Apple today released a revised version of iTunes 12.6, which appears to eliminate a hidden option that may have accidentally been built into the software release.
Shortly after the original release of iTunes 12.6 on Tuesday, a reddit user discovered a “Show on Profile Page” toggle on a Playlist edit page.
Apple is quite clearly looking at social networking in iTunes once again. It makes me cringe to think that they are still trying to be social with music. I suppose it’s another place they can push artists that they pay millions of dollars to have exclusive rights to their music.
My thanks to Twocanoes Software for sponsoring The Loop with SD Clone 3 this week.
If you do any projects that use SD cards (like the Raspberry Pi), check out SD Clone. SD Clone makes an exact copy of your SD card right on your Mac and makes it easy to restore back to either a single SD card or multiple SD cards at once. You’ve spent a lot of time getting a Raspberry Pi project exactly right and want to make an image of your SD card to protect all that work. SD Clone makes creating an image simple. If you want to make multiple of copies of that SD card to start shipping your project, SD Clone restores up to 8 SD cards at once, making it super fast to do something that was slow and painful before. SD Clone can also check any SD card to make sure it is not failing or isn’t a counterfeit. Learn about these features and more here.
The iPhone 7 (PRODUCT)RED and iPad were announced earlier this week, and both products are now available to order from Apple’s online store. I did an unboxing of the new iPhone 7 if you’re interested in seeing what it looks like before you buy.
David Chartier, writing about an experience at AltConf in 2015, when the Apple Watch was brand new:
It was a good keynote, but my favorite part happened in the Metreon theater. About 50 minutes in, a cacophony of Apple Watches all beeped nearly at once—according to the Activity features, it was time for us to stand.
Apple said on Tuesday that Swift Playgrounds would be available in Simplified Chinese. Swift Playgrounds is an app, only available on iPads, that helps kids learn to code through games. Not only does Playgrounds help kids learn to code, but it teaches them Apple’s new coding language, Swift, released in 2014.
And:
Getting kids hooked has historically been part of Apple’s long game for the iPad — Steve Jobs once told Barack Obama that it was “absurd” that teachers still used chalkboards instead of iPads.
This is an important move that got little attention. This is Apple paying great attention to the details in opening up the iOS device market in China, paving the way via education. Smart.
This is like an external keyboard case with a slot for an iPhone (or an iPad), except with this model, there’s an external display that is driven by the iOS device’s processor.
Neat idea. A bit of a missing link between iOS and macOS.
Fascinating post by Ed Fries, who led the team that created the original Xbox for Microsoft, on hearing the legend of the very first arcade Easter egg and his quest to track it down.
Great, great read with lots of detail and pictures.
At a glance, Magnet ($7.99, but it’s on sale right now for $1.49) is like any window snapping tool. You can organise windows neatly side-by-side, in fullscreen, quarters, thirds or any combination of those you want. You can manage windows by dragging them, setting up keyboard shortcuts, or by using the menu bar. This alone is helpful for someone like me, who typically has dozens of windows open of varying sizes all stacked in a disorganised way that makes me spend more time in the app switcher than I’d like. If I do ever bother to manually resize a window, it’s usually just to make it large enough to peek out from another stack of apps.
What sets Magnet apart from other options is the sheer amount of polish.
Apple is reassuring customers that its systems have not been breached while a hacker, or hackers, threaten to remotely wipe hundreds of millions iPhones of all their data, including photos, videos, and messages.
The hackers are using an alleged cache of stolen email accounts and passwords as leverage in an attempt to extort the world’s most valuable company. They claim to have access to as many as 559 million Apple email and iCloud accounts, Vice blog Motherboard reported on Tuesday.
Want to be on the safe side? Enable two-factor authentication.
Apple announced its iPhone 7 (PRODUCT)RED Special Edition on Tuesday. The new iPhone goes on sale tomorrow and ships at the end of March, but I thought I’d give you a first look at mine. It’s absolutely gorgeous.
The day a shelter dog gets adopted is one of the happiest days of its life. No matter where an animal came from or what it’s been through, suddenly it knows that better times are ahead.
Have a problem with an app purchased on the Mac or iOS app store, or via iTunes? Looking for a refund?
Apple’s got a page for that. Click the link, then enter your AppleID password. You’ll see a scrolling list of all your recent purchases, with a Report a Problem link for each one.
The list includes purchase for music, movies, TV shows, apps, and books. Good to know, pass it along.
I love the artwork here, glad they are still expanding the set to be ever more representational. As this set expands, we’re going to need better search tools. Scrolling through pages and pages of emoji is reaching a breaking point.
Text substitution is one solution. Keeping a page of recently used emoji (as iOS does now) is also helpful, though perhaps Apple could add in a pane of configurable favorites?
Note this, in bold letters on the Emojipedia page:
This update is not final and is subject to change.
Just something to keep in mind. And where’s that rimshot emoji?
As reported yesterday, Apple bought the Workflow app and team. This could be great news, assuming this signals a move on Apple’s part to open up the black box and give users the ability to automate pretty much everything their heart desires, something they’ve long been able to do on the Mac.
Federico Viticci, MacStories:
At this stage, it’s not clear what Apple’s plans for Workflow in the long term might be. I have a few theories, but this isn’t the time to speculate. I’ll say this, though: Workflow has been the driving force behind my decision to embrace the iPad as my primary computer. Workflow is a shining example of the power of automation combined with user creativity and its underlying mission has always been clear: to allow anyone to improve how iOS can get things done for them in a better, faster, more flexible way. Workflow is the modern bicycle for the mind. There’s nothing else like it.
In my mind, no one has embraced and written about Workflow quite as much as Federico. If you are interested in learning more about Workflow, download it here (it’s free), then dig into this archive of Federico’s Workflow articles.
Following its release on Android today, Nintendo has also updated Super Mario Run on iOS. The update adds a host of new features and bug fixes and brings the app to version 2.0. The update comes months after the app’s initial release.
Headlining the update are new playable characters. Nintendo says the update adds different color versions of Yoshi. If you play with a certain color of Yoshi during Toad Rally, you can unlock more toads of that color.
Additionally, the update makes more of the game available for free. Nintendo says that by completing one of Bowser’s challenges, you can unlock the previously locked courses 1-4 and battle with Bowser. Furthermore, Nintendo says that if you “clear course 1-4,” you’ll get new courses to play in Toad Rally.
If you love the game, there’s just more to love. Me, I find the interface a bit of a mess. Lots to love, lots of frustrating design to go along with it.
On a side note, Android users finally got their first taste of Mario yesterday afternoon:
The initial release, back on December 15th, 2016, was an iOS exclusive. I suspect this refresh was to revive the wave, give Android folks a reason to buy.
Apple has finalized a deal to acquire Workflow today — a tool that lets you hook together apps and functions within apps in strings of commands to automate tasks. We’ve been tracking this one for a while but were able to confirm just now that the ink on the deal is drying as we speak.
Algoriddim on Wednesday released an update for djay Pro for Mac, bring a host of new features including tight integration with Pioneer DJ’s newest CDJ set-ups. In fact, djay Pro is now certified by Pioneer. The update also brings enhanced Touch Bar integration on the new MacBook Pro, and Spotify Browse access.
Algoriddim and Pioneer DJ partnered to integrate djay Pro with the CDJ-2000NXS2 and TOUR1 from Pioneer. Users can now access Spotify and iTunes playlists directly from the CDJ screens including displaying colored waveforms, song information, and cue points.
djay Pro is the most modern way to DJ on your Mac,” said Karim Morsy, CEO of Algoriddim. “This new version adds a host of new features for live performance, music discovery, and preparation. It combines the best of both worlds, content discovery via Spotify and hardware access through Pioneer DJ’s state-of-the-art CDJ setups.”
I’ve known Karim for a number of years and have talked to him at length about music and his apps. This is a man that cares about the products he releases, but he also has a deep love and understanding of music. I can’t think of a better mix (pun intended) for someone that is making music apps.
If you remember when Apple unveiled the Touch Bar on the MacBook Pro, Karim was one of the developers on stage during the keynote. Using the Touch Bar, users can scratch and slice a track, simultaneously apply filters and effects in real-time, and trigger audio samples. With this new update you can now manipulate two decks simultaneously, manually select the active deck, and to navigate the library to browse, preview, and prepare songs.
djay Pro featured integration with Spotify, but now it has extensive integration with Spotify’s Browse section, so DJs can now mix curated playlists and instantly discover new music by mood, genre, and popularity.
With the release of Team View, business owners and managers can now see the workload and availability for all their teams in one view. Appointments, tasks, and project due dates for today and the next few days are displayed for a whole team in Team View. Small business owners can now avoid interrupting their staff to figure out their workload and availability. Team View also includes additional productivity features so a user can send everyone on a team an email or invite everyone to a meeting with a click of a button.
Team View is a great overview for managers to see exactly what team members workloads are.
You probably already knew that Disney has a habit of taking dark, twisted children’s fairy tales and turning them into sickeningly sweet happily-ever-afters.
The 1940 version of Pinocchio is no exception. The movie is based on a story that appeared as a serial in a newspaper called The Adventures of Pinocchio, written in 1881 and 1882 by Carlo Collodi. Jiminy Cricket appears as the Talking Cricket in the book, and does not play as prominent of a role.
The Disneyfication of many of our favourite childhood stories might be a good thing. If you read many of the original stories of so much of what Disney has shown us, you’ll find they are not only significantly different but, in many cases, really disturbing.
The US has a very rough national regulatory framework for autonomous vehicles, so for now, it’s largely up to the states to figure it out. Of course, that means some cities are better suited for self-driving cars than others.
A new study from Inrix, which provides traffic analytics and other related services, ranks the 10 cities that it believes are best suited for the introduction of autonomous vehicles. Those cities are, in order: New Orleans, Albuquerque, Tucson, Portland, Omaha, El Paso, Fresno, Wichita, Las Vegas and Tulsa.
Now, that might be a strange list to you, because none of the cities mentioned have been in the news touting their willingness to accept self-driving cars.
One of the downsides of the self-driving future is it is coming in such a piecemeal fashion. Seemingly, every city and/or state will have their own laws and regulations regarding whether you can or cannot use self-driving technology.
Amazon.com Inc.’s battle with Apple Inc. over digital assistants is moving to a new venue: hotel rooms, where Alexa and Siri are both vying to be the voice-controlled platform of choice for travelers.
Marriott International Inc., the world’s biggest lodging company, is testing devices from the two tech giants at its Aloft hotel in Boston’s Seaport district to determine which is best to let guests turn on lights, close drapes, control room temperature and change television channels via voice command. In December, Wynn Resorts Ltd. became the first hotel company to install Alexa-powered Echo devices, starting with suites at its flagship Wynn Las Vegas property.
This is a fascinating business conflict. Let’s say Marriott chooses Alexa and Hilton chooses Siri. Will Apple folks shift their staying habits, choosing to stay at a Siri friendly hotel? Is this forced choice good business? Is there a way to support both? I see a business opportunity for an Echo-like device that supports multiple personalities, translating requests into the appropriate format with an exposed setting that lets you pick your favorite.
Introduced as part of iTunes 12.6, which is rolling out to users as of this writing, the “rent once, watch anywhere” feature lets customers watch content rentals on any iPhone or iPad running iOS 10.3 or Apple TVs running tvOS 10.2. Those operating system versions have yet to move out of beta, suggesting a launch in the next few days.
Prior to the change, rented movies were largely relegated to the device on which they were purchased. For example, a film rented on an iPad or Apple TV could not be transported to iPhone, or vice versa.
Huzzah. The one rental, one device model was painfully archaic. Long overdue.
Remember how you liked having playlists in their own windows? Well, it’s back in the latest iTunes update. Right-click on a playlist and choose Open Playlist in New Window.
Amazon has quietly rolled out the “Send to Kindle” feature to its Kindle for iOS application that allows you to save to the app articles and documents found on the web. That means your Kindle device or app can replace your preferred “read it later” application — like Pocket or Instapaper, for example — apps where regular web readers often store the longer news articles, features or profiles they want to dig into at a later date.
Not sure of the impact of this move. I use the Kindle app to read books. And that’s it. Not sure the ability to “Send to Kindle” will even get an experimental look. Where’s the value? I can share everything to an app designed from the ground up for article or PDF reading. Why shift that workflow to run through Kindle?
