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The Humble-Serenity Edition Tuesday, May 16, 2017

Apple’s New Campus: An Exclusive Look Inside The Mothership, by Steven Levy, Wired

We go upstairs, and I take in the view. From planes descending to SFO, and even from drones that buzz the building from a hundred feet above it, the Ring looks like an ominous icon, an expression of corporate power, and a what-the-fuck oddity among the malls, highways, and more mundane office parks of suburban Silicon Valley. But peering out the windows and onto the vast hilly expanse of the courtyard, all of that peels away. It feels … peaceful, even amid the clatter and rumble of construction. It turns out that when you turn a skyscraper on its side, all of its bullying power dissipates into a humble serenity.

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“It’s frustrating to talk about this building in terms of absurd, large numbers,” Ive says. “It makes for an impressive statistic, but you don’t live in an impressive statistic. While it is a technical marvel to make glass at this scale, that’s not the achievement. The achievement is to make a building where so many people can connect and collaborate and walk and talk.” The value, he argues, is not what went into the building. It’s what will come out.

App Specific Passwords Will Be Required To Sign In To iCloud With Third Party Apps From June 15, Here’s How To Make Them, by Benjamin Mayo, 9to5Mac

In its ongoing efforts to ensure strong security for customers, Apple will require the use of app-specific passwords from June 15th. This affects you if you use a third-party app that logs in with an iCloud email and password (Outlook, Thunderbird, etc) to access contacts, calendar and mail messages.

Apple Releases macOS 10.12.5, iOS 10.3.2, watchOS 3.2.2, And tvOS 10.2.1, by Josh Centers, TidBITS

We haven’t heard of any problems out of the gate, but Apple was so parsimonious with release notes that it’s hard to muster much enthusiasm for updating right away. It’s best to err on the side of caution this time.

Apple’s New Ad Shows How Portrait Mode Changed This Imaginary Barbershop, by Romain Dillet, TechCrunch

Apple just released a new ad featuring the “practically magic” tagline at the end. The ad focuses on Portrait mode once again. It takes place in a barbershop in New Orleans.

Stuff

Never Miss Out On A Great Story With These Read-it-later Apps, by Adam Ismail, Digital Trends

There a ton of content-sharing and pinning platforms out there, but only a few actually nail the basics. Here are some of our favorites — though your mileage may vary depending on your usage habits and the kinds of devices you own.

Silicon Valley’s ‘Not Hotdog’ And 7 Other Ridiculous (Real) Food Apps, by Keenan Steiner, Grubstreet

An official version of that app, called Not Hotdog, is now real and available in the App Store, so you can see for yourself whether things in front of you are hot dogs, or not hot dogs.

Develop

10 Years Of iPhone — A Developer’s Perspective, by Adrian Kosmaczewski, Medium

The iPhone celebrates its 10th anniversary this year. From a historical point of view, it had a tremendous impact in the industry and the careers of those involved in mobile application software development.

At some point in my career, I was a .NET developer, and then one day I told myself that I wanted to write Objective-C for a living. This is how I started my career in this galaxy. This is how I got here. I could have chosen Windows Mobile. I could have chosen BlackBerry. I chose the iPhone.

Mobile, by Matt Gemmell

It’s time to stop worshipping at the altar of the Weird Machine, because almost nothing else in the world is designed or used like computers are.

Notes

Apple In Search For Programming Chief, by The Information

HBO’s former programming head Michael Lombardo met with Apple executives earlier this year to discuss Apple’s video programming strategy, says a person familiar with the talks. The talks suggest Mr. Lombardo could be a candidate to run Apple’s video efforts.

Long Live The MP3, by Jason Snell, Six Colors

This is great news for everyone. I’ve spoken to several developers of audio and MP3-related software who have been watching the clock run out on MP3 patents so that they could release MP3 features into the world—both in brand-new apps as well as existing ones—without buying into Fraunhofer’s expensive licensing regime.

Bottom of the Page

One of the most peaceful moments I have had is when I stepped into a cemetery somewhere in Boston. Even the cars that whizzed by just outside the cemetery seemed muted.

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Thanks for reading.