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.
Spotify, from their Gimlet acquisition press release:
That’s why we announced today the strategic acquisitions of two podcasting companies, Gimlet and Anchor. These companies serve two different, distinct roles in the industry. Gimlet is one of the best content creators in the world, with unique, celebrated podcast shows like Homecoming, which was recently adapted into a critically acclaimed show on Amazon Prime, and the internet culture hit Reply All. And Anchor has completely reimagined the path to audio creation, enabling creation for the next generation of podcasters worldwide — 15 billion hours of content on the platform during Q4.
And:
With the addition of Gimlet and Anchor, Spotify will now become the leading global podcast publisher with more shows than any other company.
I’ve been following the Gimlet Media story since the very beginning of the company. Gimlet’s first podcast was a show called Startup, launched in September 2014, documenting the creation of a brand new company.
The earliest episodes were all about the typical growing pains of a brand new venture: Figuring out your core values, learning how to pitch investors, working through partnership agreements, and settling on a name.
Amazing to watch this story unfold. And, if Spotify’s claim is to be believed, this little venture has helped Spotify become the largest podcast publisher on the planet. This true?
The Ian McAllister-directed film takes viewers to the remote area on the northwest coast of B.C. and shows off the pristine landscapes and unique wildlife — the cool and rare spirit bear and the swimming coastal wolves are just two species that call it home — of the 6.4-million hectare Great Bear Rainforest. Part of the largest coastal temperate rainforest in the world, the rainforest is stewarded by local First Nations, who are also highlighted in the film.
For Reynolds, the chance to be a part of a project like Great Bear Rainforest was an easy decision to make. “I’m a big fan of the Great Bear Rainforest and I’m a big fan of IMAX, so it seemed like a match made in heaven, so I said yes right away,” said Reynolds.
The Great Bear Rainforest is relatively near where I live. The first trailer for the film was a little offputting. Having “Deadpool” do the narration made me anticipate the smirking joke that seemed inevitable.
There is little more surprising—or even alarming—than having audio start blasting from your speakers while something starts moving before your eyes. It triggers all sorts of fight-or-flight reactions buried deep in our brainstems, wakes the kids, and scares the pets.
I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!
Is there anyone outside of advertisers and corporations that actually wants video or audio to autoplay?
You just want to buy an SD (secure digital) card or microSD card for your DSLR, dash cam, drone, smartphone, or tablet. But one size doesn’t fit all. If the confusing array of memory card logos and specs has you pounding your head against a wall, we understand. We’ll give you the quick answers for most common memory card uses. (Pro tip: Check your device’s manual for memory card recommendations.)
If your needs are very particular, we’ve also delved deep into SD card standards to help you understand the difference between Class 10, V30, UHS-I, A1, and U3, so you can make the right choice for any device or purpose.
It used to be easy – just buy an SD card. But nowadays, between various cameras, drones and other devices, along with the specs constantly being updated, you need to buy the right card for the right device.
Deirdre was part of the team that planned and launched Apple’s very first online and retail stores. She has been a part of Retail’s exciting expansion and every product launch since. She knows the value of the deep human connections that retail experiences make possible — and she knows this is where Apple shows its heart and soul.
Good letter. Follow the headline link to read the whole thing.
This iPhone XR review from Anandtech is long and detailed. Don’t miss the popup menus at the top and bottom of the page, which will take you to each of the 7 pages, including the “Conclusion & End Remarks”.
Kashmir Hill, writing for Gizmodo, in the latest of her six part series on dumping Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and, this week, Apple from her life. Fascinating read.
As we posted last night, Apple formally announced that Angela Ahrendts would be leaving Apple this April, naming Deirdre O’Brien as the new senior vice president of Retail + People.
I’ve long been a fan of Angela’s. Hard to know what aspects of Apple Retail success she should get credit for, how much of those plans were in place when she arrived, but that aside, I’ve always appreciated her intelligence and her well spoken representation as the public face of Apple Retail.
Here’s a little publicized interview from a few years back that CNBC just posted, with Angela talking about retail.
And if you are unfamiliar with Deirdre O’Brien, here’s a short backgrounder to fill in a few of the details.
From Apple’s announcement:
In her expanded role, Deirdre will bring her three decades of Apple experience to lead the company’s global retail reach, focused on the connection between the customer and the people and processes that serve them. She will continue to lead the People team, overseeing all People-related functions, including talent development and Apple University, recruiting, employee relations and experience, business partnership, benefits, compensation, and inclusion and diversity.
It is interesting to look at the updated Leadership page, where Deirdre is the only person with a “+” in their title (Senior Vice President, Retail + People). Plenty of “and”, but no other “+”.
Retail and HR are such different spaces, I can’t help but wonder if that + is a stopgap, a temporary assignment until they find someone else to take over one spot or the other. Or, perhaps, that + is simply a typo, and Deirdre is in both camps for the long haul, with an and in her future.
The more emoji that join the list, the more we need a re-roll of the emoji interface in iOS. At the very least, I’d love for iOS to steal the customizable Favorites list from macOS, allowing me a favorites pane that I control, in addition to the dynamic pane populated with the most recently used emoji.
Security researcher Linuz Henze has shared a video demonstration of what is claimed to be a macOS Mojave exploit to access passwords stored in the Keychain. However, he has said he is not sharing his findings with Apple out of protest.
Henze has publicly shared legitimate iOS vulnerabilities in the past, so he has a track record of credibility.
However, Henze is frustrated that Apple’s bug bounty program only applies to iOS, not macOS, and has decided not to release more information about his latest Keychain invasion.
As Apple explores changes to its bug reporting process, this should join the FaceTime eavesdropping bug as case studies for how information like this flows back to Apple.
We are a national leader in long-term solutions to ending homelessness. Each year, we support more than 50 community agencies across the country, and work together with partners in all sectors to address the issue. We bring awareness and attention to the challenges of homelessness, engaging Canadians through public education.
Buy a toque to support long-term solutions to homelessness. Proceeds go to agencies working directly with people experiencing homelessness.
I’m a big fan of this organization and the work they do. Toques can be considered uniquely Canadian but even if you’re not from the Great White North, buy one and give a damn.
Apple today announced that Deirdre O’Brien is taking on new responsibilities for Apple’s retail and online stores in an expanded role as senior vice president of Retail + People, reporting to CEO Tim Cook. After five transformative years leading the company’s retail and online stores, Angela Ahrendts plans to depart Apple in April for new personal and professional pursuits.
In her expanded role, Deirdre will bring her three decades of Apple experience to lead the company’s global retail reach, focused on the connection between the customer and the people and processes that serve them. She will continue to lead the People team, overseeing all People-related functions, including talent development and Apple University, recruiting, employee relations and experience, business partnership, benefits, compensation, and inclusion and diversity.
For those of you who find regular Guinness too strong, the company has developed “Guinness Clear”. Apparently, it has a flavor reminiscent of Heineken.
Grant Thompson, the 14-year-old who found Apple’s FaceTime flaw, may get a bounty for his discovery.
“I kind of found this one on accident, which is pretty surprising to me that like Apple didn’t get this and a 14-year-old kid found it by accident,” Thompson told CNBC.
And:
[Grant’s mother] said a high-level Apple executive flew to Tucson, Arizona, on Friday afternoon to meet with Grant. The executive, whom she declined to name, “thanked us in person and also asked for our feedback, asked us how they could improve their reporting process.”
“They also indicated that Grant would be eligible for the bug bounty program. And we would hear from their security team the following week in terms of what that meant.
I do hope Apple finds ways to improve their reporting process. Ideally, the new process would help egregious, widely reported bugs quickly find their way to the appropriate team at Apple, perhaps with a more publicly exposed status system that makes it clear the reported bug is valid, with a fix in the works.
The idea of tons of iPhone owners duplicating the work of others by reporting a known bug, all in an attempt to get it to rise to the right team at Apple seems incredibly wasteful to me. No easy fix here, glad Apple is working on this.
In 1991, aspiring animator Mike Judge was a touring musician and grad student living outside of Dallas, Texas, when he channeled his past cubicle-life angst – from his former life as an engineer – into a 16mm short film called Office Space, featuring Milton. The vignette about a mumbling office worker and his condescending boss – which Judge drew, voiced and scored –would air on Comedy Central. It was a low-key launch for one of Hollywood’s most singular comedic voices who brought us the generation-defining MTV cartoon Beavis and Butt-Head, the eerily prescient 2006 satirical feature Idiocracy, and HBO’s Emmy-winning tech-nerd lampoon Silicon Valley among others.
The short film also inspired Judge’s live-action feature debut, Office Space: a box-office-flop-turned-cult-classic that ultimately became one of the most relatable workplace comedies of all time.
I generally hate “workplace comedies” but I saw this in theaters when my date and I were late getting to the movie we actually wanted to see. I don’t think I’ve ever laughed so hard in a movie theater.
In an age where we LOL and ROFL, where we transmit through Siri and Alexa instead of typing, where auto-correct both fixes and generates errors in our written work, we have to wonder: Can anyone spell anymore, and does it even matter?
First, it’s hard to tell whether spelling abilities have declined, partly because it’s not usually tested anymore in a way we can isolate and track.
We certainly aren’t teaching spelling in schools the way we once were, partly because of national Common Core standards released in 2010.
I think this is a fascinating question. My wife and I disagree on whether or not spelling should matter to our 13-year-old. What do you think?
Target last month announced that it would begin accepting Apple Pay at all of its stores in the coming weeks. That rollout has now begun.
MacRumors readers have shared photos of NFC-enabled payment terminals at select Target stores in the Northeast and Midwest, including the White Plains, New York location below. The updated interface indicates that Apple Pay is accepted along with Google Pay, Samsung Pay, and contactless credit cards.
This is one of the last shovelfuls of dirt thrown onto the coffin of the ill-fated CurrentC platform.
Warby Parker is out with an update to its iOS app that brings a useful new feature to its collection of spectacles: Virtual Try-On. With Apple’s ARKit and TrueDepth camera tech, the company’s new software lets users see “the realistic color, texture, and size of each style— using just your iPhone X [and later]” while shopping for new glasses with its app.
Virtual Try-On is available today in the free Glasses by Warby Parker app for iPhone X, XS, XS Max, and XR users. There’s also a share option to send your Virtual Try-On results with others.
I haven’t tried the app yet but, as someone who went glasses shopping a few months ago for the first time, I can appreciate the idea behind the app and the relief from some of the tedium and frustration of trying to find the “right” pair of glasses.
Over the last few months I’ve bought and tested a couple dozen USB-to-Lightning cables in the sub-$10 price bracket, and all in all, they’re pretty gnarly.
So what’s wrong with them?
Well, first off, every cable I bought that claimed to be a “genuine” Apple cable was a counterfeit. And poor quality counterfeits at that.
It’s frustrating that Apple charges so much for a “simple” cable but trying to save money may actually do more harm in the long run. Stick to “name brand” cables.
Had no idea how much work went into creating the SNL cue cards. But when you watch the video, it’s clear how important a role they play, and how complex the process of keeping them in sync with the ever evolving scripts.
Charger tech is changing, moving from silicon to gallium nitride. And that means smaller/lighter form factors and, eventually, more power for less money.
The Verge takes a look at the first generation. Wondering when Apple will make the switch.
No Starch Press is a longtime publisher of books for developers. Over the weekend, they posted this tweet, calling out Amazon for selling a fake version of one of its books (H/T Robert Walter).
The book had the same title, same author, and a similar cover. But it was not printed by No Starch Press and, presumably, none of the money will make its way to No Starch or the author.
Book fakes have been around forever. Pretty early in my book writing career, I found out the ugly truth. When a book with any kind of demand appeared in print, the fake machinery kicked in. Someone (for me, it usually started in China) would buy a copy of the book, use a saw to cut off the spine/binding, then feed the pages into an optical character reader, creating a PDF of the book.
Once they had the fake book in hand, they could print a fake and sell it, or add the fake PDF to a torrent web site. Happened to me with every book I ever wrote.
But this particular fake appears to be surfaced by Amazon, the number one bookseller in the world. Here’s a link to what appears to be the fake. If I had not seen the original, I would never have known.
In the early 2000s, simple images of text were enough to stump most spambots. In 2014, Google pitted one of its machine learning algorithms against humans in solving the most distorted text CAPTCHAs: the computer got the test right 99.8 percent of the time, while the humans got a mere 33 percent.
Google then moved to NoCaptcha ReCaptcha, which observes user data and behavior to let some humans pass through with a click of the “I’m not a robot” button, and presents others with the image labeling we see today. But the machines are once again catching up. All those awnings that may or may not be storefronts? They’re the endgame in humanity’s arms race with the machines.
Sadly, CAPTCHA’s seem like a necessary evil of today’s internet.
A team of Boston doctors tell the woebegone tale of an unnamed, 18-year-old professional athlete who unknowingly swallowed a wooden toothpick. After weeks of abdominal pain, multiple visits to emergency rooms, bloody poops, and a life-threatening infection, doctors finally discovered it—lodged in his colon, piercing through his intestinal wall and into a neighboring, large artery. Then there was the harrowing effort to remove it and patch him up.
I love these medial mystery stories but fair warning, don’t look at the photos unless you’ve got a strong stomach.
