This is about the quickest way to switch your AirPods from the device to which they’re currently connected to another.
You’ll likely know most of these shortcuts, but worth a scan. The first one is especially worth a look, using a quick tap in the Control Center AirPlay icon to quick-switch your AirPods to your iPhone or iPad.
Of course, you can also shorten this up a bit more with a Shortcut, but not sure that would be any quicker, time wise.
An 80-year-old lady with a work history as engineer presented with typical angina symptoms Canadian Cardiovascular Society Class III in our chest pain unit (CPU).
And:
The initial 12-channel ECG revealed no evidence for ischaemia. High-sensitive troponin I was also negative. The patient also complained about previous frequent episodes of ectopic beats which were recorded with her Apple watch. Further, Apple watch recordings included tracings with marked ST-segment depression.
And:
Based on this evidence of ischaemia, further diagnostic in the CPU was omitted and the patient was transferred to the catheterization laboratory, where a left main stem stenosis and a left anterior descending/diagonal bifurcation lesion. Accordingly, the patient was treated with coronary artery stenting and left the hospital a day later.
In a nutshell, the Apple Watch picked up a pattern because it had much more access to the patient’s heart data than a single visit to even the best hospital could capture.
This is still early days for Apple Watch and heartbeat irregularity detection. New heartbeat patterns that indicate a specific underlying condition are still being discovered. Some are known, but impossible to detect without constant heart monitoring. Apple Watch, and the underlying ECG pattern matching software are an incredibly valuable resource, one that continues to evolve. There’s way more here than AFib detection.
If the new Apple TV+ show “Trying” is not on your radar, take a look at the “first look” trailer embedded below. It does a great job showing off the tone of the show, the charm of its characters.
The show hails from BBC Studios and is distributed by Apple TV+. A second season has already been signed. The show is available to watch now.
Tim Bray, now formerly a key part of Amazon Web Services:
May 1st was my last day as a VP and Distinguished Engineer at Amazon Web Services, after five years and five months of rewarding fun. I quit in dismay at Amazon firing whistleblowers who were making noise about warehouse employees frightened of Covid-19.
What with big-tech salaries and share vestings, this will probably cost me over a million (pre-tax) dollars, not to mention the best job I’ve ever had, working with awfully good people. So I’m pretty blue.
And:
VPs shouldn’t go publicly rogue, so I escalated through the proper channels and by the book. I’m not at liberty to disclose those discussions, but I made many of the arguments appearing in this essay. I think I made them to the appropriate people.
That done, remaining an Amazon VP would have meant, in effect, signing off on actions I despised. So I resigned.
Patience loading the page. Tim’s post made it to the front page of Hacker News over the weekend, big demand. It’ll load though.
A few additional links:
Tim Bray’s Wikipedia page. Note the mention of Tim as one of the co-authors of the original XML specification.
The Hacker News comments on this post. If you found the post interesting, you’ll no doubt appreciate the comments, likely representing some of your own thinking.
This is a great read for a number of reasons. There’s the whole “birth of shareware” aspect, which was a fantastic slice of history.
But beyond that, there’s the amazing picture of Microsoft, circa 1978, all 9 principals, with a very young Bill Gates in the lower left.
And then there’s this:
The PC World issue with the landmark review of PC-File was still on newsstands when Andrew Fluegelman had his next life-changing encounter with a computer: he was one of a select few invited to Apple for an early unveiling of the new Macintosh. He was so smitten by this whole new way of operating a computer that he immediately began lobbying for a companion magazine to PC World, to be named, naturally enough, Macworld. Its first issue appeared in time to greet the first Macintosh buyers early in 1984.
And:
People [say the Macintosh is] more of a right-brain machine and all that. I think there is some truth to that. I think there is something to dealing with a graphical interface and a more kinetic interface; you’re really moving information around, you’re seeing it move as though it had substance. And you don’t see that on [an IBM] PC. The PC is very much a conceptual machine; you move information around the way you move formulas, elements on either side of an equation. I think there’s a difference.
A new play by Nick Dear, based on the novel by Mary Shelley. Watch Danny Boyle’s monster hit Frankenstein with Benedict Cumberbatch as the creature and Jonny Lee Miller as Victor Frankenstein.
Frankenstein with Benedict Cumberbatch as the creature is streaming for free from 7pm UK time on Thursday 30 April. Available on demand until 7pm UK time on Thursday 7 May. It is subtitled and the running time is 2 hours.
National Theatre:
A new play by Nick Dear, based on the novel by Mary Shelley. Watch Danny Boyle’s monster hit Frankenstein with Jonny Lee Miller as the creature and Benedict Cumberbatch as Victor Frankenstein.
Frankenstein with Jonny Lee Miller as the creature is streaming for free from 7pm UK time on Friday 1 May. Available on demand until 7pm UK time on Friday 8 May. It is subtitled and the running time is 2 hours.
What a great idea – have the two lead actors swap roles.
Dave and I spent some time talking about my review of Apple’s Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro and why I liked it so much. We also looked at some of the things Apple is doing to help users during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Linode: Instantly deploy and manage an SSD server in the Linode Cloud. Get a server running in seconds with your choice of Linux distro, resources, and choice of 10 node locations. Get a $20 credit when you use promocode dalrymple2020 at https://linode.com/dalrymple/.
I love Rogue Amoeba and have used their audio software for years on my Mac. Thank you for sponsoring The Loop this week. Their new app, SoundSource, gives you powerful control over all the audio on your Mac, right from your menu bar:
Per-Application Volume Control
Change the volume of any app relative to others, and play individual apps to different audio devices. Mute your browser, or send music to one set of speakers and everything else to another.
Improve Sound Quality
Use Magic Boost and Volume Overdrive to hear your audio even in loud environments. The built-in equalizer can sweeten the sound, and more advanced users will love the ability to apply Audio Units to any audio.
Fast Device Access
All the settings your Mac’s audio devices are just a click away. Adjust input and output levels, tweak the balance, and even switch sample rates, right from your menu bar.
One More Thing…
If you have a DisplayPort or HDMI device that fails to offer volume adjustment, SoundSource can help there too. It gives those devices a proper volume slider, and the Super Volume Keys feature makes your keyboard volume controls work as well. Neat!
Check out SoundSource today, with a free trial! Rogue Amoeba has extended their April sale – through May 15th, Loop readers can save 20% with coupon code LOOPSS.
I love the craftsmanship that went into this process. The creation of the mold, judicious use of epoxy, those amazing tools. This was cool to watch unfold.
This AppleInsider piece by William Gallagher is a semi-long read, so I’ll cut to the Message-editing specifics. Apple has a new patent application, and part of it concerns editing a Message that has already been sent:
“The first message can be edited, despite the fact that it has already been sent,” it starts. “To initiate the editing of the first message, the user selects the first message with a predefined touch input (e.g., a tap gesture, long press gesture, light press gesture, or deep press gesture) on the first message or the message region for the first message.”
Of course, just a mention in a patent does not mean the concept will ever see the light of day. So grain of salt there.
But the section in the AppleInsider piece titled Editing Messages is worth reading. It does a great job laying out the problem with editing messages and syncing those edits. Makes the patent mention that much more intriguing.
And if Apple does work out a system for doing this, maybe they can share the technique with Twitter.
In a nutshell, the camera of AnandTech’s iPhone SE review unit produced less than spectacular images. When they contacted Apple, Apple replaced the phone and AnandTech saw what everyone else is seeing, great images, especially for a camera on a $399 phone. Jump to the article and you’ll see the before and after. Clearly a huge difference in camera quality.
Here’s the curious part:
The bad news is that we still don’t exactly know what went wrong with the first unit – what I don’t doubt is confirmed is that it suffered from a manufacturing defect in the optical system of the camera.
The problem with confirming such a scenario is that it’s very unlikely that I was extremely unlucky in being the sole person receiving such a sample, as usually one-off faults like these are insanely rare, with the more likely scenario being some sort of systematic failure for a whole batch of units.
The upshot? If you get an SE and are not happy with the images, it might be that your camera is part of the same batch that went to AnandTech. Check it against the before and after images in the article. This is the first such issue I’ve heard of, so it is possible it was just a single faulty unit, though that seems unlikely.
On 13 November 2019, PIR announced that ISOC, its parent organization, had reached an agreement with Ethos Capital, under which Ethos Capital would acquire PIR and all of its assets from ISOC. Under the agreement, PIR would also be converted from a Pennsylvania not-for-profit corporation to a for-profit Pennsylvania limited liability company.
This was disappointing news. But yesterday:
Today, the ICANN Board made the decision to reject the proposed change of control and entity conversion request that Public Interest Registry (PIR) submitted to ICANN.
After completing extensive due diligence, the ICANN Board finds that withholding consent of the transfer of PIR from the Internet Society (ISOC) to Ethos Capital is reasonable, and the right thing to do.
Apple on Thursday posted results for its fiscal quarter ending March 28, 2020. The company reported quarterly revenue of $58.3 billion, an increase of 1 percent from the year-ago quarter, and quarterly earnings per diluted share of $2.55, up 4 percent.
“Despite COVID-19’s unprecedented global impact, we’re proud to report that Apple grew for the quarter, driven by an all-time record in Services and a quarterly record for Wearables,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “In this difficult environment, our users are depending on Apple products in renewed ways to stay connected, informed, creative, and productive.
Sales of iPhones were down this quarter over the year ago quarter. Mac and iPad sales were down only slightly from the year ago quarter, but the company made big gains in Wearables, Home and Accessories, as well as Services.
Also don’t expect Apple’s commitment to giving back to communities to stop any time soon during the global pandemic.
“We feel motivated and inspired to not only keep meeting these needs in innovative ways, but to continue giving back to support the global response, from the tens of millions of face masks and custom-built face shields we’ve sent to medical professionals around the world, to the millions we’ve donated to organizations like Global Citizen and America’s Food Fund,” said Cook.
Ever since its debut on McDonald’s menus in 1981, the McRib has been a popular Golden Arches staple. Throughout its sticky existence, the McRib has garnered adoration from fans so strong that they’ll drive hundreds of miles for their favorite sandwich. The “McFib” has also earned its share of revulsion, confusion, and most of all, curiosity.
I’ve had exactly two McRibs in my lifetime and both times, I thought they were disgusting.
Every year, hundreds of people travel the world just to glimpse one particular airplane. This isn’t some experimental aircraft or even a fancy fifth-generation stealth fighter. This is a cargo plane—the largest one in the world and the only one of its kind in existence.
This is the Antonov An-225 Mriya.
And all these thronging crowds of planespotters are understandable. Mriya is a freight plane with cargo best described as ‘atypical,’ including giant turbines, entire rail locomotives, or ready-to-eat meals…for an entire army. The An-225 also makes only a couple of flights per year and just finished an 18-month-long stint off the runway.
But why would you need a plane that’s so monstrous? The short answer: Rockets.
Really interesting article if only for the pics of the Russian version of the space shuttle.
Here is a story, for quarantined times, about extremely tiny organisms that do some of their best work by burping into uncooked dough. In the end, if things go well, there is good bread. If things go poorly, there is bad bread, or a mass of gluck you heave out so you can try again. This is the nature of yeast, which in its most familiar packaged version started vanishing from markets sometime in March, right after toilet paper and hand sanitizer.
Yeasts are single-celled creatures so complex and diverse that scientists have named only some of the many thousands of varieties living all around us. Yeasts live and reproduce in our homes, in our compost and sidewalk weeds, in our air, on our produce, on our skin.
And all the multiplying yeast bodies are eating sugar molecules they encounter in their surroundings. Yeasts like sugar. As they digest sugar, though, they discharge gases pungent enough to lift your bread dough, ferment your drink, and allow the kid in your household to examine a jarful of belching and flatulence.
I still remember as a kid my mother, a very accomplished baker, explaining what yeast was. “It’s alive!?” I exclaimed in horror. “I’m never eating your bread ever again!” That ultimatum lasted until the next delicious loaf came out of the oven.
In the new iOS 13.5 beta 3 code, which was released to developers for testing on Wednesday, Apple simplifies the unlock process for folks wearing masks by bringing the passcode field to the main screen. All you need to do is swipe up if you’re wearing a mask, and you’ll skip the Face ID display and enter in a code instead.
You’ll find the new setting under Settings > FaceTime in the section AUTOMATIC PROMINENCE.
I’ve been doing a lot of Skype, Zoom, and FaceTime calls in coronavirus time. With more than two people on a call, the various approaches, and their flaws, become obvious.
I get the value of automatic prominence/face zooming. But it gets distracting, especially when you have many people on a call and several people are speaking at once. The tools to moderate large discussions are rudimentary, so the autocratic “mute all” seems to be the best play.
For me, no solution rises to the top. No one has really figured out the ideal solution, but hopefully the providers are learning from this experience and the next wave will be better.
Follow hitmaking, Grammy-nominated songwriter and music producer Oak Felder as he creates a new song. Along the way, he speaks about music production, creating his own unique sound, working with the world’s top artists, and what it means for young artists to have access to powerful technology.
Felder is impressive. He’s six foot, five inches, 400 pounds, with a mohawk. He’s charming, articulate, and full of passion.
I get that this is a marketing piece for Apple, but I was drawn in by Oak Felder, his charisma and his obvious talent.
In conjunction with this, Apple and Google representatives say that they are also releasing the first seeds of the exposure notification API to public health authority developers. The goal, the companies say, is to collect feedback from those developers on how to improve the API ahead of its release in mid-May.
Here’s the setting that enables exposure notification:
The first phase of the system will let health agencies build apps that allow a person who tests positive for Covid-19 to input their diagnosis. The system will then use Bluetooth technology to learn who the person has come into contact with and then notify those people of a possible exposure.
And:
A second phase of the project, to be released in the coming months, will have deeper integration with Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android operating systems to rely less on apps. Still, the first version of the program will require a software update for iPhones and a download from the Google Play store for Android phones.
Long term play. In the beginning, it’s all about creating a foundation, a system for privacy-respecting data collection. Deep iOS/Android OS integration will raise usage levels enough to make the data collected truly useful.
Maybe this won’t help so much in the short term, but when the second wave hits, this might be a game saver.
It’s finally here. Nearly two years after discontinuing the 4-inch iPhone SE, Apple has introduced a new iPhone SE with a highly competitive $399 starting price tag.
Like its predecessor, this release puts Apple’s latest processor inside the chassis of the company’s heretofore cheapest phone, giving buyers who want a powerful, future-proof handset an option for quite a bit less than the $1,000 cost that has become common for flagship phones.
Those who aren’t married to the idea of a 4-inch smartphone will find a lot to like about the SE, though. It doesn’t have an OLED screen or the latest multi-camera system, but given the price, it still might be the best iPhone for most people.
When I first saw the announcement of the iPhone SE, I thought it was a very good phone at a very good price and Apple will sell a metric buttload of them. Now that the reviews are in, there should be no doubt in anyone’s mind that this is a grand slam home run (God I miss baseball) for the company.
Apple has officially inked a deal to settle a class action lawsuit in California that accused it of intentionally breaking FaceTime on older iPhone devices. According to Law360, Apple has reached an $18 million deal in the case.
Through the settlement, 90% of the class action members will receive compensation, either through the mail or electronically. 3.6 million devices are said to have been affected by the update, and each class member will receive an estimated $3. The case was scheduled for trial this month.
“The class is defined as all California owners of non-jailbroken Apple iPhone 4 or 4S devices with iOS 6 or earlier operating systems,” according to the report. 30% of the settlement fund will go to the class counsel, while the two original named plaintiffs will each get $7,500.
Millions spent. Millions owed. Millions to lawyers. Some of us will get $3. The plaintiffs get $7,500 each. Justice is “served.”
Once you scroll to the very end of Jeff Bezos’ fortune in developer Matt Korostoff’s new “1 Pixel Wealth” visualization, the message “No single human needs or deserves this much wealth” appears onscreen.
You may disagree with Korostoff’s judgement on that point, but you might also find yourself more inclined to agree as you massage your wrist, undoubtedly a bit sore after so much scrolling.
The interactive starts with one pixel equaling a thousand dollars, and escalates rapidly from there.
Throughout your journey through Bezos’ fortune, Korostoff overlays comparisons to more familiar amounts of money — say, the median lifetime earnings of an American.
The amount of money Bezos has access to is quite literally incomprehensible to many of us. What he is doing (or not doing) with it is often equally incomprehensible.
I’ve spent a week using Apple’s new Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro, much longer than I thought I would before writing this review. The simple truth is that it changed my thoughts on using the iPad Pro so dramatically, I questioned my initial enthusiasm.
After a week, I’m confident that feelings are reliable, and my conclusion on day one remains: The Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro changes everything. Meanwhile, for people who are searching for other hardcore options, a popular gaming keyboard and mouse may be ideal.
Let’s face it, performance has never been a problem for the iPad, no matter how many generations you go back, the iPad has been a powerful device. The new iPad Pro, with the A12Z Bionic chip, is more powerful than most PC laptops on the market today. Augmented Reality, 4K video editing, 3D design are nothing for the iPad Pro—it’s what the device was built to do. Add in the Apple Pencil, and you have a tablet that can serve every pro graphics user and their needs, as well.
So, if power and performance weren’t the issues, what was it that held people back from using the iPad more? Like most of my reviews, this is a question I answered by pulling from my personal experiences.
I use my iPad quite a bit, but it’s usually at the end of the day when I’m researching a story, returning emails, or some other task that typically doesn’t require the apps that I use on my Mac. I put my MacBook Pro 16-inch down and pick up my iPad for the final bit of work I have to do. It’s easy and relaxing. But why didn’t I use the iPad more throughout the day? It certainly has the potential to do everything I need and much more, but still, I defaulted to the Mac.
After using the Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro, I believe the answer is simply familiarity. I can move around my Mac so quickly that it made sense for me to do all of my work on the machine I felt most comfortable with. At first, I thought this had everything to do with the macOS vs. iOS, but the more I used the Magic Keyboard, the more I realized it had everything to do with my hands. The ability to navigate around a device using a keyboard and trackpad was more critical than I ever gave it credit for, until now.
I’ve used Apple’s Smart Keyboard for iPad since they were first released—I didn’t like them. I could never figure out why the keys were so small and odd on the keyboard and mentioned that in my past reviews. The keyboard was something, but not enough to change the way I use the iPad for my daily tasks.
This admission is especially hard because I’ve changed my opinion completely: I laughed and scoffed at the thought of having a trackpad on the iPad keyboard. I said it on my podcast with Dave Mark on several occasions and never backed down from my thoughts that the trackpad on the iPad was the screen. I maintained that all Apple needed was a keyboard that more closely resembled a MacBook keyboard.
I was wrong.
From the minute I plugged in the Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro, I was enthralled with the trackpad. It allowed me to do things on the iPad in a way that felt more comfortable for me. I was faster navigating than I have ever been on an iPad before. I was having fun trying out all of the things I could do with the trackpad. Simple things like entering the multitasking window positioning the cursor in a document I was writing—I was like a little kid trying out a new toy.
It’s with the trackpad in particular that I forget the golden rule: never underestimate how clever Apple can be when implementing a feature. It’s a trackpad, what could Apple possibly do to make it work any different on an iPad? A lot.
First, it’s not a mouse on the screen, but a small grey circle. It’s easy to see and follow as you move it across the screen. When you hover over an app, it changes size alerting you to where the pointer is on the screen. If you hover over text, it changes shape to allow you to put the cursor in place or easily select some text. When you hover over an interface element, it changes to highlight that entire element. When it’s not in use, it simply fades away.
Brilliant.
After I finished playing, it was time to get down to work and see how the iPad Pro performed using my new Magic Keyboard. There are a few things that were important to me beyond my new found love for the trackpad, and if they didn’t work, the iPad wouldn’t fit into my workflow.
The first of these is that it must fit in with the way I want to use my iPad. Most times, I’m outside, sitting in a chair, with my feet up and the iPad on my lap. The iPad needs to be sturdy enough on the floating keyboard so it doesn’t move around when I type or use the trackpad. Through all of my use, the screen didn’t move once—it barely even shook when I was typing. Adjust the screen to a comfortable angle, and you’re all set for as long as you need.
Speaking of adjusting the screen—that’s a thing too. When I’m not sitting on my comfy chair, I’m usually at a table. As you can imagine, the viewing angle of the iPad screen will change. With its floating design, the iPad screen moves seamlessly as you change the viewing angle to fit your most comfortable position. This was strange because the screen is so sturdy on the keyboard that I expected more resistance when I tried to move it, but it was very smooth.
Of course, one of the most important things for me was how efficient and comfortable it was when I started typing. Let’s be honest, the Magic Keyboard can be the coolest thing on the planet but if you’re not efficient using it, then it’s not going to work. Because the Magic Keyboard is full-size, you get the feeling of typing on a computer—it’s smooth, familiar, and comfortable, allowing you to get on with the work at hand. The keyboard uses a scissor mechanism with 1mm of key travel, the same as a MacBook keyboard.
The hinge on the Magic Keyboard also contains a pass-through charger, giving you the option to charge the iPad using the USB-C connection on the iPad itself, on the right-hand side, or the keyboard charger on the left-hand side. This may seem like a small thing unless you’ve had the charging cable running over your lap when you’re working or worse, running behind the iPad, and you try to get up.
There is one other element that I need to mention: Face ID. For some reason I always had trouble getting Face ID to work properly with the old Smart Keyboard, but that is fixed now. The angle of the screen using the Magic Keyboard allows Face ID to work nearly every time I pick up my iPad. That’s not only efficient, it also does away with a lot of frustration I had every time I wanted to use my iPad.
It truly feels like Apple thought of everything with the Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro. I tried everything I could think of to break the keyboard in my workflow, but it held up and surpassed every challenge I came up with. I will still use my Mac, of course, but I won’t think twice about using my iPad Pro even more during my daily routine. In fact, if I were going away on a trip today, I would only take my iPad Pro—normally, I would have a MacBook and an iPad.
The Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro doesn’t just change the way I feel about keyboards; it fundamentally changes the way I see the iPad. That’s why this accessory is so important—this is one of the best accessories Apple has ever released for any product. I would say second only to the AirPods Pro for the way it changes my view on an existing product.
I am not exaggerating when I say, the Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro changes everything.
Technology that connects us while we’re apart helps keep us safe and productive. Over the past few months, we’ve seen the power of video meetings bring us together—whether we’re working with teammates, talking to healthcare professionals, sharing with loved ones, or learning from home.
Today, we’re making Google Meet, our premium video conferencing product, free for everyone, with availability rolling out over the coming weeks. We’ve invested years in making Meet a secure and reliable video conferencing solution that’s trusted by schools, governments and enterprises around the world, and in recent months we’ve accelerated the release of top-requested features to make it even more helpful. Starting in early May, anyone with an email address can sign up for Meet and enjoy many of the same features available to our business and education users, such as simple scheduling and screen sharing, real-time captions, and layouts that adapt to your preference, including an expanded tiled view.
Facebook and Google are desperately trying to move into the space dominated over the past few weeks by Zoom. Problem is, Facebook and Google are no more trustworthy than Zoom is.
