[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?
For those who aren’t familiar with the origins of this song, no spoilers. I love this aching performance, especially as the band joins in and her voice really goes to town.
But I also love the video itself, minimalist and well filmed, showing off the bands playing in closeup, as well as revealing all the gear they use to perform.
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.
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.
I wonder if the two pages were built by two different teams. As you scroll through both pages, do you notice a difference between them? Here’s why I ask.
To me, the main difference is animation. As you make your way through the iOS 12 preview page, the images all come alive (they are short videos). Though there is some animation on the Mojave page, it’s doesn’t have the same liveliness. To see this for yourself, scroll down to the FaceTime section of each page.
Another difference? The iOS 12 images are all on a white background, the Mojave images are on a dark background (no doubt to showcase dark mode).
No complaints here. Both are graphically stunning. But I do think the iOS 12 page is more effective, does a better job of drawing you in. Just my 2 cents.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
Very interesting, but I especially love the part where Sarah talks about Siri Shortcuts. A few snippets:
The company also showed off a new app called Siri Shortcuts.
The app is based on technology Apple acquired from Workflow, a clever — if somewhat advanced — task automation app that allows iOS users to combine actions into routines that can be launched with just a tap. Now, thanks to the Siri Shortcuts app, those routines can be launched by voice.
By now, you’ve no doubt read about Siri Shortcuts, have a basic sense of the goal, to build a sequence and wrap it up under a spoken phrase that can trigger Siri to execute the sequence.
In response to the demo, Sarah continues:
That’s arguably very cool — and it got a big cheer from the technically minded developer crowd — but it’s most certainly a power user feature. Launching an app to build custom workflows is not something everyday iPhone users will do right off the bat — or in some cases, ever.
Now here’s where things get really interesting to me:
Developers will update their apps’ code so that every time a user takes a particular action — for example, placing their coffee order, streaming a favorite podcast, starting their evening jog with a running app or anything else — the app will let Siri know. Over time, Siri will learn users’ routines — like, on many weekday mornings, around 8 to 8:30 AM, the user places a particular coffee order through a coffee shop app’s order ahead system.
As developers add this “user action” code to their apps, they are helping make Siri smarter, more capable of helping users, doing more useful actions customized to a user’s day-to-day habits/activities. And this happens, even if the user dumps the Shortcuts app in a junk folder.
In your favorite apps, you’ll start seeing an “Add to Siri” link or button in various places — like when you perform a particular action — such as looking for your keys in Tile’s app, viewing travel plans in Kayak, ordering groceries with Instacart and so on.
To me, this is Siri’s new secret weapon. As users start tapping the “Add to Siri” button, their Siri will become smarter. So clever.
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.
Jeff Benjamin, 9to5Mac, does a fantastic job digging through iOS 12 to show off what’s new. If you have to pick one video to wrap your head around iOS 12’s new chewy goodness, this is the best one I’ve yet come across.
One standout from the video occurs very near the beginning, when Jeff runs a GeekBench benchmark test on two identical phones, one running iOS 11.4 and another running the first beta of iOS 12. iOS 12 shows some clear speed improvements.
I’ve been watching a number of videos testing this delta from iOS 11.4 to iOS 12 and most of the performance improvements Apple promised show up in all of them in one form or another. One video, dedicated exclusively to the iPhone 5S, clearly shows Apple has paid attention to older devices, making sure those speedups carry a good way back in the product line.
Start by considering exactly what Federighi said on stage at WWDC: “We love the Mac, and we love macOS because it’s explicitly created to the unique ergonomics of Mac hardware, like the ergonomics of the keyboard and trackpad, the flexibility in displays and storage, and because of the power it exposes, it makes the Mac able to accomplish almost anything.”
And:
I’m not sure I can entirely conceive of iOS never having a tool like the Terminal—if only because it feels inevitable that app development will one day be possible on iOS—but I can accept that the wild-west feel of macOS, where you can arbitrarily install, compile, and write software, is unlikely to ever be reflected on iOS.
And:
Apple itself sells a keyboard for the iPad Pro, and even allows users to move their fingers like they’re using a trackpad when editing text. The iPhone and iMac Pro are about as far as two devices can get from one another, but the MacBook and the iPad Pro are not.
To me, there’s still a huge chasm between any Mac and any iOS device. The Mac was built to serve a cursor, a specific location on the screen that has a focus. There are windows that you can drag around, a file system designed for rapid file/folder moves and copies, searches and sorts.
On the flip side, iOS devices are built for the dynamic nature of touch. All areas of the screen are equal citizens when it comes to touch. There’s no nudging things to the side without specifically reaching for them. No arrow keys to move a text cursor back and forth, or move an object from side to side.
Though I do see Jason’s point, the differences between a MacBook and a keyboard enabled iPad Pro are less than that of the iPhone and iMac Pro, to me they are still worlds apart.
All that said, Jason’t article is a terrific read, worth your time, thoughtful as always. I look forward to next year’s WWDC when we see a truly informed Marzipan, when Apple delivers a framework specifically designed to bridge the macOS iOS chasm.
Music-streaming companies like Spotify will soon be able to let users utilize Siri controls to play music through their apps thanks to Apple’s newly-announced Siri Shortcuts feature in iOS 12.
At a WWDC developer session, the company detailed a new “Play Media” intent it was introducing to developers with Siri Shortcuts that will let users summon audio and video media from third-party apps. The integrations would operate much less seamlessly than controls for Apple Music through Siri, but you would theoretically be able to direct Siri on the iPhone or HomePod to a designated playlist or artist on a service like Spotify, functionality that was previously not possible.
Not clear if this will carry over to allow you to ask HomePod Siri to play a specific Spotify track, but seems likely to me.
The largely unknown company claims to have issued a cease and desist letter to Apple, asking the company to stop “infringing on our intellectual property” with the Shortcuts logo.
And:
A Shift spokesperson said: “It’s mind-blowing that Apple, the firm with the biggest cash pile in history, the firm that is so design oriented, had to copy our logo.”
First things first, follow the link and look at the two logos side-by-side. Judge for yourself.
I do see a strong resemblance, can’t imagine a universe where someone at Apple copied the logo. Cash grab? Fair demand?
Though it went unannounced at Apple’s WWDC 2018 keynote on Monday, the first iOS 12 beta allows two different people to register their face with Face ID on iPhone X, addressing in part one of the biggest downsides of Apple’s new biometric authentication technology.
While still not as capable as Touch ID in this regard, this is still a welcome way for me to allow my wife to access my iPhone X easily.
On Monday Apple announced that they are officially supporting so-called “free trials” for non-subscription apps. The reaction has been a breathless celebration that Apple has finally relented and given developers something we’ve been asking, no begging, for since the dawn of the App Store.
But what really changed? Not much. Apple announced no functional changes to the way the apps are categorized, how pricing is conveyed to customers, or how the physical transaction of downloading, trialing, and potentially purchasing an app takes place.
While many of us will be happy to have free trials available to us, as a developer, Jalkut still has some understandable concerns he hopes Apple will address.
We’ve uncovered a host of small changes, tweaks, and features that brought smiles to our faces while tinkering with the beta, and they’ve reminded us that these little bits of polish and refinement are what make iOS a delight to use. Here’s a list of all the hidden delights we’ve discovered in iOS 12 so far.
Along with the big iOS 12 features, Apple has added a bunch of little ones that may go unnoticed but will be almost as important and useful.
