It’s tricky to make the argument that any of this is inherently bad for music fans; in our anti-élitist times, all taste is regarded as relative. Maybe Johan Röhr does, indeed, lower your stress levels. Who’s to say that A.I. Oasis is that much better or worse than the real thing? If you harbor no dreams of making money off your music, it’s never been easier to put your art out into the world. And even if we are constructing our playlists for friends under “data-tuned, ultra-surveilled” circumstances, feeding a machine data to more effectively sell things back to us, it’s a trade that most users don’t mind making. We’ve been conditioned to want hyper-personalization from our digital surroundings, with convenience and customizable environments the spoils of our age. For Pelly, it’s a problem less of taste than of autonomy—the question she asks is if we’re making actual decisions or simply letting the platform shape our behaviors. Decades ago, when you were listening to the radio or watching MTV, you might encounter something different and unknown, prompting some judgment as to whether you liked or loathed it. The collection of so much personalized data—around what time of day we turn to Sade or how many seconds of a NewJeans song we play—suggests a future without risk, one in which we will never be exposed to anything we may not want to hear.
Balancing the holiday theme with a deeper message of inclusivity and accessibility was no small feat. “Our goal was never to create just a ‘Christmas ad. First and foremost, we wanted to tell a beautiful, human story that resonated emotionally, did justice to the power of the technology, and honored Apple’s longstanding commitment to inclusivity and accessibility.”
A new report published by the child safety groups Heat Initiative and ParentsTogether Action details the alarming presence of inappropriate apps that are rated as suitable for children as young as four years old on Apple’s App Store. The groups worked with a researcher to review as many apps as possible in the span of 24 hours, and say they ultimately identified over 200 apps that contained “concerning content or features” given the ages they were rated for — including stranger chat and AI girlfriend apps, gaming apps with sexual or violent prompts and imagery, and AI-powered appearance rating apps.
I spent about an hour deleting icons, arranging widgets, and adding controls to create my new homescreen. The camera control button on the iPhone 16 renders that icon unnecessary; the action button launches the oft-used daycare app, so that could go too. When I was done, my haphazardly maintained system of folders with cute emoji labels was whittled down to just four apps in the dock and a handful of widgets spread across two pages, which I’m affectionately calling “Windows Phone 2.0.”
Do you know what the Option key on your Mac keyboard does? It's actually one of the best little-known features in macOS, and hides countless extra settings and shortcuts. Let's take a closer look.
If you search “coloring book” on the App Store, you’ll see no shortage of options, so I’ve narrowed it down to the best apps for coloring on iPad that I’ve tested.
In January of 2017, Stiller called Scott and pitched him on the show. Scott read the script and loved it. “It felt too good to be true,” he told me recently. “I pretty much assumed it would disappear.” It nearly did. Stiller sold the show to Apple, which was preparing to launch a new streaming service, AppleTV+, and the same qualities that had made Erickson and Stiller want Scott—the sense that he could be anyone, that he could almost be overlooked—made him a harder sell to Apple. Executives were hesitant to cast him. Stiller refused to commit to an alternative, and a year of developmental stalemate ensued. Finally, Stiller sent Scott a late-night e-mail: Apple was open to considering him, but only if Scott agreed to tape an audition for the part he’d thought he already had. Stiller feared that Scott would consider this demeaning and walk. But Scott, who is now fifty-one, spent the first fifteen years of his career as a struggling actor, and even after the success of “Parks”—and a part on the popular HBO drama “Big Little Lies” (2017)—he’d maintained a swallow-your-pride mind-set. When Scott read Stiller’s e-mail, he was in a rental trailer in Atlanta, completing a shoot as the host of a short-lived ABC game show called “Don’t.” Scott said, “I remember sitting there thinking, Am I in any position to say ‘No, thanks’ to audition for probably the best pilot I’ve ever read?” He wrote back to Stiller “in, like, five seconds,” and after reading for the part he secured the job.
Gurman said the doorbell would wirelessly connect to a compatible deadbolt lock, allowing users to automatically unlock a door with Face ID. The doorbell would likely work with third-party HomeKit locks, but Apple could also partner with another brand to offer an all-in-one solution, he said.
The American Chamber of Commerce said in a November report that the rules can lead to lower production levels. Companies also are often forced to source costlier or lower-quality materials with advanced electronics components in limited supply locally.
“The gap between the government’s demand for local production and the actual infrastructure to support high-technology standards creates obstacles for foreign investors,” it said.
Sherlock Holmes is one of my favorite fictional detectives, and reading and re-reading the novels and short stories always bring me joy. (Except for that whole Utah and Mormon thing in that one novel, which bored me to tears.)
And Sherlock, the recent television re-imagination of the characters, was really interesting and inventive and wonderful.
But, somehow, I missed the even-more recent re-invention, bringing the characters yet again into today's London: Sherlock & Co, the radio plays. I am still a bit mad that I missed out on this all these months. Yes, I am now bingeing on all the adventures to make up for lost time.
(Okay, to be fair to me, radio plays were never that interesting to me. I may have to change my mind.)
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Thanks for reading.