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.
I wish the interview was longer. I was really interested in hearing more about Kottke’s experience at Apple. Wondering what those various boards were that he was showing off. I bet Woz knows.
Thanks to Twitter, I got my wish. Check out the video on this page [Autoplay warning, but worth it], in which Daniel Kottke gives us a nice guided tour of the very first prototype Mac mother boards. Lovely.
Benjamin Mayo, writing for 9to5mac, digs into the Facebook battery drain issue:
Ari Grant says there are two main problems with the app as it stands. One of which is a CPU spin state where the app would be instructing the CPU to be constantly doing ‘something’, even if the activity was unnecessary. Hence, the app would be using battery unnecessarily as it was keeping the CPU working without achieving any task for the user.
The other issue is related to improper management of audio sessions. This explains the prolonged background audio sessions. According to the post, if you left the Facebook app whilst watching a video the app would continue audio playback of the paused video. This effectively meant the app was playing silence indefinitely, through the background audio session. Facebook claims the app isn’t doing anything nefarious whilst it is in the state.
Good that Facebook is addressing this.
Moving on, it’s not a bad idea to check your battery usage, see what apps are sucking up the most battery. Should be reasonably proportional to their usage.
Go to Settings > Battery, then wait just a bit while iOS does its thing. Note the tab just above the list of apps that lets you switch between Last 24 Hours and Last 7 Days.
Finally, here’s a wish list item for iOS. If you go to the search page (swipe home screen to the right, or pull down from any of the springboard screens) and enter Battery in the search field, iOS will not find Settings > Battery. If you ask Siri to go to Battery settings, no love there either.
Settings is a complex enough beast, it’d be nice to have a way to search it. Any suggestions?
UPDATE: Wish granted (or, perhaps, ignorance corrected)! In Settings, pull down on the main screen and there be a search bar. Added in iOS 9.
How much extra work would it be to add it to Siri and the regular Spotlight search? Have I just used up another wish? [H/T Skylar Primm]
Daniel Kottke, a college friend of Jobs’ and one of Apple’s first employees, says it was basically an accident that he revealed one of Jobs’ biggest secrets to the world: the fact that Jobs had a daughter, Lisa. According to Kottke, Jobs was furious.
That’s the reason they stopped speaking and one of the central plot points in the new movie “Steve Jobs.”
And:
“I get one final call from him: ‘Could you clarify a question for me? Is it true that Steve has a daughter named Lisa?” Kottke recalled. “I did not really hesitate … My answer was, ‘Yeah sure he has a daughter named Lisa.’ I really did not know he was denying it.”
The comment became an important part of a Time Magazine article released in conjunction with Moritz’s book, and an insurmountable obstacle in the friendship between Kottke and Jobs.
The linked article has an embedded [Autoplay warning] video interview with Kottke. It’s sensationalized, but worth watching anyway.
I wish the interview was longer. I was really interested in hearing more about Kottke’s experience at Apple. Wondering what those various boards were that he was showing off. I bet Woz knows.
In the age of wireless speakers and Bluetooth streaming, vacuum-tube amplifiers may seem antiquated, but you don’t have to be an audio nerd to appreciate their appeal. Designed to power traditional speakers and/or headphones, these devices are throwbacks, to be sure. Still, when their steampunk-esque glass tubes glow a soothing orange, it’s evident something magical is happening here—and your favorite tunes will never sound the same.
The science behind how these radiant glass tubes produce better sound is difficult to grasp. Suffice to say, just as nothing quite matches the ambience created by an incandescent bulb dimmed low, nothing quite sounds like a good tube amp. Audiophiles will argue about whether a solid-state or tube amp is superior. However, it’s best to think of tubes as an aesthetic choice—akin to applying a vintage filter to a pristine snapshot.
I have no idea if these actually sound better than their more expensive digital counterparts but they do look a lot cooler.
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The Chapman University Survey of American Fears, Wave 2 (2015) provides an unprecedented look into the fears of average Americans. In April of 2015, a random sample of 1,541 adults from across the United States were asked their level of fear about eighty-eight different fears across a huge variety of topics ranging from crime, the government, disasters, personal anxieties, technology and many others.
A little light reading going into your weekend. The list is interesting. How does it correspond to your personal fears and worries? I think it’s hilarious that “Zombies” and “Clowns” rank at all, let alone enough to make the list. And having “Obamacare” at 35.7% followed closely by “Illness” at 34.4% is kind of ironic.
Todd Stabelfeldt is sending his wife a romantic text. He taps his chin on a button mounted on his wheelchair, then grins, pleased with his wooing.
A quadriplegic since he was 8, Stabelfeldt can’t move anything below his neck. Now a 36-year-old engineer and business owner, he’s turned his wheelchair into a powerful mobile communication hub using switches, a Bluetooth headset and an iPhone 6.
He averages a phone call every six minutes and sends more than 100 texts a day.
Wow. This guy gets more done in a day than I do in a week.
About a month ago, we ran a post pointing out a mysterious new “eye in speech bubble” emoji.
Now we know.
From Wired:
What was still unclear at the time was what purpose the new emoji served. Shortly after it appeared, a designer named Erik Veland used the text-to-speech feature to discover that the emoji is described aloud as “eye in speech bubble representing anti-bullying campaign.” Mystery solved! Except … why did Apple put an anti-bullying emoji in its unreleased iOS update? How did Apple foresee people using it? And what campaign was it representing, exactly?
Interesting. Will this bring in a wave of new cause-sponsored emoji?
Apple Inc. will build an additional 200 megawatts of solar power in China and push suppliers to make similar commitments, as the maker of the iPad and Apple Watch seeks to offset its global-warming emissions in the world’s most polluting country.
The solar investment comes atop two previously announced solar farms in southern China that have now been completed, producing a combined 40 megawatts of power, Apple said in a statement Wednesday. The company will also partner with suppliers, including iPhone maker Foxconn Technology Group, on an additional 2 gigawatts of solar, wind and hydropower projects.
“Climate change is one of the great challenges of our time, and the time for action is now,” Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook said. “We believe passionately in leaving the world better than we found it and hope that many other suppliers, partners and other companies join us in this important effort.”
It’s things like this that make me such a fan of Tim Cook and of Apple.
If you want to dial a phone number with your Apple Watch, the absolute simplest way is to use Siri.
Hey Siri: Dial 408-996-1010
or
Hey Siri: Dial my wife at her office
Now this last bit only works if you’ve told iOS who your spouse is. Here’s one way to do that:
On your iPhone, open Contacts
At the very top should be an entry labeled “My Card”, the entry that represents you. Tap to open that contact.
Tap the Edit button in the upper right corner.
Scroll down until you find the field “add related name”. Tap to add a related name.
The default for this field is mother. Tap mother and find the spouse field, tap spouse. Then tap Done.
Now tap the info button (all the way to the right, an i in a circle), then find your spouse’s contact, select it.
Add more related names if you like.
Tap Done.
Now Siri knows who your spouse is.
Or, you can take the simple path and just say:
Siri, XXXX is my wife.
Siri should ask you to verify that (use your own spouse/sibling/parent/child/etc for XXXX), then make the change to your contacts. [H/T Andrew Escobar]
Alternatively, take a look at this iDownloadBlog post, which reviews an app that lets you actually dial a phone number on your Apple Watch.
Yesterday, we ran a post called In defense of The New York Times, which detailed a very public battle between The New York Times (exposé of Amazon) and Amazon (Medium post rebutting those charges).
In the post, Ben Thompson made the point that these types of battles are now being fought in public, that newspapers no longer control the means of mass communication.
A few days ago, we ran a post about Theranos, linking to Jean-Louis Gassée’s first person encounter with the blood-testing medical startup embroiled in its own battle with The Wall Street Journal.
In an eerie parallel with the Amazon/NYTimes back and forth, Theranos has posted its own public rebuttal to the negative media coverage.
As a consumer, the heart of this story is the accuracy of the Theranos blood tests. In their blog post, Theranos detailed the FDA approval of their process. If there is an issue, surely the FDA would respond in some way.
More as this unfolds but, point is, we’re seeing a new forum for the court of public opinion.
Hitting 61% this quickly is remarkable. Passing 90% for the last two major iOS releases shows the lack of fragmentation in the market and the real value in Steve Jobs’ original vision of controlling the hardware and the software.
The splintering of hardware control in the Android universe amongst a variety of manufacturers means low/slow adoption rates for new Android releases and, ultimately, makes it very difficult to build a cohesive defense against malware.
Apple has released the iOS 9.1 update for iPhone and iPad, which includes 184 new emojis. This makes iOS the first operating system to include every single emoji in the Unicode Standard.
Popular requests included in this release include the volleyball, taco, middle finger and champagne bottle; as well as new faces for sickness, thinking, and rolling eyes.
Apple today released seven (!) new Apple Watch ads highlighting some of the features and capabilities of the wearable. Each of the ads is just 16 seconds long and is perfect for catching the attention of TV viewers and giving them a message… before they get bored.
I’m still not completely sold on this new ad campaign. Not sure what it is but they just don’t grab my attention the way other previous efforts have.
There are updates available for iOS (9.1) and watchOS (2.0.1). I just got done installing both, timed the installs, figure that might be useful info to have.
I did the iOS update first. On my iPhone 6s Plus, it took 11 minutes from the moment I started the download until the Hello message came up on my iPhone once the update was installed.
The Apple Watch update took longer, as it usually does, but not nearly as long as past updates. From the time I started the download until the update was installed and my Apple Watch asked me to enter my security code, it took 30 minutes. Tack on another 4 minutes for the automatic Apple Watch restart that happens after you reenter your code.
Now it’s on to the iTunes 12.3.1 and El Capitan 10.11.1 updates. I won’t be timing those.
Apple and Dropbox said Tuesday that they do not support a controversial cybersecurity bill that, according to critics, would give the government sweeping new powers to spy on Americans in the name of protecting them from hackers.
The announcement by the two companies comes days before the Senate expects to vote on the legislation, known as the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act, or CISA.
“We don’t support the current CISA proposal,” Apple said in a statement. “The trust of our customers means everything to us and we don’t believe security should come at the expense of their privacy.”
This is and will continue to be an ongoing battle. It’s great to see companies like Apple, Dropbox and others drawing a line in the sand and pushing back on the government’s attempts to access our private information.
Apple isn’t just a technology company. It’s increasingly becoming a luxury brand in its own right.
Apple’s sponsorship of the 2016 Met Gala and exhibition—announced last week— further underscores this shifting identity. Dubbed “Manus x Machina: Fashion in the Age of Technology,” the exhibition will highlight the intersection between machine-made fashion and handmade haute couture.
I sat down with Apple Chief Design Officer Jony Ive, Vogue Editor-in-Chief Anna Wintour and Costume Institute Curator Andrew Bolton to talk about the gala and exhibit, how technology and fashion can work together, and the future of the two worlds.
Apple’s move into the “luxury market” is interesting but fraught with pitfalls. The fashion world is notoriously fickle. So it’s always interesting to hear from Apple’s principals about what they think and how they are going to navigate this minefield.
I didn’t know Steve Jobs during the early parts of his career — his first stint Apple and then his time running the failed NeXT — which take up most of the movie. And I know very little about his relationship with his daughter Lisa.
But the Steve Jobs I did know — the one the movie never shows — balanced his strong views and his impatience with a willingness to listen to others and to change his mind. In our many conversations, he loved to debate product and tech issues. Yes, we had some shouting matches, but we also had a lot of serious, calm conversation and even some laughs. And, unlike the man in the movie, I saw him listen to, and eventually agree with, contrary views raised by an employee.
Every review I’ve seen of this movie is similar – that it would have been a good movie had it been about an entirely fictitious character. In particular, reviewers have raved about Fasbender. But every person who knew Jobs echoes what Mossberg said – the movie is unfair to Jobs and doesn’t do the entirety of his life — or even the period portrayed — justice.
Ally Kazmucha, writing for The App Factor, walks through the various settings that can impact Facebook’s drain on your iPhone battery. Even if you don’t use Facebook, this is still worth a read, just to get a sense of the basic approach that might apply to other apps you do use.
