Earlier this month, the co-working juggernaut announced that it was essentially going vegetarian. The company will no longer serve red meat, pork or poultry at company functions, and it will not reimburse employees who want to order a hamburger during a lunch meeting.
Uncomfortable as the new dietary policy may be, Mr. McKelvey said WeWork is only just getting started. The company is phasing out leather furniture, single-use plastics and is going carbon neutral. In time, he said, the company will evaluate its consumption of seafood, eggs, dairy and alcohol.
“We could have introduced a series of nudges, but then we wouldn’t be having this conversation,” Mr. McKelvey said. “And awkward conversations are how we learn.”
Oh, I think we’d learn a lot from the “awkward conversation” I’d have with my boss if he told me I couldn’t eat meat at work.
“You’ll be the person eating carne asada while everyone else is eating the lettuce bowl.”
On July 20, 1969, 49 years ago today, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the Moon, took a walk, and returned safely to Earth a few days later. And the whole thing was broadcast live on television screens around the world.
For the 40th anniversary of the landing in 2009, I put together a page where you can watch the original CBS News coverage of Walter Cronkite reporting on the Moon landing and the first Moon walk, synced to the present-day time. Just open this page in your browser and the coverage will start playing at the proper time.
If you want to experience it the way “those old folks did”, start watching at 4:10pm ET this afternoon.
Specifically, the concessionaire is testing the use of Apple Business Chat to allow iPhone-equipped fans in certain sections of the ballpark to order water and beer from their seats.
And
To order, a fan would first open the iPhone camera app and scan the QR code on the seat back. That will launch prompts on the iMessage text screen to place the order, which is then completed with Apple Pay. The drink will be delivered supposedly shortly after.
Okay, I like this a lot. I’ve been to San Jose Sharks games where they take your order at the seat and deliver the food, but it’s a hit a miss type of thing. This seems a lot more likely to be successful, and let’s face it, it’s really cool.
The phone looks like an iPhone X. It has the same form factor, most of the same detailing, no home button, the same volume rockers and side buttons, a working Lightning port, and the same speaker holes on the bottom of the phone. It also has pentalobe screws on the bottom of the device, just like an iPhone.
When turning the phone on, the Apple logo shows up, and it boots to something that looks very much like iOS. It has the same default lock screen that the iPhone launches with, and you can launch the camera or flashlight from it. It uses the same logos, appears to have the same default apps, and generally seems as though you are using an iPhone.
It quickly became clear this isn’t iOS, though.
While I wouldn’t use one of these even if you paid me the $100, it’s still very interesting to see what these fake iPhones can and can’t do.
Cool. But to me, even cooler, is this video Collins made about follow-foils. Around since the 1950s, follow-foils roll in mid-air, riding on an updraft you create simply by walking along with a piece of cardboard. If you’ve never seen one, watch the video. Fun.
The 2018 MacBook Pro keyboard is a wealth of secrets—it just keeps surprising us. Just when we think we’ve exhausted one vein of tasty tech ore, we find something new. And today, we bring this trove to you.
And:
We pumped this keyboard full of particulates to test our ingress-proofing theory. We started with a fine, powdered paint additive to add a bit of color and enable finer tracking (thanks for the tip, Dan!). Lo and behold, the dust is safely sequestered at the edges of the membrane, leaving the mechanism fairly sheltered. The holes in the membrane allow the keycap clips to pass through, but are covered by the cap itself, blocking dust ingress.
And:
On the 2018 keyboard, with the addition of more particulate and some aggressive typing, the dust eventually penetrates under the sheltered clips, and gets on top of the switch—so the ingress-proofing isn’t foolproof just yet.
I do appreciate the testing, good to know the threshold at work here. Bottom line, don’t dump a bunch of powder or sand on your keyboard and you should be fine.
If you want a more traditional, picture-laden keyboard teardown, iFixit has that too.
And on a related note, here’s John Gruber’s take on the legal/marketing side of the new keyboard, and the quieter vs. better at keeping out debris language.
‘Songwriter’ is an intimate and personal look into the writing process of one of the world’s biggest artists – Ed Sheeran. Filmed by Murray Cummings, ‘Songwriter’ details the creation of Sheeran’s third studio album ‘÷’ and gives authentic insight into his life through never-before-seen home videos. Witness his creativity firsthand, from the very first chord to the finishing touch – the sounds become the songs on August 28, exclusively on Apple Music.
I love videos that show a song being written, then produced. This looks like it gives a good sense of the entire process.
This turned out to be fascinating. A bunch of company-specific ant emoji, all critiqued and rated.
Gonna share three with you:
Apple: Beautiful big almond eye, realistic and full of expression as she gazes gently at you. Elbowed antennae and delicately segmented legs and body. Gorgeous pearlescent sheen like she is glowing. This ant moisturizes. This ant is round and huggable. This ant is a star. 11/10.
Samsung: This ant has an unexplained, double-jointed thorax, and no evidence of a waist. Her four-footed pose suggests that she a centaur rather than an ant. Centaur ants would be cool. I’m not sure what was intended here. 2/10.
Twitter: Were you even trying. 0/10
Follow the link to see the reviews in place with the emoji images. Great!
Here’s a clever new twist on an old email scam that could serve to make the con far more believable. The message purports to have been sent from a hacker who’s compromised your computer and used your webcam to record a video of you while you were watching porn. The missive threatens to release the video to all your contacts unless you pay a Bitcoin ransom. The new twist? The email now references a real password previously tied to the recipient’s email address.
The basic elements of this sextortion scam email have been around for some time, and usually the only thing that changes with this particular message is the Bitcoin address that frightened targets can use to pay the amount demanded. But this one begins with an unusual opening salvo
I received this email scam as well but it didn’t worry me. While it was a password I’d used in the distant past, now that I use 1Password, I knew it wasn’t to anything I still use.
The Tour de France is probably the most physically demanding major sporting event in the world. Over 23 days and 21 stages, riders burn an average of roughly 5,000 calories per day, which is almost twice as much as a pro marathon runner might burn in a single race, and all the while they must maintain a sharp mind, marking their opponents and working with teammates to go fast as efficiently possible before their bodies cave in.
Cycling a grand tour is as much a fight against one’s own body as it is against opponents. Quite literally, cyclist’s bodies begin fighting back after the first week. Riders begin to lose muscle, their immunes systems tank, and they practically have to force feed themselves in order to maintain the baseline system functionality to climb, let’s say, Alpe d’Huez.
Yes, cycling has a doping problem, but it’s hard to blame athletes who are putting their bodies through very real trauma for looking for some kind of shortcut. Humans shouldn’t do their bodies what Tour riders do to theirs. And indeed, it’s hard to believe some riders aren’t aliens, with their bird-like frames and gaunt features.
As corrupt as pro cycling may or may not be (hint: it is), I still love watching the Tour de France, not just for the beautiful scenery but in sheer awe and admiration for what these athletes put themselves through.
For more than two years, a small and stealthy group of engineers within Google has been working on software that they hope will eventually replace Android, the world’s dominant mobile operating system. As the team grows, it will have to overcome some fierce internal debate about how the software will work.
The project, known as Fuchsia, was created from scratch to overcome the limitations of Android as more personal devices and other gadgets come online. It’s being designed to better accommodate voice interactions and frequent security updates and to look the same across a range of devices, from laptops to tiny internet-connected sensors.
Fantastic read. I hope Fuchsia solves the security problems and offers privacy options absent from Android.
The company must also settle some internal feuds. Some of the principles that Fuchsia creators are pursuing have already run up against Google’s business model. Google’s ads business relies on an ability to target users based on their location and activity, and Fuchsia’s nascent privacy features would, if implemented, hamstring this important business. There’s already been at least one clash between advertising and engineering over security and privacy features of the fledgling operating system, according to a person familiar with the matter. The ad team prevailed, this person said.
One of the arguments made about Dave’s experiment is that it was specific to Adobe Premiere and possibly due to Premiere not being optimized for macOS.
Jeff Benjamin, writing for 9to5Mac, put his i9 MacBook Pro on the line to test this theory. Jeff did his testing with Apple’s own Final Cut Pro X (and a different model freezer).
I won’t spoil the conclusion (follow the headline link and read through Jeff’s well written walkthrough, don’t miss the update with John Poole’s take at the very end), but this line made me laugh:
The freezer is good for short term performance on the MacBook Pro, but may prove to be an inconvenient/hazardous working environment (condensation is bad, folks).
During a press event at the company’s Sunnyvale, Calif. facility Wednesday, the company showed off new designs that add realistic textures to its glass. It’s called “Vibrant” Gorilla Glass, and it was first introduced in 2016 with the promise that phone makers could print high resolution images directly onto it.
But its latest prototypes take the concept to the next level. The technique combines the printed images with etched glass that’s designed to mimic the feel of different textures, such as wood, rock, polished marble, or even snakeskin. The result is glass that doesn’t look or feel anything like glass.
This is pretty cool stuff. Not clear if Apple will adopt this new glass, but I imagine the design team is hard at work experimenting with it.
Some customers have been hoping that Apple will start swapping out second-generation keyboards with third-generation keyboards, as part of its service program, but MacRumors has learned that isn’t the plan.
When asked if Apple Stores and Apple Authorized Service Providers will be permitted to replace second-generation keyboards on 2016 and 2017 MacBook Pro models with the new third-generation keyboards, if necessary, Apple said, no, the third-generation keyboards are exclusive to the 2018 MacBook Pro.
This isn’t terribly surprising, as the architecture of the new machines has changed and the swap-out goes way beyond simply swapping keyboards. But it is good to know.
The patent application for “Light-based Shielding Detection,” published by the US Patent and Trademark Office on Thursday and originally filed in December 2017, describes a ‘sunscreen detector that could be used on a portable device, which Apple suggests could be a wearable device.
Imagine a sensor on your Apple Watch that could measure UV radiation and warn you when you’ve been in the sun too long. I love this idea.
eBay has decided to eliminate nearly 300 Bay Area jobs, including more than 200 in San Jose, the company has told a state labor agency.
The job cuts are due to be completed by July 20, eBay stated in notices to the state’s Employment Development Department. Affected employees were notified in the final week of June.
And:
Over the one-year period that ended in March, eBay lost $1.64 billion on revenues of $9.84 billion.
It’s not that people don’t want to buy other people’s stuff. eBay’s core model is still working. The trouble is more their growth areas that overlap with Amazon, Google, and Alibaba. Tough competition.
…In the years following Jobs’s death (and the departure of some other Jobs-era executives), Apple has continued to evolve—and in many cases, it’s torn up the old rulebook. A lot of the changes strike me as being for the better. I feel like after Steve laid down the law in the late 1990s, some policies and decisions were never really reconsidered until the Tim Cook era got into full swing.
Here are just a few ways that today’s Apple has tossed out, or at least amended, the classic Apple rulebook.
I’ve made note of some of these changes on my own podcast but Snell writes about it better than I ever could. The PR moves are especially interesting. Snell says:
Today’s Apple PR, led by Steve Dowling, is much more creative in how it releases information into the world…
Not only are they more “creative” but, sans Jobs and Dowling’s predecessor, Apple PR is much more open than in the past. They still have a long way to go but throwing off Jobs’ yoke of absolute secrecy takes time.
Mirrorless cameras have been around for almost a decade now, and in that time they’ve changed in countless ways.
While some of the designs many have stayed constant, the extent to which these models are more capable for a broader range of tasks means that many people have happily ditched their DSLRs, sold their glass (or not, as we shall see) and jumped across to one of the more recent but rapidly expanding mirrorless systems. Many others, however, are more hesitant, and they continue to ask the same question: are mirrorless cameras better than DSLRs?
If you’re expecting a short answer, it’s this: mirrorless cameras are certainly more capable than DSLRs in many respects, and they hold a number of different advantages, but there are many reasons why novice users and seasoned pros alike would still be better served by a DSLR.
There may be a big difference for professionals but for the average shooter, the gap between DSLR and mirrorless is almost nonexistent nowadays. I have no problem recommending mirrorless cameras to my students and workshop participants. For some, mirrorless cameras can be the better choice.
On a day (and a half) with more than one million deals worldwide offered exclusively to Prime members, sales this Prime Day surpassed Cyber Monday, Black Friday and the previous Prime Day, when comparing 36-hour periods, making this once again the biggest shopping event in Amazon history. Prime members worldwide purchased more than 100 million products during this year’s Prime Day event. Best-sellers worldwide were the Fire TV Stick with Alexa Voice Remote and Echo Dot – making this, with 12-hour early access to device deals, the biggest event ever for Amazon devices.
That’s an incredible amount of products to sell in such a short period of time. I found the top products sold in each country very interesting, too.
EU antitrust regulators hit Google with a record 4.34 billion euro ($5 billion) fine on Wednesday and ordered it to stop using its Android mobile operating system to block rivals, a ruling which the U.S. tech company said it would appeal.
That seems like an incredible amount of money, but then there’s this:
It represents just over two weeks of revenue for Google parent Alphabet…
Google is appealing the decision, more out of principle than financial reasons.
A new video is making its way around the net, under the title “MacBook Pro 15 (2018) – Beware the Core i9”. The video (embedded below), is a reasonably measured analysis of one specific new MacBook Pro model, the highest end, spec’ed with a 2.9GHz 6-core Intel Core i9 processor.
Before we get into the video at all, the issues Dave Lee raises are specific to this configuration. I’ve seen not seen anything to make me believe the over-throttling Dave encountered occurs on lower-spec’ed models. Per usual, ping me if I’ve missed anything, or if you see someone encountering this issue with, say, a 2.6GHz 6-core i7.
On to specifics:
Dave runs an Adobe Premiere render on Mac and Windows, the Mac using the i9, and the Windows machine using an i7. Under high load:
The Windows laptop (Intel i7) runs at an average clock speed of about 3.1GHz, temp of ~87°C
The MacBook Pro (high end i9) runs at an average clock speed of 2.2GHz, temp of ~90°C
In this specific case, with this specific configuration, with this specific i9 chip, the MacBook Pro runs hotter and slower under intense load.
Dave then sticks his MacBook Pro in the freezer and repeats the experiment, and the thermal throttling is significantly reduced, as the Mac no longer has to throttle performance to keep the machine from overheating.
I’d be very interested in seeing this experiment repeated by other folks. Thermal throttling is not the villain here. It’s about the ability of the Mac itself to dissipate heat efficiently. Once the chip heats up, that’s when thermal throttling kicks in.
A few years ago I had the privilege of being an engineer on the Google Photos team and part of the initial launch in 2015. A lot of people contributed to the product — designers, product managers, researchers, and countless engineers (across Android, iOS, Web, and the server) to name just some of the major roles. My responsibility was the web UI, and more specifically the photo grid.
Whether or not you use Google Photos, it’s fascinating to get an inside look at how it was built.
The Samsung Galaxy S9 and S9+ are the fastest smartphones on the market, with download speeds that are up to 42% faster than the closest competitor’s newest devices, according to Ookla®, a leading mobile data speed analyst.
And from the fine print:
Analysis by Ookla® of Speedtest Intelligence® data for iPhone X/8/7 for Feb–April 2018 comparing mean download speeds weighted averages on major nationwide carriers’ 4G LTE network results.
Not sure how scientifically rigorous the comparisons are, but I definitely agree that Samsung has the snarkiest marketing, by far.
Apple announced updated 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Pros last week. Let’s take a quick look at the performance of these new laptops using Geekbench 4 results from the Geekbench Browser.
For those unfamiliar with Geekbench 4, it is our cross-platform CPU and GPU benchmark. Higher scores are better, with double the score indicating double the performance.
Note that Geekbench scores tend to improve over time, as startup tasks like iCloud syncing tend to eat CPU time when a machine is first configured. Once those “one time” tasks are completed, usually after a few days, they no longer skew the results.
Benchmarks like these offer a nice way of comparing apples to apples when you are considering a move from one machine to another. If your workload includes very specific, repetitive, high-intensity tasks (such as audio or video rendering, for example), you might want to seek out benchmarks comparing results for those specific tasks.
With the upcoming release of iOS 12, Apple is introducing a new app called Shortcuts that will allow users to build custom voice commands for Siri that can be used to kick off a variety of actions in apps. While some apps will directly prompt users to add a Shortcut to Siri, the new Shortcuts app will offer more shortcut suggestions to try, plus the ability to create your own shortcuts and workflows. Now, there’s a new resource for shortcut fans, too – Sharecuts, a directory of shortcuts created and shared by the community.
The site is still very much in the early stages.
Shortcuts is an incredibly important addition to iOS, an evolution to the app architecture that gives you finer grained access to an apps functionality.
Sharecuts is a playground that lets you download useful Shortcuts built by the community but, in my mind, Sharecuts brings something more important to the table:
If you have the Shortcuts app installed, jump to the Sharecuts page (and bookmark it for later reference) and tap one of the Shortcuts. When it opens, you’ll be able to see, and change, all the elements that make up that Shortcut. To me, this is an invaluable learning tool, a wonderful community resource.
As part of its digital health initiative in iOS 12, Apple has introduced some improvements to the way app notifications can be managed, enabling users to more easily reduce the number of daily distractions their iPhone or iPad throws their way.
One of these new features is called Instant Tuning, which allows you to quickly adjust the future behavior of app notifications whenever they appear in the Lock Screen or the Notifications Center. Here’s how to make the most of it.
This is a short read, talks through an interface that is relatively hidden, but useful and easy to get to. Good stuff.
