Polygon:

All nine episodes of HBO’s conversation-defining Watchmen television series, a spiritual sequel to the influential Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons comic, will be available free this weekend.

HBO will make the series available for non-subscribers to stream on HBO.com, as well as through Free on Demand services, starting Friday June 19, through Sunday June 21. The company’s press release stated that the move was “an extension of the network’s content offering highlighting Black experiences, voices and storytellers. […] HBO is proud to offer all nine episodes for free of this timely, poignant series that explores the legacy of systemic racism in America.”

I wasn’t a huge fan of the show if only because I had no idea of the characters’ back stories but it was still well done and worth watching.

Matthew Panzarino did an interview with Apple’s Phil Schiller today about the Hey app controversy, which I’m sure you’ve heard all about by now. Here’s a couple of things that Schiller said:

“You download the app and it doesn’t work, that’s not what we want on the store,” says Schiller. This, he says, is why Apple requires in-app purchases to offer the same purchasing functionality as they would have elsewhere.

That makes sense to me.

One way that Hey could have gone, Schiller says, is to offer a free or paid version of the app with basic email reading features on the App Store then separately offered an upgraded email service that worked with the Hey app on iOS on its own website. Schiller gives one more example: an RSS app that reads any feed, but also reads an upgraded feed that could be charged for on a separate site. In both cases, the apps would have functionality when downloaded on the store.

I’m not sure if the developer could do that, but if they could, the point makes sense.

Schiller also noted the exceptions that Apple allows, which are mostly “reader” apps “that only display external content of certain types like music, books and movies.”

It seems like Hey can fix this by making the app usable on the App Store. It doesn’t sound like that’s what they want to do, so Apple is exercising its right to not allow it on the store at all.

Every so often, I encounter an image and wonder where it comes from. Or, perhaps, I’m looking for the highest possible resolution of an image. Or I’m trying to track down the creator of the image.

I’ve long used Google’s reverse image search for this purpose. If you’ve not gone down that route, pick an image, head to google.com and try to figure out the interface. Once you know how to jump through the hoops (hint, click Images, then click the camera) the interface is still a bit clumsy. Plus, some object to doing a search with Google looking over their shoulder.

Now give TinEye a try. Click the link, and just drag and drop an image (on the Mac) or tap the up arrow (on iOS) to select an image from your camera roll. I especially appreciate the simplicity of the experience on my Mac. Just drop the image on the TinEye home page. That’s it.

Worth knowing about. [H/T Dave Zawislak]

Reddit user:

Last night I accidentally deleted my entire library of photos, many of which are (obviously) very important to me.

What follows is a long slow car crash, a combination of misunderstanding where your original photos are stored and, perhaps, ignoring some error messages that would have prevented this situation.

I post this, not to harp on the confusing language of iCloud (it can be confusing, no doubt), but to point out how this user got their photos back.

First, here’s how deleted the photos were:

After freeing up space by deleting my entire photo library on the Macbook, I look at my phone and realize it’s all deleted there as well. Of course, I had also gone to the “recently deleted” and removed all of them because I was trying to free the space on the Mac.

Yup. Those photos are deleted. A backup of your Mac might help here, but set that aside for now.

I called Apple immediately, and was quickly escalated to something along the lines of a “media specialist for iPhoto and iTunes” – honestly it was a very long title, but something like that. He said they have something called “the magic button” which is a level of iCloud that regular users can’t see. The iCloud file recover function didn’t work for me either btw, forgot to mention that.

A magic button you say! First time I’ve heard of this. Interesting.

After he pressed this “magic button”, all the photos came back into my recently deleted section, and I just restored them back to the library.

That’s worth noting. Me, I keep all my original pictures and music on my Mac, then back up that Mac religiously. I have my original music/photo libraries backed up off site, too.

If you use Twitter, you may have noticed a wave of tweets with built-in audio. Tap on the play button and the poster’s Twitter avatar, embedded in a jittery circle, plays audio.

Twitter blog:

Each voice Tweet captures up to 140 seconds of audio. Have more to say? Keep talking. Once you reach the time limit for a Tweet, a new voice Tweet starts automatically to create a thread. Once you’re done, tap the Done button to end your recording and go back to the composer screen to Tweet.

This is a pretty major step up for Twitter, both in terms of enhancing what can be shared, and in the demand placed on their servers.

Audio tweeting is limited to a small number of testing accounts at the moment but will roll out to everyone in the coming weeks. To see if you have the feature, compose a new tweet. If you see the camera icon to the left of your recent pictures (toward the bottom of your compose pane), you don’t have it yet. When you get audio, you’ll get a little waveform icon to the left of your camera.

I wonder how long it will be until we have video tweets.

Juli Clover, MacRumors:

Apple plans to offer a self-guided activity book for kids to complete, along with live virtual sessions with Apple Store Creatives.

Live sessions, which will be hosted over Webex, will last for 30 to 60 minutes, while the activity book Apple has created is a Pages document that kids can complete at their own pace.

The camp is designated for kids ages 8-12. Visit the official sign-up page to get notified when registration opens.

I got to believe those slots will fill up quickly.

512 Pixels:

When Apple added the Breathe feature to watchOS 3, I — like many of you, I suspect — turned it off pretty quickly. However, over the last six months, it has come to be one of my favorite things about wearing my Apple Watch.

The Watch app on the iPhone lets you set the length of your sessions, and how many times throughout the day you want to be reminded to pause and breathe, and minutes are totaled in the health app.

It can subtly remind me throughout my day to take a couple of minutes to slow down and focus on breathing. I’ve done it sitting at my desk, in a parking lot, and recently, on the roof of my house as I was cleaning some debris up from a storm.

I’m a big fan of this simple little feature.

The Next Web:

After mounting pressure from privacy activists and users, Zoom said today that it’ll provide end-to-end encryption protection to everyone — including free users.

Earlier this month, the company had said that it’ll provide this feature to only paid users to comply with law enforcement and catch abusers of the service. After its announcements, several privacy experts wrote to zoom about enabling this feature for all users.

Yesterday, Mozilla foundation, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), 19,000 other users sent an open letter to the company, urging it not to make “security and privacy a luxury.” In another letter, digital rights organizations such as Fight for the future and MPower Change conveyed similar concerns.

Yet another example of a company having two options – the “right” thing and the “wrong” thing – knowing what the “right” thing to do is, and still choosing the “wrong” thing only to be forced by public pressure to backtrack and do the “right” thing after all.

Lots to process here. Start off with this tweet, from Basecamp partner and HEY (email client) creator David Heinemeier Hansson:

Wow. I'm literally stunned. Apple just doubled down on their rejection of HEY's ability to provide bug fixes and new features, unless we submit to their outrageous demand of 15-30% of our revenue. Even worse: We're told that unless we comply, they'll REMOVE THE APP.

— DHH (@dhh) June 16, 2020

Read the thread followups for the whole story.

Next up, take a read of this explainer from Business Insider.

And with that in mind, check out these two Daring Fireball posts, first here, then here.

There’s been a river of reaction to this situation, some pro Apple (no one is forcing you to put your app on the App Store, but if you do, follow Apple’s rules) and many con (explained in all the links above).

This feels like an inevitable moment of change for the App Store. The question is, will Apple get ahead of the situation and negotiate that change themselves, or will they resist and minimize any change, pay the fine and keep their model as is?

Bookmark the headline link. Click to set a reminder. Not that you’d forget, but for some of us a good idea.

Cade Metz, New York Times:

Sitting alone in her bedroom, she stumbled onto an internet video describing a smartphone app called Replika. The app’s sole purpose, the video said, is to be her friend.

Ms. Francola was skeptical. But the app was free, and it offered what she needed most: conversation. She spent the day chatting with the app via text messages — mostly about her problems, hopes and anxieties. The next day, she paid an $8 monthly fee so she could actually talk with it, as if she were chatting with someone on the telephone.

At first blush, this seemed a non-starter. $8 a month for a chatbot?

But reading on, and chewing on the concept, I do get the need here. Loneliness is a powerful, debilitating force, especially in the time of COVID-19. And companionship can be just what the doctor ordered.

The question is, can chatbots cross the uncanny valley, feel real enough that you lose sight of the artificial nature of who you’re chatting with?

Way back in the day, Apple made this amazing concept video called Knowledge Navigator. If you’ve never seen the video, take a few minutes to watch it. It’s from 1987, in the very early days of Macintosh.

The dream was to create an assistant that was completely artificial, but felt human. We are still far from that reality. But the evolution of chatbots seems a slender bridge to that future.

For whatever reason, reminds me of this.

Facebook:

With the US elections less than five months away, today Facebook is launching the largest voting information campaign in American history. We’re building a new Voting Information Center that will give millions of people accurate information about voting, while also giving them the tools they need to register and make their voices heard at the ballot box. Our goal is to help register 4 million voters this year using Facebook, Instagram and Messenger, and help them get to the polls so they can hold our leaders accountable. This goal is double the estimated 2 million people we helped register in both 2018 and 2016.

I am biased here. I am not a fan of Facebook. But I am a fan of any effort to fix the steady drumbeat of false political narrative. And even more a fan of efforts to get people registered to vote.

My initial reaction here was an eye-roll so deep I had to steady myself afterwards. But if Facebook is making an effort to make it easier to register, to give people facts, especially where voting is concerned, how can I be anything but for it?

Make it so, Facebook.

MacStories:

Adobe’s Lightroom and Photoshop are complementary tools that a lot of creative professionals use together on the desktop, moving images back and forth. Until now, however, that wasn’t possible on the iPad, which has made it a frequently-requested feature ever since Photoshop debuted on the iPad late last year.

With today’s update to Lightroom, there’s a new option in the share menu called ‘Edit in Photoshop.’ When you select that option, Lightroom converts your image for Photoshop and uploads it to Adobe’s cloud service. As soon as that process is complete, Lightroom automatically launches Photoshop and loads the image. When you’re finished making edits, tap the big, blue button at the top of the screen that says ‘Send to Lightroom,’ and a PSD version of the image is returned to Lightroom where you’ll also find the original image you sent to Photoshop. Alternatively, you can save the PSD file as a cloud-based document without sending it back to Lightroom.

Adobe is slowly but surely making Lightroom and Photoshop for iPad much better and much more full-featured as well as increasing the integration between the two.

VentureBeat:

The European Commission (EC) has formally opened an antitrust investigation into Apple over rules that force developers to use Apple’s in-app purchasing technology and prohibit them from notifying customers of alternative ways to purchase or subscribe to content.

The EC has also opened a separate antitrust investigation into Apple Pay over concerns Apple has restricted how Apple Pay is integrated into merchant apps and websites, as well as limiting rival payment services’ ability to access near field communication (NFC) technology for in-store payments.

Apple says, “It’s disappointing the European Commission is advancing baseless complaints from a handful of companies who simply want a free ride, and don’t want to play by the same rules as everyone else. We don’t think that’s right — we want to maintain a level playing field where anyone with determination and a great idea can succeed.”

Apple has to be cautious here. The EU is not nearly as “forgiving” of these kinds of actions as the US is.

Jump to the linked article, make your way down to the earliest posts, then back up through the series of updates as people worked out what was really happening.

Fascinating watching this unfold. A widespread outage for a major carrier is extremely rare, and cause for concern, especially for those folks in lockdown who depend on their cell service for all contact with the outside world.

Of all the names I’ve seen suggested, my favorite is lockdown-related: macOS Alcatraz.

I wish we had similar naming schemes for iOS, iPad OS, tvOS, etc. Also, remember BHA?

We’ll find out a week from today!

Adobe:

As previously announced in July 2017, Adobe will stop distributing and updating Flash Player after December 31, 2020 (“EOL Date”).

And:

Open standards such as HTML5, WebGL, and WebAssembly have continually matured over the years and serve as viable alternatives for Flash content. Also, the major browser vendors are integrating these open standards into their browsers and deprecating most other plug-ins (like Adobe Flash Player).

And:

Adobe will be removing Flash Player download pages from its site and Flash-based content will be blocked from running in Adobe Flash Player after the EOL Date.

It’s been a long time since I’ve even seen Flash running on a device. When I hear someone talking about Flash, red lights go off in my head, all nostalgia has been pushed aside by thoughts of malware.

Apple:

When the Apple 2020 Worldwide Developers Conference kicks off on June 22 in a new virtual format, a global community of 23 million developers will have the opportunity to join from around the world for free through the Apple Developer app and the Apple Developer website.

23 million developers. That is an amazing number, especially when I think back to that tiny developer universe when the first iPhone SDK rolled out back in March, 2008.

Among them will be 350 Swift Student Challenge winners from 41 different countries and regions. The students were chosen based on their original Swift playground submission, part of Apple’s annual WWDC student challenge, which recognizes and celebrates the next generation of coders and creators.

This is one of my favorite parts of WWDC, the opportunity for the newest generation of developers to show off their skills.

Want to learn to program? Fire up your iPad and check out Swift Playgrounds. It’s a wonderful way to get started.

From a study commissioned by Apple, but independent in nature:

Originally offering approximately 500 apps for the iPhone and iPod touch, the App Store has grown to distribute millions of apps for the full suite of Apple devices (iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, Mac laptops and desktops, and Apple Watch) in 175 countries. Cumulative downloads are in the hundreds of billions.

And:

The goal of this study is to capture total billings and sales generated through app developers’ various monetization strategies. In other words, our purpose is to estimate total billings and sales facilitated by the Apple App Store ecosystem. Our study accounts for billings generated through direct monetization via the App Store and sales generated through monetization outside the App Store.

With that last point in mind:

We estimate that the Apple App Store ecosystem facilitated more than $500 billion in billings and sales worldwide in 2019. More than 85% of that accrues solely to third parties.

Jaw dropping numbers, especially considering how lean times got before Steve Jobs’ return and the rollout of the colorful iMac, the iPod, iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, AirPods, etc.

Apple has really blossomed.

MacRumors:

Apple today launched its annual “Back to School” promotion in the United States and Canada. After five years of offering free Beats, Apple this year is offering free AirPods with the purchase of an eligible new Mac or iPad.

Qualifying students and educators can receive free second-generation AirPods with a wired charging case with the purchase of a new MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, iMac, iMac Pro, iPad Pro, or iPad Air. During the checkout process, it it also possible to upgrade to second-generation AirPods with a wireless charging case for $40 or to AirPods Pro for $90.

As usual, the deals aren’t at “OMG MUST BUY!” levels but, even if your kid isn’t physically going back to school in the fall (they haven’t made that decision yet in many places), you still might be getting them new gear. And a free set of AirPods or a few bucks off AirPods Pro is nothing to shake a stick at.

The Awesomer:

Musician Leo Moracchioli rarely busts out the trumpet for his metal and hard rock cover versions of popular songs, but in the case of Robert Palmer’s 1985 hit Addicted to Love, it was the best way to do the song justice. Though Leo’s video seems to be a little light on long-legged models in slinky black dresses.

Moracchioli says on his Patreon site, “I do music covers on YouTube where I record, mix, master, film and edit the videos myself.” I’m not generally a fan of covers but he does a great job on this classic tune.

TechCrunch:

A week before kicking off WWDC, Apple introduced a pair of upgrades to its pro-level hardware lines. Both the 16-inch MacBook Pro and the Mac Pro desktop are getting select internal upgrades, starting today.

On the notebook front, the 16-inch model gets an additional graphics configuration. The addition of the AMD Radeon Pro 5600M GPU marks the best graphics performance yet for the notebook line, marking up a 75% speed increase over the the next-highest configuration, the Radeon Pro 5500M.

Apple also just rolled out a new feature designed to make it easier for users to upgrade the Mac Pro. A new SSD kit is designed for user-installation, featuring 1, 2, 4 and 8TB storage modules.

These upgrades are a welcome addition to the machines I dream about but will never be able to afford.

Macworld:

Apple sheds the past as necessary to provide new features in its products. With macOS 10.15 Catalina, Apple gave up on 32-bit software after two years of Apple warning about that event coming. That meant iPhoto and a host of third-party apps could no longer be used after upgrading. But less remarked upon were video formats that relied on software components Apple had never updated to 64-bit compatibility.

There’s a long list of formats dropped in last fall’s macOS update, and it includes faves from years past: RealVideo, DivX, Sorenson 3, FlashPix, and many great hits that eventually were superseded by improved encoders.

This is one of those issues that, even though Apple warned users for several years ahead of this transition, still might catch less tech-savvy customers out.