A couple of weeks ago, I opened my Macbook Pro as usual. The keyboard lit up, as usual. I waited – there’s that pause while the display gathers itself (it’s a 2012 model) and the processor pulls everything together and presents the login window.
Except this time, nothing. The display didn’t light. There was the quiet sound of the fans going, but nothing. Oh dear. Closed the display, opened it to catch it unawares – no, that wasn’t going to fool it. After a bit more futzing around, I concluded that it was not in the mood to work. But I had work to do, and so I turned to my iPad Pro.
This is a well-written post, from someone who uses a MacBook Pro to maintain a blog. This is particularly interesting to me for the obvious connection to my work writing for and maintaining The Loop.
What I particularly like about this post is the objective list of the good and the bad. All of these comments resonated for me. If you’ve considered what it’d be like to move from MacBook to iPad, I’d encourage you to read this list of good and bad first.
Kacie Anderson, a 24-year-old from Hannover, PA, used the watch’s SOS feature to call for an ambulance after suffering injuries from a car accident late last year which could’ve been broadcasted in a car accident news. As Anderson recently shared in a letter to Apple, she was stopped at a red light with her 9-month-old baby when her car was struck by a drunk driver. She wasn’t able to reach her phone after the collision—but she was able to use her watch to get help.
“The moment he hit us everything inside the car went airborne. My face took a horrible blow to the steering wheel, headrest, back to the steering wheel, and then to the window. I blacked out for about a minute and could not see. My eyes were wide open but all I saw was black,” Anderson shares exclusively with Shape. “My hands flew around to feel for my phone and then I realized I had my watch on and commanded it to call 911.”
I kind of love the look of Apple’s new Close Your Rings page. The design matches the Activity app icon, with lots of red, green, and that “Stand” shade of pale blue.
While we’re on the subject of Stand, I’d love to see Apple add just a bit more functionality to Stand tracking. As is, there’s a “you’ve not reached your Stand goal for the hour” and “You did it”. But nothing in between. The Activity app does show the individual stand status on a time line, but the current hour is either filled in (you reached the hour’s Stand goal) or faded (you’re not there yet).
I’m suggesting more of a status bar, something that fills up so I can see how close I am to my goal for the hour. As is, it’s a bit of a mystery how close I am. Sometimes, I get the “You did it” message and wrist tap when I reach the Stand goal, but often I do not get that completion message. Some sort of progress indicator (fill the Activity app’s bar for that hour as my Stand progresses, for example) would be a motivator for me and less frustrating.
On the heels of this past Tuesday’s annual shareholders meeting, Apple has made the transition to their new campus official by changing the company’s corporate address to One Apple Park Way. The change comes just weeks after Apple was given occupancy permits for several sections of the main campus building.
In addition to his keen melodic sensibility, Sinatra also set a high bar with his technique. In the video at the top of the post from 1965, we see the consummate artist record “It Was a Very Good Year” in the studio, while smoking a cigarette and casually sipping what may be coffee from a paper cup in his other hand.
Think about it…this was a live studio recording. One take. No overdubs, No added tracks. Just pure talent. The only thing the sound engineers had to do was adjust the eq levels a bit and that’s it. This is what you hear on the album. You’d be hard pressed to find ANYONE who could do that today.
Sinatra was “before my time” but my mom loved him and played his music constantly so I grew up listening to his songs. This is a really interesting video of an artist doing something that few, if any, still do today.
Ever wondered how we get such smooth tracking shots of rockets moving at incredibly fast speeds? In this video, I talk about the camera equipment that’s used and how it was used in the past.
I have often wondered. Now I want to know the specs of those cameras.
Starting today the Twitter for Mac app will no longer be available for download, and in 30 days will no longer be supported.
What used to be a great app atrophied and died because of lack of support from its owner, not because Twitter is “focusing our efforts on a great Twitter experience that’s consistent across platforms.” If you’re looking for a replacement, I highly recommend Tweetbot or Twitterrific.
This week we reported to Apple a serious flaw in macOS that can lead to data loss when using an APFS-formatted disk image. Until Apple issues a macOS update that resolves this problem, we’re dropping support for APFS-formatted disk images.
What I describe below applies to APFS sparse disk images only — ordinary APFS volumes (e.g. your SSD startup disk) are not affected by this problem. While the underlying problem here is very serious, this is not likely to be a widespread problem, and will be most applicable to a small subset of backups. Disk images are not used for most backup task activity, they are generally only applicable when making backups to network volumes. If you make backups to network volumes, read on to learn more.
As Bombich points out, this is a fairly specific issue that may not affect many of you but it could be catastrophic to those of you it does affect. Thanks to Moeskido for the heads up.
The latest in smart speaker innovation deserves state-of-the-art surface protection. Our Leather HomePod Coaster is designed in Minneapolis and handmade by skilled artisans. You’ll love it, but don’t put a ring on it. Your HomePod’s new home features durable & luxurious American full-grain leather with an ultra-soft leather backing because the only rings you should see in your home this season are of the Olympic variety on TV.
That didn’t take long. Seriously, if you’re going to put your HomePod on something, you should use Pad & Quill—I have several of their products and they are all high quality.
One of my favorite Siri features is the Shopping List. I love the fact that HomePod Siri supports this feature. To try this yourself, fire up Siri on your HomePod or on the iPhone used to set up your HomePod and say:
Add milk to the shopping list
If you don’t yet have a list named Shopping, Siri will ask if you want her to create one for you. Say yes. Next, tell Siri:
What’s on my shopping list?
Siri should read your list. The key here is that your shopping list is shared between your HomePod and iPhone. This gives you the ease of saying “Hey Siri, add zzz to my shopping list” pretty much anywhere within hearing distance of your HomePod. Then, when you get to the store, pull out your iPhone and either have Siri read the list, or fire up Reminders and tap the shopping list (that’s where the list is stored).
One small complaint: To me, a key to a shopping list, especially if you live with other people, is sharing. If you use HomePod to create a shopping list (as we did above), the shopping list will default to being locally stored on the iPhone used to setup the HomePod. As far as I can tell, once a locally stored list is setup, there’s no way to change the sharing settings for that list to share on iCloud (please do ping me if I’m wrong about this).
A better path: If you find that your shopping list is, indeed, stored locally and not in iCloud, do this:
Fire up Reminders on your Mac or iOS device
Delete any existing Shopping list (copy down any items on there first)
Tap the + to create a new list. When prompted, save it on iCloud. Name it Shopping.
Now, when you ask HomePod Siri (or any of your Siris, really) to add an item to your Shopping list, you’ll have access to the same list on all your devices.
Note that there is nothing special about the name Shopping, either. You could call your list Grocery or Stanley. Just ask Siri to add an item to the XXX list, where XXX is the name of that list. Key is for the list to live in the cloud.
UPDATE: I have gotten some pings telling me that I can already share Lists. True, but the point here is that HomePod Siri creates the list as a local list. My issue is, once a list is local, I can’t find a way to change it so it is stored in iCloud. Once the list is in iCloud, sharing is easy.
First things first, you might want to listen to this one on headphones, else you’ll find your home devices firing off constantly. Amusing the first time it happens, but trust me, you don’t want that.
The fact that this infinite loop of requests gets interrupted says something about reliability of this technology. I’d hate for my life to depend on one of these assistants getting something right. As I understand it, the CNET folks who pulled this together tried several times to tweak settings to get the infinite flow and just couldn’t.
It’ll get there.
Side note: I kept expecting that weird fake flowers thing in the middle of the picture to come to life. Sadly, it did not.
Apple last month fixed a flaw in macOS and iOS that allowed a text message to crash its chat software – and now it has the opportunity to do so again.
Various macOS, iOS, and watchOS apps that rely on Apples’s text-rending code can be crashed when sent a message containing a symbol composed of characters used in the Indian language Telugu.
And:
The symbol represents a combination of Telugu letters and signs, specifically the letter “ja,” the sign “virama,” the letter “nya,” a zero-width non-joiner and the vowel sign “aa.”
Trying to open a message with this symbol in iMessage or other apps that rely on Apple’s UIKit framework for text rendering, like Facebook Messenger, Twitter, and WhatsApp, will cause a crash. Don’t what ever you do try to create a filesystem folder using that symbol.
Unless you use Telugu or interact with someone who does, chances are you’ll never encounter this bug. But it is interesting. This came to light when this OpenRadar post appeared.
The original radar was marked as a duplicate, meaning Apple already knew about the problem. And sure enough, there’s already a fix in place in the latest betas:
Apple has confirmed the message app Telugu crash bug is fixed in all current iOS 11.3 betas for iOS/macOS/watchOS/tvOS.
What’s more: Apple will push a quicker fix out ahead of iOS 3 release. (I.e. iOS 11.2.x update) to fix it faster for everyone.)https://t.co/SF47fpBgXs
Along with most of the channels you’d expect, such as ESPN, Fox News, and MSBNC, YouTube TV has just added Turner networks, including Adult Swim, Cartoon Network, CNN, TBS, and TNT. It will also soon offer NBA TV and MLB Network.
Which channels you want is highly personal, but here are a few notable channels that are missing: BET, Food Network, Hallmark, MTV, and Nickelodeon.
FOX has not secured the rights to NFL games on its national feed, FOXNet. Users in Albuquerque, Austin, Birmingham, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Denver, Grand Rapids, Greensboro, Greenville (South Carolina), Harrisburg, Hartford, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Milwaukee, Norfolk, Portland, Raleigh, Sacramento, Salt Lake City, San Diego, Seattle, St. Louis, and West Palm Beach will not see NFL games on FOX.
Every cord cutting package I’ve seen so far has holes like this. With cable, you pay a lot more, typically (but not always) have to make a long term commitment, get a lot of stuff you don’t want, but pretty much can get everything you want, as long as you are willing to pay for it.
Ideally, at least for me, the market will devolve to the point where you can build a package that has every element you want, but leave off (and not pay for) things you’ll never consume.
My two cents: Once that sort of package becomes affordable, one of two things will happen. Either the companies that deliver internet will throttle packages they don’t own and make the experience untenable, or cable prices will come down to keep customers and become competitive again.
When Apple acquired Shazam, people wondered what would become of the popular song identification and music discovery app. It’s not unusual for an app acquired by a big company to be pulled from the App Store or for development to slow substantially.
As John reports, the new version of Shazam has a great new UI, supports Spotify, same as always, and features lyrics sync, for those karaoke moments.
One thing to keep in mind though, is that if you’re using the iOS 11.3 beta, playback is broken throughout the app.
That’s not units sold, but 51% of total global smartphone revenue. Both have value, but I’d argue that revenue is much more important than units sold. While total unit sales buys influence, revenue buys investment in R&D.
51% of total global smartphone revenues is astonishing.
Olympic curling has taken to the ice, but if you’re like most Americans, this writer included, the game is a bit baffling. Here’s a quick, stripped-down primer on everyone’s favorite icy alternative to shuffleboard. It doesn’t cover anywhere near all of the game’s nuances, but it should give you enough info that you can enjoy watching an end or two. (And yes, you’ll learn what an “end” is.)
Anyone who lives in a small northern town, be it in Canada, The US, Scotland, Norway, etc, knows what curling is. It’s incredibly popular in those kinds of communities but almost completely unknown outside of them. But, every four years, the Winter Olympics brings it to the forefront again and, while it may look silly with all of the yelling, sweeping, and sliding around, it actually is a very nuanced sport.
We Canadians love our curling. It helps that we are a “world power” of the sport.
Seems to me, “damage” implies permanence. As far as I can tell, the rings left by HomePod, etc., are like smudges. A bit of mayo (or whatever cleaning miracle you use for your wood surfaces) and elbow grease, and it’s all cleaned up.
Or put something solid under the speaker to prevent the ring in the first place.
Using Google data, visualized by Google News Lab with design studio Polygraph, we can begin to quantify how these food trends vary across the country. Based on aggregated, anonymized, and differentially private data from users who have opted in to Google Location History, we ranked cities and counties by their most popular cuisine.
These maps are pretty interesting. Worth a scroll-through, even if you just look at the images.
Engineers at five major SF-based tech companies would need to spend over the 28% threshold of their income to afford a monthly mortgage near their offices.
And:
Apple engineers would have to pay an average of 33% of their monthly income for a mortgage near work. That’s the highest percentage of the companies analyzed, and home prices in Cupertino continue to skyrocket.
This housing market is a chaotic bubble. But it continues to inflate, money continues to pour in.
Take a few minutes to scroll down this page, get a sense of the highlighted apps. A fascinating look at what’s already shipping. To me, this is the tip of the iceberg, and just the slightest taste of what’s coming down the pike.
The Rajam Report highlights various reviews of the YouTube and Amazon Prime Video apps built for Apple TV. At the core are the complaints that the interface does not feel like a traditional Apple TV app, that they do not feel like they were written for Apple TV.
But why?
Take a look at this chart:
Those numbers are sales estimates. Pavan Rajam asks this question:
If you’re Amazon, Hulu, or YouTube, what incentive do you have to invest in a high quality tvOS app when it addresses a mere fraction of your overall TV user base?
Read the whole article. I do think Pavan has his finger on the pulse here.
Apple Inc.’s HomePod, the company’s first foray into speakers in a decade, costs $216 to build and generates thinner profit margins than other products like the Apple Watch and iPhone, according to analysis by TechInsights.
Given the HomePod’s $349 price, that $216 cost suggests Apple is generating margins of about 38 percent, according to the product analysis firm. That compares with margins of 66 percent and 56 percent for the Google Home and Amazon Echo, products that compete in the smart-speaker market, but offer lower audio quality, according to the firm’s estimates.
Margin is complicated. Lots of analysis goes into setting prices and, thus, determining margin. But it does seem reasonable to assume this is Apple entering a somewhat crowded market, wanting to keep their pricing relatively low (compared to their cost) to help raise demand.
The bulk of the HomePod’s costs come from the internal speaker technology, including the many microphones, tweeters, the woofer and the power management components. That adds up to $58, while an additional $60 includes various smaller parts like the lighting system used to display the Siri animation on the top of the device.
The HomePod’s A8 chip is estimated to cost $25.50, while the external housing and other items come in at $25. TechInsights also estimates manufacturing, testing, and packaging to add up to $17.50.
There’s clearly a lot more going on under the hood in a HomePod than in the much cheaper Google Home or Amazon Echo. If you haven’t already, I would definitely click over to the iFixit HomePod teardown and watch the video. I found it fascinating.
In case you ever doubted Facebook’s commitment to hoovering up as much information about you as it can, the company has come under fire for a change in the Facebook app for iOS in the United States. In the last few days, users have discovered a new option when you tap the hamburger button to access your pages, shortcuts, and settings. In that screen is a section called Explore that lets you get to a vast number of Facebook services, such as On This Day, Crisis Response, Live Videos, Find Wi-Fi, and Device Requests. There are so many, in fact, that the last one is Show More, and tapping that displays another 11, including the reassuringly named Protect.
Our recommendation: If you use the Facebook app on your iPhone or iPad, don’t get suckered into installing Onavo Protect.
Facebook once again goes above and beyond to prove they are one of the sleaziest companies in America.
An unhappy discovery after we placed a HomePod on an oiled butcher-block countertop and later on a wooden side table was that it left a defined white ring in the surface. Other reviewers and owners (such as Pocket-lint, and folks on Twitter) have reported the same issue, which an Apple representative has confirmed. Apple says “the marks can improve over several days after the speaker is removed from the wood surface,” and if they don’t fade on their own, you can basically just go refinish the furniture—the exact advice Apple gave in an email to Wirecutter was to “try cleaning the surface with the manufacturer’s suggested oiling method.”
I didn’t have my HomePod placed on an oiled wood surface, so I never noticed this. Still, it doesn’t seem like this is something you would want to have happen when placing a speaker in your home.
The 50-watt Friedman Buxom Betty is what guitar amp fantasies are made of — a gorgeous, hand-wired single-channel amp that delivers the dynamic shimmer of American vintage tube combos as well as the comely roar of classic British stacks.
I really like the unique sound of Friedman amps. The Buxom Betty cleans up really well, but it also gives you some grit when you need it.
Terrific article from iMore’s Lory Gil. Long story short:
On Apple TV, go to home screen (this next step only works from the home screen).
On Apple TV remote, hold down pause button for 3 seconds or so.
When AirPlay menu appears, select your HomePod. This will route Apple TV audio to HomePod.
Now go play a movie. The audio should be coming out of your HomePod. If you are watching in front of your TV, this isn’t really ideal, but if you are moving around, perhaps working in the kitchen with a long view of the TV screen, this can be terrifically convenient.
Now that audio is piped into your HomePod, you can say things to HomePod Siri like:
After numerous delays, Apple has finally confirmed that Before Anythang: The Cash Money Story will release on their Apple Music streaming platform on Friday. The Cash Money documentary will feature Bryan “Birdman” Williams narrating his childhood and what inspired him to change his life’s trajectory by launching the mythical label back in 1991.
Cash Money is home to prominent artists like Drake, Lil Wayne and Nicki Minaj. An amazing, compelling story. Here’s the trailer:
