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.
The city with the lowest relative cost of living in the world is Thiruvananthapuram, India.
That’s according to rankings published by data company Numbeo. The company continuously updates its data and just published its Cost of Living Index Rate for 2017. The list is calculated relative to New York City, which has an index of 100. If a city has a cost of living index of 130, it is 30 percent more expensive than New York; if a city has an index of 70, it is 30 percent less expensive.
Thiruvananthapuram has a rating of 19.83. A 1-bedroom apartment in the center of the coastal city costs as little as $89 per month to rent.
Interesting list. There aren’t many places in the bottom half I’d actually want to live in though.
Under the guidance of its head of content, Larry Jackson, 35, it’s signing the biggest names in music—including Drake, Frank Ocean, and Taylor Swift—to exclusive deals, and flying right in the face of the old-world labels to do so. Apple has established its own radio station, Beats 1, and poached Zane Lowe, 43, from BBC Radio 1 to serve as its leading personality. And it has Bozoma Saint John, 39, who ran music and entertainment marketing at Pepsi and reportedly brokered Beyoncé’s 2013 Super Bowl performance, to explain what Apple Music is for the masses who have never shelled out for a streaming subscription.
If Apple Music seems freewheeling, that’s because it is. It’s laying out a future for the music industry, but right now, the path ahead is murky. The company is seemingly figuring things out as it goes—a far cry, metaphorically speaking, from the perfectly designed rectangle of the iPod. Unlike Steve Jobs, Jackson, Lowe, and Saint John aren’t designers—they’re plucked directly from the entertainment industry. Fittingly, it’s a new kind of leadership for the next chapter of music history.
From a music industry perspective, what Apple is attempting to do is extraordinarily messy and difficult and mostly out of their control.
Note that you can do this in both iOS and macOS. On macOS, tap the Details button (upper right corner) on an individual thread to reveal the Send Read Receipts checkbox.
Below is Nintendo’s public presentation of their new console, the Nintendo Switch. If time is limited, jump to about 38 minutes in, where the real stuff starts.
And read the linked Washington Post piece, which does a good job highlighting the important features.
First things first: Sine qua non is defined as “an indispensable and essential action, condition, or ingredient.”
Jean-Louis Gassée, Monday Note:
Much has been said about the original iPhone’s success factors: an innovative multi-touch interface, a never-seen-before combination of cell phone, iPod and Internet “navigator”. All good, but missing one crucial element: removing the carrier’s control on the iPhone’s features and content.
Steve Jobs did what only he could do, get AT&T to give up control:
Before the iPhone, handsets received the same treatment as containers of yogurt in a supermarket chain. The central purchasing office told the yogurt makers which flavors to ship, when, where, at what price, with payment at some point in the future after we’re sure there are no more returns. And don’t forget to send your people to make sure the labels line up on the shelves.
And:
This was anathema to Jobs, himself notoriously control-hungry. He wasn’t going to allow mere carriers to control what the iPhone did and contained.
Read the post. As usual, Jean-Louis delivers the goods.
Apple is rising the prices for apps and in-app purchases in a few countries following changes to exchange rates and taxation policy, with customers in India, Turkey and the United Kingdom to see price increases.
In the United Kingdom, one of Apple’s largest markets, app prices are rising up more than 25% following the weak pound exchange rate after the Brexit vote. An app sold for $0.99 in the US will now cost £0.99 in the UK, up from £0.79.
That is an increase of about 25% and similar rises will be seen at every price tier when the changes hit the App Store in the coming days. A Tier 2 priced app now costs £1.99 in the UK up from £1.49. An In-App Purchase that previously cost £7.99 will now be priced at £9.99, like the ‘All Worlds’ upgrade for Super Mario Run.
Interesting post. Read the comments. This obviously runs much deeper than an App Store price rise.
The new year is underway and we’ve opened up sponsorships for the first couple of months. If you want to get your product or service in front of The Loop readers, this is the only way to do it. Weekly sponsorships are exclusive, so you’ll be the only sponsor on the site. We have some great pricing to kick off the new year as well, so check it out.
If you go on the Best Buy site, the ship date is March 7th. No inherent promise that they’ll ship in 3 days. But given the experience of others, might be a path to consider.
If you are at all a fan of Mario, Zelda, Donkey Kong, etc., this is time well spent. I love the fact that you get to see Shigeru at his desk, pen in hand, drawing out genius.
For background, start with this post from last Thursday, which digs in to a Wall Street Journal report that Apple has big plans for original TV and movie content.
Jimmy Iovine added more, speaking to reporters. From the Hollywood Reporter:
“If South Park walks into my office, I am not going to say you’re not musicians, you know?” Iovine continued when pressed about the report. “We’re going to do whatever hits popular culture smack on the nose. We’re going to try.”
And:
Iovine said the hope for Apple is that it will be better able to compete with streaming music competitors like Spotify and Pandora, which are largely free for users: “We’re fighting ‘free.’ So a simple utility where, ‘here’s all the songs, here’s all the music, give me $10 and we’re cool,’ is not going to scale.”
Interesting point. Apple is fighting free, needs to raise the value of their offering to make Apple Music a compelling value.
A circus without elephants might be more humane, but apparently it’s far less enticing.
The owners of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus said they will permanently end their 146-year-old show this spring. “The Greatest Show on Earth” saw a steep decline in ticket sales after removing elephants from performances in May 2016.
“After much evaluation and deliberation, my family and I have made the difficult business decision that Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey will hold its final performances in May of this year,” Kenneth Feld, chairman and CEO of Feld Entertainment, said in a Jan. 13 statement.
This makes the kid in me very sad (I still remember the first circus I ever saw as a little kid in Nova Scotia) but the adult is happy the animals will no longer be forced to perform.
On Friday, Facebook’s Oculus launched a 360-video version of the tour on its social network. You can watch on your phone, moving it around you to see in every direction or you can use a Gear VR headset like I did. The 8-minute clip is a prelude to a longer virtual-reality experience to come later this year.
“What we wanted to do is make sure that everybody felt they had access to the White House,” Obama says in the experience.
“The People’s House: Inside the White House with Barack and Michelle Obama” is available as a Facebook 360 video as well as Oculus Video for Samsung Gear VR.
I watched some of this yesterday and it’s very cool.
I really liked Avid’s Eleven guitar software, but it seems they didn’t do much with it for the past couple of years. Now they have—A new version of Eleven powers the Headrush pedalboard. I can’t wait to see this at NAMM.
In the list of iconic recording studios, Music Shoals Sound Studio is right up there with the most famous. During its heyday of the 70s, the studio hosted a wide array of artists that produced dozens of hit records, including Aretha Franklin, Cher, Boz Scaggs, The Rolling Stones, the Staple Singers, Bob Seger, Traffic, Willie Nelson, Rod Stewart, Paul Simon, Leon Russell and Lynyrd Skynyrd. The studio closed in 1978, but thanks to a grant from Beats By Dr. Dre, the studio is set to reopen once again.
I am so incredibly happy to hear this—Muscle Shoals was part of some amazing music.
