Did you know you can specify medical info to appear on your iPhone lock screen? This could be lifesaving for many people.

Important features to be aware of, well laid out by Michael Potuck, writing for 9to5Mac.

Billboard:

Today Apple launches Apple Music for Artists, a dashboard designed to provide acts with hundreds of data points giving deep analytical insight into their fans’ listening and buying habits.

And:

The easily navigable dashboard’s home page provides artists with their current number of plays, spins, song purchases and album purchases. The user can specify the time period ranging from the past 24 hours to the 2015 launch of Apple Music.

An Insights panel showcases key milestones via bullet points that highlight such information as all-time number of plays and purchases for specific songs or cumulatively.

And:

Apple Music for Artists debuts more than two years after Spotify, Pandora and YouTube bowed their own artist dashboards. While admittedly a late entry, Apple hopes to make up for its tardiness with the depth of information available, level of transparency and the ease of use provided by the clean user interface.

Good news for Apple Music artists.

One side note: The original Billboard headline was “Apple Bows Apple Music For Artists to Provide Acts With Deep Analytics Dive”. Took me a few reads to parse that one. Music and Hollywood writers have their own headline language. You’d rarely (if ever) find the word “boffo” in a tech headline. But “Boffo Box Office”? Happens all the time in the Hollywood press.

When Hollywood folk check out the tech blogs, do they see the same alien language?

Intel Corp said on Monday that patches it released to address two high-profile security vulnerabilities in its chips are faulty, advising customers, computer makers and cloud providers to stop installing them.

Wow Intel, that is awful.

Core77:

Imagine being in the ocean, trapped in a swell some 700 meters from shore. Suddenly a yellow package drops out of the sky as if sent by a god, hits the water next to you and expands into a flotation device.

That was the experience of two unlucky, then lucky teenage boys off the coast of Lennox Head in Australia last week. Someone spotted the boys in distress and called it in, but the nearest lifeguard station was a kilometer away. Just that morning, however, Lennox Head had brought their new lifesaving drone into service.

What a great story. I was caught in a small rip when I was in Australia last month and it was all kinds of terrifying.

M.G. Siegler:

Spotify pays most of its revenue to the labels to license music rights. The labels then pay a small amount of that money to artists. In the age of record pressing, compact disc encoding, physical distribution, and the like, such a middle man was needed. Today, that middle man seems, well, antiquated. The labels, of course, will say they do far more than this, and maybe they do — for now. But come on, this middle man is so getting cut out of the equation at some point.¹

And Spotify, more so than any company before it — aside from maybe Apple (more on that in a bit) — is in a position to do just that. Of course, they can’t come out and say this — though it sure sounds like Jimmy Iovine did recently (again more in a bit) — because it would be declaring open war on their most important partners. But this is inevitable: Spotify will work with artists directly to produce and distribute their music, becoming, effectively, a label.

It’s hard to argue with the logic. It’s just a matter of time.

Apple:

Apple and Malala Fund today announced that Apple will become the fund’s first Laureate partner, enabling a significant expansion of Malala’s effort to support girls’ education and advocate for equal opportunity. Led by Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Malala Yousafzai, Malala Fund champions every girl’s right to 12 years of free, safe, quality education.

With Apple’s support, Malala Fund expects to double the number of grants awarded by its Gulmakai Network and extend funding programs to India and Latin America with the initial goal of extending secondary education opportunities to more than 100,000 girls.

A very worthy cause but why stop at 12 years of education? If finishing high school is important, isn’t a college education just as important?

Longreads:

The show that premiered in 1989, with its signature theme song “Bad Boys” by the reggae band Inner Circle, was only slightly different than its current iteration.

“Cops” quickly expanded to other counties, cities, and towns — Los Angeles and Multnomah, Las Vegas and Houston—and by 1992, it had been syndicated and nominated for two Emmys.

“Cops” married the growing pop culture obsession with police to the often unpredictable nature of the job. As Wurms puts it: “It’s not staged. It’s real life stuff, and you [never knew] what you were walking into when they were filming with you.”

It’s a show I’ve never watched much of but its longevity certainly raises some interesting questions.

iPhone J.D. legal blog:

The computer asked me if I wanted to update the iPad to the latest version of iOS, and I said yes without thinking much about it. Everything seemed to go fine, but then at the very end I saw an error message that I had never seen before telling me to press the iPad’s home button to attempt data recovery. What the heck? Nervous that I had somehow lost data on my daughter’s iPad, I pressed the button as instructed and crossed my fingers.

I then waited a while while the iPad told me that it was attempting data recovery.

I’ve seen this message, and I’ve heard from a number of other folks who’ve encountered the same issue while trying to apply an iOS update. Here’s a link showing what this looks like.

Seems to me it’d be easy enough to add in some kind of clarifying text to this error message. As is, it is a bit terrifying.

This snippet comes from a Guardian interview with Tim Cook:

Cook said: “I think if you had to make a choice, it’s more important to learn coding than a foreign language. I know people who disagree with me on that. But coding is a global language; it’s the way you can converse with 7 billion people.”

From Kirk McElhearn’s response:

I agree with Mr. Cook that coding teaches people logic and many other skills, but suggesting that it allows you to converse with 7 billion people is Trumpian foolishness. (If you follow Mr. Cook on Twitter, you’ll notice that he occasionally posts tweets in languages other than English. His minions clearly give him the texts, but it’s surprising that he doesn’t post code to converse with his Twitter followers.)

At a strictly surface level, I think Kirk has a point. Clearly, programming languages are not intended as conversing languages. You’d never chat with someone in Swift.

But digging in a bit, I took a different meaning from Tim’s comment. Programming languages are a common currency, a common language shared by many different cultures.

That said, is it more important to learn coding than a foreign language?

Food for thought.

Glenn Fleishman, Fast Company:

Every part of the U.S. has a different local term for a convenience store: the bodega, the corner store—even “the Wawa,” a chain name that Northeasteners use generically. Now Amazon wants to extend its brand to the notion of a grab-and-go shop with Amazon Go, a store that literally lets you grab and go.

And:

Amazon Go works like—well, like a physical manifestation of Amazon’s 1-Click checkout, where you “click” by taking an item off a shelf. On arrival, you launch the Go app, which comes out today for iPhones and Android phones and connects to your Amazon account. It displays a 2D code that you scan at one of several glass security gates. The code identifies you to the store and opens the gate.

And:

Once you’re in, AI algorithms start to track you and everything you pick up and keep. You can bag your items as you go if you so choose, and need interact with an employee only if you’re buying alcohol, in which case an associate standing in the liquor area will check your ID.

And:

I tested the system by picking up a can of LaCroix water and leaving the store. It was a non-event, which is sort of the point. The experience doesn’t feel like an act of advanced technology unless you scan the ceiling and notice the hundreds of matte-black cameras surveying the shopping floor below.

This is the future of retail. Or, at least, a major step along that path. Two things occur to me:

• This is a direct example of AI eliminating the need for specific jobs. Clearly, there are plenty of employees in the chain here, both in building out the store and designing and coding the AI itself. But those jobs are front loaded. Once the stores are built, and the AI in place, this will require very few people to run.

• What happens if someone gets hold of your Amazon login info and goes on a spree through a store? If someone uses my credit card fraudulently, my credit card company covers me 100%. Does Amazon have a similar policy?

This is a great read.

Variety:

Disney announced last summer that it plans to launch an ESPN-branded direct-to-consumer offering early this year, followed by a Disney-branded service in 2019. To power the service, Disney acquired a large stake in the streaming solutions provider BAMTech for $1.58 billion last year.

And:

Disney’s BAMTech Media has hired former Apple and Samsung executive Kevin Swint as SVP and GM, Disney SVOD Service, to build, and ultimately run, the company’s upcoming Netflix competitor.

Netflix killer? I don’t think so. But they will make life just a bit harder for Netflix:

To prepare for the launch of its own subscription video business, Disney announced that it won’t renew its distribution agreement with Netflix.

Presumably, that will also include the content they will acquire in the Fox deal.

New York Times:

You could be forgiven if you’ve never eaten a butter tart. There is no flashy frosting or elaborate lattice to entice you. It’s easy to pass by.

But Canadians will tell you that these diminutive treats hold an expanse of flavor and textures: flaky pastry, caramelized crust and a bracingly sweet filling.

It wasn’t until I moved to the US that I found out Butter Tarts were “uniquely” Canadian (few things are so we celebrate where we can) and most Americans had never heard of them. BTW, they are easy to make and delicious!

The Guardian:

The head of Apple, Tim Cook, believes there should be limits to the use of technology in schools and says he does not want his nephew to use a social network.

Cook was talking at Harlow college in Essex, one of 70 institutions across Europe that will use Apple’s Everyone Can Code curriculum, it was announced on Friday.

“I don’t believe in overuse [of technology]. I’m not a person that says we’ve achieved success if you’re using it all the time,” he said. “I don’t subscribe to that at all.”

Even in computer-aided courses, such as graphic design, technology should not dominate, he said.

As usual, interesting and thoughtful comments from Cook. Although, I still disagree with him on the importance of coding.

Open Culture:

Whatever kind of cinema grabs your attention probably first grabbed your attention through the design of the movie poster, a genre that gets its due in novelty shops and specialist exhibitions, but often goes unheralded in popular conceptions of art.

Despite its utilitarian and unabashedly commercial function, the movie poster can just as well be a work of art as any other form.

I love the graphic style of these old posters, many for movies you’ve never heard of and which are undoubtedly, quite awful.

Asymco:

As individuals we think that having lots of cash makes us rich. For companies it’s the opposite. Cash is a liability. If you come across a company that is cash rich and has nothing else, its enterprise value will be zero. Companies are valued on their future cash flows, meaning their ability to generate cash, not how much they managed to keep. In other words, cash is a measure of past success and investors are interested only in future value.

This is an excellent FAQ on Apple and the Everest-sized mountain of cash they are sitting on.

Ahead of the promised “early 2018” launch of the HomePod, Apple has received official FCC approval for the smart speaker. Now that FCC approval has been obtained, Apple is free to begin selling the device at any time.

I can’t wait to try out the HomePod.

CBC:

“If I go to Canada and visit some of my wife’s relatives, and I come back … they [can] say, ‘We want your laptop and your phone and your pass code.’ And I say, ‘Well, do you have any reason?’ They say, ‘We don’t need one.’ Is that correct? They can do that?”

“Welcome to America,” Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy added sarcastically.

Agents can demand a password to open your phone, without probable cause, DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen confirmed during the hearing.

This is a concern not just for non-US citizens but also for US citizens arriving back into the country. Know your rights and know what to do and what not to do.

GameZebo:

Universal Paperclips is part clicker, part resource management, part incremental game that has a definite “ending,” but is played over time at a pace you can set based on your style. You begin by simply pushing a button to make a paperclip yourself, which is then sold at a price you set, at a speed determined by the current demand. The lower the price, the higher the demand, but your demand early on will be very low no matter what, and your profits minuscule.

Just like a paperclip, Universal Paperclips is boring to explain…at least at first.

I got sucked into this game from a tweet by Rob Griffiths. I ended up creating 30 septendecillion paper clips. The game is best described as “a little odd” but definitely addictive for me. You can play it from your browser or via the iOS app.

The price of the monthly Prime membership for new members increased from $10.99 to $12.99 on January 19, 2018.

I know a lot of people that have Prime and seem to love the benefits.

This is great news for fans of Rock and Def Leppard. Turns out, some changes at the music labels led to the band’s music being available on many streaming services today.

Macworld:

This is not a computer designed for the masses—a new iMac Pro starts at $5,000 and you can pay five figures for a high-end model. If you aren’t sure if you need the power of the iMac Pro, you almost certainly don’t. If, on the other hand, you are hungry for multi-core performance and a powerful GPU that will let you crank through intense tasks—in video editing, software development, photo and audio processing, science, graphics, and similar applications—this is the new Mac Pro you’ve been looking for, albeit in the shape of an iMac.

The reports of the power of this iMac make it not only droolworthy (I wish I could justify getting one) but it gets me thinking – how incredible will the promised 2018 Mac Pro be?

Sanjay Mathur, Silicon Valley Data Science’s founder and chief executive officer, joined Apple as part of the move. He leads “strategy and analytics initiatives for a group at Apple,” according to his LinkedIn profile. About 20 data scientists from the firm joined Apple, according to their LinkedIn profiles. They’re working on analytics for ad-related initiatives, which may include optimizing App Store ads.

I’d be interested to know what data Apple is going to use to improve its products. Is it actual data that will improve the iPhone on a personal level, or is it general data from its customers to improve its services?

A new version of Microsoft Office 2016 just shipped (release notes here).

What really caught my eye was this tweet from Microsoft’s Erik Schwiebert:

Mac Office 2016 version 16 is now live! For the first time in over 20 years, Office is again built out of one codebase for all platforms (Windows, Mac, iOS, Android)!https://t.co/6gNdKTOEHl

— Erik Schwiebert (@Schwieb) January 18, 2018

As Erik says, that is a massive code realignment. My 2 cents, this is good news for all Mac Office users. The Office experience will now have more consistency across platforms, and there’s more of a chance for new features to make their way to the Mac at the same time as they appear on Windows.

Side note: Office 365 subscriptions give you the opportunity to keep up with the latest version of Office at no extra cost. A license to a specific version of Office does not. When Office 2019 is released (presumably, later this year), Office 2016 users will have to pony up for a new license. Office 365 subscribers will have the opportunity to upgrade as part of their subscription.

It’ll be interesting to keep an eye on this page over time, to see if any cities are added or deleted. Fascinating to compare this process (with it’s public auction feel), to Apple’s much more closely held process.

A criminal complaint? Really? Yeesh.