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The Cry-Me-A-Stream Edition Friday, July 1, 2016

Spotify Says Apple Won’t Approve A New Version Of Its App Because It Doesn’t Want Competition For Apple Music, by Peter Kafka, Recode

Last fall, Spotify started a new end-run via a promotional campaign offering new subscribers the chance to get three months of the service for $0.99 — if they signed up via Spotify’s own site. This month, Spotify revived the campaign, but Gutierrez says Apple threatened to remove the app from its store unless Spotify stopped telling iPhone users about the promotion.

Spotify stopped advertising the promotion. But it also turned off its App Store billing option, which has led to the current dispute.

Apple In Talks To Acquire Tidal, Jay Z's Streaming-Music Service, by Daisuke Wakabayashi, Hannah Karp and Patience Haggin, Dow Jones

Apple Inc. is in talks to acquire Tidal, a streaming-music service run by rap mogul Jay Z, according to people familiar with the matter.

Why Apple Might Buy Tidal, by Dan Frommer, Recode

Perhaps most importantly, a deal would take Tidal off the market as a competitor for artist exclusives.

Retail Difficulty

Tekserve, Precursor To The Apple Store, To Close After 29 Years, by Rick Rojas, New York Times

Before iPods and iPads and iPhones, before Apple started selling and servicing its devices out of a glass cube on Fifth Avenue, the eclectic Tekserve store on West 23rd Street in Manhattan was where customers went for upgrades to their PowerBook laptops or to have their computers fixed.

But times have changed, Tekserve’s managers said, and on Wednesday, they announced that the company was closing its retail and customer-service operation. The service center will remain open until July 31, and the retail store will close on Aug. 15. About 70 employees will lose their jobs, the company said.

Mac Fans Rue Demise Of Tekserve, New York’s ‘Real’ Apple Store, by Nicole Piper, Bloomberg

“Thanks Tekserve, for saving my Mac from myself so many times,” Carl Zimmer posted on Twitter.

“Wow, @Tekserve is shutting down. For me, this was always the real Apple store,” said Anthony de Rosa in a Twitter post.

There's Only One Siri

With iOS 10, ‘Hey Siri’ Intelligently Activates On Just One Nearby Device At A Time, by Benjamin Mayo, 9to5Mac

Although both devices initially wake up, once one starts recognizing voice input, it appears to send a message to other nearby devices to cancel out the operation. This means that only one device keeps listening and prevents the naive havoc that happened on iOS 9, where all devices would try to answer the ‘Hey Siri’ question causing a confusing cacophony of sound from every nearby iPhone and iPad.

New Third Party iOS 10 App Extensions Designed To Extend Siri, Maps In Tandem, by Daniel Eran Dilger, AppleInsider

Developers building support for their ride sharing apps to plug into iOS 10's Siri can be supported within Maps as well, thanks to integrated efforts between the two teams to share a mechanism for deciphering and responding to user intent, whether driven by voice or the multitouch interface.

Space Music

Apple Music And NASA Team Up On Short Film And Exclusive Songs Celebrating Juno Mission, by Juli Clover, MacRumors

Apple and NASA have collaborated on a short musical film called "Visions of Harmony," which is designed to celebrateNASA's Juno spacecraft reaching Jupiter's orbit. [...] "Visions of Harmony" celebrates the link between exploring space and making music, featuring songs from artists like Weezer and Nine Inch Nails frontman and Apple exec Trent Reznor.

Stuff

Qwiki And Wonder: No-Nonsense Wikipedia Research, by John Voorhees, MacStories

Both apps are fast, no-frills utilities that help you find and browse what you need, copy a link, and share it quickly.

IQBoxy Prime (For iPhone), by Kathy Yakal, PC Magazine

IQBoxy Prime comes close to being the top all-around app for freelancers and independent contractors whose work demands exceptional, technologically advanced expense tracking.

Hyper Will Sort Through The Internet Muck And Find You The Best 10 Videos Of The Day, by Ashley Carman, The Verge

There are a whole lot of videos on the internet. Some are great, some are bad, and some just shouldn't exist. And that makes figuring out what to watch each day a huge hassle; there are just too many videos to sort through. An app for iOS called Hyper thinks it has the answer.

Facebook Is Shutting Down Its Paper Newsreading App On July 29th, by Casey Newton, The Verge

Facebook is shutting down Paper, a bold reimagining of the company's flagship app for iOS that impressed critics but failed to attract a large audience, the company said today. The app transformed the core Facebook experience into a kind of newsreader, with customizable sections for politics, technology, food, and other subjects. Visitors to the app received a message saying the app would no longer function after July 29th.

Develop

Neural Networks In iOS 10 And macOS, by Bolot Kerimbaev, Big Nerd Ranch

Apple has been using machine learning in their products for a long time: Siri answers our questions and entertains us, iPhoto recognizes faces in our photos, Mail app detects spam messages. As app developers, we have access to some capabilities exposed by Apple’s APIs such as face detection, and starting with iOS 10, we’ll gain a high-level API for speech recognition and SiriKit.

Sometimes we may want to go beyond the narrow confines of the APIs that are built into the platform and create something unique. Many times, we roll our own machine learning capabilities, using one of a number of off-the-shelf libraries or building directly on top of fast computation capabilities of Accelerate or Metal.

My Rules For Mutable Foundation Collection Objects, by Brent Simmons, Inessential

I have some simple rules that I always follow when dealing with mutable Foundation collection objects (plus mutable strings) in my Objective-C code.

Notes

Software Heritage From Inria Wants To Preserve Old Versions Of Computer Code, by Jacob Brogan, Slate

Where the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine has long collected past versions of websites, there’s never been a similar repository for code. The new initiative Software Heritage is attempting to change that, pushing back against what it describes as the fundamental fragility of software.

What Would A World Without GMOs Look Like?, by April Fulton, National Geographic

Without genetically-modified foods, we might have to give up oranges and resign ourselves to living with avian flu and more malnutrition.

Bottom of the Page

Honestly, I don't see any good reason for Apple to even consider buyig Tidal. There isn't too much for Apple to gain, and whatever gains Apple realise are only for short terms.

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Thanks for reading.