The Guardian:

For a growing number of users – and mental health experts – the very positivity of Instagram is precisely the problem. The site encourages its users to present an upbeat, attractive image that others may find at best misleading and at worse harmful. If Facebook demonstrates that everyone is boring and Twitter proves that everyone is awful, Instagram makes you worry that everyone is perfect – except you.

“On the face of it, Instagram can look very friendly,” says the RSPH’s Niamh McDade. “But that endless scrolling without much interaction doesn’t really lead to much of a positive impact on mental health and wellbeing. You also don’t really have control over what you’re seeing. And you quite often see images that claim to be showing you reality, yet aren’t. That’s especially damaging to young men and women.”

Much like Twitter and Facebook, Instagram is what you make of it. I don’t see any of these “feel good” posts because I don’t follow those kinds of Instagrammers.

Two Bit History:

There are two stories here. The first is a story about a vision of the web’s future that never quite came to fruition. The second is a story about how a collaborative effort to improve a popular standard devolved into one of the most contentious forks in the history of open-source software development.

The future once looked so bright for RSS. What happened? Was its downfall inevitable, or was it precipitated by the bitter infighting that thwarted the development of a single RSS standard?

I am still a big fan of RSS. I don’t know if it’s “dead” or not but it’s a shame it’s not more popular.

Macstories:

iOS 12, available today for the same range of devices that supported iOS 11, feels like a reaction to changes that have occurred around Apple and consumer technology over the past year.

It’s important to understand the context in which iOS 12 is launching today, for events of the past year may have directly shaped Apple’s vision for this update.

This will be the first of many reviews of iOS 12, available today.

Apple:

You can use two cellular plans with your iPhone Xs or iPhone Xs Max, a nano-SIM, and an eSIM. An eSIM is a digital SIM that allows you to activate a cellular plan from your carrier without having to use a physical nano-SIM. Here’s how to set up and use a cellular plan using an eSIM.

Follow the headline link to the Apple knowledge base article (big hat tip to Loop follower and furniture maker J. Leko) and dig in.

Side note: The new iPhone branding is all over the place. In this post, it’s “Xs”. On Apple’s front page, it’s “X?”, and on a variety of other pages, it’s “XS”. I think Apple is going for “X?” and, if typing the s-in-a-square is not practical, “Xs”. I suspect the “XS” was inadvertent and will slowly disappear.

iOS 12 is coming later today. If you haven’t already, follow the advice in Dave Smith’s headline and back up your device before you dive into the new shiny.

One comment on the iCloud backup process. I believe the proper path is:

• Launch Settings
• Tap your name
• Scroll down and tap your phone name (for me, the first line in the 3rd section)
• Tap iCloud Backup
• Tap Back Up Now

Enjoy iOS 12.

Michael Steeber, 9to5Mac:

Ahead of next Friday’s iPhone and Apple Watch launches, Apple is rolling out fresh new artwork and eye-popping displays to its retail stores. Vivid graphic panels promote the upcoming iPhone XS, iPhone XR, and Apple Watch Series 4, while feature bays showcasing Apple services, apps, and third-party accessories are headlined by unique new molded iconography.

“Eye-popping”. Love that. Follow the link, check out the pictures in Michael’s post. They truly do look gorgeous. Worth a trip to my local Apple Store to check these out in person.

From this 9to5Mac article, last week:

Apple has seemingly updated its website today, removing all mentions of AirPower except in one place. Looking at the AirPods product page, Apple mentions the optional wireless charging case, noting that it is currently unavailable. The charging case is placed on what appears to be the AirPower mat, along with the iPhone X.

Previously, the iPhone X’s product page mentioned AirPower, noting that it would be available sometime in 2018. However, with the introduction of iPhone XS and iPhone XR, Apple has removed that reference since iPhone X is no longer being sold.

Now, add this quote from the wrap-up at the end of John Gruber’s Thoughts and Observations on Apple’s iPhone XS/XR and Series 4 Apple Watch Introductory Event, posted Saturday:

I wrote about AirPower’s absence earlier this week. What I’ve heard, third-hand but from multiple little birdies, is that AirPower really is well and truly fucked. Something about the multi-coil design getting too hot — way too hot. There are engineers who looked at AirPower’s design and said it could never work, thermally, and now those same engineers have that “told you so” smug look on their faces. Last year Apple was apparently swayed by arguments that they could figure out a way to make it not get hot. They were, clearly, wrong. I think they’ve either had to go completely back to the drawing board and start over with an entirely different design, or they’ve decided to give up and they just don’t want to say so.

I can only imagine this whole AirPower experience is a lesson learned for the powers-that-be at Apple. Engineering is a complex thing, and not every engineering problem can be solved, as least not in a timely fashion. Pre-announcing product requires a certain hubris and, ultimately, can lead down a rabbit hole of unmet expectations.

Lesson learned is, ultimately, a good thing.

Side note, John Gruber’s event writeup is chock-full of interesting nuggets and well worth your time. I especially like the section on capitalization, and the confusion of “XS/XR” vs “Xs/Xr”, not to mention those little squares. Great stuff.

Horace Dediu, Asymco:

I think Lisa Jackson’s presentation at the September 2018 iPhone launch event was perhaps the most interesting and most profound.

Lisa Jackson is Apple’s Vice President Environment, Policy and Social Initiatives. Here’s a link to her Apple Leadership page.

At the Apple Event, Lisa laid out three things Apple will have to do to “eliminate the need to mine new materials from the Earth”.

1. Sourcing recycled or renewable materials for all products.
2. Ensure that Apple products last as long as possible.
3. After a long life of use, ensure that they are recycled properly.

This second point is the focus of Apple’s strategy shift, and of Horace’s excellent article.

More from the article:

One premise of investing in durable goods hardware companies is that value depends on frequency of upgrades. If products are not replaced frequently they do not generate revenues and the company selling them ends up growing very slowly if at all.

And this is the core of the matter. Apple cannot continue to grow their device sales forever. The market saturates, and the only way to succeed in a saturated market is via planned obsolescent. In other words, they’d have to purposely build phones designed to last for a very limited time.

Yet, Apple seems focused on doing the opposite. They are releasing iOS 12 today, and have worked hard to make sure this latest OS runs on older phones, as far back as 2013’s iPhone 5s.

Why would Apple do this? Here’s why:

Fundamentally, Apple is betting on having customers not selling them products.

And:

An iPhone at $1200 may be less expensive than an iPhone at $600 if the $1200 version lasts twice as long as is used twice as much each day. The $1200 phone delivers 4x the utility at twice the price, making it half the price. By making more durable products, both in terms of hardware and software, the customer base is satisfied and preserved.

And if Apple can keep its base satisfied, they can continue to grow the services part of their business. And that’s key.

Terrific, insightful piece by Horace Dediu, read the whole thing.

DP Review:

All phones sport the industry’s most color accurate, wide color gamut (P3) displays which, combined with best-in-class color management built into the OS, ensures accurate display of photos and videos. When you go to print or share an image online, you can rest assured that color rendition will be consistent.

At first sight the new cameras aren’t much different from last year’s iPhone X but improvements have been made in terms of hardware, software and features. On the following pages we take a closer look.

Apple continues to up the camera phone game with these improvements and additions to the hardware and software on these latest models.

Wired:

Twenty-five years ago, the computer revolution’s marquee company was in decline. Back then, it was just settling into shiny new headquarters, a campus of six buildings that formed a different kind of ring. Called Infinite Loop, the name is a reference to a well-known programming error—code that gets stuck in an endless repetition—though no one seems to know who applied it. Infinite Loop was the place where Apple’s leaders and engineers pulled off a historic turnaround, and it will always be the source of stories and legends—many of them untold. Until now.

I visited the Infinite Loop campus on several occasions and really enjoyed every visit I had there.

CNET:

Though his tweets went viral, and though he did chat with Apple Support, the company didn’t delete or actively “remove” the movies that disappeared from Dr. Anders Gonçalves da Silva’s iTunes library and his devices. It seems to have been a more complicated mix-up, based on the fact that da Silva moved his residence from one country to another.

Most importantly: Apple tells CNET that it won’t delete your movies, either. At least, not ones you’ve downloaded.

As is usual with stories like these, the facts come out a few days later but only after the sturm un drang.

The Ringer:

The path from the hallowed 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle Predator to Friday’s Shane Black–directed The Predator—the sixth movie in the series, counting a ludicrous two-flick hookup with the Alien franchise—is fraught with chaos, wild-eyed diversions, grody overindulgence, and geysers of blood both red and fluorescent green. Sometimes these films are gross, and sometimes they are super gross. They get relatively little critical respect and always make money. Each dangles the tantalizing threat of total apocalypse, and each, to some tightly controlled degree, delivers.

If I ever had a movie franchise guilty pleasure, the Predator movies would qualify. Citizen Kane they ain’t.

We have talked and deep-dived on the potential of eSIM across different connected things from automotive to drones, to IoT and smartphones. The move that the industry (not all operators though) was waiting for, when someone like Apple integrates eSIM in smartphones is finally arriving; though Google was the first major player to add in last year’s Pixel series, but a very tiny scale.

Apple showed a first glimpse of it with iPads and then Apple Watch. The iPhone wasn’t going to escape the grand plan Apple has for eSIM and the stronghold it looks to have over end-to-end customer experience and profit from it at every stage.

All the new fall range of iPhones, both Xs series and Xr have integrated eSIM (except China SKUs). Some thoughts on this development.

There’s a lot of interesting supposition in this post.

Vox:

The Dutch have wielrenners, or “wheel runners” — the sporty cyclists — and they have a fietser, which is just “someone on a bike.” When you talk to somebody in the Netherlands about what makes biking so special, most of them will say, “What are you even talking about? It’s no different than when I get on the train or go for a walk.” You’re no more a cyclist than you are a pedestrian or a driver or a public transit user.

The Dutch built environment treats people who ride bikes normally, everyday fietsers, with respect and dignity and gives them a wholly separate space to cycle.

The difference in attitude between bicycle riders in Europe in general and Holland specifically is in marked contrast to bikers in North America where they are often seen as an inconvenience to cars.

Reddit:

I’m an Emergency Physician and read/interpret ECGs on a daily basis. I wanted to talk about the Apple Watch’s new ECG feature as there are a lot of misconceptions about this new function. Apple Watch’s new ECG feature is pretty neat and a lot of people here are understandably excited about it, but it does have limitations.

The new Apple Watch looks like a great tool, but it is not meant to be a medical grade device and not a substitute for medical and professional evaluation in the case of symptoms. Even if your Apple Watch ECG appears totally normal that does not necessarily mean you do not have atrial fibrillation or other cardiac abnormalities.

I’m by no means an expert in this kind of thing but this seems like good, common sense information. Any doctors in the audience who can confirm or refute any of the statements made in this Reddit post?

Vancouver Courier:

A proposal to stop observing daylight saving time in British Columbia was narrowly approved by Union of B.C. Municipalities delegates Sept. 14.

The resolution said daylight saving time and the resulting time changes twice a year no longer serves a purpose and affects people’s health when time changes.

It may just be my imagination but I’m seeing more and more discussion about this recently. It will still take many years before getting rid of daylight saving time is a widespread talking point but its time may be coming to an end (see what I did there?).

Wired:

At a certain point, you think you have a good grasp of what to expect from weather graphics. A color-coded map, a five-day forecast with a sassy cloud. Which might be why the Weather Channel’s 3-D, room-encompassing depiction of the Hurricane Florence storm surge took so many by surprise. It doesn’t tell, it shows, more bracingly than you’d think would be possible on a meteorological update. Here’s how they did it.

If you haven’t seen the graphic yet, take a moment to watch the segment below.

Storm surge will be a huge factor for Hurricane #Florence Check out what it might look like with @TWCErikaNavarro: pic.twitter.com/TPqTZTmiAM

— The Weather Channel (@weatherchannel) September 13, 2018

I saw this on Twitter when it happened last week and was blown away. Really interesting to read how the Weather Channel pulled it off.

Refinery29:

The new iPhone Xs Max is the biggest yet from Apple with its 6.5-inch screen, which is all very well for those with big hands, but the rest of us – particularly women – will run the risk of a shattered screen every time we use it one-handed.

This hasn’t gone unnoticed, and Apple is facing a backlash for making phones that are too large to fit in the average woman’s hand. The tech giant also recently revealed that it would be discontinuing its 4-inch iPhone SE, which drew ire online.

My wife has small hands and has an issue with the size of her hand-me-down 6 Plus. But does Apple have a “responsibility” to make phones that fit every hand size? Where does it end?

CBC:

An unusual visitor has been hanging out in the St. Lawrence River for the past three years: A narwhal, more than 1,000 kilometres south of its usual range.

But the lone narwhal is not alone — it appears he has been adopted by a band of belugas.

The narwhal — thought to be a juvenile male because of its half-metre-long tusk — was filmed in July playing among a pod of young belugas, thought to be mostly or all males.

In Canada, even our whales are friendly.

Uncrate:

To say pitching a new idea to (Steve Jobs) could be intimidating would be an understatement. Just ask Ken Kocienda. The software engineer and designer worked at Apple for over 15 years and during his time there brought several demos to the CEO, including the autocorrect touchscreen keyboard for the iPhone. In this interview, Kocienda describes exactly what it was like to pitch a prototype to Steve Jobs.

Kocienda is on a book tour to promote his book, “Creative Selection: Inside Apple’s Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs” (affiliate link). From the interviews and excerpts I’ve read, it sounds fascinating.

Michael Grothaus, FastCompany:

The best product Apple offers is intangible, yet far more valuable than a flagship smartphone. The best product Apple has–and the single biggest reason that consumers should choose an Apple device over competing devices–is privacy.

And:

It has only been in the last few years that the perils of online privacy have made their way to the forefront of national conversation, thanks to the Cambridge Analytica scandal and a seemingly unending string of data breaches and hacks. Such events have left consumers rightly worried just how the data tech companies are collecting about them are being used and abused. Yet Apple seems to be the only major tech company that had the foresight–and the will–to begin tackling these issues before they reached a crisis point.

And:

In iOS 12 Apple is also introducing anti-fingerprinting technology in Safari. Fingerprinting is a tracking technology advertisers and data firms use to identify your movements online. They do this by recording characteristics about the device you are using–such as hard drive size, screen resolution, fonts, installed, and more–and then recording a log of that device’s movements.

And:

Apple makes its hundreds of billions every year by selling physical products that have a high markup. Facebook and Google, on the other hand, have a business model built around advertisers who want as much data about users as possible so they can better target them. This is why, for example, Google would never build the types of anti-tracking and privacy protections into the Android OS that Apple has done with MacOS and iOS. Google–and Facebook–aren’t going to cut off their access to all that black gold.

This is a terrific article. The callouts above are just the tip of the iceberg. One key point, to me, is that Apple is able to offer privacy because it makes its money from high margins and money gained from services. Though I wish we could have Apple’s great design and ecosystem for less money, I truly appreciate Apple’s, and Tim Cook’s privacy stance.

Fascinating read.

Benjamin Mayo, 9to5Mac:

During the highs of BatteryGate, Apple reduced official battery repairs to $29 each through 2018, down from $79. Apple has now updated the page with details of what will happen from January 1st, 2019.

The prices are going back up, but not quite to the level that they were. Battery repairs for iPhone X, iPhone Xs and iPhone Xs will cost $69. Repairs for all older iPhones will cost $49.

Read the post for all the details.

This is a fascinating Reddit post that looks at screen sizes. Take the op-ed parts with a grain of salt, but if you are considering the iPhone XR, this is worth your time. One excellent point:

The XR will show exactly the same amount of actual content as the XS Max, just slightly smaller and less sharp. If both phones were opened to a site in Safari, they’d show exactly the same chunk of webpage. I think that’s pretty nice, PPI be damned. This is the most compact Plus phone ever made. I’m on board.

I will say, I do find it amazing that $749 represents the new price of a budget phone. Wow.

I do wish Apple would consider updating the iPhone SE for folks with smaller hands, and smaller budgets. Same with a smaller Apple Watch for people with smaller wrists. It does feel like some part of the Apple loving crowd is being left behind.

The Verge:

Apple included a spare dongle in the boxes of the iPhone X, 8, 8 Plus, 7, and 7 Plus phones, but it isn’t so generous this year when it comes to including a 3.5mm audio dongle in the box.

The 3.5mm dongle is no longer a free accessory and the new iPhones won’t ship with Apple’s own fast Lightning to 3.5mm audio jack adapter. This includes the iPhone XS, XS Max, XR, and the iPhone 8, which used to include the free dongle.

I understand both sides of the argument but still – I wish Apple would continue to include it.