The Guardian:

Internet advertising firms are losing hundreds of millions of dollars following the introduction of a new privacy feature from Apple that prevents users from being tracked around the web.

Advertising technology firm Criteo, one of the largest in the industry, says that the Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) feature for Safari, which holds 15% of the global browser market, is likely to cut its 2018 revenue by more than a fifth compared to projections made before ITP was announced.

Anyone shedding a tear for advertising companies, who for years ignored users’ requests for less intrusive advertising, suddenly crying poverty over Apple’s efforts to offer that protection to their users?

Don’t.

The Globe and Mail:

The evidence for this goes beyond the carping of Luddites. It’s there, cold and hard, in a growing body of research by psychiatrists, neuroscientists, marketers and public health experts. What these people say – and what their research shows – is that smartphones are causing real damage to our minds and relationships, measurable in seconds shaved off the average attention span, reduced brain power, declines in work-life balance and hours less of family time.

They have impaired our ability to remember. They make it more difficult to daydream and think creatively. They make us more vulnerable to anxiety. They make parents ignore their children. And they are addictive, if not in the contested clinical sense then for all intents and purposes.

I don’t buy the full doom and gloom of the article but an overreliance on smartphones in any number of ways is definitely something to be watchful of. I see it in my “new” 12-year-old stepson. He’s “addicted” not to Facebook or Instagram or other social media but he’s very attached to gaming on his iPhone, so much so that it causes significant amounts of family friction.

Ford Motor Co on Tuesday said it will partner with delivery service Postmates Inc as the automaker starts testing ways to transport people, food and packages using its self-driving cars in a U.S. city during the first quarter.

This is an interesting partnership for Ford. I’ve used Postmates a couple of times and it’s an okay service, if you can get a driver.

This looks really cool.

A French prosecutor has launched a preliminary investigation of U.S. tech giant Apple (AAPL.O) over alleged deception and planned obsolescence of its products following a complaint by a consumer organization, a judicial source said on Monday.

I think this will be the first of many such investigations.

“We’ve always been clear that we are open to any opportunity that will help us scale our mission. JP Morgan is our banker, but there is no active engagement to sell,” GoPro said in emailed comments to Reuters.

The more you read the article, the worse it gets. GoPro is in some trouble.

Powermat:

Powermat, the wireless charging technology pioneer, today announced it will become the newest Wireless Power Consortium (WPC) member. Powermat will contribute its technology and expertise to further advance inductive wireless charging capabilities while maintaining backwards compatibility to the existing Qi ecosystem.

“Qi has become the dominant wireless charging standard on the market and the recently launched Apple iPhone lineup is evidence of this success”, said Elad Dubzinski, Powermat CEO.

Ignoring the marketing speak in this press release, the bottom line – that Powermat is going with the Qi standard – is good for consumers. It means a less confusing marketplace.

The lawsuit, which was filed in the Santa Clara Superior Court on Monday, alleges that Google “discriminated against employees for their perceived conservative political views,” as well as due to their “male gender,” and “Caucasian race,” and then “systematically punished” them.

Nathan Gitter:

What determines the color of the home indicator and why it does it behave like this? The answer is surprisingly complex. Let’s take a deep dive and see what we can learn!

This is a wonderfully geeky examination of the iPhone X Home Indicator and how it dynamically changes color. I still hate it though.

Open Culture:

We do not typically remember [Prince] as a jazz pianist. But his facility with jazz earned him the admiration of Miles Davis, who made several efforts to collaborate with the extremely busy pop star. (They performed together only once, it seems, on New Year’s Eve, 1987 at Paisley Park.) Prince’s style, stage show, songwriting, and arranging drew from jazz of all kinds—from zoot suit-era big band to the frenetic movement of hard bop to the classically-inflected show tunes of George Gershwin. Just above see him “casually own” Gershwin’s “Summertime” during a 1990 soundcheck in Osaka, Japan.

I had no idea Prince even played piano, let alone so well. I love this video. The groove is right there, with Prince driving. Super talented.

Dan Moren, Macworld:

Late last year, Apple announced that it would delay the promised release of its HomePod smart speaker to early 2018. It was a disappointment for those customers hoping to score one for the holiday season, but in an interview with Dutch site Bright.nl, Apple senior vice president Phil Schiller said Apple needed “more time to make it right.”

And:

A new report from Canalys says that the smart speaker market is forecast to spike this year, outpacing other technologies like augmented reality and virtual reality. In a rare moment of (for it) transparency, Amazon said it had sold tens of millions of Echo devices during the holidays. (Though many of those sales are likely for the low-cost devices that Apple won’t compete with.)

And:

By all accounts, the version of the HomePod shown to press during Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference last year was far from a fully functional prototype. Those to whom Apple gave access reportedly got a demonstration of the device’s audio quality, but not much beyond that.

Add to this mix, is a new survey (reported by CNBC) on the impact of smart speakers on people’s smartphone habits:

Two thirds of people who use digital voice assistants like the Amazon Echo or Google Home use their smartphones less often, according to a new survey published by tech consultancy Accenture.

The results suggest that the next big wave of consumer technology will be centered around these digital assistants, and may spell trouble for smartphone makers like Apple and Samsung— who lag behind Amazon and Google in this emerging space.

Here’s a link to that survey. Be sure to click Key Finding #1.

No matter what Apple ships as HomePod 1.0, I suspect there is already a team hard at work on HomePod 2.0, and perhaps on HomePod satellite products. I wouldn’t waste a second worrying about the impact of the smart speaker market on iPhone sales, nor about the first HomePod being the be-all and end-all of smart speakers.

Just as they did with Apple Watch, Apple will revise and tune, learning from every sale, with HomePod eventually landing in a sweet spot that makes money and extends the ecosystem for iPhone, Apple Watch, Apple Music, and Siri.

From the Panic blog, announcing the suspension of the iOS version of the very popular Transmit app:

Transmit iOS made about $35k in revenue in the last year, representing a minuscule fraction of our overall 2017 app revenue. That’s not enough to cover even a half-time developer working on the app. And the app needs full-time work — we’d love to be adding all of the new protocols we added in Transmit 5, as well as some dream features, but the low revenue would render that effort a guaranteed money-loser.

David Sparks from his blog:

Panic has made public statements about how little income they’re making off their pro-level iOS apps, and I really can’t blame them for pulling Transmit if it is losing them money.

What is even more upsetting is that an app of the calibre of Transmit for iOS is a financial failure and none of us are much surprised.

And:

I use Transmit both on my Mac and iOS devices. I don’t recall what I originally paid for Transmit, but I believe it was in the neighborhood of $50. Since then I’ve upgraded twice so let’s say I’ve now given Panic $100 for the privilege of having their app on my Mac.

When I bought Transmit for my iOS devices, I paid $10. That is it. I’ve been using the app for years and all the money Panic ever got out of me was $10, less than I’m going to spend today on lunch.

That’s the issue. Somehow, consoles like Nintendo Switch and the Xbox, as well as the Mac, have avoided the race to the bottom that makes iOS apps want to be free, or dependent on in app purchases. While in-app-purchases make sense for a game, it is a harder sell for a pro-level app.

Panic is pulling Transmit for iOS but keeping the Mac version. Part of the issue is the massive size of the iOS App Store compared to the Mac App Store. The iOS App Store is large enough that it attracts people willing to build something for free just for the experience. And once there’s a free alternative, it becomes exponentially harder to get people to pay for an alternative, even if it is a better experience.

AppleInsider:

Announced at CES on Sunday, the latest iteration of the U system integrates voice control through Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa virtual assistants. Alexa compatibility arrives in the first quarter as a third-party extension, while Siri and HomeKit will see integration in quarter two.

Moen showed off U in a demonstration, explaining that users simply ask the assistant of their choosing (Alexa on the show floor) to turn on the shower head or set a desired temperature. Water begins to flow from the outlet until a desired temperature is reached, then the system pauses, waiting for a user to enter.

I really like the idea of walking in the bathroom, telling Siri to set the shower temp to my preference, then having Siri let me know when the shower is ready for me.

Luke Kawa, Bloomberg:

In a letter to the smartphone maker dated Jan. 6, activist investor Jana Partners LLC and the California State Teachers’ Retirement System urged Apple to create ways for parents to restrict children’s access to their mobile phones. They also want the company to study the effects of heavy usage on mental health.

“There is a growing body of evidence that, for at least some of the most frequent young users, this may be having unintentional negative consequences,” according to the letter from the investors, who combined own about $2 billion in Apple shares. The “growing societal unease” is “at some point is likely to impact even Apple.”

“Addressing this issue now will enhance long-term value for all shareholders,” the letter said.

Instinctively, it seems clear to me that heavy smartphone usage does have an impact on your mental health. It changes the social equation, moving communication from one-on-one direct contact to abbreviated, interrupting bursts. It also brings in a steady stream of sensationalized news snippets, exposing you to some information that is false.

This is an issue for children and an issue for everyone.

Is this Apple’s issue to fix?

Isaac Lyman:

Meltdown and Spectre are the two latest exploits throwing the tech world for a loop. They have a lot in common with each other; both depend on built-in features of your computer’s processor.

After doing some reading, I think I understand the Meltdown exploit well enough to explain it in layman’s terms.

This is a well-written explainer on what happens with Meltdown. Even I understood it. And I never say this but – read the comments as well.

Gizmodo:

Here at Gizmodo, we’ve been keeping track of everything we can, and while we might not be able to pinpoint every single rising star before the show starts, we’ve got more than enough info to highlight a number of major trends that are going to define this year’s CES. Here’s what we’re expecting so far.

These aren’t far-fetched expectations. After all, their four highlights have been the star of the show for many years now.

Having covered several CES’, I can honestly say it’s an amazing show – and I don’t necessarily mean that in a good way.

Ars Technica:

The Meltdown and Spectre flaws—two related vulnerabilities that enable a wide range of information disclosure from every mainstream processor, with particularly severe flaws for Intel and some ARM chips—were originally revealed privately to chip companies, operating system developers, and cloud computing providers. That private disclosure was scheduled to become public some time next week, enabling these companies to develop (and, in the case of the cloud companies, deploy) suitable patches, workarounds, and mitigations.

With researchers figuring out one of the flaws ahead of that planned reveal, that schedule was abruptly brought forward, and the pair of vulnerabilities was publicly disclosed on Wednesday, prompting a rather disorderly set of responses from the companies involved.

There are three main groups of companies responding to the Meltdown and Spectre pair: processor companies, operating system companies, and cloud providers. Their reactions have been quite varied.

This vulnerability is so widespread it’s important for those of us who support various users to know as much as we can about it and what vendors and companies are doing to mitigate the damage.

The Atlantic:

The first thought that comes to mind staring at the photograph is: This has got to be fake. The B-2 stealth bomber looks practically pasted onto the field. The flag is unfurled just so. The angle feels almost impossible, shot directly down from above.

And yet, it’s real, the product of lots of planning, some tricky flying, and the luck of the moment.

This is one of those photos so improbable, you immediately think it’s fake. Reading the story about the amazing shot and you realize, faking it would have been easier.

Open Culture:

Download hundreds of free audio books, mostly classics, to your MP3 player or computer. You’ll find great works of fiction, poetry and non-fiction, by such authors as Twain, Tolstoy, Hemingway, Orwell, Vonnegut, Nietzsche, Austen, Shakespeare, Asimov, HG Wells & more.

I’m not a huge fan of audio books but I know I’ll be listening to the Asimov’s “Nightfall” and “The Foundation Trilogy” on my next 24-hour flight to Australia.

Yesterday, Apple published an article titled “About speculative execution vulnerabilities in ARM-based and Intel CPUs” giving users information on how the vulnerability affects their products. They issued a small update today noting that Apple Watch is not affected by either Meltdown and Spectre.

One of the areas that Apple has made big improvements with the release of the 2017 iMac Pro is the introduction of SecureBoot. SecureBoot is a process where the firmware validates the bootloader prior to loading. It is at the start of the chain of trust that ensures that code that gets run (drivers, kernel, applications) is known and validated. It all starts with the initial boot and with the release of the iMac Pro, Apple introduced SecureBoot to ensure that the initial bootloader is trusted.

Timothy Perfitt takes a deep dive into Apple’s SecureBoot and the new iMac Pro.

Jason Snell, Macworld:

The T2 processor isn’t doing the heavy lifting in the iMac Pro—that’s the Intel Xeon processor with between 8 and 14 processor cores. The T2 is the brain behind that brain, running the subsystems of the iMac Pro from a single piece of Apple-built silicon. The result is a simplified internal design that doesn’t require multiple components from multiple manufacturers.

Jason does a nice job here, digging into what makes an iMac Pro different than its ancestors. Pay special attention to the section “Boot twice for safety”. Very interesting.

These are the most complex, detailed, far reaching update notes I can recall. Take a moment to scan through them, I think you’ll see what I mean.

Tripp Mickle, Wall Street Journal:

Of the three major new products since Mr. Cook became chief executive in 2011, both AirPods earbuds in 2016 and last year’s HomePod speaker missed Apple’s publicly projected shipping dates. The Apple Watch, promised for early 2015, arrived late that April with lengthy wait times for delivery. Apple also was delayed in supplying the Apple Pencil and Smart Keyboard, two critical accessories for its iPad Pro.

The delays have contributed to much longer waits between Apple announcing a product and shipping it: an average of 23 days for new and updated products over the past six years, compared with the 11-day average over the six years prior, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of Apple public statements.

Apple has shown enormous, unparalleled growth during Tim Cook’s reign as CEO. The demands on the supply chain and the complexity of production have increased dramatically during that same period. And while there have been cracks in the armor, they are far less than I would have expected given the sheer scale of this growth.

Of the 70-plus new and updated products launched during Mr. Cook’s tenure, five had a delay between announcement and shipping of three months or more and nine had delays of between one and three months. Roughly the same number of products were launched during Mr. Jobs’ reign, but only one product was delayed by more than three months and seven took between one and three months to ship after the initial announcement, according to the Journal’s calculations.

I would argue that Apple during Steve and Apple during Tim are two different stories. The supply chain mechanics are vastly different. The competitive landscape is different as well, not to mention the growing complexity of Apple devices like the iPhone X and AirPods.

Apple’s large and global customer base also add to logistical and manufacturing challenges, former employees said. The company now has an estimated 1.1 billion devices in use world-wide, about triple the 400 million in early 2013, according to market-research outfit Asymco.

Former employees also cite the increasing complexity of Apple’s devices as a contributing factor in the delays. AirPods feature lasers that detect when the device is inserted into an ear, which has made manufacturing more difficult. With the facial-recognition camera on the iPhone X, Apple had production issues partly because its miniature, infrared laser was so sensitive that it could easily be knocked out of alignment, a person familiar with the production process said.

Interesting read.

The former Interscope CEO joined Apple in 2014 after selling Beats, the the music service and electronics business that he and Dr. Dre co-founded, to the tech giant for $3 billion. It is believed his departure is timed to his Apple shares fully vesting, sources tell Billboard. Apple declined to comment.

Apple bought Beats, and Iovine, for his connections in the industry and that has helped Apple get a strong foothold with artists. I’m not really sure what Iovine’s departure would mean for Apple Music because his daily role has diminished over time.

The company said in a tweet today that it had surpassed 70 million subscribers. The last numbers from Apple Music show they have 30 million subscribers.

Security researchers have recently uncovered security issues known by two names, Meltdown and Spectre. These issues apply to all modern processors and affect nearly all computing devices and operating systems. All Mac systems and iOS devices are affected, but there are no known exploits impacting customers at this time. Since exploiting many of these issues requires a malicious app to be loaded on your Mac or iOS device, we recommend downloading software only from trusted sources such as the App Store. Apple has already released mitigations in iOS 11.2, macOS 10.13.2, and tvOS 11.2 to help defend against Meltdown. Apple Watch is not affected by Meltdown. In the coming days we plan to release mitigations in Safari to help defend against Spectre. We continue to develop and test further mitigations for these issues and will release them in upcoming updates of iOS, macOS, tvOS, and watchOS.

Everything you need to know is on Apple’s web site.