Nick Corasaniti, New York Times:

> IT’S MEMORIAL DAY WEEKEND, 1976, and nearly 1,000 people pack a tiny club in Asbury Park, N.J., to watch a local band and a local legend named Bruce Springsteen, share their mix of rock and soul with a wider world that had all but written off this struggling seaside city for good.

And:

> Since it opened in 1974, the club, the Stone Pony, has been the beating heart of Asbury Park, a beacon for musicians and fans alike. But its survival, much like that of its host city, has been a constant battle, a story of resilience and revival, of sold-out shows and custom roller blinds on windows. > > Here is the renowned club’s history, as told by the owners, musicians, staff and fans who have called its dark black interior and low-slung stage home.

Growing up in New Jersey, Springsteen was almost a religion. And the Stone Pony was the center of his universe. This is a brilliantly told tale of a major branch of the rock family tree.

9to5Toys:

Apple has refreshed its refurbished storefront this morning to now include 2018 MacBook Pros for the first time. Inventory is primarily centered around the latest 13-inch models with prices starting at $1,529. A high-end maxed-out 13-inch model is on sale for $3,139, which is good for $560 off the regular price, marking today’s biggest savings. Most of these deals work out to be around 15% off the new condition price. In recent months we’ve seen as much as $200 off 13-inch models and up to $300 off 15-inch configurations.

Here’s the link to Apple’s refurbished storefront. Have a look around.

A couple of links associated with Apple’s updated privacy portal:

• This Apple support document will walk you through the process of getting a copy of the data associated with your Apple ID account.

• This is the link to your privacy portal page. Log in with your Apple ID, do the two-factor dance, and grab a copy of your updated data.

• This article by Rene Ritchie is an interesting read: Apple’s updated privacy site and why it matters.

A snippet:

Apple, as a matter of company policy, believes privacy is a fundamental human right. From Tim Cook at the very top to engineers on the front line, this belief permeates Apple and drives the company’s product development process every bit as much as the technology itself. As much as Apple is designing for experience and for accessibility, the company is also designing for security and privacy.

The more I read, the more I learn about the big tech companies, I do believe this about Apple, and I do believe Apple is the only company of the majors that has this commitment.

Gizmodo:

The UK’s advertising watchdog chastised Spotify today for releasing an “unduly distressing” ad that, it argues, improperly targeted children. The ad shows young people listening to Camila Cabello’s song “Havana,” which in turn wakes up some scary looking dolls that go on to terrorize them.

“The fact the ad was set inside the home, including a bedtime setting, and featured a doll, meant it was particularly likely to cause distress to children who saw it,” the ASA wrote in its ruling. “We did not consider that the context of the ad justified the distress.”

Definitely an odd way to promote Spotify.

Apple:

At Apple, we believe privacy is a fundamental human right.

And so much of your personal information — information you have a right to keep private — lives on your Apple devices.

Every Apple product is designed from the ground up to protect that information. And to empower you to choose what you share and with whom.

We’ve proved time and again that great experiences don’t have to come at the expense of your privacy and security. Instead, they can support them.

This updated site from Apple has even more detail on how they feel about the subject and the efforts they are making to ensure that your private data stays private. This stance by Apple isn’t just marketing fluff, although it does serve as a differentiator from other companies. I’ve spoken to lots of Apple employees and it’s something that is a deeply held belief of many of them.

New York Times:

The friendly, bearded face of Caroll Spinney may not be one you recognize immediately. But if you have watched TV at any point in the past 50 years or so, you are almost certainly familiar with his work. Since 1969, he has played the parts of the gentle, inquisitive Big Bird and the lovably disgruntled Oscar the Grouch on “Sesame Street,” the long-running children’s program.

This Thursday, as he so often has, Spinney, 84, plans to travel to the studios in Astoria, Queens, where “Sesame Street” is produced, and record some voices for his colorful alter egos.

Then he will retire from the program: His roles will be passed on to new performers and his remarkable half-century run, in which he has embodied two of the most beloved characters on television, will come to an end.

Few people can lay claim to providing more joy to children than Mr Spinney. Even as an adult, the image of Big Bird makes me smile and brings back wonderful memories of watching Sesame Street with my siblings.

CNET:

The Pixel 3 camera holds its own against Apple’s iPhone XS despite having one camera tied behind its back. It all but dispenses with the camera’s flash, using new low-light shooting abilities instead. And it offers enthusiasts a radically new variety of raw image that opens up photographic flexibility and artistic freedom.

It’s all possible because of a field called computational photography, a term invented in 2004 by Google distinguished engineer Marc Levoy while he was at Stanford, before he moved full-time to Google Research. Long gone are the days when photography was all about glass lenses and film chemistry. Fast receding are first-generation digital cameras that closely mirror the analog approach.

Now our cameras rely as much on computers as optics. And what we’ve seen so far is only the beginning.

I post this less to say one camera is better than the other but to point out as advancements happen in computational photography, everyone who shoots photos with their smartphone benefit as manufacturers leapfrog each other with each release.

I think there will always be a place for DSLRs but for more and more people, not only is their smartphone “good enough”, it’s become a damn good camera in its own right.

WATCH: The 47th Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta, an annual event that draws 1 million visitors, features more than 500 hot air balloons and pilots from all over the world pic.twitter.com/UW98omaqhU

— Reuters Top News (@Reuters) October 17, 2018

Going to this festival is definitely a bucket list item for me. I always tell my photography students, if you want guaranteed good shots, shoot hot air balloons. They are often brightly coloured, huge, and only fly during The Golden Hour. You’ll definitely get some good shots.

This is some lovely appreciation. Worth the read. And that first picture!

Apple should contact this poster, use the story for a commercial, or in a marketing video. Great stuff.

If you are interested in space exploration, rocketry, this is a worthy follow.

Right now, they are live tweeting the communications with Apollo 7. Terrific idea.

[H/T Marcus Mendes]

Though there are plenty of uses for individual voice identification, I can’t think of a better use case than the HomePod. For example, it’d be great if HomePod Siri could play different music, depending on who said “Play some music.”

Apple:

The new iPhone XR, integrating breakthrough technologies from iPhone XS in an all-screen glass and aluminum design featuring a stunning 6.1-inch Liquid Retina display — the most advanced LCD in a smartphone — and six beautiful finishes will be available for customers to pre-order beginning Friday, October 19 at 12:01 a.m. PST on apple.com and the Apple Store app.

And:

iPhone XR will be available in 64GB, 128GB and 256GB models in black, white, blue, yellow, coral and (PRODUCT)RED starting at $749 (US)

And:

Customers will be able to pre-order iPhone XR beginning Friday, October 19 at 12:01 a.m. PST with availability beginning Friday, October 26, in more than 50 countries and territories.

Follow the headline link for all the technical details. But if you want an iPhone XR anytime soon, I’d jump on that pre-order.

iPhoneography Central:

My selections this week from our Flickr group return to one of my favorite themes (so much so that I have to keep trying to come up with original names for them) – black on white, otherwise known as the B&W photo.

A lot of beginners shy away from black and white shots, thinking they are intimidating and hard to do. But with a little practice and some of the cool apps as described in this article, you should give B&W shots a try!

Wired:

Ive, who was interviewed at the summit by Anna Wintour, the artistic director of Condé Nast and longtime editor of Vogue, talked about everything from Apple’s penchant for secrecy to the social and civic responsibilities of tech giants, which today possess not only powerful sway over the media landscape but a strong grip on the attentions of billions of people. In fact, Wintour’s opening question directly confronted Apple’s contribution to digital dependence. “First there were iPhones, and now there’s iPhone addiction,” said Wintour. “How do you feel about that? Is the world too connected?”

Ive—who, while known for being shy, is also notoriously loquacious—responded succinctly: “I think it’s good to be connected. I think the real question is what you do with that connection.”

Another interesting interview with Ive and I couldn’t agree with him more on the above. “Connection” isn’t bad in and of itself.

Uncrate:

Michel Parbot’s The Empire Strikes Back documentary has been somewhat of a Star Wars urban legend. His behind-the-scenes footage was believed to have been lost — until now. Almost 40 years an auction sale later, the entire film has surfaced and it was worth the wait. The video offers nearly a full hour of on-set clips, interviews, and some of the vintage special effects work that brought the movie to life.

Star Wars fans rejoice!

Great, detailed, hands-on look at the coming version of Photoshop for iPad. This is the real deal, a version of Photoshop that uses the cloud to share files between your Mac and your iPad.

Watch the video, embedded below, follow the headline link for the Verge review.

Reddit:

Basically, a failure involving iPhone and local carrier TIM has made iPhone owners wake up 1 hour earlier today.

That’s because the smartphone adjusted automatically for daylight saving time, but that year the start of the DST was postponed to November due to the second round of presidential elections and the National High School Exam.

A small fraction of Android users was affected, but problem hit mainly iPhone users.

That’s a major oops. I wonder if Apple has a mechanism in place to deal with time changes like this.

Craig Grannell:

The standard macOS interface has quite a few semi-transparent elements, which like frosted glass provide a glimpse of what’s beneath them. At Apple events, execs go giddy about how pretty this is. In use, these elements vary from being distracting to outright dangerous. For example, if you have a motion-sickness issue and an animating web page is sitting behind a semi-transparent element, it can take a while before you realise it’s affecting you, by which time it’s too late and you’re already dizzy.

And:

“Fine”, says Apple, grumpily, “so just turn on Reduce transparency”. Only it’s not that simple. Because when you do, Apple designers get in a strop and hurl logic out of the window. What you’d expect to happen is for macOS to remove the semi-transparent bits. So instead of Finder sidebars or the macOS app switcher showing what’s beneath them, they’d just have a neutral solid background. Nope. Instead, in its infinite wisdom, Apple’s decided those components should instead be coloured by your Desktop background.

Stephen Hackett put together a few screenshots to show off this effect.

To me, this sort of thing happens due to lack of a specific branch of testing. Seems to me, someone at Apple should reach out to Craig Grannell and ask him (and other leaders in the accessibility community) to beta test new software/hardware early in the cycle, so they have time to address these sorts of issues. I believe accessibility testing would be greatly enhanced by voices, hands, eyes of real world experience.

Wow. Just wow.

There’s a lot of anger in this riveting piece, but don’t be quick to dismiss Morgan’s story. Lots of lessons learned, and I suspect you might recognize some of the behavior he encountered in people in your universe.

[H/T Khaled]

Follow the link to see Apple’s original bagel emoji, and the new “fixed” version. While the new version is undoubtedly better (everything is better with a shmear of cream cheese), it still (IMO) falls far short of truly reflecting a real life bagel.

And that said, I do recognize how trivial this is. But I was born with a deep, familial appreciation of bagels, so this hits home for me.

I think the bagel Wikipedia page has some images that might be a good starting point for rev 3. The key is texture.

CNBC:

The University of North Carolina’s medical school will soon be starting a study called BEGIN, which stands for Binge Eating Genetics Initiative, to better understand overeating. People with binge eating disorder often eat large amounts of food uncontrollably in a small period of time.

And:

Each participant will be given a free watch, courtesy of Apple, and researchers will monitor their heart rate using the device’s sensor over the course of a month to see if there are spikes before binge eating episodes. It’s likely that a binging and purging episode would cause some biological change that would show up in the Apple Watch data, according to Bulik.

As the capabilities of the Apple Watch grow, as more sensors are added, we should see more and more of these sorts of studies. Terrific use of technology.

Mr. Allen, who in 1975 set up with Bill Gates the company that became known as Microsoft, died Monday from complications of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in Seattle, according to a statement from his family.

Very sad.

My thanks to Bare Bones Software for sponsoring The Loop this week. Do you sling code or compose with words? Whether you’re an app developer, web developer, systems admin or just want a powerful writing tool that stays out of your way, BBEdit is worth checking out.

I’ve been using BBEdit since 1995, so I know first hand that it can handle any job I throw at it.

BBEdit is crafted in response to the needs of writers, web authors, and software developers, providing an abundance of high-performance features for editing, searching, and the manipulation of text.

BBEdit 12 is 64-bit ready. Download and try it today!

VentureBeat: >Google today announced that the camera within the Translate app for iOS and Android is now able to translate 13 new languages including Arabic, Bengali, Hindi, Thai, and Vietnamese. The update is available starting today and will be rolled out to Translate users worldwide in the coming days, a company spokesperson told VentureBeat in an email. > >Translation of text seen in photos or in real-time on billboards or menus was added for Google Translate in 2015, and started with 27 languages. To carry out visual translations, simply open the Translate app and choose the camera icon. Translations can be carried out in real time.

As the demand for seamless communication across languages continues to rise, the importance of reliable translation services cannot be overstated.

With tools like Google Translate’s camera feature making everyday translations more accessible, professional agencies are still essential for high-quality, nuanced translations. Ortiz Schneider, a premier language services agency, has positioned itself as a leader in providing specialized translations that go beyond the capabilities of automated tools.

While machine learning advancements are impressive, Ortiz Schneider ensures that every translation is culturally accurate and contextually relevant, bridging gaps that technology alone cannot address. Whether it’s legal documents, medical reports, or business communications, this agency offers a human touch, ensuring that nothing is lost in translation.

As I do research for a (belated) honeymoon in Florence, Italy and my photography workshop in Lisbon, Portugal, I’ve been testing the Google Translate app and I’m very impressed at how well it does. I don’t speak Italian or Portuguese so I don’t know how accurate the translations are but they are definitely good enough to get the basic idea.

Slate:

Of all the weird and frankly nonsensical practices that companies use in hiring, probably none are as bizarre as our conventions around negotiating salary. Given that paying employees money in exchange for their labor is what hiring is all about, you’d think that salary would be discussed early, clearly, and directly in any hiring process. But for some reason that approach is more the exception than the rule. Instead, many employers play coy games around salary, hiding what they plan to pay and even taking offense when candidates bring up money.

On the job seeker side of the equation, candidates tend to be very interested in what a gig pays—which makes sense, since most people aren’t seeking jobs out of the kindness of their hearts or a desire to be industrious. But employers frequently refuse to discuss a position’s salary range until late in a hiring process, or sometimes not even until they make a formal job offer. Meanwhile, though, they’re often happy to push—or even require—candidates to show their hand by naming a number first.

As a freelancer, I’ve been in this position many times and my wife, who is researching jobs in anticipation of our move to Australia next year, is getting the same runaround in her searches as well. It’s really frustrating and stressful.

Ars Technica:

Early in the platform’s life—long before the release of the Apple TV 4K, which has very attractive specifications for game development—Apple lifted the requirement that games support its controller. But the first impression had already been made. And even if developers could release games that required a controller, the lack of a controller bundle for games-minded Apple TV buyers meant that developers couldn’t feel confident they’d find a large audience that could play their games.

But there’s more going on here than just controller support. To find out more, we talked to the people who would have the most complete perspective on the Apple TV’s video game credentials.

Games have been a bastard stepchild at Apple. The company has always given mixed messages to game developers regarding how much the company is willing to support them in their efforts.

Digital Camera World:

Adobe’s dream is that you will be able to open and edit a PSD (Photoshop format image file) on an iPad and then carry on working on it seamlessly on your desktop computer, or the other way round. This would be a major step forward, avoiding the need to export/import files, convert them to different formats or overcome inconsistencies in tools and effects.

The company’s engineers have already carried out ‘proof of life’ experiments using the same underlying Photoshop code and algorithm’s on an iPad and are now ready to launch a 1.0 version for Apple’s tablet devices.

This is one of those “I’ll believe it when I see it” stories but if it is true, it will be an amazing leap in functionality for many Photoshoppers who want to use their iPads to edit.