Matthew Bolton, writing for TechRadar, pulled together a fascinating look at both the current state of the Mac as a gaming machine, and the history of the Mac’s evolution in that space.
Just one tiny slice from the article:
It’s hard for a lot of gamers to remember now, but there was a time when the Mac was fertile ground for great games.
Maxis brought the dozens of Sim-something games it did every month to Mac; Bungie grew big as a Mac-exclusive developer, getting to the point where it announced Halo for Mac and Windows (before being promptly snapped up by Microsoft); and Myst, one of the biggest games of all time, was built in the Mac’s ‘make your own app!’ programming tool HyperCard before being ported to every electronic platform with a screen.
If you are at all interested in Mac gaming, this is worth the read.
Charlie Warzel, writing for BuzzFeed News, takes us on a tour of M, the Facebook Messenger based digital assistant that behaves like there’s a human on the other side of the conversation:
In late March, Facebook gave the world a peek at its grand ambition: to use the Messenger platform to effectively become the internet. Yesterday evening, thanks to a test rollout of the company’s virtual personal assistant program, M, some of us were treated to a glimpse of how that process is likely going to go down. Late last night, M popped up in my co-worker’s Messenger app, and, within moments, started behaving exactly like, well, a real human being.
It worked seamlessly, drawing information from other platforms like Yelp. It booked flights (M seems really good at helping you spend your money), explained how to use Snapchat, and recognized articles my colleague had written. It was a little stiff, perhaps, but an effective researcher and a reasonable conversation partner. As my colleague’s screengrabs spread around the internet, watching people tweet about it began to feel almost surreal — a bit Skynet-y. One Twitter user said that M helped him lower his Comcast bill.
M reminds me of invisible boyfriend. How much of M is AI and how much human?
Built atop Facebook Messenger—the company’s instant messaging app—M made its debut this morning, arriving on the phones of a few hundred unsuspecting souls in the San Francisco Bay Area. Yes, it’s the company’s answer to Siri and similar services like Google Now and Microsoft Cortana. But it tackles a broader range of tasks, at least as Facebook describes it. You can ask M questions along the lines of Can you make me dinner reservations? or even Can you help me plan my next vacation?—and it will comply.
And:
If you want a system to automatically identify cats in YouTube videos, humans must first show it what a cat looks like. They must tag all sorts of feline photos. They must provide data. Through the human staff backing M, Facebook is doing this type of thing in unusually complex ways. “This is why we have this big team of people,” Lebrun says. “The data we need is nonexistent.”
Makes me wonder if Apple is exploring a human-assist version of Siri.
CBS CEO Les Moonves did an interview with Bloomberg Business. The video is linked here, though be aware it autoplays.
If you are interested at all in the TV business and the moving pieces like Netflix, Hulu, the networks, Apple TV, this is a fantastic interview, not too long, full of interesting tidbits.
At the very end of the interview, Moonves is asked, “How close are you to a deal with Apple”. Moonves replies:
Apple is having conversation with everybody about doing their own streaming services, we’ve had those conversations, as have the other networks. Do I think something will happen? Probably, but I don’t know when.
To me, this is a party line kind of comment, not at all an indicator of progress or lack of progress. I see a lot of headlines that focus on this tiny part of an incredibly interesting interview. I feel like this is a bit of missing the forest for the trees.
Newer Tesla Motors Model S sedans will be able to steer and park themselves under certain conditions starting Thursday, the carmaker said, although Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk cautioned that drivers should keep holding the steering wheel.
“We’re being especially cautious at this stage so we’re advising drivers to keep their hands on the wheel just in case,” Musk told reporters at the company’s Silicon Valley headquarters. “Over time there will not be a need to have your hands on the wheel.”
The dynamic, engaging and interactive Newseum allows visitors to experience the stories of yesterday and today through the eyes of the media while celebrating the freedoms guaranteed to all Americans by the First Amendment.
I really want to go here. I’m a big fan of history and this museum is definitely in my wheel house.
Jim and Dan talk about Apple’s brand new Magic Keyboard, Magic Trackpad 2, Magic Mouse 2, and the new 5k and 4k iMacs.
Brought to you by Braintree (To learn more, and for your first $50,000 in transactions fee-free, go to braintreepayments.com/amplified) and Squarespace (Visit the link and use the code GUITARS for a free trial and 10% off your first purchase).
On October 14, 1947, high above California’s Antelope Valley, Charles “Chuck” Yeager became the fastest man alive. That day Yeager—an Appalachian farm boy-turned-fighter ace—flew an experimental rocket plane called the Bell X-1 through the sound barrier and into the history books. Fifty years and one day later (and only about 500 miles due north), another fighter pilot—RAF Wing Commander Andy Green—equaled Yeager’s feat but on four wheels. Thrust SSC was the name of his ride, and it made Green the fastest man on Earth. It’s a title he still holds.
But 65 years to the day after Yeager’s supersonic flight, an Austrian skydiver named Felix Baumgartner got his own entry into the record books. Baumgartner rode a helium balloon from Roswell, New Mexico, (yes, that Roswell) 128,100 feet (39,045m) into the atmosphere and then stepped out of its gondola, breaking the sound barrier with nothing more than a pressure suit and the laws of gravity. Luckily for Green, Baumgartner became the fastest man en route to Earth.
All three of these historic supersonic firsts happened on (or about) October 14.
The speed of sound is one of those record marks that capture the imagination, even though it was first broken more than 60 years ago. No matter the conveyance, we are still fascinated whenever someone breaks the sound barrier.
Berkeley Breathed has brought back his popular comic strip “Bloom County” after having retired it 25 years ago at the height of its popularity. At the time, “Bloom County” was published in over 1,200 newspapers. Anthologies that collected the strip were best-sellers.
I can’t tell you how happy this makes me. Along with The Far Side, Bloom County was one of my favorite comic strips. It’s latest iteration has lost none of the sweetness and world-weariness of the characters or the ever-so-gentle skewering of the world through Breathed’s eyes.
It doesn’t seem like a good sign when you have to launch a support account for your new music service, especially when you’re known around the world for ease of use.
A few months ago, I reviewed Taptronome and Taptronome Pro, well made and easy to use metronome apps. Taptronome is free (ad supported) and Taptronome Pro is $2.99.
Well now the folks behind Taptronome have added an Apple Watch app to the mix, and it is just perfect. When I heard about the Apple Watch app, I couldn’t imagine how it could work. I was concerned about lag as the Apple Watch interface communicated to the phone and back again.
Silly me. The whole thing sits on my Apple Watch and there is zero lag at all. It just works. If you are a musician, go get this.
This is an incredibly long list but it is text-based and searchable. The data in this list is helpful if you are configuring a firewall or setting up an IP service.
Bookmark and pass along, especially to any IT friends. [Via Mac Kung Fu]
M.G. Siegler, in a reasonably short piece on his hands on experience with the iPhone 6s Plus:
A year ago, after going back-and-forth as to whether to get the iPhone 6 or iPhone 6 Plus, this time around, with that year of usage under my belt, the decision seemed easy. I went with the iPhone 6s Plus. The rationale is simple: bigger battery. That continues to trump all for me.
Here’s Apple’s battery life projections for iPhone 6s / iPhone 6s Plus:
Talk time: 14 hours / 24 hours HD Video playback: 11 hours / 14 hours Audio playback: 50 hours / 80 hours Standby time: 10 days / 16 days
As you can see, there’s a significant battery life bump when moving from the 6s to the 6s Plus.
I do still prefer the form factor of the smaller iPhone — it’s both easier to fit in your pocket and easier to use with one hand — but it’s definitely nice to have the larger screen if you do a lot of reading. The slightly better camera (optical image stabilization) continues not really to matter to me in practical usage. But still, another nice-to-have.
This is a big issue for me. My thinking is, optical image stabilization will mean better low light photos.
Anyway, the absolute key of the new device has feature parity across both sizes: 3D Touch. In my mind, this is easily the best new feature Apple has launched in quite some time in an “s” model of iPhone. And, as more developers implement it, I have a feeling I’m going to upgrade it to best new feature Apple has launched in quite some time, period.
Yup. And if you haven’t already, take a read of Allyson Kazmucha’s love letter to 3D Touch. Really brings home how important this feature is, and how you’ll actually use it.
I’ve not spent any real quality time with the 6s Plus, but that’s about to change. Mine is on its way!
Solid interview. When asked about comments saying “a lot of the things in the movie didn’t actually happen”, Woz said:
There’s parts of me saying, “Steve, please, please acknowledge the Apple II team”, all the way for 15 years through the movie. Like I would do that?
At the core of this is Sorkin making a movie, not a biography. Woz is saying, if you can get past that fact, it’s a great movie. Not sure I can get past that fact. I enjoyed the Social Network, thought it was a terrific movie, but I don’t have strong feelings about the subject matter in that movie.
The history behind this movie runs very deep to me, and I am intimately familiar with the players, they’ve been part of my entire adult life. It’ll be hard for me to see it and divorce myself from that reality.
Apple Inc could be facing up to $862 million in damages after a U.S. jury on Tuesday found the iPhone maker used technology owned by the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s licensing arm without permission in chips found in many of its most popular devices.
The jury in Madison, Wisconsin also said the patent, which improves processor efficiency, was valid. The trial will now move on to determine how much Apple owes in damages.
And:
WARF sued Apple in January 2014 alleging infringement of its 1998 patent for improving chip efficiency.
The jury was considering whether Apple’s A7, A8 and A8X processors, found in the iPhone 5s, 6 and 6 Plus, as well as several versions of the iPad, violate the patent.
Moving on to damages phase. $862 million is quite a sum, even for Apple.
Apple’s chief design officer Jony Ive in conversation with the director of the upcoming Star Wars film, J.J. Abrams. Moderated by the Academy Award–winning producer Brian Grazer.
An hour long conversation with and between three fascinating people.
The U.S. Justice Department said it’s satisfied Apple Inc. put in place reforms to comply with antitrust laws even though it fought with a monitor appointed to oversee its sale of electronic books.
The government on Monday recommended that the monitoring not be extended. In a letter to the Manhattan federal judge who found in 2013 that Apple illegally conspired with publishers to set e-book prices, the U.S. said Apple has “now implemented meaningful antitrust policies, procedures, and training programs that were obviously lacking at the time Apple participated in and facilitated the horizontal price-fixing conspiracy found by this court.”
While Apple won’t be sad to see the monitor go, looking through other details of this story tells you the monitor will be – he was making a small fortune billing Apple for his court-mandated time.
There are many reasons why Apple is the world’s most valuable company. Tim Cook is celebrated as a supply chain Maester who has internalized the focus on innovation that his predecessor inculcated in the culture. Jony Ive has drawn global raves for making Apple a design icon. Its marketing and branding practices set industry standards. But a visit to the lab where its legacy products — computers — are made suggests another reason.
Sweating the details.
Levy was given inside access to the iMac team while they developed the new machines and, as usual, his writing on the topic is fascinating.
Apple tells you a number of things that iCloud syncs between devices in Settings (or System Preferences) > iCloud, such as Photos, Contacts, and Reminders. But I’ve noticed a number of other OS-level things that sync between my devices (presumably through iCloud), but Apple doesn’t seem to keep a central, comprehensive list. Let’s make one.
Read the list, learn about the stuff that’s shared between devices. Good list. And if you notice anything that should be on this list, be sure to let David know.
Allyson Kazmucha, writing for The App Factor, lays out six specific uses for 3D Touch on the iPhone 6s that make a world of difference. This is a solid list, well described, and worth reading if you have a new iPhone 6s or 6s Plus or are considering a purchase.
If you have an iPhone 6s or 6s Plus, you can take a Live Photo, which is a still picture combined with a 3 second video captured 1.5 second before the still through 1.5 seconds after the still.
You can easily enable/disable Live Photo (there’s a control at the top center of the Camera app – tap it to turn Live Photo on and off), giving you better control over the extra memory that a Live Photo consumes.
Once you take a Live Photo, you can share it just as you would every other photo. If you share the photo using Messages, and if the recipient is running iOS 9, they’ll actually receive the Live Photo. To watch it, they first tap the photo in Messages, then tap and hold to watch the video.
Not every app supports Live Photos. For example, if you email a Live Photo, the email client will only send the still image and not the movie. This same is true if you try to post a Live Photo on Facebook, Twitter, etc. Note that El Capitan’s Messages application does not yet support Live Photos, but the Photos application does.
You can transfer Live Photos between iOS devices and Macs using AirDrop and iCloud Photo Sharing and you can also convert Live Photos into animated GIFs to share on social media. To learn more, read this article by Zac Hall and this article by Serenity Caldwell. Both are full of helpful details.
An interesting bit of internet history, this email from Marc Andreessen, while he was working on Mosaic and before the birth of Netscape, proposes the creation of a core element of HTML, the IMG tag.
Apple just updated the entire iMac line, bringing the option for a Retina display to the 21.5-inch iMac, and a 5K display to every 27-inch model. I had a chance to see the displays last week, and I can say they are spectacular.
I’ve been using the new iMac since last week and will have a review in the next couple of days, but in the meantime, here’s what changed in the iMac world.
The 21.5-inch iMac’s 4K display features 4096 x 2304 resolution and 9.4 million pixels—that’s 4.5 times more than the standard 21.5-inch iMac display. The Retina 5K display on the 27-inch iMac features 14.7 million pixels, 7 times more pixels than an HD display.
The big question I had when I saw the displays was, would I be able to tell the difference. Higher specs are great, but without having some real-world usage, specs don’t mean much. The simple answer is yes you can tell the difference.
With standard sRGB-based displays, many of the colors you see in real life never make it to your screen. Many cameras on the market are able to capture more colors than those screens can actually display. What we see are colors that resemble what the camera saw, but they aren’t exact.
The new Retina 5K and 4K displays feature a wider P3-based color gamut that provides a 25 percent larger color space. This is a significant change and you can see it on the new iMac. Apple showed me pictures in the sRGB range and the same pictures in P3 on the new iMac—the difference was very noticeable.
The 21.5-inch iMac with Retina 4K display has a fifth-generation Intel Core processor and enhanced Intel Iris Pro Graphics. Two Thunderbolt 2 ports now come standard on all iMacs.
The 27-inch iMac with Retina 5K display now comes with sixth-generation Intel Core processors and the latest AMD high-performance graphics.
Magic Accessories
Not only has Apple updated the iMac, but it also updated the accessories to go with the computer. Today, the company introduced the Magic Keyboard, Magic Mouse 2, and Magic Trackpad 2.
There are a lot of changes with the new accessories, but one of the biggest is that they feature rechargeable batteries, eliminating the need for disposable batteries. All three accessories charge via a Lightning cable plugged into your computer.
The Lightning port on Magic Mouse 2 is on the bottom of the device, which led to the obviously question of, how am I going to use the mouse if it runs out of juice? Apple told me that a two minute charge on the mouse will give you a full days use—a two hour charge will give you 30-days use of the mouse.
The ports on Magic Keyboard and Magic Trackpad 2 are always accessible.
The other great thing about the new accessories is that Apple took care of the awkward pairing problems. Plug in the accessory using the Lightning cable and they are automatically paired—when they are unplugged, they remain paired with no issues. That’s the way it should be.
The Magic Keyboard is at a three degree angle, which is about half as much as previous keyboards. I tested it out and it was very comfortable to use. The keys use a scissor mechanism, which is not like the butterfly mechanism introduced in the 12-inch MacBook. However, Apple reduced the key travel from 2.1mm to 1mm with the Magic Keyboard. Key travel on the 12-inch MacBook is 0.5mm.
Magic Trackpad 2 features a 29 percent larger surface and brings Force Touch to the desktop for the first time.
Pricing and availability
The 27-inch comes in three models starting at $1,799, $1,999, and $2,299. The 21.5-inch iMac is available in three models starting at $1,099 and $1,299. The iMac with Retina 4K display starts at $1,499. Every new iMac comes standard with the new Magic Keyboard and Magic Mouse 2—you can order the new Magic Trackpad 2 as an option.
Magic Keyboard is available for $99, Magic Mouse 2 is available $79, and the Magic Trackpad 2 is available starting today for $129.
This video came out last year, around the 3rd anniversary of Steve’s death. I came across it a few days ago, thought it was appropriate timing and and interesting anecdote. Not sure what the lesson is here, but definitely feels like a parable.
As you can tell from this post, I tend toward the minimalist/utilitarian, but if you like photos on your Apple Watch, this iDownloadBlog post is worth checking out.
A while back, I started a master list of Safari content blockers (at least the ones I found). Over the weekend, Carlos Oliveira and I banged around a few ideas and Carlos edited the list, adding 2 codes to each entry.
One code indicates whether a content blocker is free, the second code indicates whether the content blocker supports an editable white list (turn off blocking for specific sites).
Please take a look at the list, ping me if you spot any errors or missing blockers. The link remains the same.
What’s your plan when your Mac’s hard drive dies? Plan ahead and get back to work in minutes with a Carbon Copy Cloner bootable backup. CCC—the app that saves your bacon.
Jim’s Note: I’ve used this app for many years. I trust and love it.
Jean-Louis Gassée was a part of Apple in the early days of Macintosh, first as head of Apple France, then in Cupertino as Macintosh Marketing Director. A witness to the end of Steve Jobs’ first days at Apple.
In today’s Monday Note, Jean-Louis penned a beautiful remembrance of the anniversary of Steve’s passing, combined with some insightful thoughts on what Apple has become, is becoming:
So far, Apple has been viewed and valued by Wall Street as a kind of Hollywood studio: It’s too dependent on its next hit – or miss. Hence, for the same amount of profit, Apple gets a lower valuation than Google or Amazon. These companies are said to have built a “moat” around their business, they collect, in Horace Dediu’s words, “monopoly rents” from their well-protected businesses, just like Microsoft once did with its Windows-Office franchise. No such fortress for Apple – or so says the current lore. But, if you read Apple’s words, carefully vetted by attorneys and accountants, a fortress is precisely what the company is building with a functional organization singularly focused on its ecosystem.
Here’s a link. As usual with Jean-Louis, a thoughtful read.
