Display damage due to drops, impacts and other sudden shocks is the bane of many a smartphone user. Apple is working on technology to help users determine when a device is cracked and perhaps prevent such events from occurring in the first place.
Described in Apple’s filing for “Coverglass fracture detection,” the proposed system utilizes a comprehensive network of sensors and software to detect the formation of cracks, or potential cracks, in a protective display cover.
What I find most fascinating is the idea of crowdsourcing crack detection. When a crack is detected, the theory goes, Apple could contact the user to verify. The user would verify the crack (perhaps tracing it on the screen) and Apple could follow up to learn what type of impact caused the crack. Pretty cool idea.
Apple may replace its fingerprint scanner with a face scanner on the next iPhone, according to JPMorgan analyst Rod Hall.
A front-facing 3-D scanner could replace the home button, which could be phased out if Apple goes with a full-glass front this year, Hall wrote in a research note this week. Biometric facial scanning would be more secure for Apple Pay and could work better in “wet conditions” if the iPhones are more water resistant, JPMorgan wrote.
Don’t have a link to the original research note. If anyone has it, please tweet it at me, I’d like to read the original text. And I’ll add it here as an update.
UPDATE:Johannes Schaller points out that the Surface Pro 4 ships with Windows Hello, which is designed to read fingerprints but can also work with certain camera configurations to do facial recognition. So there’s the consumer starting point.
Apple on Thursday will announce that it’s bringing its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) back to San Jose, Calif. This will be the first time WWDC will be in San Jose since 2002— the conference moved to San Francisco in 2003. I spoke to Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing about the move.
WWDC will be held the week of June 5, 2017 at the McEnery Convention Center in San Jose. Schiller said registration will begin on March 27, giving developers plenty of time to make travel plans to attend the show.
Schiller said that downtown San Jose is going to provide a great environment for developers attending the conference. Of course, San Jose has the added benefit of being close to Apple’s Cupertino headquarters, which should make logistics much easier for the company, especially when it comes to getting engineers on site.
According to Schiller, WWDC 2017 will be about the same size as previous conferences—about 5,000 developers and 1,000 engineers. The cost of tickets to the conference will also remain the same, he said.
WWDC 2017 will focus on all platforms—macOS, tvOS, watchOS, and iOS, Schiller said. Apple will still stream and offer on-demand video of the conference sessions for those developers that cannot attend in person.
Of course, Apple is a much different company now than it was the last time they held a WWDC in San Jose. The big news in 2002 was Mac OS X 10.2, QuickTime 6, and Rendezvous. That was also the year Steve Jobs gave a eulogy for Mac OS 9 during a mock funeral on stage. I remember that WWDC very well.
I contacted the mayor’s office in San Jose and they are very happy with Apple’s decision, as you may expect.
“We’re ecstatic that Apple has chosen to host its WWDC 2017 in San Jose, the heart of Silicon Valley and site of the very first WWDC,” said San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo. “We look forward to working with Apple to create a special experience for the thousands of attendees who will visit San Jose for this marquee event. And on behalf of our entire city, I’d like to extend a warm invitation to Apple developers, partners and enthusiasts from around the world to join us in Downtown San Jose as Apple unveils its latest innovations.”
My big hope is that the cost of hotels, restaurants and all of the sundry expenses that developers found overwhelming in San Francisco will decline in San Jose. I know many developers that stopped going to WWDC because the cost of a week in San Francisco was just too high. Some developers stayed outside the city to reduce costs, but that left them out of many events that happened during the evening.
I’ve spent some time in San Jose over the years and I really like the city. It’s clean, friendly, and there are quite a few bars and restaurants in the downtown area to accommodate the developers attending WWDC.
As a side note to this news, I’d like to say that I will be holding my WWDC party again this year, and I’ll be moving it to San Jose. Last year we had over 1,000 people attend the party and everyone had a great time. I’ll share more news on that in the coming weeks.
I like this move by Apple. San Jose is where WWDC began, it’s a great city that is excited to have the developer community there, and hopefully it will be more affordable. (Also the weather is much, much nicer than San Francisco). I don’t see any downside to this announcement at all.
Apple has struggled for years to pull off bigger deals because of a series of quirks: an aversion to risk, reluctance to work with external advisers like investment banks and inexperience in closing and integrating large takeovers, said people who have worked on acquisitions with the company.
I don’t know if the article is correct but they don’t seem to take into account the fact that, as Tim Cook has often said, Apple buys companies for the usual reason but also because the company and people “fit” with Apple. That’s easier to do with a smaller company than it would be for a Netflix-sized acquisition.
BlackBerry has at last fallen to a rounded 0.0% share among smartphone operating systems, including iOS, Android, and Windows 10 Mobile, following an over seven year decline from its peak market share of approximately 20% in 2009, according to the latest quarterly data from research firm Gartner.
I remember the BlackBerry co-CEOs saying they weren’t worried at all about the release of the iPhone. Idiots.
Apple is planning to fight proposed electronics “Right to Repair” legislation being considered by the Nebraska state legislature, according to a source within the legislature who is familiar with the bill’s path through the statehouse.
And:
The legislation would require Apple and other electronics manufacturers to sell repair parts to consumers and independent repair shops, and would require manufacturers to make diagnostic and service manuals available to the public.
Nebraska is one of eight states that are considering right to repair bills; last month, Nebraska, Minnesota, New York, Massachusetts, Kansas, and Wyoming introduced legislation. Last week, lawmakers in Illinois and Tennessee officially introduced similar bills.
And:
The bills nationwide are being pushed by Repair.org, a trade organization made up of independent repair shops who say that their companies have been harmed by an attempt by manufacturers to gain a monopoly over the repair business. Even without readily available repair parts or service manuals, a healthy DIY repair hobby has thrived thanks to online crowdsourced instruction manuals on sites like iFixit and grey market parts that are available directly from factories in China or can be salvaged from recycled devices.
The idea that it’s “unsafe” to repair your own devices is one that manufacturers have been promoting for years. Last year, industry lobbyists told lawmakers in Minnesota that broken glass could cut the fingers of consumers who try to repair their screens, according to Gay Gordon-Byrne, executive director of Repair.org.
First things first, this is a one sided post, almost a marketing piece from Repair.org. That said, repairability has become more and more of an issue. I’d like to hear Apple’s side of this. Macs, iPhones, and iPads have certainly become harder and harder to repair yourself.
But I think the claim that self-repair is unsafe is disingenuous. I think most self-repairers would agree to voiding their warrantee in exchange for self repair, and also be willing to hold Apple harmless for damage done doing a self-repair.
That said, let’s see what happens on March 9th:
According to the source, an Apple representative, staffer, or lobbyist will testify against the bill at a hearing in Lincoln on March 9. AT&T will also argue against the bill, the source said. The source told me that at least one of the companies plans to say that consumers who repair their own phones could cause lithium batteries to catch fire.
Until then, this is just a sourced rumor.
UPDATE: A little birdie told me about an Apple Store that had to be evacuated when a trained technician accidentally put a tiny screwdriver through the battery of an iPhone, starting a lithium fire that required special chemicals to stop. In another incident, those same chemicals were used in the repair room when someone punctured a MacBook Air battery.
Points well taken. Assuming these anecdotes are documented, I hope they are presented at that March 9th hearing in Lincoln.
When it comes to EQing, there are certain frequencies that seem predominant for every instrument. Many call them the magic frequencies, because they do tend to work most of the time.
This is a great place to learn what frequencies to use with certain instruments.
The Boston Consulting Group has outfitted about 100 volunteer employees in its new Manhattan office with badges that embed a microphone and a location sensor. Made by Humanyze in Boston, the badges track physical and verbal interactions. BCG says it intends to use the data to see how office design affects employee communication. Outside critics have called the plan Orwellian and despotic—“It is a little bit invasive,” says Ross Love, 57, a BCG managing partner who volunteered—but the data collected is anonymized, and the company has pledged not to use it for performance evaluation.
Sure, you say that now. But once those badges are in place, once they become the new normal, all bets are off.
TweetDelete.net will automatically delete your tweets after a certain amount of time has passed. While this is definitely an interesting idea, not sure I get the use case. Given that all tweets are backed up almost as soon as they are issued, deleting your tweets won’t keep them off the net. And there’s no limit to the number of tweets you can have.
If you say “Hey Computer” to Siri, she’ll respond as if you are Lego Batman. Is this just humorous content, or a new paid marketing/advertising path for Apple?
Silicon Valley has a long way to go on diversity, but most tech companies would argue that they’re making progress. Intel beat its initial hiring goals; Microsoft is tying executive compensation to diversity success; and Google says it’s made changes to remove pay inequality, even though the diversity of its workforce has remained flat.
Apple also claims to have removed pay disparities and has made slight gains on hiring women and people of color. It’s even launched an “Inclusion & Diversity” page with visualizations of its hiring data.
But a small group of Apple investors believe the company isn’t making progress fast enough, and they’re trying to force the company to pick up the pace. “Some of the excuses given by Apple and others — there’s not sufficient people in the pipeline, this and that,” says investor Tony Maldonado. “Excuse my language, it’s bullshit.”
And:
Maldonado is leading an effort to mandate that Apple accelerate its work toward becoming a more diverse company. For the second year in a row, he’s submitted a shareholder proposal asking that Apple “adopt an accelerated recruitment policy … to increase the diversity of senior management and its board of directors.”
From Apple’s point of view:
In a filing with the SEC, Apple’s board wrote a note recommending that shareholders vote against the proposal. The company argues that it already has “much broader” diversity efforts at work and, in the past three years, has made “steady progress in attracting more women and underrepresented minorities.” The proposed policy, Apple concludes, “is not necessary or appropriate because we have already demonstrated our commitment to a holistic view of inclusion and diversity.”
Is Apple doing enough on their own? They have certainly proven that they think well beyond the boundaries of profit and revenue, leading their corporate cousins in issues like clean/renewable energy and supply chain ethics. That doesn’t mean they always do right, but my sense is that Apple listens on issues like this and, when they listen, change is sure to follow.
Apple CFO Luca Maestri spoke at yesterday’s Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference. If you are interested in where Apple is going as a company and the potential for growth, take a few minutes to listen to Luca speak. Here’s a link to the audio, found on Apple’s web site.
One set of comments I found particularly interesting was Luca addressing the question, “Is the iPhone still a growth business?” Luca’s (slightly edited) response:
I want to point out that during the December quarter, we went back to growth with iPhone, and it was actually was very good for us to see. We definitely continue to believe that there’s a lot of room for growth with our iPhone business.
And
When we look at the smartphone as a consumer product, we really believe it’s become more relevant to people’s lives than it was, ten years ago, five years ago, and two years ago, when you look at how much people rely on their iPhones in every aspect of life, from payments, in the car, in the home, and that’s a great foundation, the fact that the product is extremely relevant to people’s lives is very important.
We also believe that there is a lot of innovation left in the iPhone, when we look at the key foundational technologies that go into the product. When you look at processors, look at sensors, displays, batteries, cameras, we made a lot of progress during that last few years on those dimensions and we think there is a lot that is left. Innovation can help us continue to grow the business.
When we look at markets around the world, there’s a lot of growth that is available to us in emerging markets, starting from China, to India, many places around the world, the demographics are such that we can expect a rise in the middle class, we can expect that LTE adoption and smartphone penetration will increase over time and our market share is extremely low in a lot of these emerging markets.
Luca is not in marketing. He’s the Chief Financial Officer, a numbers guy. This take seems objective, based on demographics, and gives me a sense that there’s still a lot of room for future iPhone growth.
The flying experience feels like it gets crummier all the time, and people trudge through it. But, it seems, other passengers’ phone calls would fly right past the breaking point, and keep on going.
In a bid to preserve sanity, the federal Department of Transportation is considering a ban on in-air calls using WiFi, and invited the public to share their thoughts. And boy did they: Over 8,000 of people logged on and left comments before the consultation ended Monday. And probably no surprise to anyone: The American people are gaga for this travel-related ban.
I really hope the federal Department of Transportation institutes a ban on in-air calls using WiFi. As the article points out, flying is already awful enough without have to listen to one-way conversations at 30,000 feet.
The popular conception of a lemming blindly rushing to its death does a poor job of describing the animal’s nature, but an excellent job of describing human nature—lemmings has entered the vernacular to denote any group of unthinking followers hastening their own demise.
To paraphrase Voltaire’s chestnut on God, since no animal that regularly commits mass suicide exists, it was necessary to invent one. We turn to nature documentaries not to understand nature, but to see our own behavior reflected back at us. The natural world—wild, chaotic, mutable—can be endlessly recut to tell whatever story we need to tell ourselves.
Like many of us here in Canada and the US, as a kid I sat down on Sunday evening’s to watch “The Wonderful World of Disney”. They often had “documentaries” about various animals. As an adult, I learned many of them weren’t in fact documentaries but often staged to get the desired response from the audience. I still like nature documentaries (I’m a huge fan of the “Planet Earth” series) but I’m much more wary of the staging that is possible.
At the end of the day, dog shows are kind of cruel: How can you expect dogs to just ignore an adoring crowd all around them? Mia, to her credit, stood up for her species and basked in all that lovely human attention.
I love the Westminster Dog Show (I watched hours of it last night and will watch more hours of it tonight) and wish they televised more of these agility events as opposed to nothing but the actual “Best of Show” stuff.
Interactive television has long been the holy grail for TV content makers, but Apple’s Eddy Cue thinks the tech company has all of the right tools in place to actually make it happen. And it’s something that could impact sports, news — even polling.
In an interview with The Verge, Cue said that Apple isn’t against the idea of making more original TV, but emphasized that there would have to have some sort of interactive element for it to make sense for the tech giant right now.
Interesting POV from Cue but I’m not sure he’s correct. TV has always been a consumption medium – you sit in your comfy chair and just watch. I don’t doubt that a certain portion of the population wants to have greater “interactivity” (whatever that means) with the TV and its programming but I don’t know that the average consumer does.
Even if you’re not the most avid reader, chances are you’re familiar with the work of Donald Lau. For 30 years, Lau served in the unique position of “Chief Fortune Writer” at Wonton Foods—America’s largest fortune cookie producer. Sadly, Lau has been forced to is step down due to an affliction that has stymied even the world’s most prolific scribes. “I have writer’s block,” says Donald Lau, “I used to write 100 a year, but I’ve only written two or three a month over the past year.”
I’ve never thought about the person who writes the pithy sayings in a fortune cookie but I do know the meal isn’t complete without munching on the cookie and reading the “fortune”.
Twitterrific for Mac was first released 10 years ago way back in 2007 and had regular updates until 2013. Development of Twitterrific has continued exclusively on iOS since then, but many of us still use Twitterrific on the desktop – despite it missing many recent Twitter features and Twitterrific for iOS refinements. It is time we fixed this, but we need your help!
Twitter rolled back a new fix aimed to prevent abuse a few hours after it met with protests, reflecting that the company is still scrambling to find solutions to the problem of harassment on its service, but is willing to make changes quickly in response to its users.
The social network on Monday rolled out a new feature that would ensure that users would not get notified when they are added to a list. “We want you to get notifications that matter. Starting today, you won’t get notified when you are added to a list,” wrote Twitter Safety. One user pointed out that it was critical for people to know if they have been added to a list intended for targets.
Does it feel like the people who manage this stuff at Twitter have no clue how Twitter works? As soon as I heard about this “feature”, I knew it would cause problems. Why didn’t anyone at Twitter see it coming?
Drag a song from the left onto a song on the right, then sit back and listen.
This works really well. Seems to me, this would make an excellent app, especially if you could figure out a general approach that mapped all the songs in a playlist. I see possibilities here.
On Feb. 14, an Indian PSLV rocket will attempt to set a record by deploying 103 small satellites in a single launch, including 88 satellites owned by Planet. With a successful launch, the San Francisco-based imaging startup will operate a total of 143 satellites—the most of any company in the world.
If all goes according to plan, Planet expects to be able to image the entire Earth daily; right now it covers about a third of the world’s landmass every 24 hours.
And:
The US government technically prohibits American companies from using India’s rockets, since the company that markets them, Antrix, is state-owned and arguably distorts the market for space access. The rule is in part designed to protect American rocket-makers from competition, but also to protest Indian policies that effectively block foreign satellite companies from doing business there.
Yet with so few options available to small satellite firms, the US has increasingly granted waivers for companies to contract with India.
With this launch, Planet will become one of the largest satellite image providers in the world. Check out the picture of the rack of satellites. So tiny!
Interesting that Will.i.am planned the show Planet of the Apps with his production company, then pitched and sold the concept to Apple (as opposed to the show being a brain-child born inside of Apple).
Also interesting is that the show is being designed around an app which will let you pause the show and dive deeper into a specific app or concept. This is very non-linear. I think it would be a mistake to pigeonhole this as a traditional reality show.
Planet of the Apps celebrates the world of apps and the talented people who create them. Hosted by Zane Lowe and featuring advisers Jessica Alba, Gwyneth Paltrow, Gary Vaynerchuk and will.i.am, the series highlights developers who have the vision to shape the future, solve real problems, and inspire change within our daily lives.
This feels like a mix of Shark Tank and The Voice. As a developer and investor, I’m intrigued by the concept. The hard part is to straddle the channel between broad entertainment and entrepreneurial detail. Keep it fun while still teaching some skill or lesson.
Starting today, you can create lists of places, share your lists with others, and follow the lists your friends and family share with you—without ever leaving the Google Maps app (Android, iOS).
And:
Open the Google Maps app and find that BBQ spot you’ve been wanting to try. Tapping on the place name and then the “Save” icon adds the place to one of several pre-set lists like “Want to Go” or “Favorites.” You can also add the restaurant to a new list that you name yourself, like “Finger Lickin’ BBQ.” To recall the lists you’ve created, go to Your Places (in the side menu) and then open the saved tab. Icons for the places you’ve saved to lists will appear on the map itself.
I love the concept. Only issue I have is that I tend to move between different Google accounts and if I am logged in to the wrong account, I won’t see my place lists. One workflow is to always share place lists with all accounts, then each added place will automatically appear in all accounts.
