A large number of hospitals, GPs, and walk-in clinics across England have been locked down by a ransomware attack, reports suggest. There are also some reports of a ransomware attack hitting institutions in Portugal and Spain, with telecoms provider Telefonica apparently hit hard. Further attacks have been reported in Russia, Ukraine, and Taiwan. Batten down the hatches: we might be in the middle of a global ransomware attack.
Consistently popular through the 1960s and 1970s, the show began to falter in the following decade as tight budgets and questionable artistic choices took their toll. After its cancellation in 1989, Doctor Who “lived on through the ’90s, as science-fiction shows often do, in the wilderness genres of semi-official novels and radio plays.”
The best known of these Doctor Who radio plays, which you can hear on this playlist, come produced by a company called Big Finish. Having acquired a license from the BBC in 1999 (and recently renewed it into 2025), they’ve put out a range of audio dramas, both one-offs and series of various lengths, using not just the characters but many of the actual actors from the television show, including six of those who have taken on the iconic Doctor role onscreen.
I’ve never been a big Doctor Who fan but I am a fan of audio dramas. I’ll check these out this weekend.
Apple’s iPhone 7 is the top selling smartphone model in Q1 2017, according to a new research report from Strategy Analytics released this week. When is it okay to be No. 2? When you’re also No. 1—the second top selling smartphone model is the iPhone 7 Plus, according to the report.
“We estimate Apple iPhone 7 shipped 21.5 million units and captured 6 percent marketshare worldwide in Q1 2017,” said Juha Winter, Senior Analyst at Strategy Analytics. “The iPhone 7 is by far the world’s most popular smartphone model, due to a compelling blend of user-friendly design, extensive supporting apps, and widespread retail availability for the device. Apple iPhone 7 Plus, with its bigger screen and higher pricing, shipped 17.4 million units for second place and 5 percent marketshare worldwide in Q1 2017. Apple today accounts for two of the world’s top five smartphone models.”
Apple’s two iPhone models were followed by the OPPO R9s and two Samsung models, filling out the top five smartphone models sold in the quarter.
Apple recently reported its fiscal second quarter results, posting revenue of $52.9 billion and iPhone sales of 50.7 million units. Those are both staggering numbers when you consider they were done in one quarter.
Despite rumors of the upcoming iPhone 8, Apple’s current iPhone products are clearly still very popular among consumers. With Apple’s commitment to innovating and improving the hardware and software, I don’t expect that to change any time soon.
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Every few months, as Apple’s stock price continues to rise and its cash coffers get more and more full, these calls for action crop back up. Just last week, Citigroup listed seven companies it thinks Apple should eye for takeover bids, including usual favorites like Netflix, Tesla, and Disney.
Apple is not a company that makes massive acquisitions, and as its financials continue to prove, it doesn’t need to be. And yet, every few months, articles abound about how Apple should spend its money, always with a focus on big splashy deals.
Many of the companies pundits think Apple should buy are patently ridiculous choices.
This is a great collection of videos, including this interview with Clair Torry, where she tells the story about coming in to the studio to record her vocals, getting no guidance from producer Alan Parsons, and basically winging it, coming up with one of the greatest off the cuff vocal performances of all time.
The video embedded below is a somewhat isolated mix which really highlights Clair’s performance. I just love this track. Feels like it just pours out of her soul.
CTIA’s Stolen Phone Checker – powered by the GSMA Device Check service – is a public service designed to limit the resale of lost and stolen mobile devices in the United States and to help consumers, businesses, and law enforcement agencies make informed decisions about the status of a mobile device.
Looking to buy a used phone? Go to this page and enter the IMEI/MEID/ESN and submit. Good idea.
The video embedded below was built to showcase Microsoft’s new Windows 10 design language, which will roll out over the coming months. As you watch the video, think motion, depth, and translucency effects. It all flies by fast, so it might take a few viewings to wrap your head around the subtleties.
Not seeing a lot of capability that I don’t already see in iOS, but the trend definitely seems to be more depth, a move away from the completely flat design that had become a hallmark of Windows.
According to a study conducted through heartbeat measurement app Cardiogram and the University of California, San Francisco, the Apple Watch is 97 percent accurate in detecting the most common abnormal heart rhythm when paired with an AI-based algorithm.
The study involved 6,158 participants recruited through the Cardiogram app on Apple Watch. Most of the participants in the UCSF Health eHeart study had normal EKG readings. However, 200 of them had been diagnosed with paroxysmal atrial fibrillation (an abnormal heartbeat). Engineers then trained a deep neural network to identify these abnormal heart rhythms from Apple Watch heart rate data.
According to Apple’s most recent earnings and management commentary, the company sold more than five million wearable devices last quarter. When combined, Apple Watch, AirPods, and W1 chip-enabled Beats headphones are now outselling Mac in terms of unit sales. More impressively, Apple wearables are tracking ahead of iPhone in terms of unit sales out of the gate. As competitors continue to approach wearables with caution, Apple is doubling down.
Unit sales, not total revenue, but still impressive. Nice job by Neil pulling this together. Take a look at the chart labeled Exhibit 2, which does a nice job putting all this into perspective.
According to FactSet, as of the end of the first quarter of 2017, Apple has taken on more than $98 billion in debt.
And:
Apple generates cash flows of nearly $40 billion every six months. It’s the richest company in the world, with more than $256.8 billion in cash and marketable securities sitting on its books.Why does such a rich company have to borrow money?
And:
As of the end of 2016, Apple had more than $230 billion stored overseas. That’s because, when Apple earns money from sales outside the U.S., it’s taxed once by the country where it makes those sales, then taxed again by the U.S. when it brings the money back home. As a result, Apple doesn’t bring that money home.
This from Tim Cook, in his recent interview with Jim Cramer:
If you sell globally, you earn money globally. If you earn money globally, you can’t bring it back into the United States unless you pay 35 percent plus your state tax. And you look at this and you go, ‘This is kind of bizarre.’ You want people to use this money in the United States to invest more. We are in a good position, but an unusual one. Our good position is we can borrow. And so to invest in the United States, we have to borrow. This doesn’t make sense on a broad basis.
Complicated problem. If that 35% rate is dropped to the rumored 10%, would that be enough to repatriate all that cash?
Apple today announced Corning Incorporated will receive $200 million from Apple’s new Advanced Manufacturing Fund as part of the company’s commitment to foster innovation among American manufacturers. The investment will support Corning’s R&D, capital equipment needs and state-of-the-art glass processing. Corning’s 65-year-old Harrodsburg facility has been integral to the 10-year collaboration between these two innovative companies and will be the focus of Apple’s investment.
And:
Apple has committed to investing at least $1 billion with US-based companies as part of the fund, which is designed to foster innovative production and highly skilled jobs that will help lay the foundation for a new era of technology-driven manufacturing in the US.
Logical investment in a company whose fortunes are tightly bound with yours.
Sources in position to know tell BuzzFeed News that Amazon’s Prime video app — long absent from Apple TV — is indeed headed to Apple’s diminutive set-top box. Apple plans to announce Amazon Prime video’s impending arrive to the Apple TV App Store during the keynote at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) on June 5 in San Jose, CA. A source familiar with the companies’ thinking say the app is expected to go live this summer, but cautioned that the hard launch date might change. Amazon had previously declined to even submit a Prime Video app for inclusion in Apple’s Apple TV App Store.
John certainly knows his stuff and this has been rumored before. It would be great if Amazon and Apple could get things worked out, release a video app, and get the Apple TV back in the Amazon store again.
“We are taking a careful yet balanced approach to incorporating autonomous vehicles on our roads to reduce dangerous driving habits, decrease the number of accidents and save lives on New York roadways,” Cuomo said in a statement.
Says a lot about the driving habits of many on the roads today.
Companies in New York must have a $5 million insurance policy, submit reports to the state, be overseen by the state police and pay the state police for supervising each test.
Testing also cannot take place in construction or school zones – which take up huge swaths of land in New York City – and must adhere to a predesignated route shared in advance with the state.
No doubt there will be challenges or suggestions from the companies developing the technology.
The Windows Store platform’s heating up now that Windows 10 S is here and restricted to Microsoft’s walled garden. At the Windows 10 S launch event last week, it was revealed that Spotify is on its way, and during Thursday’s Build 2017 keynote, Windows chief Terry Myerson announced that iTunes—yes, Apple’s crown jewel—is coming to the Windows Store.
Details beyond that are scarce; Myerson simply said that iTunes will include Apple Music and “full support for iPhone,” whatever that means for a Windows Store app.
It will be interesting to see how well (or how poorly) iTunes will be received on the Windows Store.
Have you ever held a NeXTcube? It’s a tesseract. It’s an alien thing that was for no reason brought to us earthlings. Apple devices have always looked a bit out-of-this-world and that’s why we like them so much. So no wonder that when there’s a chance to get a huge collection of iconic Apple computers, you snatch it with the tightest grip.
As sad as I was to hear of Tekserve’s closing, I’m glad to see their wonderful collection of Apple computers has gone to a good home. Macpaw got a great deal – 39 pieces of Apple history for $47,000.
This is some fine parody work. And they did the entire album.
But, to me, this first video is the highlight. Hard to get that “Princess Leia’s Stolen Death Star Plans” out of my head now. Sorry, people around me today.
Mike Matthews, writing for TidBITS, walks through some solid background on iCloud Photo Library and some thoughts on the use of space on your iPhone and in the cloud.
Mario Wienerroither has taken the famous half-animated video for the A-HA song “Take On Me“, strategically stripped the music out and dubbed in appropriate reactive sounds. Without the music, the lighthearted romance of the original video was gone and a more sinister theme took its place.
It’s not exactly a traditional story, but it certainly is interesting. This was the first example of rotoscoping I ever saw. I think it still holds up after all these years.
Fossil Group’s latest financials show the watchmaker is clearly hurting from Apple’s encroachment into the traditional hardware sector.
Shares of Fossil closed down more than 20 percent Wednesday, following the company’s dismal first-quarter earnings report.
“Our results for the first quarter … continue to reflect a challenging retail environment and a watch category undergoing significant change,” Fossil CEO Kosta Kartsotis said on the earnings conference call.
Results like these fly in the face of naysayers, support the notion that Apple Watch is entrenched and is solidifying its hold on this market.
To any HGTV fan, Andromeda Dunker has a voice that is instantly recognizable. Her gliding cadence and dulcet tone are as soothing as the comfort-food reality TV shows she narrates.
Since 2009, Dunker has voiced literally thousands of episodes of the House Hunters franchise, becoming an integral part of the HGTV juggernaut, which drew almost 25 million primetime viewers each month last year.
While the buyers and cities may change, the narrator does not. Episode after episode, Dunker introduces us to a new couple and a new location but with the same singsong intonation and honeyed tone. She is the show.
Want to talk about guilty pleasures of trash tv watching? This is mine. I watch every episode of House Hunters International (yes, I know the show is staged), although not such a fan of the other shows.
Between migration and multiple imports and copying for particular purposes, you could have several copies of the same image or scene, and sometimes they aren’t identical: one may be lower resolution, one may have been edited, and some might taken in quick succession but only one is good! Burst mode can lead to a lot of extra pictures, depending on your settings.
Photosweeper 3 is a well-updated version of software designed to solve this problem with a high degree of customization and specificity.
I’ve used Photosweeper 3 to organize and/or delete thousands of photos. Well worth the $10.
No matter your level of interest in the guitar, no matter how well you can play, if at all, this is so worth watching.
Mark Knopfler, best known as the singer, lead guitarist and songwriter for Dire Straits (Sultans of Swing, many others), talks about learning to play the guitar. He starts with the most basic of techniques, then slowly folds in the moves that took him places.
This is a piece from last years excellent Soundbreaking documentary. Take a few minutes to watch a true master sharing his craft.
This quiz from a few years ago has been making the rounds. In a nutshell, take a look at these cropped faces, try to identify the emotion shown. It’s all multiple choice, 36 in all, goes pretty quickly.
I generally found that if a particular face brought up an instinct, that first instinct was the correct answer. Enjoy.
UPDATE: Not sure why, but it appears the quiz comes up fine on the Mac, but not on my iPhone. If you get a broken link on your phone, try it on your computer.
Visual designer and Northwestern University student Jason Yuan:
Earlier this year I applied and interviewed for a graphic design internship at Apple Music (an opportunity of a lifetime), and was turned down with a very kind letter stating that although they liked my work, they wanted to see more growth and training.
Jason’s solution? Redesign Apple Music:
What you’ll find below is a case study offering potential solutions to address some of Apple Music’s problems, as well as ideas for future development. My process was guided by qualitative user research, Apple’s official Design Principles, and my own designer intuition.
To me, there’s always value in a project like this, value in identifying flaws in an existing design, as well as in prototyping fresh design approaches. Feedback like this is a gift to the Apple Music team. Hope someone there takes a look.
