June 27th marks 10 years since Steve Jobs unveiled the first iPhone, a device that would fundamentally transform how we interact with technology, culture, and each other. Ahead of that anniversary, Motherboard editor Brian Merchant embarked on an investigation to uncover the iPhone’s untold origin. “The One Device: The secret history of the iPhone”, out on June 20th, traces that journey from Kenyan mines to Chinese factories all the way to One Infinite Loop. The following excerpt has been lightly condensed and edited.
Ignoring the opening factual error on The Verge (the iPhone was unveiled by Jobs in January of 2007), the history of the development of the iPhone is a fascinating one. I’ve already added the book, “The One Device” (affiliate link), to my Amazon wish list.
It’s been getting harder for me to read things on my phone and my laptop. I’ve caught myself squinting and holding the screen closer to my face. I’ve worried that my eyesight is starting to go.
These hurdles have made me grumpier over time, but what pushed me over the edge was when Google’s App Engine console — a page that, as a developer, I use daily — changed its text from legible to illegible. Text that was once crisp and dark was suddenly lightened to a pallid gray. Though age has indeed taken its toll on my eyesight, it turns out that I was suffering from a design trend.
I wouldn’t say “the web” has become unreadable but far too many sites favor design over readability. My aging eyes can’t take it.
After years toiling away in secret on its car project, Apple Inc. Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook has for the first time laid out exactly what the company is up to in the automotive market: It’s concentrating on self-driving technology.
“We’re focusing on autonomous systems,” Cook said in a June 5 interview on Bloomberg Television that amounted to his most detailed comments yet on Apple’s automotive plans. “It’s a core technology that we view as very important.” He likened the effort to “the mother of all AI projects,” saying it’s “probably one of the most difficult AI projects to work on.”
In the interview on Bloomberg Television, Cook was hesitant to disclose whether Apple will ultimately manufacture its own car.
But that won’t stop everyone in the Tech Media from screaming, “This news proves Apple is making a car!”
Recently, we learned that AirPods will pair automatically with an Apple TV running tvOS 11. This is great news, but there are two features I’d love to see for future versions of tvOS:
Pair two sets of AirPods to a single Apple TV: This would allow my wife and I to listen on headphones, each with a different volume level, a blessing for people with different hearing needs and for parents with sleeping infants.
Pass the audio through to HDMI while AirPods are active: This would allow someone with a hearing deficit to listen at a louder volume while the room gets the regular volume.
Anyone else with the same needs here? Anything else to add to this particular wish list? Ping me.
In the video embedded below, Jeff Benjamin walks through the process of organizing your iPhone’s home screen using iOS 11 drag and drop. This is a fantastic use of drag and drop and an easy way to get your head around how this works.
I’ve spent the last week using a new 10.5-inch iPad Pro, and this is, in many ways, the easiest product review I’ve ever written. There are several significant improvements to the hardware, and no tradeoffs or downsides. There is no “but”.
Read the review. Fantastic upsides, no downside save price. The only question for me is which size to buy.
A few days ago, chess players using 32-bit devices found themselves locked out of chess.com. From the forum:
The reason that some iOS devices are unable to connect to live chess games is because of a limit in 32bit devices which cannot handle gameIDs above 2,147,483,647. So, literally, once we hit more than 2 billion games, older iOS devices fail to interpret that number! This was obviously an unforeseen bug that was nearly impossible to anticipate and we apologize for the frustration. We are currently working on a fix and should have it resolved within 48 hours.
This sort of thing comes up in computing periodically. In this case, if I’m reading this correctly, the variable used to hold the gameID was not big enough to handle chess.com’s growth. It is not clear if this problem is limited to iOS devices.
Could the developers have seen this coming? Probably. And even if they didn’t anticipate their success, they might have seen the gameID approaching this limit, made the change earlier.
There’s a lot to process in this 110 slide presentation on Apple’s China business. At its core, China is placing restrictions that are breaking the stickiness of Apple’s ecosystem.
From the China Channel presentation:
TO MOST CHINESE IPHONE USERS THE IPHONE IS JUST A LUXURY PHONE. THEY HAVE NO SIGNIFICANT INVESTMENT IN APPLE’S SERVICES ECOSYSTEM
And:
APPLE’S CHINA SERVICE ECOSYSTEM HAS BEEN SYSTEMATICALLY STRIPPED AWAY BY LOCAL COMPETITORS
And:
FROM APRIL 2016 IBOOKS AND ITUNES STORE HAVE BEEN BLOCKED IN CHINA. CHINESE AUTHORITIES ORDERED THEM TO BE TAKEN OFFLINE.
In most markets, Apple can depend on ecosystem loyalty. Most iPhone users would never even think of shifting over to an Android device. There’s brand loyalty, for sure, but there’s also ecosystem stickiness at work here. My photos, music, documents, etc., are all on my Apple devices, and I already have a great deal of expertise in using all this data, moving around the ecosystem. There’s little incentive to shifting over to Android.
According to this presentation, the Apple ecosystem stickiness is broken. For example, iMessage is hardly used in China. China is dominated by Android devices, iMessage is Apple device specific, spam is a huge issue, and WeChat is an entrenched tech in China, making it hard for iMessage to gain a foothold.
Can Apple overcome these obstacles? No doubt. But understanding the problems and retooling to overcome them is key.
After two years and more than 100,000 photos taken, we are proud to present ‘Vancouver Hyperlapse: Extended Version’; the 7min version of our love letter to Vancouver shot using a new and emerging technique that magically blends stop motion and time lapse photography.
I’m lucky enough to live in one of the most beautiful areas in North America, if not the world. Up until 2 weeks ago, the first thirty seconds of the video were my backyard views in Chilliwack.
It’s been a week since Apple announced the new 10.5-inch iPad Pro, and the early reviews are now in. While reviewers do express a few reservations along the way, the overwhelming tone is positive.
Phrases like ‘Apple pays off its future-of-computing promise’ and ‘the biggest step forward the category has made yet’ suggest that tech writers are finally taking seriously Apple’s claim that an iPad is for many a realistic replacement for a PC.
There is disagreement about just how far that claim stretches, and eyebrows raised over the all-in price of a device that makes little sense without a Smart Keyboard and Apple Pencil, but those are the only real reservations found.
Great collection of reviews. You might also want to take a look at this review Serenity Caldwell did for iMore.
I scrolled down the list in the Productivity category and saw apps from well-known companies like Dropbox, Evernote, and Microsoft. That was to be expected. But what’s this? The #10 Top Grossing Productivity app (as of June 7th, 2017) was an app called “Mobile protection :Clean & Security VPN”.
Watch as Johnny Lin follows the money. This is no isolated incident.
In a nutshell, you need to update your AirPods firmware, then connect to an iOS 11 device to capture the updated Settings. Not a solution for everyone, but if you’ve got access to a single device running the iOS 11 beta, this seems to transfer the updating settings to your iOS 10 device.
From the dean’s introduction of Tim Cook (about 5:47 in):
It only seems natural that he should have wound up at the helm of the company that has changed the texture of our lives more than perhaps any other company in the history of the world.
Hyperbole? Perhaps. But there’s a core of truth there. I can’t think of a company that has changed the world in quite the same way.
The speech itself is terrific, inspirational, worth your time. I especially enjoyed Tim’s passionate words about Steve Jobs.
I’ve been using Apple’s new 10.5-inch iPad Pro for five days now and there is a lot to like about the device. When you factor in what’s coming this fall in iOS 11 and the features built specifically for iPad, you have a device that’s more compelling than it’s ever been before.
I use my iPads all the time. I switch back and forth between the 9.7-inch and 12-inch models, depending on what I’m doing. What I wondered before I started using the 10.5-inch iPad is if it would add enough screen real estate to make it the perfect size for all my needs.
One of the key elements for me on the iPad Pro is the True Tone display. With this technology, the iPad display automatically adjusts to the lighting conditions around you.
It doesn’t just adjust the brightness, but the color and intensity of the display to match the light wherever you’re viewing the iPad. This means I can be outside in direct sunlight and read the display perfectly. When I move inside, the display adjusts again and it is perfect for those lighting conditions.
This was on the 9.7-inch iPad Pro I was previously using, but not on the 12-inch I had. It makes such a huge difference, I wouldn’t want an iPad without it now.
The new iPad Pro also comes with ProMotion, which delivers refresh rates up to 120Hz. In practical terms for the user, this means that everything you’re viewing is more responsive. From gameplay to scrolling pages in Safari, everything is really smooth. You may not think this would make much of a difference, until you see it in action. ProMotion will also adjust to match the frame rate of video, so video looks a lot better too.
The big concern with screen technologies is that they will take a toll on your battery and reduce the 10 hours of battery life. I have always found Apple to be fairly conservative on its battery life claims and the iPad Pro is no different.
There are many things to consider when looking at your battery life, including the settings for screen brightness, and what you are doing on the iPad. For my uses, writing, listening to music and doing other general tasks, battery life has not been a concern at all.
I’ve always had a Smart Keyboard with my iPad because portability is so important for a device like this. I like having a built-in keyboard that is also a cover. It’s convenient and easy to use in most situations.
I do have a complaint about the size of the keys on the Smart Keyboard though. I’m a huge fan of Apple’s new MacBook and MacBook Pro keyboards and their larger sized keys. There seems to be lots of room on this keyboard to have larger keys, but they haven’t done it yet.
It would be much more comfortable moving from a Mac to an iPad if the keys were more uniform. Having said all of that, the Smart Keyboard is still a convenient option when you’re working remotely and you need a compact solution to work with.
I rarely use the camera on my iPad, but the fact it has a 12-megapixel camera that allows you to capture and edit 4K video is going to be a huge plus for a lot of users. Not to mention that the A10X chip is so powerful, it allows you to edit multiple streams of 4K video.
Many of the new features for iPad will come with iOS 11. Apple realized that in order for the iPad to be used like they, and their customers, wanted, the operating system need to change to accommodate the device. With iOS 11, some of those changes are happening and I couldn’t be happier.
Being able to drag and drop from one app to another is one of the things that made me smile during the keynote. Now when I’m researching an article, I can add links, text, and photos easily without leaving the current app.
The Dock expands, accommodating more of the apps you choose, as well as your most recently used apps. The new Files app gives you a view of all your documents on multiple cloud services including iCloud, Dropbox, and Box. There can be multi cloud challenges but these are avoidable.
If you tap the screen with your Apple Pencil, the iPad will automatically open up in the Notes app, so you can quickly jot down some hand written notes. Since iOS 11 can recognize handwriting, those notes will also be searchable.
Being able to have these types of features will make the iPad Pro more attractive to users that want to use it as a work machine, as a complement to their Mac, or perhaps as their only machine.
I mentioned at the beginning of this review that I was wondering if the 10.5-inch iPad would be the perfect size for me. So far, it really has been.
The 12-inch is great for working in a fixed location, but isn’t really as mobile as I would like. The 9.7-inch is a great size, but I wanted a bit more screen real estate to work, especially when multitasking with other apps.
The 10.5-inch really is the “Goldilocks”1 of iPads for me. Not too big, not too small, and really powerful in everything it does. I would highly recommend it.
Shawn King first mentioned that it sounded like I was looking for the Goldilocks iPad and he was right. ↩
Orphan Black debuts its fifth and final season on June 10, and while the show will always be remembered for introducing us to the incredible, multifaceted performances of star Tatiana Maslany — who has brought almost a dozen clones to life over the course of the series — some of its greatest achievements are moments that you never realized you saw.
Visual Effects Supervisor Geoff Scott and his team at Intelligent Creatures have been in charge of bringing Clone Club to life across the show’s 50 episodes, and like a magician performing up-close tricks, much of their work is designed to be invisible.
Orphan Black is a great TV show even without the amazing visual effects. Fellow Canadian Tatiana Maslany should have won a dozen Emmy awards over the show’s five-year run.
The App Review guidelines were updated this week to accommodate App Store policy changes and new rules for usage of frameworks introduced in iOS 11, like MusicKit.
One change is the addition of section 1.1.7. This new paragraph requires developers to use the official in-app rating UI added in iOS 10.3 and states that they ‘will disallow custom review prompts’ going forward.
The language is pretty clear-cut, use the Apple API and stop using custom implementations. The change to the Apple API has some advantages and drawbacks for developers and users.
Cook says the fact that the press doesn’t always give Apple credit for its AI may be due to the fact that Apple only likes to talk about the features of products it is ready to ship, while many others “sell futures.” Says Cook: “We are not going to go through things we’re going to do in 2019, ’20, ’21. It’s not because we don’t know that. It’s because we don’t want to talk about that.”
While he calls AI “profound” and increasingly capable of doing unbelievable things, on matters that require judgment he’s not comfortable with automating the human entirely out of the equation. “When technological advancement can go up so exponentially I do think there’s a risk of losing sight of the fact that tech should serve humanity, not the other way around.”
I think this is one of the reasons why I like Apple in general and Cook specifically – I wholeheartedly agree with him. Tech for tech’s sake has rarely interested me. But show me tech that makes my life better and I’m all over it.
Apple has quietly scooped up Dr. Sumbul Desai, the executive director of Stanford Medicine’s center for digital health, who led a groundbreaking telemedicine project there and has been overseeing a project to promote health uses for the Apple Watch.
Desai will serve in a senior role at Apple in the growing health team but will continue to see patients at Stanford, said people familiar with the move.
At Stanford, Desai was involved in a number of digital health projects with big tech companies and start-ups, including Apple. At Stanford’s digital health center, she worked with Silicon Valley technology companies to test and develop new tools in collaboration with the university’s medical experts.
Another example of Apple’s “building block” approach. They are slowly but surely putting together a world class team to do…..who knows?
People have been asking me two things all week—What did you think of Apple’s keynote announcements? And What did you think of WWDC in San Jose instead of having it in San Francisco? I largely covered my thoughts on the product announcements, including listening to HomePod, so I thought I’d give you some additional thoughts on WWDC in San Jose.
I’ve been trying to pinpoint all week how to properly explain my feelings on how I felt about WWDC in San Jose, especially for developers that previously attended the conference in San Francisco, but didn’t make it here this year.
The best way to explain it is that when you left the Moscone building in San Francisco, you effectively left WWDC. In San Jose, it feels like Apple set up a little city for developers—even a few blocks away, you felt like you were still at the conference.
There was a wonderful plaza setup out front of the convention center where people would sit and chat, eat, and do some work. The days of people sitting in every nook and crevice at Moscone has been replaced by comfortable chairs and tables that allowed for conversation and collaboration among attendees.
The only thing I would like to see is that the restaurants and bars nearby would stay open a bit longer each night to accommodate the crowd. They all closed pretty early.
WWDC in San Francisco felt like a tech conference. WWDC in San Jose feels more like a get together of friends. I really hope Apple decides to bring the conference back here again next year.
Sure, a few of us lucky souls were able to listen to a HomePod at Apple’s developer conference, but nobody outside of Apple has talked to one or picked one up. At the risk of stating the obvious, that’s because this is a product that’s not finished yet. Apple doesn’t want to publicly commit to a feature and then realize it can’t ship it; the product as the company conceives it today may not be the product that ends up in customers’ hands in December.
Lots of detail on what we know and what we still don’t know. Good read.
The history of London can be found in pieces on its riverbed. The old pipes and fossilised horse bones wash up on the shore, and with them come the lead letters that printed that history in the newspapers.
The letters ended up there mostly out of laziness, building up piece by piece over the years that Fleet Street served as the epicentre of British journalism. A typesetter’s job was time-consuming: A page of newspaper was laid out one character at a time, the pieces were put back in their boxes the same way. When the typesetters crossed Blackfriars Bridge on their way home from work they’d toss a pocketful of type over the side rather than bother.
They’re still there. There are thousands of letters slowly rearranging themselves over the years and moods of the mud, like alphabet soup.
This is the story of one of those sunken typefaces and a feud between two longtime friends. Beautifully written and a fascinating bit of design history.
UPDATE: Here’s a BBC video laying out the story (H/T James Stratford):
Lots of good reading material here, but this on the Mac Mini stuck out:
And while they even updated the venerable MacBook Air (a bit), the Mac Mini is sitting there in its ancient and increasingly “what about this then?” glory. I have to admit, I can only think of one reason for this: that they still plan to replace the Mac Mini down the road, and that it’ll be done with a lower end version of the Mac Pro. Here’s hoping, because I’d buy that thing in a femtosecond. But for now, the Mac Mini continues to be an enigma of “why is is not updated and still on the price list?” — I’m a little surprised it didn’t get a CPU refresh with everything else here, but I’ll bet our friend the Thermal Limit problem is the reason, and replacing it will require the stuff being done on the Mac Pro. At least, I hope so.
The Mac Mini does have an audience, it’s throw in the suitcase portable, and is Mac Pro-level long in the tooth. Here’s hoping we see a new one sometime soon.
With iOS 11, users will gain the ability to adjust the AirPods’ double-tap action with new control options.
Changing the double-tap functionality on the AirPods is as simple as jumping into the AirPod’s Bluetooth settings. Before iOS 11, users were simply stuck between decided whether the double-tap activated Siri, or Play/Paused audio. On iOS 11, Apple has given more control to the AirPods with the introduction of Next Track, Previous Track, and Off options.
This is a smart add for Apple. I can control volume (something I do rarely) from my Apple Watch, and skip to next track (something I do all the time) directly from my AirPods. Perfect.
When you pair AirPods to your iPhone, the wireless earbuds are automatically paired to iPads, Macs, and Apple Watches with the same iCloud account thanks to automatic setup. Apple TV has not been included in the devices that automatically pair, however, but that’s changing with tvOS 11.
Starting with the first tvOS 11 developer beta, AirPods appear as a new speaker option automatically on Apple TVs with iCloud accounts connected to iPhones with AirPods paired. This means you can play music or easily listen to video from Apple TV through AirPods without using the TV speakers.
Welcome to the auto-pairing family, Apple TV. Huzzah!
When iOS 11 comes out in the fall, users will be able to turn on “Type to Siri” in their accessibility settings, which will let you write your commands to Siri, rather than shout them into space.
As of now, Type to Siri is an accessibility feature: It’s designed for folks who may not be able to speak their queries and need a keyboard (or other switch control-based device) to do so, and a huge boon for them, too.
But even those without need for accessibility features may love this feature — Google’s Assistant offers both a text and type interface, allowing for quick and quiet answers to questions when a typical voice query won’t do, and a similar Siri option should prove very helpful for a variety of folks. The feature will also be available for macOS High Sierra when it launches in the fall, as well.
It’ll be interesting to see if this feature is exposed in other ways. For example, would I be able to write a script in High Sierra to programmatically interface with Siri?
The Wall Street Journal did a complete hatchet job on Siri this week this week in an article entitled “‘I’m Not Sure I Understand’—How Apple’s Siri Lost Her Mojo”. I use Siri, and yes, I’ve had issues with the responses sometimes, but it’s not at all as bad as what this article implies. In fact, Siri has improved significantly over the past little while.
Siri has remained largely a feature of the iPhone, although it is also available on a handful of other Apple devices, including the Apple Watch.
Well, that’s divisive of Apple Watch, iPad, Mac, and Apple TV. I use Siri on all of my devices.
Some former executives, close observers and even devoted customers say Apple’s innovative power appears to be waning, stymied by a lack of urgency and difficulty bringing ideas to fruition.
So people that left the company or were forced out, and I don’t even know what hell a “close observer” is.
Apple will enter the home-speaker market a distant third, at best.
Reporters like this scoffed at the iPhone and iPad too. How did that turn out for you?
In nearly six years under Chief Executive Tim Cook, Apple’s stock has soared but the company has not delivered a breakthrough product on par with the string of hits under late founder Steve Jobs, which included the iPod, iPhone and iPad.
Ugh, I hate when people do this. Yes Steve released some amazing products, and Tim has and will continue to, as well. Name me one company that has released a product on par with the iPhone since it was released—there isn’t one. Most companies have one or two major releases in their history, Apple has had multiple. They will continue to work on new products and release innovative products, so don’t bring up Steve and think you’re making a major point because you’re not.
Another thing to consider is that Apple values its customers privacy. I appreciate that. While the article describes it as being “hamstrung”, I think Apple’s commitment to the privacy of its customers should be commended.
I had the chance to hear Apple’s HomePod this week and it was incredible. I’m not sure yet how Siri will work with HomePod, but I’ll add it to the products that I’ll use Siri on a lot. It also kicked the Amazon Echo’s ass in music playback quality.
Can Siri be better? Absolutely. Is it going to get better? Absolutely.
I’m not sure what the WSJ’s reason was for writing such an unbalanced piece of shit, but damn, this article sucked.
