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The Little-Lag Edition Wednesday, July 18, 2018

Apple Purges 'Doorbell' Category From HomeKit Accessories Page, by Roger Fingas, AppleInsider

It's not clear what hurdles have prevented HomeKit support. One possibility is the heavy encryption Apple demands, since while the platform now supports both software and hardware for that task, it could be that August and Ring have had trouble minimizing lag.

Doorbells are typically expected to deliver audio, video, and other data with as little lag as possible. A long gap could at best make for an awkward social situation, and at worst mean that a criminal gets away without his face on camera.

Test Suggests 2018 MacBook Pro Can't Keep Up With Intel Core I9 Chip's Thermal Demands, by Mikey Campbell, AppleInsider

Technology-centric YouTuber Dave Lee claims the thermal design of Apple's latest 15-inch MacBook Pro does not provide sufficient cooling for Intel's Core i9 processor, causing the chip to throttle down performance to prevent serious damage.

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In a video posted to his YouTube channel on Tuesday, Lee shows the top-of-the-line MacBook Pro running Adobe Premiere Pro at surprisingly low clock speeds. Tests conducted put the average clock on load at around 2.2GHz, well below the advertised 2.9GHz.

How Today’s Apple Has Thrown Out Its Old Rulebook, by Jason Snell, Macworld

When Steve Jobs came back to Apple in 1997, he didn’t like what he saw, so he set about changing the corporate culture. A decade later, one proof of his success was the fact that the company seemed to follow a rulebook, largely behaving with a consistency that allowed those of us who covered the company to react to wild rumors with phrases like “Apple wouldn’t do that” or “that’s not how Apple does things.”

But in the years following Jobs’s death (and the departure of some other Jobs-era executives), Apple has continued to evolve—and in many cases, it’s torn up the old rulebook. A lot of the changes strike me as being for the better. I feel like after Steve laid down the law in the late 1990s, some policies and decisions were never really reconsidered until the Tim Cook era got into full swing.

Here are just a few ways that today’s Apple has tossed out, or at least amended, the classic Apple rulebook.

Beta Track

Sharecuts Is Creating A Community For Sharing Siri Shortcuts, by Sarah Perez, TechCrunch

With the upcoming release of iOS 12, Apple is introducing a new app called Shortcuts that will allow users to build custom voice commands for Siri that can be used to kick off a variety of actions in apps. While some apps will directly prompt users to add a Shortcut to Siri, the new Shortcuts app will offer more shortcut suggestions to try, plus the ability to create your own shortcuts and workflows. Now, there’s a new resource for shortcut fans, too – Sharecuts, a directory of shortcuts created and shared by the community.

Stuff

Mophie Rolls Out iPhone Battery Packs That Charge By A Lightning Cable, by Shoshana Wodinsky, The Verge

Its new Powerstation battery packs all charge via Apple’s Lightning connector — meaning the cord you use to charge your phone is the same one that charges the battery, cutting down on wires and making your bag a little more streamlined.

Develop

Estimations And Orders Of Magnitude, by Accidentally in Code

Being off by an order of magnitude smaller allows for humanness and human error.

Notes

Apple’s iCloud User Data In China Is Now Handled By A State-owned Mobile Operator, by Jon Russell, TechCrunch

If you’re an Apple customer living in China who didn’t already opt out of having your iCloud data stored locally, here’s a good reason to do so now. That information, the data belonging to China-based iCloud users which includes emails and text messages, is now being stored by a division of China Telecom, the state-owned telco.

The operator’s Tianyi cloud storage business unit has taken the reins for iCloud China, according to a WeChat post from China Telecom. Apple separately confirmed the change to TechCrunch.

Google Faces $5 Billion EU Fine For Android Antitrust Violations, by Tom Warren, The Verge

The European Commission has accused Google of abusing its Android market dominance by bundling its search engine and Chrome apps into the operating system. Google has also allegedly blocked phone makers from creating devices that run forked versions of Android.

The Definitive Ranking Of Apple’s Best Food Emoji, by Chris Fuhrmeister, Eater

With all of this excitement in the air, a ranking of every iOS food emoji in existence feels appropriate. But turns out, there are a lot of food emoji — more than 100 — and many are quite boring (it’s hard to get jazzed up about Bowl with Spoon). Here, after lengthy, careful consideration, are the top 20.