iLounge:

Apple has debuted a major update to its web-based iCloud Photos app at iCloud.com, presenting a new user interface that more closely resembles the macOS Photos app. A new sidebar is enabled by default which provides more streamlined browsing of photo albums, although as in the corresponding macOS app, users can choose to toggle the sidebar off using a button at the top of the screen. Multiple photos can now be selected, and action buttons in the top-right corner will apply to all selected photos, allowing you to share, download, delete, or file several photos at a time; individual photos can also be organized into albums via drag-and-drop into the sidebar. Viewing an individual photo also now displays a carousel of thumbnails at the bottom of the screen, allowing you to quickly browse through other photos in the same album.

I don’t use iCloud Photos but this looks like a decent update to start bringing it more in line with macOS Photos app.

Great news for Pro Tools users on Sierra.

I really didn’t know what to expect, but this is really cute. My favorite is the two bananas hugging.

I’ll take the AirPods every time.

This is just so great.

Today, AT&T launches AT&T Call Protect. The free network-based service gives eligible AT&T wireless customers with HD Voice more control over unwanted calls on their smartphones.

This innovative solution harnesses the power of the AT&T network to give customers automatic fraud blocking and suspected spam call warnings.

Sounds like a great idea, but I was under the impression that many of the spam calls cycle through numbers endlessly. That could be a long cat and mouse game, but hopefully with technology, they can curb a lot of it.

Nokia Corp said on Wednesday it had filed a number of lawsuits against Apple Inc for violating 32 technology patents, striking back at the iPhone maker’s legal action targeting the one-time cellphone industry leader a day earlier.

djay Pro provides a complete toolkit for DJs of all skill levels. Built exclusively for iPhone, djay Pro seamlessly integrates with your media library and Spotify, giving you instant access to millions of tracks. Pristine sound quality and a powerful set of features including high-definition waveforms, four decks, and video mixing give you endless creative flexibility to mix music on-the-go.

These guys do such a great job with their apps, I just love them.

In April, a British Airways jet was hit by a suspected drone as it landed at London’s Heathrow airport, while in August a passenger plane narrowly avoided being hit by a drone as it prepared to land in Cornwall.

There are a lot of very responsible drone owners, but like many things in life, there are a few that are so irresponsible, it gives everyone a bad name. Flying a drone anywhere near an airport or over a major fire when helicopters are trying to fight the fire is just plain stupid.

Techcrunch:

Nintendo has confirmed what we all knew was likely – Super Mario Run got a lot of downloads at launch. The company says that the app was downloaded over 40 million times during its first four days on the App Store, which breaks records for Apple’s mobile software shop. Previous third-party estimates suggested the new game was on track to topple Pokémon Go’s previous early performance and approach the 40 million mark, but this official number confirms it.

Apple SVP of Marketing Phil Schiller is quoted in the release, confirming that the game broke a record for App Store downloads during its initial few days of availability.

While this is surprising to absolutely no one, it will be interesting to see how Nintendo keeps the momentum going.

I was reading this post from Kirk McElhearn, walking through ways of checking AirPods battery life, when I noticed that the iPhone AirPods icon does not include a battery life icon.

For example, here’s what I see with my Bluetooth headphones. Note the headphone icon in the upper right, showing the battery life left in my headphones.

While the AirPods do show up as a Headphone icon on the iPhone, they do not include a battery level indicator in the icon. Any idea why this is?

There’s a Twitter thread on this here. Feel free to weigh in.

One thought is that the AirPods would require three different battery icons (left and right, plus the case itself), perhaps too much clutter for the limited space.

UPDATE: Curiouser and curiouser. Looks like anything with a W1 chip loses the battery sub-icon in the iPhone status bar. Powerbeats 3 have a single charge source (mini USB plug) and do not have the battery sub-icon. Certainly not a big deal, but I am a curious fellow.

These pictures are amazing. They are from deep sea fisherman Roman Fedortsov’s Twitter stream. As fantastic as they are scary. If I didn’t know better, I’d say they were special effects castoffs from some sci-fi movie.

Not for the squeamish.

Mark Gurman, Bloomberg:

Interviews with people familiar with Apple’s inner workings reveal that the Mac is getting far less attention than it once did. They say the Mac team has lost clout with the famed industrial design group led by Jony Ive and the company’s software team. They also describe a lack of clear direction from senior management, departures of key people working on Mac hardware and technical challenges that have delayed the roll-out of new computers.

Combine this with Tim Cook’s response to employees in an internal memo:

“Some folks in the media have raised the question about whether we’re committed to desktops,” Cook wrote. “If there’s any doubt about that with our teams, let me be very clear: we have great desktops in our roadmap. Nobody should worry about that.”

It’s not that I am worried. It’s more that I recognize that Macs are in the back seat now. Especially the Mac Pro.

Letting the Mac Pro languish is shortsighted thinking. As I’ve said many times, Apple developers are foundational to Apple’s success. Inside Apple, developers are building the secret future. Outside Apple, developers are building the apps, macOS and iOS, that bring life and revenue to the ecosystem. Make sure those developers have the best tools possible so they can do their work efficiently and effectively.

And don’t let elegant design be a bottleneck for the Mac Pro. The Mac Pro need not be retail store pretty. Just make it powerful as can be, let me add memory and drives, swap out video cards, VRAM, GPUs, SSDs and the like for third party options, and get it to me ASAP. It can be ugly or plain, just not loud. As long as it runs the latest macOS and is compatible with all the major power tools, like Final Cut Pro, Logic, ProTools, Xcode, Photoshop, etc.

This just made me laugh. [H/T Robert Davey]

Interesting to see what you can adjust. This list will no doubt grow over time. As I said yesterday (here, here, and, especially here), this is some great tech.

It’s just horrifying that people are still using these fire hazards.

Update: Apparently it was some asshat who changed their SSID to Note 7. There are some stupid, stupid people in this world.

Scaling our websites and applications so that they look great on every screen can be difficult. A big portion of that difficulty can be trying to get specific components, particularly ones that have pieces that have to stay a certain size (like animations), to look good regardless of the screen size. In this post, we’ll cover how to help keep our responsive animations sized the way we want them.

Fortune:

Twenty years ago today, Steve Jobs started his march back to Apple.

On Dec. 20, 1996, Apple announced plans to acquire NeXT Software, the company Jobs founded, for $400 million. As part of the deal, Jobs, who had been previously pushed out of Apple, returned to report to then CEO Dr. Gil Amelio.

It’s hard to overstate the importance of this sale, not just for Apple (I don’t think the company would still be around if this hadn’t happened) but for the entire technology industry. It can be easily argued that, if it weren’t for this sale, we’d all still be using boring beige computers and talking on flip phones.

The European Commission has charged Facebook Inc with providing misleading information during its takeover of the online messaging service WhatsApp, opening the company to a possible fine of 1 percent of its turnover.

The EU is on fire this year. Facebook, Google, and Apple have all felt the wrath.

Apple:

Apple certified refurbished, free shipping and free returns on all refurbished products. We test and certify all Apple refurbished products and include a 1-year warranty. Limited supplies, but updated frequently. Availability is guaranteed upon receipt of full payment.

Apple has a limited selection of refurb Watches now available. Don’t wait too long to decide. Even though the savings are fairly minor (but every little bit helps), refurbs tend to sell out quickly and I’d imagine the Apple Watch even more so this time of year.

Uber has admitted that there is a “problem” with the way autonomous vehicles cross bike lanes, raising serious questions about the safety of cyclists days after the company announced it would openly defy California regulators over self-driving vehicles.

It’s interesting that this was observed before the launch of the self-driving cars.

We’ve written about iStockNow before. You can use it to check if your local Apple Store stocks the specific iPhone or Apple Watch model you want.

Now they’ve added AirPods to the database. Good stuff.

UPDATE: Interestingly, when I first wrote this post, there was stock in several stores. As of this update, iStockNow shows no stores with stock.

Ben Bajarin, Tech.pinions:

Apple’s AirPods are just wireless headphones about as much as the Apple Watch is “just” a watch and iPhone is “just” a phone. Nothing makes this more apparent than the Siri experience.

And:

It is remarkable how much better Apple’s Siri experience is with AirPods. In part because the microphones are much closer to your mouth and, therefore, Siri can more clearly hear and understand you. I’m not sure how many people realize how many Siri failures have to do the distance you are from your iPhone or iPad, as well as ambient background noise and the device’s ability to clearly hear you.

And:

Thanks to the beam forming mics and some bone conduction technology, Siri with the AirPods is about as accurate a Siri experience I’ve had. In fact, in the five days I’ve been using the AirPods extensively, I have yet to have Siri not understand my request.

And:

You very quickly realize, the more you use Siri with the AirPods, how much the experience today assumes you have a screen in front of you. For example, if I use the AirPods to activate Siri and say, “What’s the latest news?” Siri will fetch the news then say, “Here is some news — take a look.” The experience assumes I want to use my screen (or it at least assumes I have a screen near me to look at) to read the news. Whereas, the Amazon Echo and Google Home just start reading the latest news headlines and tidbits.

These are just a few nuggets from a much longer piece. One core question that emerges is, should we design for the screen? Instead, perhaps we should design for the screen as an option, or somehow let the user choose, perhaps with a gesture that says, “I’ve got no screen, pipe all the info into my ears”.

Good stuff from Ben Bajarin.

The AirPods are a true engineering marvel, an astonishing array of technology jam packed into the smallest of containers. Take a minute to scroll through the pictures. Remarkable.

Daisuke Wakabayashi, New York Times:

Following directions from Google Maps on a smartphone last year, Jose Alejandro Sanchez-Ramirez turned a Ford truck, hauling a trailer, where he thought the app was telling him to go. But he ended up stuck on the railroad tracks at a poorly marked California crossing.

Soon after Mr. Sanchez-Ramirez abandoned the truck, a commuter train barreled into it, killing the engineer and injuring 32 others.

And:

On Monday, after investigating the crash for almost two years, the National Transportation Safety Board issued a safety recommendation asking technology and delivery companies to add the exact locations of more than 200,000 grade crossings into digital maps and to provide alerts when drivers encounter them.

Apple, Google and Microsoft have promised to add rail crossing data to their maps.

Want your Apple gear in time for Christmas? Get an order in the queue by 2p Friday (I’d assume that’s 2p local time) and you’ll get your goods by Saturday. Nice.

Here’s the fine print:

Free two-day shipping is available on all in-stock items purchased through apple.com. Free next-day shipping is available on any in-stock iPhone. Check your bag to find out which items are in stock and see checkout for exact delivery dates. Two-day shipping and next-day shipping are not available on customized Mac and engraved products; for certain order types, including orders paid for with financing or by bank transfer; and to some geographical areas. In-stock items ordered before 5:00 p.m. on a business day will be delivered in two business days; any in-stock iPhone ordered before 5:00 p.m. on a business day will be delivered in one business day.

Outside the US? Check this page and look for a “Free next day delivery” banner at the top of the page.