During the last few years of the Steve Jobs era, it was Cook (and Apple SVP Marketing Phil Schiller) who were tasked with coming up with Apple’s corporate strategy. This allowed Steve Jobs to spend time with Jony Ive and focus on the product. Said another way, Tim Cook was the one that allowed Steve to be Steve.
When it came time to relinquish his CEO title, Steve selected Cook as his successor. While the move was met with controversy outside Apple, the selection signaled that Steve didn’t look at the CEO position as something that needed to be held by a product person. Much of that belief likely resulted from the fact that Cook had been handling many of the traditional CEO duties himself as COO for years.
And:
Tim Cook is leading a different type of Apple than that which existed under Steve. Things are done differently, down to how decisions are made and then communicated throughout Apple. This leads to a theory that may seem controversial today but is becoming increasingly clear as time goes on. It is impossible to grade Tim Cook as CEO without grading Cook’s inner circle.
While Cook has at least seventeen VPs and SVPs reporting directly to him, a very high number, there is evidence that many of the key decisions regarding Apple’s strategy are determined by a much smaller group of SVPs. This team likely includes Eddy Cue, Phil Schiller, and Jeff Williams. The three have been at Apple since the 1990s, experiencing Apple at its best and also worst. Eddy Cue joined Apple in 1989.
And:
The removal of Scott Forstall as SVP of iOS back in 2012 takes on a new level of importance when discussing the topic of Tim Cook and his inner circle. It has been reported that Forstall did not get along with other Apple executives. While we have never officially heard Forstall’s side of the story, which is odd, Cook’s desire for a powerful inner circle does support the theory that Forstall was removed in order to position this tight-knit group of Apple SVPs as a type of brain trust. Forstall was clear in his ambitions to one day be CEO. Cue, Schiller, and Williams don’t hold similar ambitions. Instead, ideas are bounced off each other and disagreements are hashed out within this group before being funneled to the rest of the company. Forstall threatened to throw off this dynamic and risk having Cook’s leadership structure collapse.
There’s a lot of insight here. Neil Cybart does an excellent job breaking down the big picture, explaining the complex model that is the Apple executive team.
Whether you agree with the grades at the bottom or not, the post itself is definitely worth making your way through.
The tutorial below is going to highlight the difference between the two main subsets of dictionaries (thesaurus vs. actual language to language translation) and scrutinize if your language of choice is one of the few lucky ones Apple decided to support beyond the thesaurus. Following that is a quick demonstration on how to translate the words in question to English. Read on to find out why some dictionaries are simply better than others.
As an example, if you install the French-English dictionary (in addition to your regular dictionaries), you’ll now have a powerful, built-in translation tool.
Well worth the time to read through the tutorial and, if you have the space on your device, install an extra dictionary or two.
AppleInsider caused a bit of a stir when it reported that the TV app for iOS and tvOS now supports playing Netflix content. As you may recall, Netflix hasn’t yet agreed to integrate with the TV app (see “tvOS 10.1 Unifies the Apple TV Experience with “TV” App,” 12 December 2016). However, the AppleInsider report is correct in that you can indeed find and stream Netflix content from the TV app. But TechCrunch’s Matthew Panzarino correctly pointed out that such functionality has been there from the launch of the TV app.
So what’s the deal? Netflix doesn’t work with TV, but it also does work? It’s a bit like the famous Schrödinger’s cat thought experiment, in which a cat in a box is simultaneously alive and dead. But unlike quantum mechanics, there’s a simple answer to this conundrum.
We wrote about this yesterday. Glad Josh was able to clarify. Read his post for the details.
The Touch Bar’s accessibility support is bountiful. There is a lot of functionality built into that little strip, all of which makes using the Touch Bar easier. The one feature that stands out the most is Zoom. Zoom is where the magic happens, and it’s my favorite Touch Bar accessibility feature.
What Touch Bar Zoom (System Prefs → Accessibility → Zoom → Enable Touch Bar Zoom) does is bring up a virtual Touch Bar on the bottom of the screen when you touch anything on the Touch Bar. Slide your finger back and forth, and the Touch Bar (real and virtual) moves accordingly. A circle icon follows your movement that fills in (think: iOS app updates in App Store) when you select an option, but Apple tells me you don’t need to wait for it to fill completely to select an item. In practice, I find Touch Bar Zoom to work great; animation is smooth and there’s no no lag between moving through and selecting options.
Nice job, as always, by Steve Aquino. No one does detail like Apple.
If you have a choice between listening to the best cellist perform the piece or the second best, why would you want to listen to the second best? You might be willing to pay a few cents more only to hear the best, because they’re all good. But, even if you’d be willing to pay a few cents more, the fact that there are millions of copies of these things sold means that the fact that the company that bids successfully for Yo-Yo Ma or whoever is regarded as the best cellist is going to get that market all to himself.
And so the price that you have to pay to get the best recording artist is set accordingly. One earns eight or nine figures a year while the cellist who is almost as good is teaching music lessons to third graders in New Jersey somewhere. It’s a dogfight now to see who gets to be regarded as that best performer. The person who is eventually successful got there by defeating thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of rivals in competitions that started at an early age.
And this, on Bryan Cranston and Breaking Bad:
Vince Gilligan wanted to cast him as Walter White right from the beginning. The studio bosses didn’t want that. It was going to be an expensive production. They were experimenting to see if AMC could carve out a new role for itself in the cable firmament. And so they were going to put a lot of money behind this series and they wanted an A-list dramatic actor. I think at the time Cranston was best known for playing the dad in Malcolm in the Middle, which is a sitcom I never even saw. Apparently he was pretty good in that role, but it wasn’t a leading dramatic role to be sure.
They wanted a more visible, dramatic actor. At the studio bosses insistence Gilligan offered the part of Walter White to John Cusack. Cusack turned it down. They offered it to Matthew Broderick. Broderick also turned it down. I don’t remember which one had the first crack at it. Both of them turned it down. Gilligan went back to the bosses and again pleaded his case. Finally they reluctantly allowed him to cast Cranston as Walter White. And, you know, White was the breakout part of that series. He got four Emmys in the show’s five seasons. He is today one of the very most sought after actors in his age group. But I still wouldn’t have heard of him except that Cusack and Broderick turned the role down first.
Meitu is a viral sensation. Who wouldn’t want to instantly give themselves or their favorite politicians and celebs a Japanese-anime inspired makeover, and share the hilarious results with the world? That’s why the face-recognizing photo app is currently rocking the charts.
But before you zip on over to the App Store or Google Play to grab your free copy, there’s something you should probably know: Meitu is asking for an awful lot of your data in exchange for the lolz — and the app also seems to contain some rather suspicious code.
I wasn’t going to download it regardless because it creates some truly awful photos but the security implications mean you shouldn’t download/use it either.
By collecting and analyzing data from a variety of government and private sources, we’re able to create detailed, informative profiles for every city in the United States. From crime rates to weather patterns, you’ll find the data you’re looking for on City-Data.com.
This is a very detailed data dump you can use to compare elements of two American cities. Everything from population to education to commuting income. I would have killed to have this kind of data easily available to me when I was in school.
The first Mac malware of 2017 was brought to my attention by an IT admin, who spotted some strange outgoing network traffic from a particular Mac. This led to the discovery of a piece of malware unlike anything I’ve seen before, which appears to have actually been in existence, undetected, for some time, and which seems to be targeting biomedical research centers.
While this probably isn’t much of a threat to most of us, the article is an interesting look into how Malwarebytes goes about investigating malware.
Samson’s Go Mic Mobile is the first professional wireless microphone system that connects directly to smartphones without the need for cumbersome adaptors or interfaces, turning your phone into a pro-level video camera capable of capturing high definition audio anywhere.
This looks very cool. It literally piggybacks on the iPhone so you have access to all of the controls on the Go Mic Mobile. I need to get one of these.
iRig Pro I/O is the next generation of the iRig Pro — the first mobile interface for connecting all of your studio gear to your iPhone, iPad, Mac, PC or Android device to play and record on the go.
iRig is a great little device. You can use it with your computer or iOS devices, so it’s very versatile for the money. I’ve had a number of iRigs throughout the years and used IK Multimedia’s AmpliTube software, which I also found to be very good. I’ll check this out today at the NAMM show.
It’s a compact acoustic microphone and advanced digital preamplifier and processing unit that recreates a studio microphone set-up providing you with all of the true character and tonal nuance of your acoustic in live playing situations. Simply clip the iRig Acoustic Stage’s microphone to the sound hole, attach it to the iRig Acoustic Stage pre-amplifier processor, then connect the preamp to your amplifier or mixer. iRig Acoustic Stage also features a “Cancel Feedback” button that gets rids of annoying frequency feedback during performance.
I got a demo of this yesterday and it was pretty impressive. If you play an acoustic live, you should take a look at this.
Samson’s AirLine 88 Wind Instrument system offers true wireless freedom without the hassle of a beltpack or cable. Featuring a clip-on transmitter with a shockmounted microphone and adjustable gooseneck, this frequency-agile UHF wireless system provides high definition sound and 300′ of reliable wireless operation for saxophones, trumpets, trombones and other wind instruments.
I’m going to have a look at this today at the Samson booth.
Samson’s Q7x and Q8x provide exceptional sound reproduction for live and studio vocal and instrument performances, as well as presentations and podcasting. And with updated body designs and improved capsule shockmount systems, these mics provide reliable performance in even the most demanding environments. The Q7x and Q8x will be available March 2017.
I haven’t tried these mics from Samson, but I like the company and do use other gear from them.
The most frenzied American ritual you’ve never seen is called the “transfer of families,” a five-hour tsunami of activity that transforms President Obama’s home into President Trump’s.
“I call it organized chaos,” said Gary Walters, who choreographed several transfers of families in his 21 years as the White House chief usher.
“It’s energizing,” said Ann Stock, who saw the transfer up close as the Clintons’ social secretary, “but absolutely exhausting.”
Here’s what happens on Inauguration Day before and during those five hectic hours.
I’ve seen several stories about this over the years and it always fascinates me.
This might seem a mundane, niche product announcement, but take a minute to read this post from Jeff Benjamin:
The 2016 MacBook Pro has endured criticism for its lack of I/O ports, but what that it does have — two or four Thunderbolt 3 ports based on your configuration — have lots of potential. For example, it’s now possible to connect an external GPU (eGPU) box via Thunderbolt 3 and tap into the power offered by a full-sized graphics card.
Imagine a box that offered the power and expandability of a Mac Pro that plugged into a port (or two) on your MacBook Pro.
You’d have the lightness and portability of a laptop and, arriving at your desk, you’d have a large display and the growling power of large, desktop class expansion cards, limited only by the transfer speeds of Thunderbolt 3. And Thunderbolt 3 is no slouch.
I tried this out this morning. Brought up the TV app on my iPhone, searched for a show I know is on Netflix. Sure enough, the search revealed two options: Rent the show via iTunes, or open it via Netflix.
This is a solid step forward for Apple, Apple TV, and searchability.
Now if only Amazon would deliver their promised Prime Video Apple TV app. I suspect that ship has sailed.
UPDATE: Check this tweet from Tech Crunch Editor-in-chief Matt Panzarino:
Checked this out – looks like false alarm, this stuff has been in there from launch. No new integrations afaik.
Not sure which is correct. I don’t recall this level of integration with the TV app.
Earlier this month, Swift creator Chris Lattner announced he will be stepping down as director of Apple’s Development Tools department to lead Tesla’s Autopilot engineering team as VP of Autopilot Software.
Joe got these two quotes from Chris:
I’ve been writing code for more than 30 years, and 16 of those years have been in the developer tools space. I love it, but I am ready to move on to something else. Autopilot is clearly incredibly important to the world because of its ability to save people’s lives (and increase convenience). It is also a very, very hard technology problem and my experience building large scale software and team building is useful. Of course, I’ve also been a huge Tesla fan for some time.
And:
This was a very difficult decision, because I care deeply about the technology and people at Apple and because I could see myself staying there for many more years. In the end though, the opportunity to dive into a completely new area and work with the amazing Tesla Autopilot team was irresistible.
Class statements, both. Tesla is lucky to have him.
I wouldn’t say nobody noticed, but clearly the wave of publicity centers on the AirPods, rather than on the W1 chip. That quibble aside, Matt Weinberger, Business Insider, writes:
The magic happens when you’re using a W1 headset with an iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, or Mac.
First, you turn it on next to your unlocked iPhone or iPad. Second, you click “connect.” Now they’re automatically paired with any other Apple gadget that’s signed in to your iCloud account. Switching from iPhone to Mac and back takes a click.
And:
Apple’s W1 confers other benefits, too. When you’re using it with an Apple gadget, the chip grants tremendous range — with the Beats Solo3, I was able to vacuum my entire small house with my phone charging in the bedroom without losing audio. Better yet, W1 uses some kind of magic optimization technique to greatly extend battery life.
And:
It means Apple has something that no Android phone — or Windows laptop, for that matter — can match. It also opens the door for a world where people are always wearing their headphones, with Apple’s Siri only a tap away.
Apple’s competitor to the omnipresent Alexa is hiding in plain sight — in the iPhones and iPads that more than a billion people own and in the wireless headphones that Apple is so keen to push. In other words, the W1 brings together all the pieces of the Apple puzzle, from Siri to Beats to the iPhone, in a way that hasn’t been done before.
Interesting point. While Alexa is winning the early adopter battle, Apple is planting seeds with the W1 Bluetooth chip for a much longer play. If you buy a device with a W1 chip inside, you’ll see immediate and tangible benefits to switching over to a macOS or iOS device.
The Stanford Center for Digital Health (CDH) invites applications for its inaugural seed grant program focused on innovative uses of the Apple Watch in healthcare. This seed grant program is designed to stimulate and support creative uses of the Apple Watch to address important issues in healthcare. We are particularly interested in high impact projects that will positively influence the selected study population and/or clinical workflow.
They are giving away $10K in funding and 1,000 Apple Watches. Sadly, the RFP limits applications to faculty and instructors.
As NAMM gets ready to kick off in Anaheim on Thursday, Apple released updates for two of its music apps, Logic Pro X and GarageBand for iOS.
Logic Pro
Previous updates for Logic Pro have focused on bringing new instruments for Electronic musicians, drummer tracks, and other tools for all genres of music. Apple told me on Tuesday that Logic Pro X 10.3 is focused on delivering tools that their high-end pros desired the most.
For instance, Logic Pro X gives professional mixers a 64-bit summing engine, 192 additional busses, and true stereo panning that provides discrete control of stereo signals.
One interesting new feature is Selection-based Processing. It allows you to add any combination of Logic or third-party effect plug-ins onto any selection of one or multiple audio regions. You can preview how the effects will sound and then render it only to the selected regions.
Logic introduces Track Alternatives, which lets users create and switch between different playlists of regions and edits on any track. This feature works with Take Folders, but it isn’t region specific, but rather track-wide.
The first thing you will notice about the latest Logic update are some changes to the interface. The changes make the interface look more modern, bringing it in line with macOS Sierra, but nothing changes as far as button placement, so it will look newer, but familiar. You’ll also notice the interface is a bit brighter—Apple said that is in direct response to feedback from its users that sometimes work in remote locations or even outside where the darker interface wasn’t as user-friendly.
With the recent release of the MacBook Pro with Touch Bar, it makes sense that Logic Pro X would incorporate support for that new tech technology, and it does.
Logic Pro gives you the ability to view and navigate your project in a timeline overview on the Touch Bar. You also have access to volume and Smart Controls for any selected track to make little adjustments—for larger adjustments, you can still use the regular interface in Logic Pro.
Performance controls are now available on the Touch Bar. This lets you play and record software instruments with the Touch Bar using a musical piano keyboard that can also be customized to a variety of musical scales, or by tapping drum pads to create beats. Clearly, this isn’t a feature that you would use while you’re in the studio with all of your instruments available to use, but it will come in handy while you’re on the road or in a remote location.
Touch Bar in Logic Pro X also has assignable key command buttons so you can save your favorite shortcuts directly to the Touch Bar.
Logic Pro X 10.3 update is free for all existing users, and available on the Mac App Store for $199.99 for all new customers.
This is the fifteenth Logic Pro update since Apple redesigned the app about three years. Any doubts about the company’s commitment to the app should be put to rest by now.
GarageBand for iOS
GarageBand is an interesting app because it appeals to all users, from amateurs to pros. Of course, amateur users like it because it’s so easy to use and provides a way to make great sounding recordings without having to spend a lot of time learning a more advanced application. Pros use GarageBand as a scratchpad and then transfer projects to Logic to get more advanced features.
Transferring projects between Apple’s pro and consumer apps is easy because they are both built on the Logic Pro engine. That makes features like this possible with the new Logic and GarageBand updates:
Logic Pro X users can also remotely add new tracks to their Logic sessions from their iPhone or iPad when they’re away from their Mac. With a new share option, users can upload a special GarageBand-compatible version of a Logic project to iCloud, which they can then open on their iOS device and add new recordings whenever inspiration strikes. When the project is saved back to iCloud, any newly added tracks will automatically appear in the original Logic project the next time it’s opened on a Mac.
That is incredible.
GarageBand is also getting Alchemy, a favorite synthesizer of Logic users. The synth will come with 150 Apple-designed patches from a variety of genres, including EDM, Hip Hop, Indie, Rock, and Pop, among others.
The Sound Browser has been redesigned with the addition of categories. This cuts down on the amount of swiping you’ll have to do when looking for a Touch instrument or sound.
One of my favorite new features is Multi-Take Recording. This gives you multiple passes to capture their best performance and the ability to audition and switch between your favorite takes. I use this a lot in other apps, so it will quickly become one of my most-used in GarageBand too.
The Audio Recorder has been redesigned and adds one-tap vocal effects, as well as pitch correction, distortion and delay. There is also a new collection of audio processing tools, including an interactive graphic Visual EQ and the ability to use third-party Audio Unit plug-in effects.
GarageBand 2.2 for iOS is free for all existing users and with all new iOS devices. Customers with older, non-qualifying devices can purchase the app for $4.99 on the App Store.
There is a lot to like about both updates. More power, control, versatility, features—just everything. Apple did a great job with improving both apps for all users.
The headline in the Guardian last week was certainly eye-catching: “WhatsApp vulnerability allows snooping on encrypted messages.” The allegation was that a newly discovered flaw could allow messages you’d sent to a known and confirmed party through a highly secure method could be replayed, or sent again to other parties that could insert themselves as trusted recipients.
It turns out, almost none of this is accurate or represented in a way that will help WhatsApp users improve their security.
I don’t use WhatsApp but if you do, Fleishman does a good job of explaining the false headlines and how you can keep yourself secure on the platform.
I find this fascinating. Steve Jobs likeness and voice being used to pitch a non-Apple product. In this case, both spots are for the Obama-created U.S. Digital Service.
It’d be one thing if it was something related to Steve, such as a Pixar movie or book of NeXT-era photos, but these two things are unrelated.
Reminds me of the first time I heard a Beatles song used in a commercial. Jarring, and a tiny bit disappointing.
About the first spot:
Havas New York has created a new campaign to promote the work of the U.S. Digital Service, which was created by President Obama in 2014 to help government agencies with their digital transformation efforts.
And about the second spot:
Another, with the same Jobs narrative, features animation that Havas created internally via its Studio 6 unit.
UPDATE: Scott Knaster shared this bus ad that also featured Steve’s likeness.
AirPods are a totally different product than my wireless Bose QC35s which have longer battery life and active noise cancellation not to mention superior audio quality, but AirPods were easily preferred as my travel earphones after real world testing for a few reasons.
Nice detailed overview on pros and cons (mostly pros) of flying with AirPods. I do tend to travel with noise canceling over-the-ear headphones, but Zac makes the AirPods sound like a reasonable alternative, especially if packing space is tight.
Rene Ritchie, commenting on the September iPhone 7 rollout:
Where before you could press firmly on your iPhone 6s display to trigger 3D Touch and get a reassuring “thump” in response, with iPhone 7 you get a broader, deeper, more sophisticated range of responses.
Some of them are delightfully subtle: Spin through a date or time picker and you can feel a slight “tock” for each number. Thumb across alternate characters on the keyboard and you can feel a little “tick” for each accent.
Then this discussion of Nintendo Switch haptics, from the NeoGaf forums:
The demo that blew my mind was the marble box.
Imagine you are holding a small wooden box, with x amount of marbles inside. As you move the box, you can feel them move and clack against each other.
The Joy-con can emulate this feeling incredibly well, I was able clearly feel three separate marbles rolling down the side of the Joy-con and then each hitting each other as they got to the bottom.
What started as something simple (vibrate mode) has matured into a subtle science with broad applications.
Good post from Rene. Looking forward to seeing this evolve.
According to a recent report from the much-respected Midia, there were 100.4m people paying for music streaming subscriptions at the end of 2016.
The company’s Mark Mulligan estimates that around 43m of these were subscribing to Spotify, with 20.9m signed up to Apple Music, 6.9m to Deezer, 4.5m to Napster and just 1m to TIDAL.
The rest of the 100.4m subs were made up of other services, suggest Midia’s numbers.
And:
Meanwhile, Netflix is currently forecasting that it finished 2016 with 87.8m paying subscribers – a 24% jump on its Q4 2015 number (70.8m.)
Both are still growing by leaps and bounds, but music streaming, at the moment, is growing more quickly.
