Whilst HomePod works best with an Apple Music subscription, allowing users to ask Siri to play any of the 40 million tracks in the Apple Music catalog, it does not require a subscription to function. We have learned that the HomePod can play content purchased from iTunes, stream Beats 1, and listen to podcasts without needing a subscription.
And:
Users can continue to buy albums from iTunes and expand their collection of purchased songs associated with their iTunes Store account, and ask Siri to play those on HomePod.
But:
If you add music to your home iTunes library that was not acquired through a purchase, HomePod will not be able to access it. It appears HomePod doesn’t have Home Sharing, which would enable that kind of feature.
Judging from the huge HomePod interest on my Twitter feed, and from the volume of questions I’ve been getting on issues related to HomePod and Apple Music, I think HomePod has big potential.
In the short term, buyers might skew heavily towards folks already subscribed to Apple Music. But I see HomePod as a potential Trojan horse, bringing new subscribers to Apple Music, assuming the HomePod reviews are positive.
In February 2006, Robert Hewitt was scuba diving near Mana Island, off the coast of New Zealand’s North Island. Hewitt was an experienced navy diving instructor with 20 years in the service. It’s safe to say he is always fully geared with essential items like Attrezzature Sub, ensuring he is prepared for any underwater adventure. From high-quality diving masks to sturdy wetsuits, every piece of equipment serves a vital purpose. His readiness guarantees safety and optimal performance, allowing him to explore the depths confidently, no matter the challenges the ocean presentsHe told his dive buddy that he would swim back to shore himself. Instead, when he next surfaced, he had been pulled several hundred meters away by a strong current. The dive boat had moved on, and Hewitt was left alone, the tide pushing him farther and farther from shore.
And:
> The most pressing challenge facing Hewitt was the water temperature of 61 to 63 degrees Fahrenheit (16 to 17 degrees Celsius), well below body temperature. According to physiological models, when water is 59 degrees Fahrenheit (15 degrees Celsius), the median survival time is between 4.8 and 7.7 hours. Amazingly, Hewitt spent the next 75 hours in the water, drifting back and forth over a distance of nearly 40 miles.
And:
> In general, immersion in cold water produces a four-stage response. First is the “cold shock response” that triggers “an inspiratory gasp, uncontrollable hyperventilation, hypertension, and increased cardiac workload.” If you’re not ready for it, this shock response can cause you to inhale water and drown and can set off heart arrhythmias.
Riveting, riveting read. And if this interests you, watch this video.
Andrew O’Hara, iDownloadBlog, jumped through the hoops necessary to test out the beta version of AirPlay 2 using multiple Apple TVs, each running their latest betas.
Watch the video below. This is especially timely, given the fact that we’re just a few weeks away from our first public HomePods and the importance of AirPlay to the HomePod experience.
Here’s how to cheat at the Apple Watch Stand goal: dangle your wrist by your side while you sit in a chair. I discovered this by accident — I dangle my arm during meetings — but once I found it out, I did it on purpose. I cheated while watching Thor: Ragnarok, in meetings, at brunch.
I’ll admit it. I’ve cheated my Activities taskmaster. Mostly inadvertently by, say, forgetting to mark the end of a run, then noticing that I’ve been running for 3 hours!
More from the article:
Exercise can reduce the risk of depression, help you sleep better, and even increase your chances of a long life. Seriously, it’s good for you.
And yet, only about half of American adults were meeting the recommended physical activity standards as of 2016, the CDC has found.
Yup. One of the great benefits of Apple Watch and the rewards that come from filling those rings.
Rewards, as influential American psychologist B. F. Skinner noted, are highly motivating. Rewarding a behavior is a very easy way to reinforce that behavior. Humans really like gold stars.
And:
Skinner’s big idea was basically this: you’ll do what you’re rewarded for. It doesn’t really matter if you’re a person, a cat, a pigeon, or a rat — rewards are a key part of animal behavior. The reward could be anything: a treat, some money, or just closing the rings on your Apple Watch.
And:
The Apple Watch is a behavioral intervention device that was created without consulting any behaviorists. I asked Apple directly about this — both at the original presentation around the Watch and again just before publication. I was told that Apple doesn’t use outside consultants, though it does invite researchers to come discuss their work, including those who have interests in habit formation and behavior change. Apple didn’t formally hire any behaviorists to design the Watch, either.
Whether or not the Apple Watch/Activities team built the reward system on nothing but spit and hunches, it clearly works. People’s behavior changed. So it works.
Read the article. Elizabeth really did some homework here. I found the whole thing fascinating.
This is one of those iOS betas that bring a bevy of new features. Take a few minutes to watch the video embedded below. Jeff Benjamin does an excellent job walking through all the new stuff.
Of special note is the discussion about Messages on iCloud, about 2:25 in.
If you are interested in solving this, start by deciphering the image in the tweet above. If you get stuck, or just want to read through the sequence of solve steps, follow the headline link to a sequence of clues.
According to statistics accumulated by Thinknum, a new data-driven web publication that tracks Apple job openings, among a slew of other publicly available metrics, the number of new positions for designers at the Cupertino tech giant has been climbing steadily since October.
Follow the headline link, check out the graph. That is an impressive spike, year over (not quite) year. I wonder if this is indicative of a new product in the works, or purely replenishing the talent pool.
The latest version of Swift Playgrounds includes new features to make it easier to discover even more content. Now you can subscribe to playgrounds from your favorite third-party creators, then browse and download their content directly within Swift Playgrounds. You’ll automatically see new and updated playgrounds in your subscriptions, a content gallery that shows all playgrounds in a single view, new robots, and much more.
Swift Playgrounds is a wonderful tool to learn how to code.
Apple today introduced a significant update to the Health app with the iOS 11.3 beta, debuting a feature for customers to see their medical records right on their iPhone. The updated Health Records section within the Health app brings together hospitals, clinics and the existing Health app to make it easy for consumers to see their available medical data from multiple providers whenever they choose. Johns Hopkins Medicine, Cedars-Sinai, Penn Medicine and other participating hospitals and clinics are among the first to make this beta feature available to their patients.
Apple’s advancements in health, fitness, and medical in the past few years are incredible.
This spring, iOS 11.3 will deliver exciting new ways to experience augmented reality on iPhone and iPad, new Animoji on iPhone X and the ability to view health records in the Health app.
There are some great new features that are available in iOS 11.3. The developer beta was released today.
With the release of the latest macOS developer beta, Apple will begin to alert users that they are using older, 32-bit apps, instead of the more modern 64-bit apps, the company told me today. The macOS beta will be released to developers on Wednesday.
At this point, the alert is more of a gentle reminder to users that their apps are out of date. You will receive an alert once per 32-bit app, so it won’t be an annoyance, but certainly something you should pay attention too.
Further alerts will happen when the next-generation macOS is released, most likely later this year.
Apple said they aren’t announcing a timeframe for cutting off support for 32-bit apps in macOS, but clearly that time is coming in the next year or so. This is a way for the company to start making people aware of the change, giving them plenty of time to make the necessary arrangements to update their apps.
While the alerts are only in the latest beta version of macOS, end users will start seeing them when version 10.13.4 is released to the general public. That will most likely happen in the next few weeks.
Developers were made aware of this change at WWDC last year, so none of this is new to them. If you see an alert, you should check to see if there is an updated version of that app.
All plants reflect light. Leaves reflect green, and flowers reflect red, or yellow, or whatever. But plants also fluoresce, which means when they absorb ultraviolet light, they emit longer wavelengths visible to the human eye. It’s the same thing that happens with a black-light poster.
This guy is creating spectacular images of “ordinary” flowers.
If you don’t happen to live near a cathedral, you can experience something of that atmosphere through your headphones anywhere you happen to be with Callixtus, a channel on the not normally sacred space of Youtube.
“Perhaps named in honor of either Pope Callistus or Xanothopoulos Callistus, Patriarch of Constantinople,” writes Catholic web site Aleteia’s Daniel Esparza, it offers “an impressive collection of sacred music, mostly medieval, including choral works belonging to both Western Christianity and the Eastern tradition.”
I’m not the least bit religious but I love listening to these chants.
Apple on Wednesday released an update for iTunes on the Mac, allowing the software to work with its upcoming HomePod.
iTunes release notes:
iTunes is now designed to work with HomePod. Use the improved AirPlay menu to easily choose HomePod and what plays next with your Apple Music subscription.
You can download the latest version of iTunes by launching the App Store on your Mac, and then clicking the “Updates” tab.
From a Reddit thread on /r/audiophile, discussing HomePod:
They’re using some form of dynamic modeling, and likely also current sensing that allows them to have a p-p excursion of 20 mm in a 4″ driver. This is completely unheard of in the home market.
And:
The practical upshot is that that 4″ driver can go louder than larger drivers, and with significantly less distortion. It’s also stuff you typically find in speakers with five-figure price tags (The Beolab 90 does this, and I also suspect that the Kii Three does). It’s a quantum leap over what a typical passive speaker does, and you don’t really even find it in higher-end powered speakers
And:
The speaker uses six integrated beamforming microphones to probe the room dimensions, and alter its output so it sounds its best wherever it is placed in the room. It’ll know how large the room is, and where in the room it is placed.
And:
The room correction applied after probing its own position isn’t simplistic DSP of frequency response, as the speaker has seven drivers that are used to create a beamforming speaker array,. so they can direct specific sound in specific directions. The only other speakers that do this is the Beolab 90, and Lexicon SL-1. The Beolab 90 is $85,000/pair, and no price tag is set for the Lexicon, but the expectation in the industry is “astronomical”.
And:
Lots of people online are calling it overpriced because they think Apple just slapped a bunch of speakers in a circular configuration and added Siri, but the engineering behind it is extremely audiophile niche stuff. And it does this all automatically with no acoustical set up or technical know how.
One comment I’ve seen over and over is the fact that the HomePod is not stereo. From Apple’s official HomePod page:
Place HomePod anywhere in the room. It automatically analyzes the acoustics, adjusts the sound based on the speaker’s location, and separates the music into direct and ambient sound. Direct sound is beamed to the middle of the room, while ambient sound is diffused into left and right channels and bounced off the wall.
While you can add a second HomePod to get true stereo, there’s more going on here than simple mono sound. And I’ve long been used to Bluetooth speakers from high end companies such as Bose that fill a room with sound using a single speaker, frequently priced around $300.
To me, HomePod is a step up in audio quality and in functionality. Looking forward to February 9th. I’ll definitely let you know if it was money well spent.
Ursula K. Le Guin was a great scifi and fantasy writer. She died a few days ago and amongst all the articles appreciating her work, I came across this letter she wrote.
Le Guin was asked to contribute a blurb to an anthology of science fiction stories. Here response says a tremendous amount about her:
Dear Mr Radziewicz,
I can imagine myself blurbing a book in which Brian Aldiss, predictably, sneers at my work, because then I could preen myself on my magnanimity. But I cannot imagine myself blurbing a book, the first of the series, which not only contains no writing by women, but the tone of which is so self-contentedly, exclusively male, like a club, or a locker room. That would not be magnanimity, but foolishness. Gentlemen, I just don’t belong here.
Today, Apple finally announced a shipping date for its smart speaker, the HomePod. And something about the launch of this Apple music device reminds me of the launch of that other Apple music device, the iPod.
“No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame,” said Rob “CmdrTaco” Malda on Slashdot on October 1st, 2001. (The Nomad, if you’re wondering, was a pre-iPod MP3 player that was the size and shape of a Sony Discman in its early incarnations. So.) At the time, Slashdot was the most important online community for talking about tech. And at the time, tech news meant for discussion (a lot of Linux) was posted with brief news snippets submitted by readers, snarky one-liners from the people who posted, and even snarkier tags. The iPod came “from the well-thats-not-very-exciting dept.”
Good analogy, comparing the HomePod launch to the iPod launch. Will HomePod succeed? I suspect we’ll see at least enough success to justify the effort, given that Apple is selling into a pool of about 30 million Apple Music subscribers.
If things go well, the enthusiasm of the HomePod enjoyers will help bring more people into the Apple Music fold. Seems a reasonable bet for Apple.
> Apple is betting big on HomePod as an audiophile device.
I’m going to post separately on this, but suffice it to say that I think audio quality will make or break HomePod. From everything I’ve heard and read (from people who either worked on the tech or have heard it in person), it sounds like HomePod audio is impressive as hell, surprisingly so.
And that’s not likely something you’ll be able to go out and listen to in a crowded Apple Store. If the sound is as impressive as it sounds (sorry), you’ll be reading glowing praise in the blogosphere, it’ll be a grass roots effect.
> After more than three years, the best way to stream your music library inside your house is still through your television. HomePod will change that with full Apple Music integration, complete with support for Siri commands and playlists. Apple also says it will learn your tastes based on the songs you like (by saying, “Hey Siri, I like this”), and adjust your playlists and recommendations accordingly.
To me, the friction of teaching Apple Music my likes/dislikes, of tuning my musical preferences, is a big problem. Recently, I stumbled upon a discussion about the best crypto casinos in the UK as reviewed on reddit.com, which highlighted the importance of user-friendly interfaces. This made me realize how valuable it is to be able to like/dislike without having to dig through an interface, which is a terrific step forward.
There’s a lot more to Michael’s article, well worth the read.
In case you want to protect your $349 HomePod from accidental damage, you’ll be able to get AppleCare+ coverage for $39.
And:
The coverage includes AirPort products and “adds up to two incidents of accidental damage from handling for HomePod, each subject to a $39 service fee”.
As with all other AppleCare+ packages, it doesn’t cover cosmetic damage that doesn’t affect the functionality of the device.
The European Commission today announced that it would be fining the company €997 million, or $1.23 billion, for abusing its market position between 2011 and 2016, related to its relationship with Apple.
And:
“Qualcomm illegally shut out rivals from the market for LTE baseband chipsets for over five years, thereby cementing its market dominance,” said Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, in a statement. “Qualcomm paid billions of US Dollars to a key customer, Apple, so that it would not buy from rivals. These payments were not just reductions in price — they were made on the condition that Apple would exclusively use Qualcomm’s baseband chipsets in all its iPhones and iPads.
Qualcomm will no doubt appeal this ruling. The size of this fine boggles my mind. $1.23 billion. That’s a lot of baseband chips.
Apple on Wednesday will release ARKit 1.5 to developers, giving them the latest tools to make augmented reality apps for iPhone and iPad users.
With the release of ARKit just six months ago, iOS became the largest augmented reality platform in the world, rolling out to hundreds of millions of iPhone and iPad users. The latest version will make the next-generation apps even more powerful and useful for the average user.
The new version has a better understanding of the scene and space around you, allowing it to place virtual objects on vertical surfaces like walls and doors. For instance, in one demo Apple showed me, a developer can make a game that requires the player to bounce a ball on the floor and hit a virtual target hung on the wall. ARKit 1.5 makes the target on the wall possible. If you miss the target, ARKit will recognize that and bounce the ball off the wall.
ARKit can now also map irregularly shaped surfaces like circular tables, allowing the entire experience of an AR scene to be more realistic. The resolution of the camera view in the latest version offers 50 percent greater resolution and supports auto-focus for an even sharper perspective.
In speaking with Apple about the release, one of the new features that impressed me the most is ARKit’s ability to find and recognize 2D images such as signs, posters, and artwork.
Think about this for a minute. You walk into a museum and see an image of the Apollo moon landing. When you hold up your iPhone, it recognizes the image and allows you to tap on it, which instantly takes you to the surface of the moon with the Apollo vehicle landing beside you.
While these are just example apps, it was an incredible demo to see. It really makes you think about the possibilities of what developers can do with this technology.
One of the main questions I have about augmented reality is when will it become important to the average, mainstream user. The game demos I’ve seen at Apple keynotes are great, but I’m not a gamer, so they don’t matter much to me.
One thing to remember is how new this technology is and how far it has to go. There are currently about 2,000 AR apps, but that number is only going to grow, as will the categories of apps developers will make. The same thing happened when Apple opened the original iOS App Store—as time went on the apps became more sophisticated and useful for everyone. The same thing should happen with AR apps.
ARKit 1.5 is a big step to making augmented reality a cool technology that average users will use even more than they do now.
If you’re tired of the “Upgrade to macOS High Sierra” notifications nagging your Mac to install a system software update that you perhaps have made a conscious decision to avoid, then you will likely appreciate this tip to completely stop the upgrade macOS notifications.
This is a great tip for those of us who can’t or don’t want to upgrade to MacOS High Sierra. But when I tried the tip both ways, my Mac doesn’t seem to have a “/Library/Bundles/” folder and the Terminal command comes back with an “OSXNotification.bundle: No such file or directory” result. Should I be concerned?
HomePod, the innovative wireless speaker from Apple, arrives in stores beginning Friday, February 9 and is available to order online this Friday, January 26 in the US, UK and Australia. HomePod will arrive in France and Germany this spring.
HomePod delivers stunning audio quality wherever it’s placed — in any room in the house, playing any style of music. Using just your voice, it’s easy and fun to use, and works together with an Apple Music subscription for a breakthrough music experience, providing access to one of the world’s largest cloud music libraries.
On Siri:
Siri, now actively used on over half a billion devices, has developed a deep knowledge of music and understands your preferences and tastes. And with Siri, HomePod can send a message, set a timer, play a podcast, check the news, sports, traffic and weather, and even control a wide range of HomeKit smart home accessories.
And:
Using Siri to deliver deep knowledge of artists, songs, albums and more, HomePod can handle advanced searches within Apple Music’s catalog, so users can ask questions like, “Hey Siri, when was this song released?” or “Hey Siri, can you play something totally different?” to change the mood. Apple Music subscribers can enjoy a catalog of more than 45 million songs, combined with their entire iTunes library, for online or offline listening — completely ad-free.
On SiriKit:
Through SiriKit, HomePod supports third-party messaging apps, so users can ask Siri to send a message to a friend or colleague using apps like WhatsApp. Reminders, note-taking and to-do list apps like Things and Evernote will automatically work with HomePod, so Siri can set reminders, create a new list, mark items as complete, or create and modify notes. For developers interested in adding SiriKit support, more information is available at developer.apple.com/sirikit.
On setup:
Setup is as easy and intuitive as setting up AirPods — simply hold an iPhone next to HomePod and it’s ready to start playing music in seconds. The Siri waveform appears on the top to indicate when Siri is engaged, and integrated touch controls also allow easy navigation.
The biggest question for me, how will Apple distinguish HomePod from Amazon Echo and Google Home, both priced significantly less. HomePod is $349.
From the post, this bit about KGI predicting a quick end-of-life for iPhone X:
KGI also expects a trio of iPhone models in the fall of 2018. He predicts the iPhone X will be “end of life” in the summer of 2018, instead of being retained as a lower-cost option in the following year. If this is the case, it would be the first time that Apple has not retained the previous year’s model to allow for a wide range of iPhones available at many price points.
This would not be the first time an iPhone flagship model didn’t stick around for a second year. In 2013, Apple introduced the iPhone 5S to replace the iPhone 5, and also introduced the iPhone 5C to occupy the second pricing tier.
The iPhone X was a relatively giant leap in hardware design. The notch took a lot of heat and it seems a logical speculation that Apple is working hard to shrink the hardware footprint and the notch. And that means a new rev of the iPhone X. Once that happens, it’d seem logical to end-of-life the previous version. If the KGI speculation is true. If.
But my favorite part of Gruber’s post is his takedown of a Newsweek article, with the headline:
Is Apple About to Cancel the iPhone X? Poor Sales Mean Device Faces ‘End of Life’”
This article got a fair amount of traction, but it was based on the Apple Insider article quoted above. Headlines. A sharp, cutting tool, dangerous when used poorly.
Follow the link above to Gruber’s post. A worthy read.
The “ring” building is situated on 175 acres, so it can take a lucky Apple employee as long as 10 minutes to walk from the parking garage to their office.
So Apple will provide 1,000 free bikes and 2,000 bike parking spots on its campus for employees to get from place to place.
Most Silicon Valley tech giants provide free bicycles for their employees, but given Apple’s corporate preferences, its bikes are minimally designed, compared to Google’s rainbow-colored two-wheelers.
It seems Apple settled on a completely chrome, minimalist bicycle design, and ordered a whole lot.
Not new news, but there’s a bit of video and a still shot of the bikes. Interesting to compare Google’s Google-color-scheme bikes to Apple’s minimalist take.
If you want an iPad to supplement your iPhone and Mac, you can still get one in the $329 “just call me iPad” model introduced last spring. But the bulk of Apple’s iPad efforts of late have centered on making the device a capable replacement for the traditional computer. The iPad Pro and iOS 11 represent a new vision for the iPad. This vision puts the iPad not next to the Mac, but instead squarely in its place. It’s a vision embodied by the question, “What’s a computer?”
If the tagline “What’s a computer?” doesn’t ring a bell, take a moment to watch it.
Two key moments:
At about 30 seconds in, our hero does a super-Pro-move to fold up the keyboard. I’ve not yet found someone who can duplicate that move, at least not nearly as smoothly. Wonder how many takes that took.
At 55 seconds in, there’s the real payoff. “What’s a computer?” Apple is clearly pitching the iPad Pro as the be-all and end-all in devices.
Ryan’s MacStories post does a terrific job answering that question, painting the differences between a Mac and an iPad with absolutely no snark or venom. This is a wish list, an exploration of what the iPad still needs to cross the “What’s a computer?” divide.
