If you’ve got a Sonos smart speaker system in your house, starting today your system has Apple Music compatibility.

If that’s you, you’ll want to take a few minutes to read through Federico Viticci’s Sonos/Apple Music review. Not all love and roses, but it’s a first release.

Reuters:

U.S. vehicle safety regulators have said the artificial intelligence system piloting a self-driving Google car could be considered the driver under federal law, a major step toward ultimately winning approval for autonomous vehicles on the roads.

And:

“NHTSA will interpret ‘driver’ in the context of Google’s described motor vehicle design as referring to the (self-driving system), and not to any of the vehicle occupants,” NHTSA’s letter said.

“We agree with Google its (self-driving car) will not have a ‘driver’ in the traditional sense that vehicles have had drivers during the last more than one hundred years.”

And:

Karl Brauer, senior analyst for the Kelley Blue Book automotive research firm, said there were still significant legal questions surrounding autonomous vehicles.

But if “NHTSA is prepared to name artificial intelligence as a viable alternative to human-controlled vehicles, it could substantially streamline the process of putting autonomous vehicles on the road,” he said.

Just another domino falling. Our robotic overlord drivers are coming.

Cyrus Farivar, writing for Ars Technica:

On Wednesday, Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) and Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-Tex.) introduced a new bill in Congress that attempts to halt state-level efforts that would weaken encryption.

The federal bill comes just weeks after two nearly identical state bills in New York state and California proposed to ban the sale of modern smartphones equipped with strong crypto that cannot be unlocked by the manufacturer. If the state bills are signed into law, current iPhone and Android phones would need to be substantially redesigned for those two states.

From Congressman Lieu’s Wikipedia page:

Lieu graduated from Stanford University in 1991 with a B.S. in Computer Science and an A.B. in Political Science and graduated magna cum laude with a J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center in 1994, where he was Editor in Chief of the Georgetown Law Journal and received four American Jurisprudence awards.

That’s a Computer Science degree from Stanford and a Law degree from Georgetown. Nice to see this sort of expertise involved in this issue at such a high level.

Joe Rossignol, writing for MacRumors:

Norwegian police will force a 27-year-old man accused of drug possession to unlock his iPhone with Touch ID, according to local website Bergensavisen [Google Translate]. The police believe the confiscated smartphone may contain evidence about where he obtained the illegal substance.

And:

It remains unclear if Norwegian police are aware that Touch ID requires a passcode as supplemental verification after 48 hours of disuse, a restart, or three failed fingerprint entry attempts. The accused was arrested on January 25, so it may be impossible for authorities to unlock his iPhone with Touch ID without taking additional measures.

In the U.S., a Virginia court ruled that fingerprints, unlike passwords and passcodes, are not protected by the Fifth Amendment. In his ruling, Judge Steven C. Frucci opined that “giving police a fingerprint is akin to providing a DNA or handwriting sample or an actual key,” which is permitted under federal law.

Interesting all the way around. Even if the Norwegian courts were too slow to be effective in this case, they’ve now established a precedent.

More interesting is the issue of police in the US being able to force you to use your finger to unlock your phone.

[H/T David Sobsey]

Downloaded Firewatch yesterday, the new game from Campo Santo and Panic. I’ve long been a fan of Panic, thought I’d check it out, just take a quick look.

Lost a day. Played it straight through to the end, pretty much non-stop. I don’t usually do that. This is a game that draws you in, immersing you in a steadily evolving storyline, with game mechanics that quickly become second nature. And the game somehow manages to grab you emotionally, too. You care about these characters. They seem very real.

This is not a first person shooter. In fact, there is no shooting at all. There’s cursing, but no more than you’d find at my house when I’m trying to fix something. Instead, this is like a gentle puzzler, with a heavy dose of map reading. It’s really all about the storyline, even more about the relationship between the two main characters.

If you are interested in the story behind the development of the game, learning how Panic and Campo Santo got together, here’s the Panic perspective, and the Campo Santo perspective. Both are interesting reads.

Note that Firewatch is available for the Mac, via Steam, and as a PlayStation 4 download. Worth every penny, in my opinion.

Ken Segall:

In honor of the Super Bowl I’m setting the time machine back to 1985, when Apple ran its notoriously awful Lemmings commercial on that year’s Super Bowl.

Just twelve months earlier, Apple had stunned the technology and advertising worlds with its famous 1984 commercial, and Lemmings was meant to carry on the blockbuster tradition.

Instead, it was a dud of extraordinary proportions.

But what exactly is the origin of Lemmings? It’s a story that’s never been told publicly, and it’s definitely not what you think. Join me now on this journey down memory lane…

Segall is one of those guys who was deeply involved with Apple (he came up with the name “iMac”) and I love his stories of the behind the scenes goings on at Apple during his time working with the company.

Engadget:

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has a knack for space-themed travel posters. A little over a year ago, its “Exoplanet Travel Bureau” series made its debut with an homage to the iconic WPA prints of the 1930s. This year, the JPL commissioned Seattle-based design firm Invisible Creature to be part of a project/gift for staff. Invisible Creature designed three “travel posters” to be included in the “Visions Of The Future” 2016 calendar. Among the collection are visuals for a multi-planet tour, a stop at Mars and exploring Enceladus, Saturn’s icy moon.

For those of you wanting to remain on Earth, the JPL will make the artwork available as downloadable posters soon, but for now, you can purchase high-quality prints from the source.

The look and feel of these posters is spectacular. Very art deco.

The Verge:

Well you did it, mean-spirited internet humans. Tim Cook has deleted the Super Bowl picture that sent Twitter into a tizzy on Sunday night. As the Denver Broncos celebrated their Super Bowl 50 victory, Apple’s CEO made his way onto the field and took a photo of all the excitement (and confetti). He uploaded it to Twitter with a message congratulating the Super Bowl champs.

Now, either Cook didn’t take much time to review his shot or he just didn’t care, but it was a very blurry snapshot of what must’ve been a thrilling moment. Although he took a second, far better shot minutes later, the damage was already done — and the mockery and ridicule came flying. There were too many “Shot with iPhone” jokes to count.

There are several lessons here: Always check your photos before posting. The internet never forgets. Anyone can take good shots with the iPhone but anyone can take bad shots with it as well. And, if you’re the CEO of a company that makes cameras, make sure your shots are really good before you post them.

This is a fascinating story. Academics do the research for free, but they have to buy back their papers through expensive subscriptions from publishers. Enter the dark web.

I love this bag. It’s quality from top to bottom and the leather artisan even signs it.

It’s no surprise that lawyers are considering suing Apple, but this is an interesting case.

People who have iPhones running iOS 9 sometimes see “Error 53” when trying to restore the phone through Apple’s iTunes software after being prompted to connect the device to a computer. The error, which prevents the user from using the device, seems to occur on the iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, iPhone 6S, and iPhone 6S Plus after their Touch ID sensors are repaired by unapproved retailers.

I can understand Apple’s reasoning, but perhaps they should have been more proactive in letting people know before they updated.

Ginny Marvin , writing for Search Engine Land:

According to Google, 82 percent of TV ad-driven searches during the Super Bowl happened on smartphones. That’s a 12-point jump from last year, when 70 percent of Super Bowl ad-related searches across Google and YouTube derived from phones.

During this year’s game, just 11 percent of searches related to ads aired during the big game happened on desktop/laptop, and seven percent occurred on tablets.

Not surprising that this number is increasing. I wonder if most of the desktop/laptop searches are from folks actually watching the game on those devices.

Macworld:

One of the joys of macro photography is that for most of our lives most of us just don’t look at the world in that much detail. Whether you’re shooting or just looking at close-up shots, there’s something a bit magical about taking the time to examine things around us in minute detail. What they reveal is the “analogness” of those apparently crisp, perfect objects, their imperfections, and the artifacts of their manufacture.

So join me. Come near. Nearer! Let’s quite literally take a close look at some of the vintage Apple hardware in my collection.

As awful as the slideshow mechanism is, it’s a great example of macro (close up) photography and the beauty and attention to detail of some of Apple’s hardware.

Before you ask yourself why, click through and look at the picture. If that doesn’t awaken the maker in you, this just might not be of interest.

I just love this sort of thing. Now if only my old ADB mouse could fit into the picture somehow.

Meet Kathleen Kennedy, read the Vanity Fair interview.

In 2012, after more than three decades producing hits such as E.T., Jurassic Park, and Schindler’s List, Kathleen Kennedy was handpicked by George Lucas to head Lucasfilm. Now, with the smash success of The Force Awakens behind her, Kennedy sits down with Sarah Ellison to talk about her mentors, her sense of equality, and her vision for the Star Wars franchise.

And:

Now, with the release of The Force Awakens, which is already one of the most lucrative films in history, Kennedy has become the high priestess of the relaunched Star Wars enterprise. The new movie’s position as the first feminist Star Wars film—with Rey, the breakout female protagonist—only adds to the impression that Kennedy is, as the Star Wars screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan put it, a “secret superhero in training.”

Great read.

Jacob Weisberg, writing for The New York Review of Books:

Americans spend an average of five and a half hours a day with digital media, more than half of that time on mobile devices, according to the research firm eMarketer. Among some groups, the numbers range much higher. In one recent survey, female students at Baylor University reported using their cell phones an average of ten hours a day. Three quarters of eighteen-to-twenty-four-year-olds say that they reach for their phones immediately upon waking up in the morning.

Most importantly:

Once out of bed, we check our phones 221 times a day—an average of every 4.3 minutes—according to a UK study. This number actually may be too low, since people tend to underestimate their own mobile usage. In a 2015 Gallup survey, 61 percent of people said they checked their phones less frequently than others they knew.

And:

Our transformation into device people has happened with unprecedented suddenness. The first touchscreen-operated iPhones went on sale in June 2007, followed by the first Android-powered phones the following year. Smartphones went from 10 percent to 40 percent market penetration faster than any other consumer technology in history. In the United States, adoption hit 50 percent only three years ago. Yet today, not carrying a smartphone indicates eccentricity, social marginalization, or old age.

This all rings true. It’s who we’ve become.

I kind of like it, though. I like the access to information, the ability to read and learn, to sip from the cup of knowledge as much as I can hold.

Zac Hall, from 9to5Mac, talks through lots of cool new stuff coming with the next release of tvOS.

From previous betas, you can merge apps together to form a folder. For example, you might move all your on demand channels into one folder and your games into another folder.

With this new beta, you can now use dictation (you have to enable it first) to speak your text, anywhere there’s a search text field. Not clear if this will work in third party apps but, hopefully, this will just work automagically. Here’s a demo video Benjamin Mayo put together showing the dictation at work.

Can’t wait for this all to hit the release version.

Christian Zibreg, writing for iDownloadBlog, lays out a metric ton of iPhone/iPad storage saving tips.

Like this one:

Restarting your iPhone or iPad once a day not only ensures smoother than usual performance, it also gives iOS a chance to clear caches that are clogging up the ‘Other’ storage section, visible upon connecting an iOS device to iTunes. Cached files are created when streaming or viewing content like music, videos and photos.

You cannot delete these system caches manually as iOS automatically removes them when it needs more space. Restarting a device may prompt iOS to clear at least some cached content. To restart your device, hold down the power button until a “Slide to power off” message appears, then slide to restart.

And:

Force-restarting your device forces iOS to wipe clean its temporary files and purge caches. To perform a force restart, press and hold the Sleep/Wake and Home buttons simultaneously until an Apple logo appears. In addition to clearing caches, this method may help your device run a little faster for some time.

Never thought about force-restarting. I generally only do that when I do an iOS update. Any down side to this approach?

This chart from Wristly (click the chart to embiggen) shows the relative importance of Apple Watch versus other products, things like your iPhone, iPad, sunglasses, jewelry, etc.

As an example, the Apple Watch is more important to 47% of polled users than their sunglasses. Their sunglasses are more important to 22% of those polled. Presumably, 31% of them valued both equally.

Ars Technica:

The Expanse series takes place two centuries from now in the Belt, a ring of asteroids that orbit the Sun between Mars and Jupiter. People who have migrated to the Belt come from all over Earth speaking dozens of languages, and they’re often isolated for years at a time on remote mining stations. To communicate, they evolve a creole called Belter, which becomes the lingua franca for what is essentially the solar system’s new proletariat. The problem? In the book, Belter could be referenced. But now that The Expanse was coming to television, people would actually have to speak the damn thing. SyFy suddenly needed a linguist who could build a language out of dozens of parts. Luckily, Franck knew a guy. He soon recommended Farmer, who delivered a lot more than they bargained for.

I’m really enjoying this show. It started off a little slow but hit its stride about four episodes in.

That’s certainly original.

The Onion:

Disappointing the thousands of fans in attendance as well as an estimated 100 million viewers watching at home, the Super Bowl 50 halftime show was marred Sunday by the stadium’s functioning sound system, sources confirmed. “Right from the beginning, the sound was working normally, and unfortunately, I could clearly hear the singing,” said 29-year-old spectator Joe Kessler.

Priceless.

What if you could get 5% of your day back? What would you do?

You already have enough work to do today and shouldn’t have to waste time looking for the things you need to do your job.

Igloo makes it easy to find what you need, when you need it. And it’s not just for locating your traditional intranet stuff like HR policies and expense forms. It also helps you find experts, talk about problems and share content with your team. So stop digging through your inbox for that file from 3 months back and give yourself the tools you need to do your best work.

Try it yourself or send your IT guy to investigate Igloo, an intranet you’ll actually like.

Jean-Louis Gassée, writing for Monday Note, takes us along for the ride as he ambles to his local Microsoft Store to purchase a Surface Pro 4, then compares it to his iPad Pro and MacBook.

Won’t spoil the entertaining read, but my favorite part:

Stepping up to pay, I recognize an Ingenico Point-of-Sale terminal that accepts Apple Pay. Instead of swiping my credit card, I present my Apple Watch and, cling, the transaction goes through. The salesperson didn’t realize the store took Apple Pay – and her face says so. On that fun note, off to the office I go.

Apple Pay, via Apple Watch, paying for a Surface Pro 4 at the Microsoft Store. Fascinating.

From MixPanel, here are the latest iPhone adoption numbers:

To get a sense of the potential market for a smaller screen size iPhone, add up:

• iPhone 6: 34.36%
• iPhone 6Plus: 9.07%
• iPhone 6s: 13.57%
• iPhone 6s Plus: 4.21%

That gives a total of 61.21%, leaving 38.79% of the iPhone market prime for an upgrade. Interesting.

Dan Moren, writing for Macworld:

The Mac’s success is especially heartening for someone like me, who grew up in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, when the platform was a target for jeers and the company seemed to perpetually appear with that good old “beleaguered” adjective in every news story. No matter how much we asserted the merits of the Mac, we were told that it was nothing more than a niche product, okay for creative use, but not sufficient for real work.

Twenty-some years later, and the worm has certainly turned. As Tim Cook is fond of reminding us on every quarterly conference call, the Mac routinely experiences growth despite the contraction of the overall PC market. 10 years ago, Apple was selling 3 or 4 million Macs in a year. In 2015, it topped 20 million. While it may be only a small chunk of the company’s overall revenue, the Mac has maintained an upward trend for the last decade.

Obviously, much of the Mac’s success is due to the success of surrounding products, such as the iPod, iPhone, and iPad. That’s certainly true.

But the Mac is (still) the hub at the center of the wheel of Apple products, the dashboard at the heart of Apple’s ecosystem. At the same time, as Apple’s star was rising, Google’s free applications suite loosened the stranglehold long held by Microsoft’s Office suite. And that paved the way for the Mac’s acceptability in the button down business world.

Will the iPad slowly replace the Mac, becoming the new hub? Not seeing it, at least not yet. I use my Mac and iPad equally. But my Mac is still the control center of my Apple ecosystem and I’m just fine with that.

Christian Zibreg, writing for iDownloadBlog, pulled together this tutorial that walks you through the various ways you can use 3D Touch with Apple Maps.

My favorite bit? This. To remember where you parked your car, unlock your iPhone, then force touch on the Apple Maps icon to reveal this menu:

Tap Mark My Location and Apple Maps will drop a pin pretty close to where you are standing. Easy peasy.