“Steve Jobs” was composed by Mason Bates, and recorded by the Sante Fe Opera Orchestra. It takes place within a single act but jumps around in time, depicting milestones like the founding of Apple and the launch of the iPhone, mixed in with personal events and Jobs’ interest in Zen Buddhism.
Some of the opera’s competition included a recording of Richard Strauss’ “Der Rosenkavalier” starring Renee Fleming, and a BBC production of John Adams’ “Doctor Atomic,” about the testing of the first nuclear warhead in 1945.
As anyone who visits an Apple store knows, you’re first greeted by a friendly person with an iPad at the store’s entrance. I told the greeter that I had a Genius Bar appointment for my iPhone XS Max, and she asked for a brief description of my problem.
I explained that my device was randomly shutting down and wouldn’t come back on for several hours. As soon as I finished the explanation, the greeter said, “Have you considered upgrading to a new iPhone recently?”
I was holding my iPhone XS Max in my hand.
And:
A source tells 9to5Mac that this is a new policy at all Apple retail locations. Employees are being instructed to push for an upgrade instead of repairing an existing device. In some stores, the source says, an employee is tasked with pitching iPhone upgrades to Genius Bar customers as they wait for appointments. Other stores have the Geniuses themselves to pitch an upgrade.
This slide into upselling seems new. I’ve always found the Apple Store to be chill, there to help or give me the opportunity to learn about new product. I certainly hope this isn’t the new Apple Store. And I can’t help but wonder if this policy, if it is indeed the new policy, has anything to do with the change at the top.
The Apple Store has never been defined by the hard sell. In fact, it boldly fought against it. Apple retail employees have never earned commission because the goal was to give shoppers the right advice, and match person to product based on need and wants, not which one gives the biggest kickback.
These new initiatives to juice iPhone XS and iPhone XR fly in the face of the principled stance Apple has established in the past. Staff advice is distorted by upper management marketing pressure, rather than monetary incentives, but the result is the same for the customer. The advice is currently biased towards hitting Apple’s targets, not what the person walking in the shop really wants.
Perfectly put. This is not the Apple I know. And love.
In 2013, Apple introduced a security feature designed to make iPhones less valuable targets to would-be thieves. An iPhone can only be associated to one iCloud account, meaning that, in order to sell it to someone else (or in order for a stolen phone to be used by someone new) that account needs to be removed from the phone altogether. A stolen iPhone which is still attached to the original owner’s iCloud account is worthless for personal use or reselling purposes (unless you strip it for parts).
And:
The iCloud security feature has likely cut down on the number of iPhones that have been stolen, but enterprising criminals have found ways to remove iCloud in order to resell devices. To do this, they phish the phone’s original owners, or scam employees at Apple Stores, which have the ability to override iCloud locks. Thieves, coders, and hackers participate in an underground industry designed to remove a user’s iCloud account from a phone so that they can then be resold.
This is a fascinating deep dive into the sophisticated black market that evolved for the sole purpose of defeating iCloud security locks.
Since we launched the Download feature in 2016, one thing has been clear — members love downloading and enjoying Netflix on the go. Whether they are commuting, traveling or just in a place with pricey or spotty internet access, the download feature makes it possible for our members to take their stories with them wherever they go.
Today, we are excited to introduce Smart Downloads. Now, when you finish watching a downloaded episode, Smart Downloads will delete it, and then automatically download the next episode. You watch, we do the work.
This definitely eliminates a pain point with managing offline content. If you have a Netflix account, take the time to read about this.
The list of winners (and nominees) is posted in lots of places, but this is the official list, published by the Recording Academy, the people behind the Grammy Awards.
An anonymous blackmailer has caught at least two YouTube creators in a scheme involving cash ransoms and esoteric copyright laws.
Last week, both creators shared stories of how their channels were being threatened with a third copyright strike — and the possible termination of their channels — from an anonymous extortionist. The scammer offered to reverse the strikes in return for payment to a bitcoin wallet.
It’s a balance issue. Copyright strikes let copyright holders protect their content, but open the doors to this sort of extortion.
Those who are able to appeal the strikes don’t have it much easier. The process, when successful, can take at least a month — and during that time, “you can’t upload at all,” according to Pierce Riola, a voice actor whose YouTube channel been hit by similar extortion scams in the past.
Interesting read. Reminds me of the issue in the iOS App Store, where copycats copy successful apps, down to the pixel, and the original creators are stuck between the hard rock of legally pursuing the copiers, or pressing Apple for a takedown, which can take time, if successful at all.
In the YouTube channel example, should this be YouTube’s responsibility to fix? In the case of the App Store, does Apple have a responsibility to prevent or repair the app copying scourge?
Open Culture: >The Prince party playlist (available on Spotify) has just the right mix of erotic, romantic, and spiritual—with the psychedelic funk of Shuggie Otis thrown in, naturally—some of the most finely-tuned soul the seventies produced.
The songs you choose to play can influence the way your guests feel. Slow songs can give a more intimate feel while upbeat music is more hype and energetic. Good music must be able to match the theme of your party. A silent disco or silent rave is an event where people dance to music listened to on wireless headphones. Rather than using a speaker system, music is broadcast via a radio transmitter with the signal being picked up by wireless headphone receivers worn by the participants. If you need some help setting a great party, you might want to find the party hire.
> >One of the latest recordings on the playlist, Chaka Khan’s “I Was Made to Love Him” came out in 1978, the same year as Prince’s first album, so we can take a fairly good guess at what he was listening to when he made his debut. In fact, we might look at the playlist as a snapshot of the funk-rock-soul genius from Minneapolis’ original inspirations, which still resonate like cosmic radiation in his late digital-era recordings.
You can’t go wrong letting Prince pick your party music.
Set in the 1990s, Marvel Studios’ Captain Marvel is an all-new adventure from a previously unseen period in the history of the Marvel Cinematic Universe that follows the journey of Carol Danvers as she becomes one of the universe’s most powerful heroes.
This. is. awful. If any of you young folks want to know what the World Wide Web looked like in the 1990s, look upon this site and despair for your elders and what we had to endure.
“It hurts me to admit it,” Sybil Marie Hicks wrote in her pre-written memorial to herself, which ran in the Spec after she died on Feb 2. “But I, Mrs. Ron Hicks from Baysville, have passed away.”
In the obituary, she affectionately wrote about her husband, Ron, whom she called a “Horse’s Ass,” and her children, clearly labeling which ones she liked best.
Even if I wrote my own obituary, I still wouldn’t be as cool as this woman.
At the dark intersection of America’s ongoing political quagmire and an angsty public searching for answers is Merriam-Webster’s dictionary, a bright roadsign providing unadulterated knowledge. One medium for sharing this information has been Twitter where Merriam-Webster has spent nearly a decade reporting on what words are being searched for on its website at any given moment.
Some…words that have also seen a rise in popularity on Merriam-Webster are collusion, cloture, clemency, and complicit…
There are few things quietly funnier than a Merriam-Webster subtweet.
One of first numbers you’ll see when you’re shopping for a new TV — right after the screen size and the price — is the resolution. Unfortunately, it’s one of the more confusing numbers too.
Here are some common questions you might have about resolution
We’re in the market for a new set so this was helpful in explaining to my non-techy wife why we need a 75″ TV. Please don’t tell her we don’t.
Joanna Stern got a hacker to try to break into her various webcams. Is putting tape over your webcam justified, or more like putting on a tinfoil hat? I’m in the former camp.
Clearly, keeping up with your various system updates will throw plenty of roadblocks in the way of a hacker, but plenty of people don’t do this.
Dr. Drang, from a longer piece on the responsibility shifts between Apple Senior VPs:
To me, Ahrendts’s five years in charge of Retail has been similar to Ive’s time as Chief Design Officer. The Apple Stores look better than ever, but they don’t work as well as they used to. No one I know looks forward to going to an Apple Store, even when it’s for the fun task of buying a new toy. No doubt a lot of this is due to Apple’s success and the mobs of people milling about, but Ahrendts didn’t solve the problem of efficiently handling the increased customer load.
Interesting take. Whether this is Ahrendts doing or a result of Apple’s massive growing pains, I do think there’s something to this.
And do head over to the original article and tap on that tiny asterisk after the phrase “milling about”, for a nice Yogi Berra quote.
Apple is telling app developers to remove or properly disclose their use of analytics code that allows them to record how a user interacts with their iPhone apps — or face removal from the app store, TechCrunch can confirm.
In an email, an Apple spokesperson said: “Protecting user privacy is paramount in the Apple ecosystem. Our App Store Review Guidelines require that apps request explicit user consent and provide a clear visual indication when recording, logging, or otherwise making a record of user activity.”
Imagine if your website or mobile app could see exactly what your customers do in real time, and why they did it? This is no longer a hypothetical question, but a real possibility. This is Glassbox, an innovative customer experience solution to help your organization manage the results of big data analytics. Glassbox is the first Enterprise analytics platform that analyses every digital customer interaction. Can your website afford not to have a brain?
A recently published Apple patent application suggests that a future HomePod could feature support for 3D hand gestures, Face ID, and much more.
And:
Interestingly, the HomePod could have LEDs woven into the fabric to provide visual feedback for the hand gestures. The LEDs could also be configured to display alphanumeric characters through the fabric that change depending on time of day.
And:
As for Face ID, the patent explains that the HomePod could identify users in the vicinity of the speaker using “facial recognition,” as well as measure the distance of users to the speaker. This could allow for biometric authentication of Personal Requests, multiple user profiles, and more on a future HomePod.
Facial recognition is one of those technologies that has huge potential for misuse, if it falls into the wrong hands. I believe it is vital for Apple to keep its emphasis on privacy. I count on my information to stay MY information. That’s part of my agreement with Apple, and why I am so comfortable exposing so much of my life to Apple.
As to the HomePod, I’m really looking forward to seeing what comes next.
After AT&T decided to start rolling out “5G Evolution” branding on phones and networks that use 4G LTE Advanced technology, competitors have had to make decisions on how to respond. While T-Mobile mocked it with a sticker, Verizon (Engadget’s parent company) fired off a letter. So what is Sprint going to do? It has filed a lawsuit in federal court, seeking an injunction to prevent AT&T from using 5GE tags on its devices or advertising.
5GE is enhanced LTE, not 5G. That 5GE branding is consumer-hostile, at the very least.
In 2017, AT&T began to similarly use the trademark 5G Evolution (5G E) to refer to LTE networks upgraded to support higher data speeds via LTE-Advanced and LTE Advanced Pro features, such as 4×4 MIMO antennas, 256-QAM, and three-way carrier aggregation. AT&T promotes these services as having a theoretical top speed of 400 Mbit/s. The suite is supported on certain high-end Android smartphones offered by the carrier, such as the LG V30 and the Samsung Galaxy S8 and S9, and the iPhone XR and XS. In late 2018, AT&T began to deploy software updates to display a “5G E” network indicator when connected to such a network.
This is a bad look, AT&T. Pull that 5GE from the status bar before your brand takes an even bigger hit.
Depth Control on iPhone XS and iPhone XR allows you to adjust the depth of field to get the perfect amount of blur. Turning any background into a beautiful backdrop.
Apple has said it will compensate the teenager who first found a security bug in Group FaceTime that allowed users to eavesdrop before a call was picked up. The bug was initially reported to Apple by 14-year-old Grant Thompson and his mother, but the family struggled getting in contact with the company before the bug was discovered elsewhere and went viral on social media.
The payout will fall under Apple’s bug bounty, which incentivizes security researchers to claim a reward for privately submitting security bugs and vulnerabilities to the company. Apple will also offer an unspecified additional gift to Thompson’s education.
Good to hear that Apple has stepped up and done the right thing by this kid.
In this age of HD and 4K, videos seem to keep getting bigger, but our hard drives and Internet bandwidth don’t always follow suit. Whether you’re ripping your Blu-ray collection to an external hard drive, or just trying to e-mail Grandma a high-quality video of your vacation, sooner or later you’ll wish you could fit all those pixels into a smaller file. Happily, you can, with a little help from Handbrake – a free app that helps you compress video without sacrificing (much of) its quality.
Apple is today releasing an updated version of iOS 12.1.4, which is designed to address a major FaceTime bug that was widely publicized last Monday. The new update comes two weeks after the launch of iOS 12.1.3, an update that introduced bug fixes.
The iOS 12.1.4 update will be available on all eligible devices over-the-air in the Settings app. To access the update, go to Settings –> General –> Software Update.
If you use or want to use Group FaceTime, update as soon as you can.
The marriage of country and atonal music, a match made in…well..not sure. But I love it.
Some references to keep in mind:
Schoenberg refers to the influential composer Arnold Schoenberg, who many credit with the birth of atonal, or 12 tone music. A big influence on Frank Zappa.
Alban Berg was another influential atonal composer.
John Cage, an American composer, best known for his composition 4′33″, which I might title, musicians in a room, not playing, with 4’33” of background noise.
I absolutely love this song, and offer a shout out to my brother, Stu, who taught me all about such things.
The article is about Steven Soderbergh and his continued quest to create mainstream movies shot completely on an iPhone.
Great read, though I think a bit of backstory is missing. Soderbergh was the director of the movie Moneyball and was fired. From the Moneyball Wikipedia page:
On June 19, 2009, days before filming was set to begin, Sony put the picture on hold. Soderbergh’s plan for the film called for elements considered non-traditional for a sports movie, such as interviews with real-life players. Soderbergh was dismissed and ultimately replaced by Bennett Miller. Aaron Sorkin wrote a third version of the screenplay.
That firing started a rift between Soderbergh and the studios, traditional moviemaking. The iPhone brought him back to moviemaking, with the “shot on iPhone” independent release Unsane, shot entirely on an iPhone 7.
Soderbergh’s latest effort, High Flying Bird, was shot entirely on an iPhone 8, and was done for Netflix. I find Soderbergh’s reemergence, in part thanks to the capabilities of the iPhone, fascinating.
There is no place like New York. ❤️?Love this remarkable #shotoniPhone video of NYC’s unstoppable energy. The brilliant @andyyto shows us some of the best of what iPhone XR can do. https://t.co/0ZrW7jySPO
I spent a nice stretch in New York last week, and this video (part of a series) really clicked for me, captured the essence of the city. It also gives you a sense of what you can do with video using the iPhone XR.
Terrific, thoughtful piece about Angela Ahrendts’ departure and Deirdre O’Brien’s appointment.
One highlight (of many):
Across the U.S., retailers struggle to make ends meet. Since Ahrendts began at Apple in 2014, legendary brands like Sears, Bon-Ton, Toys R Us, RadioShack, and countless others have filed for bankruptcy. Mall operators face the challenge of repurposing massive vacant anchor stores. Yet Apple stores are consistently filled to the brim. The same success that has allowed Apple to thrive amidst a sea of store closures has become a lightning rod for retail woes.
It’s true that making an appointment at an Apple store often means days of waiting for an available slot, and walk-ins are almost impossible. Since 2014, Ahrendts has guided the launch of the Apple Watch, iPad Pro, AirPods, HomePod, and yearly iPhone models. Each of these products have led to growing customer demand even as Apple increases its store footprint globally. This strain on resources would’ve occurred no matter who was at the helm. Simply increasing the number of Apple stores worldwide brings with it a new list of problems long enough to fill another article.
