Guilherme Rambo, on Twitter yesterday:

Cool, there’s a Facebook SDK issue crashing several high-profile apps right now. Great idea adding that social login, huh?

— Guilherme Rambo (@_inside) May 6, 2020

Amazing how many apps depend on the Facebook SDK. All of them started crashing, without warning, last night. Some developers worked out their own workarounds, other apps remained broken. Facebook seems to have identified a fix which is said to be rolling out now.

From Gui Rambo’s (headline linked) blog post:

The issue was caused by some bad data being sent by Facebook’s server to their SDK, which caused code in the SDK to crash, which in turn brought down the app that was running the SDK. Since this happened during the initialization of the SDK — something that occurs right after launching the app — the apps simply became unusable.

And:

You know how people are saying these days that it’s dangerous how companies like Apple and Google control their ecosystems, to the point of accusing them of monopoly? I’m not going to dismiss that completely here, but I think we have a much bigger problem that’s been lurking in our apps for several years, unnoticed: third-party SDK creep.

On a similar note, this blog post shock wave announcement from Wink:

Since 2014, Wink has grown to support more than 4 million connected devices. During this time, Wink has relied solely on the one-time fee derived from hardware sales to cover ongoing cloud costs, development, and customer support. Providing users with local and remote access to their devices will always come at a cost for Wink, and over the years we have made great progress toward reducing these costs so that we can maintain that feature.

And:

We have a lot of great ideas on how to expand on Wink’s capabilities and satisfy the many requests from our user base. In order to provide for development and continued growth, we are transitioning to a $4.99 monthly subscription, starting on May 13, 2020.

And:

Should you choose not to sign up for a subscription you will no longer be able to access your Wink devices from the app.

Dependence on any single technology or company can produce unwelcome surprises. As we were reminded last night.

James Vincent, The Verge:

A beta app launched by the UK this week shows the huge challenges they face and, crucially, the difficulty in designing an effective app without the help of the tech giants that make our phones.

And:

Instead of decentralizing the data across devices, the UK will pool the information it collects in a single database operated by the National Health Service.

And:

In addition to privacy issues, researchers have identified a major problem in the UK’s efforts to build an app without Google and Apple: it simply won’t work as advertised.

One major problem is Bluetooth pinging. From this Register article:

Apple’s iOS normally forbids applications from broadcasting via Bluetooth when running in the background. That means you would have to leave a contact-tracing app open in the foreground all the time for it to work properly.

Read both articles for the details but, in a nutshell, the centralized data pooling approach seems to rely on people leaving their app running in the foreground (rendering the phone useless for all other purposes, not going to happen) or negotiating exceptions with Apple to allow Bluetooth to ping in the background.

Benjamin Mayo:

The Library may share the same tab bar as the other buttons in the TV app but they are otherwise disconnected. It’s like having two separate apps rolled into one, each with their own UI components and each operating on a different set of data. It’s like having two people living in the same house that do not talk to each other. For the Library tab, Apple essentially took the old iOS Videos app and transposed it as one screen inside of TV.

They didn’t modernise it all, and its age shows through.

And:

Everything is just very disjointed, both in concept and in their underlying implementations. A better TV app would have everything holistically driven by the same shared data source. You should be able to add any show to your library; it shouldn’t matter if that show is backed by a physical file on disk or not. The Apple Music app does a much better job at unifying the deprecated iTunes Store and the modern subscription-based experience.

Couldn’t agree more. I spend a fair amount of my TV watching experience in the Apple TV ecosystem. I would be more than happy to live in the TV app, consume all my content from that one focused source. But as is, things are just too confusing. Drives me to the individual apps, with their myriad ways of doing things. Confusing switching contexts, too. I’d love a rewrite.

Zac Hall, 9to5Mac:

Apple Watch and iPhone have supported a feature called Medical ID that lets you collect critical health data in one place. Medical ID can include your contact information, date of birth, medical conditions, blood type, and more.

And:

iPhone and Apple Watch offer a separate feature called Emergency SOS. When you hold down the Side Button on an iPhone and Apple Watch for several seconds, the device can call local emergency services for you.

And:

What’s new in iOS 13.5 and watchOS 6.2.5 is a new capability that connects Medical ID and Emergency SOS together. Starting later this month, customers can opt into a new Emergency SOS feature that automatically shares Medical ID information with emergency services.

Nice evolution.

Apple:

Apple today announced it is awarding $10 million from its Advanced Manufacturing Fund to COPAN Diagnostics, a market leader in sample collection kits that play a critical role in COVID-19 testing. This funding will allow COPAN Diagnostics to rapidly accelerate their supply of sample collection kits for hospitals across the United States, expanding production from several thousand today to more than one million kits per week by early July.

What I really found fascinating (emphasis mine):

As part of this effort, Apple will support COPAN Diagnostics’ expansion to a new, larger facility in Southern California, with advanced equipment that Apple is helping design.

Makes me wonder if we’ll see Apple branded health hardware (beyond Apple Watch) in the future.

Not to minimize Apple’s efforts here in any way. This is great work that benefits us all.

PCWorld:

Mesh networking for small networks appeared in 2015 with the claim that it would solve Wi-Fi problems by improving coverage, speeding networks, and eliminating hassle. It also promised to remove the need to place base stations meticulously around a home or small office to avoid dead and slow spots.

Five years after its initial widespread emergence, those promises appear to have been fulfilled. Mesh networks have become the best way to set up a new network that spans more than a single, standalone Wi-Fi gateway can manage—or to overhaul an existing inadequate or outdated one.

How does mesh networking pull off this trick? What are the ideal circumstances to pay more for mesh over standalone base stations? And which should you consider? Let’s look into those questions in turn.

As always, Fleishman does a good job explaining the technical aspects of mesh networking.

To check your AirPods Pro firmware version, connect your AirPods Pro, then:

• Go to Settings > General > About
• Tap AirPods Pro

No way to force an update. Mine were updated by the time I checked.

See also, this Twitter thread from Gui Rambo:

I actually compared AirPods Pro running firmware 2C54 vs. 2D15 by putting one in each ear and there’s no difference in noise cancellation whatsoever.

— Guilherme Rambo (@_inside) May 5, 2020

I’ve not had a problem with my AirPods Pro, but I definitely feel like the phrase should be Noise Reduction and not Noise Cancellation. With Noise Cancellation turned on, I can still hear background noise, though it is definitely reduced.

If you are having issues with active noise cancellation, here’s Apple’s support article, for what it’s worth.

Matthew Panzarino, TechCrunch:

The iPhone and later the iPad didn’t immediately re-invent the cursor. Instead, it removed it entirely. Replacing your digital ghost in the machine with your physical meatspace fingertip. Touch interactions brought with them “stickiness” — the 1:1 mating of intent and action. If you touched a thing, it did something. If you dragged your finger, the content came with it. This, finally, was human-centric computing.

Then, a few weeks ago, Apple dropped a new kind of pointer — a hybrid between these two worlds of pixels and pushes. The iPad’s cursor, I think, deserves closer examination.

Great, long read, interspersed with comments from Craig Federighi, sharing insight into how this new hybrid cursor came to be.

My Mom died a few weeks ago and this story really hit home for me. Tim Cook has compassion, empathy. He’s a mensch.

Don’t miss the part of the story where the photo of the Reddit poster’s Mom turned out to be a Live Photo. I can imagine how much that little detail meant.

I absolutely love the Memoji artwork pulled together by the WWDC team. The faces are hidden, buried in MacBooks, shot with a Portrait Lighting effect, a combination of dark, eerie, and whimsy. Delicious!

Bloomberg:

Spotify Technology SA Chief Executive Officer Daniel Ek said he expects Apple Inc. to further open up its platform a year after the Stockholm-based music streaming company filed an antitrust complaint with the European Union.

And:

Spotify has criticized Apple for taking a 30% cut of subscriptions and accused it of limiting app updates and preventing functionality on the Apple Watch and Siri.

And:

Since then, Apple has slightly opened up, rolling out a feature for Siri last year that lets the digital assistant control music services other than Apple’s own. Spotify also released an updated Apple Watch app and Apple TV app in recent months.

And:

Ek also reiterated his previous statements that he believes Spotify is growing faster than Apple Music, saying Spotify is twice the size of its nearest competitor and has three times the engagement.

That last bit, to me, makes it hard to make the argument that Apple is stifling Spotify’s growth.

As to the 30% cut, this from Apple (quote from March 2019):

“Even now, only a tiny fraction of their subscriptions fall under Apple’s revenue-sharing model. Spotify is asking for that number to be zero.”

Has Apple done enough here to avoid further antitrust action from the EU?

Apple:

Apple today announced it will host its annual Worldwide Developers Conference virtually, beginning June 22, in the Apple Developer app and on the Apple Developer website for free for all developers. The company also announced the Swift Student Challenge, an opportunity for student developers to showcase their love of coding by creating their own Swift playground.

And:

Developers are encouraged to download the Apple Developer app where additional WWDC20 program information — including keynote and Platforms State of the Union details, session and lab schedules, and more — will be shared in June. Information will also be made available on the Apple Developer website and by email.

Can’t wait. Very curious about how the labs will be implemented.

Was going through my backlog of posts, found this, was curious if the site was still alive. It is. Curious that people are still posting to it, keeping it going.

Here’s a bit more background on the site, beyond the explainer on the site itself.

The first half of this Benjamin Mayo, 9to5Mac piece is a bit of a retrospective, a look back at six months of Apple TV+. But then he digs into the interface:

The problem is the TV app misleads them (amidst countless other issues). Due to Apple’s arrogance in intermingling originals with $3-per-episode iTunes Store content, most users don’t understand the service. Here’s what happens in the mind of a typical user:

They get a popup on their phone that says they qualify for a free year of Apple TV+. They click the banner and it takes them to the TV app, an app they probably have never launched before. They see a Watch Now screen packed with content — Game of Thrones, Walking Dead, Star Wars, Modern Family, all the newest movies — and then they get asked to subscribe and enjoy 1 year of Apple TV+ free. They can’t wait to watch everything, and it’s only $5 a month!

… So, they press the button and in their minds have subscribed to ‘Apple TV’, so they click on the Search tab, type in their favorite show, see that it shows up, click on it, and get presented with a buy/rent panel and a link to find the show on Disney+ or Netflix.

Exactly my experience. I found the Apple TV+ interface a competing mix of all the shows on all the services and the shows specific to Apple TV+. If I do a search, I get all the shows, with no sense of how to pick the one that’s free to watch, vs the show I have to pay Apple to watch. I’ve learned to navigate to the Apple TV+ list in the Channels section to minimize confusion. But it took me a while to figure out what was going on. I can only imagine how confusing this would be for an Apple TV newbie.

When I do a search in Apple Music, it’s easy (and obvious) to tell if I’m searching my library or if I’m searching the world at large. I’d love a more customizable Apple TV search experience that let me:

• limit my search to a specific service, or
• show me all the occurrences of a specific show on all the services, perhaps divided by free to watch vs pay to watch

As to evidence of confusion, Benjamin’s article includes actual tweets from people convinced that Apple TV+ includes shows from other services, but that they have to pay, à la carte, to watch. Deep confusion between Apple TV and Apple TV+. It is a bit of a mess.

Juli Clover, MacRumors:

Apple will reopen 21 of its 22 retail locations in Australia on Thursday, May 7, according to Apple’s dedicated websites for each of the stores. All of the stores that are reopening will operate on limited hours for the time being.

And:

Apple’s sole Australian store that will remain closed is the Apple Sydney store. As noted by 9to5Mac, this store closed in January for major renovations, and it is possible that the global health crisis caused a construction delay.

If you jump to this Bloomberg post, scroll about halfway down, you’ll see a picture of the line to get into the Gangnam neighborhood Apple Store in Seoul that opened a few weeks ago. Packed line, people standing close together, no social distancing.

The key to South Korea’s success in this bit of a return to normal is testing and exposure response. Will this same experience be mirrored in Austria? Australia? Will each Apple Store reopen be a unique experience, or will they all mirror the Seoul, South Korea approach? I am definitely curious.

Reuters:

Apple Inc and Alphabet Inc’s Google on Monday said they would ban the use of location tracking in apps that use a new contact tracing system the two are building to help slow the spread of the novel coronavirus.

And:

The Apple-Google decision to not allow GPS data collection with their contact tracing system will require public health authorities that want to access GPS location to rely on what Apple and Google have described as unstable, battery-draining workarounds.

And:

Software company Twenty, which developed the state of Utah’s Healthy Together contact tracing app with both GPS and Bluetooth, said on Monday the app “operates effectively” without the new Apple-Google tool.

“If their approach can be more effective than our current solution, we’ll eagerly incorporate their features into our existing application, provided it meets the specifications of current and prospective public health partners,” Twenty said.

At some point in time, I’d expect Apple and Google to build their contact tracing exposure notification solution into the OS, in addition to providing access to third party apps via an API.

I’d expect that the concerns of adoption (getting the system to be actually used by the public) and battery drain are cornerstones of the teams doing the testing of the system.

And not sharing location tracking data? Seems a logical, and necessary, restriction.

Ohio State:

Apple CEO Tim Cook delivered a virtual commencement address today to thousands of graduates of The Ohio State University.

In light of COVID-19 restrictions on large gatherings, Ohio State announced plans on April 3 to hold the virtual commencement.

Cook advised graduates to “build a better future than the one you thought was certain.” The following is a transcript of Cook’s address.

Man, I bet all the Auburn and Duke alumni are feeling awfully queasy seeing Cook decked out in OSU gear.

Smithsonian Magazine:

Test your mettle with this puzzle created exclusively for our readers. This is the first in a series of four puzzles of a pilot program designed for Smithsonian magazine readers.

I love crossword puzzles and this one was a blast to do.

MacRumors:

If you’ve just picked up Apple’s new Magic Keyboard for your 2018 or 2020 iPad Pro, here’s a list of our favorite tips and tricks that you need to know.

For those of you lucky enough to snag one of the new keyboards, this may be of use to you.

CNET:

When the Apple Watch launched in 2015, it had 3,000 apps available to download. Today, there are more than 20,000 apps — 21 of which are built into the wearable. While watches weren’t an in-demand accessory in general back in 2015, the Apple Watch proved to be a useful tool for checking messages, the weather, and reminders, Wang added — all of which are already built into the device.

Here are several native Apple Watch apps that you may not already be using.

Unlike the Mac, iPhone or iPad, I don’t use any third-party apps on my Apple Watch 3. That might mean I’m not using it to its full potential. Anyone else use very few apps on their Watch?

New York Times:

If power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely, how can we best describe the kind of power Big Tech will wield when the coronavirus crisis is over?

How about this: The tech giants could have all the power and absolutely none of the accountability — at least all the power that will truly matter.

In a column about a month ago, I wrote about a problematic trend that would develop after the world had been turned upside down by the pandemic. “There will be a culling of most competitors of these giants that will only strengthen the power and reach of the behemoths, eliminating pesky roadblocks to their further domination,” I wrote about tech’s leading companies, who have the money and the means to wait out the storm. “This is obviously not a good thing in the long run.”

I don’t think Swisher is being overly pessimistic in this piece.

Macworld:

By essentially taking an iPhone 8 and swapping out its processor for the company’s latest-and-greatest A13 Bionic, Apple is able to profitably sell a $399 phone that gives a lot of bang for the buck.

How good of a value is it, really? Perhaps a few charts will make everything more clear. By taking performance metrics and dividing it by the base starting price for every new iPhone you can buy, we are able to get a measure of performance-per-dollar.

This is an interesting but odd way to look at the “value” of the iPhone SE. Sure it may show the iPhone SE in a good light, but it also shows that looking at data this way may skew your opinions about purchasing the latest iPhone.

Apple:

Apple today updated the 13-inch MacBook Pro with the new Magic Keyboard for the best typing experience ever on a Mac notebook and doubled the storage across all standard configurations, delivering even more value to the most popular MacBook Pro. The new lineup also offers 10th-generation processors for up to 80 percent faster graphics performance1 and makes 16GB of faster 3733MHz memory standard on select configurations. With powerful quad-core processors, the brilliant 13-inch Retina display, Touch Bar and Touch ID, immersive stereo speakers, all-day battery life, and the power of macOS, all in an incredibly portable design, the new 13-inch MacBook Pro is available to order today, starting at $1,299, and $1,199 for education.

The base model:

1.4GHz quad‑core 8th‑generation Intel Core i5, Turbo Boost up to 3.9GHz, with 128MB of eDRAM

And the top of the line:

Configurable to 2.3GHz quad‑core 10th‑generation Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost up to 4.1GHz, with 8MB shared L3 cache

Note the range from 8th-gen i5 to the 10th-gen i7.

Storage goes from 256GB all the way up to 4TB. Memory goes from 8GB up to 32GB.

Be aware that the lower end models have 2 Thunderbolt 3 (USB‑C) ports, the high end models have 4 such ports.

The base model supports:

• one external 5K display with 5120-by-2880 resolution at 60Hz at over a billion colors, or
• up to two external 4K displays with 4096-by-2304 resolution at 60Hz at millions of colors.

The high end model supports:

• one external 6K display with 6016-by-3384 resolution at 60Hz at over a billion colors, or
• one external 5K display with 5120-by-2880 resolution at 60Hz at over a billion colors, or
• up to two external 4K displays with 4096-by-2304 resolution at 60Hz at millions of colors