Paul Mozur and Katie Benner, writing for The New York Times:
Apple has disabled its news app in China, according to a person with direct knowledge of the situation, the most recent sign of how difficult it can be for foreign companies to manage the strict rules governing media and online expression there.
The Apple News app, which the company announced in June, is available only to users in the United States, though it is being tested in Britain and Australia. Customers who already downloaded the app by registering their phones in the United States can still see content in it when they travel overseas — but they have found that it does not work in China.
Those in China who look at the top of the Apple News feed, which would normally display a list of selected articles based on a user’s preferred media, instead see an error message: “Can’t refresh right now. News isn’t supported in your current region.”
Apple, based in Cupertino, Calif., declined to comment.
They all left in the wake of a very different sound nearly 30 years earlier: the explosion of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in 1986, which left dozens dead and drove more than 100,000 people from their homes across a 1,600-square-mile swath of Ukraine and Belarus. These days, abandoned apartment complexes are nothing more than crumbled concrete wrecks. Vines crawl up the decaying walls of old farmhouses and break unintended skylights into their roofs. No one lives in the postapocalyptic setting.
No one human, that is. Wildlife populations there – shaggy-haired wild boar, long-legged elk, the howling choruses of wolves that so captivated Hinton last August – are flourishing.
That’s according to a study published last week in the journal Current Biology, which found that mammal numbers in the exclusion zone are as high, if not higher, than in even the most protected parks in Belarus.
Thanks to SVALT for sponsoring The Loop this week. Use code “LOOP” for a $15 discount on the ultimate high-performance Apple laptop dock, the SVALT D Performance Cooling Dock, that increases CPU Turbo Boost speeds by 106% and speeds up 4K exports in Final Cut Pro X by 10% on 15-in Retina MacBook Pro.
Over just a few years, the batteries in our smartphones have changed a lot. That means those old tips to stretch out your battery life just aren’t as true as they once were, yet we still share them like they’re gospel. Before telling someone to disable Bluetooth or Wi-Fi, let’s shed some light on those old myths.
Pass this along to the people in your life who still believe you can overcharge the batteries on laptops or iPhones.
The Merritt Parkway is a four-lane highway, with a large and wooded median in between. The lanes are narrow, there are no streetlights, and it’s completely surrounded by forest. The on-ramps are almost nonexistent, meaning that getting onto the road can be a bit like the initial descent of a roller coaster. The best part, however, is that no trucks are allowed–it’s a zippy car haven. And the cars do go fast.
I used to live in Westport and Danbury CT and, even though it added quite a bit of time to the trip, I always tried to take the Merrit Parkway. When the traffic was light, it was a high speed run into New York City. In the fall, it was one of the prettiest roads I have even been on. If you’re ever in the New York city area and have a car and a few hours to kill, drive the Merrit.
The environments in The Good Dinosaur are breathtaking. There are moments in the 30 minutes of the movie I previewed that look no different from live-action footage. And if it looks real, that might be because they used real data to create the locations in the film.
Some shots in the movie look out more than 50 miles in the distance. To accomplish this near-impossible task, the set team used actual USGS data of the northwest United States to create the sets in the film.
The amount of work that goes into any animated film today is mind-boggling but Pixar go so far beyond what anyone else does for the look of their films. As the story says, they wanted the environment to be another character in the story.
From Federico Viticci’s review of the just released new version of Overcast:
In using Overcast for the past year, Smart Speed has turned from a simple and clever addition to a lock-in factor for daily listening: I know that Overcast will make shows I listen to shorter without making them sound odd or unnatural, and it’s the kind of feature that I can’t enjoy in iOS’ built-in Podcasts app. Apple’s player has gotten considerably better on iOS 9; but, when looking at the total amount of hours saved with Overcast, I realized that those are hours of my life I got back by using Arment’s app instead of an alternative. This, combined with the many thoughtful touches of its interface, makes me happy to stick with Overcast.
Arment faced two problems, though. Overcast always needed to download new episodes before playing them: due to limitations of iOS 7’s web download and audio APIs, Smart Speed and Voice Boost couldn’t work with streaming – a popular feature that many podcast apps implement to avoid taking up storage on users’ devices with downloaded audio files. And, while it was Arment’s goal to gain market share with a freemium model that made Overcast free to use with an In-App Purchase to unlock advanced features (such as unlimited effects), the majority of Overcast users ended up staying on the free tier – a less capable version of the app that Arment himself wasn’t using, and which couldn’t be easily differentiated in a sea of podcast clients for iOS.
Overcast 2.0, launching today on the App Store, fixes both problems.
Smart Speed is a killer feature. I love Overcast, can’t praise it enough. Read the full review. As usual, Federico did a fantastic job.
The iPhone is a remarkable device, even if all it did was put the things you do every day into the palm of your hand.
But over time, Apple and the iPhone have slowly changed the nature of healthcare. At a foundational level, there’s HealthKit, Apple’s API that makes it possible for developers to build significant health-related capabilities into their own apps.
But more than this, there are peripherals that bring more self-monitoring into the user’s hands and simplify the process of sharing diagnostic data with a health care professional, all over the internet without requiring an office visit.
The latest of these is the AliveCor Mobile ECG, reviewed in this post by Jeremy Horwitz, writing for 9to5mac.
Some health accessories are undeniably useful, but others raise the question “why?” — why pay more to see my weight on an iPhone rather than the scale’s built-in screen? Why track daily tooth brushing, body fat percentages, or the humidity of one’s bathroom? People survived for thousands of years without charting every seemingly minor blip on their personal radars.
My perspective changed last month when my wife was diagnosed with a serious cardiac condition. One of those “seemingly minor blips” that can now be constantly monitored is your heartbeat, and when something’s wrong with your heart, advance knowledge literally makes the difference between living or dying. As it turns out, a San Francisco-based company named AliveCor is now on its third-generation version of an iPhone accessory that helps people with cardiac conditions. The AliveCor Mobile ECG ($75) is an FDA-approved electrocardiogram (ECG) monitor that can record and share your heartbeat directly from your iPhone. Measuring roughly 3.2″ by 1.3″ by 0.2″, Mobile EGC can self-attach to your iPhone’s back, or integrate with a bundled custom iPhone 6/6s case for only $79.
This is a remarkable achievement, one that would have been unthinkable not so long ago. This sort of inexpensive ($75) device is a game changer for the field of cardiology and patients with cardiac issues. Not only does this device save you a trip to the cardiologist, it makes it possible to have more frequent and more timely assessments of your condition, it makes the entire analysis less invasive and more convenient, and reduces the cost to all parties involved.
I suspect that a day will come when health care is embedded in software and devices like these, when the entire process is made more affordable and less restrictive, less controlled by insurance companies and their actuarial tables and available to all of us, regardless of our income streams.
I’ve been waiting for this review and Austin Mann does not disappoint. There’s lots to consume here, lots of examples/comparisons.
My particular favorite is the video that shows video optical image stabilization on the 6s and 6s Plus side-by-side (3rd video down). The 6s Plus has it, the 6 does not. What a huge difference.
AT&T has flipped the switch on Wi-Fi calling, making it available to customers with eligible plans that are running iOS 9. MacRumors has received tips from customers who were able to activate Wi-Fi calling and we were able to activate the feature on our own iPhones. A number of readers in our forums are also having success activating Wi-Fi calling.
Wi-Fi calling is a feature that lets calls be placed over a wireless connection when cellular connectivity is poor, functioning much like an AT&T M-Cell does now. It’s similar to Apple’s own FaceTime Audio feature, which also routes calls over a Wi-Fi connection.
If AT&T is your carrier, you find yourself with a poor cell signal but with solid access to WiFi, WiFi calling is for you. It won’t eat up your data plan and your signal will go from nonexistent to excellent.
Anthony Ha, writing for TechCrunch, laid out this dialog from the new Steve Jobs movie:
Woz: You can’t write code, you’re not an engineer, you’re not a designer, you can’t put a hammer to a nail. I built the circuit board, the graphical interface was stolen from Xerox Parc, Jef Raskin was the leader of the Mac team before you threw him off his own project. Everything — someone else designed the box! So how come 10 times in a day, I read “Steve jobs is a genius.” What do you do?
Jobs: I play the orchestra. And you’re a good musician, you sit right there, you’re the best in your row.
In the article comments, the real-life Woz weighed in with this:
I always give Jobs the credit for finishing a design into a product and marketing it and much more. The movie made up this part based on the first few months of the Apple ][ but I, instead of Jobs, should have been the one to say “I’m the best in my row, actually in every row.” I only wanted recognition as a good (great) engineer.
Handelsblatt: Apple just hired some of Tesla’s most important engineers. Do you have to worry about a new competitor?
Musk: Important engineers? They have hired people we’ve fired. We always jokingly call Apple the “Tesla Graveyard.” If you don’t make it at Tesla, you go work at Apple. I’m not kidding.
Handelsblatt: Do you take Apple’s ambitions seriously?
Musk: Did you ever take a look at the Apple Watch? (laughs) No, seriously: It’s good that Apple is moving and investing in this direction. But cars are very complex compared to phones or smartwatches. You can’t just go to a supplier like Foxconn and say: Build me a car. But for Apple, the car is the next logical thing to finally offer a significant innovation. A new pencil or a bigger iPad alone were not relevant enough.
Yet another person who should know better being dismissive of Apple. Remember when cell phone manufacturers said it’s not easy to make a phone and that Apple couldn’t just walk in and take over? How’d that work out for them?
Obviously the iPhone is infinitely worse than any current DSLR for stills but surprisingly it appears to be a far better video camera than my $3000 DSLR when there is enough light present.
With the Apple-designed A9 chip in your iPhone 6s or iPhone 6s Plus, you are getting the most advanced smartphone chip in the world. Every chip we ship meets Apple’s highest standards for providing incredible performance and deliver great battery life, regardless of iPhone 6s capacity, color, or model.
Certain manufactured lab tests which run the processors with a continuous heavy workload until the battery depletes are not representative of real-world usage, since they spend an unrealistic amount of time at the highest CPU performance state. It’s a misleading way to measure real-world battery life. Our testing and customer data show the actual battery life of the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus, even taking into account variable component differences, vary within just 2-3% of each other.
Academy Award-winning screenwriter Aaron Sorkin uses actual events to take the audience on an imagined — as in, fictional — series of fast-paced exchanges in the minutes before the curtain would rise on the introduction of each product.
But the writer and director weren’t looking to create a biopic that rigidly adhered to the details of Jobs’s life — rather, they wanted to create an “impressionistic portrait” that drew from real-life events.
The story is populated by events that never happened — such as a dramatic reimagining of preparations for the Mac’s demo in which it blows up in rehearsal, instead of declaring, “Hello, I am Macintosh. It sure is great to get out of that bag” — and long, stinging exchanges that aren’t drawn from any of the six biographies written about Jobs.
I’ll still see the movie but will be disappointed if only because I would have preferred more “reality”. Steve Jobs was such a fascinating person that his life story, in my opinion, doesn’t need the kinds of embellishments described in this review.
Lightroom for mobile on iOS can now be used locally on your phone or tablet without the desktop Lightroom app, without a Creative Cloud Photography Plan subscription and even without an Adobe ID. The same feature is coming soon to Android.
This move is part of an overall desire to broaden the audience. By letting people use Lightroom for mobile without Creative Cloud, Adobe is making the app competitive with other popular standalone photo editing apps like Snapseed or Pixelmator’s mobile version.
I use and love the desktop version of Lightroom and this will be another tool I can use when I’m out and about using my iPad.
Why would you care? A series of videos have been making the rounds claiming that the Samsung version of the iPhone 6s processor runs hotter and has poorer battery life than the processor manufactured by TSMC.
Here’s a link to a 9to5mac post with two of these videos embedded.
As I read through the post, my reaction was, I’d like to see more scientific testing before we scream fire. Is it possible this is a problem with just one or two phones/chips? Is this issue restricted to the 6s, or does it carry over to the 6s Plus as well?
All that said, if you care to know, iDownloadBlog has a nice post that will walk you through the process so you’ll know which chip you have.
This is actually a fascinating article and definitely worth the read. But at the very least, take a few minutes and click on all the little speaker icons embedded in the article.
You’ll hear the Mac II boot sound (referred to as “the Devil’s interval”), the boot sound that replaced it (so much nicer, thanks Jim Reekes), the Windows boot sound, Nokia’s classic ringtone, and a whole bunch of Skype sounds.
I’ve been maintaining a list of Safari ad blockers (the list is up to 25 now). As a natural consequence, people have been asking me to recommend an ad blocker, or at least tell them what I use.
Given that I’ve not done an extensive study of ad blockers, rather pick one over the other, I thought I’d share my thoughts on a path to consider when picking one for yourself.
First things first, I’d start with a free ad blocker, just to dip your toes in the water, get a sense of what an ad blocker can do, how it works, and the change it brings to your browsing experience. Feel free to use the aforementioned list as a launch point. Check out a few, find a free one with reasonable reviews in the App Store, and install it.
To enable an ad blocker, you’ll go to Settings > Safari > Content Blockers, then tap the switch next to your ad blocker of choice.
With the ad blocker enabled, go to a few ad heavy sites and get a sense of what’s changed. If I might suggest a good place to start, take a trip to the infamous New York Post web site. I’d suggest doing this experiment while connected to WiFi, to prevent unwanted data counting against your data plan.
Do this without the ad blocker, then with it. Notice the time it takes to initially load the site (consider quitting Safari between each viewing to be sure there’s no caching going on), then try to dismiss any ads that appear.
With the ad blocker in place, did any ads make it through the filter? Do some browsing. Do you see any ads at all?
With that experience under your belt, here are a few questions to consider:
Does the ad blocker offer a white list you can edit? In other words, is there a way to tell it not to block ads from, say, The Loop? Obviously, a white list makes it possible for you to let your favorite sites bring in their ad dollars. After basic ad blocking capability, this is the number one feature I look for.
How does the ad blocker figure out what to block? Does the ad blocker update its own blacklist? Does it offer separate switches for trackers/ads/images/adult content?
The goal of your ad blocker is to prevent unwanted content from slowing down Safari and, more importantly, prevent content from silently/unknowingly consuming your data plan. Once that is achieved, the tunability of the ad blocker is a true personal preference.
To be clear, I’ve got no issue with ads. They pay the freight and can be artistic/entertaining. To me, what started the ball rolling downhill here was the discovery of ads that carry invisible, data plan consuming content, hiding behind an innocuous ad. If you haven’t already, take a look at the post that got me started.
This technology looks like it has incredible promise. In a nutshell, it will erase all moving objects (like annoying tourists) from the frame when you take a picture.
Obviously, key to this is that the object of your affections stands stock still (like a monument tends to) and you have some form of optical stabilization on your camera (a tripod would do just fine but, my guess is, that stabilization can be built into the Monument Mode algorithm).
Jony Ive, speaking at Vanity Fair’s New Establishment Summit, on a panel with Director J.J. Abrams and producer Brian Grazer:
I was talking to a friend of Steve’s and a friend of mine earlier in the week, on the day that marked the fourth anniversary of his death. What struck me, four years ago, is that I was faced with this wall of grief. A lot of messy—a whole series of multiple feelings. In thinking of him then, there was this incredible complexity of all his attributes. What has been very surprising, is that over the four years that have passed, so much of that noise, and so many of his attributes, they’ve ended up essentially receding. And what’s left is . . . just him.
Quite honestly, what’s remained, I never would have predicted four years ago. What’s remained is almost unremarkable, but what’s remained is his very simple focus on trying to make something beautiful and great. And it really was simple. There wasn’t a grand plan of winning, or a very complicated agenda. That simplicity seemed almost childlike in its purity. And it’s true.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone so happy, as I saw him—this very simple kind of joy—when he would realize, “This is actually working out. This could be great.” It was just the simplicity of that.
That stands in such contrast, obviously, to how he’s being frequently and popularly portrayed at the moment. The lack of agenda.
He certainly had a sense of a civic responsibility to make something good, as a way of somehow making a contribution to humanity, and to culture.
After her prolific husband died of prostate cancer in 1993, Gail kept Frank’s recordings in the public, putting out dozens of posthumous albums and judiciously licensing his image where appropriate. Earlier this year, the Zappa family announced that the couple’s son Ahmet would be in charge of the Trust.
Solid list of the best movies currently streaming on Netflix, at least according to this particular poster. There are a couple of questionable picks towards the top of the list, but it just gets stronger and stronger. Some of my favorites:
Fargo
The Conversation (with a very young Harrison Ford!!!)
