Apple introduced an innovative milled lattice pattern on the Mac Pro and Pro Display XDR in 2019, which is created by machining a spherical array into the internal and external surfaces of the aluminum. The result is a lightweight lattice pattern that maximizes airflow while creating an extremely rigid structure.
The new patent, first spotted by Patently Apple and granted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, is titled “Housing construction” and covers expanding the lattice pattern to other devices, such as the iPhone.
Look at that first image. When I saw the article, then the image, my first thought was a check of the date. Nope, too early for April Fools Day. This appears to be a real patent filing.
Sixteen years ago, many of us held a printout of directions in one hand and the steering wheel in the other to get around— without information about the traffic along your route or details about when your favorite restaurant was open.
Jarring to watch a movie or TV show where a character peers at a paper map or, for a brief slice of time, makes their way through a list of MapQuest turn-by-turn directions.
This year, we’re on track to bring over 100 AI-powered improvements to Google Maps so you can get the most accurate, up-to-date information about the world, exactly when you need it. Here’s a snapshot of how we’re using AI to make Maps work better for you with a number of updates coming this year.
A notable feature here is Live View, to make it much easier to navigate indoors, say, in a mall:
We all know that awkward moment when you’re walking in the opposite direction of where you want to go — Live View uses AR cues to avoid just that. Live View is powered by a technology called global localization, which uses AI to scan tens of billions of Street View images to understand your orientation. Thanks to new advancements that help us understand the precise altitude and placement of objects inside a building, we’re now able to bring Live View to some of the trickiest-to-navigate places indoors: airports, transit stations and malls.
Check out that first animated image to get a sense of this.
Read the whole post. Google Maps is raising the bar.
The invitation artwork consists of a diverse bunch of Memoji characters, peeking at a MacBook display as the hinge opens. (One of them is wearing a hearing aid.) It’s a clear callback to the Craig Federighi hero shot in the M1 announcement event that launched a thousand memes.
When I first saw the announcement, didn’t click for me, then saw this Rene Ritchie tweet, now can’t unsee it. Great callback.
But the other thing: every single one of the Memoji characters is wearing glasses, with the contents of the MacBook screen reflected in them. Does this mean Apple’s glasses product is getting announced at WWDC? I’d say that’s possible, but wouldn’t read too much into it.
The hint at Apple Glass seems so strong, so deliberate, it will be interesting to see what Apple does at WWDC to connect the dots here. If they do not announce Apple Glass (or Apple Glasses, or Apple iGlass, etc), seems to me Apple is playing the crowd here. This graphic clearly leads to a very specific conclusion. Or, if no Apple Glass, it purposely misleads.
Has Apple ever put out an invite graphic that purposely misled? Plenty of graphics that didn’t really lead anywhere, some that were obscure until the announcement made things clear (thinking bokeh event invite). But purposefully misleading? Can’t think of one.
Smart personal audio devices grew 20% in 2020 to reach 432 million units, while wearable bands grew 10% to reach 185 million units. Both segments continued to be strategic winners as countries emerged from the extended battle against COVID-19, where people grew more health-conscious and became active outdoors.
To give a sense of how big Apple’s lead is here:
Apple/Beats audio shipments for 2020Q4: 29.5 million units
Second place? Samsung: 9.4 million units
That translates to Apple market share of 26.2%, Samsung 8.3%.
Apple, the University of South Carolina, and Benedict College announced a partnership on Tuesday that will see eight Apple computer labs built statewide. Funding for the project comes from the Governor’s Emergency Education Relief, which awarded $6 million to the school.
The labs will provide internet access to communities in broadband deserts and can be used by local school districts, Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), the South Carolina Technical College System and citizens in the community.
There will be no cost to the user for the labs and availability for lab access will be advertised in each community.
“At Apple, we believe education is the great equalizer, and that access to technology is key to learning and workforce opportunities today,” said Susan Prescott, Apple’s Vice President of Worldwide Developer Relations and Enterprise & Education Marketing. “We are proud that Apple products and curriculum have been selected by the University of South Carolina and Benedict College for their new education labs. Together, we aim to ensure all South Carolinians have the opportunity to learn, code, create, and grow in new ways.”
Apple has a long history of championing education, including a recent initiative called Apple Teacher Portfolio to help teachers bring creativity to every lesson and any subject, no matter where learning happens.
Every once in a while, an iOS secret surfaces that makes me wonder, “How am I just learning about this?” I remember the first time I found out how to delete numbers in the Calculator app, and when I discovered you could bulk-move apps around the home screen. Now, there’s another tip to add to the list: a hidden iOS app whose icon you quite literally can’t find unless you know where to look.
In a nutshell, to find the app, go to your iOS Home Screen and pull down to bring up Search. Type in the word “code” and the Code Scanner app will appear. Tap it and you are in the QR-code and App Clip scanner.
Apple called the Code Scanner app by a different name in previous iOS versions. On iOS 13, it was “QR Code Reader,” and on iOS 12, it was “Scan QR Code.” Apple likely moved away from having “QR” in the name since it can also scan App Clip Codes, which can launch miniature versions of apps called “App Clips.”
It’s also in Control Center. One of those hidden things that you might not know.
Makes me wonder what new codes Apple might have up its sleeve, with the rumored AirTags and Apple Glasses. Maybe we’ll learn more at WWDC?
We’ve been hearing rumors about the next-generation Apple TV for a while now, but we don’t know when the company plans to officially announce it. Now 9to5Mac has learned that Apple is developing a new Remote for Apple TV, which corroborates some previous rumors about Apple updating the Siri Remote.
Read Filipe’s post for all the details, but this does feel real. If it is real, will this be part of the WWDC keynote? I would love a new remote, one you can clearly navigate in the dark, tell the top from bottom, feel the button shapes you are looking for.
And maybe one compatible with “Find My” for those occasions when it slips behind the couch cushions.
Apple today announced it will host its annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) June 7 through 11, in an all-online format. Free for all developers, WWDC21 will offer unique insight into the future of iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS.
And:
Apple also announced that this year’s Swift Student Challenge, an opportunity for young developers to demonstrate their coding skills by creating a Swift playground, is now accepting submissions.
Online and free. Perfect.
Will we see the next generation of Apple Silicon Mac? Apple Glass? A new Apple TV remote? Other rumored products? Can’t wait for the keynote.
Though season 2 of Ted Lasso won’t premiere on Apple TV+ until this summer, fans who tune into the SAG Awards will be treated to a new sketch starring the AFC Richmond gang, which will open the ceremony on April 4. EW has the exclusive teaser for the two-minute video, in which Coach Ted Lasso (Jason Sudeikis) gives his team a pep talk following their SAG Award nomination for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series.
If you can’t get enough of Ted Lasso, follow the headline link, put up with the ad, then drink in the Lasso.
Apple has lost a legal bid to block Swatch from registering Steve Jobs’ famous “One more thing” saying as a trademark in the UK, reports The Telegraph.
On Monday, judge Iain Purvis overturned a previous decision that sided with Apple, saying that even if Swatch had meant to “annoy” Apple, the company could not stop it from doing so.
He added that the phrase may have originated with the 1970s television detective Columbo, a character who was known for cornering criminals by asking them “just one more thing.”
That Columbo reference might be prior art here. But still, modern times, that’s a phrase I definitely associate with Apple, no doubt.
In 2017, Apple filed a complaint in a Swiss court over the use of the slogan “Tick Different” in a Swatch marketing campaign, arguing that the watchmaker was unfairly referencing the Apple’s 1990s “Think Different” ad campaign for its own gain.
And:
Two years later the Swiss court agreed with Swatch that Apple’s “Think Different” was not known well enough in Switzerland to warrant protection, and that Apple had not produced documents that sufficiently backed up its case.
A total of 134 fleeceware applications have been identified by Avast on the Apple App Store.
Sensor Tower data estimates a total of 500 million downloads of these applications. It also estimates that the applications have brought in $365 million in revenue in their lifetime.
And:
Another solution could be subscription payment confirmation. If the user accepts a free trial, the app could require another confirmation before paying money for the actual subscription once the free trial is over. In this scenario, the app’s functionality would stop until the user pays the required fee. This would give the user direct control over subscription payments and allow them to make a fully informed decision on continuing with the subscription.
This seems a great solution to me. Require a confirmation from the user at the moment a free app transitions to a paying subscription. That confirmation alert should make the costs clear.
If you are a Ted Lasso fan, follow the headline link. This is fun. Ted Lasso and Coach Beard, fully in character, takes on Team Trevor Noah playing FIFA 21.
Audio starts about 15 minutes in. Make sure mute is off.
Apple is clamping down on product security, a move the company hopes will stop leaks about its future products. A brother and sister stole millions of dollars of MacBooks from Stanford, and got caught, of course. A cool video takes us down memory lane with some old Apple products.
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This is a bit of an experiment. If it worked, you’ll see a pretty cool video embedded below, a walking tour through a boatload of Apple products, all in one packed room. If not, here’s a link to a page with the video. Worth seeing.
Later that same morning: So the embed worked, cool. This one is worth seeing on your iPhone, looks really great. Reload this post, tap the “full screen” arrows in the video, then hit play. Gorgeous.
I’ve not seen this interview before. Lots of interesting discussion, with Steve mid-NeXT. Note the use of “they” to refer to Apple. Glad he got to do something about that.
The Information says that it obtained an internal Apple document outlining the changes. One change is that manufacturing partners with which Apple works, such as Foxconn and Pegatron, are no longer allowed to collect biometric data from Apple employees, but they are still free to collect such data from their own employees, even if those employees are making Apple products.
Tricky line to walk, one set of rules for Apple employees, different set for non-Apple employees.
The guidelines also make other changes to help crackdown on product leaks that come from the supply chain. For the first time, Apple is now requiring manufacturers to run criminal background checks on all workers. The company is also mandating that the use of surveillance cameras be increased at these facilities.
I find the chasing of leaks to be a fascinating dichotomy for Apple, a light and a dark side, championing privacy for users, requiring surveillance for workers.
Another change includes Apple increasing its focus on “movement of sensitive parts in factories.” As part of this change, if a component takes “an unusually long time to get to its destination,” an internal security alarm must be triggered.
Leaking of Apple secrets is a disrespectful act. Obviously, there’s a hunger on the part of the media and Apple fans, but it disrespects the people who work hard for that moment when their labors can be shown to the world.
Chasing leaks while respecting privacy, a tricky line to walk.
iCloud links to shortcuts broke sometime in the past 24 hours. Instead of opening the Shortcuts app and allowing users to install a shared shortcut, tapping a shortcut link displays an alert with the message ‘Shortcut Not Found,’ explaining that the link may be invalid or the shortcut may have been deleted.
Years and years of Shortcuts cut off from the community. A single point of failure, showcased.
Apple has acknowledged the issue and is on it:
We are aware of an issue where previously shared shortcuts are currently unavailable. Newly shared shortcuts are available, and we are working to restore previously shared shortcuts as quickly as possible.
Jason Snell, Macworld, with a nostalgic look back at a critical transition for the Mac, one that occurred 20 years ago.
Side note: I was at Metrowerks at the time, and had the chance to play with early betas of that first new re-roll of MacOS. I remember being mystified by the completely reinvented Finder, especially the multi-column browser, lifted from NeXT’s interface. It felt like a forced fit at the time, but now I can’t imagine going back to the old version.
Interestingly, Steve left Apple and came back on September 16th, leaving in 1985, then returning in 1997.
San Carlos resident Patricia Castaneda, 37, pleaded guilty to a charge of federal program theft while her brother, 36-year-old Eric Castaneda of Redwood City, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to transport stolen property across state lines. Patricia Castaneda worked for Stanford’s school of humanities and used her position to steal approximately 800 MacBooks from the university, prosecutors say.
You can watch the crime unfold via text messages in the plea agreement (scroll down to Appendix A, towards the end — interesting reading).
Photoshop was the solitary reason I owned an iMac Pro and a MacBook Pro. My models were packed with memory and top-of-the-line graphic processors, and as a result, I could breeze through my photo edits.
Lots of Intel-based Macs out there, similarly kitted out for Photoshop.
With Apple ready to switch to its silicon, I decided it was time to sell those machines. What made my decision easier was that Adobe’s Photoshop Beta was spectacularly fast.
Yup. So far, so good.
The application has garnered gushing reviews across the board. Many have been gobsmacked by the software’s performance on M1 machines. I am no different. I love the performance of M1-Photoshop.
Except for one small thing.
Here comes the kicker:
The M1-Photoshop is pretty useless for those — like me — who use third-party extensions as part of their editing workflow. For instance, I use some extensions that allow me to pursue highly granular masking via luminosity masks. Other extensions for color grading (including Adobe’s own Color Themes) and additional tune-ups are also part of my flow. And none of them work with the new Photoshop.
Read Om’s post for the details. Part of this is the low-level pains involved in moving to a brand new chip architecture. If you build an app using third party libraries, for example, until those libraries are ported to the new architecture, you might just be stuck, waiting for that port so you can fully take advantage of the M1 speeds.
Not quite what’s happening here, but the solution is likely the same. Until those critical path extensions are ported to the new architecture, Photoshop users like Om are stuck in emulation.
Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger is staying hopeful that the frayed relationship with former long-time partner Apple could be salvaged.
“We will pursue opportunities with Apple,” Gelsinger said on a conference call updating the company’s business plans Tuesday evening.
Intel is doubling down on chip fabrication, pouring $20B into two new chip plants in Arizona. Here’s a link to the press release with all their announcements.
In the conference call laying all these plans out, Gelsinger specifically brought up Apple. Just days after launching a campaign mocking the Mac, using Apple’s own former spokes-character (Here’s a link to those ads, in case you’ve not yet seen them).
Don’t get me wrong. I truly want Intel to succeed. Having a US-based chip fabricator would be good for the economy, and potentially help take the strain off Apple’s (and other company’s) supply chains. Those ads just seem poorly thought out. A bit of a bridge burner.
Like most AirPod owners, Emily Alpert found that, after 18 months, her wireless buds didn’t last, not even for one full run. Unlike most AirPod owners, Alpert, along with her best friend, got a robot to fix her problem.
That’s what started Podswap, a startup that replaces your AirPods, first or second-generation, for $60. First you get a thoroughly cleaned and refurbished pair sent to you, then you mail Podswap your dead pods. It’s like a SodaStream canister exchange, but for headphones that might otherwise be headed to a landfill.
Definitely going to give this a try. Love the concept.
Watch the video below to get a sense of the battery replacement process. Very interesting. And though the audio might be a bit annoying, I find it amazing how good artificial audio actually sounds.
Years ago, when I was young and stupid, I put on my bestest hiking books and trekked over the lava flow on Hawaii’s most active volcano, Mount Kilauea.
There were ten foot tall lava tubes to climb through, and places where you could see glowing red under the massive lava boulders on which I was standing (which easily could have collapsed, the red was molten lava). There were many plumes of acrid smoke, which turned out to be flares of sulfuric acid. Thrilling, wouldn’t change it, but thinking back, how am I still alive?
Every time I see volcano coverage, I lean in. Never lost the allure. Follow the headline link for some gorgeous photos. Can’t wait until I can travel again.
In a Hacker News thread about Dustin Curtis’s locked Apple ID (see “The Mystery of Dustin Curtis’s Locked Apple ID,” 5 March 2021), there were several reports of iMessage accounts being disabled after other users inadvertently marked messages from them as spam during deletion (swipe left on a message and then tap the trash icon).
Follow the link for all the details. Not going to test this (something I usually try to do when I run across stuff like this, but just don’t want to fall down that sinkhole).
But worth noting:
If you regularly delete messages or conversations in Messages, read the prompts carefully before responding to them.
A judge has certified a class action suit against Apple for its fragile butterfly keyboard design. The suit covers anyone who purchased an Apple MacBook with a butterfly keyboard in seven states: California, New York, Florida, Illinois, New Jersey, Washington, and Michigan. That includes people who bought a MacBook model dating between 2015 and 2017, a MacBook Pro model between 2016 and 2019, or a MacBook Air between 2018 and 2019.
What about people who bought an affected MacBook in other states? What if they bought the MacBook on-line, from California-based Apple?
The plaintiffs accuse Apple of violating several laws across the seven states mentioned above, including California’s Unfair Competition Law, the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act, and the Michigan Consumer Protection Act. They aren’t asking for a nationwide certification at this time, but the law firm behind the suit has invited any US buyer of an affected MacBook to complete a survey.
This suit claims Apple knew for years that its butterfly switches were defective — and that its incremental changes weren’t fixing the core problem. It cites internal communications inside Apple, including an executive who wrote that “no matter how much lipstick you try to put on this pig [referring to the butterfly keyboard] . . . it’s still ugly.”
No matter how many times I run across stuff like this, always amazed what people will put in writing.
