Steven Aquino, who writes a lot about accessibility, writing for The App Factor:

As I reported last February, the initial version of Apple Music was mired by a confusing design and, more importantly, less than stellar accessibility. These issues weren’t severe enough to drive me away from the product, but they certainly put a damper on an otherwise solid experience.

Then came good news. With the advent of iOS 10 came an all-new, totally redesigned Apple Music that addressed both of my biggest gripes about 1.0. Streaming and downloaded music are now clearly marked, but the big win for me is the app is much more visually accessible.

And:

From an accessibility perspective, it’s the bigness and boldness that make Apple Music shine in iOS 10. First and foremost, the Dynamic Type is pervasive throughout the app. Headers are ginormous. Whereas previously I had trouble reading Editors’ Notes and track listings, I now can read them fine. The larger text is boosted by the higher contrast, as areas such as the Now Playing screen eschew form for function. It may not look pretty, but the plain background of the Now Playing screen coupled with the large type makes text jump off the screen. This lessens eye strain and fatigue, which happens fast, because I don’t struggle to find things.

There’s lots more to this, both in terms of size (bigger icons are kinder to people with limited vision), and in terms of basic interface improvements (adding demarcations to make it easier to find your way around).

As always, solid insights from Steven Aquino.

PBS:

Hamilton’s America, the documentary film that brings history to vivid life through the lens of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s pop culture Broadway phenomenon Hamilton – winner of 11 Tony Awards and the Pulitzer Prize – explodes onto THIRTEEN’s Great Performances, as the season premiere of the PBS Arts Fall Festival.

If you’re in the US, now is the time to watch this before PBS removes it in a few days. Those of us outside the US don’t get to watch it at all.

Recombu:

Everyone’s favourite nature commentator has been going strong for six full decades, producing a seriously strong body of work. Shows such as Life and Planet Earth have dropped jaws and kept us glued to our sets, and now the BBC has honoured Sir David’s career with the launch of a new app, The Story of Life.

The Story of Life presents over a thousand clips of David in action, across the breadth of his sixty year career. That includes astonishing footage from his latest show Planet Earth II, which you can watch now in glorious 4K. Yep, the bit with the iguana is present and correct.

While we wait for Planet Earth II to be available here in the US and Canada, I’ll happily download this app on Thursday.

Wallpaper.com, on the new book, Designed by Apple in California:

This is a comprehensive and objective portrait of Apple products produced over the past 20 years. ‘It is a book with very few words,’ writes Sir Jony Ive in the foreword. ‘It is about our products, their physical nature and how they were made.’ The pages that follow trace two stratospheric decades of product design with the effortlessness that’s become synonymous with the company.

It is a quiet and elegant work, a high-quality piece of book design, typography and production. It is far from a show-off vanity project. Great care, time – and money – has been spent on making it a paean to good, useful design and manufacturing. It is also of course a paean to Steve Jobs. In the five years since his death, Apple has forged on without him. Designed by Apple in California is a tribute both to him, and to the products that have shaped our future.

What follows is an interview with Sir Jony. Well worth the read.

[H/T @achantra]

When Shazam (macOS) is toggled ‘OFF’ it to simply stops processing recorded data…however recording continues.

Shazam considers it a feature.

[Via MacRumors]

Steven Levy, Editor of Backchannel:

Fortunately, I do not have to make guesses at what’s going on in Apple’s mind. Perhaps motivated by the grumbling in rainbow-fruit land, Apple’s SVP of worldwide marketing Phil Schiller came to the phone last week to decode the company’s motivations, and stridently counter the cavils of the doubters.

And, from Phil Schiller:

“If we were to do Multi-Touch on the screen of the notebook, that wouldn’t be enough — then the desktop wouldn’t work that way.” And touch on the desktop, he says, would be a disaster. “Can you imagine a 27-inch iMac where you have to reach over the air to try to touch and do things? That becomes absurd.” He also explains that such a move would mean totally redesigning the menu bar for fingers, in a way that would ruin the experience for those using pointer devices like the touch or mouse. “You can’t optimize for both,” he says. “It’s the lowest common denominator thinking.”

And:

“This notebook design has been with us for 25 years and that fills a need for many people,” he says. “Having an interactive place where your hands are down on the keyboard is celebrating what makes a notebook a great notebook.”

And:

Another key variable is whether web services will be able make use of the bar. Schiller says only, “There is opportunity for that.” As for now, the Touch Bar pushes you to use Apple’s own browser, Safari. Writing this review now on the Medium online platform, I get word suggestions when using Safari, but not on Chrome.

And, to sum up, from Steven:

I am still not totally convinced that this innovation — and yes, I will call it that — is really transformative, and not just a cool way to save a few seconds here and there.

Lots more to this, a great read.

Bloomberg:

Apple Inc. is weighing an expansion into digital glasses, a risky but potentially lucrative area of wearable computing, according to people familiar with the matter.

While still in an exploration phase, the device would connect wirelessly to iPhones, show images and other information in the wearer’s field of vision, and may use augmented reality, the people said. They asked not to be identified speaking about a secret project.

Apple has talked about its glasses project with potential suppliers, according to people familiar with those discussions. The company has ordered small quantities of near-eye displays from one supplier for testing, the people said. Apple hasn’t ordered enough components so far to indicate imminent mass-production, one of the people added.

If true, it’ll be interesting to see what Apple does differently than Google did with Glass. This is an area where subtlety of design will make all the difference.

My favorite part of this article is the set of Touch Bar screen grabs at the very top. Nice job by Jordan Kahn.

From Apple’s news release:

Apple today announced the release of a new hardbound book chronicling 20 years of Apple’s design, expressed through 450 photographs of past and current Apple products. “Designed by Apple in California,” which covers products from 1998’s iMac to 2015’s Apple Pencil, also documents the materials and techniques used by Apple’s design team over two decades of innovation.

The book is dedicated to the memory of Steve Jobs.

And:

“The idea of genuinely trying to make something great for humanity was Steve’s motivation from the beginning, and it remains both our ideal and our goal as Apple looks to the future,” said Jony Ive, Apple’s chief design officer. “This archive is intended to be a gentle gathering of many of the products the team has designed over the years. We hope it brings some understanding to how and why they exist, while serving as a resource for students of all design disciplines.”

The book is available in two sizes:

• Small (10.20” x 12.75”)
 US$199
• Large (13” x 16.25”)
 US$299

Twenty years takes us back to 1996, the year CEO Gil Amelio made one of the most important decisions of his tenure, starting the process of bringing Steve Jobs back to Apple. The NeXT deal was finalized on February 9, 1997.

Apple news release:

Apple Pay is making it easier and more secure to donate to your favorite nonprofit organizations with just a touch. Apple Pay support for charitable donations kicks off today with nonprofits ranging from global organizations such as UNICEF to startups like charity: water, and more nonprofits will offer Apple Pay over the coming months so their supporters can make easy, secure and private payments.

Giving has never been so simple — by eliminating the need to enter billing and contact info, create an account or fill out long forms to check out, Apple Pay gives nonprofit supporters a way to donate instantly.

What’s most interesting about this article is that the most innovative company (Apple) is not even on the list of top 10 in R&D spending. Number one on that list? Volkswagen AG, followed closely by Samsung.

To deliver that, Google Play Music uses machine learning to figure out what music you like and then mixes in signals like location, activity, and the weather along with hand-picked playlists to personalize music for wherever you are and whenever you want tunes. Starting this week on Android, iOS and the web, the new experience will roll out globally (62 countries, to be precise).

The new app is live now, I just downloaded it.

The Wirecutter:

Everyone can benefit from an increase to their privacy and security, and reliable services are available for less than $4 per month. Setup is automated, too—you need only install a small application. To track down the best advice about what a VPN can and can’t do for everyday people, we rounded up research and advice from around the Web, and we spoke with Rich Mogull, the CEO of security consultancy Securosis.

The idea of a VPN seems intimidating but there are plenty of apps and services available that make it pretty easy to set up. The peace of mind is worth it.

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Red Sweater:

Touché lets you assign a global keyboard shortcut for easy toggling of the simulated Touch Bar window. Leave Touché running, and when inspiration to see the Touch Bar strikes? Just press the keyboard shortcut. Simulate, show and hide, take screen captures. Free Download for Mac. Use and enjoy.

For those of us not lucky enough to be able to use the Touch Bar equipped Macs just yet.

Bloomberg:

Samsung Electronics Co. is spending $8 billion to buy its way into a burgeoning market for automotive technology alongside Apple Inc. and Google as the smartphone business wanes.

The South Korean company is making its largest-ever overseas acquisition with an offer for Harman International Industries Inc., angling to become the go-to supplier of everything from in-car entertainment to connected-auto services.

Time will tell whether or not this is money well spent for Samsung or if this will make any difference in the US car market.

This is a lot of fun. Fantastic job recreating these shots.

Glenn Fleishman, Macworld [AUTOPLAY, grrr]:

When I tested disabling and re-enabling iCloud sync, as Joe’s wife did, I was told I didn’t have enough storage at iCloud, even though I had nearly 90GB free and my library is about 115GB. That library was already stored in iCloud in identical form.

Instead of first comparing photos in iCloud with those on my system, I wasn’t able to proceed without upgrading my storage and then later downgrading it. (Apple lacks automatic pro-rated refunds, and even though it says you can email to obtain such a refund, I received no response to my email.)

There’s some sense in this: Apple doesn’t want you to start an operation that will fail. But it could also predict whether it would work or not.

Glenn digs in to a real problem, an edge condition with iCloud sync when you hit the limits of storage on a very temporary basis.

Jason Snell, Six Colors:

To balance out the design, the Touch Bar’s OLED screen doesn’t extend all the way to the left edge of the glass. As a result, the Touch Bar always appears inset from the rest of the keyboard. It’s a bit weird. Fortunately, it appears that touch sensitivity extends a bit past the end of the display itself—when I tapped the corner of the Touch Bar, reflexively reaching for the Escape key, my touch would still trigger that key—even though my finger wasn’t actually touching the part of the Touch Bar displaying the virtual Escape key.

(It took me a few days to get used to the presence of the Touch Bar. Until then, I found that my pinky would slide off the carat key and make contact with the Touch Bar, triggering the virtual Escape key. I’ve trained myself not to let my finger stray up into the Touch Bar accidentally, but it was an adaptation.)

And:

The Touch Bar is an animated interface through and through. Items don’t just fade in and out, but also slide smoothly back and forth. The arrow pointing from the Touch Bar to the Touch ID sensor during a request for an unlock grows and shrinks, practically begging you to put your finger down. There’s a lot more personality here than I expected.

This is a good read, with lots of pictures and the video embedded below. A review worth reading.

Walt Mossberg, The Verge, reviewing a 13-inch Touch Bar MacBook Pro:

Apple is realigning its familiar laptop line, dramatically reshaping and in some ways merging the favorite options for both heavy-duty “pro” users and everyday customers. And the poster child for this more muddled future is the pricey new MacBook Pro

And:

The Pro, once mainly aimed straight at people who do especially taxing work like professional video editing or serious design, is now being stretched to suit a much larger audience.

Thus the term “tweener”.

Walt noted that the MacBook Pro’s battery life was wildly inconsistent:

On my rigorous test, which I’ve used for years, the machine actually exceeded Apple’s claim of up to 10 hours of battery life. The test involves setting the screen at 100 percent, keeping it on and undimmed constantly, playing an endless loop of music, and leaving Wi-Fi on to collect email, tweets, and Facebook posts in the background. Result: 11 hours and 38 minutes.

But then:

I ran a second test with all of Apple’s default energy-saving settings on, the screen at 75 percent and a perfectly normal (for me) mix of tasks like web browsing, email, a few short videos, Twitter, Facebook, some light writing, and Slack. The Pro died at 8 hours and 22 minutes.

To make things worse, Apple’s built-in prediction of how much time the battery had left before dying fluctuated a lot and was mostly wrong (Apple says this is a known problem caused by the fact that modern processors can power up and down rapidly over a much wider range than in the past, making estimates much more difficult.)

Interesting. Hopefully, this will get better over time as Apple collects usage data, gets their arms around the problem.

Ars Technica:

In an excoriating op-ed, China’s state-run newspaper Global Times warned that the People’s Republic would adopt “a tit-for-tat approach,” and would simply stop buying American goods, including the Apple products that are so popular there. It said:

“A batch of Boeing orders will be replaced by Airbus. US auto and iPhone sales in China will suffer a setback, and US soybean and maize imports will be halted. China can also limit the number of Chinese students studying in the US.”

No one believes this is just saber rattling on the part of the Chinese government. Sadly, the shortsighted response from many will be, “Just buy Android phones”, but that will ignore the enormous financial harm such actions will visit upon Apple and others.

Stephen Wolfram:

When I watch science fiction movies I have to say I quite often cringe, thinking, “someone’s spent $100 million on this movie — and yet they’ve made some gratuitous science mistake that could have been fixed in an instant if they’d just asked the right person.” So I decided that even though it was a very busy time for me, I should get involved in what’s now called Arrival and personally try to give it the best science I could.

An fun story about how Wolfram got involved in the movie and his efforts to make it as “accurate” as possible.

Popular Mechanics:

It was just after sunup on the morning of Oct. 14, 1947, and as I walked into the hangar at Muroc Army Air Base in the California high desert, the XS-1 team presented me with a big raw carrot, a pair of glasses and a length of rope. The gifts were a whimsical allusion to a disagreement I’d had the previous evening with a horse. The horse won. I broke two ribs. And now, as iridescent fingers of sunlight gripped the eastern mountain rims, we made ready to take a stab at cracking the sound barrier–up until that point aviation’s biggest hurdle.

The Bell XS-1 No. 1 streaked past the speed of sound that morning without too much fanfare–broken ribs notwithstanding. And when the Mach indicator stuttered off the scale barely 5 minutes after the drop from our mother B-29, America entered the second great age of aviation development.

It’s an often-told story but still fascinating. If you’re on Twitter, you really should follow the general. Really fun, interesting Twitter feed.

My thanks to Marketcircle for sponsoring The Loop this week.

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Legion Magazine:

Rest in Peace Leonard Cohen. Just last fall, Legion Magazine and Leonard Cohen released a video to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the poem “In Flanders Fields” by Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae In a poignant tribute to McCrae, Canadian songwriter, painter and poet Leonard Cohen has recited that stirring poem for this exclusive video. His voice is accompanied by stirring imagery from the First World War.

In honour of both Leonard Cohen and Remembrance Day today, please listen to this reading from Canada’s “Voice of God”. Thanks to my friend SlyM for the link.