If you are subscribed to Apple Music, Siri will fire up Somebody That I Used to Know. If you are not, Siri will defer, telling you you don’t have access to Apple Music.
Now ask Siri:
What’s the top song this week?
This time, Siri will point out a variety of web articles, whether or not you have Apple Music installed.
This issue is getting a lot of coverage. Some of the reaction, perhaps predictably, is quite negative, implying that Apple is intentionally holding back data from non-subscribers.
If the result of the query is a song, Siri is programmed to play it for you. If Siri can’t play the song, she tells you. Not seeing any evil intent here.
I do find it interesting that Siri will go to the web if there is no built-in chart data, but not offer that web solution when she does have the chart data but the user does not have Apple Music. Why not point them to the web and, if you must, make your Apple Music sales pitch along the way? Seems to me, that’d be more useful to the person who asked the question in the first place.
Every Live Photo in your photo library takes up about twice as much space as a still picture. Want to reclaim some of that space? Take a look at Lean.
Lean is a simple app that lets you scan through a list of your Live Photos. Tap to watch a Live preview, tap the checkmark to select that Live Photo as one you want slimmed down. Once you make your selections, tap the Clean Up button and Lean will delete the video, but leave the still photo.
Ben Popper, writing for The Verge, pulled together a highly detailed, long form look at YouTube’s new paid subscription service, Red. YouTube Red gives you ad-free videos, combined with ad-free music streaming via Google Play Music.
On the question of YouTube Red cannibalizing YouTube’s existing advertising:
If the most passionate fans stopped looking at ads, wouldn’t that make the service less appealing to marketers who want their brands associated with YouTube stars? “Let’s take it to the extreme,” said [Chief Business Officer Robert] Kyncl. Say every paid television customers in the United States — 100 million individuals — sign up for YouTube Red. That would still be less than a tenth of YouTube’s total audience, barely making a dent in the number of eyeballs that would be available to advertisers. Kyncl laughed — “and we have a very long way to go to that kind of number.”
In many ways, YouTube Red is facing the same challenges as Apple, finding ways to nail down permissions from the various rights holders:
Getting permission to include every single video on YouTube ad-free was no easy task. Kyncl and his team had to convince millions of independent creators, large and small, many of whom worried that their fans would be forced to pay in order to see all their videos, of the benefits of a subscription model. Independent musicians and labels whipped up righteous anger across the web. Fans and media glommed to the story. But for users who choose to opt out, the vast majority of videos will still be available on either side of the paywall, with ads for ordinary users and ad-free for subscribers.
YouTube also had to convince its big music label, television network, and movie studio partners. Many of these big media companies requested a more favorable cut of the subscription revenue than the service was offering to the average YouTuber, on the grounds that their premium content would be the main driver of subscriptions. But YouTube held out, and in the end almost all the big players came along. The only one that hasn’t is Disney, but YouTube plans to forge ahead regardless, saying it has 98 percent of its content covered by agreements with rights holders.
And on the split with the creators:
With the advertising model, YouTube takes 45 percent of the revenue, and the remaining 55 percent goes to creators. With Red, creators will be paid a percentage of the total subscription revenue, minus YouTube’s’s cut, based on the watchtime of their videos each month. The more devoted their fan base, the bigger that check could become. YouTube won’t share the exact percentage it plans to take from Red, but says creators will still get the majority of subscription revenue.
Jack Conte, the founder of the crowdfunding service Patreon and a musician who makes a large part of his living through videos, doesn’t think Red will bring about significant improvements for creators. “Subscription services are great for consumers. Pay 10 bucks and have any song or any video in your pocket, whenever you want,” he says. “But for the creators, there is still way too much of a middleman.”
Aerial is a Mac screen saver based on the new Apple TV screen saver that displays the aerial movies Apple shot over New York, San Francisco, Hawaii, China, etc.
Aerial is completely open source, so feel free to contribute to its development!
These Apple TV screen savers are beautiful and they look just as good on your Mac’s desktop.
The Nobel Prize for chemistry was announced earlier this month: three scientists shared the almost $1 million award for their work on how cells repair DNA.
Once again it did not go to John Goodenough, the 93-year-old physicist regarded as the father of the lithium ion battery. You probably haven’t heard of him, but for years, pundits have predicted that Goodenough would win science’s highest honor. And for good reason. His work transformed society. His is possibly the most revolutionary invention yet not to win the prize. What’s it to you? Well, your life wouldn’t be the same without his work.
It’s hard to disagree with this characterization of the importance of the lithium ion battery. And that importance will only grow as we move forward with more and more kinds of electronics — in particular, electric cars.
Time to flex your Apple knowledge, with a quiz that delves into the company’s history and pulls out past classics (along with some lesser known products). Are you an Apple nerd extraordinaire or do you find it hard to tell your iPods from your iPhone? Take the quiz and see how you fare.
As I suspected, I’m not nearly as familiar with this stuff as many of you are. To be fair, I wasn’t around during the time of the really early Apples and Macs so I don’t recognize many of them. Still, I made it to the “Apple Nerd” category of the quiz.
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Billings Pro is a time tracking and invoicing app that helps freelancers and small businesses create beautiful and professional invoices in as little as 60 seconds. With less time managing invoices, you have more time to focus on clients and do the work you love.
New in Billings Pro: support for El Capitan, and iOS 9, including multitasking support.
Apple ran a new series of ads over the weekend. You’ll recognize the music, voiceover, tempo and timing, it’s the same as the other recent ads.
This one in particular caught my attention. Take a look at the embedded video below, be sure to listen all the way to the end, then come back here.
At about :57 in, Stephen Curry drops a 3 pointer, and the voice of Lake Bell (huge fan of her work) kicks in and says, “so yeah…XXX…changed”. What’s do you hear?
UPDATE: OK, it’s my imagination (close captioning proves it’s “that’s what’s changed”), but I am hearing (and can’t NOT hear) “so yeah…that shit’s changed”. Most people hear the former, some people (glad it’s not just me) hear the latter. It’s sort of a blue dress/brown dress thing, but for the ears.
Want to be notified when a web page changes? For example, want to know the exact second the Apple TV goes from “coming soon” to “actually on sale”?
Check4change is a Firefox extension, though it doesn’t require you to make Firefox your default browser. Install the extension, visit a web page, select the text you want to monitor and select a reload interval, then stop thinking about it.
For example, if you had gone to the Apple TV store page and marked the “coming soon” text, check4change would have notified you the second that text changed and the Apple TV went on sale.
Allyson Kazmucha, writing for The App Factor, lays out an excellent series of tips that will help extend your battery life.
To give you just a taste:
Location services let apps see where you’re located and can report that information back to the app. If you have apps set to Always, this can happen in the background without your knowledge.
I’ve never found a reason to completely disable location services, and there are even a few apps I let have full access. However, letting all apps run rampant in the background isn’t a good idea.
Ally then walks you through the settings, lays out a recommended path. Solid stuff, all the way around.
One quibble. At the end, Allyson says:
I see far too many people flicking apps out of the multitasking tray thinking it saves their battery. It actually does the complete opposite. iOS automatically saves states so apps can launch as they were without having to restart completely. Flicking them away and then restarting them actually consumes more battery.
Compare this process to putting your computer to sleep instead of shutting it down and restarting it each time. Which method do you think uses fewer resources?
I get the logic here, but there are times when a background app eats battery when it shouldn’t. The Facebook app is one example, and perhaps the most egregious, but it is not the only one. To get a sense if this is happening on your iPhone, take a look at the usage data on the Settings > Battery page. If there is an app at the top of the list that looks like it is eating far more than its fair share of battery, that app is a candidate for “flicking away”.
The new Apple TV goes on sale today is now on sale. It comes in two flavors, 32GB (US$149) and 64GB (US$199). If you are reading this, you no doubt are considering a purchase.
Which version should you buy? Is it worth spending the extra $50? Do you need that extra storage?
If these questions click for you, take a read of this iMore article, written by Rene Ritchie. In it, Rene walks you through the 32GB vs 64GB decision tree, explores the elements that impact storage, helps you home in on which model to buy.
As to value of the new Apple TV vs its older, cheaper sibling (US$69), spend a few minutes reading this Brian Barrett article from Wired.
On universal search:
About that remote! It’s new, too, and has fun new tricks like a touchpad and a dedicated Siri button. Tap it, and you can ask Siri to whisk you away to a specific app, or to recommend a funny show (keeping in mind that your idea of “funny” may not align with Siri’s, although she does use Rotten Tomatoes to determine what’s good), or to fish a specific piece of content out of one of your many streaming options.
That last trick is thanks to universal search, another new feature previously found on Roku and, to a lesser extent, Amazon’s Fire TV. You can access it by yelling at Siri or with good old typing. Want to watch Miller’s Crossing, but aren’t sure where to find it? The new Apple TV will tell you your options; it’s currently free on HBO Now, versus a $10 iTunes purchase. And with that, you just saved yourself 10 bucks (or, more likely, the frustrating of not getting to watch Miller’s Crossing).
To me, universal search, Siri integration, and the new touchpad-driven remote are the dividing line, the features that make the new Apple TV so compelling.
Here’s a link to the Apple TV page. I just ordered the 64GB model.
After what seems like light-years of griping about the fact that Netflix users get more (and sometimes better) titles in the U.S., Canadians will soon have exclusive access to something our American friends might actually install a VPN for: Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
A representative from Netflix confirmed to CBC News on Sunday that Canada is its only territory in which streaming rights for the hotly-anticipated forthcoming Star Wars film has been secured.
“The reason Netflix will be able to offer the much-anticipated movie in Canada next year — and not in the U.S. or anywhere else — has to do with the timing of when Disney’s pay-TV distribution deals were up for grabs,” reports Variety, which broke the news Friday.
Once again, Americans will pretend to be Canadians.
After racking up the year’s best per-screen average in its opening weekend and doing strong business in limited expansion, “Steve Jobs” hit a stumbling block in its national release. It debuted to a measly $7.3 million, only a little more than the $6.7 million that “Jobs,” a critically derided film about the iPhone father with Ashton Kutcher, made in its initial weekend. Going into the weekend, some tracking suggested that the picture would do as much as $19 million.
So what went wrong?
This dissection by Variety is really interesting. I never expected it to do Star Wars box office but I am a little surprised it has done so little. Apparently, there’s lots of blame to go around.
Hold on to your butts and roll for initiative, because this might be the greatest game we’ve ever played. Together with our sister site, Geek & Sundry, we invited the one and only Vin Diesel to come play Dungeons & Dragons with us… and not only did he accept, he may have become our new best friend.
D&D isn’t cool. It’s fun, and I played a lot in high school and college, but it’s not cool. But, if one of your players is Vin Diesel, a giant buff nerd in his own right, D&D gets very cool and even more fun. BTW, the DM in that video is really good. There’s even a 30 minute version of this on Youtube.
A recently discovered map of Middle-earth annotated by JRR Tolkien reveals The Lord of the Rings author’s observation that Hobbiton is on the same latitude as Oxford, and implies that the Italian city of Ravenna could be the inspiration behind the fictional city of Minas Tirith.
The map was found loose in a copy of the acclaimed illustrator Pauline Baynes’ copy of The Lord of the Rings. Baynes had removed the map from another edition of the novel as she began work on her own colour Map of Middle-earth for Tolkien, which would go on to be published by Allen & Unwin in 1970. Tolkien himself had then copiously annotated it in green ink and pencil, with Baynes adding her own notes to the document while she worked.
Blackwell’s, which is currently exhibiting the map in Oxford and selling it for £60,000, called it “an important document, and perhaps the finest piece of Tolkien ephemera to emerge in the last 20 years at least”.
I hope whoever buys this puts it on display somewhere.
If you’ve never seen The Shining, add it to your list of must see movies. It’s based on a phenomenal book by Stephen King and, in my mind, it’s Kubrick’s masterwork (though A Clockwork Orange, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Dr. Strangelove, and Full Metal Jacket certainly give it a run for the money). The Shining has an IMDB score of 8.4, if you care about that sort of thing.
In 2007, Director Gary Leva put together a documentary, lovingly exploring the details behind the making of this movie. If you are a film fan, this is a real gift.
Not sure when this first appeared online, but I just encountered it, thought it was worth sharing, perfect fare for a lazy Sunday. Enjoy.
I worked on the Mac OS Wi-Fi client user experience at Apple from 2007–2012, implementing a number of features to help users identify when a Wi-Fi connection was not working as expected, as well as the utilities built into the OS to help debug problems when they occurred. When I left Apple, just after my five year anniversary, I owned the Wi-Fi Utility and Network Utility apps, along with some assorted supporting components deep inside the OS.
During my last few years I spent a lot of time working closely with AppleCare on customer Wi-Fi and networking issues: poring over user trouble reports, sitting down at call centers and listening in on calls, and generally doing everything I could to improve the user experience of Wi-Fi for Apple users. I failed.
Ignoring the bad copyediting and his possible behind the scenes motives for writing this, Watt’s piece is a pretty damning indictment of at least one seemingly dysfunctional area inside Apple. I will say that, as soon as I heard about WiFi Assist, I thought it was a bad idea from a customer point of view. I didn’t realize that it might have been a bad idea inside Apple, too.
How fair could this be? I mean, they kind of stacked the deck with this one, given that the folks who run the test run a site called Android Authority. Not even worth reading on, is it?
Still…
If you’ve been following the homepage over the past week, you’ll have seen we published a big blind smartphone camera shootout to find out how the new Sony Xperia Z5 camera compares to the iPhone 6S, Galaxy Note 5 and the LG G4. Like our past blind camera shootout, we didn’t tell you which device took each image and today, we’re revealing the results – which smartphones takes the crown?
It turned out to be quite a close-run race between the iPhone 6S and the Galaxy Note 5 for the title but Apple’s latest just beat Samsung’s latest with 38.2 and 34.1 percent of the 7810 votes respectively.
Bob Ross introduces us to his “Almighty” assortment of tools and colors, tells us that anyone can paint, and creates a landscape of a forest path just after a rain shower.
This guy was utterly hypnotic. When I was a kid, I could never pass up watching an episode even though I couldn’t paint and had zero interest in painting. Watching and listening to Ross was just incredibly soothing.
Last week, Tesla rolled out new autonomous functions to the Model S, and drivers are already reporting some serious issues. There are already several cases of Tesla’s Autopilot software losing the plot, with cars veering off the road and breaking the speed limit.
But Tesla’s Autopilot isn’t totally at fault. Before launch, Tesla claimed that the Model S’ new Autosteer functions were designed solely for motorways – but that hasn’t stopped some drivers using it elsewhere.
I predict that, within a year, we’ll hear about an accident involving this feature where it will turn out that the driver was completely ignoring what the car was doing. Of course, he’ll blame Tesla and sue.
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 can’t solve the conflict in Syria but it can help with conflict with coworkers. Igloo’s not just for your traditional intranet stuff like HR policies and expense forms. It lets you work better together with your team. Stop digging through your inbox for that file from 3 months back and give yourself the tools you need to do your best work.
Send your IT guy to try Igloo Software and see for yourself why Igloo is an intranet you’ll actually like.
After a number of short teasers, Netflix has finally revealed the first full trailer for its next Marvel series, “Jessica Jones,” and it’s going to be really dark.
The series follows titular character Jessica Jones (Krysten Ritter), a former superhero who is grappling with PTSD after being controlled by a mysterious man Zebediah Killgrave (David Tennant).
Not being versed in the various iterations of Marvel’s super heroes, I’m not familiar with this character so I watched the trailer with no notion of who Jessica Jones is. That being said, this show looks interesting with lots of dark elements. I’m looking forward to watching it in November.
Two days ago, HTC unveiled a new flagship phone, the $399 One A9, with most of the headlines calling the device an iPhone lookalike due to its two-tone design, the antenna bands and a protruding camera lens on the back. The device indeed bears a striking resemblance to Apple’s iPhone 6 and iPhone 6s smartphone series.
In an effort to set the record straight and maybe get a little more free press, the Taiwanese handset maker said that “it’s Apple that copied” its antenna design and unibody construction as HTC first released a smartphone with these features about three years ago.
And:
“We’re not copying. We made a uni-body metal-clad phone in 2013. It’s Apple that copies us in terms of the antenna design on the back,” said Jack Tong, president of HTC North Asia. “The A9 is made thinner and more lightweight than our previous metal-clad phones. This is a change and evolution, and we’re not copying,” he insisted.
Alphabet, Google’s new parent company, announced the tech giant’s first stock buyback on Thursday: nearly $5.1 billion.
The exact dollar value that Alphabet is buying back? $5,099,019,513.59
Of course, this was not a randomly selected number. The square root of 26 (the number of letters in the alphabet) is 5.09901951359. Multiply that by $1 billion and you have the buyback amount.
Alphabet Chief Financial Officer Ruth Porat called it “fun math” during a conference call with analysts to discuss third-quarter results.
