Backups are so important and Carbon Copy Cloner is one of the best.

Juli Clover, writing for MacRumors:

In recent weeks, Apple has been sending out surveys to users asking about MacBook Pro features, most notably the headphone jack. A survey question shared by MacRumors reader Blake asks “Do you ever use the headphone port on your MacBook Pro with Retina display?”

There are several other reports on Twitter from users who have been asked similar questions about the headphone jack, suggesting Apple is exploring the removal of the headphone jack in a future version of the MacBook Pro.

If there is a MacBook Pro update coming this year, I suspect it will have a headphone jack. This sort of market research would typically be done during the design phase, not in preparation for product rollout. I suspect the headphone jack will, ultimately, go away, as wireless becomes the standard. On the iPhone 7, waterproofing and case real estate are often quoted as two driving reasons for the removal of the headphone jack. Neither of these is a big issue for the MacBook Pro.

The dock is new to watchOS 3. This lays out the process of adding apps to the dock. Pretty simple, but worth walking through the process. Removal is just as easy – click the “-” instead of the “+”.

This is a monster of a post, with a wealth of detail, lots of images and embedded videos. I’m bookmarking this one (I already made my way through it) so I can search it later. Well done.

CNET covers Apple’s iPhone 7 launch at various locations around the world. Even with the news that there would be no iPhone 7 Plus and no iPhone 7’s in Jet Black, there were still plenty of people in line, perhaps hoping against hope that those shortage announcements were not true.

As to the shortages, there seems to be two complementary explanations: One is due to the extra time required to achieve the jet black finish using a technique Jony Ive refers to as “rotational 3D polishing.”

The second issue is apparent supply chain constraints for the iPhone 7 Plus dual camera, which requires more precision and calibration during assembly.

Ever play with an Apple II? ProDOS? Then you’ll want to check this for yourself.

Federal consumer safety regulators on Thursday formally recalled 1 million Galaxy Samsung Note 7 smartphones after dozens of users reported the device caught fire while charging.

These things are clearly a hazard. How do you trust their next product?

17 Orbits:

Tonight’s Thursday Night Football game features the Buffalo Bills hosting the New York Jets at 8:25 Eastern time. For the first time you can watch an NFL game on Twitter via Apple TV (4th gen) or other set top box.

And:

Just yesterday the Twitter app became available for Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV and xBox. The app does not require an account and therefore no log in is necessary. It allows one to view the original CBS broadcast of the game alongside curated Tweets – but you cannot Tweet, Like, Follow or view your own timeline. Its like a “second-screen experience” without the second screen.

The cord-cutting wheel is turning.

Chris Messina:

Apple doesn’t give a shit about neckbeard hipsters who spent thousands of dollars on expensive audiophile gear that rely on 100-year-old technology to transmit audio signals. They’ll readily drop them faster than Trump drops facts to make an argument in a televised debate.

Apple is securing its future, and to do that, it must continue to shrink the physical distance between its products and its customers’ conceptions of self. The ᴡᴀᴛᴄʜ came first, busting our sidekick supercomputer out of our pockets and onto our skin. Apple’s next move will put its products literally within earshot of our minds.

This is no accident.

Good, funny read about the perception of Apple’s new AirPods.

In the middle of Jason Snell’s iPhone 7 and Apple Watch Series 2 writeup is this nugget:

One pulled tab and the plastic wrap around the iPhone box unravels. Inside there’s a little paperboard package that features the shockingly tiny Lightning-to-3.5mm adapter, pinned like it’s smiling at you, and on the flip side of the same bundle, your Lightning EarPods. It’s adorable, compact, and plastic free.

Follow the link (Jason’s writeups are always worth the trip), check out the image. Just look at that packaging design. And it’s all made out of recyclable cardboard. Apple is the Steph Curry of packaging.

Kirk McElhearn on all the new shiny that came with iTunes 12.5.x. Solid list.

Jeff Benjamin walks you through the brave new world of the iOS 10 Messages app. Lots has changed here, well worth the read.

Someone better go let all those folks camped out in front of the Apple Store know. And if someone paid them to camp out, do they still get paid?

Apple’s official statement:

We couldn’t be happier with the initial response to iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus, and we are looking forward to beginning sales through our retail stores and partners around the world.

Beginning Friday, limited quantities of iPhone 7 in silver, gold, rose gold, and black will be available for walk-in customers at Apple retail stores. During the online pre-order period, initial quantities of iPhone 7 Plus in all finishes and iPhone 7 in jet black sold out and will not be available for walk-in customers. Availability at partner locations for all finishes may vary and we recommend checking directly with them.

Customers can continue to order all models in all colors on apple.com. We sincerely appreciate our customers’ patience as we work hard to get the new iPhone into the hands of everyone who wants one as quickly as possible.

I can’t ever recall Apple releasing such a statement before an iPhone launch. Walk-in stock was always limited, but I don’t remember there being zero stock in the most popular models. Wonder if this is the new normal. It certainly will drive a lot of on-line orders as word of this gets out. And that will give Apple a lot of valuable sales information.

Josh Centers digs into the latest tvOS release. One notable addition:

Those of us blinded by the bright-white look of tvOS 9 will appreciate the new Dark mode, which you can enable in Settings > General > Appearance. Dark mode not only turns the Home screen dark, but also darkens the user interface elements of many apps.

I’ll definitely be switching to Dark Mode.

Callblock represents the start of an interesting new app category. Apple supports something called CallKit, similar to the content-blocking API that allows ad-blocking in Safari. CallKit allows you to build filtering rules to block calls by name and number.

The team that built Callblock spent most of their development time compiling a directory of telemarketers and setting up the infrastructure to keep the directory up to date.

So far, since I’ve had this installed, I have not gotten a single telemarketing call. Coincidence? Perhaps. But I’ll keep Callblock enabled, just in case.

Serenity Caldwell presents her list of under-the-hood iOS 10 features. Worth a look.

Martin Hajek:

What if Apple had done the new AirPods in black too?

I modelled these earphones and rendered them in brand-new iPhone gloss black. You can’t buy these for real but you can download the 3D model of these AirPods.

Hajek screams in his piece, “SO WHY DID THIS NOT HAPPEN?” There are any number of reasons, most likely for simplicity’s sake in their first iteration. If they prove to be popular (and, even though I won’t be buying them, I think they will be), we’ll see colour matched AirPods in their next version. But, then again, there are no black EarPods so maybe we’ll never see them.

Buzzfeed:

Beginning Wednesday morning, Uber customers in the former steel town who’ve agreed to participate in the company’s self-driving car pilot program will have a reasonable chance of being picked up in an autonomous vehicle — albeit one carrying both a safety driver (ready to take the wheel during emergencies) and a co-pilot (to monitor the car and its route on a laptop).

Uber’s Pittsburgh pilot program is kicking off with just a handful of self-driving Ford Fusions, but will later expand to include an additional 100 self-driving Volvos. For now, the cars aren’t entirely autonomous. A human driver brings the car to the road before hitting the silver button that activates autonomous mode. This safety driver sticks around for the duration of the ride, ready to intervene should something go awry on the journey. Also aboard is a co-pilot in the front passenger seat, watching for glitches and anomalies and sending notes to Uber’s developers, who are refining the algorithms the cars use to navigate.

You can now travel the future in Pittsburgh.

Austin Mann:

As many of you know, in the past I’ve created this review in Iceland (twice), Patagonia, and Switzerland, but this year I wanted to really change things up. With indicators pointing toward possibilities of optical zoom, I asked myself: Where’s the best place in the world to test optical zoom? Africa, of course.

So this year, in collaboration with Nat Geo Travel + Nat Geo Adventure, we’ve set out to get you the answers. I’m writing from deep in the Nyungwe rain forest in southwest Rwanda. We’ve been tracking gorillas in the north, boating Lake Kivu in the west, and running through tea plantations in the south — all with the iPhone 7 Plus in hand.

These are the kinds of reviews I’ve been looking for — from professional photographers. Definitely check out the video if only for the incredible images of the mountain gorillas. Thanks very much to Dave Mark and Brian Smith for the link.

Scan the article, pass these along. Also, here’s a post from a while back that talks you through launching iOS 10’s new Magnifier.

Yesterday, I posted an article about the cellular radios inside the new iPhone 7 and 7 Plus and the fact that there are two distinct models (Intel and Qualcomm) with two different sets of capabilities.

This article from iMore digs into this from a slightly different angle:

The iPhone 7 now supports maximum speeds of up to 450Mbps, which is a 50% jump over the iPhone 6s. Specifically, the new iPhone is a Category 10 device, which means that in addition to being able to reach those astronomical speeds of 450Mbps in the downlink (downloading data from the internet), it is able to reach speeds of 100Mbps in the uplink.

To reach these speeds, the iPhone uses a technology under the LTE standard called carrier aggregation, which combines several wireless channels, or bands, to transmit data to and from a phone. The iPhone 7 supports 3x CA in the downlink — up to three distinct bands carrying data — and 2x CA in the uplink. Unfortunately, those uplink speeds can only be achieved using a combination of Band 7 and Band 41, which currently precludes all U.S. carriers, since none of them currently operate on Band 7.

And:

Oh, and another thing: it is expected to be revealed (through upcoming teardowns) that this year’s iPhone has a baseband chip designed and manufactured by Intel, a company that has been trying to get its components into Apple’s smartphones for some time. While Qualcomm is still likely designing the baseband inside the CDMA variants of the iPhone, due to ongoing patent exclusivity, the GSM variants of the phone have likely transitioned to its Portland-based rival.

Bottom line, the value in getting the Qualcomm chip only arises if you plan to switch carriers.

CNN Money:

“If a customer is going out to buy a phone, they’re going to buy an iPhone 7, not a Note 7,” said Mark Newman, a Bernstein analyst who covers Samsung. He pointed out that the Note 7 was launched before the iPhone 7 and received better reviews.

Not sure I agree on the better reviews things, but keep reading:

Samsung’s Note 7 storm will “most likely blow over in a couple of months,” he said. “Longer term, Samsung is a strong brand with great products. Most of them don’t explode.”

And there it is. The Galaxy Note 7 killer feature. Not newsworthy, I know, but I just loved the quote.

[H/T Brandon Cosby]

Click the headline link to jump to a chart showing Mixpanel’s take on iOS 10 adoption. As of this writing, iOS 9 has 83.86%, iOS 10 has 11.09% and older has 5.06%. Those are remarkable numbers, especially when compared to Android’s fragmented adoption rates.

It’ll be interesting to see that iOS 10 number in about a week.

God I hate these headlines. But. This is a solid article and ceramic is an interesting new direction for Apple. Lots to learn here:

“Ceramics are much more durable than metals,” says Julia Greer, a materials scientist at Caltech. To understand what she means, consider your MacBook. That anodized aluminum casing provides a handsome sheen, but drop it and you run a good chance of denting a corner. Stick it in your bag unprotected, and your keys almost certainly will scratch it.

And:

The back of each Watch uses zirconia ceramic where the magnetic charger attaches. Ceramics are non-conductive, and don’t interfere with wireless charging.

And:

Ceramics, on the other hand, are virtually scratch-proof. “They deform in an elastic way,” Greer says. “You’ll never see the deformation, until they crack.” Unlike an aluminum or a stainless steel case, a ceramic one can take a licking and keep on ticking. The rub with ceramics is that, while they’re tough to scratch, they’re more prone to cracking compared to metal.

Want the new gorgeous? It’ll cost you. The ceramic Apple Watch is the new high end, selling for $1,249 for the 38mm case and $1,299 for the 42mm case.