This has been around a while, but seems appropriate for this time of year.
Type in your address, watch the snow fall on your house. An odd perspective, since the view is from inside your house but the view is from the front of your house, but pretty cool nonetheless.
Pete Souza:
Throughout the year, I post photographs of my White House work on a regular basis to my Instagram, @PeteSouza. Many followers have inquired about whether a certain photograph is taken with an iPhone or DSLR (digital single lens reflex camera). In choosing the photographs for my year on Instagram, I decided to select only iPhone photographs that were captured in the square format on an iPhone. For many purists, the square format was the original inspiration for Instagram. And I certainly admire those that continue to post only square photos taken with a smart phone.
I love these iPhone shots because it shows that, in the right lighting conditions, the iPhone can take shots every bit as good as a professional’s DSLR. It’s not the camera that is important. It’s the photographer and their view of the world.
Macstories:
Screenshot apps tend to fall into one of two categories: managers and editors. On iOS, screenshot management apps dominate, likely because until Apple added a ‘Screenshots’ album to the Photos app with iOS 9, there was no good way to separate screenshots from snapshots of family and friends. On the Mac there are fewer apps, but their feature sets tend to be deeper.This article casts a broad net to provide an overview of the top screenshot apps on iOS and Mac and help you find the apps that meet your specific needs.
This is a wonderful ridiculously long list of a number of screenshot methods and apps. You’re sure to find one that does just what you need.
Petapixel:
If you’re a Mac user and are annoyed that OS X automatically launches Apple Photos every time you connect a device or insert a memory card, there’s good news for you: you can disable the program from launching for all devices with a single command.
I find this change by Apple really annoying in particular because, every time you format your memory card (which I do often), OS X/Photos (an app I’m never going to use but can’t delete – thanks Apple!), forgets and treats it like a new device. So being able to kill this activity using a Terminal command is a Godsend.
From The Beatles’ official site:
LISTEN TO THEIR MUSIC THE MINUTE CHRISTMAS EVE ARRIVES.
On December 24 at 12:01am local time — here, there and everywhere — The Beatles’ music is available for streaming worldwide via the following nine services:
Apple Music | Deezer | Google Play | Microsoft Groove | Amazon Prime | Rhapsody | Spotify | Slacker | Tidal
The Beatles streaming will be LIVE at 00:01 AM YOUR TIME and you can track its progress around the world, from east to west, on the globe here at thebeatles.com.
HAPPY CRIMBLE, WITH LOVE FROM US TO YOU.
By my calculations, that should be tonight (the evening of December 23rd), starting just after midnight, your local time. Which means the streaming has started for some of you.
Here’s the link to the Apple Music Beatles stream.. In my neck of the woods, the link currently takes you to The Beatles’ iTunes page.
Happy Crimble, everyone.
Universal Audio are simply the best audio plug-ins on the market. They remain true to the analog versions, while giving you the flexibility to make the best music possible. This is all I use.
NSNorth is more than a tech-talk focussed event. It is designed to inspire you to learn something new amongst an encouraging and aspiration-driven group of friends.
I’ve heard great things about this conference. It takes place April 28-30, 2016.
Drum Werks IX is a powerful collection of slow and mid-tempo rock drum loops. A hard rocking addition to Beta Monkey’s versatile Drum Werks line of drum loops and samples, Drum Werks IX offers nearly 600 acoustic drum loops and samples in comprehensive Groove Sets™, from moody 60 BPM vibes through power rock stomping at 90 BPM.
I love Beta Monkey drum loops. They are played by real drummers and recorded in a studio, so your songs sound like your played with a real drummer—because they are. I’ve been buying loops from Beta Monkey for years.
This is kind of cool. You come across a video you want to watch and you bookmark it to Zinc using a Safari extension. You can then bring it up on your Apple TV or other device to watch it later.
ZDNet:
I used the Internet for years before there was a Web, but when Tim Berners-Lee proposed the Web, an Internet-based hypertext system, to his boss at CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory, we didn’t know it but we were on the brink of a revolution.Berners-Lee’s idea wasn’t new. You can trace it back to Vannevar Bush’s As We May Think article in July 1945. Personally, I think Ted Nelson’s 1960 Xanadu hypertext vision had even more influence on how the Web would turn out. And, of course, Apple’s HyperCard did give us a hypertext system that might have beat Berners-Lee to the Web… except HyperCard was totally network unaware.
The door was open for Berners-Lee to turn the hypertext dream into our Web reality.
Hard to believe it wasn’t that long ago. Us old folks will remember what it was like accessing the internet before the World Wide Web. You kids nowadays don’t know the struggles we had using Archie, Gopher and Mosaic.
“The creation of backdoors and intercept capabilities would weaken the protections built into Apple products and endanger all our customers. A key left under the doormat would not just be there for the good guys. The bad guys would find it too.”
Exactly right. The government—all governments—need to realize that leaving a door open is a door that’s open to everyone, not just law enforcement. They don’t seem to get that.
Good for Apple.
A lot of people have been asking me about guitars this Christmas, so I thought I’d show you the acoustic I’m using. If you’ve ever heard me talk about acoustic guitars, you know I love Taylor—I think they are the best.
The one I’m using is the 612ce 12-Fret. It has a smaller body, which makes it really easy to play, but it’s warm with a huge sound. I’d highly recommend this guitar.
Bloomberg:
Painters put brushes to canvas, sculptors take chisels to marble, potters shape clay on a wheel, but the process for handblown glass is, to put it mildly, slightly more obscure.“I’ll be out in the world selling my work at a festival, and I’ll ask a child if they know what glass is made of,” says Lisa Aronzon, 58, a glass-blowing artist based in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. “I’ve actually had a child say, ‘Plastic?’” When Aronzon explains that glass is made of sand, “Their eyes light up. … It seems like magic, or alchemy,” she says. And in a sense, it is.
I’ve never done it but I’ve always been fascinated by glass blowing. I could watch people do it all day long.
Designed with simple controls, comfortable ergonomics and beautiful filters in mind, allowing you to take photos that are instantly ready to share with the world.
What makes a great camera stand apart is not down to features, per pixel sharpness or the amount of lenses in your bag. What matters is that the camera gets out of the way and lets you take the pictures you want.
I’ve been using this app since it was first released and love it.
A buckwheat pillow is kind of like a beanbag for your head. The hull fill provides unique support that’s superior to soft traditional pillow types. Hullo’s features include:
Drop what you’re doing—go and check out Hullo. Try it for 60 nights. If it’s not your favorite pillow, send it back to us for a refund.
Thanks to Igloo Software for sponsoring The Loop this week. 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.
Some of these are fascinating. Some are dopey, true, but even those help show what is possible. Good food for thought.
Jonny Evans, writing for Computerworld, had the chance to speak with Kathryn White, the IBM Vice President with responsibility for the IBM / Apple partnership.
Integrating the IBM MobileFirst for iOS apps with Watson will allow them to predict customer trends and improve decision-making. In a financial advisor app, for example, [we] could use Watson Analytics to visually show the advisor what’s trending, what [the] market sentiment is and help them make decisions. With Watson, the app will get better and smarter over time.
And:
For example…the Ancillary Sale app delivers predictive analytics to flight attendants, suggesting next-best actions like which beverage or upgrade option to recommend to a passenger. With Watson, the app could learn about a repeat passenger’s preferences and make recommendations specific to them. That would take the airline’s customer service to the next level.
Some tantalizing opportunities to bridge the deep thinking power of Watson through the net and iPhone, all the way to the Apple Watch on your wrist.
Kirk McElhearn wondered why his MacBook battery kept dying so quickly. So he did some digging.
From Apple’s web site:
Order in-stock items by 2pm on 12/23 and get free next day delivery, or two hours before closing on 12/24 for pick up at any Apple Store.
Two hours before closing on Xmas eve, now that’s cutting it tight.
Jan Dawson, writing for Tech.pinions:
Apple, which might be described accurately, if incompletely, as a player in the consumer electronics market, makes telecom-like margins while competing with those barely profitable vendors. And just as interesting is the fact that, as players that have historically only competed indirectly in the consumer electronics business enter it, at least some of them are choosing to follow Apple’s route to the high end of the market.
And, explaining a chart that shows Apple margins towering over the rest of the industry:
Apple is the one exception to all of this, with between 25% and 30% operating margins during the latter half of this chart, while everyone else scrambles at 5% or lower margins. How does Apple achieve this distinction? Well, it’s due to a combination of factors but it’s probably best summarized this way: Apple provides premium products at a premium price, and is able to justify the premium through differentiation based on a tightly integrated approach to hardware and software.
Apple has always favored this approach, high margins maintained by controlling all the hardware and software. This has been Apple’s approach since the release of the Macintosh way back in 1984 (with a brief, pre-Steve Jobs-return, when they allowed other folks to license the Mac OS). Apple builds the software in house and designs all the hardware in house.
How are things working out for the Android universe?
It’s increasingly clear that both OS vendors turned hardware vendors have decided to embrace the high end along with its high margins, while leaving the scale and the thin margins to their OEMs. Meanwhile, their OEMs continue to struggle to make the business work, with several exiting segments of the market entirely and several others clearly having a hard time staying afloat. Sony has abandoned PCs and continues to struggle in smartphones, HTC increasingly looks like it’s on its last legs as an Android vendor, Toshiba is considering spinning off its PC business, and Samsung’s smartphone business – once the poster child for success making Android phones – continues to slip. It sometimes seems as if the only vendors making Android phones and Windows PCs who aren’t struggling in some way are the licensors of the operating systems.
Interesting post.
Rene Ritchie, writing for iMore:
Phill Schiller taking over on App Store is interesting. While Schiller has effectively had that kind of clout for years, the actual structure of Apple Store has been split between his and Eddy Cue’s organizations. Schiller has and continues to own developer relations, app review, and evangelism. Cue has and continues to own the iTunes infrastructure, but now passes editorial and business management to Schiller. There will no doubt be some overlap, but also a lot of advantages to being closer together. App Store still lives on iTunes, at least for now, so how the continue to work together may not change completely, but this does cement Schiller’s role as the final word on everything App Store.
What this means for developers in general and indie developers in specific remains to be seen. Historically there have been issues in both orgs. App review has generated complaints about capriciousness and lack of responsiveness pretty much since launch, and that has always been under Schiller. iTunes infrastructure, resources, and tools—or the lack thereof—has been under Cue but now move at least partially under Schiller. In the past, long-requested features like upgrades, trials, and Mac App Store parity have been nebulous in terms of who and how they could be lobbied. Now Schiller’s name is officially on the top and it’s absolutely clear—the buck stops with Schiller.
John Gruber, from this Daring Fireball post:
Schiller taking over the App Stores is very interesting — and is definitely a shake-up that seemingly wasn’t widely known internally until today’s announcement. Up until now, the App Stores were in a weird place in terms of the org chart — they were officially under Eddy Cue because the stores are extensions of the iTunes Store, but partly under Schiller with regard to developer relations. The problem wasn’t that there was conflict between Schiller and Cue, but that without one person in charge of the whole thing, some problems inevitably fell through the cracks.
Treating the App Stores as part of developer relations instead of “media content” is clearly the right way to go. The stores are built on the iTunes Server platform (WebObjects, still!), but running an App Store is nothing like distributing movies, TV shows, books, and music. There are far more improvements that need to be made on the developer relations side of things than the technical side of things (although better search would be welcome).
Bottom line, Phil Schiller has a tremendous opportunity for foundational change. He has the chance to make things better for developers in all the App Stores (Mac, iOS, tvOS). Key to this is understanding exactly what the problems are. What is driving some developers to release their apps outside the safety of the official Mac App Store? Why is it so hard to make a living building apps? Are these things fixable? Can Apple make app discovery on the various App Stores easier for users and better for developers?
My two cents: I think this would be a perfect time for Apple, and Phil Schiller specifically, to reach out to the developer community, create a funnel of feedback to allow developer voices to be heard at the very top. There are so many voices, so many different mechanisms for complaint, but what’s needed is focus, something that let’s Phil’s team build a short list of problems that, if solved, would make life better for developers and users alike.
iMore:
Jony Ive will give Charlie Rose a look inside “Apple’s secret design studio” in an upcoming episode of 60 Minutes that will be aired on Sunday, December 20 at 7:30PM ET & 7PM PT on CBS. Rose’s tour of Apple’s “store of the future” with retail chief Angela Ahrendts will also be highlighted on the show.
While this may be interesting viewing, don’t get your hopes up to see any “secrets”. I’ve been inside Apple’s labs and studios and whenever an outsider is present, all the good bits are well hidden and/or covered in black cloth.
Apple:
Apple and China UnionPay announced a partnership to bring Apple Pay, which transforms mobile payments with an easy, secure and private way to pay, to China. China UnionPay cardholders will be able to easily add their bank cards to Apple Pay on iPhone, Apple Watch and iPad, providing added convenience and security to everyday shopping.“China UnionPay is dedicated to promoting payment innovations and providing secure, convenient mobile payment experiences for its hundreds of millions of cardholders, aligning multiple parties in the industry,” said Chai Hongfeng, executive vice president of China UnionPay. “We’re very excited to offer Apple Pay among a diverse set of innovative payment options that work with China UnionPay QuickPass.”
“Apple Pay has revolutionized the way millions of people pay every day with their iPhone, Apple Watch and iPad,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services. “China is an extremely important market for Apple and with China UnionPay and support from 15 of China’s leading banks, users will soon have a convenient, private and secure payment experience.
“Extremely important” may be the understatement of the year. This is the single most important thing to happen to Apple Pay since it was first announced.
Ars Technica:
John Chen, the Blackberry chairman and CEO, is ripping Apple’s position that granting the authorities access to a suspected criminal’s mobile device would “tarnish” the iPhone maker’s image.“We are indeed in a dark place when companies put their reputations above the greater good. At BlackBerry, we understand, arguably more than any other large tech company, the importance of our privacy commitment to product success and brand value: privacy and security form the crux of everything we do. However, our privacy commitment does not extend to criminals,” Chen wrote in a blog post titled “The encryption Debate: a Way Forward.”
Well, if anyone would know a thing or two about a tarnished brand, it would be the CEO of Blackberry. I’d rather have Apple making sure law enforcement requests have a “clear legal authority” rather than Chen’s plan to roll over whenever the government wants to “help us be safe”.
Macstories:
Pigment works in a rather unsurprising way: the app launches to a library of digital coloring books, ranging from animal figures such as butterflies and birds filled with smaller patterns to flowers, geometric shapes, 3D structures, and the omnipresent mandalas for a total of 200 illustrated works. Most of the books’ artworks have been licensed from Shutterstock, but there are also books by independent artists as well as patterns created with Assembly, Pixite’s innovative design tool for iOS. It’s a good selection of themes and patterns, in line with popular trends in adult coloring books and a solid start for an app that wants to replicate the coloring experience on an iPhone and iPad.
Adult coloring books have been around for a while. As soon as I saw the iPad Pro and the Apple Pencil, I knew they would be a good fit for people like me who can’t draw but like to color.
BusinessInsider:
Apple announced a sweep of management changes on Thursday, which includes the appointment of Tor Myhren, who has become the company’s vice president of marketing and communications.43-year-old Myhren will join in early 2016 from well-respected ad network Grey Group, where he was worldwide chief creative officer and president of its New York shop Grey New York.
Now he’s moving client-side. At Apple he’ll be responsible for all the brand’s marketing efforts — everything from its big TV campaigns, to packaging, and retail store displays.
It’s been rumored for a while that Phil Schiller hasn’t been happy with Apple’s ad campaigns in the past 18 months. This is a sign the company is looking to shake up how it projects itself to the consumer.
If you go to Google’s home page, you’ll see a puzzle dedicated to Ludwig van Beethoven. Though it’s not really his birthday, December 17th is traditionally celebrated as Beethoven’s day. If you check out his Wikipedia page, you’ll see December 17th listed as the day he was baptized. Interesting distinction.
Anyway, the puzzle is a fun little distraction and worth a few minutes of your time. You’ll step through a few of Beethoven’s more well known compositions, putting them in the right order so they sound right musically. Easy enough, but I enjoyed the challenge and the music.
Jeb Blount, writing for Reuters:
Access in Brazil to the WhatsApp phone-messaging application was cut off early on Thursday after a judge told phone companies to block the popular service for 48 hours for failure to comply with a July court order in a criminal case.
SindiTelebrasil, a Brazilian phone-company association, said it received the order to shut off WhatsApp text message and Internet voice telephone service throughout Latin America’s largest country Wednesday afternoon. The blockade went into effect at midnight (0200 GMT Thursday) as required by the court.
Wow. Imagine if this happened to Twitter. Or Facebook. Or Messages. WhatsApp is huge, with more than 100 million users in Brazil alone.
UPDATE: Reuters just issued this update:
A Brazilian court on Thursday ordered the lifting of a 48-hour suspension on the services in Brazil of phone-messaging application WhatsApp, owned by Facebook Inc, overturning an order from a lower court.
From the Apple press release:
Apple® today announced that Jeff Williams has been named chief operating officer and Johny Srouji is joining Apple’s executive team as senior vice president for Hardware Technologies. Phil Schiller, senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing, will expand his role to include leadership of the revolutionary App Store® across all Apple platforms. Apple also announced that Tor Myhren will join Apple in the first calendar quarter of 2016 as vice president of Marketing Communications, reporting to CEO Tim Cook.
“We are fortunate to have incredible depth and breadth of talent across Apple’s executive team. As we come to the end of the year, we’re recognizing the contributions already being made by two key executives,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “Jeff is hands-down the best operations executive I’ve ever worked with, and Johny’s team delivers world-class silicon designs which enable new innovations in our products year after year.”
Cook continued, “In addition, Phil is taking on new responsibilities for advancing our ecosystem, led by the App Store, which has grown from a single, groundbreaking iOS store into four powerful platforms and an increasingly important part of our business. And I’m incredibly happy to welcome Tor Myhren, who will bring his creative talents to our advertising and marcom functions.”
It’ll be interesting to see what changes Phil Schiller brings to the App Store.