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The Built-for-Pop Edition Wednesday, June 26, 2019

In Streaming Age, Classical Music Gets Lost In The Metadata, by Ben Sisario, New York Times

The genre has been an awkward fit for streaming partly because of the major services’ metadata — the underlying organizational schemes for identifying titles of recordings, the personnel associated with them and other details.

For most of the music on Spotify or Apple Music, a listing of artist, track and album works fine. But critics of the status quo argue that the basic architecture of the classical genre — with nonperforming composers and works made up of multiple movements — is not suited to a system built for pop.

Apple To Deprecate Scripting Languages In Future Versions Of macOS, by Curtis Wilcox, TidBITS

How troubling the loss of these scripting languages will be depends on who you are.

A Survey Of Voice-to-Text Options On The Mac, iPad, And iPhone, by David Sparks, MacSparky

The reason I have delayed publishing this article is that I kept thinking I would find the magic solution and, frankly, it doesn't exist. Everything I have discussed in this article requires some sort of compromise, whether it be money, quality, convenience (like installing Windows on your Mac), or all of the above.

Ultimately, the solution to this problem needs to come from Apple. Specifically, Siri dictation needs to be just as good as Dragon Professional Individual for Mac. It needs to support a custom dictionary, and it needs to be as reliable with its dictation engine. I understand this doesn't happen overnight. I also suspect Apple is spending quite a bit of money to try and bridge that gap.

Project Catalyst Reveals Apple’s Struggle With The Future Of The Mac, by Jason Snell, Macworld

As the platform owner, Apple does get to drive that process and make those calls. Unfortunately, right now it doesn’t seem to know what it wants. In the meantime, it will be up to third-party app developers to do the best they can to make great Mac apps—and to not blame their tools if they fall short of that standard.

Stuff

Apple Updates iWork For iOS And macOS With New Style Options, Apple Pencil Customization, More, by Chance Miller, 9to5Mac

One of the most notable updates across the board is that Apple is now using face deception to “intelligently” position subjects in photos in placeholders and objects. Furthermore, many of the apps are adding new style options for text, enhanced Apple Pencil customization on iOS, and more.

Microsoft To-Do For Mac: The Free Task Tracking App's Standout Features, by Erik Eckel, TechRepublic

Among the task management app's most popular features is its My Day view, which provides a daily schedule and lists recommended corresponding tasks. Because Microsoft To-Do synchronizes with your Office 365 account, your task list, additions, and changes stay in sync on whichever devices—whether iOS, macOS or Microsoft powers the device—you connect to the account.

Corel Intros Painter 2020 For Mac With Speed & Interface Upgrades, by Roger Fingas, AppleInsider

A new "Brush Accelerator" automatically optimizes settings with GPU acceleration, which Corel claims can "significantly" boost speed and responsiveness. To go with these Corel has added two new "Fast" brush categories — with 26 brushes in all — plus five new Expressive brushes in Watercolor and Digital Watercolor.

“Stay On Route” iPhone App For Blind/visually Impaired, by William C. Vantuono, Railway Age

Grice’s “Stay on Route” app lets users pre-program the app with their destination station and set an alert, such as an alarm or a vibration, for when the station is a set distance away. Grice says that the app, though developed for improving accessibility, “could also be used by all types of travelers worried they may miss their stop if reading, resting or otherwise distracted.”

Notes

Apple Acquires Self-driving Startup Drive.ai, by Kaveh Waddell, Axios

Apple bought Drive.ai, an autonomous driving startup once valued at $200 million, Apple confirmed to Axios on Tuesday, and has hired dozens of Drive.ai engineers.

Trump’s Tariffs Are Aimed At China, But Apple Is In The Line Of Fire, by Russell Brandom, The Verge

Apple is uniquely vulnerable because of the intricacy of assembling smartphones, which makes it hard to start a new supply chain from scratch. “The scale and the complexity of putting together an iPhone or any smartphone is just very, very challenging,” says Moor Insights analyst Patrick Moorhead. “In a year, you could have those new facilities building notebooks, but I wouldn’t even want to speculate how many years it would take to build the same capability for smartphones.” As a result, Apple may simply have to eat the cost of the tariff for however long it lasts.

At the same time, Apple is uniquely wedded to both Chinese manufacturing and US markets, a brutal combination if any kind of smartphone tariff is put into effect. Samsung assembles in South Korea and Vietnam, while companies like LG can forestall the hit to US exports with sales to Asian or European markets. “Samsung or LG really won’t be hit that hard,” Moorhead says, “but Apple would be hit incredibly hard.”

Bottom of the Page

I listen to albums in Apple Music like I listen to podcasts: I place albums into my iCloud library. I sort albums by date-added. I listen to the albums in sequence. After I listen the albums, I remove them from my iCloud library.

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