Google blog:

We’ve heard from a lot of people that adding “Hey Google” before each follow-up question for the Assistant doesn’t feel as natural as they’d like. We announced Continued Conversation at I/O as an optional setting which lets you have a natural back-and-forth conversation with the Assistant without repeating “Hey Google” for each follow-up request. The new feature is starting to roll out today, and you can turn it on in the Google Assistant app by going to Settings → Preferences → Continued Conversation and hitting the toggle.

Basically, Google assistant will keep listening (for about 8 seconds) after the end of a “Hey Google” back and forth. No need for a follow-up “Hey Google”.

Wondering if Siri will follow this approach, or perhaps develop a more complex protocol for handling continued conversation.

A solid review of the Logitech Crayon stylus, announced at Apple’s education event, along with their new education iPad. While it’s no Apple Pencil, the Logitech Crayon clearly fills a need, works very well, perhaps well enough for most folks.

Electronic Frontier Foundation:

When a site you visit uses browser fingerprinting, it can learn enough information about your browser to uniquely distinguish you from all the other visitors to that site. Browser fingerprinting can be used to track users just as cookies do, but using much more subtle and hard-to-control techniques.

And:

By using browser fingerprinting to piece together information about your browser and your actions online, trackers can covertly identify users over time, track them across websites, and build an advertising profile of them. The information that browser fingerprinting reveals typically includes a mixture of HTTP headers (which are delivered as a normal part of every web request) and properties that can be learned about the browser using JavaScript code: your time zone, system fonts, screen resolution, which plugins you have installed, and what platform your browser is running on.

And:

When stitched together, these individual properties tell a unique story about your browser and the details of your browsing interactions. For instance, yours is likely the only browser on central European time with cookies enabled that has exactly your set of system fonts, screen resolution, plugins, and graphics card.

The linked/quoted article is long and detailed, an enlightening read. But the bits about browser fingerprinting are incredibly important. And this is as good an explanation as I’ve seen.

At WWDC, Apple declared war on browser fingerprinting and related techniques. From Apple’s Mojave press release:

As with all Apple software updates, enhanced privacy and security remain a top priority in macOS Mojave. In Safari, enhanced Intelligent Tracking Prevention helps block social media “Like” or “Share” buttons and comment widgets from tracking users without permission. Safari now also presents simplified system information when users browse the web, preventing them from being tracked based on their system configuration.

And that’s a good thing.

NPR:

“The Gorilla Foundation is sad to announce the passing of our beloved Koko,” the research center says, informing the world about the death of a gorilla who fascinated and elated millions of people with her facility for language.

Koko, who was 46, died in her sleep Tuesday morning, the Gorilla Foundation said.

“Her impact has been profound and what she has taught us about the emotional capacity of gorillas and their cognitive abilities will continue to shape the world,” the Gorilla Foundation said.

We don’t often post obituaries of animals here but Koko had a profound affect on me as a kid. One of the few magazines we regularly got delivered was National Geographic and I read every article in every issue. In October of 1978, the cover was a picture Koko had taken of herself for “Conversations with a Gorilla” and it blew my mind. In January of 1985, Koko was again on the cover, this time with her kitten. I still remember reading that article with tears in my eyes.

There’s always been (understandable) skepticism about Koko’s abilities but there’s no doubt she brought joy to many and a deeper understanding of both gorillas and humans. She will be missed.

Wall Street Journal:

We were preparing to mount the horses when Qaboos announced: “Horse little crazy.” He said this nonchalantly, as if he were saying this horse is white. Crazy. What was Qaboos’s definition of crazy? Crazy as in dangerous crazy? Or crazy as in crazy fun? Or was it a word that rhymed with crazy. Lazy? Maybe Scarzo detected my confusion. He turned his scimitar head and regarded me with one ebony eye. Or perhaps he was considering the scents I exuded—deodorant and breath mints, ibuprofen and middle-age angst.

Or maybe the horse discerned something more profound— the real reason that I was sitting atop him now—that I hoped to resolve a patchwork of personal mysteries that revolved around horses, Arabia, and magic, the origins of which lie buried in the deep folds of my childhood memories. Whatever the case, several hours later—as I dangled off Scarzo’s rump, one foot tangled in a stirrup, vainly trying to regain my balance as he rampaged across the beach toward a family that had just spread out a picnic blanket—I understood exactly what Qaboos had meant by crazy. But let’s freeze here in the midst of this peril and return to the origin of this calamity to see how the djinns had been plotting this moment from long ago.

I’m a City Kid who has never had any interaction with horses (I’ve touched exactly three in my life and ridden one once for 60 minutes) but they have always fascinated me. This is a great story about the history of these majestic creatures.

The New Yorker:

Prince’s sister, Tyka Nelson, and his five half siblings were eventually named his heirs. With the family’s blessing, Graceland Holdings took over management of the property. Because Paisley Park is expensive to maintain, and because the estate was facing a considerable tax bill, the family made one decision quickly: Prince’s sanctuary would become a museum. Six months after Prince’s death, on October 28, 2016, Paisley Park opened to the public.

From the road, Paisley Park looks industrial, utilitarian, and cheerless, like a big-box store that has recently gone out of business. The exterior is covered in white aluminum panels. Inside, fleecy clouds have been painted on pale-blue walls.

Before I arrived, I found the property’s purpose somewhat oblique: was it a shrine, a historic site, a mausoleum, a business? In the atrium, I discovered that Paisley Park provides an immediate target for a very particular kind of grief.

I’d bet that $100 VIP tour money that Prince would have hated this. But the man should have had a damn will.

Mark Gurman, Bloomberg:

Apple said in September that the iPhone X and iPhone 8 could be charged wirelessly. It recommended charging hubs from Mophie and Belkin, an unusual move for the consumer-hardware specialist. Apple also announced its own AirPower charger, but said it wouldn’t be released until 2018.

And:

Company engineers have been toiling away to address problems. One challenge is making sure the charger doesn’t overheat. Another is the complexity of the circuitry, according to people familiar with the device’s development.

And:

Unlike wireless chargers on the market today, the AirPower is designed to charge three devices simultaneously: an iPhone, Apple Watch, and AirPods with a still-to-be-released wireless charging case.

And, the point I think is the heart of the problem:

Apple also wants users to be able to place any of their devices anywhere on the charging mat to begin a charge. That ambitious goal requires the company to pack the AirPower with multiple charging sensors, a process that has proven difficult, the people said.

If you take apart a Qi wireless charger, you’ll find a coil of fabric-coated wire, the induction coil behind the physics of wireless charging. That coil is always round, and the chargers you buy are typically round as well, keeping the case design at its smallest form factor.

Here’s a video showing a tear-down of a Samsung Qi charger. Jump to about 3:58 in to see the coil.

Apple’s AirPower charger is oblong, not the same shape of the existing, circular Qi chargers. Some physics to solve for there. There’s also the complexity of a number of objects placed in unpredictable proximity on the oblong coil and it seems understandable that this is a tricky problem to solve.

Add to that:

The AirPower charger is also more advanced than the current competition because it includes a custom Apple chip running a stripped down version of the iOS mobile operating system to conduct on-device power management and pairing with devices. Apple engineers have also been working to squash bugs related to the on-board firmware, according to the people familiar.

This is a complex piece of engineering.

UPDATE: Interesting tweet from Jeff Guilfoyle, with a picture of overlapping coils. The idea being the controlling circuitry would switch between coils as needed. Interesting.

Mikey Campbell, Apple Insider:

The Car Connectivity Consortium, which counts Apple among its charter members, on Wednesday announced the publication of new “digital key” standard that allows drivers to actuate vehicle systems like door locks and the engine via an NFC-enabled smartphone.

And:

With its technology, aptly dubbed the Digital Key Release 1.0 specification, the CCC aims to bring automotive manufacturers and mobile device makers together to create an interoperable digital key standard.

The system operates in much the same way as first-party digital keys currently available from a handful of vehicle OEMs. Users with authenticated smart devices are able to lock, unlock, start the engine of and share access to a specific car. Unlike some remote control solutions that leverage Wi-Fi or Bluetooth communications, however, Release 1.0 appears intrinsically tied to short-range technology like NFC.

Here’s the consortium press release with all the details.

Neil Cybart rolls out a smart, detailed look at where Apple has its future focus. Lots of interesting bits here. A few highlights:

While Apple management will never admit it, the company has been thinking and looking beyond iPhone for years. The Apple Watch’s ongoing march to iPhone independency is clear evidence of this post-iPhone thinking.

And:

Management isn’t driven by the goal to come up with something that is more profitable than iPhone. Instead, the focus is on coming up with something that makes technology more personal and handling new workflows that were never able to be handled by iPhone.

And:

While AR makes for a cool on-stage demo, having to hold an iPhone or iPad up as an AR viewfinder for long periods of time isn’t ideal. Items like Siri Shortcuts and Siri Suggestions are interesting on iPhone and iPad although they are incredibly more appealing on mobile displays worn on our bodies. ML applications on iPhone and iPad are useful, but the predictive and proactive nature of the technology can work wonders when combined with mobile cameras and screens that we don’t have to hold. Apple is announcing new technologies that make more sense on form factors that currently don’t exist.

And:

It’s easy to think that Apple may simply be biding its time until the world is ready for AR glasses. However, WWDC gave us a glimpse of how Apple is busy behind the scenes, preparing for what comes next. With ARKit, Apple is using hundreds of millions of iPhone and iPads to inspire 20 million developers with the potentials found with AR. A similar dynamic is at play in getting customers comfortable with items like Animoji and Memoji – items that will likely one day be available via a pair of smart glasses.

This is a wonderful exploration of where Apple is heading, their strategy for getting there. Don’t miss the chart in the middle of the post, specifically that yellow line showing Apple Watch growth.

Wall Street Journal:

Under the terms of the contract, Apple has ordered multiple series from Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit media and educational platform best known for the long-running show “Sesame Street.” Shows will be live-action, animated as well as one featuring puppets, according to a person close to Apple.

Sesame Street itself isn’t part of the deal. This jibes with what Jim and I were discussing on the latest Dalrymple Report (should pop up later today). We were discussing Apple’s stated aim of focusing on family-friendly programming, avoiding edgier, R-rated stuff.

Intel press release:

Intel Corporation today announced the resignation of Brian Krzanich as CEO and a member of the board of directors. The board has named Chief Financial Officer Robert Swan interim chief executive officer, effective immediately.

Intel was recently informed that Mr. Krzanich had a past consensual relationship with an Intel employee. An ongoing investigation by internal and external counsel has confirmed a violation of Intel’s non-fraternization policy, which applies to all managers. Given the expectation that all employees will respect Intel’s values and adhere to the company’s code of conduct, the board has accepted Mr. Krzanich’s resignation.

Well that’s a bit of a bombshell. Certainly a headache that Intel didn’t need.

CNBC:

When it was announced in 2013 that Angela Ahrendts would leave her long-time role as chief executive of Burberry to run Apple’s stores, the fashion label’s shares went down 5.5 percent.

Today, Ahrendts admitted to doubts about the job opportunity at Apple. “It was funny … I fought joining Apple, because I thought I had the greatest job on the planet and we were flying, and life was incredible but it was the culture that we had built and the values of the team at Burberry that was so brilliant. (But Apple CEO) Tim (Cook) kept saying ‘trust me, trust me’,” she said, addressing an audience at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in France on Wednesday.

Ahrendts is a very interesting person who I think is first in line as the next CEO of Apple.

FastCo Design:

From 1986 to 1997, isolated from the fray at One Infinite Loop, (Advanced Technology Group) engineers and scientists crafted breakthrough technologies like HyperCard, QuickTime, QuickTime VR, and Apple Data Detectors. These inventions–even if they don’t exist today in their original form–shaped how computers, smartphones, and even the web itself works today.

There was a very real concern after Jobs killed the ATG that the company would lose its edge. Happily, those of us who thought that were wrong.

Time and Date:

Eclipse times, paths, phase animations, maps, and much more.

Will you be able to see the next eclipse?

There’s a blood moon on July 27th and I was looking for info about it that led me to this website. It’s one to bookmark because it lets you know not only when a solar or lunar eclipse will occur but whether or not you can see it from your location.

Popular Science:

Every four years there’s a new ball for the World Cup—and every four years players are unhappy with it. Maybe it’s too light and has too much lift, like the 2002 Fevernova. Or maybe it wobbles unexpectedly in the air, making it harder for goalies to predict its motion, like the 2006 Teamgist. Or maybe the ball suddenly changes speed, dropping out of the air and causing accidental handballs, like the 2010 Jabulani.

At the World Cup level, these tiny changes in a ball’s aerodynamics can legitimately impact a team’s performance, so the intense scrutiny of the World Cup ball is perhaps to be expected. “You could argue that it’s the most important piece of equipment in the most popular sport in the world,” says John Eric Goff, Professor of Physics at University of Lynchburg.

Non-soccer/football fans don’t realize it but the shape and “flight path” of a soccer ball is crucial. No more so than during the World Cup.

Rolling Stone:

As streaming gives the music industry its biggest profits in a decade, the CD business continues to plunge. CD sales have fallen 80 percent in the past decade, from roughly 450 million to 89 million.

And:

Since Tesla began manufacturing cars without CD players, other companies like Ford and Toyota have recently followed. Downloads – once seen as the CD’s replacement – have plummeted 58 percent since peaking in 2012, their profits now even smaller than physical sales.

And:

Artists have taken note; Bruce Springsteen released his latest box set, The Album Collection Vol. 2, 1987-1996, exclusively on vinyl, with no CD option, unlike 2014’s Vol. 1.

So the music world is evolving to streaming and vinyl. CDs are still there, but that world is clearly shrinking.

Fascinating to see vinyl continue to take hold. That’s becoming the way to own music. And, clearly, there are people who still value that.

When I saw the watchOS 5 Walkie-Talkie announcement in the WWDC keynote, I got a little excited, had a little nostalgia buzz full of campouts and whispered late night push-to-talk conversations.

The video embedded below is Jeff Benjamin doing what he does best, taking you on a tour through the latest shiny, in this case, a step-by-step on the watchOS 5 Walkie-Talkie app.

Is this purely for fun? Or is there a use case? The performance seemed just a bit laggy, clearly laggier than the real world walkie-talkies which had no A-to-D conversions, were straight real-time radio transmission.

If the answer is, don’t be grumpy, just have fun with it, cool. Just want to be sure I’m not missing the value here.

First check out the video in this tweet:

?AR Business Card Concept

I created this it using ARKit 2.0 with Image Tracking,
Could really be how we interact with business cards in the near future.#ARKit #iOS12 #AugmentedReality pic.twitter.com/6qB7zfLyqM

— Oscar Falmer (@OsFalmer) June 18, 2018

The concept is familiar, a business card, a real world object, that expands when seen through an augmented reality lens, tracking to the original object, but adding views and controls that enhance the original object.

To me, there’s no question that this approach has tremendous potential. Imagine picking up an item in the grocery store and having a pane appear with buttons like “find best value” or “find cheapest” and having arrows appear on nearby shelves marked with appropriate alternatives.

Or a “convert” button that translates the price into a common format. For example, if you buy paper towels, it might show you cents per foot, so you can compare differently priced products, which range from $/roll to $/package to cents/sheet (with different sheet sizes).

I can definitely see the advantage of wearing a pair of glasses when immersed in an AR environment. It would get old constantly having to hold my phone up as a lens as I walk through a store. I wear glasses, so it’d be interesting to see how Apple will deal with the corrective lens issue. Will we someday see AR glasses that automatically correct my vision as well as offering an AR overlay?

This is an unbelievable story. A true story, not some futuristic SciFi darkness, but a thing that actually happened. Top of the front page on Hacker News this morning.

This reads like the screenplay from Brazil.

WSB Atlanta:

Dunwoody police said burglars took a page out of the movie ‘Mission Impossible’ when they stole more than $100k worth of Apple products from a Best Buy Store.

Police said the thieves rappelled through a hole in the ceiling at the store on Hammond Drive.

Reading this story, I can’t help but picture this scene.

Two things I pulled from the linked Reddit post:

• Here’s a link to a nice image of an Apple Maps van, with its can shaped Velodyne HDL-32E Lidar (on the four corners of the roof rack) and the 360 degree cameras.

• Here’s a link to Apple’s Apple Maps Vehicles page, which shows what parts of the country the vans are currently roaming.

Interesting stuff.

Have an iPad? This is a terrific walk through what’s coming in iOS 12, a chance to wrap your head around the new gestures before you are plunked square in the middle of them with time pressures and work to do.

Glenn Fleishman weighs in with some excellent advice on what to do if you inherit or buy a Mac, to make sure you don’t end up with an unusable doorstop down the line. Worth a scan, just to get the gist of the issue, and a more detailed read if you are in that situation.

That’s a damn good deal. Especially if you are considering a second HomePod.

Benjamin Mayo, 9to5Mac:

A report from supply chain sources, via Korean language publication The Bell, suggests that the largest of Apple’s 2018 iPhone lineup will be the most popular. Apple is set to announce an ‘iPhone X Plus’, or whatever Apple ends up branding it, with a 6.46-inch OLED screen, packing a ~6.5-inch screen into roughly the same size as the existing 5.5-inch iPhone 8 Plus.

And:

The Bell report says Apple has ordered more screen panels for the X Plus than any other model. It forecasts 45 million 6.46-inch panels, about 25 million panels for the 5.8-inch iPhone X successor, and 30 million 6.04-inch LCD screens for the new lower-priced flagship.

Not hard to believe the rumors of an iPhone X Plus, also not hard to believe that Apple will go with that name, if they do ship that phone. And not hard to believe it will become the most popular phone.

A 6.5 inch iPhone X Plus would be be a huge upgrade to the iPhone 8 Plus, the form-factor it would be replacing. Better screen, more pixels, what’s not to like? To me, the real question is one of price.

The iPhone X sold very well at its $999 price point last year, but the ‘super cycle’ of upgraders did not materialise in the way some investors expected.

The iPhone 8 starts at $699 and the iPhone 8 Plus at $799. Which leads to an iPhone X Plus entry price of $1099. Is that too high, too soon? We shall see.

Drew McCormack:

Apple currently allows free trials in two forms: if you sell subscriptions, you can give customers a free month to try the app; and, you can give your app away free, and offer a free In-App Purchase (IAP) to unlock all features for a fixed period of time.

So why does Apple allow these forms, but not offer a more formal version of free trials?

And:

Think for a moment about how a ‘formal’ free trial system would work. What would you see in the App Store? Probably something along the lines of a button with the text “$50 with Free Trial”. Now take your average iOS customer, who has never heard of free trials as they exist outside the App Stores. I suspect many will already be confused by this.

Drew goes on to explain that confusion, with specific questions like:

• If I click the button, will I be charged $50 now?
• What happens when my trial is up: will I be charged automatically then?

Not sure that confusion can’t be addressed by better wording. And if Apple did go down that road, I think they would try to make sure all those questions were answered before the user was put in that decision position.

I also think, and this is a nitpick on the post’s title, it’s impossible for anyone outside Apple to truly know Apple’s logic on this without either a clear statement from Apple or being inside the room.

To be clear, I do like this post. The two points above are my instant reaction, don’t want them to be left unsaid. Don’t let those points derail you, though. Drew’s post is worth reading.

Moving on:

So why are the existing options any better? Let’s take the free IAP system. Firstly, there is no fear about downloading an app — it is free to download. There is a nice big “Get” button to indicate that. Second, once you have the app, you are told there is a free trial, and you are given a clear choice to opt-in. Because it is an IAP, and not a subscription, you know there can be no charge at the end of the trial. There is a second IAP to purchase the app; it is equally clear that you don’t pay until you activate that IAP, and that you can do that any time. Everything is driven by the customer, and all opt-in. No uncertainty.

To me, that’s the core. Apple’s chose a clear, straightforward solution. Not one that will satisfy everyone, but one that won’t confuse users.

This is an interesting take on the free trial issue, and a good balance to Daniel Jalkut’s excellent Ersatz Free Trials post from a few weeks ago.

[H/T Dman228]

In the suit, originally filed in late 2011, a group of consumers accused Apple of monopolizing the market for iPhone apps by not allowing any other way of purchasing such apps, and therefore engaging in anti-competitive practices. The suit alleges that since the App Store’s launch, Apple “illegally monopolized the distribution of iPhone apps, and that the commissions charged to app developers inflate the prices consumers ultimately pay for apps.”

I just don’t agree with this at all. Apple is providing a safe place for developers to sell apps, and for consumers to buy apps without wondering about malware and all of the other scams that go on out there.