Mike Shields, writing for the Wall Street Journal, pulled together this fascinating interview with Randall Rothenberg, CEO of the Interactive Advertising Bureau, a trade association of sorts for the advertising industry.
Some core comments from Rothenberg:
There is a real issue. I’m not worried because the marketing and media value chain has shown remarkable resilience. There is a natural human need to have businesses proposition you with goods and services and vice versa. You need to have that communication. I’m really not worried about whether advertising will be able to find its way through digital channels. I am concerned — very, very concerned — that costs of ads will go up and up and up from this unethical obstruction.
On the cause of this problem:
There is a fair amount of shared responsibility here. We have definitely, definitely over time gummed up the advertising experience and Web pages with all kinds of analytics and pixels and tags and all kinds of things. The more we are able to do with advertising on the Web, the more it contributes to the problem. So this is absolutely something the industry can address and should address.
On potential legal action:
We’ve examined this, and there are some pretty good legal principles here. So that might be a course of action. Maybe. Certainly nothing aimed at consumers. That would be a bad idea. In terms of the software companies, nothing is imminent.
One thing that frustrates the hell out of me is that these companies are ad-blocking profiteers. They are trying to divert a portion of brands’ spending to line their own pockets.
Read the rest. It’s fascinating. Always good to see both sides of an issue, but Rothenberg seems blind to the real problem. He seems to see it as ad blockers taking money from his client’s pockets. This is not a chicken and egg problem. We know which came first. If ads were helpful or, at worst, innocuous, this issue wouldn’t exist.
Take responsibility for the problem, apologize, vow to do better, than do better. Anything short of that is self-serving.
Apple® today announced that Apple Music™, iTunes® Movies and iBooks® are now available to customers in China. Apple Music combines an extensive and diverse music library with the knowledge of world-class music experts who have programmed playlists and radio stations just for you. Launching with millions of songs in its catalog, Apple Music in China features music from artists including Eason Chan, Li Ronghao, JJ Lin and G.E.M., as well as a wide range of international artists including Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeran and many more. Fans can also rent or purchase movies from a great selection of Chinese studios as well as Hollywood blockbusters on the iTunes Store®, in addition to enjoying paid and free books from the iBooks Store℠. For the first time, customers in China will have access to Apple’s entertainment ecosystem with music, movies and books right at their fingertips.
“Customers in China love the App Store and have made it our largest market in the world for app downloads,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services. “One of the top requests has been more great content and we’re thrilled to bring music, movies and books to China, curated by a local team of experts.”
Following their established pattern, Chinese Apple Music fans get a free, three-month trial membership, priced at 10 RMB/month for an individual plan, 15 RMB/month for a (up to six member) family plan.
The RMB, or renminbi, is the official currency of China. You can read about it here.
Apple put out a press release yesterday, formally announcing the official El Capitan release, later today.
My favorite part of the release, towards the bottom, is a section titled Pricing & Availability:
OS X El Capitan is available as a free update starting Wednesday, September 30 from the Mac App Store. El Capitan supports all Macs introduced in 2009 and later, and some models introduced in 2007 and 2008.
I just love Apple’s embrace of the free operating system model. It started with the release of OS X Mavericks back in October 2013 (Craig Federighi famously said “Today we’re going to revolutionize pricing”). The move was pooh-poohed and, eventually, embraced by the Windows universe.
Charging money for the OS was putting up a barrier, one that either allowed people to move to another brand or, more likely, one that kept users from upgrading. Charging money for the OS was pure friction. Making the OS free and easy to install is a major reason (along with controlling all the hardware) Apple’s OS fragmentation is so low, both for OS X and iOS.
This is pretty cool. I just downloaded it on my Mac and setup was very easy—using the iPhone as a client was simply entering my email address into the app. I wonder if they’ll have an app for the new Apple TV.
Privacy is something everyone should care about. But studies continue to indicate that people either aren’t aware of what they’re giving up, or they don’t understand the implications.
Apple is blowing that up a bit today by expanding on its privacy page and presenting its policies in clear language, with extensive supporting data. Whether it’s government information requests (94% of that is trying to find stolen iPhones, and only 6% is law enforcement seeking personal information) or how consumer-facing features like iMessage, Apple Pay, Health and HomeKit are set up to protect user information; the sense is one of confidence in its stance.
This has been a long time coming and no surprise that it’s coming from Apple. I expect Samsung (and other companies) to copy this new stance shortly.
One of the biggest questions for potential users of the iPad Pro and Apple Pencil concerns palm rejection, the ability of the iPad Pro to distinguish between unwanted touches from your wrist and intended input from the Apple Pencil itself.
Pixar’s Dr. Wave (AKA, Michael B. Johnson) tweeted this, along with a picture of the team:
Lovely of our friends from Apple to stop by to let us take iPad Pro & Pencil for a test drive
In the follow-up comments, he said:
It has perfect palm rejection as far as we were able to see.
If you are considering ordering an iPhone 6s or 6s Plus, this walkthrough from iMore is worth your time. It’s focused, not a lot of fluff, and it includes a well-produced video that walks you through the benefits of the new iPhones.
YouTube, which spent the first 10 years of its life as a free service, is getting ready to start selling tickets.
Google’s video site appears to be finalizing launch plans for its long-in-the-making subscription service, and industry sources say they’ve been told to expect a launch near the end of October.
A blast email from YouTube to content owners, telling them they have to agree to new terms by Oct. 22 or their “videos will no longer be available for public display or monetization in the United States,” helps support that timeline.
And:
Note that we’re referring to a single service, not multiple ones. Sources say that’s because YouTube intends to bundle two different services into one offering: An update of its music service, which it launched in beta as YouTube Music Key last fall, and another service, yet to launch, that will give users the ability to watch anything on YouTube without seeing ads.
Video industry sources say Google has told them it intends to charge $10 a month for the combined offering.
Looks like Google’s YouTube arm is pursuing the ecosystem strategy, which Apple has built its entire business around. Come for the videos, stay for the music. Or vice versa.
The sense I get is that YouTube is using ad-free YouTube viewing as a sweetener to get people to sign up for its music service. Sounds like an accounting nightmare to me.
Amongst its big bag of tricks, iOS 9 has one seemingly innocuous feature: Wi-Fi Assist, enabled by default, which will switch to cellular data when your Wi-Fi sucks. This would be great, if I had an unlimited data plan. I don’t, but now I do have a very expensive cellphone bill.
This is shocking to me. While this may be a truly useful feature, why would Wi-Fi Assist be enabled by default? Any setting that automatically consumes my cellular data (and therefore spends my hard earned cash) should be OFF by default.
To check your Wi-Fi Assist setting, go to Settings > Cellular (Settings > Mobile Data in the UK), then scroll all the way to the bottom.
Please pass this along, especially if you know someone at Apple who might be able to get this setting turned off as a default. And if I have this wrong, please let me know.
Here’s a friendly reminder for folks who signed up for the free trial of Apple Music. Sometime tomorrow (September 30th), it’ll be three months since the rollout and, for some of you, time for your automatic paid subscription to kick in.
Want to check your own specific status? Easy enough:
On your iOS device, fire up the Music app
Tap the user silhouette icon in the upper left corner (left side of the title bar) to load the Account page.
Select View Apple ID from the Account page.
If prompted, enter your Apple ID password.
On the Account Settings page, tap the Manage button (under Subscriptions, just below Ratings and Reviews).
Tap the Apple Music Membership table cell.
Make any changes to your subscription.
Here’s what my Apple Music Membership page looks like:
As you can see, my account is set up for Automatic Renewal, with a first payment due to kick in sometime tomorrow.
The Los Angeles Unified School District has reached a tentative $6.4-million settlement over curriculum from education software giant Pearson that the school system said its teachers barely used.
The pact is the latest fallout from an aborted $1.3-billion plan to provide an iPad to every student, teacher and campus administrator in the nation’s second-largest school district.
The Board of Education is expected to vote on the settlement in October. The bidding process that led to the original contract is the subject of an FBI investigation.
This has been a long, drawn out embarrassment for Apple, a company that prides itself on its work with schools. While the case isn’t entirely over, this settlement at least paves the way for all parties to move on.
The only thing that most people will need to know about Apple’s A9 is that it’s a whole lot faster than last year’s A8. But for those of you who are more interested in chip design, Chipworks has unearthed an interesting tidbit: there are two different versions of the A9 chip, one manufactured by Samsung and another by Taiwan Semiconductor (TSMC). Most interestingly, Samsung’s version (the APL0898) has a slightly smaller footprint than the TSMC version (APL1022).
There have long been rumors that Apple was dual-sourcing the A8 from Samsung and TSMC, but this is the first visual proof that we’ve seen of the practice. iPhone and iPad processors up to and including the A7 were all made by Samsung.
This is really “inside baseball” for a lot of folks but it does beg the question of why is Apple doing this? To keep Samsung “honest”? Or are they prepping TSMC to take over chip design?
Determining whether liquid water exists on the Martian surface is central to understanding the hydrologic cycle and potential for extant life on Mars. Recurring slope lineae, narrow streaks of low reflectance compared to the surrounding terrain, appear and grow incrementally in the downslope direction during warm seasons.
Our findings strongly support the hypothesis that recurring slope lineae form as a result of contemporary water activity on Mars.
I link directly to the research study because I love the language they use. Bottom line? There is not only water on Mars (we knew that already. It’s in the form of ice) but that it actually flows – “liquid water” – in Mars’ summer months.
Anyone who thinks Apple’s new ‘Live Photos’ element of the iPhone 6s (and 6s Plus) is a gimmick is a fool that doesn’t understand Apple — and may not understand human nature and emotions. I actually think this is one of the more brilliant features Apple has released in a while.
It’s no accident that people with children immediately realize the value in this feature.
I haven’t seen Live Photos in action but it’s been interesting talking to people who have. No one has dismissed it as “just a gimmick” and those with young children echo Siegler – they think it is a brilliant idea.
GoPro just further expanded its action camera lineup after announcing the HERO+ LCD back in June. The new HERO+ is an even more affordable camera that drops the LCD screen while retaining 1080p60 recording and Wi-Fi connectivity.
The HERO+ can also capture 720p60 video, 8-megapixel photos, time-lapses, and burst mode photos. Other features and specs of the camera include an durable (integrated) housing that’s waterproof down to 131 feet (40m), Bluetooth connectivity, GoPro’s new built-in trimming and sharing, QuikCapture (powering up and starting video recording with one button), and HiLight Tag for selecting key moments while filming.
If you’re looking for a very good and very inexpensive action camera, GoPro is your best bet. This would be a great Christmas gift for a kid who was into BMX or other high motion activities. I’ve been thinking of getting one for my motorcycle until I realized, the video wouldn’t really be all that exciting.
In the past eight years, each new advancement in iPhone camera technology has made dramatic improvements to image quality. The new 12-megapixel iPhone 6s iSight camera is no exception. With 50% more megapixels than the last four iPhone 8-megapixel models, the iPhone 6s boasts a number of key improvements including: improved auto-focus, local tone-mapping, noise reduction, and colour separation, with that fancy “deep trench isolation” technology Apple is raving about.
In this follow-up post to my previous iPhone comparisons, I present a 9 iPhone comparison from all iPhone versions taken with Camera+ including: the original iPhone, iPhone 3G, iPhone 3Gs, iPhone 4, iPhone 4s, iPhone 5, iPhone 5s, iPhone 6, and the new iPhone 6s, in a variety of real-life situations to test each iPhone camera’s capabilities.
The results are predictable (after all, it’s expected the camera would get better with each generation) but seeing them on the page is very interesting especially considering how “great” many of us thought the original iPhone was at taking pictures.
Thanks to Twocanoes Software for sponsoring The Loop this week. Makers of Winclone, the best Mac app for migrating, cloning and backing up your Boot Camp partition. This week Loop readers can use the code “theloop” to get 10% off Winclone 5, just in time to backup Boot Camp before upgrading to El Capitan. If you run Boot Camp in labs or classrooms, Boot Runner 2 from Twocanoes is a time saver for remote scheduling of maintenance reboots and an easy to use OS picker for your users. Check out the video or get the 14-day trial and see how easy Boot Runner makes managing dual boot Macs.
Thinking of buying an iPhone 6s or 6s Plus? Want to get a sense of the camera?
David Pierce took his iPhone 6s and 6s Plus out on the streets and took a bunch of photos. None of these are retouched in any way. Tap on a picture to embiggen, then scroll down to see the details.
Update: Joe Caiati shared some of his unretouched iPhone 6s photos here.
Jonny Evans, writing for ComputerWorld, pulled together a nice little collection of 3D Touch tips and tricks. Very useful and, even better, this is all tip, no fluff.
Akinori Machino, writing for Medium, digs into the details of the San Francisco font. There are just a ton of fascinating details here. Just one tiny example:
[In other fonts], a colon will be placed right above the baseline, so it’s not vertically centered if it is placed between numbers. San Francisco fonts, on the other hand, will make it vertically centered automatically.
Great stuff. Apple’s constant attention to tiny details continues to amaze me.
Nick Keppol, writing for the MartianCraft blog, takes you on a smartly written tour of 3D Touch. This is relatively short with lots of pictures. Just the way I like it.
When Tim Cook introduced content-blocking features in iOS9, and thus caused a flood of ad-blocking apps in the App Store, the topic became more mainstream than ever. Adblockers adoption rose to never-seen-before levels. (A reminder of the most recent data: PageFair says that between 8% and 16% of ads are blocked in the US, vs. 10% to 35% in Europe; SecretMedia says that 26% of video ads are blocked in the US vs. 33% to 62% in Europe; more in our previous stories on the subject.) PageFair figures vastly underestimate the problem. In a recent poll, The Information (paywall) found that 50% of respondents already used an adblocker, and that 52% intended to install one on their iPhone.
Those are surprisingly high numbers and, I suspect, they’ll continue to rise, because:
Through their data plans, users are actually taxed by intrusive ads. Some carrier plans — usually the most expensive ones — might include unlimited data. But “unlimited” doesn’t usually work when roaming: bit-guzzling apps prove costly when traveling abroad. Besides the monetary impact, the adblocking benefit experienced in navigation comfort and speed is way more tangible on a mobile device than on the desktop. For example, according to tests performed by BrooksReview, the loading time gain on New York Times mobile pages is 6x. No wonder why adblocking apps are such a hit in the AppStore.
There’s a reason ad blockers have had such a meteoric rise to the top of the App Store charts. They make a huge and immediate impact on your browsing experience.
From the conclusions:
At some point, all ecosystem components (advertisers, creative agencies, media buyers, marketplaces, publishers) will need to congregate and come up with acceptable ad formats, as well as reasonable tracking practices. For now, they appear numb, but the combined pressure of quarterly earnings and antsy customers will force change.
And:
Low-end formats will disappear from the web, to the benefit of rarer, more sophisticated ads such as bespoke contents. In the process, most bottom-feeding intermediaries should vanish, with remaining ones adding real value.
As Frederic says, things are going to get worse before they get better. But ultimately, this is a shakeup in an industry that truly needs a shakeup.
Apple today announced it has sold more than 13 million new iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus models, a new record, just three days after launch. iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus will be available in more than 40 additional countries beginning October 9 including Italy, Mexico, Russia, Spain and Taiwan. The new iPhones will be available in over 130 countries by the end of the year.
That’s a hell of an opening weekend and a quick move internationally.
The only fly I see in the ointment is the implementation of the Apple Upgrade Program. Potential buyers who were not able to reserve their phone of choice in the first few minutes of availability had no way to order their phone via the Upgrade Program as it requires an in store purchase, and those reservations sold out quickly. As of this writing, inventory of most models is extremely limited (practically zero if you want anything beyond 16 GB or any model of 6s Plus).
In essence, Apple is pushing buyers to make the purchase on-line (at least 3 to 4 week shipping on most models). The in-store reservation system does not allow you to reserve a phone far into the future. If the store does not have stock, you still cannot get in the Apple Upgrade Program queue.
To test this for yourself, go to the Apple Store iPhone page, then scroll down to the second page and click the link that says “Reserve iPhone 6s to buy in store”. Notice that the State popup menu only has 20 options (most states have zero inventory). And of the available states, most states only offer iPhone 6s inventory. Very few offer the iPhone 6s Plus, and those that do offer a 16 GB model in only one color.
The Apple Upgrade Program is a terrific idea, but it is certainly not an easy get.
Tonight — Sunday, Sept. 27 — you can see the first “supermoon” total lunar eclipse in 30 years. The moon will turn red, which is normal for a lunar eclipse, but this rare event will be bigger and brighter than those of the past few decades. That’s because the eclipse will coincide with a supermoon — a “very rare” alignment that won’t happen again until 2033.
Check this map to see if you live where the eclipse will be visible. If you don’t live in a visible region, or a big city with too many tall obstructions or a lot of light pollution, bookmark this page.
We won’t see the full effect here on the West Coast but if you’re lucky enough to be able to get outside and see it clearly, don’t miss it. Otherwise, like so many other things nowadays, you can watch online.
