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The Calendar-Junk Edition Monday, December 12, 2016

Apple Rolling Out ‘Report Junk’ Feature For iCloud Calendar Invites From Unknown Senders To Address Spam, by Benjamin Mayo, 9to5Mac

Apple is rolling out a fix for the iCloud Calendar spam issue that has plagued users over the past few weeks. On iCloud.com, the company has added a new Report Junk feature. This lets users remove spammy invites from their calendar and reports the sender to Apple for further investigation.

The iPhone 6S Battery Replacement Process, by And Now It's All This

You’ve probably heard about battery problems with the iPhone 6S. Although I wasn’t having the sudden shutdowns characteristic of the problem, my phone was manufactured in the target time frame, so I decided to go ahead and get the battery replaced. I’d rather get ahead of the problem than have it appear when I’m out on a business trip.

Designing A Safer Battery For Smartphones (That Won’t Catch Fire), by John Markoff, New York Times

There is growing evidence that after decades of excruciatingly slow development, batteries are on the verge of yielding to a new generation of material science. [...]

“We’re in a golden age of new chemistry development which probably hasn’t been seen in thirty or 40 years, since the last energy crisis,” said Paul Albertus, a program manager at the Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy. “It’s a pretty exciting time to be developing energy storage technology.”

Will Trump Make Silicon Valley Kiss The Ring At His Tech Summit?, by Ian Bogost, The Atlantic

More likely, the Trump tech summit sends a signal to the tech industry: No longer will it enjoy the anonymity and freedom afforded by the Obama administration, whose friendly disregard for the ills of technology only history can judge. And likewise, no longer will Silicon Valley be allowed to ignore Trump’s Hollywood-style, feudal demand for sworn loyalty. This tech summit isn’t a venue for input or discussion, but a reminder of who is in charge. [...]

When a king or a mogul holds court, he does so for different reasons than a politician or a CEO hosts a roundtable or takes a meeting. Such a gathering might include actual collaboration, or at least the appearance of collaboration. But first and foremost, it affirms which audiences those overlords consider worthy of their time. It is thus no surprise that successful, established, infrastructural technology companies like Google, Cisco, Microsoft, Oracle, and IBM would make the cut, while more trivial distractions, like Slack and Twitter and Netflix, would not. It is also no surprise that organizations with whom Trump has known beefs—Apple and Amazon, for example—would be invited to learn how to kiss rings.

Stuff

Apple 13" MacBook Pro Review: The Best Computer You Shouldn’t Buy, by Samuel Gibbs, The Guardian

Apple claims that the 13in MacBook Pro will last for 10 hours under its testing conditions. I didn’t get anywhere close to that figure. Barely using it for more than emailing and browsing with a few tabs open in Chrome, the brightness set at about 75%, Evernote and Twitter open and Double Shot preventing it from sleeping, I managed just over six hours on battery. Swapping Chrome out for Safari increased battery life for some sites, but I noticed others really chewed through battery, meaning it came out about even. [...]

Absolutely, it’s brilliant, it’s beautiful, it’s almost everything Apple said it was, I absolutely love it … until it runs out of battery. Or you have to dig out yet another dongle to use a sodding USB flash drive, or a card reader, or attach a display. Or you realise that you spent a month’s mortgage money on a computer and are having your house repossessed.

Bridge Is A Mobile Headset That Brings Inside-Out Tracking And MR To iPhone, by Jamie Feltham, Upload

Develop

Apple Plans To Release Swift 3.1 In Spring 2017, by Joe Rossignol, MacRumors

Apple has announced it plans to release Swift 3.1 in the spring of 2017, corresponding to some point between March and June.

Swift 3.1 is intended to be source compatible with Swift 3.0 and will contain a few enhancements to the core programming language.

Notes

Apple Reseller B&H Says BeatsX Earphones Delayed At Least 2-3 Months, by Joe Rossignol, MacRumors

In an email to a customer this weekend, authorized reseller B&H Photo Video said Apple has informed them shipping will not begin for at least 2-3 months.

The Inventor Of Bluetooth On Where Wireless Is Going Next, by Devindra Hardawar, Engadget

Bluetooth has come a long way. It's gone from being a frustrating standard that only businesspeople used for mobile headsets to something that millions rely on daily for wireless speakers and headphones, syncing with wearables and more. And now, with Apple and other companies pushing consumers toward wireless headphones (and away from the tried-and-true 3.5 headphone jack), Bluetooth finally has a chance to shine.

Jaap Haartsen, who spearheaded the design of the standard in 1994 while working at Ericsson, was recently inducted into the Consumer Technology Association Hall of Fame. I had a chance to sit down with him to talk about the development of the format and get a sense of where things are headed.

The Downward Slide Of The Seesaw, by Sharon Otterman, New York Times

The two young brothers seesawed in Riverside Park recently, testing and tormenting each other, absorbed in a playground ritual familiar to generations of children.

What they did not know was that they were in one of the last places in New York City where they could seesaw. Once ubiquitous in the city’s hundreds of public playgrounds, as they were around the country, the seesaws adults remember have largely vanished from the city and much of the nation because of safety concerns and changing tastes.