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The Silver-Lining Edition Friday, February 10, 2017

Apple Is Giving Away Three Months Of Apple Music With Wireless Beats Products, by Sean O'Kane, The Verge

BeatsX, Apple’s newest pair of $149 wireless earbuds, will finally hit store shelves tomorrow after a few months of delays. But it turns out there’s a slight silver lining, because buyers will find a card inside with a code that’s good for three free months of Apple Music — a $30 value. Better yet, Apple will also include the promo card in other Beats products, like the Powerbeats 3 Wireless, Solo 3 Wireless, Studio Wireless, and Beats Pill+ for a limited time.

Vacation With The Apple Watch Series 2, by Jason Snell, Six Colors

But that Apple Watch was on my wrist, and as a result, I was able to answer calls and reply to texts (we had eight people and three cars, so there was a lot of coordinating going on) without needing to dig my phone out of the bag. It was pretty great. I realize that some people will view this as a negative—didn’t I want to be entirely cut off from communication when I was on the beach?—but honestly, I didn’t mind. I was more relieved to know that I could respond quickly to someone without checking my phone. It helped, rather than hindered, my relaxation.

Apple: Tuning Out Cynicism Since 1976, by Jonny Evans, Compuerworld

Cynicism is easy. All it takes is an external target and a cutting turn of phrase. It will always be easier to slam someone’s original idea than it is to build your own. Apple ignores the cynical. So should we all. [...]

If you think about it, tuning out cynicism has been part of Apple's D.N.A. since it began when Steve Jobs sold his car, Steve Wozniak sold his calculator and both men began on their mission to “get a computer into the hands of everyday people”.

iCloud Was Quietly Storing Years Of Cleared Browsing Histories, by Russell Brandom, The Verge

Elcomsoft did not disclose the new method to Apple, but the company responded quickly once news of the bug became public. Within hours of the Forbes report, a server-side fix began to stop the retrievals, apparently deleting all records older than two weeks. Elcomsoft acknowledged the change in a blog post. “Good move, Apple,” an update said. “Still, we would like to get an explanation.”

Stuff

Apple Delays Shipping For UltraFine 5K Display As LG Works On Shielding Fix, by Juli Clover, MacRumors

New orders for the LG UltraFine 5K Display will now ship out in five to six weeks, ensuring buyers will get a display with updated hardware that fixes the Wi-Fi interference problem.

How To Use Alfred As A Clipboard Manager, by Bradley Chambers, The Sweet Setup

I had gotten away from using Alfred because Spotlight has recently matured, but having access to a clipboard manager convinced me to reinstall it.

Workflow 1.7 Introduces Magic Variables For Easier, More Powerful Visual Automation, by Federico Viticci, MacStories

Magic Variables mostly remove the need to manually save variables. They leverage Workflow's Content Graph engine to automatically keep track of variables in the background, allowing you to access them at any time with the ability to change their type (format). It's a novel idea, and it'll take a few minutes to fully grasp, but it's drastically superior to Workflow's old variables. Magic Variables will change how you build workflows.

Review: Elgato Eve Motion Is A Standalone HomeKit Motion Sensor For Triggering Automations, by Zac Hall, 9to5Mac

Elgato Eve Motion is a standalone motion detection sensor that’s compatible with Apple’s HomeKit feature. Eve Motion can be used as a sensor in iOS 10’s Home app to trigger scenes and control accessories.

WhatsApp Rolling Out Two-Step Verification Security Feature To All Users, by Tim Hardwick, MacRumors

With the optional feature, WhatsApp users will be able to securely verify their number with a custom-generated six-digit passcode whenever they install the app on a new device.

Notes

Amazon's Jeff Bezos & Steve Boom On Starting A New 'Golden Age' For Music, by Stephen Witt, Billboard

Jeff Bezos: Well, here’s what I would say: We’ve been in the music category since 1998. It was the second category we launched after books. Our customers listen to a lot of music and we have a couple of freight trains kind of pulling the business along. One is Prime, and the other is Echo and Alexa.

Steve Boom: We don’t wake up thinking, “How do we beat Spotify?” We think about the opportunity in front of us, and we think there’s room for multiple winners. Obviously we’re big into families, and our age demographic is different than the other services. It tends to skew a little bit older. Because it’s a household device, our goal is to get everyone up into the family plan, ultimately.