This is my favorite video showing off the Apple Event invite augmented reality Easter egg. This shows off the occlusion (how the AR object blocks the real world objects, gives the appearance of being in the room) even from “inside” the apple looking out.
Stumbled on this over the weekend as a toss-off in a Twitter mention. I’ve seen edited versions of the keynote on YouTube, had no idea Apple Podcasts offered this up on their official podcast channel.
From the description:
Watch Apple CEO Steve Jobs kick off the Macworld Conference & Expo 2007 with a keynote address from San Francisco’s Moscone West. Check out the exciting new developments at Apple, which include the addition of Paramount movies to iTunes, Apple TV, which allows you to wirelessly play all of your iTunes content from your Mac or PC on your television, and the pioneering iPhone. This revolutionary product is a widescreen iPod with touch controls, a mobile phone, and an Internet communications device all in one.
I love that iPhone is mentioned last.
The quality of the video is excellent, and includes the tail end of the music that played as folks waited for Steve Jobs to take the stage. Be sure to jump to about 56 minutes in to hear the voice mails from Al Gore and then Tim Cook.
An amazing look back.
Michael Potuck, 9to5Mac:
Ahead of WWDC in June, Apple announced Background Sounds would be coming to iOS to help users find focus, calm, and rest. Now in the iOS 15 beta, the feature is available to test out. Read along for how to use iPhone Background Sounds in iOS 15, what you get, what you don’t, and more.
Background Sounds is definitely worth knowing about. You’ll find them in both iOS 15 and iPadOS 15 in Settings > Accessibility > Audio & Visual > Background Sounds.
The default sound is the sound of rain, with critter sounds in the mix. I find it very soothing. Did all my writing with that on in the background.
There are switches to leave the sound playing (at reduced volume) when other media is playing, as well as when the screen is locked.
And to make this a bit easier to turn on and off, go to Settings > Accessibility > Accessibility Shortcut and enable the Background Sounds shortcut. That’ll add a Background Sounds toggle to the Accessibility Control Center control (which you’ll also need to add to Control Center).
Worth exploring.
Follow the link for in interesting comparison of Apple Music vs Spotify, posted on Reddit. It’s blunt, biased, but interesting.
One particular part I found very interesting:
The amount of library customization iTunes gives you, is unlike anything else out there. I can adjust the volume of individual song files, set when the song will start & stop or remember the time mark to start playing from when it was last played.
And:
Another thing I’m bonkers about is the Star Rating system. Everyone else seems to have gotten rid of this in favor of a like/love button. But the degrees to which I like songs is different; 3 stars is an “Ok” whilst 5 stars is an “I’m obsessed with this!” and I think that distinction is very important.
I do love the star rating system, though it feels lost in the shuffle if you tend to listen to music on your iPhone or HomePod.
To see this for yourself, start up a song in the Music app, then try to find the star rating system. Easy enough to Love (or Unlove) the song. But where are the stars?
If you hop over to your Mac and fire up the Music app, you have access to both the stars and the love:
In addition, if you’ve got a Home Pod, ask Siri to give the song a star rating:
Is the star rating system an artifact, a still grudgingly supported thing of the past?
PYMNTS:
Seven years post-launch, new PYMNTS data shows that 93.9% of consumers with Apple Pay activated on their iPhones do not use it in-store to pay for purchases.
That means only 6.1% do.
The survey was conducted between Aug. 3-10, 2021, 3,671 U.S. consumers.
Apple Pay’s adoption and usage isn’t much larger than it was 2015 (5.1%), a year after its launch, and is the same as it was in 2019, the last full year before the pandemic.
Does this mean Apple Pay usage is saturated? The folks who are going to use it are using it?
The growth in total Apple Pay transactions since 2015 has come almost entirely from more stores having contactless terminals to accept it, more people having new iPhones that can use it, and the overall growth in retail transactions.
And almost none of that growth comes from more iPhone users wanting to use it instead of plastic cards.
Pulling out that credit card is a tough habit to break. I think it’ll take a much bigger marketing push from Apple to change that ingrained behavior. Some sort of carrot, even a temporary one.
For example, when Apple Card came out, it offered a 3% discount if I used the card on any Apple purchases. That’s a solid discount, more than any other card in my wallet, and I was able to set it and forget it for all my monthly Apple services payments (iCloud usage, Apple TV bundle, etc.) That carrot got me into the habit.
Apple does offer regular Apple Pay promo discounts, but none of them are regular enough (at least in my spending patterns) to pull me in, to cement the habit.
If I was a regular subway rider, that’d do it. Or if my favorite restaurants offered an Apple Pay discount, that’d do it too.
I actually love the Apple Watch Apple Pay experience. Maybe once (and if) we’re ever able to move past masks, Apple Pay will start to grow again.