Brian X. Chen, writing for the New York Times:

Yet one much ballyhooed device will be absent from the conference: a new Apple TV, Apple’s set-top box for televisions. The company planned as recently as mid-May to use the event to spotlight new Apple TV hardware, along with an improved remote control and a tool kit for developers to make apps for the entertainment device. But those plans were postponed partly because the product was not ready for prime time, according to two people briefed on the product.

Apple declined to comment.

And:

Those eager for a new Apple TV, however, will have to wait. The company decided to hold off an announcement because the product was not ready to be demonstrated, according to people briefed on the device.

A major setback for the Apple TV involves content. Apple plans to offer its Apple TV, iPhone and iPad customers a bundle of channels that is smaller and cheaper than the large catalog of offerings in a typical cable subscription, according to people briefed on the service, who discussed the incomplete plans on the condition of anonymity. Media executives have been coy about the existence of the coming Apple TV service — the chief executive of CBS said last week that his network would “probably” sign a deal with Apple. Separately, Showtime announced on Wednesday a new Internet streaming service that would debut on Apple devices in July for a monthly fee of $10.99.

Feh. I’m really looking forward to the new Apple TV. I want the content control, but I also want the SDK.

Just imagine the possibility of being able to build an app that had access to both streaming content and the content metadata. Every modern TV is controlled by an interface purposefully limited by a need to be both bulletproof (well, mostly) and a lowest common denominator (the same interface for both techies and non-techies). Imagine being able to break that barrier, to customize that interface.

My first wish would be to add a button that did an IMDB, Metacritic, and RottenTomatoes lookup for a show I was thinking of recording. I’d put in preferences that let me add review sites as I encountered them.

Have to put that dream on hold for a bit. Feh.

The Washington Post:

PayPal users, this is for you.

The payments company is rolling out an update to its user agreement that threatens to bombard you with “autodialed or prerecorded calls and text messages” — and worse, by agreeing to the updated terms, you’re immediately opted in.

PayPal can even reach you at phone numbers that you didn’t provide. Through undisclosed means, PayPal says it has the right to contact you on numbers “we have otherwise obtained.”

I don’t get how these companies continue to add clauses like this. There are far too many geeks out there reading the EULAs and taking them apart word for word for companies like PayPal to get away with such egregious abuses of the information they gather on us.

Ars Technica:

Macs older than a year are vulnerable to exploits that remotely overwrite the firmware that boots up the machine, a feat that allows attackers to control vulnerable devices from the very first instruction.

The attack, according to a blog post published Friday by well-known OS X security researcher Pedro Vilaca, affects Macs shipped prior to the middle of 2014.

The new attack doesn’t require even brief physical access as Thunderstrike did. That means attackers half-way around the world may remotely exploit it. While the attack isn’t likely to be exploited on a mass scale, it’s also not hard for people with above-average skill to carry it out.

I’ve been chatting with my favorite security expert on Twitter about this and he says, “It looks pretty serious. Not panic level, but I hope Apple patches quickly. It makes a root exploit permanent but you still need the initial exploit. Nearly impossible to remove once exploited.”

Showtime:

You will be able to watch wherever and whenever you want through the SHOWTIME app on your Apple TV®, iPad® and iPhone®, plus on your computer.

You’ll be able to stream current and classic SHOWTIME Original Series, hit movies, live sports, exclusive documentaries and comedy specials. Watch when they first premiere or catch up on old favorites – always commercial free!

All of these services are great news for cord cutters but they are going to add up to spending real money real quick.

New York Times:

Last fall, however, Koeslag set off on a very different, decidedly 21st-century project: a smartwatch. In response to Apple’s plans to introduce a high-tech watch this year, the chief executive of Frédérique Constant, Peter Stas, decided the company would produce its own. It would not be a minicomputer with a screen, like Apple’s. Instead, it would combine the functions of a Fitbit, a device that tracks physical activity, with a traditional Swiss timepiece, a $1,200 entry-level Frédérique Constant watch. A Silicon Valley company would produce the tiny sensors that count steps and measure sleep cycles, and this information would be transmitted to a phone through a Bluetooth connection. The phone would also control the watch — resetting its hands in different time zones, for example. From the outside, the watch wouldn’t look “smart” at all, but it would be packed with electronics. Koeslag’s job was to bring to life this chimera of Swiss engineering and Silicon Valley wizardry.

Koeslag faced a significant problem, though: He had never worked with chips and sensors before. He didn’t even own a soldering iron. Swiss watchmakers don’t need them; their devices are put together with screws and screwdrivers.

This proposed watch sounds very interesting. I think the Swiss watchmakers, after a period of consolidation when the big makers swallow up a few smaller ones, will be fine. People will always want high end, exquisitely made watches.

Product Hunt:

Useful Mac apps you probably aren’t using (but should).

I get the Product Hunt newsletter every day and they often have some really interesting bits. Today’s list of Mac apps are of some I use – Duet, Bartender, Spectacle – but several I’d never heard of but installed immediately because they sound so cool/useful.

Apple:

Apple has determined that, in rare cases, the battery in the Beats Pill XL Speaker may overheat and pose a fire safety risk. This product has been sold worldwide since January 2014 by Beats, Apple, and other retailers.

Product returns will only be processed via the web for this program.

I blame Dr Dre.

You’ve all no doubt heard about Fantastical 2, the incredible calendaring program from Flexibits. Well, now there’s more to love.

Thing 1: Flexibits has just released Fantastical 2 for Apple Watch. See the video below.

Thing 2: Flexibits has just updated Fantastical 2 for iPhone (version 2.3) and Mac (version 2.0.6). A great thing just got fantasticaler. Yes, I went there.

A personal note: I have been searching for a replacement calendar for years. Literally years. Fantastical 2 is absolutely brilliant. If you haven’t tried it yet, I would urge you to click here and take the 21 day free trial version for a spin. Great product, exceptional tech support.

Sarah Perez, writing for Tech Crunch:

Apple quietly made a number of changes to the way it features and organizes mobile applications in the iTunes App Store in May that are of particular interest to mobile game developers. Previously, developers relied on algorithmically generated sections highlighting new and trending titles as a way of having their games found, but now many of these lists are gone.

Now missing are lists like “New,” “What’s Hot,” and “All iPhone (Free & Paid),” for example. In their place, including for the first time ever in the Games’ subcategory pages, are editorially curated lists instead.

These changes started rolling out a few weeks ago. Definitely a step in the right direction.

If you have even the slightest interest in building a startup, if you have even the tiniest entrepreneurial bone in your body, read this story. Inspirational and educational.

Side note: MVP is Minimal Viable Product, the idea of the smallest, cheapest thing you can build to test out your idea before you commit that big chunk of cash.

[H/T David Lawrence XVII (known to many as the Puppet Master from Heroes)]

Tyler Fisher and Jacob Ganz, writing for NPR Music:

Recently, the rapper Jay Z relaunched the subscription streaming music service Tidal, which includes the option to listen to high-definition audio for $19.99 per month. Tidal’s HiFi, with its uncompressed audio files, promises a better listening experience than any other streaming service on the market.

Many listeners cannot hear the difference between uncompressed audio files and MP3s, but when it comes to audio quality, the size of the file isn’t (ahem) everything. There are plenty of other ingredients to consider, from the quality of your headphones to the size of the room you’re sitting in to, well, your own ears.

Follow the headline link to try your hand at picking the highest quality stream from three different choices. You’ll have six different samples to work through. I did surprisingly poorly. I guess I’m not a good candidate for Tidal’s HiFi service. Are you?

Techcrunch:

“I’m speaking to you from Silicon Valley, where some of the most prominent and successful companies have built their businesses by lulling their customers into complacency about their personal information,” said Cook. “They’re gobbling up everything they can learn about you and trying to monetize it. We think that’s wrong. And it’s not the kind of company that Apple wants to be.”

Cook went on to state, as he has before when talking about products like Apple Pay, that Apple ‘doesn’t want your data.’

“We don’t think you should ever have to trade it for a service you think is free but actually comes at a very high cost. This is especially true now that we’re storing data about our health, our finances and our homes on our devices,” Cook went on, getting even more explicit when talking about user privacy.

I love that Cook continues to bang this drum.

I can’t imagine how much data Heineken is pushing through the cloud.

Macworld:

FireWire is emblematic of everything that’s great about Apple as well as everything that’s not, and of a particular mindset among some Apple users.

It was technically hugely sophisticated, removing much of the burden for the data interchange from the main CPU; unlike USB, which required a host computer, FireWire was essentially a peer-to-peer networking technology, and it could transfer at full speed in both directions simultaneously, unlike USB.

But it was also, ultimately, expensive to implement, and although variants were supported by other companies (notably Sony), it struggled to get traction outside of the Apple ecosystem.

I have a soft spot for FireWire (I took delivery of the very first FireWire Drive in Canada). For those of us who remember not only the days of slow USB 1 but also back to ADB and (shudder) SCSI, it was a great way to move lots of data extremely quickly. I still have a bunch of FireWire cables I don’t have the heart to throw out.

Seasonality Pro offers meteorologists and advanced weather enthusiasts a powerful way to explore current weather model data on iOS. View weather forecast model data at full resolution quickly while on the go.

That’s some detailed weather.

Just in case you were wondering.

Huffington Post:

In a series of trials, the Department of Homeland Security was able to smuggle fake explosives, weapons and other contraband past airport screeners in major cities across the country, according to ABC News. Officials briefed on the Homeland Security Inspector General’s investigation told the station that the TSA failed 67 out of 70 tests conducted by the department’s Red Teams — undercover passengers tasked with identifying weaknesses in the screening process, NJ.com reports.

During the tests, DHS agents each tried to bring a banned item past TSA screeners. They succeeded 95 percent of the time.

In yet another example of the “security theater” that is the TSA, this latest in a long line of embarrassments should cause the related departments to seriously look at whether or not the TSA is even worth the effort, money and resources it takes to keep such a sad sack organization propped up.

Techcrunch:

Apple’s HomeKit is finally starting to roll out to actual consumers, via the first crop of HomeKit-enabled accessories from third-party manufacturers. This means you’ll soon be able to get your hands on a range of products for the connected home that work with Siri on your iOS device, and that you’ll be able to do so as soon as today, since some of the new HomeKit accessories start shipping now.

The accessories in question range from sensors, to lights, to thermostats, to smart outlets, and come from a group of accessory-makers with a trusted reputation in the connected home industry. HomeKit may have taken a while to arrive, but it’s doing so in grand fashion, with a practical lineup to get your home connected to your iOS ecosystem in an essential way.

I bet we’ll see more announced and demoed at WWDC next week. It will be interesting to see the early adopters’ reaction to these and how they work right out of the box. The tech is far too new for me to invest in just yet but it is definitely the future and I’m looking forward to seeing what developers come out with.

Nice photo gallery from The Telegraph shows the history of the iPhone. Amazing to me that the iPhone has been out long enough, has had such a massive impact on the world, that we think if it as having a history. But it certainly does.

[H/T Rob Richman]

Jeff Benjamin, writing for iDownloadBlog, talks you through everything you’ve ever wanted to know about managing alarms on your Apple Watch, including a link to this tutorial that shows you how to add alarms as a complication to your watch face.

Lory Gil, writing for MacRumors, lays out two lists: One with your Apple Watch in the wild with no iPhone and no WiFi, and one with no iPhone but with WiFi. Good stuff.

Most devices require a minimal voltage to continue functioning. When your alkaline battery drops below that threshold, it still has 80% of its voltage left, but it is essentially useless.

This is where Batteriser comes in. It’s essentially a voltage booster that sucks every last drop of useable energy from ostensibly spent batteries. So, instead of using just 20 percent of all the power hidden inside of your Duracells and Energizers, Batteriser makes effective use of the remaining 80 percent.

Voltage boosters are nothing new, but Batteriser scales down the technology to the point where it can fit inside a stainless steel sleeve less than 0.1 mm thick. Roohparvar says the sleeves are thin enough to fit inside almost every battery compartment imaginable, and the combined package can extend battery life between 4.9x for devices like remote controls and 9.1x for various electronic toys.

“The Batteriser has boost circuitry that will boost the voltage from 0.6 volts to 1.5 volts and will maintain voltage at 1.5—which is a brand new battery,” Roohparvar says. “There’s actually no IP [intellectual property] in the boost circuitry. Our technology is really a miniaturization technique that allows us to build the sleeve. We have some IP in some of the IC circuits that are in there, but the key is we’ve been able to miniaturize the boost circuit to a point that no one else has been able to achieve.”

Too good to be true? Snake oil? My gut says, this is the real deal. And the test is simple enough to run. Run down the batteries, then add the sleeve, reinsert. If it works as advertised, we’ve got a winner.

Side note: Read the linked article. There’s a fascinating story about industrial espionage that sounds like it came from the marketing department, but still interesting.

Ben Lovejoy, writing for 9to5mac:

Apple was an early adopter of the Thunderbolt standard, which allowed a single port to be used for both high-speed data transfer and DisplayPort monitor connections. Intel’s integration of the two standards would allow Apple to replace the Thunderbolt port in the MacBook Pro range while still maintaining full compatibility with existing peripherals.

Full compatibility, with the purchase of an adapter. Not a fan of port changeover, though the market clearly is. Money out of our pockets to buy adapters, money that drives the accessory/adapter market.

That said, I am a fan of standards, especially when it reduces the total number of cables I need to worry about. The move towards USB as a standard for cell phone chargers broke the cycle of waste, reducing the replacement charger options from a river of models to a handful, all of them with a USB plug on one end of the cable.

The move to USB-C is a short term pain, a long term gain.

Karen Webster, writing for PYMNTS.com:

Unlike Apple and Apple Pay, Android Pay is not really an “Android” play, it is a Google Android Play, and the two aren’t the same.

Google, of course, has been regarded as the unofficial godfather of Android since it acquired it in 2005, but Android is an open source software platform that can be licensed, and modified out the wazoo, by anyone who wants to use it.

Which means that it has a huge fragmentation problem staring it right in the face – a huge obstacle when trying to replicate an Apple-like strategy.

And:

At its launch, Google announced that Android Pay would be supported on devices running KitKat and higher. That’s roughly 44 percent of Android enabled devices, and none of those that operate a forked version of Android, like the Amazon Fire phone, for instance or Samsung’s Tizen.

That means that despite Android having a humongous share of the operating system market worldwide, its potential Android Pay customer funnel is reduced by the number of consumers with handsets that have both NFC capabilities and that are running a current version of Android. By comparison, more than 80 percent of iPhones have upgraded to its most recent operating system, iOS8.

Then there’s the process of getting Android Pay onto handsets manufactured by other companies. Apple, as Karen points out, doesn’t have to do diddlysquat.

Fantastic analysis.

Re/code:

To create each of the seven spots, the Apple team engaged in a little bit of benign online creepery. For instance, one of the featured videographers, Cielo de la Paz, had posted photos to Flickr, “and I hadn’t tagged them or anything. They must have been doing a search for photos shot on the iPhone, because they found me out of pure luck and asked if they could use my photo” for their iPhone 6 World Gallery campaign, which launched at the beginning of March.

For the TV spots, “they were like, ‘you have good photos — do you have good videos?” and I was like “um, maybe?”

Simple, effective, minimal…typically Apple.

Deal with it.

Wall Street Journal:

More than a decade after it revolutionized music ownership with digital downloads through iTunes, Apple Inc. is again trying to change how consumers listen to their favorite songs with a new subscription streaming service and a renewed push into Internet radio.

At its developers’ conference next week, Apple is expected to announce a new set of music services, putting the company in competition with Spotify, the world’s leading streaming service, as well as Internet-radio player Pandora and even traditional broadcast stations.

These stories are leaking now ahead of next week’s WWDC. While the fine details may be wrong, it’s pretty common knowledge that Apple will announce their Beats (or whatever it will be called) streaming service next week. The biggest question is what will that service entail feature-wise. This WSJ article might have some of that information correct.