The New York Times:

Apple is closing the technological loophole that let authorities hack into iPhones, angering police and other officials and reigniting a debate over whether the government has a right to get into the personal devices that are at the center of modern life.

But privacy advocates said Apple would be right to fix a security flaw that has become easier and cheaper to exploit.

While this may be bad news for law enforcement, keep in mind what Rich Mogull says on Twitter:

In every conversation I have with people (at Apple) it’s about making things inherently more secure, not about trying to stymie any particular government or agency.

To get us started, we turned to Manhattan audio guru Chuck Zwicky, a platinum-selling producer, engineer and mastering ace who’s worked with Prince, Soul Asylum and Nine Inch Nails, Zwicky has helped create numerous UAD presets for the MXR Flanger/Doubler, Lexicon 224 Digital Reverb, Pure Plate Reverb, and, today’s focus, the acclaimed Manley VOXBOX Channel Strip plug‑in, which Zwicky played a key role in refining during its early stages.

This is a new series from Universal Audio called “Producer Presets Unpacked”. It is absolutely fascinating.

Per usual, Jeff Benjamin does a wonderful job walking through macOS Mojave. So much new stuff. Love the new screenshot capabilities. Another tick towards iOS with the screenshot hanging around in a floating window for you to edit.

Rene Ritchie, iMore:

Developers can tap into the Continuity-derived user activity to make locations available within their apps. And they can use a new Intents API to let the system know, more expansively, the actions available in the app.

Once that’s done, Siri keeps track of what you do with them and when you do it, and tries to guess when you’ll do it next.

Rene clarifies this with examples:

For example, if you always order pizza before the game on Sunday, instead of having to go to the pizza app, pick your favorite, and place your order, it’ll have a banner waiting for you right on your Lock screen ready with your favorite order.

If you always text your child to say you’re on your way home from work, instead of having to go to messages, find the conversation with your child in the list, and tap to start a new message, a banner will be waiting for you, ready and able to send that message with a single tap.

Rene’s article is long and full of interesting detail. But the part that struck me was the way he distinguished between shortcuts you create yourself (using the Shortcuts app, rebranded from Workflow), and the voice triggers you create to label shortcuts (Hey Siri “Get pizza”), and the shortcuts Siri creates (driven by user activity reported by various apps) and suggests to you.

I’ve been using the iOS 12 beta for a week now. In that time, my Lock screen has offered to put my phone into Do Not Disturb when a Wallet pass, Open Table, and even simply iMessage indicated I might be having dinner or breakfast.

I hasn’t offered to let me order my usual Philz Mint Mojito, because I don’t have the Shortcuts enabled version of that app — yet! — but it has offered me directions to Philz after I used Maps for walking directions the first couple days of the conference.

Read Rene’s post to take advantage of his iOS 12 experience, wrap your head around what’s coming. Good stuff.

Paul Stamatiou:

Against my better judgement, I decided to give tablets one more chance. On the last day of a vacation that started in Rwanda and ended in the UK, I walked into the Regent Street Apple Store in London and purchased a 12.9″ iPad Pro and Smart Keyboard.

That was a few months ago. A few months in which my 13″ MacBook Pro has not even been powered up once. Any new gadget novelty has long since worn off and I’m still loving and using this iPad Pro daily.

What changed this time around?

Let me be clear about something. Though I often write about why I am still on a MacBook and the things that prevent me from moving full-time to an iPad Pro, I would love to make that move. I would love for an iPad to fill all my needs. I own a number of iPads and use them all the time.

Every time I read one of these stories, I dig down to see if, perhaps, the time has arrived. I do see us getting closer, but there are still a few things that make the MacBook my central computing device.

From Paul:

The viewing angle of the iPad Pro is not adjustable. You just get the two modes and that’s it. It’s okay most of the time but on a few occasions (usually when I’m slouching in a chair…) I have found myself stuffing something behind the iPad Pro to prop it up a bit more.

And:

Rather trivial but it’s hard to use the keyboard in a more relaxed, casual couch setting without placing a hard surface underneath.

The MacBook is its own platform. You could balance it on your lap, a small tray table (think airplane), even on a soft patch of grass. The iPad keyboard combo is not stiff enough to work on non rigid surfaces. Sure, I can use my iPad anywhere, but to type at speed, I need the keyboard, and the iPad keyboard combo requires a rigid surface.

More from Paul:

Repetitively placing a cursor or selecting text is a chore. It’s tedious to constantly move your hand from the keyboard up to the middle of the screen as opposed to a closer adjacent mouse as you have become accustomed to with a computer.

The text editing thing is the one thing I can’t get past. I would love to write a Loop post on my iPad. But typing and editing anything more than a paragraph is a chore on my iPad. I wish I could solve this. I want to believe!

All told, Paul made the transition. Terrific read, lots and lots of interesting detail, all written on the iPad Pro.

Bloomberg:

Apple Inc. changed its App Store rules last week to limit how developers use information about iPhone owners’ friends and other contacts, quietly closing a loophole that let app makers store and share data without many people’s consent.

The move cracks down on a practice that’s been employed for years. Developers ask users for access to their phone contacts, then use it for marketing and sometimes share or sell the information — without permission from the other people listed on those digital address books.

Glad Apple made this move. Amazing to me that Apple continues to embrace privacy, with the constant lure of moving to the dark side.

Danny Crichton, TechCrunch:

[The repeal of net neutrality] will allow telecom companies like AT&T to prioritize their own content over that of competitors. In the past, AT&T didn’t have all that much content, but the addition of Time Warner now gives them a library encompassing Warner Bros. to TBS, TNT, HBO and CNN. Suddenly, that control over prioritization just got a lot more powerful and profitable.

And:

If Comcast bids and is successful in buying 21st Century Fox, then connectivity in the United States will be made up of a handful of gigantic content library ISPs, and a few software players that will have to pay a premium to deliver their content to their own subscribers. While companies like Netflix and Alphabet have negotiated with the ISPs for years, the combination of these two news stories puts them in a significantly weaker negotiating position going forward.

So if you get your internet from AT&T or DirectTV or Time Warner (or other AT&T owned/branded ISPs), keep an eye out for either Netflix packet slowdown or an offer to make your connection net neutral.

And what about YouTube? No reason AT&T wouldn’t slow YouTube packets to allow their own content to hog the fast lane. Will this threat rekindle the stuttering Google Fiber (now spun off into Alphabet) efforts?

In what world is this a win for consumers? Feh.

Watch the video embedded in this tweet:

Image tracking in #ARKit2. So many potential applications! pic.twitter.com/tSrpupjIXU

— Nathan Gitter (@nathangitter) June 17, 2018

To me, this really puts the augmented in augmented reality. This is a taste of what’s coming.

Jean-Louis Gassée, Monday Note, starts things off by talking through the Marzipan rumors and then Craig Federighi’s famous “No.” slide, followed by the details of the Marzipan announcement.

All good, but what I really liked was when Jean-Louis turned to the numbers:

By some measure, there are approximately 2.1M iOS apps in Apple’s App Store. By contrast, macOS apps number in the low thousands — a slightly misleading measure since some Mac apps are available independent of the regulated App Store. But with that caveat, iOS apps certainly outnumber macOS apps by at least an order of magnitude — a ratio that parallels the macOS vs iOS revenue and unit numbers.

He follows that with a slide that lists revenues for the 2017 Xmas quarter, AKA, 3Q2017:

• iOS revenue: $68 billion
• Mac revenue: $6.9 billion
• iOS units sold: 90.4 million
• Mac units sold: 5.1 million

And this conclusion:

The iOS-macOS UIKit bridge will pump new blood into the (relatively) anemic Mac app world. The arrangement will benefit everyone: iOS developers will find new customers on the Mac, customers who pay multiples of $10 vs single digits for iOS apps; Mac users will be given a wider choice of apps; and Apple gets a livelier macOS store.

Well said, Jean-Louis. Per usual.

John Vorhees, MacStories:

Now that people have had a chance to dig deeper into macOS Mojave, a number of smaller features have been discovered that didn’t get mentioned during the keynote on Monday and weren’t included in our initial overview of the updated OS that will be released in the fall. Here are a few of our favorite discoveries.

This is a short read, interesting all the way. My favorite nugget:

What Apple didn’t explain when it updated the Mac App Store is that macOS updates have been moved from the Mac App Store to System Preferences.

To me, this is a step towards iOS. Can’t help but wonder if we’ll see a unified core framework for the basic App Store and software updating functionality. Looking forward to playing with Marzipan.

Nice job by Bryan M. Wolfe, iDownloadBlog. I came away from this thinking the core, recently rewritten iOS App Store code was repurposed for macOS Mojave. Made me wonder if the iOS to macOS Marzipan framework was at all involved here.

And, no matter, the results are excellent. Take a look.

Macworld:

1Password 7 for Mac has a variety of small improvements and a fresher design that add up to a nice bump justifying the version number. But because its maker, AgileBits, switched to a subscription model as its dominant method of offering software, the company is clearly less obsessed with including the kitchen sink, as it tries to offer ongoing updates and new features between major releases to justify the cost to current subscribers.

1Password.com subscriptions start at $2.99 a month for an individual license. AgileBits also sells a standalone version of 1Password with version 7, which is $50 at introduction and $65 at some indeterminate point in the future.

There’s no doubt 1Password is the best and easiest to use password manager available for the Mac and iOS.

AppleInsider:

New developer guidelines released during WWDC set new rules for cryptocurrency apps distributed through both the iOS and Mac App Stores.

Apple has added new language to its App Store review guidelines related to cryptocurrency. Under the Hardware Compatibility section, Apple now states that “apps, including any third party advertisements displayed within them, may not run unrelated background processes, such as cryptocurrency mining.”

Good that they’re banning mining on the iOS device itself but not other aspects of cryptocurrency.

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.

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.

Back in the 90s, we built our Web sites from scratch, so we used BBEdit to hand-code everything we needed to get the site up-and-running. We didn’t just use BBEdit for building and maintaining the Website, we also used it as our default word processing tool. Every word written for the stories we posted was done in BBEdit.

Now, as BBEdit celebrates its 25th anniversary, I can still say I am a proud user. Congrats to the crew at Bare Bones Software and thanks for making such a great product.

To celebrate BBEdit’s 25th Anniversary, Bare Bones Software is creating commemorative apparel. Learn more!

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

Viso uses your iPhone X’s TrueDepth camera and ARKit to allow you to use your face to control your Mac. To truly appreciate this, watch the video embedded below. Amazing work. Love the accessibility possibilities.

Kudos to the team that pulled this page together. It is graphically interesting, full of eye candy, but it also does a wonderful job showing off the incredible new tech of iOS 12. Worth your time.

Madeline Buxton, Refinery29:

In February, Samsung revealed AR Emoji, a clever (and slightly creepy-looking) way to create interactive avatars that speak onscreen as you speak IRL. Yesterday, Apple revealed their version of the interactive emoji, called Memoji (i.e. Animoji, but make it human).

Besides looking cute, rather than creepy, Memoji have another major plus over their direct competitor: They don’t require users to pick a gender. In fact, the entire creation process is gender neutral — there is no mention of male or female anywhere onscreen. This is an emoji set anyone can relate to, no matter how they identify, what their hair looks like, or even how many piercings they have.

Yet another reason Memoji are head and shoulders better than Samsung’s AR Emoji (which I just find creepy, way the wrong side of the uncanny valley).

As I’ve said before, I believe Memoji will help Apple sell a ton more Face ID devices.

This TidBITS post is a good read. Even if you already know how to do this, good to walk through the interface to see what’s changed since the last time you dug into this.

From the Fire TV Cube product page:

• Fire TV Cube is the first hands-free streaming media player with Alexa, delivering an all-in-one entertainment experience. From across the room, just ask Alexa to turn on the TV, dim the lights, and play what you want to watch.

• With far-field voice recognition, eight microphones, and beamforming technology, Fire TV Cube hears you from any direction. Enjoy hands-free voice control—search, play, pause, fast forward, and more. Plus, control your TV, sound bar, cable or satellite box, receiver, and more with just your voice.

• Do more with Alexa. Fire TV Cube has a built-in speaker that lets you check the weather, listen to the news, control compatible smart home devices, and more—even with the TV off. Fire TV Cube is always getting smarter with new Alexa skills and voice functionality.

• Experience true-to-life picture quality and sound with access to vivid 4K Ultra HD up to 60 fps, HDR, and the audio clarity of Dolby Atmos.

This seems like a major move into the living room for Amazon, and a much more direct threat to Apple TV and, more subtly, an attack on HomePod.

To get a sense of this, try to use your Apple TV with just your voice. No remote allowed, not even to turn it on. Though there are workarounds, including configurations where you can use your HomePod to turn on your Apple TV, most people will get nowhere with this challenge. And that’s the point.

HomePod is designed with Apple Music in mind, with a secondary nod to Siri. The Fire TV Cube, starting at $119.99, brings a full-fledged Alexa to the living room, designed specifically to control your TV, a direct replacement for your Apple TV.

Though you don’t get the deep access to the Apple ecosystem, you do get access to Alexa (and the growing list of 3rd party Alexa skills), and you can control the whole thing with your voice, no remote needed.

Looking forward to seeing the next generation of Apple TV. Will Apple somehow use HomePod as a bridge to bring this hands-free capability to Apple TV? Not sure that’d be enough, since my HomePod lives far from my TV. I’m hoping for built-in far-field mics in the Apple TV itself.

My thanks to Bare Bones Software for sponsoring The Loop this week. As it happens, BBEdit was launched during the 6th WWDC. After 25 years, it’s good to know you can always count on BBEdit!

For the last 25 years, Bare Bones Software’s BBEdit has made getting work done easier (and faster!) for people who write, app developers, web developers and system admins.

BBEdit is crafted and continuously refined in response to meet the needs of writers, web authors, and software developers, providing an abundance of high-performance features for editing, searching, and manipulation of text. All in all, BBEdit is a powerful editor with an interface that stays out of your way, and well worth checking out.

To celebrate BBEdit’s 25th Anniversary, Bare Bones Software is creating commemorative apparel. Learn more!

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

Open Culture:

So Consequence of Sound has posted a list of The 100 Best One-Hit Wonder Songs, and before we dive in, we should point out that they’ve really tried to do their best in the face of history.

If American chart success is a judge, the CoS writers says, Beck would be a one-hit-wonder along with Radiohead. No, what we’re really gunning for are artists who really only have one bona fide hit to their name, and afterwards pretty much disappeared into the ether.

Great playlist but I’d disagree with categorizing some of these bands as “one hit wonders”. While they may not be as good as their one song inclusions on this list, some had long and successful careers.

Sam Nichols, Vice:

A couple years ago, something strange happened. A friend and I were sitting at a bar, iPhones in pockets, discussing our recent trips in Japan and how we’d like to go back. The very next day, we both received pop-up ads on Facebook about cheap return flights to Tokyo. It seemed like just a spooky coincidence, but then everyone seems to have a story about their smartphone listening to them. So is this just paranoia, or are our smartphones actually listening?

I have heard so many examples like this. It seems impossible that all these anecdotes are mere coincidences. I’ve been just waiting for someone to take the time and run some (relatively) controlled experiments to prove or disprove this theory.

I am still not convinced one way or the other. I’d still love to see a rigorous experiment that really nails down all the variables. But a fascinating read.

[H/T Storm Garelli]

Chance Miller, 9to5Mac:

With WWDC every year comes new beta versions of all of Apple’s operating systems. This year, we got iOS 12, macOS 10.14 Mojave, watchOS 5, and tvOS 12. All are currently available to developers and are meant for testing purposes. After all, they are betas and are buggy.

With beta releases come a handful of issues. Devices typically run warmer than expected and suffer from shortened battery life, as Apple typically doesn’t really optimize performance until later betas.

And:

Furthermore, you’ll likely run into app compatibility issues across all of the latest betas. The purpose of the beta period, again, is for developers to test their applications and services on the latest versions of macOS, iOS, watchOS, and tvOS. This means apps aren’t optimized and might not run properly on the beta.

That last is the biggest bugaboo for me. I can live with occasional crashes or quirky behavior, and the current slate of betas seem exceptionally stable. But for certain apps, compatibility is critical. If I move to a beta and a key app just doesn’t work, I’ve wasted a lot of time since I’d be forced to restore from a backup to get back to where I was before I took the leap.

If you are considering a backup, check out this Mojave compatibility Reddit thread. Be sure to read the comments, lots more issues revealed there.

If you depend on a 3rd party device, like a specialized trackball with programmable buttons, say, do a bit of research to see if the device still works in the beta.

I am more likely to take the leap with my phone, since that does seem stable enough with all my key apps. With Mojave, I’ve still got a bit more research to do, since I use so many specialized apps.

Obviously, make sure you have solid, reliable backups. For your iPhone, make sure you do an archived backup, which will ensure that your backup will not be overwritten by a backup of the beta, just in case you have to restore your phone back to 11.4.

And finally, keep in mind that embracing a beta is a choice. If you make it, don’t complain about things not working right. That’s the world you are entering. Stuff will break. But it will (in the vast majority of cases) get fixed, and performance will no doubt get much better as debug builds are replaced by performance builds. Report the bugs you encounter so the folks doing the heavy lifting can follow up.