Ars Technica:
This remarkable $599 camera lets you watch while completely unobserved from distances so great that people can’t even see you, much less know that you’re watching them.
Check out the video. The camera has insane amounts of really good zoom.
My thanks to Igloo for sponsoring The Loop this week. Igloo allows you to share files, coordinate calendars, provide updates and manage projects easily.
Why use the latest, sleekest devices if you are going to use them to stare at an intranet website that looks like it was built in the 90’s?
Igloos are CSS and HTML5 friendly, which means they can be customized to look amazing.
They are also responsive right off the bat, which means that everything you can do at your desk, you can now do on the go, on your phone.
And just like your favorite Apple devices, Igloo helps you do your best work.
Share files, coordinate calendars, provide status updates and manage projects. Igloo’s not just for your traditional intranet stuff like HR policies and expense forms. It also lets you work better together with your teams.
For example, with Igloo’s latest release, Wolf, you can preview Photoshop, InDesign, HTML or CSS files straight from the platform, making it easier for co-workers to give feedback on creative assets.
Head over to igloosoftware.com to sign up for a free trial today and invite up to 10 of your favorite coworkers to try it too.
It’s been an interesting and confusing day. I arrived at Apple this morning to talk to them about my issues with Apple Music and to hopefully fix my problems. The good news is that I have about 99 percent of my music back.
Let’s get the easy stuff out of the way. The missing and duplicate song issues that we’ve all seen in Apple Music are being fixed shortly. They are certainly aware of what’s been going on, I can assure you.
Now to talk about my missing music. I am an iTunes Match customer and have been since the service started. This allowed me to have all of my music in one library, match it to iCloud and then stream my songs from any device. It worked flawlessly for me. When I bought a new device, I just logged into iCloud, turned on iTunes Match and all of my songs were there.
Apple said my music was never deleted and that it was in the cloud the entire time. Before Apple Music, iTunes Match would show me all of my songs—matched, uploaded, and purchased. However, if you turn off iCloud Music Library and Apple Music, iTunes Match will only show your purchased content now. There is no way to separate iTunes Match from the iCloud Music Library. Before, you would turn off iTunes Match—now you would turn off iCloud Music Library.
So now I have the iTunes Match service that I pay for separately, and Apple Music, both of which use iCloud Music Library. There is really no way to get away from them if you want to use the latest and greatest from Apple.
I’ll admit, I’m still trying to get my head around how this works.
Some of the songs I own were incorrectly tagged as Apple Music, but that’s been fixed too, which means they show up correctly in iTunes. That is great news.
However, I’m still missing a couple of hundred songs. Apple’s theory is that I deleted them—that when I was trying to fix Apple Music, I mistakenly deleted my own files. While I concede that it is within the realm of possibility that I deleted my own files, it doesn’t make sense to me.
Here’s where my confusion comes from. I own all of Ozzy’s albums and quite a few compilations. I can’t think of a single reason why I would download an album I already own, and album that is in my iTunes Library, only to delete it. I can’t think of a good reason for that.
Here’s one possibility. Perhaps I deleted an Ozzy compilation album (I believe I did do that) that contained tracks that were also on some of his studio albums. I’m wondering if iTunes Match deleted my version of those same songs—songs that I own from my own CDs, purely because the titles were the same as those on the compilation album.
At any rate, I have most of my music back in my library. Since I don’t have access to my original Ozzy library, I will have to buy those tracks again because he is one of my all time favorites.
At this point, I’m just glad to have most of music back, but I still have no idea what happened to the other songs, for sure.
Update: I corrected the description of iTunes Match being bundled with Apple Music. They are separate services. 7/24/15 4:03 pm
The video embedded in the linked article is short and (to me) well worth watching, especially the part about privacy. As a reminder, Tony Fadell is the new boss of Google Glass.
[H/T Rob Richman]
A few days ago, Jim wrote about his nightmarish experience with Apple Music. I do understand his frustration. But I’m not ready to give up on Apple Music just yet.
To be clear, I haven’t run into the exact same issues as Jim (my library still appears to be in one uncorrupted piece, no files appear to be missing). But I do see plenty of problems with the current Apple Music incarnation.
My Mac and iOS devices might as well be on different planets. When I search for a song on my iPhone, I can tap the Apple Music tab and, assuming the song is available on the Apple Music library, I can add the song to my current playlist, download it to my device for offline play, and mark it with a For You heart. Easy peasy.
On my Mac, not so simple. Unlike the iOS universe, there is no Apple Music application on my Mac. On my iOS device, things are clear cut. There’s the iTunes Store app for buying music and the Apple Music app for streaming.
On my Mac, however, there’s iTunes. Only iTunes. iTunes for buying music, just as it always was. And iTunes for streaming. But merged together, interleaved, with no clear dividing line between streaming and purchasing. That dividing line exists, true, but it is mushy, vague, unclear.
As an example, fire up iTunes and click the music note icon towards the upper left corner to focus on music. Next, click in the search field (upper right corner). Chance are, you’ll see a popup window appear with tabs for My Library and iTunes Store. If you find a song in the iTunes Store that you like, how do you go about adding it to your playlist? Turns out, you can’t.
To get to Apple Music, you have to click on For You (Maybe there’s a simpler way to get there, but I haven’t stumbled across it). Once you click For You, a click in the same search field shows tabs for My Library and Apple Music. Yeesh. There’s no way to buy a song you find in Apple Music and (much more importantly for me) no way for me to find a song from the front page of the iTunes Store in Apple Music. Crazy town.
[Update: As Kirk McElhearn points out, there is a link back to the iTunes Store in the “…” menu to the right of a song in Apple Music. But no direct link from a song in the iTunes Store (and its rich front page of New Music and Hot Tracks) back to that song in Apple Music.]
This is just one scenario. There are lots more. Why isn’t there an editable history of my likes? How about a playlist built from all the songs I’ve listened to? How about a searchable list of playlists, something I can browse through that is organized by genre? Some of these things may well exist, but the interface is so complex, so scattered, I’ve not yet stumbled upon it.
So all this said, why am I still pushing on? Why don’t I make the move to Spotify?
It’s all about potential.
Even with all its blemishes, Apple Music has been a hell of a lot of fun. I now have access to, arguably, one of the largest music databases on the planet. I am listening to lots of new music, exploring genres I’ve never gotten into before, digging into some old favorites that bring me pangs of nostalgia and, overall, just listening to lots more music than I’ve listened to in quite some time.
All of the things I’ve complained about, and all the stuff Jim complained about in his post, are all eminently fixable. More importantly, the building blocks are in place for the next generation of Apple Music to do some incredible things.
I can tell you one thing for sure: I have backed up my music collection very carefully. Thanks for that warning, Jim. Sorry you had to pay the price for that knowledge.
Senator Al Franken wrote this letter to the US Attorney General and the Chair of the Federal Trade Commission, saying, in part:
I am writing to encourage you to examine Apple’s content dealings with app developers to determine whether the company is engaging in anticompetitive behavior in the music streaming market. As the digital music industry continues to evolve, we must ensure that this relatively new market allows for meaningful competition and that consumers have access to important information about the products and services available to them. While I am encouraged to see increased competition in this market, I am concerned about certain business practices that have the potential to limit choices and raise prices for consumers.
And:
Apple’s licensing agreements have prevented companies from using their apps to inform users that lower prices are available through their own websites, to advertise the availability of promotional discounts, or to complete a transaction directly with a consumer within their app. These types of restrictions seem to offer no competitive benefit and may actually undermine the competitive process, to the detriment of consumers, who may end up paying substantially more than the current market price point.
I think this one has legs.
Not sure if there is a single official iPhone Film Festival, but this one certainly is one of the most prominent.
At its core, IFF5 (each year, the number increases, next year will be IFF6) is really a mobile film festival. The rules allow any mobile device to be used, but I suspect the vast majority of entries are filmed on an iPhone.
Here’s the winners page. I must say, these are impressive.
Rene Ritchie:
To make a bad analogy, if they’ve already broken into your house, they can break into the locked drawer in your desk as well.
well said.
I love my Apple Watch and just the thought of losing it is scary, but having a way to turn off Apple Pay on the Web is nice.
Just look at the company’s historic success with the iPhone and you can tell that we are indeed living in strange times! So far Apple has taken down Nokia and left Motorola, HTC and Samsung gasping for air. The profits have not stopped flowing to Cupertino. Apple has reported $42.3 billion in net income so far for the first three quarters of this fiscal year. That’s more than the company’s profits for all of 2012.
I’ve said this before, but no company that reports a profit in the billions of dollars should be worried about doom and gloom. It’s based on what Wall Street predicts, which seems flawed to me.
But that’s not the story at all. For one thing, Android overtook the Wintel world way back in 2012. The story here is that mobile utterly dwarfs desktop and laptop computing. Civilization has been changing under our very noses, and today even the second largest mobile platform outsells the world of Wintel.
This is an interesting take from Bryan Chaffin.
[Editor: Be sure to read Dave Mark’s response to this post]
I love Apple. I love them because they take difficult problems and come up with innovative, simple solutions. The things they make just work and we trust them. Unfortunately, my experience with Apple Music has been exactly the opposite. As of today, I’m missing about 4,700 songs from my library with little hope of getting them back.
I had high hopes for Apple Music. I really wanted it to work and become my default music streaming service, but after the problems I’ve experienced over the last couple of weeks, I’m disabling it altogether.
My problems started about a week after installing Apple Music. While Apple Music Radio and Playlists worked well, adding music to my library is nothing short of a mind-blowing exercise in frustration.
I started to notice that whenever I added an album to my library, not all of the songs would get added. When I looked at the list of songs, there would be some missing—sometimes, most of the album would be missing. When I clicked the “Show Complete Album” button on my Mac, all of the missing songs would show up with an “Add” button beside them.
Why do that when I already told Apple Music to add the album?
From what I can tell in my tests, Apple Music is deciding itself, based on your library, that it will not add duplicate songs. For instance, I purchased a lot of Black Sabbath albums over the years, but not all of the compilations. I went into Apple Music and added a compilation album, but it didn’t all get added to my library. When I looked at all of the songs that didn’t get added, they were ones that I already had in my library.
In another example, I added Bob Dylan’s “Blonde On Blonde” and his “Greatest Hits” albums. The “Greatest Hits” was short three songs—the same three songs that are on “Blonde On Blonde,” so Apple Music chose not to add them to the “Greatest Hits” album. It’s not unreasonable to want to listen to an album in the context the artist wrote it, and then other times, just listen to their greatest hits. It’s my choice to make.
However, if I decide I really want those songs, when I click the “Add” button, nothing happens, which seemed odd to me. If adding the songs is an option, why won’t they add to the library. I went to my iPhone and tapped “Show Complete Album”—when I tapped on the song to add it, the option was to “Remove from My Music.” This means that my iPhone thinks it’s already added, but the song isn’t showing up. What I had to do is go through all of the songs, remove them from the library, and then click add to get them back in the library.
I went through about 15 albums one night and manually added all of the missing songs. It was frustrating, to say the least, but I did it. I nearly lost my mind the next morning when I checked my iPhone and Apple Music and taken out all of the songs I added the night before. I was right back where I started.
In some cases, like Bob Dylan and Neil Young, a few of the songs show up twice on one album. When you tap to play the song, they both show the animated icon in iTunes, as if they are both playing. Note in the screenshot that the songs are different in terms of their length of playing time. Either Apple Music shaved a few seconds off one of the tracks, or they’re from different albums.
Other strange things have happened too. For instance, I added ZZ Top’s “The Very Baddest” album. Instead of downloading all of the songs from that album, it downloaded them from multiple albums. So now I have several ZZ Top albums, each with a few songs on them.
Apple Music also decided that I like Electronica and Pop music. I found this out by going to the setup screen to redo my entire account and see that if that helped fix my original problem. I deleted the categories and bands that Apple Music put in, but it didn’t help the overall problem.
In another case, I own Led Zeppelin IV—and all of their other albums. However, when I look at it in Apple Music, it doesn’t recognize that I have it and gives me the option to add it to my library. With all of the other problems I’ve been having, I didn’t even bother trying that.
I tried adding one Neil Young album six times and it just wouldn’t go into my library. I finally just gave up.
If all that wasn’t enough, none of my devices seem to sync, so my Macs don’t have the same songs that my iPhone has, and neither of them match my iPad.
The Recently Added from one of my Macs
Taken at the same time, the Recently Added from another of my Macs
I’ve tried logging out of my accounts on all my devices and allowing Apple Music to rebuild itself. I’ve turned iCloud Music Library on/off and I’ve done just about everything else I can think of doing. Nothing I’ve tried works.
The only thing that changed since I started using Apple Music is transferring my Beats account to my new Apple Music subscription. I can’t say for sure if that caused all of these problems or not, but it was around the same time.
I know I’m not the only one having this problem. There are threads on Apple’s support forums detailing similar issues to the ones I’m having, and I’ve noticed tweets in my stream reporting the same problems.
At some point, enough is enough. That time has come for me—Apple Music is just too much of a hassle to be bothered with. Nobody I’ve spoken at Apple or outside the company has any idea how to fix it, so the chances of a positive outcome seem slim to none.
As if all of that wasn’t enough, Apple Music gave me one more kick in the head. Over the weekend, I turned off Apple Music and it took large chunks of my purchased music with it. Sadly, many of the songs were added from CDs years ago that I no longer have access to. Looking at my old iTunes Match library, before Apple Music, I’m missing about 4,700 songs. At this point, I just don’t care anymore, I just want Apple Music off my devices.
I trusted my data to Apple and they failed. I also failed by not backing up my library before installing Apple Music. I will not make either of those mistakes again.
I’m going to listen to what’s left of my music library, and try to figure out all of the songs I have to buy again. I’ll also download Spotify and reactivate the account I cancelled with them a couple of weeks ago.
Juli Clover, writing for MacRumors:
Apple has quietly changed its App Store policies and is no longer permitting iOS devices running pre-release software to be used to write App Store reviews. When attempting to write a review from a device that has iOS 9 installed, a popup is displayed that tells users reviews can’t be submitted while using beta software.
Good. And here’s why.
During Apple’s earnings call yesterday, Tim Cook carved out a section of his presentation to address Apple Watch sales numbers.
A little parsing:
Sales of the watch did exceed our expectations, and they did so despite supply still trailing demand at the end of the quarter.
That’s referring to Apple constraining sales to online-only, long shipping dates, not being able to make enough Apple Watches to meet demand.
To give you a little additional insight, through the end of the quarter, in fact the Apple Watch sell-through was higher than the comparable of the launch periods of the original iPhone or the original iPad.
This post elaborates on this point. Apple Watch numbers, at this point in the product lifecycle, are better than iPhone sales, better than the original iPad sales, at the same point in those lifecycles.
We were able to do that with having only 680 points of sale, and as you probably know, as I had reviewed earlier, the online sales were so great at the beginning, we were not able to feed inventory to our stores until mid June, and so those points of sale pretty much the overwhelming of the low numbers of sales were not there until the last two weeks of the quarter.
Sales didn’t rollout to stores until there were only two weeks left in the quarter. This doesn’t mean that the next quarter sales will be off the charts. It’s still early in the adoption cycle and watchOS 2 is still in beta. Only time will tell us how successful Apple Watch will be in the long run.
But Tim followed with this point:
Most importantly of all of this, is the customer sat is off the charts. Because we’ve constantly seen that if you can get the customer sat off the charts you can wind up doing fairly well over time.
The “customer sat” refers to existing customer satisfaction with the product. With a sat of 97%, it’s clear that people who own an Apple Watch love their Apple Watch. And that is a huge point. If anything is a predictor of future success, tremendous user satisfaction is that predictor.
[Transcript via Six Colors]
Jason Snell has a great transcript of what Tim Cook said to analysts during the earnings call today. In case you missed it, Apple reported a profit $10.7 billion on revenue of $49.6 billion.
Microsoft reported a $3.2 billion quarterly net loss, hurt by charges related to its Nokia phone business and job cuts, and weak demand for its Windows operating system.
The company took a charge of $7.5 billion in the fourth quarter related to the restructuring of its Nokia handset business, which it acquired last year.
Ouch.
Basically, the companies argue that a refusal to limit damages to infringing features could have huge impact in an era when consumer products incorporate many highly sophisticated components within a single device. That Samsung can be successfully sued over singular design features and forced to pay damages based on overall device sales rather than a portion of profits sets a dangerous precedent, the group argues.
I could see their point if Samsung had of taken one feature and incorporated it into a smartphone it designed. However, Samsung stole the entire phone—hardware, software, and everything else it could lay its grubby little hands on. They were caught and should pay.
Apple on Tuesday reported a third quarter profit of $10.7 billion on revenue of $49.6 billion. This compares to revenue of $37.4 billion and net profit of $7.7 billion in the year ago quarter.
Apple said the growth was fueled by record third quarter sales of iPhone and Mac, all-time record revenue from services and the successful launch of Apple Watch.
In the quarter, Apple sold 47.5 million iPhones, 10.9 million iPads, and 4.7 million Macs. Apple did not break out sales of the recently released Apple Watch.
Updated every Monday morning, Discover Weekly brings you two hours of custom-made music recommendations, tailored specifically to you and delivered as a unique Spotify playlist.
Good idea.
Betts, who has spent more than 25 years in the auto industry with companies including Toyota and Nissan, vacated his role of head of quality at Chrysler Group last year to “pursue other interests.”
Oh Apple, what are you up to.
Ed is just on fire. Much respect.
USAToday:
The airplane is one that turns heads.Aviation enthusiasts instinctively know it is the “Beluga,” a nickname stemming from the aircraft’s uncanny resemblance to the whale of the same name.
But nearly all who see it tend to agree that regardless of its name, it’s one of the world’s strangest-looking aircraft.
I have a fascination and appreciation for the magic of flight and those crafts that are able to achieve it but this thing? Sorry. It’s one butt ugly airplane.
Apple:
All Store Services – Some users are affected. Users are experiencing a problem with the services listed above. We are investigating and will update the status as more information becomes available.
For those of you/us who are having issues accessing Apple Music and other services today, rest assured, it’s not on your end. Apple has been having frequent problems with Apple Music since last week. This is a good page to bookmark and check when your Apple cloud-based services aren’t working as expected.
This is one of those lists that likely has a number of things you already know. But it’s worth reading, just for that one little nugget that’s new to you.
My favorite is one that works on your Apple Watch but also on any iOS device. This is especially useful for folks who are new to Siri. When you have a spare minute, ask Siri:
What kind of things can I ask you?
You’ll get a list of queries, organized by apps installed on your device. Tap an app and you’ll get a second page with more suggestions for that app.
Pass this one along.
Mike Wehner, writing for the Daily Dot, put together a nice little writeup showing iPod, iPad, and iPhone sales numbers at the same point in their life-cycle as the Apple Watch is now.
Bottom line, speculation is foolish. Those who speculate so early in the game are destined for John Gruber’s claim chowder file.
The report on the hardware and software that makes up your Mac has been around forever. But that report, accessible via the Apple menu’s About This Mac menu item, is constantly evolving.
One particularly useful element of this report is the what and when of all the software you’ve got installed on your Mac. If you’ve not encountered this, here’s how you get there:
When the report appears, scroll down on the left-hand sidebar and, under Software, select Installations. The scrolling list that appears on the right shows every piece of software you’ve installed on your Mac. You can click on a column header to sort your list by name, version number, source, or install date.
Of particular interest is the source column. Anything showing a source of Apple is likely safe, but are there items on the list that you don’t recognize marked as 3rd Party? Might be worth looking into those.
[Via MakeTechEasier.com]
Before you get too excited, this fine print is from the new NFL Game Pass web site:
NFL Game Pass includes live access to most preseason games. Such live preseason games do not include all nationally-broadcast preseason games and any preseason games televised in a user’s local market. Preseason games that are not available live in NFL Game Pass will be made available on-demand in the NFL Game Pass archives shortly after the conclusion of the original telecast. NFL Game Pass does not include live regular season, playoff, and Super Bowl game broadcasts. Access to these games is available within NFL Game Pass on an on-demand basis in the NFL Game Pass archives after such games have aired on broadcast television. Sunday morning and afternoon games (9:30am ET, 1pm ET & 4pm ET) are available at the conclusion of all Sunday 4pm ET games, and Sunday night, Monday night, Thursday and Saturday NFL games are available following the conclusion of the applicable game telecast. NFL Game Pass is unavailable during the telecast of the Super Bowl. Some 2009 regular season games are not available. NFL Game Pass is only available to users within the United States, Bermuda, Antigua, the Bahamas, any U.S. territories, possessions and commonwealths (including American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands), and Mexico.**Some live Preseason games may not be available live on phones, but will always be available in the archives.
The key here is the phrase: “Sunday morning and afternoon games (9:30am ET, 1pm ET & 4pm ET) are available at the conclusion of all Sunday 4pm ET games, and Sunday night, Monday night, Thursday and Saturday NFL games are available following the conclusion of the applicable game telecast.”
No live games.
Kiss your afternoon goodbye. Enjoy.