Apple has hired famed robotics expert Yoky Matsuoka, one of the co-founders of Google’s X lab and former head of technology at Nest, to work on the iPhone maker’s health projects.
And:
Apple said Matsuoka is working for chief operating officer Jeff Williams, who oversees the tech giant’s growing number of health initiatives. Those efforts include the HealthKit framework for developing apps, ResearchKit for using mobile devices in medical studies, and CareKit to help individuals improve their own medical care.
Yoky has had an incredible career. She seems an impressive addition to Apple’s technical staff.
> At WWDC 2015 we announced the transition to IPv6-only network services in iOS 9. Starting June 1, 2016 all apps submitted to the App Store must support IPv6-only networking. Most apps will not require any changes because IPv6 is already supported by NSURLSession and CFNetwork APIs.
> If your app uses IPv4-specific APIs or hard-coded IP addresses, you will need to make some changes.
Apple announced this last year, so most of any work that needs to be done by developers such as ip leasing is probably taken care of already. If not, this is a good reminder from Apple.
This post will upset many of you. I am sorry about that. I’ve been ill for quite some time, but I haven’t talked about it. Brace yourself for the really bad news.
I’ve got cancer. It’s bad, and I’m not going to survive it.
In general, I haven’t gone public with this, though I told family, some friends, and colleagues when I had a chance to sit down with them at Macworld Expo 2014. I’ve kept things mostly under wraps because I didn’t want to publicly become Cancer Guy, because I’ve seen that happen to other people I know. Cancer is something I have; it does not define who I am.
Tom is the “Grand Old Man” of the Mac Community. He and his lovely wife Dori have been involved on many levels – users, authors, speakers – for decades. Both of them are wonderful, kind, funny, smart and fierce people. I’m proud to know them and even prouder to call them friends. This is terrible news but, Tom being Tom, he will handle it with the dignity and intelligence for which he has always been admired. My thoughts are with both of them as they go through this awful ordeal.
When the fourth-generation Apple TV was announced last September, I gave an audible (and embarrassing) “Whoop!” in my chair as I watched the presentation, eager to write the second edition of “Take Control of Apple TV” (which is now available). The little set-top box suddenly had a lot more potential, thanks to Apple finally adding an App Store.
But it has been nearly six months since the fourth-generation Apple TV was released, and there isn’t much to show yet. Yes, the tvOS App Store quickly added over 1000 apps, but growth since that initial explosion seems slow. I dutifully check the “Best New Apps” section every week, only to be disappointed by the slow trickle of interesting new apps.
The problem isn’t a complete lack of apps (there were over 2600 back in December, and likely many more than that now), but a dearth of those that make the Apple TV compelling.
One of the complaints from developers is that there’s just no there there. In other words, there’s just not enough to the Apple TV to make developing for it worth the effort, particularly for smaller developers working on iOS.
News came today that Apple is planning a major revamp of Apple Music at its Worldwide Developer Conference in June. This is welcome news for sure. While the service has improved considerably since its introduction, there are still some things that need to addressed—hopefully, this is it.
However, there are some lessons I hope Apple learned from last year’s introduction.
So Apple:
Leave the celebrities at home
This is a developer conference, not a gala event where you can show off all the celebrities you know in the industry. Don’t talk to the first two rows of the audience like you did last year—talk to the 5,000 developers that paid to be there and the millions of customers watching from home.
Listening to Drake stumble his way through a speech about how great Apple is does nothing to help your cause with Apple Music. Most people in that room don’t care—or we don’t care as much as you seem to—we want to see a product that works.
Focus on the product
Showing two dozen screenshots of Pharrell also does nothing for your audience. That crowd wants to hear about the product and how you’ve improved it. They want to know about the APIs that are going to help them build products.
Apple is a great product company, but the first version of Apple Music chipped away a lot of trust people had—that will be difficult to get back, but with a laser focus on the product, it can be done.
Be honest
I think we can be honest and admit you released Apple Music when it wasn’t ready. There were just too many bugs for it to be any other way, but you did it regardless.
Developers and consumers want to know you heard us—that you took our criticisms to heart and you fixed the problems.
I don’t mind a public beta of Apple Music that is being worked on, but don’t walk on that stage and tell me it’s a finished, working product if it isn’t.
The amount of trust and loyalty you’ll lose with another round of broken Apple Music will be mind boggling.
Beauty and respect
Ultimately, we want to see the same dedication you have for your hardware products brought to Apple Music. Hardware works. It’s beautifully designed, elegant, and thoughtful. That’s what you need to show us with Apple Music at WWDC.
Show your developers, customers, and musicians the respect they deserve. We’re paying for this service and we want it to work. We will support your efforts to make it the best service in the world.
This is a simple way to record a call. Are there laws against recording a call without someone’s knowledge?
I’ve not tried this, but I would never record a call without everyone on the call acknowledging they are cool with being recorded. This smells like trouble.
A hacker in Finland has become the youngest person to receive a reward from Facebook’s bug bounty program — but he’ll have to wait three years before he’s old enough to humblebrag about it on the social media platform.
Apple has increased orders for its low-priced iPhone SE in the second quarter of 2016, according to industry sources. The second-quarter outlook for related chip orders has been revised to more than five million units from 3.5-4 million.
The outlook for Apple’s chip orders for iPhone SE for the third quarter will likely be similar to that for the second quarter, said the sources.
His assessment is certainly accurate. Apps take a relatively long time to launch and there is too much lag when an app has to communicate with the iPhone.
I see this as a glass half full. I love my Apple Watch, wear it every day. These are the things I get from my watch at a glance, with no lag:
Current time
The day and date
Current outside temperature
Texts
Email
Other notifications
Alarm settings
Battery life
There is a ton of value here. All of this functionality is immediate. The only lag is the time it takes for my watch screen to light up.
Add to this list Siri interaction (Siri is its own glass half full), Apple Maps integration (mileage to next turn, wrist taps when a turn is close, all incredibly useful), and Calendar integration (I use Fantastical’s complication, works very well).
This is a glass half full, but a really big glass, with lots of capacity for improvement. This was first generation hardware and I have incorporated it into my day-to-day life.
I do see Nilay’s disappointment. But I would urge patience here. Point out the flaws, that helps Apple home in on what to change. But give Apple another generation to address the flaws (I suspect these issues are not software fixable, or they’d be fixed) and judge the change.
I can’t imagine that we won’t see significant changes with the next generation of Apple Watch.
Even during the short time that Brazil’s ban on the Facebook-owned app was in effect, people still found other ways to access the type of encrypted messaging features that triggered the block in the first place.
Several rival apps that offer encrypted messaging services reported a surge in Brazilian sign-ups, which highlights how the growing ubiquity of private messaging apps makes it hard to stop people from using them.
Living proof. Banning or weakening encryption just does not work. All it does is push people to other communication channels.
Apple Inc. is planning sweeping changes to its year-old music streaming service after the first iteration of the product was met with tepid reviews and several executives brought in to revive the company’s music strategy departed.
Apple is altering the user interface of Apple Music to make it more intuitive to use, according to people familiar with the product who asked not to be identified because the plans aren’t public. Apple also plans to better integrate its streaming and download businesses and expand its online radio service, the people said. The reboot is expected to be unveiled at the company’s Worldwide Developers Conference in June. The changes will be accompanied by a marketing blitz to lure more customers to the $10-per-month streaming service. An Apple spokesman declined to comment.
Hallelujah. I wonder if the WWDC unveiling means a more robust Apple Music API. The existing API is pretty limited. Apple should take a look at the kinds of things you can do with SoundShare, which lets you collaborate on playlists (your friends can add songs to a common playlist), create a playlist with songs from different services (Apple Music/Spotify/Deezer), and see what your friends are listening to (Jim can see what music Slash is listening to, as opposed to scrolling through Slash’s marketing page).
UPDATE: Some of the mentioned SoundShare functionality won’t hit the App Store until the new release, which (I’m told) should be live tomorrow (Thursday). Try it out. It’s free.
Accessibility enables people with disabilities to perceive, understand, navigate, interact with, and contribute to the web. Imagine a world where developers know everything there is to know about accessibility. You design it and they build it… perfectly. In this world, only the design itself can cause people with disabilities to have trouble using a product.
Apple has hired famed robotics expert Yoky Matsuoka, one of the co-founders of Google’s X lab and former head of technology at Nest, to work on the iPhone maker’s health projects.
But malware attacks are on the rise and OS X is no longer immune to such threats. According to a study from Bit9 and Carbon Black, 2015 was a banner year for malware on the Mac, with more than 1,400 unique samples collected and analyzed, a whopping five-fold increase over the previous five years combined.
One of Leo Fender’s first and finest amp designs, the Fender Deluxe was introduced in 1946. After various circuit tweaks, Fender eventually landed on the now historic “wide-panel” 5E3 Deluxe in 1955. This amplifier’s touch-sensitivity has a dynamic range from clean and sweet, to overdriven raunch that’s made it a go-to recording amp for the likes of Larry Carlton, Neil Young, Mike Campbell, Daniel Lanois, and Billy Gibbons.
I have never been so excited to try out a plug-in. It took Universal Audio two years to complete this single plug-in.
Sir Jony Ive, chief design officer of Apple was one of the four co-hosts of Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute Gala alongside Anna Wintour of Vogue, singer Taylor Swift and actor Idris Elba. Apple, was an underwriter of an event widely known as “Oscars of the East Coast.” Here is a text of his speech at the event.
What would a serene body of water look like if someone were to shatter it into a million pieces? Good question. That’s what we found when photographer and master illusionist Erik Johansson brought a cool concept to life, with a Hasselblad H5D-40 and 17 pieces of mirrors.
“This is an image I’ve been working on for the past months. I wanted to create an image where a lake is breaking up as a mirror,” Erik shares in his 500px caption. “I wanted to make the effect look as realistic as possible, so I decided to buy 17 square meters of mirrors last summer and brought out the mirrors, a boat, and the model to a stone-pit.”
The result? This epic photo that captured our imagination—and blew our minds.
This kind of photo-illustration just melts my brain. I can’t even conceive of the concept let alone have the incredible skills this guy has, both in the camera and on the computer.
Think of the gear you can’t live without: The smartphone you constantly check. The camera that goes with you on every vacation. The TV that serves as a portal to binge-watching and -gaming. Each owes its influence to one model that changed the course of technology for good.
It’s those devices we’re recognizing in this list of the 50 most influential gadgets of all time.
These lists are always fun/interesting and congratulations to Apple for having the iPhone named as #1 but, is it just me or does anyone think of the iPhone as most certainly not a “gadget”?
Apple’s 2Q16 earnings report was not pretty. Not only did iPhone sales decline year-over-year for the first time, but management issued alarming guidance for 3Q16, suggesting another very difficult quarter for iPhone sales. In addition, Apple expects iPhone average selling price (ASP) and margin to deteriorate due to the recently introduced $400 iPhone SE.
On top of it all, Apple will take a historically large $2 billion inventory adjustment related to the iPhone 6s due to sales coming in below expectations. While some are optimistic that the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus will turn things around in a few months, it’s time to become skeptical. The iPhone growth story is breaking apart, and management does not seem to be in control of the situation.
There is a lot of justifiable doom and gloom surrounding Apple in general and the iPhone in particular so far this year. A lot of it is incomprehensible to those of us who use and enjoy the products the company makes. Personally, I don’t think there’s any need to push a panic button but the company does have some serious challenges ahead for the rest of the year and into 2017.
Part of my move to start printing my photos comes from my desire to create and share something tangible and special in this age of digital noise and the culture of “now” and “more.”
This post is written to other photographers who might be considering buying and using a photo printer. I’m printing exclusively with the Canon Pixma Pro 100 and couldn’t be happier with the results. Below are some reasons why you should start printing.
I’m a big fan of printing off some of your photos. Along with the reasons included in this post, there’s just a certain “something” about holding your photos in your hand in a tangible, physical form and a sense of pride to be able to take your own work and hang it on your wall or to give to a friend.
There are all kinds of places to do printing online or even locally. Here in British Columbia, I’ve used London Drugs to very inexpensively have some of my shots printed (I also have an Epson R2000 printer at home). Grab a cheap frame from Walmart and a couple of hooks and you’re good to go. I love when friends come over, see the photos on the wall, ask about them and I can say, with no small measure of pride, “I took that shot.”
India has rejected Apple Inc.’s request to import and sell refurbished iPhones to the world’s second largest mobile population, a telecommunications ministry official said Tuesday.
The U.S. company’s application has been turned down, the official said, asking to not be identified, citing official policy. Apple has been seeking permission to import and sell used phones to court price-conscious consumers with a similar proposal rejected in 2015 by the environment ministry.
This might be a serious blow to Apple’s plans in India. The Indian consumer is much more price conscious and less concerned with brand image than China and Apple was counting on refurbs to help them get a foot in the door.
I decided to write Skyfaring, a book about flying, in order to set down for myself some of the remarkable details of the job I’d dreamed of since childhood. I guess I hoped, too, that these details would be of interest to readers who travel so often that flight has become an uninteresting experience for them. Here are six of the more amazing things I’ve learned, or relearned, in the 15 years that I’ve been flying.
Like most people, I hate flying but I love the view of our world from a plane’s window.
This is strong, visceral writing, so proceed with caution.
Paul Miller, writing for The Verge:
My friend wanted to show me BigScreen, which is a blend of AltspaceVR and old-fashioned screen sharing. It’s pitched as a “Virtual Reality LAN party.” You co-occupy a virtual scene with up to three other people, and a version of your computer desktop floats in front of you, available to play games on or do whatever. What’s crazy is you can see other people’s desktops, as well. Like a peer-to-peer VR Twitch, kind of. You see their floating avatar, you see their screen, and you feel “present” with them. Screen looking is back.
I popped into a nice luxurious apartment, sharing a couch with someone I’d never met. I immediately started tweaking my screen — a little further away, a little bigger, a little bit of curve, no wait I hate the curve. I heard someone pop in and then leave, muttering something like, “That’s messed up.” Finally I got my screen in a comfortable spot, and I opened a browser and loaded up my favorite Tumblr.
And then I looked over.
Clearly, VR brings some very dark cyberpunk possibilities, but this actually makes VR seem even more compelling as a business model.
Apple no longer exclusively owns the iPhone name in China. The California tech giant recently lost a trademark suit against a Chinese company, which now holds the right to make and sell handbags and other leather products branded “IPHONE.”
The Beijing Municipal High People’s Court rejected Apple’s appeal of the trademark dispute against Xintong Tiandi Technology (Beijing) Co., Ltd. on Mar. 31, state media Legal Daily reported (link in Chinese). The final judgement allows the Beijing company to brand leather products including handbags, purses, and cellphone and passport cases with the name “IPHONE.”
Jean-Louis Gassée, writing for Monday Note, weighs in with this thought:
Many on Wall Street and elsewhere have started to ask if Apple is going to treat Services as a separate business with its own Profit & Loss statement. For Apple, this would be a momentous cultural shift away from its praised functional structure, one Tim Cook sees as fostering effective collaboration across groups such as operating system software, built-in apps, hardware, developer relations, and retail operations. The idea is for everyone to work together on the customer’s experience, as opposed to concentrating on an isolated goal: hardware revenue, App Store profits, or Retail numbers.
And this quote from Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, taken from John Kirk’s piece:
It’s very difficult for a publicly traded company to switch,” Bezos said. “So, if you’ve been holding a rock concert, and you want to hold a ballet, that transition is going to be difficult.
Jean-Louis then continues:
I agree. A company’s culture is extremely hard to change once, like a concrete foundation, it has set. It may actually be impossible: I can’t think of a single mature company that has managed to change its culture.
I read Apple as a personal computing company. It wins or loses through the experience it delivers to its customers. Once upon a time, revenue came mostly from its personal computers, small, medium and large. Software and services had one and only one purpose: pushing up personal computers’ volumes and margins. Hardware, software, and services coalesced into what we now call an ecosystem. Over time, as a result of the size of the installed base of Apple devices, Services became substantial, the number 2 revenue category — but, for reasons just discussed, it shouldn’t be run as a separate division.
Interesting. If nothing else, Apple is a company built on its ecosystem foundation. A company dependent on, and greater than, the sum of its parts.
The iPhone 7 had been rumored to be dropping the analog 3.5 mm headphone jack, in favour of wireless Bluetooth or Lightning cable headphones for audio output. However, a new iPhone 7 component leak posted on Weibo disagrees with previous reports, depicting a board that includes a 3.5mm jack.
And:
The pictured board is sized for a 4.7 inch sized iPhone (and an equivalent version for the 5.5 inch phone has not surfaced) so there’s a possibility the 3.5mm jack will stay on the smaller sized phone but be dropped on the Plus models. This strategy does not sound very ‘Appley’ — it makes more sense for it to deprecate technologies consistently across the lineup.
Moving on from the 3.5mm analog jack makes sense to me. It’s universal technology, but an antiquated relic in digital signal path. This move is inevitable, at some point.
Keeping the 3.5mm jack makes sense. Everyone has headphones that “just work” with this technology and a move to wireless will relegate all those headphones to the dustheap.
One model with and one model without? That’s the one possibility that doesn’t click.
