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The Full-Ceramic Edition Saturday, April 15, 2017

Apple Watch And The Story Of Ceramics, by Jon Edwards, iMore

Given the influence of the watch industry on the company's industrial design, it seems fitting that Apple's exploration of a new class of materials, beyond plastic, aluminum, and other metals, would begin with the Apple Watch. That new class of material being ceramic.

Ceramic has been in the Apple Watch line from day one. It debuted first as the back cover for the steel Apple Watch and gold Apple Watch Editions, housing the heart rate sensors while simultaneously providing a durable, passive surface through which the watch could be charged inductively. Two years later, with the announcement of Series 2, the Apple Watch Edition went full ceramic.

Sierra’s Log Is Now Locked Away From Normal Users, by The Electric Light Company

Apple has not apparently documented this anywhere, but it has changed access to Sierra’s new log with the 10.12.4 update. When logged in as a normal – as opposed to admin – user, the entire contents of the logs are now inaccessible.

Apple Now Upgrading iPad 4th Gen Replacements To Newer iPad Air 2 As Stock Dwindles, by Jordan Kahn, 9to5Mac

Customers in need of a whole unit replacement for their fourth generation iPad may now receive a newer and more capable iPad Air 2 as a substitute from Apple Stores and authorized service providers. Apple is implementing the new policy, allowing its repair staff to ship an iPad Air 2 for a unit replacement when stock of the aging and now discontinued 4th gen iPad isn’t available.

Stuff

Final Cut Pro And iMovie For Mac Updated With New Improvements, by Zac Hall, 9to5Mac

Apple has released new updates for both Final Cut Pro and iMovie for macOS through the Mac App Store. iMovie version 10.1.5 for macOS includes a few bug fixes and improvements while Final Cut Pro’s update is a bit more detailed.

Apple Shares Three Special Shot On iPhone Ads To Celebrate Children’s Day In Turkey, by Benjamin Mayo, 9to5Mac

Apple has posted three new Shot on iPhone ads to its Apple Turkey YouTube channel. The fifteen-second spots are special in that all three videos have been taken by 11-year old children using an iPhone 7. The clips include quirky uses of perspective and slow-mo to create some clever sequences.

PDFpen 9 Improves Markup, Tables Of Contents, And More, by Michael E. Cohen, TidBITS

According to the company, the new apps share over 100 usability improvements, including additional annotation capabilities, more export options, line numbering, and a hand tool with magnification features. In addition, PDFpenPro has beefed up its Table of Contents creating and editing tool and added the capability to perform horizontal OCR on Japanese, Chinese, and Korean PDFs.

Like Twitter But Hate The Trolls? Try Mastodon, by Margaret Rhodes, Wired

Mastodon has created a diverse yet welcoming online environment by doing exactly what Twitter won’t: letting its community make the rules. The platform consists of various user-created networks, called instances, each of which determines its own laws. One instance could ban sexist jokes and Nazi logos, while another might practice radically free speech.

Develop

Visual Studio For Mac Update Takes Inspiration From Windows, by Pedro Hernandez, eWeek

Visual Studio for Mac also supports Fastlane, an open source continuous integration tool for testing and publishing apps, streamlining the certificate-signing and profile-provisioning processes involved in publishing iOS apps. Finally, it integrates with the accessibility components in macOS, a first step in making the IDE fully accessible, said de Icaza.

Notes

Apple Gets Permit To Test Self-Driving Cars In California, by Vindu Goel, New York Times

On Friday, the California Department of Motor Vehicles granted Apple an official test permit that the agency said would allow the company to test autonomous driving technology in three 2015 Lexus RX 450h luxury hybrid sport utility vehicles. The permit authorizes six drivers to take control of the vehicles when necessary.

Apple has been coy about its self-driving car project, known internally as Project Titan. The iPhone maker has not officially acknowledged the existence of the project, which appeared to be adrift last year. The company laid off dozens of people in the fall and brought in one of its top troubleshooters, Bob Mansfield, to reinvigorate the effort.

The Bizarre Digital Book You Must Destroy Before Sharing, by Liz Stinson, Wired

It’s an admittedly perplexing project. Why destroy a book’s prose to the point of it being unreadable? It comes down to examining ownership. Making a mark on the book and then passing it on is one way to keep track of who it’s belonged to at any given time. Kim Hansen of Impossible compares it to etching your child’s height on your kitchen wall. “It shows you have been there,” he says. More than anything, A Universe Explodes is a philosophical exploration of what happens when owning relies less on buying an object and more on interacting with an object.

If You Don’t Want To Know What This Article Is About, Please Look Away Now, by Rory Smith, New York Times

Every Saturday night, about 10:20 p.m., Kate Silverton, the anchor for the BBC’s 10 o’clock news — the marquee news program of Britain’s national broadcaster, watched by more than four million people — hands over from the corporation’s home in London to a studio in Salford, where the BBC’s sports arm is based.

One of four sports presenters sits waiting. A cheery welcome and short introduction follow. And then, every week, without fail, comes that warning. It is such an intrinsic part of the broadcast, and has been for so long, that it is not far short of a national ritual, one of those few sentences a whole country knows by heart.

“If you don’t want to know the scores,” the announcer intones, “please look away now.”