Kevin McLaughlin, writing for CRN:

Apple is buying and deploying an increasing amount of IBM technology for internal use, in a sign of how the vendors’ mobile enterprise partnership is spreading to new areas, sources familiar with the matter told CRN this week.

Apple is using IBM software and hardware in its retail platform and in its corporate data centers, according to the sources.

And:

“Apple and IBM will not call out this work as part of the partnership, but there is momentum at Apple to adopt more of the IBM stack,” a source familiar with the partnership told CRN, speaking on condition of anonymity because the details are confidential. “IBM is becoming one the top software vendors to Apple.”

And:

IBM has an internal team of about 25 salespeople that focuses on selling technology to Apple. That team is forecasted sell $82 million in IBM technology to Apple for fiscal 2016.

Not a huge number for either company, but certainly a sign that the relationship is burgeoning. The headline from the linked article was:

Sources: Apple Is Buying More IBM Products And Drinking The IBM Enterprise Kool-Aid

Not sure I buy that Kool-Aid part. Not seeing anything here that makes me thing IBM is changing Apple’s thinking. To me, this seems like smart business for both sides.

ESPN:

Documents laying out some of the original “Laws of Base Ball” sold for $3.26 million early Sunday morning, setting a new record for the highest-priced baseball document.

A spokesman from SCP Auctions told ESPN that the buyer wished to remain anonymous.

It was not me.

Craig Hockenberry, writing on the Iconfactory blog:

There’s only one way for manufacturers to improve displays and gain a competitive advantage. They need to make the displays “deeper”; able to show a wider range of color. It’s also clear from Apple’s work that they see smarter displays, with things like True Tone technology, as a way to distinguish themselves in a crowded market.

Apple is in a unique position with regard to color management. They own a technology called ColorSync that first saw the light of day in 1993 with System 7.1 on the Mac. It’s also been integrated at a system-level for all of the OS X releases. It’s a very mature technology that recently made its way to mobile in the iOS 9.3 release.

On the other side of the coin, Android has no color management. Companies like Samsung are going to find it impossible to pull off something like True Tone and DCI-P3 without the aid of color management.

This is a well written, understandable walk through the future of color. Deep, but not too deep. A great read.

This is an interview with ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons, asking him about Prince, his guitar playing, and his influence.

Q: You’re a little bit older, you come from Texas and I’d imagine you first learned about Prince in the early ’80s, when you were both MTV stars.

Billy: As you may remember, he began bubbling up without a lot of advance fanfare. There was just this vague knowledge of this new guy on the scene called Prince. And then, of course, we all got our world rocked when “Purple Rain” showed up at the theaters. Even today, I’m struggling to try and emulate that guitar introduction to “When Doves Cry.” It’s just a testament to his extraordinary technique.

Q: Wait. When you say emulate — you mean you try to play it and you can’t?

Billy: I continually come back to attempting to piece together each and every one of those segments. And it’s very short. It’s not an extended solo by any means. But the way it is delivered. There’s certainly no way to write it. You’ve just got to dive in and feel it to see if you could come close.

In the interview, Billy talks about technique and references the video below. Prince was a master of technique. Take a listen. Prince is in complete control. This is not about speed, this is about breathing life into his guitar, making it an extension of his Princely self.

Daisuke Wakabayashi, writing for The Wall Street Journal:

Apple Inc. sold twice as many Watches as iPhones in each device’s debut year. Yet the smartwatch is dogged by a perception that seems premature given the history of Apple’s most popular devices: disappointment.

This is damning Apple with faint praise.

But reading on:

As the Watch marks its first anniversary on Sunday — two days before Apple’s quarterly earnings announcement — the product’s fate is critical to the company. It is Apple’s first all-new product since the iPad and a test of its ability to innovate under Chief Executive Tim Cook, when sales of iPhones are slowing.

So far, the numbers appear solid. Apple doesn’t disclose sales, but analysts estimate about 12 million Watches were sold in year one. At an estimated average price of $500, that is a $6 billion business — three times the annual revenue of activity tracker Fitbit Inc.

By comparison, Apple sold roughly six million iPhones in its first year. As a new entrant, the Watch accounted for about 61% of global smartwatch sales last year, according to researcher IDC.

To me, no matter how you slice this, the Apple Watch is a remarkable success. A $6 billion business its first year out of the gate. True, there is no Apple Watch success without riding the coattails of the iPhone juggernaut. But that qualifier shouldn’t diminish the Apple Watch’s success. This is a rev one piece of hardware.

The original iPhone was, by today’s standards, clunky, buggy, and underpowered. But it was just the beginning. Same with Apple Watch.

I continue to wear my Apple Watch every day. At a glance, I know the outside temperature, can see my next calendar event, and read emails and instant messages as they arrive, all without pulling my iPhone out of my pocket. All without a hitch. A remarkable achievement for a first generation product.

Andrew Hayward, writing for Macworld:

One year ago, just before the release of the Apple Watch, we spoke to several game developers about the coming future of wrist-based wearable gaming. All of them were excited, but some were uncertain of what was ahead—in part because some were developing for a smartwatch they’d never worn, and a device that wasn’t quite like any other before it.

Now, as the Apple Watch nears a full year on the market, we’re taking another look at gaming on the device, this time with a lot more experience. We’ve played hours of wearable games, tapping and swiping through tiny narratives or battling fantasy monsters, and we’ve watched as the initial enthusiasm and intrigue around wearable gaming quieted considerably.

Talking with developers again today—some of whom we spoke with last year, along with others—there’s still excitement about the Apple Watch gaming market today and ahead. But there’s still uncertainty, this time over whether players are going to embrace wearable gaming like they did smartphone games, if developers will push hard enough with new ideas, and if/when Apple will shine more of a spotlight on their creations.

With the potential release of a second generation of Apple Watch and the requirement that Apple Watch apps be able to run independent of their paired iPhone overlords, this is an interesting time for Apple Watch game developers. New opportunities are definitely on the horizon.

Ben Thompson, writing for Stratechery:

I do believe that Apple’s products — their devices anyways — are superior, particularly if you value the finer details of industrial design, build quality, and little UI details like scrolling and responsiveness that seem so simple but are so hard to get right. And, frankly, it’s not surprising that Apple is good at this stuff for the exact reasons laid out above: everything about the company is designed to produce integrated devices that don’t sacrifice perfection for the sake of modularity.

But…

The problem is that everything that goes into creating these jewel-like devices works against being good at services.

Apple is set up to share their expertise across product lines, in what’s called a unitary organizational form. Knowledge is centralized in functional areas, such as marketing, finance, engineering, with this expertise spanning all products. Great for creating products that integrate well. Not so great for running services, like iCloud or advertising.

The strength of integration is its mass of specifics, building for an incredibly complex tangle of devices and demands. Services, on the other hand, tend to be more general purpose. To succeed, a service should serve the widest possible customer base.

As you make your way through the post, ask yourself whether Apple is an integrated product company or a services company. Interesting post.

Since Prince’s sudden death, speculation has mounted over the trove of unreleased music he left behind: how much of it there really is, when it may emerge and who will get to make decisions about what happens to it.

But nearly as much uncertainty hangs over his existing body of work, which has been largely unavailable on many of the most popular online services, including Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube.

I wonder what the person who ultimately has control will do.

On Friday, the Department of Justice said in a filing that it would no longer seek a court order to compel Apple to help it unlock a Brooklyn drug dealer’s iPhone.

In a letter sent to Judge Margo K. Brodie of the Eastern Distict of New York, who had been considering the government request, U.S. attorneys said that an unnamed individual had provided the device’s pass code and that “the government used that pass code by hand and gained access to the iPhone.”

Still not over.

In the race to develop self-driving cars, the United States and Europe lead in technology, but China is coming up fast in the outside lane with a regulatory structure that could put it ahead in the popular adoption of autonomous cars on its highways and city streets.

I’m not surprised at all. This is going to be an interesting battle over the next 5 years or so.

Apple:

Starting June 1, 2016, all new watchOS apps submitted to the App Store must be native apps built with the watchOS 2 SDK or later.

Yes. Please.

“Microsoft has agreed to withdraw its regulatory complaints against Google, reflecting our changing legal priorities. We will continue to focus on competing vigorously for business and for customers,” a Microsoft spokesperson said in an email.

Google, in a separate email, said the companies would want to compete vigorously based on the merits of their products, not in “legal proceedings”.

Farrelltron Graphics:

Insanely rare video of the now iconic ballad “Purple Rain” live in 1983 at First Avenue in Minneapolis. This is the first time the song Purple Rain was ever performed live and this performance was the bare bones used on the album and in the movie.

This was Prince’s signature song. The video is fascinating especially if you watch the movie afterwards, as I did last night. You can definitely hear how the audio from this video is used in the movie. Speaking of the movie, as I said on Twitter last night, “I learned something disturbing tonight I didn’t know 30 years ago. “Purple Rain” has some classic tunes but it’s a crappy movie.” It really is poorly acted. But the musical performances more than make up for the deficiencies.

John Vettese, writing for WXPN Music Notes:

there was once a time when The Boss was just a young dude with a guitar and a dream. We hear that in this recording of his first-ever radio appearance, on WBCN in Boston on January 9, 1973. It might just be my favorite Springsteen rarity – I love how giddy and unsteady he sounds, the breezy saxophone commentary from Clarence Clemons, the way they effortlessly play off one another. Does this outdo the album version on Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.? Perhaps.

A Springsteen fan? Then you’ll love this.

[H/T Brother Stu]

Jason Kottke lays out, visually, that Apple, Reebok, and TrapperKeeper all used the exact same font at one point in time. Fascinating.

From the Google Search blog:

Last year we launched video actions in Search to help viewers find direct options to watch the shows they are looking for on programmer and distributors mobile apps and sites or stores like Google Play.

Today, I’m excited to announce that, coming soon, Google Search will have live TV listings. So now when you’re looking for The Big Bang Theory, we’ll not only show you the apps and sites where you can find the latest episode, but also show which channel you can turn your tv to later in the evening or week to catch it live.

This is a solid step in the right direction. Personally, I’d love to see an all-in-one guide, with links to imDB or Rotten Tomatoes ratings, and notifications for when a show is on your specific cable/Apple TV/Amazon Video setup.

One service I used to use is LocateTV, which (until it shutdown recently) let me build a list of movies I want to watch and notified me when the movie was on my cable system. This was also a step in the right direction, hate to see it go. I’d love to see something better emerge from the ashes.

And how about a Siri API to drive it all.

Siri, let me know when Horace and Pete is available on Netflix

That is something I really need to know.

Nevan King does a fantastic job speculating on Siri’s process and explaining the concept of an API (Application Programming Interface, the code that lets one program interface with and control another). The thing I love about this piece is that you don’t need to be a programmer to make your way through it. All you need is a user level understanding of Siri and iOS.

If you are at all interested in Siri’s process, and how it could work eventually, I highly recommend this read.

AnandTech does their typical great job digging into the details. In this case, Brandon Chester keeps the focus on the 9.7″ iPad Pro display, looking at things like DCI-P3 gamut support and the underpinnings of True Tone.

New York Times:

Last week, Apple’s iBooks Store and iTunes Movies were shut down in China, just six months after they were started there. Initially, Apple apparently had the government’s approval to introduce the services. But then a regulator, the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television, asserted its authority and demanded the closings, according to two people who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

“We hope to make books and movies available again to our customers in China as soon as possible,” an Apple spokeswoman said in a statement.

This is troubling. Apple needs China for growth, and they need an entire intact ecosystem to keep customers coming back for more. Hopefully, this is a short term political disagreement that can be solved through negotiation.

Dan Moren:

But. My chief frustration—and what keeps me from using more of the service’s functionality—is that the only way to get at the features is via my computer or iOS apps. I can’t stream any of this content where I watch most things: my TV.

That may be changing, though.

I read Dan’s piece with a lot of interest. This could be a great app for a lot of people on Apple TV. Comcast seems to want to do something to get the FCC off its back, and this could be it.

Marco Arment:

While a good search-ad system could benefit the App Store, customers, and many of us, nothing in Apple’s track record suggests that they’re willing or able to do this well.

But a bad search-ad system, on top of bad search, will only further damage the App Store, funnel more of our already slim margins back into Apple like a massive regressive tax, and erode customers’ confidence in installing new apps.

I’ll be honest: I can’t imagine a scenario where this would go well.

The paywalled report claims that the fighting is holding back Apple from fixing “technical problems that have plagued iCloud and iTunes,” while at least one key engineering manager is said to have departed the company over the ongoing conflict.

Political infighting is the worst.

FY 16 Second Quarter Results Apple’s second quarter earnings announcement has been rescheduled to Tuesday, April 26, at 2:00 p.m. PT/5:00 p.m. ET out of respect for the friends and family of Bill Campbell, whose memorial service will be held Monday. Apple executives and employees will be attending the service to remember Bill and his many years of friendship and service to the Apple community.

Very classy.

Microsoft Corp’s quarterly adjusted profit missed analysts’ estimates as a continued slump in personal computer sales hurt the company’s core Windows business, sending its shares down 4 percent in extended trading.

Bad day to report earnings.

Google’s parent Alphabet Inc reported a first-quarter adjusted profit that was lower than analysts’ estimates, as cost per clicks fell.

I believe this is only going to get worse.