Reelgood:

With new streaming services launching left and right, we know firsthand just how easy it can be for consumers to get confused and overwhelmed. As evidenced by the steady growth of users flocking to streaming aggregators like Reelgood, people are subscribing to multiple services for their entertainment needs. But are you really getting your money’s worth out of all these platforms?

To help you make a better-informed decision, Reelgood ran the numbers on the six major streaming services — Netflix, HBO Max, Prime Video, Hulu, Disney+, and Apple TV+ — to find out which one is the best bang for your buck.

Interesting data presented. While I knew Apple TV+ would be low on this totem pole, I was surprised to see how high Amazon Prime Video was.

Over the weekend, Daniel Eran Dilger, writing for AppleInsider, shared a post titled, Apple’s shift to ARM Mac from Intel at WWDC will define a decade of computing.

The whole thing is worth reading, but this bit captured a historic sequence, one that I’m sure Intel regrets:

The first was the iPhone, which Apple initially wanted to power with an Intel-built XScale chip. Intel’s chief executive at the time, Paul Otellini, initially said no to Apple, fearing that its phone project wouldn’t be successful enough to justify Intel’s investment.

That turned out to be wildly mistaken. Within just a couple of years, Apple’s success with the iPhone was so obvious that Intel itself desperately wanted to work with Apple on future mobile products, particularly its upcoming tablet. Intel expected Apple to select its upcoming x86 Silverthorne mobile chip, later renamed as Atom.

But this time Apple said “no” to Intel, and instead initiated the development of a project to build a new customized ARM “System on a Chip” that could power both its upcoming iPad and subsequently iPhone 4. The project was delivered in 2010 as A4.

This definitely goes down in my book as one of the biggest missed bets in tech history.

Jean-Louis Gassée:

From a PR perspective, the transition to ARM looks like a delicate balancing exercise. If Apple announces the move six months before the first ARM-based machines are scheduled to emerge, how will that effect current Mac sales?

A new Mac always raises this question, especially with a new Mac that is more than a speed bump. And more so if Apple releases a Mac that moves from Intel to ARM.

Jean-Louis brings up the fabled story of Adam Osborne, who brought the world the first commercially successful portable computer, but whose company crashed and burned.

In 1983, the polymath entrepreneur managed to kill sales of his creation by promising that its successors, the Osborn Executive and the Osborne Vixen, would be even better, Just You Wait! The pitch was so persuasive that customers did indeed wait. Sales collapsed and so did Osborne’s business.

Some say this is more fable than truth. From the Osborne Wikipedia page:

according to some new sources the real reason for Osborne Computer’s bankruptcy was management errors and insufficient cash flow.

Given how long a lead time Apple is said to be offering from announcement to release, it seems this will not be any more of a concern than previous experiences. Apple is a master of the product pipeline.

On a related note, an imagined hardware Developer Transition Kit (via DF), based on the ARM 12Z and housed in a headless device (Apple TV or Mac mini enclosure). This makes eminent sense to me. Pure speculation, but still.

Speculation aside, a key takeaway is the idea that a first ARM Mac need not replace the entire Mac product line. It might be a laptop. Or it might be a Mac mini. Or it might not even be.

Dade Hayes, Deadline:

Looking to streamline its offerings after critics have said they are complicated and difficult to navigate, even for existing customers, the company has also rebranded stand-alone service HBO Now to just HBO. The shift is expected to happen over the next few months.

HBO Go, which launched in 2010, will be removed from primary distribution platforms on July 31 but some online access will continue for a few weeks after that. The unplugging of Go is only in the U.S. Internationally, it will continue to operate, at least for now.

I still can’t wrap my head around the thinking on the HBO streaming plans. HBO, HBO Go, HBO Now, and HBO Max. All of which overlap pretty significantly, and whose names give no real indication of where the overlap ends.

TidBITS:

Persistent rumors suggest that Apple will switch from the Intel x86 processors in current Macs to ARM processors like Apple’s A series of chips that power iOS devices. Apple has said nothing about such a transition, but that’s par for the course for Apple.

Apple has successfully switched the Mac’s processor twice before. In 1994, Apple moved from the Mac’s original Motorola 68000 processors to IBM PowerPC processors. And in 2006, the company ditched the PowerPC in favor of Intel x86 processors. Both transitions were fairly smooth due to years of testing—Apple maintained a version of Mac OS X running on Intel chips years before the first Intel Macs shipped. Apple almost certainly has a version of macOS running on ARM right now, in some secret lab.

I don’t have any inside information on whether Apple is working on ARM-based Macs. But let’s look at the pros and cons of switching from Intel to ARM.

Given where Apple is at and where it seems to want to be, there’s no case needed to be made from the company’s point of view. All that’s left is implementation. And Apple is not “working on” ARM-based Macs. That part is done. They have them. They work. And they are fast.

MacRumors:

Most iPhone users will be aware of their device’s built-in calculator, but not everyone will know some of the tricks that you can perform with the app that can save you time. Here are some of our favorite tips.

I’m not a heavy user of the iPhone calculator but there are a couple of tips here I can definitely use.

The Next Web:

A thousand days is a mighty long time. That, friends, is the average lifespan of a hamster. And it’s also the amount of time since the launch of current Apple TV. Roughly.

Yes, the 5th generation of the Apple TV (AKA the newest 4K one) was released all the way back in September 2017. September 2017. The current Apple TV is as old as that mysterious jar of sauce in the back of your fridge.

Despite that, the current Apple TV easy to use, AirPlay is still fantastic, and it’s a much better experience than Android TV.

In other words, okay-ish-ness personified.

This isn’t a bad thing in itself, I just want more.

After listening to the latest Dalrymple Report, this article seemed apropos. There’s certainly an argument to be made that the Apple TV hardware is, for the most part, “good enough” and Apple should focus on making the UX and software better.

MacRumors:

Real-time transit information in Apple Maps has been expanded to multiple countries and metropolitan regions, Apple today confirmed in an update to its Feature Availability page.

In addition to regular public transport information, Apple now highlights several regions in which transit information is displayed in real time. These include the whole of Canada, England, the Netherlands, Scotland, Sweden and Wales, as well as 32 metropolitan regions in Australia, China, and the United States.

Meanwhile, support for Apple’s “Nearby” feature has been expanded and is now available in the following 31 countries: Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Croatia, Czech Republic, El Salvador, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Macau, Mexico, Montserrat, New Zealand, Norway, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Republic of Korea, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey and Vietnam.

Maps now even includes transit directions for my little Canadian town of 6,000.

Drivers working for ride-hailing services such as Uber Technologies Inc and Lyft Inc will be considered employees under California’s new gig worker law, the state’s leading industry regulator said on Thursday.

The decision, by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), which regulates ride-hailing companies across the state, comes six months after a state law took effect that makes it tougher for companies to classify workers as contractors rather than employees. The latter designation exempts them from paying for overtime, healthcare and workers’ compensation.

This looks like it’s done, but the two sides have been battling for the last few years on the issue. I wouldn’t be surprised to see more lawsuits in the future.

TechCrunch:

Before June each year, content and media platforms in China anxiously anticipate a new round of censorship as the government tightens access to information in the lead-up to the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown.

This year, Chinese users lost access to two podcast apps — Pocket Casts and Castro Podcasts. Neither app is searchable within Apple’s Chinese App Store at the time of writing.

Pocket Casts, which was acquired by a group of American public radio companies in 2018, tweeted that it “has been removed from the Chinese App Store by Apple, at the request of the Cyberspace Administration of China,” the country’s internet watchdog.

When Pocket Casts asked for clarification, Apple’s app review team told the podcast firm to contact the CAC directly, an email seen by TechCrunch showed.

Apple continues to be embarrassed by its inability to fight back against the Chinese government’s censorship.

The Verge:

Adobe is launching a new app today called Photoshop Camera that’s filled with a bunch of very elaborate filters that can change your face and the world around you. Some of the filters are really impressive: several identify the sky behind you and replace it with perfect clouds or a magical moon; another puts you inside a Black Mirror-esque glitchy world; and another makes you look like you’re in a comic book.

The app is available for free and works on both iOS and Android (though only recent Pixel, Galaxy, and OnePlus models are officially supported for the latter). Adobe launched a preview of the app in November.

Photoshop Camera has little to do with Photoshop beyond the fact that both have to do with photos and both of them are apps. You can do some basic photo editing here — adjust contrast, exposure, saturation, and so on — but mostly you’re meant to snap a picture, filter it, and leave. If you want to make adjustments, there’s a magic wand button that automatically dials in changes for you so you don’t have to worry about the actual settings.

I was a beta tester for PS Camera (as it was then called). Whether you’ll like the app I think depends greatly on whether or not you want “insta-worthy” (ugh – I hate that term) photos or not. I found it to be fairly simplistic and over the top. Not the “Camera” app I was expecting and hoping for from Adobe.

Adobe CTO Abhay Parasnis said in an interview with The Verge that Photoshop Camera is “the next one in that journey for us.” I really hope not.

AppleInsider:

Apple CEO Tim Cook and company will launch the 2020 WWDC with a “special event keynote” on June 22, at 1 PM Eastern Time — with sessions following on how to build “the next generation of apps.”

Apple says that the 2020 WWDC will be the “biggest WWDC to date, bringing together the global Apple developer community of more than 23 million in an unprecedented, virtual way.” Leading off that unique gathering is the “Special Event Keynote.”

The keynote will stream live from Apple Park on Apple.com, the Apple Developer app, the Apple Developer website, the Apple TV app, and YouTube, and will also be available for on-demand playback after the conclusion of the stream.

This might just be Apple’s most interesting and important WWDC ever.

Ars Technica:

The breadth of section 230’s immunity is historically unprecedented. While earlier legal doctrines had limited the liability of bookstores and other distributors, it hadn’t granted them the kind of total immunity that online providers now enjoy. A bookstore could still be liable if there was proof it knew it was publishing an obscene or defamatory book. By contrast, Internet providers are immune even if they know about illegal content on their sites and leave it online.

It’s hard to imagine sites like Yelp, Reddit, or Facebook existing in their current form without a law like Section 230. Yelp, for example, is regularly threatened by business owners for allegedly defamatory reviews. Section 230 allows Yelp to basically ignore these threats. Without Section 230, Yelp would need a large staff to conduct legal analysis of potentially defamatory reviews—a cost that could have prevented Yelp from getting off the ground 15 years ago.

The article quotes Eric Goldman, a professor at the Santa Clara University Law School, as saying, for better or worse, “…this rule made the modern Internet possible.”

Today, we @playgroundAI release our first product, Anonymous Camera. Designed together with investigative journalists, it lets you anonymise photos and videos in real time, locally on device. All IAP proceeds go towards @BlackVisionsMN and @UR_Ninja. pic.twitter.com/EfU0hCxpoc

— Aaron Abentheuer (@aaronabentheuer) June 11, 2020

I’ve been playing around with this app and it works mostly as advertised. I say mostly because if you move too quickly, the blur can’t keep up. Hopefully, you’ll never have to use this app but it’s good to know it’s available. Also, if you’d like to blur photos automatically, I found a Blur Faces iOS extension. The downside of this extension is the blur doesn’t sem customizable. In my testing, I saw that I could still recognize the faces of people I knew. The other issue is the extension sends the photos off of your phone to be blurred, creating security and data integrity issues.

Conner Carey, iPhone Life, in a post from a year back:

The Do Not Disturb function on iPhone allows you to silence all incoming calls, texts, and notifications. Here’s how to bypass Do Not Disturb for individual contacts using a feature called Emergency Bypass. This allows the people designated to reach you on your iPhone even if your Do Not Disturb settings are set to silence calls and texts from everyone.

Obviously, this has been around for a while, but the discoverability is pretty low, thought it worth posting. Here’s the details:

• Go into Contacts
• Search for a contact you want to be able to reach you, even if you have Do Not Disturb enabled

(Note that “Add to Emergency Contacts” is on this page. Not what we’re going for, that’s for the Health app and emergency responders)

• Tap Edit to edit the contact
• Scroll down and tap Ringtone
• There at the top of the Ringtone page is the Emergency Bypass switch.

Emergency Bypass allows sounds and vibrations from this person even when the ring switch is set to silent, or when Do Not Disturb is on.

Since you’ve come this far, take a minute to visit:

Settings > Do Not Disturb

Note the Allow Calls From setting, which defaults to your Favorites list. Slightly different from Emergency Bypass. This is about phone calls. Odd to me that they are not integrated in some way.

No matter, thought this was worth a visit.

Though this post is written from a software developer’s perspective, it is quite readable even if you’ve never written a line of code. And if you are interested in a potential Arm-based Mac, it’s short and worth your time.

If I had to cherry-pick one highlight:

Assertion: ARM Macs will exclusively run Catalyst apps.

The thinking goes, since major apps like Microsoft Word and Photoshop already have versions on the iPad, it would be a piece of cake for them to recompile and run on MacOS as Catalyst apps.

This would be a serious downgrade for users of these apps on MacOS, and would be a major departure from the way the apps currently behave on MacOS. And even with Catalyst, it’s still a lot of work for an iPad app to look and feel like a Mac app. You’re still going to need a team to make sure everything ports correctly, in addition to adding all the missing functionality that your users would expect to be there. I just don’t see this happening.

WWDC, and the answers it’ll bring, is a week and a half away.

Another milestone. Some tiny thoughts:

First US company? Hmmm. I wonder what other companies have done this. Dig, dig, dig. Ah, here’s a list of publicly traded companies, world-wide, by market-cap.

Number 1, by far, is Saudi Aramco, which passed $2 trillion back in December, in its first day of public trading. Interestingly, Saudi Aramco’s market cap today is about $115B. That’s a pretty astonishing fall. Oil biz.

Next up is Apple, followed closely by Microsoft, just a whisker behind.

Will we one day look back on numbers like these as small? Will Apple hit $2 trillion?

My immediate thought on reading that headline was, “Why one year?”. To get that, here’s Amazon’s actual announcement:

We’re implementing a one-year moratorium on police use of Amazon’s facial recognition technology. We will continue to allow organizations like Thorn, the International Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and Marinus Analytics to use Amazon Rekognition to help rescue human trafficking victims and reunite missing children with their families.

We’ve advocated that governments should put in place stronger regulations to govern the ethical use of facial recognition technology, and in recent days, Congress appears ready to take on this challenge. We hope this one-year moratorium might give Congress enough time to implement appropriate rules, and we stand ready to help if requested.

The headline linked CNBC article expands on this with coverage of IBM exiting the facial recognition business, and lots of other background snippets. Worth reading.

New York Times:

HBO Max has removed from its catalog “Gone With the Wind,” the 1939 movie long considered a triumph of American cinema but one that romanticizes the Civil War-era South while glossing over its racial sins.

The streaming service pledged to eventually bring the film back “with a discussion of its historical context” while denouncing its racial missteps, a spokesperson said in a statement on Tuesday.

“‘Gone With the Wind’ is a product of its time and depicts some of the ethnic and racial prejudices that have, unfortunately, been commonplace in American society,” an HBO Max spokesperson said in a statement. “These racist depictions were wrong then and are wrong today, and we felt that to keep this title up without an explanation and a denouncement of those depictions would be irresponsible.”

But they were wrong “yesterday” as well. And the day before that and the day before that. HBO Max is making it seem like they watched the movie on Monday and thought, “Holy crap! We had no idea how racist this movie was!” HBO Max pulling it today makes you ask the question, “If it was so racist, why did you ever have it available for streaming?” Even Disney recognizes some of its racist past and has refused to ever make “Song of the South” available on any platform.

Gone with the Wind has always been a racist movie. It didn’t just become one when HBO Max recovered from the fainting couch and put away their smelling salts like Aunt PittyPat. My wife and I watched it again (me for the 10th time) this past weekend and enjoyed it immensely while still seeing, being aware of and acknowledging its racism.

AppleInsider:

Apple is discontinuing its iBooks Author platform in July and plans to do the same for iTunes U in 2021, the company said Wednesday.

In an email to publishers seen by AppleInsider, Apple said that it will no longer update the iBooks Author platform. As part of its switch to publishing with Pages, Apple also said that it will pull the app from the Mac App Store on July 1.

Apple also said that it would discontinue iTunes U, its aging education-aimed ecosystem, toward the end of 2021.

The iTunes U platform will be available for the 2020 to 2021 school year, but will stop being supported in 2021.

I had someone desperately try to convince me to help them build a business around iBooks Author and iTunes U but, having been burned by peripheral Apple tech in the past (anyone remembers QuickTime Broadcaster?) I had zero faith in Apple continuing it for the long term. Glad I made the right call.

Gizmodo:

Video editing is easier than it’s ever been, with the barrier to entry becoming less pricey every year. As long as you have some decent footage to work with, you can turn it into something presentable—and dare we say professional—using programs that won’t cost you anything. Here are six of the best free video editors to help you unleash your inner Oscar-winning director.

These are alternatives in the most generous sense of the word. FCP is a professional app and many of these are for hobbyists or those who don’t have others relying on their work. That being said, I’ve used several of these apps and many of them are very good. The article missed one excellent free editor though – DaVinci Resolve from Black Magic Design.