Apple support page. Also, turn on voice control and then say: “Show me what to say” (H/T Roman Meliska).

Stephen Shankland, CNET:

When Apple marketing chief Phil Schiller detailed the iPhone 11’s new camera abilities in September, he boasted, “It’s computational photography mad science.” And when Google debuts its new Pixel 4 phone on Tuesday, you can bet it’ll be showing off its own pioneering work in computational photography.

The reason is simple: Computational photography can improve your camera shots immeasurably, helping your phone match, and in some ways surpass, even expensive cameras.

But what exactly is computational photography?

Nice explainer.

Juli Clover, MacRumors:

Today’s iOS 13.2 beta introduces a new option that allows iPhone and iPad users to delete their Siri and Dictation history and opt out of sharing audio recordings, features that Apple promised after being called out for its ‌Siri‌ quality evaluation processes.

Earlier this year, it was discovered that Apple hired contractors to listen to a small percentage of anonymized ‌Siri‌ recordings to evaluate ‌Siri‌’s responses with the purpose of improving the assistant’s accuracy and reliability.

Apple promised tools to manage this stuff, and here they are.