Clever trick from Jason Snell:

I realized, then, that the best way to discover if the power was just out to my house or if it was the whole neigborhood was to open the Settings app on my iPhone and tap on Wi-Fi.

Everyone’s got a wi-fi base station. On a normal day I can see a half-dozen SSIDs around my house and yard. But on this sunny, calm Tuesday morning: Nothing. Not a single signal. (Not even a battery-operated device offering wi-fi for tethering purposes, that I could see.)

So it wasn’t just me. The entire neighborhood was out. The wi-fi signals (or lack of same) were what told the tale.

If you’ve never set up a custom keyboard shortcut on your Mac, this post from Kirk McElhearn is a double dose of good.

How We Get To Next:

We’ve asked a number of experts to suggest what they think are the most powerful bots around today, in what is still an early stage for the industry. Together, those suggestions make up our first-ever Bot Power List.

A top 25 list of conversational bots, including Siri and Alexa. Lots to read, almost every example with a link so you can learn more or, in some cases, give the bot a try.

Lots of room for improvement for Siri. Looking for a major Siri announcement at next week’s WWDC keynote.

The first half of this Vanity Fair piece is a behind the scenes look at the coups that removed Twitter CEOs Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, and Evan Williams from power, all leading to the fruitless search for a replacement for Dick Costolo.

Just a taste:

Then, in early June, Chris Sacca, a voluble investor in Twitter, published an 8,500-word stream-of-consciousness epistle, agitating for a change at the company. Sacca, perhaps livid that he might lose his membership in the so-called Three Comma Club (a pejorative term for tech billionaires), followed up with a series of interviews and tweets lambasting Costolo. Costolo decided that he had had enough agony. He was out.

And:

Virtually every single product chief at Twitter—seven or eight people, depending on how you count—has been fired or forced to resign over the past decade. One former staffer told me the position is akin to the jinxed Defense Against the Dark Arts professorship in the Harry Potter saga, where every professor ends up dead or ousted at the end of the school year. A board member once said he could use only one word—“Shakespearean”—to describe the company.

The second half is all about Jack Dorsey’s quest to right the ship, to make Twitter cool again. The author, Nick Bilton, makes no secret that he wrote a book about Twitter that made him lots of enemies and persona non grata at Twitter.

In 2012, when I told him of my plans to write a book about the founding of Twitter, a very different side of Dorsey emerged. He immediately tried to kill the project. He told everyone at Twitter, and anyone associated with the company, not to talk to me.

As I started reporting, I realized why. Dorsey, who was so charming in person, had been a bully behind the scenes. Countless former employees came out of the woodwork to recall his role in their ousting. Or, in a fate that is even worse in Silicon Valley, how he had seemingly erased their contribution from the company record.

So there’s no way Jack Dorsey would agree to be part of this article, right?

I was pretty sure that Dorsey would never speak to me again. But in early April, when I reached out to see if he would be open to meeting for this article, I was surprised by his response. “Let’s do it!” he replied in an e-mail.

And that leads to the second half of the article.

All in all, a great read.

Electrek:

Norway’s four main political parties have been discussing a possible ban on new gasoline-powered car sales (diesel or petrol) for quite some time, but they were not able to come to an understanding until now, according to a new report from Dagens Næringsliv, an important newspaper in Norway.

The four main political parties, both from the right and the left, have agreed on a new energy policy that will include a ban on new gasoline-powered car sales as soon as 2025 – making it one of the most aggressive timeline of its kind for such a policy. What’s probably most remarkable here is that Norway is currently one of the world’s largest Oil exporters.

There’s little chance of many other countries matching Norway’s timeline for any number of reasons but, going forward, governmental action similar to this might be required in order to make a significant leap in electric vehicle sales.

Motherboard:

Under the Common Core standards—the core curriculum for language and math adopted by 42 states—cursive writing is no longer a requirement. And it makes sense: the loopy letters are unnecessary in pretty much all modern communication.

But some states and local school boards still require students to learn it, and the utility of cursive is an ongoing debate across the country. All students must still learn to write by hand cleanly and legibly, and considering most of us rarely lift a pen these days to begin with, why is cursive writing still a thing?

It’s an interesting question. I had to write out a sentence a few weeks ago using a pen and paper (probably for the first time in years) and had to concentrate to remember how to write out certain letters. In the age of computers and voice-assisted interfaces, do we still need cursive?

Justin O’Beirne:

Both are the default mapping apps on their respective operating systems (Android and iOS). And both are in a race to become the world’s first Universal Map — that is, the first map used by a majority of the global population. In many ways, this makes Google Maps & Apple Maps two of the most important maps ever made.

Who will get there first? And will design be a factor?

In this series of essays, we’ll compare and contrast the cartographic designs of Google Maps and Apple Maps. We’ll take a look at what’s on each map and how each map is styled, and we’ll also try to uncover the biggest differences between the two.

While O’Beirne “designed and led the development of Apple’s cartography” and therefore might be considered biased, this is nonetheless a (very) long and interesting discussion of the differences and similarities of the two apps. I’m directionally-challenged so these kinds of discussions are really interesting to me. I still prefer a dedicated GPS device but occasionally need to use one of several iOS apps in order to find my way around and can see some huge differences in the way these two apps present information.

Venturebeat:

In a cluster of East Bay nurseries, Apple has been growing more than 4,600 trees, which are nestled in large, wooden boxes. Some time later this year, Apple’s team of arborists will start shipping these trees two or three at time to Cupertino, where they will be painstakingly planted as part of the broader landscaping plan.

The investment in these trees represents the kind of attention to detail, quality, and finish that is classic Apple. Rather than just planting seedlings and watching them develop slowly over 20 years, as many developers do, Apple is hoping to come as close as possible to creating the sensation of a thick, forest-like wonderland right from the start.

Weirdly interesting article about the lengths Apple is going to to ensure the landscaping of the new campus is just as precise and groundbreaking as the building itself.

Wired:

A new web app called The True Size Of is an interactive map that its creators, James Talmage and Damon Maneice, hope will give people a better understanding of a country’s true size. Dragging one country across the map causes it to change size and shape in real time, allowing you to place it beside countries at other latitudes and compare their relative sizes. For example, as you overlay the United States on top of Greenland, the former stretches and bloats. Meanwhile, dragging Greenland down toward Saudi Arabia, causes the northerly country to shrink dramatically in size.

It’s a simple tool, but it’s wildly effective at granting a new perspective on the size and shape of the world’s various land masses.

There’s no doubt the vast majority of us learned what we know of world geography from a Mercator map but this online tool shows just how inaccurate our impressions of the size of various countries really is.

The Guardian:

Our picture editor, Jonny Weeks, has selected his favourite photographs of Muhammad Ali from the archives. The selection includes pictures of some of Ali’s most memorable fights as well as many distinctive portraits from his life outside the ring.

I was able to hang out with and interview Ali’s friend, photographer, and biographer, Howard Bingham, at a Macworld Expo in 1998. He told me of his friendship with Ali but also his photography and how much fun it was to shoot the champ. I wish I knew about photography then what I know now. I could have asked Howard much better questions. While Bingham didn’t shoot any of these linked shots, you can see a similar style – dictated not only because of its time but also because of its subject matter.

The New York Times:

Muhammad Ali, the three-time world heavyweight boxing champion who helped define his turbulent times as the most charismatic and controversial sports figure of the 20th century, died on Friday. He was 74.

Ali was the most thrilling if not the best heavyweight ever, carrying into the ring a physically lyrical, unorthodox boxing style that fused speed, agility and power more seamlessly than that of any fighter before him.

Ali was as polarizing a superstar as the sports world has ever produced — both admired and vilified in the 1960s and ’70s for his religious, political and social stances.

When I heard the news that he was sick and in the hospital, I knew it was just a matter of time. He was an amazing man in so many ways who lived a life that was full and full of controversy but you got the impression he wouldn’t have it any other way. I met Ali at a Macworld Expo in the late 1990s. I don’t have many heroes in my life but he was definitely one of them. I was in awe of the man and I’m never in awe of other human beings. I had tears in my eyes (just as I do now writing this) as I told him how honored I was to meet him. He didn’t speak but did that familiar boxer’s thing of lightly tapping me on the jaw with his fist. I wish I had a picture of that moment.

National Geographic:

National Geographic Emerging Explorer and Adventurer of the Year Wasfia Nazreen doesn’t just climb for the thrill; she climbs for a cause. The first Bangladeshi to scale the Seven Summits, Wasfia has made it her purpose to brave these climbs for the sake of something larger – for the women of Bangladesh. Lyrical and poetic, this short documentary, shot entirely on an iPhone 6S, is a reflective character portrait that takes us from the depths of Wasfia’s struggles to the highest peaks on the planet, as we explore what it means to pursue the unknown.

Seven mountains. Unfathomable. I just got back from a 30 minute hike and I want to lie down and die.

Although this news may feel sudden to some, this transition has been in progress since late last year and while I won’t be present day to day at Nest, I’ll remain involved in my new capacity as an advisor to Alphabet and Larry Page. This will give me the time and flexibility to pursue new opportunities to create and disrupt other industries – and to support others who want to do the same – just as we’ve done at Nest. We should all be disrupters!

You could see this coming.

A tvOS version of this app is now available, so you can stream and download videos from WWDC 2016 and previous conferences on Apple TV. This update supports live streaming on iOS and tvOS. It also supports multitasking on iOS 9 on iPad.

Similar to yesterday’s Lorem Fucking Ipsum, I thought this was pretty funny.

While there are no stats yet from Grubhub’s rollout, Instacart’s checkout process is now 58 percent faster for customers who use Apple Pay compared to those using other payment methods, saving them about a minute each time they order.

I love Apple Pay and use it every chance I get. The convenience of using your fingerprint for payment is a big win for consumers.

The CEO of a major hospital is confirming that Apple’s health team has made yet another secretive hire: Rajiv Kumar, a top doctor who specializes in treating kids with diabetes. Kumar made headlines in the fall of 2015 by creating a HealthKit-enabled diabetes monitoring system for young patients at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford University.

I love it that Apple cares so much about health and that they are investing heavily in it for the future.

From Google’s Self-Driving Car monthly report:

The human act of honking may be (performance) art, but our self-driving cars aim to be polite, considerate, and only honk when it makes driving safer for everyone.

And:

We’ve even taught our vehicles to use different types of honks depending on the situation. If another vehicle is slowly reversing towards us, we might sound two short, quieter pips as a friendly heads up to let the driver know we’re behind. However, if there’s a situation that requires more urgency, we’ll use one loud sustained honk.

Our goal is to teach our cars to honk like a patient, seasoned driver. As we become more experienced honkers, we hope our cars will also be able to predict how other drivers respond to a beep in different situations.

This whole thing is fascinating to me. While most cars are capable of a single sound, usually tuned to F#, perhaps playable at different volumes, the next wave of cars will be capable of a much wider range of sounds.

For example, this HHR SS which is for sale can play engine noises if they sense a pedestrian is nearby, while electric cars are virtually silent.

And what use is a horn is the surrounding vehicles are also self-driving? Long term, I suspect that the horn is an endangered species.

Ken Segall knew Steve Jobs well. Segall was a former TBWA\Chiat\Day creative director, he worked on a long range of advertising projects for both Apple and NeXT, and he was and is a fierce advocate for simplicity.

From an interview he did with the Guardian:

A growing number of people are sensing that Tim Cook’s Apple isn’t as simple as Steve’s Apple. They see complexity in expanding product lines, confusing product names, and the products themselves.

And:

Apple has a lengthy, award-winning history in advertising. Even marketers in other industries have long considered Apple ads to be the gold standard.

This isn’t because Steve Jobs created great ads himself – it’s because he was adament about keeping the process simple. He trusted a small group of smart people at his longtime ad agency and he was actively involved in the process, week to week.

There were no middlemen, no multiple levels of approvals, and no focus group research. Trust me, few companies on earth work this way. It was Steve’s way of keeping complexity at bay.

With Steve’s passing, things changed dramatically. Apple is building a large in-house marketing group. Teams compete to produce new campaigns. More people are involved. In short, Apple is now managing its marketing more like a big company and less like a startup.

My 2 cents:

Clearly Tim is not Steve. They have different strengths, different points of intellectual focus. Perhaps more importantly, Steve ruled over a much smaller company (he returned to Apple in 1997, announced his six month medical leave in Jan 2008, officially resigned in Aug 2011). Tim Cook has to both manage one of the largest companies in the world and keep its spirit alive with a wellspring of new products.

Even if, due to sheer size, simplicity on a global scale is no longer possible, simplicity on a local scale should be. Complexity of design is a captive critter, always looking to escape the confines of its enclosure. Minimalism requires diligence.

Rene Ritchie:

An external GPU (eGPU)-powered Apple Display won’t be among the things announced at WWDC 2016.

There’d been some speculation on Twitter and rumor reports about Apple possibly introducing a display with an integrated eGPU. Theory being, it would take some of the graphical processing overhead off MacBooks and/or facilitate a single-cable connection that could drive 5K. It sounds cool, but I asked around, and it’s not happening at the keynote or any time in the immediate future.

Sounds like no new MacBook Pro announcement, too. Hopefully we won’t have to wait too long for both.

This back and forth between Motley Fool analysts Dylan Lewis and Evan Niu digs into the steps it takes to get an iPhone from the factory to your hand.

On Foxconn City:

They have hundreds of thousands of employees working there. It’s over a square mile, and they have dorms for employees, its own shopping center, I think they have their own cable network there. The executives there are likening it to this college experience, I think it’s kind of a stretch. You have people working 12-hour days, six days a week, putting together iPhones. That one Foxconn City location is just one of the 12 that the company has in China. Actually, folks following tech might have heard earlier this week, Foxconn announced it automated 60,000 jobs in one of its factories. Going back to that idea of providing some of the tooling, I’m sure Apple had something to do with that.

On Tim Cook and inventory reduction:

Tim Cook absolutely hates inventory. Setting up this model and supply chain, I’ve read reports where other industry executives look at Apple’s supply chain and they’re just blown away. They’re like, “Well, we can’t compete with this.” You can order a custom-built Apple device like a Mac, or an iPhone or something. You’ll get the tracking information and it literally ships from the factory to your doorstep, in a matter of days. They build it and they ship it directly to you.

And:

The flip to contract manufacturing took the amount of time that inventory sat on Apple’s balance sheet from months to days.

There’s a lot more. Good read (or listen, if you prefer).

Join the WWDCGirls and James Dempsey and the Breakpoints for an evening of mingling and music to benefit App Camp For Girls!

This is going to be a great event. I’ll be joining James on stage for a couple of songs, so pick up a ticket and I’ll see you there!

Apple:

Users are experiencing a problem with the service listed. We are investigating and will update the status as more information becomes available.

There are widespread outages being reported. iTunes, the App Store, Apple TV, etc., are all being affected.

Stephen Hackett gathered together some of the original iMac G3 ads. I remember these.

Zen Mode is a new way to experience the game. We’ve stripped away many things from hillside; no scores, no coins, no powerups, and distilled the game down to its purest elements. There’s no on-screen UI competing for your attention – it’s just you and the endless mountain.

What a fascinating idea. I can’t wait to hear how this goes for them.

Colors play a significant role when it comes to design. However, not everyone can create coherent, suitable color concepts. Thus, there’s a bunch of web applications that help you find appropriate color combinations. Monochromatic colors can be compiled just as well as complementary colors.

This is absolutely priceless.

[Via Coudal]