Apple:

Apple today introduced the new iPod touch with enhancements to power, capability and communication at a remarkable price. The Apple-designed A10 Fusion chip brings improved performance in games, and for the first time on iPod, immersive augmented reality (AR) experiences and Group FaceTime, making it easy to chat with family members, friends or colleagues simultaneously.

Available to order now, in stores later in the week.

Interestingly, the iPod touch is not on Apple’s home page, even though most every other new product and service is there. There’s no iPod category along the top of the store, either.

No matter, my guess is, it’ll appear later today. In the meantime, here’s a link to the main iPod touch page. Pricing starts at $199 for the 32GB model, $299 for 128GB, $399 for 256GB.

Available in six colors, including (PRODUCT)RED™.

BMedia:

In the case of a recent British Airways advertising campaign, the sky was literally the limit. Through a mixture of old and new, they pushed the limits of billboard advertising to give the world something that had never quite been seen before.

Just watch the video below. Great marketing, terrific implementation. [H/T, Scott Knaster]

Bloomberg, in interview with Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei, asked about the threat of China banning Apple:

Ren said he would object to any such move against his American rival.

“That will not happen, first of all. And second of all, if that happens, I’ll be the first to protest,” Ren said in the interview. “Apple is my teacher, it’s in the lead. As a student, why go against my teacher? Never.”

Fascinating article.

The Verge:

Some of the world’s greatest artworks are known for their elaborate backstory or complex history, but not many are actively dangerous to those who own them. ‘The Persistence of Chaos’ might be an exception. Created by internet artist Guo O Dong, this piece of art is an ordinary laptop filled with six of the world’s most dangerous pieces of malware. It’s perfectly safe — as long you don’t connect to your Wi-Fi or plug in a USB.

This is incredible to me. Who would buy this? But sell it did, and for about $1.35M.

Here’s a link to the original art installation page.

Independent:

In a huge room somewhere near Apple’s glistening new campus, highly advanced machines are heating, cooling, pushing, shocking and otherwise abusing chips. Those chips – the silicon that will power the iPhones and other Apple products of the future – are being put through the most gruelling and intense work of their young and secretive lives. Throughout the room are hundreds of circuit boards, into which those chips are wired – those hundreds of boards are placed in hundreds of boxes, where these trying processes take place.

Those chips are here to see whether they can withstand whatever assault anyone might try on them when they make their way out into the world. If they succeed here, then they should succeed anywhere; that’s important, because if they fail out in the world then so would Apple. These chips are the great line of defence in a battle that Apple never stops fighting as it tries to keep users’ data private.

Fascinating look behind one of Apple’s curtains.

CNET:

I would happily argue that Alien is a perfect movie. On paper, it sounds kinda schlocky: a creature feature in which a guy in a monster suit gorily dismembers a crew of thinly written characters.

And yet this peerless blend of sci-fi and horror still grips the emotions and imagination to this day.

Released 40 years ago, on May 25, 1979, Alien began life as a script by Dan O’Bannon with help from Ron Shusett. It was called Star Beast.

Aliens was great but the other sequels are definitely mediocre. I know what I’m watching tonight.

The Verge:

According to iFixit, Apple made two changes to the new keyboards that are on its just-announced, spec-bumped MacBook Pro. The changes seem to amount to a new material underneath the key on the switch cover and a new dome switch that might be more resilient. And though it’s much too early to say whether or not those changes will make a difference in improving the keyboard’s reliability, what is clear right now is that Apple is still just tweaking its design instead of overhauling it.

Apple could do themselves a solid by getting my friends (Hi Dave!) at the Apple “shake and bake” lab to put out a video showing them torture testing these new keyboards. It would help ensure a bit of consumer confidence in this latest iteration.

Click through, take a look at that photo. Astonishing.

And lest you think it’s a fake, here’s a bit on the photo’s origin.

Finally, if this touches you at all, grab a copy of Jon Krakauer’s amazing book, Into Thin Air. One of the more gripping books I’ve ever read.

That multicore score is crazy.

Hard to describe this without seeing it at work. Follow the link, scroll down to the GIF of the Mona Lisa brought to life.

Both cool and scary. The deepest fakes are coming.

Android Police:

Samsung has started notifying device owners that starting June 1st, new Samsung accounts will be limited to 5GB of online storage. The company’s phones sync photos to Samsung Cloud by default, which caused the free 15GB to fill up rather quickly, so 5GB will surely go much faster. Existing accounts will stay at 15GB, and since the change is still a week away, you can create a Samsung account right now and lock in the current storage.

You’re going the wrong way.

This a lesson learned from Apple?

Best Buy sent out this email to cancel its Samsung Galaxy Fold preorders.

My absolute favorite part:

However, with breakthrough designs and technology come many hurdles and the possibility to face a plethora of unforeseen hiccups. These hurdles have led Samsung to postpone the release of the Galaxy Fold, and Samsung has not provided a new release date. Because we put our customers first and want to ensure they are taken care of in the best possible manner, Best Buy has decided to cancel all current pre-orders for the Samsung Galaxy Fold.

A plethora of unforeseen hiccups.

[Via The Verge]

South China Morning Post:

“There is a calling from my heart that I need to show support for Chinese brands, especially in the trade war climate,” said the manager at one of China’s largest solar module manufacturers. When the time finally came to retire his three-year-old iPhone 7 earlier this month, Wang went with a Huawei P30.

This is a terrible situation for Apple. Their efforts at building good will and a positive brand message in China are being undone by the Huawei ban.

My worry is, even if the ban ends tomorrow, it will take Apple years to undo the brand damage.

Dan Moren, Macworld:

Apple popularized the onscreen keyboard with the launch of the first iPhone, deciding to eschew the hardware keyboards that were de rigueur on smartphones at the time.

And:

That was great in 2007. But 12 years later, we’ve all largely adapted to touchscreen keyboards, and some of those smart technologies are starting to look and feel, well, not so smart. It’s time for an A-to-Z overhaul of text entry on iOS.

Dan digs into several virtual keyboard areas where there’s room for improvement. Take the time to read his article, not a long read.

I do think there’s plenty of room for improvements here. In my mind, one core problem is the blind dependence on machine learning to drive predictive text suggestions.

Here’s an example:

I brought up Twitter, and started composing a new tweet. I typed the letters “proc”, which led the keyboard to make the center prediction of the word “process”. Perfect, exactly what I was going for.

But then I typed “e”, the next letter in process. And that center suggestion was changed to another word. This happens a lot.

But the point is, when I am typing, and I see the word I want in a specific box, if I type one more letter in that word and then reach to tap the word, it should not move. I frequently find myself typing, reaching to tap the word I’m typing, and by the time my finger gets to the box, the word has changed to another word.

If my eye is on the target, and I continue to type the target word as already identified, the target word should stay the same. Until I type a letter that does not match the currently identified target word.

My sense of this is, machine learning has priority over straight logic.

I’d love to speak with someone on the keyboard team about this, and other related issues. I wonder if the team is not seeing these sorts of issues themselves.

Delight.

There’s just not enough delight in the world. Take a minute and wheel over to the Playdate web site and check out Panic’s new shiny. It’s delightful.

From the site:

We love video games.

We love the places they take us and the feelings they give us. We’ve grown up with them. It sounds silly, but they really mean a lot to us.

And:

We reached out to some top game designers, like Keita Takahashi and Zach Gage and Bennett Foddy and Shaun Inman.

We showed them Playdate and asked, “Want to make a game for it?”. Then we lost our minds when they said “Yeah!”

This is something special. Like watching the birth of Nintendo. It’s a grand, delightful experiment.

For $149, you get the Playdate hardware, crank and all (scroll down to the crank picture and click to turn on the sound to get a sense of what that’s all about), and a game a week for 12 weeks. Presumably, there will be follow-on subscription pricing for the game-a-week after that. And who knows, if this works, follow-on hardware.

If you’ve never experienced Panic’s game prowess, check out Firewatch. It’s on my shortlist of favorite indie games. Full of delight. And, if I’m not mistaken, there’s a Playdate in the game itself. A time-traveling Easter egg?

And if you don’t know Teenage Engineering (the hardware side of this collaboration), check out their synthesizers. Full of delight.

And if you are on still on the fence about Playdate, check out John Gruber’s take. He gets it.

Can’t wait.

Pitchfork:

There’s a rapper on Spotify named Lil Kambo who’s racked up 2 million streams and counting on his song “Kid Carti.” This would be a significant feat for any unsigned, self-releasing artist in the modern day.

The only problem is that “Lil Kambo” doesn’t exist and “Kid Carti” is a pitch-shifted leak of Playboi Carti’s yet-unreleased track “Kid Cudi” (previously referred to as “Pissy Pamper”), a song the rapper’s been teasing for some time and even playing out live. Lil Kambo isn’t a viral hit—he’s a fraudster.

And:

Fraudulent releases are nothing new on sites like YouTube and SoundCloud. But these recent unauthorized uploads, as demonstrated by the unauthorized Beyoncé and SZA releases back in December and a “Fenty Fantasia” leak of Rihanna songs in March are indicative of a growing trend that’s only grown more apparent in the past several months: leaks or unreleased snippets that make their way to “legitimate” streaming platforms, racking monetized streams by fans eager to consume that content regardless of who owns it or who benefits from the plays.

Bottom line, these fakes hurt both the original artists they’re lifted from, but also pollute the marketplace.

One final point:

As of May 22, fraudulent music on the profiles of Lil Kambo, Unocarti, and Unocompac have been removed from Spotify. The artist profile for Unocompac on Apple Music still features leaks, available to listen on the platform.

It’s a whack-a-mole problem. Seems like there should be a unified process for reporting and removing content like this. A takedown notice of piracy on one platform, once verified, could automatically trigger the takedown of that content on all the music services. Impossible? Overreaching?

Amazon has robots pulling stock from shelves and packing boxes to ship to customers. They are also experimenting with Prime robots (essentially, automated coolers on wheels) to get goods near your front door. Fedex and other delivery companies are doing similar experiments.

The problem is getting those goods those last few feet, from the road to your front door, overcoming obstacles like bikes and scooters, potted plants and, of course, navigating those pesky steps.

Enter Ford.

Instead of using wheeled carts, Ford’s Digit robot walks on two legs, mimicking a human approach to getting from the sidewalk to the front door. Digit also uses the Lidar and computing power of its partner self-driving car to map the path it should take to get to the door while avoiding obstacles.

Watch the video below and imagine a robot delivering your packages and mail. It’s coming.

Panic:

Hello. We made a brand new handheld gaming system.

It’s yellow. It fits in your pocket. It’s got a beautiful black and white screen. It’s not super cheap, but not super expensive. It includes brand new games from some amazing creators. Plus it has a crank.

What are these games? Here’s the thing: we’d like to keep them a secret until they appear on your Playdate. We want to surprise you.

Some are short, some long, some are experimental, some traditional. All are fun.

This looks…odd….but I hope it’s a huge success for the folks at Panic, a great Mac software company.

Design Taxi:

You don’t have to fantasize about living a whole other life anymore. The Sims 4 is now free, and you can log into an alternate existence without having to sacrifice anything—be in the real world or financially.

Origin, a distributor by gamemaker Electronic Arts, has released the video game for free. The download is available for Windows PC and Mac users, and can be obtained without a cent through 28 May. In contrast, the game is priced at US$22.24 on Amazon.

I wasted many an hour back in the day trying to find new and interesting ways to kill my Sims.

App Camp for Girls:

After significant consideration by the App Camp for Girls Board of Directors and in consultation with the organization’s co-founders and co-Executive Directors, it is with great sadness that we are announcing that camps will not be held this summer.

Although the organization was able to secure the funding needed for camps this summer, we have not been successful in attracting the minimum number of camp registrants to successfully run the camps. As our six years of history has shown us, we are unlikely to find the numbers we need this late in the season.

This is really sad news. Silicon Valley has hundreds of rich white guys whining about how they can’t find enough stuff to spend their billions on. Hey Jeff Bezos — do the world a favour and give App Camp for Girls several million dollars out of your couch cushions.

CNET:

Apple on Wednesday sent invitations to members of the media for its annual keynote address at its Worldwide Developers Conference. The WWDC 2019 presentation will take place at 10 a.m. PT on Monday, June 3 at the McEnery Convention Center in San Jose, California.

WWDC is known as the event at which Apple details the newest software that will hit its devices later in the year.

Apple hasn’t yet announced whether the keynote will be live-streamed but it is expected it will be.

Federico:

My iPad journey began in 2012 when I was undergoing cancer treatments. In the first half of the year, right after my diagnosis, I was constantly moving between hospitals to talk to different doctors and understand the best strategies for my initial round of treatments. Those chemo treatments, it turned out, often made me too tired to get any work done. I wanted to continue working for MacStories because it was a healthy distraction that kept my brain busy, but my MacBook Air was uncomfortable to carry around and I couldn’t use it in my car as it lacked a cellular connection. By contrast, the iPad was light, it featured built-in 3G, and it allowed me to stay in touch with the MacStories team from anywhere, at any time with the comfort of a large, beautiful Retina display.

The tipping point came when I had to be hospitalized for three consecutive weeks to undergo aggressive chemo treatments; in that period of time, I concluded that the extreme portability and freedom granted by the iPad had become essential for me.

This is a wonderful read, a real manifesto. So much of the underpinnings of iPad use are explored and explained in these page. Read the whole thing, learn about the iPad at the feet of a true master.

And consider joining Club MacStories to support more efforts like this one.

Great work, Federico.

Years ago, I went to a science museum (in Baltimore, I believe) that pulled together an exhibit showcasing many of these mechanical movements. Each movement was built and motorized, or implemented by a hand crank so you got a sense of how they worked.

This web site does the same thing. It’s fascinating.

Hard to call out one in particular, but definitely start out with the thumbnails (color means a design is animated), and be sure to check out this one.

SensorID:

When you visit a website, your web browser provides a range of information to the website, including the name and version of your browser, screen size, fonts installed, and so on. Ostensibly, this information allows the website to provide a great user experience. Unfortunately this same information can also be used to track you.

Cross domain tracking is a well known problem, and Apple is on top of it. But read on.

We have developed a new type of fingerprinting attack, the calibration fingerprinting attack. Our attack uses data gathered from the accelerometer, gyroscope and magnetometer sensors found in smartphones to construct a globally unique fingerprint.

Dear advertisers, no one wants this to happen. You can tell because the tunnels you dig keep getting blocked. No one ever write’s a blog post begging for newer ways to cross domain track.

Following our disclosure, Apple has patched this vulnerability in iOS 12.2.

Once again, Apple has our backs.

BBC:

UK-based chip designer ARM has told staff it must suspend business with Huawei, according to internal documents obtained by the BBC.

ARM instructed employees to halt “all active contracts, support entitlements, and any pending engagements” with Huawei and its subsidiaries to comply with a recent US trade clampdown.

The screws are tightening. Waiting for the other shoe to drop, some form of retaliation from China.

This still feels like a negotiation tactic, rather than an actual security concern.

Side note: The BBC article does a nice job explaining ARM and its relationship to ARM adoptees like Apple, Samsung, and Qualcomm. Huawei is one of ARM’s top customers. This ban is a big deal.

Located below the iconic Capitol Tower in Los Angeles, Capitol Studios is arguably the most recognized studio in the world — and much of its legend can be traced to its hallowed, subterranean echo chambers. From Ray Charles to Frank Sinatra, Beck to Muse, these underground spaces continue to provide gorgeous hi-fi ambience that is simply unmatched.

Now, after years of R&D and close collaboration with Capitol Studios — including unprecedented access to four legendary echo chambers 30-feet beneath the studio — Universal Audio proudly presents the Capitol Chambers plug-in, a startling end-to-end recreation of the most popular echo chambers ever created, exclusively for UAD hardware and UA Audio Interfaces.

The sound is absolutely stunning. Watch the video when you get to the UA web site.