While most Apple end users might not be aware of the protocol's existence, AWDL is at the core of Apple services like AirPlay and AirDrop, and Apple has been including AWDL by default on all devices the company has been selling, such as Macs, iPhones, iPads, Apple watches, Apple TVs, and HomePods.
[...]
To study it, researchers reverse-engineered the AWDL protocol and then re-wrote it as a C implementation named OWL (Open Wireless Link), which they later used to test the real AWDL protocol for various attacks.
"Our analysis reveals several security and privacy vulnerabilities ranging from design flaws to implementation bugs enabling different kinds of attacks," the research team said.
If truly concerned about eye strain or dryness, you might be better off investing in artificial tears or a matte screen for your device. For the device itself, recommendations include raising the contrast of your screen, or adjusting the brightness so it’s no lighter or darker than your surroundings. You might want to check light sources around you too – glare from overhead lighting reflected on your screen can make it harsher. Adjust your screen at or below eye level – having your screen above eye level can dry your eyes out further.
But the best solution might be to drag yourself away from your computer altogether. Limiting screen time is the top tip from the Mayo Clinic. You can also make use of the 20-20-20 rule: every 20 minutes, look at something 20 feet away for 20 seconds.
A newly released data model and draft implementation guide for providing directly to patients digital access to historical health insurance claims data could mean you have better access to this info from the devices you use everyday. Called the CARIN Blue Button API, it’s a new model developed by private sector partners, including consumer organizations, insurance providers, digital health app developers and more. This new draft implementation will be in testing with participating companies beginning this year, including a number of different state-specific BlueCross/BlueShield providers, the State of Washington — and Apple, Google and Microsoft.
Apple's Wearables, Home, and Accessories category, which includes devices like the AirPods and Apple Watch, set a new June quarter revenue record of $5.5 billion, up from $3.7 billion in the year-ago quarter.
Sales from Apple's wearables category helped make up for weak iPhone sales this quarter. iPhone revenue came in at $26 billion, down from $29.5 billion in third quarter of 2018.
Apple Inc. generated less than half of its total quarterly revenue from sales of the iPhone for the first time since 2012 -- a sign the company is entering life beyond its flagship product.
While Apple reported a record $11.5 billion in sales of services in the fiscal third quarter, and demonstrated strong performances from wearables such as the Apple Watch, it can’t cut loose from its iPhone dependence quite yet. While those two product categories are growing, they’re still tied to the smartphone.
Apple wants to stay committed to assembling the Mac Pro in the US. That's according to CEO Tim Cook, who said the tariff exclusions he was seeking from the US government had to do with the intent to make its high-end Mac in America.
Apple’s latest quarterly results are out and the company generated $53.8 biillion in revenue, up 1 percent versus the year-ago quarter. It was (ever so slightly) the largest third quarter in Apple history.
On so many fronts there’s an enormous amount to look forward to over the next few months, including the launch of new services like Apple Arcade, Apple TV+, and Apple Card. And without giving too much away, we have several new products that we can’t wait to share with you. Until then, thanks for joining us today.
The behind the scenes look at some of today’s most popular artists includes new YouTube videos and billboard ads of Florence + the Machine, FKA Twigs, Kacey Musgraves, Skrillex, Travis Scott, Kamasi Washington, and more.
The display connects to a Mac using a Thunderbolt 3 cable, and this version of the monitor can connect using USB-C, which means that it's also compatible with the iPad Pro.
Florida, Massachusetts, Missouri, New Mexico, South Carolina, and Virginia all have sales tax holidays coming up in August, with Apple outlining which products are eligible for the sales tax break in each state.
Just over a year after its official launch, the Data Transfer Project is announcing a new set of partners and features. Today, Apple announced that it will be joining the project, developing interoperable systems to bring data in and out of iCloud. A number of alternative social networks have also joined the project, with Tim Berners-Lee’s Solid project enabling the import and export of contacts, and Mastodon allowing for the import and export of posts.
I'm sure there are many who still haven't gotten used to the idea of reading an Apple news story without seeing the word beleaguered.
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Thanks for reading.
If you're healthy and haven't been diagnosed with AFib or any conditions that put you at risk for it -- such as high blood pressure, diabetes or heart failure -- Murthy says the best thing you can do to take care of your heart is to follow what the American Heart Association calls Life's Simple 7. "Exercise, eat right, stop smoking and lose weight. If you have high blood pressure, high cholesterol or elevated blood sugar, manage that under the care of a doctor."
If an Apple Watch can help you or motivate you to do those things, great. If not, using one isn't necessary.
Earlier this week, The Guardian reported that Apple contractors do listen to user interactions with Siri to improve accuracy. And although those interactions are anonymized and make up only a small percentage of all Siri requests, Apple’s contractors can sometimes hear extremely private situations or sensitive data.
Now, security researcher Jan Kaiser has created an iOS configuration profile that puts an end to Siri requests being sent to the server.
Here’s how to get it (or make your own).
Two members of Project Zero, Google's elite bug-hunting team, have published details and demo exploit code for five of six "interactionless" security bugs that impact the iOS operating system and can be exploited via the iMessage client.
All six security flaws were patched last week, on July 22, with Apple's iOS 12.4 release.
Details about one of the "interactionless" vulnerabilities have been kept private because Apple's iOS 12.4 patch did not completely resolve the bug, according to Natalie Silvanovich, one of the two Google Project Zero researchers who found and reported the bugs.
Apple’s latest iOS 13 beta version was released earlier today, and with it came a few surprises. The most notable is that the company is planning a previously unannounced feature that will let users, for the first time, resize app icons on the home screen.
At least, that’s how Apple refers to it. It’d be more technically accurate to say grid layout customization, as the smaller or larger app icons are a product of adding an extra two columns to the overall grid layout. But “App Icon Size” is how it’s labeled in Settings. So it goes.
Apple has announced a new addition to the Today at Apple session lineup. In a series of “art-based Today At Apple augmented reality experiences”, customers can go on an interactive walk to see AR set pieces from leading digital artists.
There’s also a new in-store session which walks customers through using Swift Playgrounds to create their own AR experience. And, Apple will be debuting an AR art installation in every Apple Store.
Dig deeper, though, and you find an exquisitely designed ultraportable that performs very well on everyday computing tasks, has good looks to spare, and will almost certainly last all day without being plugged in. Here in 2019, this is the best general-purpose Apple laptop for most users.
But it's actually the Do Not Disturb setting that has had the greatest impact on my sleep. When this is on, the lock screen dims, all text messages and calls are silenced, and any notifications received are stored in history. I find that having my phone silenced during the hours I'm supposed to be sleeping helps prevent me from waking up during the night.
As summer draws to a close, you can almost hear the collective groans of some college students and the longing anticipation of others. It's time to head back to campus, and having the right tools in your educational toolbox can make a big difference in how your school year shakes out. Whether you're a freshman trying to figure out the campus map or you're a seasoned senior ready to wrap up your degree, check out these apps to optimize for the most successful college experience.
Highland 2 is a screenwriting app first, and a novel or blog post writing app second. From this lens, Highland 2 can quickly become a catch-all text editor for a large swath of people.
It’s 2019 and yet iPads remain married to the person who set them up. Apple may chatter a lot about privacy, but the fact that Apple insists on its tablets tied to a single Apple ID means there’s little that’s private about sharing an iPad.
Negotiators for the United States and China are meeting in Shanghai this week to try to find a way forward in resolving their bruising trade war. But for some companies, spooked by what now appears to be a definitive darkening in America’s relations with China, the appeal of working in the world’s second-largest economy may already be tarnished for good. With smartphones, video game consoles and other consumer favorites potentially next on Mr. Trump’s tariff list, gadget makers in particular are feeling pressure to find new low-wage places to make or finish their products.
Apple has homed in on Vietnam and India as it intensifies its search for ways to diversify its supply chain.
It seems like Apple is still messing around with the app icons on the home screen in the latest beta, so I'm holding out hope that maybe the iPhone will somehow also get the new feature where apps and widgets exist together on the same screen.
(Okay, maybe not.)
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Thanks for reading.
If you set aside the many legitimate concerns about nigh-Orwellian privacy violations and the potential for domestic abuse, the central promise of location sharing is peace of mind. Just tap an icon and the app pops up to issue welcome assurance that someone you love isn’t dead at the bottom of a river. And if that person is in trouble, spotting something amiss about where they are could potentially help save their life.
But even using the technology as intended can go awry. “When you invite this technology to mediate your care relations of whatever kind, you’re also inviting it to do so through its own limited bandwidth, it’s own limited algorithms,” says Natasha Schüll, a professor of media culture and communication at NYU and author of the book Addiction by Design. “That doesn’t always have the contextual clues. It can only monitor certain things.”
Even if you are eventually paying for all of these services, the experience of using them as their own, stand-alone apps is sub-par. Which is a nice way of saying “crap”. It’s like an egg hunt in a coal mine. Friends was on Netflix, now it’s on HBO Max. The Office was on Netflix, now it’s on NBC Whatever. So and So Movie was on Amazon Prime Video, but now it has been pulled to stream exclusively for the next three month window on Showtime. You will not be able to keep up with it all. Nor should you.
In a way, the success state here ends up looking like… cable. A simple, unified UI to serve up the different content you want. Even better if you can buy different content sources as… bundles. Funny that.
What can we conclude from all of this? Count if you find it motivates you, but remember there’s nothing special about 10,000 steps. Set the goal that is right for you. It might be more, it might be less – or it might be throwing out your tracker entirely.
Truth be told, even the woman behind the study — who concedes that she, too, is enamored of her step tracker — can’t say how many steps are the right number for each walker.
“No one size fits all,” said I-Min Lee, an associate epidemiologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and a professor at Harvard Medical School.
But no matter how many steps you take, merely wearing and using a fitness tracker — particularly for older women, older men and other people who tend to be somewhat inactive — “can be beneficial not only to your health but to your quality of life,” Lee said.
“The hip is really the best place for measuring steps and also most types of physical activity,” says Cadmus-Betram. “A smartphone worn in a pants pocket should be able to calculate steps very accurately.”
“At any moment your tracker could be 20 beats too high or low.”
Wrist worn devices are inevitably going to record a lot of extraneous movement that has little to do with physical activity. Even if you wear your fitness tracker on your non-dominant wrist – which is the recommendation – it’s going to register all of your hand movements.
When former Apple retail chief Angela Ahrendts started working for the technology giant in 2014, she learned an important lesson — particularly within her first 100 days. "If it teaches you anything, it teaches you that they wanted you for a reason," she said when speaking with LinkedIn's Jessi Hempel on the company's "Hello Monday" podcast in May. "So get in your lane, bring your gifts to the table."
That lesson of understanding where your strengths lie and applying that to your job, even if it's a position in a new field you haven't worked in before, is one that Ahrendts said she passes on her to children.
"Cryptography can't only work for the good guys and only allow access to authorities, no more than guns that only allow you to shoot in self-defense," Chester Wisniewski, a senior security researcher with digital-protection firm Sophos, told Tom's Guide. "Were [Barr and Wray] to talk to experts in cryptography, of which the FBI has a few, they would understand that they are asking for a rainbow-colored unicorn."
"It's the same fallacy as being a little bit pregnant," said Robert Graham, CEO of Atlanta consulting firm Errata Security, in a long Twitter thread. "Encryption is either breakable by everybody or breakable by nobody, without much difference in between."
I have lowered my daily goal from 10,000 steps to 7,000. I am feeling good, thank you very much.
(During the past seven days, I've exceeded 9,000 steps in six of the seven days, while I've only exceeded 10,000 steps in two of the seven days.)
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The older I get, the more I feel the imposter syndrome lurking inside me. The older I get, the more I believe in the part luck plays in all our lives. The older I get, the more I feel meritocracy, as a guiding principle, is totally inappropriate in a humane world.
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Thanks for reading.
The iOS Security white paper says Siri voice recordings are saved for six months with an ‘anonymous’ identifier that can group recordings from the same person together, and then the recordings are kept for at least another two years without the associated identifier. It says the saved audio is “for use by Apple in improving and developing Siri” with “ongoing improvement and quality assurance”. What it does not say explicitly is that these recordings are reviewed and assessed by humans.
If you give it a second of thought, then of course these clips have to be peer-assessed. To improve software to be more human-like, you need humans to label the training data sets and check sample outputs. However, this indirection may not be immediately obvious to people who don’t understand have a firm grasp of how machine learning works. The onus should not be on the customer to know, or to guess. The paragraph should say it explicitly; something like ‘anonymised recordings are reviewed by Apple employees for ongoing improvement and quality assurance of the Siri service’.
When I look at the world now, I see deep and real collaboration happening across the network. We are starting to see the end of people emailing documents back and forth. Synchronous and asynchronous collaboration with people across the internet is a serious technical and social skill that seems very important to me these days.
I feel that Apple has not grasped this issue correctly. There are only two ‘productivity clouds’ in the game: GSuite and Office 365. In 2010, we chose our computers and ran the software that came on our computers. In 2019, I think that we choose our productivity cloud and get the computer that best works with that cloud. Apple simply has not and is not competing in this space and is therefore at the mercy of forces it does not control.
In other words, it's a MacBook Pro as we've known it for a few years now. But it's a MacBook Pro with blistering-fast workstation graphics and CPU cores-aplenty. It's a very attractive machine if you—or perhaps more likely, your employer—have at least $3,500 to spend and you want something highly portable and powerful at the same time for certain kinds of work.
Is that a recommendation? I think so. But it's a recommendation to an ever-smaller group of people, and Apple seems to be cool with that. At least with this spec, the "Pro" moniker is a lot harder to dispute.
The full name for this dock is the Kensington SD2400T Thunderbolt 3 Dual 4k Nano Dock with Power Delivery. That’s a mouthful, but that’s because this little gadget packs a lot of capability into a small space. It allows a laptop to have all the ports of a desktop when back in the dorm room or at the office.
Technology that allows hotel guests to use their phones as room keys is expanding, taking aim at those environmentally unfriendly plastic cards.
The proper response to this Silicon Valley disruption is to build up our social defenses. Car services on call? Build up our subways and buses. Cram hotel rooms within residential buildings? Encourage hotels and hostels of different sizes and in different neighborhoods. Install AI-empowered computers in classrooms? Add more teachers, librarians, and counselors, and invest in public education. Food delivery on call? Encourage healthy food options, and legislate to eliminate “food deserts.” You get the drift.
Because the truth is that having so much of life occur at the front door, as opposed to on the town square or the market street, is simply sad. Pathetic even. Who but a small minority would want to organize life around a siege mentality?
Apple contractors regularly hear confidential medical information, drug deals, and recordings of couples having sex, as part of their job providing quality control, or “grading”, the company’s Siri voice assistant, the Guardian has learned.
Although Apple does not explicitly disclose it in its consumer-facing privacy documentation, a small proportion of Siri recordings are passed on to contractors working for the company around the world. They are tasked with grading the responses on a variety of factors, including whether the activation of the voice assistant was deliberate or accidental, whether the query was something Siri could be expected to help with and whether Siri’s response was appropriate.
Bottom line: It doesn’t matter to me if this is Amazon or Apple. I don’t want human beings listening to the audio these devices record. In fact, I don’t want recordings made of my audio, period—I want the audio processed and immediately discarded.
Apple boasts constantly about taking user privacy seriously. There’s one right response to this report, and it’s to change its policies and communicate them clearly. A mealy-mouthed response about how the eavesdropping is done in a secure facility without an Apple ID attached is not good enough.
The Eurasian commission requires that products that depend on encryption technologies be registered upfront in this database for regulatory purposes. It has become a treasure trove of Apple product leaks in the last few years, from new Macs to iPads to iPhones and even accessories like Magic Keyboard updates.
Today, Apple registered regulatory entries for two iPads, with never-before-seen model identifiers of A2200 and A2232. These two entries join the A2197, A2228, A2068, A2198, and A2230 identifiers seen in the last post.
With a constant stream of new, console-quality games in the iOS App Store, and subscription gaming service Apple Arcade on the way, there’s arguably never been a better time to be an Apple gamer. Yet despite all the great new iOS games, sometimes you just want to relive your misspent youth.
In Steve’s world, apple.com had to be in sync with the current ad campaign. Customers were driven to the website by advertising, and the home page continued that conversation. No distractions allowed.
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The current home page doesn’t have a single focus. Or two. Or three, four, five or six. It literally promotes ten individual products. It’s the very definition of a dog’s breakfast.
Apple’s combination of hardware, software, and services adroitly positions the company to help provide easy and seamless authentication to its customers. And, in the long term, making authentication available to anybody on a platform benefits everybody on that platform.
To think through how GPS might reshape our brain and mess with our internal sense of direction, I called up Kate Jeffery, a neuroscientist at University College London who studies how brains navigate. She points out that there’s still a ton researchers don’t know about how the brain navigates the world, let alone how technology will interfere. And, tantalizingly, she wonders if certain forms of technology might even enhance our brains’ power to think.
No, not acceptable.
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Thanks for reading.
Apple Inc. is buying Intel Corp.’s struggling cellular modem unit, bringing on key engineering talent and patents that will allow the technology giant to more quickly develop crucial components to connect its devices to the mobile internet.
The deal is valued at $1 billion, Intel and Apple said in joint announcement. Intel sought to shed the unit because Chief Executive Officer Bob Swan decided it was costing the chipmaker too much money to support just one customer, which is Apple. The deal will give Apple 2,200 new employees and now a total holding of 17,000 wireless patents, the companies said.
In the late 1990s, Apple almost went out of business. When Jobs returned to the company, he made a series of bold decisions that got Apple back on its feet. On the Mac side, the company embraced a Windows-focused world and dropped Mac-only peripheral and networking standards while adding USB. The iMac (and an agreement from Microsoft to keep making Office for Mac) helped stabilize Apple's business and set the stage for the iPod, iPhone and iPad.
But Jobs learned a lot of lessons along the way to saving Apple. Microsoft's software support for the Mac may have helped the computer line survive, but in another way, Microsoft was holding the Mac back. Most Mac-versus-Windows comparisons in those early days of the web focused on web browsing, and Internet Explorer —the default browser on both the Mac and Windows — was vastly superior on Windows. The Mac was seen as an inferior platform, in large part due to software that Apple couldn't control.
“You hear Tim talk a lot about humanity -- how we’re at the crossroads between the liberal arts and technology,” says Oliver Schusser. “It’s got to be both.” The new leader of Apple Music (the Tim in question would be his boss, Apple CEO Cook) is relaxing in his sun-drenched corner office at the company’s Culver City, Calif., headquarters on a June morning, explaining -- in his typically measured way -- why the service he oversees hasn’t gone all-in on algorithms. “That’s just not the way we look at the world,” continues Schusser. “We really do believe that we have a responsibility to our subscribers and our customers to have people recommend what a playlist should look like and who the future superstars are.”
Executives both inside and outside Apple often describe Schusser as “very German.” Like a Teutonic Barack Obama, he balances an unflappable calm -- and an apparent inability to say anything controversial -- with an impressive mastery of detail, in this case the inner workings of Apple Music. Dressed unassumingly, in a black tracksuit and sneakers, he hardly seems like one of the most powerful figures in the music business.
Apple and Goldman Sachs’s hotly anticipated new credit card is now just weeks away from launch, according to a person familiar with the companies. The release will be the culmination of an intense, high-stakes development process for the Silicon Valley giant and the Wall Street stalwart.
The Apple Card is targeted to launch as early as the first half of August. That timing means the project is on schedule for the summer release date that Apple first announced in March. People who own an iPhone will be able to sign up for the card via the Wallet app, which will have built-in Apple Card support as part of the latest iOS 12.4 update.
If Bluetooth is ON on your Apple device everyone nearby can understand current status of your device, get info about battery, device name, Wi-Fi status, buffer availability, OS version and even get your mobile phone number.
This year's recipients were selected from thousands of entries from over 140 countries around the world.
There are only two reasonable ways of displaying colour like this, irrespective of Mode or background window colour: faithful to the colour, or to expected human perception. TextEdit has neither intent. It simply inverts the lightness of each colour when the window background is switched between light and dark. That deliberately flouts WYSIWYG for no good reason.
SoftBank Group announced today that it will launch its second Vision Fund with participation from Apple, Foxconn, Microsoft and other tech companies and investors. Called the Vision Fund 2, the fund will focus on AI-based technology. SoftBank said the fund’s capital has reached about $108 billion, based on memoranda of understandings. SoftBank Group’s own investment in the fund will be $38 billion.
For a while, it seemed like tech innovation flowed up rather than down, where the little guy’s big idea eventually found its way to the big stage. But then the little guys got really big, and they made it hard for the next generation of little guys to succeed.
But the big guys still get blind spots—and that creates new opportunities for the little guys. The mechanical keyboard is one of those opportunities in action.
It’s easy to dismiss how reliant a modern lifestyle is on the ability to constantly charge batteries and consume large quantities of data over WiFi. Even minor interruptions to internet and electrical services can be frustrating inconveniences, but how do iPhones, Apple Watches, and Macs fare during an extended period off the grid? I unexpectedly found out this week.
I love fast software. That is, software speedy both in function and interface. Software with minimal to no lag between wanting to activate or manipulate something and the thing happening. Lightness.
Software that’s speedy usually means it’s focused. Like a good tool, it often means that it’s simple, but that’s not necessarily true. Speed in software is probably the most valuable, least valued asset. To me, speedy software is the difference between an application smoothly integrating into your life, and one called upon with great reluctance. Fastness in software is like great margins in a book — makes you smile without necessarily knowing why.
Khaled says that as Artist-in-Residence, he will be taking over "the biggest playlists on the platform" every month while also debuting new artists.
The new commercial spotlights the accessory by showing how seven runners from the Paris Running Club joined a 280km relay in Iceland.
Speakprose Pro+ utilizes the latest iPhone and iPad eye-tracking technology to allow users with limited mobility to navigate the screen with their eyes and select letters or words by blinking or holding their gaze. It also leverages facial recognition software to pick up on smiles and other muscle movements.
Last month, Apple announced that Jony Ive would be leaving the company to form his own independent design firm. Now Ive has taken the initial public steps toward officially launching that firm, offering our first look at the “LoveFrom” brand and logo.
For Lombardi, there's a unique value to an official, artist-approved greatest hits compilation. As opposed to a Spotify playlist auto-generated by an algorithm, albums like Everything Hits at Once come from the bands: Spoon hand-picked the track list, and sequenced the record themselves. "It’s their greatest hits," Lombardi said—not some giant corporation's data-driven, machine-assisted determination of what matters most in an artist's catalog.
The question is whether or not listeners actually care about the difference.
If the idea of an album still exists after so many years of the 99-cents-a-song, why not the greatest hits album too?
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Thanks for reading.
Apple Inc.’s mobile apps routinely appear first in search results ahead of competitors in its App Store, a powerful advantage that skirts some of the company’s rules on such rankings, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis.
The company’s apps ranked first in more than 60% of basic searches, such as for “maps,” the analysis showed. Apple apps that generate revenue through subscriptions or sales, like Music or Books, showed up first in 95% of searches related to those apps.
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Apple says it doesn’t give its own products an advantage over others on the App Store. The company conducted its own tests this month in response to the Journal’s questions and some searches yielded different results in which their apps didn’t rank first, a spokesman said. The company uses an algorithm that relies on machine learning and past consumer preferences, and the app rankings fluctuate. Apple doesn’t disclose details on how it works.
In AppleInsider's own testing, the Wall Street Journal results could not be replicated as described in the report. Using three devices with iCloud accounts associated with purchase histories, we duplicated the generic terms that the Wall Street Journal said that they used.
Using our three devices, apps other than Apple's apps filled the spot below the search ad in 56 of 60 of our searches, and two spots below the search ad in 48 of the 56 searches that didn't have an Apple app in the top spot.
There have been many iOS email apps that have come and gone over the years. It’s proven to be a very difficult category to be successful in, but the stakes here are high. Is there a market for third-party email apps that accommodate power users without charging a hefty subscription to support semi-standard features and compromising user privacy?
Time will tell, but we certainly hope so.
After the retweet button debuted, Wetherell was struck by how effectively it spread information. “It did a lot of what it was designed to do,” he said. “It had a force multiplier that other things didn’t have.”
“We would talk about earthquakes,” Wetherell said. “We talked about these first response situations that were always a positive and showed where humanity was in its best light.”
But the button also changed Twitter in a way Wetherell and his colleagues didn’t anticipate. Copying and pasting made people look at what they shared, and think about it, at least for a moment. When the retweet button debuted, that friction diminished. Impulse superseded the at-least-minimal degree of thoughtfulness once baked into sharing. Before the retweet, Twitter was largely a convivial place. After, all hell broke loose — and spread.
There's now a Pixelmator Pro editing extension for the built-in Photos app on the Mac, which includes all of the tools and features from the full Pixelmator Pro app.
With the extension, you can make edits to your photos using the tools from Pixelmator Pro without having to leave the Photos app. This makes for a more streamlined editing workflow when you're working with images stored within the Photos app.
To stand out from the crowd of other USB-C hubs, a product has to have something extra. The built-in travel cable helps separate the Twelve South StayGo from the ordinary. And its unusually large number of ports helps too. There aren’t many hubs with three USB-A ports, and Ethernet is relatively rare these days.
Flighty combines smart design choices with traveler-centric features to generate a comprehensive picture of every flight you track. The result is a pro-level travel app that's an excellent fit for frequent travelers.
As a division of labor, it probably makes sense for some support reps to specialize in Dropbox for Windows, or Dropbox for Mac, or Dropbox for mobile devices, etc. But when Dropbox rolled out a major change to its Mac application, it had support reps replying to Mac users without knowing what they were talking about. I don't blame the individual support reps—Dropbox the company needs to make sure its employees are prepared to answer user questions, especially in advance of major changes that will inevitably lead to a rise in user complaints. That didn't happen this time.
For the past five years, Reddam House's primary and junior high school classes have used e-textbooks on iPads. But the consistent feedback from the students has been that they preferred pages to screens.
Teachers also found the iPads were distracting and did not contribute to students' technology skills, prompting the school to announce that students should no longer use digital textbooks, and must revert to hard-copy versions instead.
The Cupertino, California-based technology giant is seeking relief from duties of 25% on key Mac Pro parts and accessories that go with it, ranging from the stainless steel and aluminum frame, power supplies, internal cables and circuit boards, and its optional wheels, according to filings posted by the Office of U.S. Trade Representative. The documents don’t specifically mention the Mac Pro, but the features and dimensions listed by Apple in the filing closely resemble the planned computer.
The review is geared toward examining the practices of online platforms that dominate internet search, social media and retail services, the officials said.
The new antitrust inquiry is the strongest signal yet of Attorney General William Barr’s deep interest in the tech sector, and it could ratchet up the already considerable regulatory pressures facing the top U.S. tech firms. The review is designed to go above and beyond recent plans for scrutinizing the tech sector that were crafted by the department and the Federal Trade Commission.
I wonder why New York Times is not doing a subscription service for its Sudoku puzzles.
I do play the daily mini puzzle, but I am not motivated enough to subscribe to the regular crossword puzzle.
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Thanks for reading.
No new features were discovered in watchOS 5.3 during the beta testing process, but according to Apple's iOS 12.4 release notes, the new update, along with iOS 12.4, fixes a major bug in the Walkie-Talkie app that could allow it to be used to spy on people and it once again makes the Walkie-Talkie app accessible.
The watchOS 5.3 update also brings ECG support and irregular heart rhythm notifications to Apple Watch Series 4 owners in both Canada and Singapore.
With the release of version 12.4 of iOS, downloaded magazines in the My Magazines section of the News app are now available for reading online and offline. The catalog of publications in Apple News includes newspapers like the Wall Street Journal, which previously weren't listed in the catalog.
According to Apple's release notes the macOS 10.14.6 update introduces several Apple News+ improvements on the Mac.
It would give Apple access to engineering work and talent behind Intel’s yearslong push to develop modem chips for the crucial next generation of wireless technology known as 5G, potentially saving years of development work. Apple has been working to develop chips to further differentiate its devices as smartphone sales plateau globally, squeezing the iPhone business that has long underpinned its profits. It has hired engineers, including some from Intel, and announced plans for an office of 1,200 employees in San Diego.
For Intel’s part, a deal would allow the company to shed a business that had been weighing on its bottom line: The smartphone operation had been losing about $1 billion annually, a person familiar with its performance has said, and has generally failed to live up to expectations. Though it would exit the smartphone business, Intel plans to continue to work on 5G technology for other connected devices.
The ability to add video to Day One is a game changer for parents like myself who record small video clips of the crazy things their kids do on a daily basis. Until now, those short video clips have had to stay in Photos library. But now that Day One supports video, I’ll be able to transfer those my journal where I’d prefer they be stored all along.
In my testing, the new recommendations were spot-on, highlighting shows that were very clearly related to my current subscription list. And the best part about them: there's no Twitter login required, so all users will get the new recommendations with no effort whatsoever.
For the past 35 years, any Mac developer who wanted to ship an update directly to customers could do so by recompiling a binary and distributing it. When macOS 10.15 ships this fall, the status quo will change. Mac developers must register with Apple and sign their products. They must submit their binaries to Apple for notarization. And most significantly of all, they must agree to the terms of Apple’s App Store developer contracts, even if they don’t distribute their apps through the App Store.
This is how formality in business communications dies, not with a whimper, but with a parti-colored riot of modern-day hieroglyphics, denoting everything from collaboration to dissent. At Slack itself, employees use the “eyes” emoji to indicate they’re reading a just-posted memo. The “unamused face” or even the “nauseated face” are both acceptable in communications channels at Joyride Coffee, a Woodside, N.Y.-based beverage maker.
A cursory Google search reveals that there is no piece-of-cake way to find all your “hearted” songs. Surprisingly, these “hearted” gems don’t automatically filter into a playlist, nor can they be compiled and sent to users in a quick email—in fact, they aren’t stored on the app at all. So, how can we find our favorite songs on Apple Music?
Over the years I’ve grown used to walking away. In the last decade, I have left countries, jobs, people —at times to my detriment. Three weeks before jumping on that plane to Thailand, I deleted my Facebook account. Two months later, in South Africa and still without a phone, I turned to my girlfriend and said, “You know what, I’m getting rid of Twitter.” Sometimes, you just have to rip off the band-aid. In the months that followed, there came a sense of security and serenity I hadn’t felt for a long time. Humans may be tool-using animals, but some tools we simply don’t need.
Sometimes solving a bug and discovering what went wrong only leads to more questions and a nagging doubt about the whole point of having this piece of software in the first place.
Not a fun place to be in.
~
Thanks for reading.
My autistic son loves music. One afternoon, when he was nine, I downloaded GarageBand to his iPhone to help with the boredom of a long wait at a doctor's office. Instead of pacing or escalating into a meltdown, he spent the entire hour and a half practicing, learning, and composing. When we finally left that day, the rest of us exhausted and irritated, he shared his first composition with a big smile.
I didn't think much of it at the time. Like most parents, we focused on keeping our kids off of technology as much as possible. But this meant that we missed some crucial ways that technology could help our kids learn and grow. The importance of digital tools became more and more clear to us as my son got older and wanted to explore music in more profound ways.
When Apple announced the pending departure of Chief Design Officer Jony Ive last month, it threw the spotlight on an executive few outsiders know: Chief Operating Officer Jeff Williams, who has now also taken over the company’s legendary design studio. This added fiefdom makes Williams unambiguously the second-most important person at Apple and Tim Cook’s heir apparent as CEO. And he’s very much in the mold of the current chief executive: a paragon of operational efficiency and even temper not prone to quite the same highs and lows of Cook’s more visionary predecessor, Steve Jobs.
Several current and former colleagues, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly, say that during his years as the company’s operations chief, Cook’s old job, Williams has distinguished himself as a modest, disciplined, demanding leader in the current CEO’s style. He’s negotiated with suppliers, shipped hundreds of millions of devices a year from Chinese factories to the rest of the globe, and been a bit more hands-on with product development than Cook, they say. Williams attends weekly reviews of product and industrial design progress, subsequently briefing Cook for a final signoff, and has been the lead executive shepherding the Apple Watch to market. Within Apple, Williams is broadly regarded as a strong choice for the top job, and current and former colleagues say management had been steadily positioning him as such long before Ive’s departure.
Instagram launched IGTV in 2018, and is pushing creators to explore what’s possible for mobile video. Netflix introduced vertical 30-second previews, and is now experimenting with mobile-first features like vibrating movies. Spotify is releasing vertical music videos. Snap is delivering plenty of premium mobile video content with its Snap Originals, and has more on the way.
But compared to traditional videos which have been around since 1895, mobile video is still a newborn baby. And for new parents, a good way to learn parenting is to look at what others are doing. On that note, mobile video producers should direct their attention to a format Chinese media companies have been experimenting with: the vertical drama (竖屏剧; shùpíngjù).
Despite the lack of dark mode support and the fact that Microsoft To-Do may not be a feature-by-feature replacement for Wunderlist just yet, the long-awaited Mac debut checks off the most important features on our wish list.
In fact, if a company doesn’t have that kind of culture—if it hasn’t done the work to make people feel safe sharing candid input—exit interviews are likely to be largely unproductive anyway. Most people won’t take that risk if they’ve seen from experience that the company won’t handle their input well.
As iPadOS lets iPads gain more use cases, especially in the realm of productivity, iPhones and their immensely larger number of devices will stay in the mainstream of iOS development. Undoubtedly, there will be unanticipated complications in some iPad uses, but the scheme feels more natural than last week’s convoluted formula.
You might be perturbed if somebody calls your business an "extortion racket" or your sales pitch a "ransom note." But Eyeo Chief Executive Till Faida, leader of the widely used Adblock Plus browser extension, is unruffled. The way he sees it, he's just trying to rescue online advertising and the websites that rely on it.
Tech giant Apple Inc. shut its stores early citywide on Monday, as fears of escalating violence and spiraling lawlessness linked to weekslong protests spurred concern among businesses and the public.
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Apple joined a raft of other businesses that chose to shut or send staff home early on Monday. The company opened its first store in Hong Kong in 2011 and is a high-profile anchor for the city’s image as an international commercial hub, gracing the Victoria Harbour waterfront in a giant mall where most tourists transit. A spokeswoman for the Cupertino, Calif.-company directed queries to information on store hours on its website.
In your daily life you probably don’t think much about adware, software that illicitly sneaks ads into your apps and browsers as a way of generating bogus revenue. Remember pop-up ads? It’s like that, but with special software running on your device, instead of rogue web scripts, throwing up the ads. Advertisers often pay out based on impressions, or the number of people who load their ads. So scammers have realized that the more ads they can foist upon you, the more money they pocket.
Apple, Amazon, Sony, Dell and other global tech companies are increasingly concerned about the adverse effects of Japan's restrictions on exports to Korea of high-tech materials, as it could cripple the global value chain of the entire IT industry, according to industry officials Sunday.
They said the global makers of smartphones and other IT devices can deal with the shortage of semiconductors and display panels in the short run because they have secured enough components to produce the products. But, in the long term, they will need to draw up contingency plans to deal with the supply shortage and higher prices.
Sure, you're not getting super high end specs, but this laptop is more than capable of doing everyday tasks like photo editing, video editing, as well as give you great battery life that will last for hours.
The summer months are the perfect time to travel. But if you’re going away with a group, it can become a bit trickier to coordinate. You’ll need to work together to book flights, places to stay, events, and more. Trying to do all of this via email or text messaging is inefficient and downright frustrating.
Thankfully there are a number of free apps that make planning group travel much easier. Here’s our list of the most crucial apps you’ll need to plan your next group vacation.
Smartphone technology has become as ubiquitous as automobiles. In Austin, Texas, a city that is widely known as the "Live Music Capital of the World," smartphones have been embraced by the music community not just as a way to document and promote, but to create music.
A rock guitarist, a horn player, and a solo artist explain.
Users who download the app and grant it access to their Instagram account are presented with an eerie interactive map of every place the people they follow have visited and shared online since they created their profile. The map updates in real time and is sourced from the wealth of location data the average Instagram user willingly uploads to the platform each time they opt to use its popular geotag feature in a story or post.
This information is nominally public already, as Instagram users must choose to share it with their followers. But by collecting them all in one place over time, Who’s in Town transforms data points seemingly meaningless in isolation into a comprehensive chronology of the habits and haunts of anyone with a public Instagram account.
Over the past couple of years, you may have noticed some websites preventing you from reading articles while using a browser's private mode. The Boston Globe began doing this in 2017, requiring people to log in to paid subscriber accounts in order to read in private mode. The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and other newspapers impose identical restrictions.
Chrome 76—which is in beta now and is scheduled to hit the stable channel on July 30—prevents these websites from discovering that you're in private mode.
When people get to the point where their devices are filling up, it often feels like flying in a slowly deflating hot air balloon: Which things can be dumped overboard to prevent a disastrous crash?
Fortunately, there are ways to manage apps and storage on iPhone and iPad models to reduce the clutter and free up space.
The tone of your voice in a meeting. How often you’re away from your desk. How quickly you respond to emails. Where you roam in the office. What’s on your computer screen.
To be an employee of a large company in the U.S. now often means becoming a workforce data generator—from the first email sent from bed in the morning to the Wi-Fi hotspot used during lunch to the new business contact added before going home. Employers are parsing those interactions to learn who is influential, which teams are most productive and who is a flight risk.
I have no idea what the "back" button in the macOS iTunes app is supposed to do. Either it has a super secret algorithm that I cannot grasp, or it is buggy as hell.
I sure hope the new Apple Music app on the new macOS will fare better.
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Thanks for reading.
Apple Music is rebranding one of its biggest playlists, The A-List: Hip-Hop, as Rap Life, and will leverage Beats 1 to launch a new weekly show and daily segments around it. Spearheaded by Ebro Darden, global editorial head of hip-hop and R&B at Apple Music, Rap Life will largely feature hip-hop from North American artists, but Apple tells Billboard it will also be representative of the genre worldwide.
The move will give Apple a flagship playlist around the world’s most popular genre that can compete against Spotify’s Rap Caviar and Amazon’s Rap Rotation playlists. Darden will host a Rap Life segment during his daily Beats 1 show and there will be a weekly show (also called Rap Life), which will feature music from the playlist and cultural discussions around hip-hop.
This week marks the launch of Sky: Children of Light, a game from famed designed Jenova Chen and beloved studio thatgamecompany, on iOS devices. Intended as an entry point to gaming that upends conventions and seeks new ranges of emotional expression, Sky was revealed during Apple's iPhone keynote in 2017 as a mobile-first game and an iOS exclusive at launch.
The game is expected to arrive on Android, Mac, Apple TV, Windows PC, and consoles sometime in the future, though. Its initial wide launch this week follows a long soft-launch period and a launch-date delay as the game went through some big changes in testing to get its social aspects—a key part of the experience—just right.
The Israeli company whose spyware hacked WhatsApp has told buyers its technology can surreptitiously scrape all of an individual’s data from the servers of Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft, according to people familiar with its sales pitch.
[...]
Apple said its operating system was “the safest and most secure computing platform in the world. While some expensive tools may exist to perform targeted attacks on a very small number of devices, we do not believe these are useful for widespread attacks against consumers.” The company added that it regularly updates its operating system and security settings.
In just a few weeks Apple’s new iOS 13, the thirteenth major iteration of its popular iPhone software, will be out — along with new iPhones and a new iPad version, the aptly named iPadOS. We’ve taken iOS 13 for a spin over the past few weeks — with a focus on the new security and privacy features — to see what’s new and how it all works.
There are no headline-grabbers here, but this latest update demonstrates that Moleskine has a strong understanding of how its app is used, and how to make it better. It introduces significant improvements to event creation, a new birthday functionality, additional calendar views, and a design tweak inspired by Timepage’s sister app, Actions, among other things.
Staying on top of a regular watering schedule requires earnest effort in the form of incessant iPhone reminders—that is, until we got wind of Happy Plant, a handy app that takes the guesswork out of green thumbs. Designed to ensure your most beloved houseplants never get thirsty, the app reminds you to water your greens according to their unique watering schedules. Basically, it's a household hero even the most skilled gardeners could benefit from.
1Password has restored the option for customers who originally purchased its iOS app to create a local vault during setup, after users queued up online to voice their frustrations that the option was silently removed in an update.
Nobody wants a file manager from Dropbox. Whether you're a Windows, Mac, or Linux user, all of our computers come with file managers already, and they work fine.
Life has become something you’re meant to “do” and “hack,” which has given rise to the feeling that only a sucker would just tromp along messily and inefficiently living through it. When every mundane activity from eating a cupcake to slicing bread to taking a dump is one you’re probably doing wrong, it’s no wonder we yearn for glimpses of how other people live their smallest moments. Optimization is all about getting ahead, and getting ahead is about not falling behind. In this climate, converting other people’s experience into a template or a cautionary tale seems only prudent. The lives of others can be converted into cheat sheets: a way to grade our own performances and see how we measure up.
I don’t mean to denigrate software marketing podcasts or more conversational styles of episodes — everyone likes something different, and these are clearly enjoyable for lots of people. But these excerpts illustrate what makes some podcasts work for me: well-edited storytelling or interviews by enthusiastic hosts. Aching to be an “influencer” is like aspiring to be a QVC host.
From a technological perspective, the Go stores are a marvel—a succinct demonstration of Amazon.com Inc.’s capacity to devote vast resources toward applying the state of the art in artificial intelligence to an everyday problem. They also illustrate the company’s tendency to pursue technology for technology’s sake (see: the Fire Phone), resulting in a store that offers all the selection of a 7-Eleven, but with more complexity and cost. Scores of cameras pointed at all angles hang from the ceilings to track shoppers as they wander the aisles, while precise scales embedded in the shelves tabulate products down to the gram to figure out which ones have been picked up. Behind the scenes, sophisticated image recognition algorithms decide who took what—with Amazon workers in offices available to review footage to ensure shoppers are accurately charged. Each store also has a local staff on hand to help people download the Go app, restock shelves, and, in locations with a liquor section, check IDs.
Will all this work be worth it? Some Go stores seem almost deserted except for the lunchtime rush. Employees familiar with Amazon’s internal projections say the outlets in Chicago, in particular, are falling short of expectations, and the company has had to resort to raffles and giveaways of tote bags and other branded goodies. Yet, as the turbulent history of the project suggests, the Go store isn’t so much the culmination of the company’s efforts but something closer to an ongoing experiment. And the potential prize—a big piece of the $12 trillion grocery industry—is one that Amazon, with its limitless resources and appetite for risk, may be in the best position to claim.
Tonight, I am calm. Maybe because something was done. Or maybe I am enjoying this new Lion King album.
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Thanks for reading.
Last year, during a stretch of anxious nights, I stumbled upon an app that offered to help me fall into a deep and restful sleep. It would do this by, essentially, programming my phone to lull me into unconsciousness. Now, every night, I crawl into bed and scroll aimlessly through my phone in the dark until I have exhausted all of its mindless distractions — email, Instagram, a virtual wooden-block puzzle. Then I open one last app. My phone speaks to me for 20 minutes, and then it plays nature songs for a very long time.
The voice in the phone is a woman’s, which I like. I don’t need some man telling me what to do. Her tone is gentle and optimistic. It sounds like she is smiling as she speaks. Her words are crisp and clear, but they are softened, almost slurred around the edges, as if she is delicately easing me into each sentence and then releasing me back into silence. Her “ands” are so subdued that they are nearly implied. Sometimes she pauses for long stretches at a time, and that is wonderful, too.
Ultimately, the technology did not help me sleep more. It didn’t reveal anything that I didn’t already know, which is that I average about five and a half hours of slumber a night. And the data did not help me answer what I should do about my particular sleep problems. In fact, I’ve felt grumpier since I started these tests.
That mirrored the conclusions of a recent study from Rush University Medical College and Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. Researchers there noticed patients complaining about sleep data collected by apps and devices from Nike, Apple, Fitbit and others.
In their study, the researchers warned that sleep-tracking tech could provide inaccurate data and worsen insomnia by making people obsessed with achieving perfect slumber, a condition they called orthosomnia. It was one of the latest pieces of research supporting the idea that health apps don’t necessarily make people healthier.
The new voice control feature is a significant upgrade to voice to text dictation on all Apple devices. It’s going to be baked into everybody’s device without any subscription or additional software, and if you want to start writing text with your voice, there is no better time to start than September.
The key change in iOS/iPadOS 13 beta 4 is that the timing for the Context Menus and a related UI feature — Home screen icon rearrangement — has been tightened to perfection. Hold down on an app icon for just under two seconds, or long enough to be “holding down” rather than tapping for selection, and a Context Menu pops up, as shown above. Hold an additional second or so and icons begin to shake to indicate they can be arranged.
It’s no wonder that the phrase “everyone has a podcast” has become a Twitter punch line. Like the blogs of yore, podcasts — with their combination of sleek high tech and cozy, retro low — are today’s de rigueur medium, seemingly adopted by every entrepreneur, freelancer, self-proclaimed marketing guru and even corporation. (Who doesn’t want branded content by Home Depot and Goldman Sachs piped into their ears on the morning commute?) There are now upward of 700,000 podcasts, according to the podcast production and hosting service Blubrry, with between 2,000 and 3,000 new shows launching each month. In August William Morrow will publish a book by Kristen Meinzer, a co-host of the popular “By the Book” podcast. Its title: “So You Want to Start a Podcast.”
While I can see powerful arguments for Apple to buy exclusive audio content and release it in the Podcasts app, there’s every chance it won’t succeed. Other companies have tried this same approach and, at least so far, nobody has really succeeded in breaking the power of the open, flexible podcast ecosystem.
And while Apple’s power position in podcasting gives it a leg up, let’s also not forget that Apple is hardly experienced in getting users to pay for exclusive content. Apple News+ is at best a work in progress, and Apple TV+ is still a few months away from launching. Apple’s probably got the money to make exclusive podcasts an experiment worth trying, but there are plenty of reasons for it not to succeed.
The vulnerability allows an attacker to passively track a device by exploiting a flaw in the way Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) is implemented to extract identifying tokens like the device type or other identifiable data from a manufacturer.
There’s always a better version coming next year. Maybe Apple will redesign the keyboard or maybe Intel will finally deliver a better processor or maybe, well, there are a lot of maybes. That is the way of all tech purchases! You always have to balance what you’re willing to spend and what you’re willing to lug around in your backpack.
What made that classic MacBook Air so special is that it cut through all those caveats for so many people and did it consistently for so many years. 2019’s MacBook Air is good, but it hasn’t yet earned the title of The Default Laptop.
The takeaway is, if you're trying to decide between a new MacBook Air or MacBook Pro, they both get around 10.5 hours of streaming video battery life, so you won't have to choose battery life at the expense of power, price, features or design.
Apple TV+ is arriving this fall with a host of original content. Among the new programs will be Snoopy in Space and we’ve got our first look at the upcoming show with a new trailer today.
The iconic wood tables that fill every Apple Store have long been globally admired as symbols of tasteful interior design. Fewer people are aware that recent top Apple Stores contain a hidden space called the Boardroom. Each Boardroom is decorated with a collection of premium furniture and accessories from some of the most respected designers in the world. We tracked down these hard-to-find items to create a directory for those with a discerning eye for design.
Electronic leaks are particularly troublesome. CAD renderings and schematics leaks of the upcoming iPhone have showcased the suspected three-lens camera. Apple has shifted resources to preventing these sorts of leaks, with an team in Apple's headquarters allegedly spearheading the efforts.
Apple's competitors, such as Google, Samsung, and LG are now trying to replicate Apple's efforts. These efforts have become more significant, now that companies like Huawei have attempted to steal technology from competitors including Apple.
Two nights in a row, I woke up in the middle of the night, and couldn't get back to sleep, worried about work.
I need a calming voice in my head to constantly remind me: it's only work.
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Thanks for reading.
Apple Inc. plans to fund original podcasts that would be exclusive to its audio service, according to people familiar with the matter, increasing its investment in the industry to keep competitors Spotify and Stitcher at bay.
Executives at the company have reached out to media companies and their representatives to discuss buying exclusive rights to podcasts, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the conversations are preliminary. Apple has yet to outline a clear strategy, but has said it plans to pursue the kind of deals it didn’t make before.
Let’s assume there’s ambition within Apple to start digging for money in these podcast hills. Are we talking about Apple pursuing a “Netflix for podcasts” model? I highly doubt it. Exclusive paywalled podcasts…well, they haven’t really proven that they can drive a paid subscription business at scale yet. And when I say “scale,” I mean “scale at the level that would make it worth it for Apple to abandon its noble, beloved position as impartial steward of the podcast ecosystem.” Sure, Spotify has exclusives, but I don’t think those exclusives are the primary reason that the Swedish platform has become the second major podcast distributor. (Not yet.) If anything, it’s the simple fact of access, plus maybe all this increased attention.
Given Apple’s deep pockets and its focus on services, I can’t see how the company wouldn’t at least investigate the possibility of adding original audio content to its portfolio, both to strengthen the pull of the Podcasts app and increase the value of one of its existing services or a forthcoming services bundle.
Apple and Google both unveiled dozens of new emoji ahead of World Emoji Day on Wednesday. They include animals like a flamingo, orangutan and sloth, as well as foods such as waffles, falafel and garlic.
The companies will also roll out new emoji depicting couples with a variety of skin tones, and there'll be gender-neutral characters, too.
Today is World Emoji Day, and in celebration of emojis, Adobe released its 2019 Emoji Trend Report, giving us some insight into the most popular emoji characters that people are using. For its report, Adobe surveyed 1,000 emoji users in the United States.
There are a couple of interesting designs in there. For example, I can’t help but think that Apple’s design for a plate of falafel kinda looks like a big pile of shit? Not human shit, and not a fun cartoony soft-serve ice cream poop like the classic Pile of Poo, but like a pile of dung from a farmyard animal. Especially when viewed at the proper emoji scale of an Instagram comment or iMessage response. Meanwhile, someone at Google has clearly actually eaten falafel at some point in their lives, and has produced a design more befitting of something you’re supposed to put in your mouth.
Apple informed us that it has sent out a silent security update to Macs to remove software that was automatically installed by RingCentral and Zhumu. These video conferencing apps both used technology from Zoom — they’re essentially white labels — and thus they also had Zoom’s security flaws. Specifically, they installed secondary pieces of software that could take commands from websites to open up your webcam in a video conference without your intervention.
I think Apple has struck a nearly perfect balance here, between doing what’s right for most users (installing these rare emergency updates automatically) and doing what’s right for power users who really do want to control when updates — even essential ones — are installed. I also think Apple is doing the right thing by going to the press and explaining when they issue such updates.
It’s been two years since we last saw an update to the entry-level MacBook Pro, but the wait was well worth it. Not only did we get Touch ID and Touch Bar access, but we got the T2 chip and all of the security and performance advantages that it brings to the table, along with a speedy quad-core CPU.
The CPU upgrade, in particular, gives this machine a large leap over its predecessor. The strong CPU provides impressive performance for multicore workloads, even if it is somewhat bottlenecked by the integrated graphics.
I don't want to buy a Macbook with this crappy keyboard anymore.
[...]
I'd instantly trade my macbook if I could use only two apps on the iPad. Terminal & Xcode. That's it.
Nikkei Asian Review
China's GoerTek, one of Apple's key contract manufacturers, will this summer begin testing the resilience of its manufacturing processes for the newest generation of AirPods at its audio factory in northern Vietnam, two sources with knowledge of the plan said.
This will mark the first production of the wireless earbuds -- which came to market in 2016 -- outside the world's second-largest economy. They are Apple's fastest growing product, racking up 35 million shipments last year against 20 million in 2017.
At issue, ultimately, is the ethical question of what makes software “good.” The qualities of good software include seamlessness, efficiency, speed, simplicity, and straightforward user-experience design. Failing to maximize these values may feel, for a software engineer, like driving a Ferrari below the speed limit—a violation of the spirit of the enterprise. But the seamlessness, efficiency, and power experienced by users don’t necessarily translate to positive social experiences; the short-term satisfactions offered by software can upstage its longer-term implications.
Gabriel Weinberg is taking aim at Google from a small building 20 miles west Philadelphia that looks like a fake castle. An optometrist has an office downstairs.
Mr. Weinberg’s company, DuckDuckGo, has become one of the feistiest adversaries of Google. Started over a decade ago, DuckDuckGo offers a privacy-focused alternative to Google’s search engine.
The company’s share of the search engine market is still tiny — about 1 percent compared with Google’s 85 percent, according to StatCounter. But it has tripled over the past two years and is now handling around 40 million searches a day. It has also made a profit in each of the last five years, Mr. Weinberg said.
I am already using five different apps for my audio entertainment on the iPhone. Yes, I only use one app for all my podcasts. But I also have apps for audiobooks, music, and BBC radio. And that's not counting the two additional apps that are essentially MusicKit-based presentation of my Apple Music library.
So, I don't see any problem having to use one more app to listen to Apple-exclusive podcasts. (Or, more probably, it will be the same Apple Music app.)
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Thanks for reading.
But when DelBene discussed her own privacy bill, which would require companies to obtain consent before using consumers’ most sensitive information in unexpected ways, Cook didn’t specifically endorse it, she said.
A number of privacy advocates and U.S. lawmakers — who did not attend the meeting — say Apple has not put enough muscle behind any federal effort to tighten privacy laws. And state lawmakers, who are closest to passing rules to limit data sharing, say Apple is an ally in name only — and in fact has contributed to lobbying efforts that might undermine some new data-protection legislation.
While Apple formally supports the notion of a federal privacy law, the company has yet to formally back any bills proposed on the Hill — unlike Microsoft. “I would argue there’s a need for Apple to be a more vocal part of this debate,” said Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.), a fierce critic of tech companies for their privacy violations.
“We would be the first to say we can do more and constantly challenge ourselves to do so. We have offered to help write the legislation and reiterate this offer. We do not believe however in having a company PAC or in using company funds to donate to any political candidate and have no intention of ever doing so.”
But do we really want any private companies, even Apple, dictating the terms of public policy? Do Facebook and Google get a seat at the table?
One of the best ways to succeed long-term in capitalism is by treating customers well rather than ripping them off. That's something you won't hear Democrats or Republicans admit these days.
While I won’t fault an indie app maker, or even Google, for failing to do better with the Touch Bar, I can lay blame at Apple’s feet. The company introduced a cool new feature and then has just let it sit there. It has provided no incentives nor has it led by example with the Touch Bar.
Both RingCentral and Zhumu license Zoom’s technology. Lyons explained, “If a lettuce producer has an E. coli outbreak, everyone who resells that lettuce under myriad brands in stores, or uses that lettuce in their sandwiches now also has vulnerable customers.”
[...]
RingCentral released an update for users of the company’s MacOS app. The company is urging all customers to accept the update (v7.0.151508.0712) patching the flaw. While the update removes a hidden web server containing the vulnerability from customers’ laptops, Lyons told BuzzFeed News that for people who have uninstalled the RingCentral app, there is no way to easily remove the hidden server.
To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, Apple this afternoon shared a new video featuring clips from its upcoming Apple TV+ show "For All Mankind" along with commentary from show creator Ronald D. Moore and others who have worked on the series.
"For All Mankind," which stars Joel Kinnaman, features an alternate history that explores what might have happened had the global space race never ended and had the USSR landed the first humans on the moon. In the series, the U.S. will race to get astronauts on Mars and Saturn.
Apple's newer laptop improved slightly on the writing side, but its performance downgraded by 35% on the reading side. That can be attributed to a slower SSD Apple included in the new MacBook Air.
The iPad app-based baking class project was established in May 2019 by sole founder Michelle Young.
She found out there was an abundance of people interested in learning how to bake, or who simply wanted to bake a cake for loved ones but lacked the space, ingredients and equipment at home.
So, she decided to do something about it.
The app's release notes vaguely suggest that existing users will have a four-month grace period, but Airmail user Vito Meznaric told us that he is no longer receiving push notifications from the app starting today. Either way, it sounds like existing users will eventually have to subscribe to regain access to all features.
Well, Office is GDPR compliant if users give consent to their data being processed by Microsoft. But because school children are unable to do that, it poses concerns about their protection.
It was the first killer app, the spark for Apple ’s early success and a trigger for the broader PC boom that vaulted Microsoft to its central position in business computing. And within a few years, it was tech-industry roadkill.
The story of VisiCalc, a humble spreadsheet program that set the tech world ablaze 40 years ago, has reverberated through the industry and still influences the decisions of executives, engineers and investors. Its lessons include the power of simplicity and the difficulty of building a hypergrowth company in a hypergrowth industry.
Despite these familial concerns, Disney’s data mining never faced the sort of scrutiny that Silicon Valley has. The reason is fairly simple: Disney World is the real-world manifestation of a walled garden, a family-friendly environment without a perceived risk of children being exposed to inappropriate content like on YouTube or Twitch. Wired once called this data-driven customer relationship “exactly the type of thing Apple, Facebook and Google are trying to build. Except Disney World isn’t just an app or a phone—it’s both, wrapped in an idealized vision of life that’s as safely self-contained as a snow globe.”
These days, I don't have too much hopes in things. If things go my way, good. If things go another way -- well, I've expected that.
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But what Apple Arcade will do is give us meaningful alternatives to the flood of F2P games. Dozens of premium games with good production values and design, some destined for consoles and PC, and none of them designed to steadily become less fun until you pay up again, and again, and again. Those are few and far between today.
How far up the product line? Certainly not all the way to the new Mac Pro. Apple’s silicon work focuses on hundreds of millions of chips and battery-saving designs; the Pro’s sales volume is likely to be in the tens of thousands, not the iPhone’s hundreds of millions. For the Pro, Intel’s high-end designs will be economically more attractive, sharing the investment with other Intel clients.
If (or, more likely, when) the Mac switches to Axx chips, the change won’t be instantaneous. Some Macs will become powered by Apple’s home-grown CPU chips, others, like the Mac Pro, will remain on x86 processors. And thus we’ll have a fork of macOS. Two forks, actually: A sliding break as the transition progressively moves from low end machines up the product line, and then a permanent “fork ceiling” that separates the extreme-end Mac Pro from its lower-powered siblings.
Where’s the nearest camping site? Does it have free space? And where is the nearest WiFi? These are common questions camping enthusiasts face. Some go into the wild without knowing what awaits; others prefer to organise everything in advance. Whether you leave at the last minute or plan ahead, apps can make your trip go smoother.
I hope Apple is more ambitious with its programming languages. I hope, somewhere, Apple is orchestrating the replacement of Javascript and CSS with SwiftUI.
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The more unused, unloved accounts you’ve got hanging around, the more targets would-be hackers have got to aim at. It’s therefore good practice to tidy up the digital trail you leave behind you, and shut down accounts you’re not regularly using. Unfortunately, there’s no big button you can press to do this all at once, but with a little bit of detective work and a few minutes of your spare time, you can effectively erase your tracks.
These hearings represent the latest in the ever-evolving dance between tech giants and lawmakers on Capitol Hill -- one that's quickly becoming an issue in the upcoming US presidential race. At stake is how government will regulate the tech industry, which has grown to be one of the world's largest and most powerful groups. Amazon and Apple are both worth nearly a trillion dollars, while Google and Facebook draw audiences that number into the billions.
Facebook’s stock went up after news of a record-breaking $5 billion FTC fine for various privacy violations broke today.
That, as the New York Times’ Mike Isaac points out, is the real story here: the United States government spent months coming up with a punishment for Facebook’s long list of privacy-related bad behavior, and the best it could do was so weak that Facebook’s stock price went up.
Is it possible to send an email anymore without this phrase?
I hope you're well. Thanks for reading.
It’s that combination of quick action and ingrained security systems that go to highlight Apple’s security strengths. These days no operating system is truly “malware-proof,” but the actions of the company that distributes it — be that Apple, Microsoft or anyone else — go a long way to keeping it secure and bringing peace of mind to us all.
Apple has reversed course on its ban of parental control app OurPact, allowing the ousted software to return to the App Store in its original form and without any limitations or restrictions. The move marks an end to a months-long dispute between Apple and a variety of parental control companies affected by Apple’s restrictions.
iFixit has gotten its hands on the 2019 13-inch MacBook Pro that was released this week, giving a detailed look at the changes under the hood. The base 13-inch Pro has a marginally larger battery, modular ports, but now has a soldered-down SSD. The teardown also checks out the notebook’s keyboard and more.
Since the first e-commerce websites started selling products, a large segment of those online sales has always suffered from a second-rate customer experience. Customers buying certain goods—such as clothes, shoes, and watches—can't interact with the goods they are considering like they can in a brick-and-mortar store; this often adversely affects their buying decision. Now some of that is set to change, however, through the use of augmented reality (AR), which could well become a game changer for online micro-retailers that don't have any physical stores. These merchants will be able to use AR to retain customers and help influence a buying decision by making it easy to "try on" or interact with virtual versions of their products.
Stress, of course, is a part of any leadership role, and startup leaders often have more resources than most to cope with mental-health woes. But it is also becoming clear that the swashbuckling creativity that pushes many startup founders to take bold leaps often comes with inner demons.
Waiting in line for Apple Store grand openings has been a fun tradition for enthusiastic fans since the very first countdown in 2001. There’s still something special about being one of the first in the line, but the most recent store openings have been largely defined by their unique opening day Today at Apple performances and events. At the grand opening of Apple Jewel Changi Airport today in Singapore, early customers celebrated the day with the first public Photo Walk exclusive to the new location.
Not too long ago, conventional wisdom held that the internet should enjoy minimal government oversight precisely because it was a technology that enabled open and free speech for everyone. The remedy for hateful and offensive remarks, that 1990s-vintage argument went, was more speech—or logging off.
This principle, which can be traced back through the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas and John Stuart Mill, was nicely captured in the U.S. Supreme Court's 1997 decision striking down certain speech-chilling provisions of the Communications Decency Act. "Through the use of chat rooms," Justice John Paul Stevens wrote, "any person with a phone line can become a town crier with a voice that resonates farther than it could from any soapbox. Through the use of Web pages, mail exploders, and newsgroups, the same individual can become a pamphleteer."
A generation later, Stevens' argument has been not merely discarded. It has been inverted.
Someday, I've probably got to get down to Changi Airport and take a look at Jewel... Someday.
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For a total of 36 seconds, Schiller spoke somewhat awkwardly about VoiceOver, Zoom, White on Black (called Invert Colors from iOS 6 onward), and Mono Audio – the first real accessibility features on the iPhone OS platform, as it was then called.
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I surveyed a number of liveblogs from that day. About half noted the mention of accessibility features in iPhone OS. The others jumped directly from Compass to Nike+. Accessibility hadn’t made much of a splash.
But in the blindness community, things were very different. Time seemed to stop somewhere after 1:51:54 in the video. Something completely amazing had happened, and only a few people seemed to understand what it meant.
The way Spotify and Apple Music pay artists is simple. They take all of the money generated from users, whether by advertisements or subscriptions, and put in a big pot. They then divide that pot by the total share of streams each artist received. So, if Apple Music gave $100 million of their revenues to artists in a month, and Drake songs accounted 1% of all streams that month, then Drake (and the writers of Drake’s songs) would receive $1 million. Essentially, 1% of Anna’s money is going to Drake. (About 70% of Spotify and Apple Music’s revenues go to music labels and artists.)
This is called a “pro-rata” system. Not everybody likes it. Many people in the music industry would prefer a payment system that was “user-centric.” Under this system, each user’s payment would be distributed based on what they streamed. If half of a user’s streams are Rolling Stones songs and half are Beyoncé, then those two artists are the only ones who earn money from that user. In this case, all of Anna’s money would have gone to The Expressionists.
So, what gives? Is Apple all in on desktops over laptops now? One interpretation might be that Apple has realized mobile computing has shifted towards iOS devices, especially for the kind of lightweight category that the 12-inch MacBook used to fill.
Still, the MacBook line-up seems to be missing something. Since the MacBook Air’s introduction back in 2008, Apple’s always had a thin, light laptop in the mix, usually representing the puck towards which the company is skating with its portable offerings. But with the 12-inch MacBook, the consensus often seemed to be that the company had skated too far too fast, made too many trade-offs. It didn’t help that the revamped MacBook Air seemed to address much the same market, and provided better bang for the buck.
In Geekbench scores, the new MacBook Pro naturally outpaces its predecessor on multi-core thanks to the two additional cores but it also outpaces on single-core too, likely due to the additional Turbo Boost headroom.
But if you’re in the market for a new Apple laptop—perhaps you’re gearing up to go back to college, or your old one finally gave out—you have a tough decision ahead of you. There’s no clear choice as to which laptop is best, but here’s a quick rundown on the options available right now, and what might be best for you:
Apple will soon allow hardware developers to manufacture additional Made for iPhone (MFi) certified adapters including USB-C to Lightning audio adapters, reports Japanese site Mac Otakara. Apple is said to have recently informed developers who participate in the MFi program about the change.
When Tonya Parker, a mom in Illinois, wanted to better organize her family life a little over a year ago, the first thing she did was set her kids up on Trello, a web-based project-management tool. Parker’s four children, ages 9 to 18, now use Trello, which is more typically used at work, to keep up with chores, to-do lists, shopping, and homework. “I use it every day to keep track of what schoolwork I need to do, or places I need to be, things to buy,” Hannah, her 15-year-old daughter, says.
“College was my first experience of having to keep track of my own stuff,” Tonya said. “I wanted [my kids] to have that sooner.” Incorporating Trello, along with Gmail, into the Parker family’s life has been a godsend, in Tonya’s view. It streamlined family communication, helped keep everyone organized, and added a layer of accountability to tasks. Now, instead of wondering if her children forgot to do something, Parker says she can ask, “How are you doing on your checklist?”
I think we are starting to see a significant differentiation between the iPad and the MacBook lines.
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Apple has disabled the Apple Watch Walkie Talkie app due to an unspecified vulnerability that could allow a person to listen to another customer’s iPhone without consent, the company told TechCrunch this evening.
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Apple was alerted to the bug via its report a vulnerability portal directly and says that there is no current evidence that it was exploited in the wild.
The Cupertino, Calif.-based tech giant told TechCrunch that the update — now released — removes the hidden web server, which Zoom quietly installed on users’ Macs when they installed the app.
Apple said the update does not require any user interaction and is deployed automatically.
As such, it’s probably true that Apple doesn’t need to sell three distinct MacBook products and three distinct iPad products. And given the volumes we’re talking about, again, the MacBook was likely the easiest candidate to cut. Especially if a new, larger MacBook Pro is on the way.
But I’m still holding out hope for the MacBook to be resurrected with ARM power. Until then, I’m hanging on to mine. That nearly one pound difference to the Air matters to me. And my keyboard hasn’t broken here — yet.
Apple Orchard Road has grown in distinction thanks to its exclusive Today at Apple sessions featuring talented creative professionals. That won’t change. But for the first time, travelers stopping on a layover or those who can’t make it to the downtown store will have access to Apple’s free educational resources. The team staffing the store collectively speaks 11 languages.
It’s where a young Steve Jobs unveiled the first Macintosh computer in 1984. Where singer Johnny Cash, actor Cary Grant, former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and every U.S. president since Richard Nixon except George W. Bush and Donald Trump took the stage over the decades.
But Silicon Valley’s iconic Flint Center for the Performing Arts recently closed and eventually will be torn down. Its last act was a Palo Alto University graduation ceremony, on June 22.
The Flint Center for the Performing Arts, the place where Apple co-founder Steve Jobs unveiled the first Macintosh computer in 1984, will close its doors after nearly 50 years.
Spoiler: It was pretty easy, although it required some simple home surgery from time to time. The only sad part is that the current lineup of iMacs almost certainly won’t last as long, at least not without professional attention.
Whether the task is making a simple grocery list or organizing a complex projects like a home renovation, there is a note-taking program for you. Here’s how to sort through the options and get started.
If you’re anything like me, your desktop gets cluttered with screenshots, random documents you wanted easy access to, and (above all) duplicate files! Thankfully, there’s a program out there that can help people like me handle this automatically, and it’s called Hazel. I’m going to walk you through my setup here, which you can customize to meet your needs, of course.
Individual transcripts can be searched by keyword or phrase, and clicking on search results will jump you straight to the corresponding timestamps in the video.
Fast forward another decade. Open offices are in full swing, and so are their critics. O+A is firmly established as a creator of work environments with an almost endless variety of amenity spaces. Remember the early interactive drumming game Rock Band? The year it debuted, several clients asked us to design rooms exclusively to play Rock Band in. We did skateboard ramps with DJ turntables, lots of game rooms with pool and ping-pong tables; we did music rooms and cafeterias with sophisticated barista bars and beer taps. We did many, many “living rooms.”
We continue to design these pleasure assets today and have found new reasons to justify them: for recruitment and retention, to increase creativity, to satisfy the introverts and the extroverts. But at the back of my mind, one thought nags: Do these spaces really help us get our work done? Do they really make for better work, more creative work, a more productive day? Or is that claim just our version of sinking a dunk shot 24/7?
The late 1990s was a simpler time for Google. The nascent company was merely a search engine, and Gmail, Android and YouTube were but glimmers in the startup’s eye. Google’s first privacy policy reflected that simplicity. It was short and earnest, a quaint artifact of a different time in Silicon Valley, when Google offered 600 words to explain how it was collecting and using personal information.
That version of the internet (and Google) is gone. Over the past 20 years, that same privacy policy has been rewritten into a sprawling 4,000-word explanation of the company’s data practices.
This evolution, across two decades and 30 versions, is the story of the internet’s transformation through the eyes of one of its most crucial entities. The web is now terribly complex, and Google has a privacy policy to match.
“I kept clicking them because the women in the ads were hot,” writer Jamie Lauren Keiles told me over DM. “Then I guess because I click them, Instagram serves me more and more, which I keep looking at because I am horny, which begets more ads for a product I don’t wear or buy. Anyway, now my whole feed is bathing suits.”
Besides our collective horniness, the real reason Instagram has transformed into one giant bikini store is multifold. It relates to quirks in the algorithm, the sudden explosion of swimwear brands in the 2010s, and the foundational difficulties of shopping for the tiny pieces of clothing in which most people, multiple brands reminded me, will be the most naked they’ll ever be in public.
A half hour west of downtown Providence, Rhode Island, past potholed highways lined with maple, ash, and pine trees, is the town of Foster, population four thousand and seven hundred. Its residents live on small farms and in aging, widely spaced homes; the closest grocery store is in Johnston, twenty miles away. Down Route 6, not far from the Shady Acres Restaurant and Dairy, is Captain Isaac Paine Elementary School. Kristen Danusis, a former school psychologist who became the principal in 2013, tells me that many of her students live “off the grid,” in households that earn little regular income.
Yet, inside Isaac Paine, tech abounds. Teachers project lesson plans onto interactive screens, and little hands reach for black Chromebook laptops, which are stacked like cafeteria trays in a large box called a Chromecart. In one class, Danusis introduces me to a lanky child in rain boots, who clicks through an online math program while chatting about a baby goat that’s being weaned in her back yard. In another room, children rotate through learning stations, sometimes at screens, sometimes putting pencils to paper. Kids work alone and in small groups; they sit at tiny desks and on beanbags and sofas scattered around the classroom. It looks unlike any school I ever attended. The ratio of children to Chromebooks, in grades three through five, is one to one.
One big question is what all this means for us, at home, fishing in the cushions for our remotes: If even a network as seemingly sacred as HBO can be pressured by corporate bosses to crank out more shows in order to better compete with smartphones, what new era are we entering?
Part of the unlikely story of the MacBook Air’s revival is Apple’s failure to create its replacement. When the 12-inch MacBook was released in 2015, it seemed like an obvious replacement. And in late 2016 the 13-inch MacBook Pro shared many features with the Air. Yet both of those Mac models are gone, as of Tuesday. Why?
As someone with minimalist tendencies, it is not a surprise that I fell in love with the idea of a super-skinny and minimal laptop that could slide into a manila envelope. I was on a hospital bed when Apple introduced the clearly underpowered and feature-challenged notebook in 2008. It was called MacBook Air then, though eventually, it became just a MacBook. The initial response to the laptop was harsh – I mean, everyone hated it.
Except me.
In addition to launching refreshes to the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro, Apple has lowered the cost of Mac solid state storage options, cutting the price in half for many of the configurations.
Since its launch, new subscribers to the service have always been eligible to receive three free months of service before paying the usual $9.99 per month. Students had enjoyed the same luxury, with an added benefit as they received a special rate of $4.99 per month. That offer is getting even better today as Apple is extending the free trial period for students, doubling from three months to now six months.
Made in LDN, created in partnership with City Hall, aims to enable teens to “unlock their creativity” in their communities over the summer.
Bi-weekly sessions, which will also include workshops on photography and health and fitness tech, will be led by the company’s London team members, with Instagram influencers and industry experts brought in to speak and provide demonstrations.
The program will initially launch with 10 community groups already working with at-risk young people, selected by the Mayor’s Young Londoners Fund.
Located in Pudong District, the Accelerator is being launched to give Chinese developers a chance to work closely with Apple experts to enhance their app development skills, learn how to take advantage of the latest Apple software and hardware, and get tips on app marketing and distribution.
Everyone -- Netflix, Disney+/Hulu, NBCU and HBO Max -- are just throwing everything and the kitchen sink into their streaming service. Can Apple TV+ be successful, however Apple defines success?
I wonder how many people are knocking on Viacom/CBS or Sony's doors?
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The price drop of the Retina MacBook Air to $1099 means that Apple has finally killed off the previous-gen non-Retina MacBook Air, which held the $999 price point for more than eight years.
The addition of True Tone is a nice gesture for Retina MacBook Air fans, but the $100 price drop is the real news here.
Apple has upgraded the entry-level $1299 MacBook Pro. The laptop now features the latest 8th-generation quad-core processors, and adds the Touch Bar for the first time. This means it also adds a Touch ID biometric sensor and the Apple T2 Security chip. The 13-inch Retina display now supports True Tone.
Ultimately, the MacBook resembles the original MacBook Air more than anything – an oddball that had both lovers and haters, but that didn’t meet the needs or expectations of the masses. Like the Air, the MacBook could rise from the ashes with a future incarnation, too – perhaps one made possible by the much-speculated future Apple transition to ARM processor architecture. Or maybe it’ll just make way for an ever-evolving iPad powered by the more sophisticated iPadOS coming this fall.
Regardless, the MacBook was an eccentric machine that I enjoyed using (and was potentially considering using again pending an update), so here’s hoping it’s not gone forever.
In other words, it is no longer possible to buy a new MacBook Pro with a physical escape key directly from Apple.
The update to the original game comes in celebration of the 10-year anniversary of the App Store and includes new characters, improved graphics, more challenging gameplay, and more.
You don’t buy the Powerbeats Pro to get you to your next pair of headphones. You get these when you’re ready to settle in for the long haul.
There are a wide range of timer apps available on the App Store, so there may very well be one out there better suited for my specific cooking needs. However, Due’s great design, simple user interface, and extra easy timer and reminder creation make it an instantly great option for concurrent timers.
Today, security researcher Jonathan Leitschuh has publicly disclosed a serious zero-day vulnerability for the Zoom video conferencing app on Macs. He has demonstrated that any website can open up a video-enabled call on a Mac with the Zoom app installed. That’s possible in part because the Zoom app apparently installs a web server on Macs that accepts requests regular browsers wouldn’t. In fact, if you uninstall Zoom that web server persists and can reinstall Zoom without your intervention.
Canvas Commons is a digital library full of educational content that enables Canvas educators to find, import, and share resources. It allows educators to share learning resources with each other, as well as import learning resources into a Canvas course.
First, don’t ever feel like it’s too late to have what you want in life. Don’t give in to a feeling of hopelessness. History shows us that talented people are capable of having amazing success for the rest of their lives. Grit matters. I know people who are still pursuing their big dreams in their 70s and 80s. Don’t give up!
Second, stop comparing yourself to others in all the wrong ways. I know you've heard this before. We all have. And, yet, we keep doing it. Sometimes it is a conscious comparison (e.g., “My friend just took his company public and became a billionaire. What have I accomplished?”). Sometimes it is a subconscious comparison that is happening in the back of your mind as you mindlessly scroll through Instagram and see your friends doing exciting things on an amazing vacation.
I will say this: if you were skeptical of Superhuman’s commitment to privacy and safety after reading the last article, you should probably be even more skeptical after these changes. The company’s efforts demonstrate a desire to tamp down liability and damage to their brand, but they do not show an understanding of the core problem: you should not build software that surreptitiously collects data on people in a way that would surprise and frighten them. Superhuman needs to realize that the people their customers send emails to aren’t “externalities”. They are people. And they deserve not to be spied on by software they don’t even know about and never signed up to use.
Hutchins and Hankins knew if the kill switch went down, the malware would pick up where it left off, infecting thousands of computers every minute. Puffy eyed and sleep deprived, they knew the domain had to stay up at all costs. The researchers fended off several attacks from an angry operator of a botnet trying to knock the domain offline with junk internet traffic. And, at one point, law enforcement seized two of their servers from a datacenter in France amid confusion that the domain was helping to spread WannaCry and not preventing it.
With the pressure on but running on empty, Hankins — who was also only pseudonymously known as @2sec4u — fought to stay awake, and would fall asleep on his couch where he worked for hours at a time, laptop still open, only to be jolted awake by messages on Slack or Skype, which the researchers used to talk.
Every time he heard an alert, he feared the kill switch had gone offline.
Just when we thought Apple has successfully simplified its product naming strategy, along came the iPad Air and an updated iPad Mini, and then an updated MacBook Air, and the disapperance of the MacBook.
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It might seem like the problem lies with publishers — I pay you good money, dammit, Wall Street Journal! — but in reality, they have little control. Instead, on the most basic level, the apps where you find those stories (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, among others) are largely responsible. That’s because they require you to read most publications’ content within their apps, which don’t communicate with the publications’ websites — forcing you to log in again and again.
Still, the problem is complicated and involves numerous stakeholders with competing interests. Beyond app makers trying to keep you in their apps, other factors like privacy concerns, advertising, and the fragmented ways in which we read news also contribute to why it’s so annoying to read paywalled stories on your phone.
Ive is a living representative of the relatively new lineage of industrial designers, of artists and engineers who understand that to design a product means taking care of the Look and Feel and the operational factors that are required to deliver their wares in extremely large quantities, on time, while meeting cost and reliability targets.
For iOS 13, iPadOS 13, and macOS Catalina beta testers, Apple is trying out a new sign-in process for iCloud on the web. When you head to beta.icloud.com on a device running the betas, you can now sign-in to your account using Face ID or Touch ID.
The ad shows the man opening his eyes and merely glancing at the phone to unlock the device and reveal the notifications. The ad closes with the tagline “Face ID. Even easier and more secure than Touch ID.”
The first app that we designed enables the classroom staff to use an iPad instead of a clipboard for documenting behaviors in real time. A web portal allows the data collection interface to be customized and gives the rest of the team access to review the data. This allows teams to have more informed discussions about whether the child is responding to things they have tried, and to adjust the strategies they use as needed.
By swapping out their clipboard for an iPad, my research group gave them a portable tool that has enabled them to make the process as paperless as possible. The app also gives educators more space to write notes than the small paper forms they used to use. This has led educators to write more detailed notes than they did before.
It took the entire set of tools needed for thru-hiking – a map, compass, guidebook and water reports – and consolidated them into a single virtual location. It functioned offline and crowdsourced updated information about trail conditions and campsites when online. Such an app might have been inevitable, but for ultralight-obsessed thru-hikers, it was a revolution.
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But as the the app’s empire continues to grow, many thru-hikers worry about its unintended consequences. They see themselves and fellow hikers depending on their phones to decide where to sleep and eat and to discover exactly how far, down to the tenth of a mile, they are from those places. They fear that American thru-hiking, once the ultimate test of self-reliance, is no longer as wild as it once was.
Amid this bounty of theme park activity I stood alone near the clustered shopping stalls of the Black Spire Outpost marketplace, my face buried in a phone. While an obsession with personal screens is often considered a modern societal affliction, here on Galaxy’s Edge it’s encouraged.
Nestled inside the 1-year-old Play Disney Parks mobile app is an exploration-encouraging experience called the Star Wars Datapad. Largely a home to mini-puzzles and short quests that can only be activated while inside Disneyland’s recently opened 14-acre area, the Datapad not only fleshes out the Galaxy’s Edge back story but also contains an ongoing game for control of the land itself.
The OIDF published this list of ways in which Sign In with Apple differs from OpenID Connect and what security and/or privacy risks those deviations entail.
Many Logitech wireless input devices are vulnerable to wireless attacks and can pose a security risk. This is the conclusion of security expert Marcus Mengs, with whom c't has been in contact for quite some time. Mengs has investigated the wireless connections of several Logitech devices and found numerous weaknesses. They affect keyboards, mice as well as wireless presenters.
Several decades into the age of digital media, the ability to leave one’s childhood and adolescent years behind is now imperiled. Although exact numbers are hard to come by, it is evident that a majority of young people with access to mobile phones take and circulate selfies on a daily basis. There is also growing evidence that selfies are not simply a tween and teen obsession. Toddlers enjoy taking selfies, too, and whether intentionally or unintentionally, have even managed to put their images into circulation. What is the cost of this excessive documentation? More specifically, what does it mean to come of age in an era when images of childhood and adolescence, and even the social networks formed during this fleeting period of life, are so easily preserved and may stubbornly persist with or without one’s intention or desire? Can one ever transcend one’s youth if it remains perpetually present?
Today, I discovered I can be happy doing a little bit of programming work while I am sleepy and hungry.
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In February 2016, a small start-up company called AliveCor hired Frank Petterson and Simon Prakash, two Googlers with AI expertise, to transform their business of smartphone electrocardiograms (ECG). The company was struggling. They had developed the first smartphone app capable of single-lead ECG, and, by 2015, they were even able to display the ECG on an Apple Watch. The app had a "wow" factor but otherwise seemed to be of little practical value. The company faced an existential threat, despite extensive venture capital investment from Khosla Ventures and others.
But Petterson, Prakash, and their team of only three other AI talents had an ambitious, twofold mission. One objective was to develop an algorithm that would passively detect a heart-rhythm disorder, the other to determine the level of potassium in the blood, simply from the ECG captured by the watch. It wasn't a crazy idea, given whom AliveCor had just hired. Petterson, AliveCor's VP of engineering, is tall, blue-eyed, dark-haired with frontal balding, and, like most engineers, a bit introverted. At Google, he headed up YouTube Live, Gaming, and led engineering for Hangouts. He previously had won an Academy Award and nine feature film credits for his design and development software for movies including the Transformers, Star Trek, the Harry Potter series, and Avatar. Prakash, the VP of products and design, is not as tall as Petterson, without an Academy Award, but is especially handsome, dark-haired, and brown-eyed, looking like he's right out of a Hollywood movie set. His youthful appearance doesn't jibe with a track record of twenty years of experience in product development, which included leading the Google Glass design project. He also worked at Apple for nine years, directly involved in the development of the first iPhone and iPad. That background might, in retrospect, be considered ironic.
Not so long ago, a Best Buy salesman told me that the best Windows laptop is a MacBook. The simple reason, he said, is that MacBooks last twice as long as other laptops.
These latest MacBooks, though, seem incapable of lasting very long at all before beginning to disintegrate like a coalition of vast political egos.
“I have yet to meet any person who” could rival Jobs “in terms of picking talent, hyper-motivating that talent, and having a sense of design of, ‘Oh, this is good. This is not good,’ ” Gates added of his sometime collaborator and competitor.
Even when he failed, he succeeded, Gates said, citing the 1988 introduction of NeXT, the computer that “completely failed, it was such nonsense, and yet he mesmerized those people.”
The iPhone app works just like the service they used to supply solely through the web, giving artists the possibility to add their tracks (from iCloud, Dropbox or directly from text messages), then distribute them to a full vary of streaming music platforms, together with Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal and more. In alternate for this distribution, in addition to analytics on how your music is performing, UnitedMasters takes a 10% share on revenue generated by tracks it distributes. However, artists retain full ownership of the content they create.
When not plugged into a wall, the internal battery or a USB-C cord can be used to turn the powerstation Hub into a wireless charging pad.
An app, iNaturalist, is a desktop, tablet, or phone app that brings a community of naturalists to your fingertips. The app uses your photos to help identify plants, wildlife, and insects within a larger online community of other naturalists.
For me, the richness of the game may work against it. I don't really want to spend my time managing items and Foundables and Portkeys when I'd rather be doing what the game does best: playing.
Apple hasn't had much to celebrate in India of late, but 2019 is becoming a turning point for the company. The Indian government has signed off on two key factories, allowing Apple to locally manufacture iPhones. That's a huge deal because India has a prohibitive 30% import tax on devices that are imported from other markets, and local assembly allows Apple to negate that tax.
Another development is around Apple's ambitions to set up a retail store in the country. India's local sourcing norms — which required a brand to source 30% of its comonents locally — disallowed Apple from setting up its stores here, but the government is relaxing that particular norm as it looks for an influx of cash from foreign brands.
A government-subsidized program fills up fast and fits only a small fraction of the town’s 4-year-olds, he said. A private program that closed a decade ago was unaffordable for many of the 6,500 residents of Fowler, a predominantly Latino community of agricultural workers in California’s Central Valley. Otherwise, there are a handful of private day cares.
So Mr. Cardenas recently seized on an unusual preschool alternative that a group from Utah presented to him. “This is something that I have never seen before,” he said. “I wanted to be on the front line right away.”
Mr. Cardenas was referring to a “kindergarten readiness program” for 4-year-olds that takes place almost entirely online. Called Waterford Upstart and run by a nonprofit group, Waterford.org, it has children spend 15 minutes a day, five days a week over the course of nine months, tapping through lessons on a computer. About 16,000 children in 15 states graduated from the program this year, and the Waterford expects to expand the program to a projected 22,000 students by 2020.
When I first started carrying a BlackBerry, in the late 2000s, it provided its own kind of liberation: Suddenly I no longer felt chained to my laptop, where I’d been checking my email on my web browser near-constantly. Smartphones made the concept of checking your email redundant, because push notifications, that brilliant idea, told you precisely when you had an email to check, obliterating the need to look at an empty inbox, hopeful for mail. The Apple Watch just takes that notion one step further. Now the notifications themselves are less obtrusive, demanding less of your attention, making it possible to deal with work, engage with a social network and remain available when needed, without reaching into your pocket and pouring over your phone every 30 seconds. It’s another win for private joy.
I'll admit it: I lose my iPhone all the time. I don't lose it in public or anything serious like that, but it's constantly going missing around my apartment. Sometimes I leave it in my bedroom, sometimes it's in my den around my desk area, and most of the time it's lost inside a couch cushion in my living room. Before the Apple Watch, trying to find my perennially misplaced iPhone, especially when I was in a rush to head out the door, was a pain in the butt.
Thankfully, my Apple Watch never has a problem finding my phone.
But holidays no longer mean leaving all your worldly possessions behind. Your phone, your tablet, your e-reader, headphones and even your smartwatch come along for the ride, which means you need to keep them charged, organised and connected.
Here’s a gadget guide to help take the stress out of keeping your digital life up and running when travelling.
If Ive has overstayed his usefulness at Apple, it is only by a little. Few careers in any field will ever match his run at Apple. His designs changed the tech industry forever, and he hit home run after home run on the playing field that he built.
It's often said that the best creative work requires limitations. In this case, another piece of industry wisdom also applies: success hides problems. But in the years to come, when I look back on Jony Ive's work at Apple, I doubt I'll dwell much on tail end, when he very nearly caught that thing he'd been chasing for his entire career. Will he ever catch it? Does anyone? I'm not sure it matters to me. After all, it's the chase that I love.
An investigation by the BBC found more than 20 harmful entries generated by users of MyFitnessPal, Lose It! or Lifesum, including some promoting dangerous cycles of starving and binging.
Phrases such as "starved", "I overate and I hate my life", and "failure, fatty" were logged, among hundreds of thousands of legitimate food items.
"Receiving this message will cause Springboard to crash and respawn repeatedly, causing the UI not to be displayed and the phone to stop responding to input," the security researcher added.
"This condition survives a hard reset, and causes the phone to be unusable as soon as it is unlocked."
Agenda is a unique date-based note taking app that allows you to organize your notes into a timeline that can help drive your projects forward. It takes some getting used to, but it’s a beautifully designed application for macOS and iOS that won an Apple Design Award at WWDC18. And with the recent release of version 6, it now offers full integration with the built-in Reminders app.
Swing is an Apple Watch app that uses machine learning to track how you hit a ball on the tennis court - giving you a chance to benefit from similar technologies to those used at Wimbledon.
"Today, most people around the world can recognize what the sound of a camera shutter means. Such specific sounds have a universal association that transcend languages and cultures, creating a global language of their own."
Apple reimbursed Samsung 800 billion won ($683 million) to cover the cost of OLED panels after Apple missed a sales target both companies had agreed upon.
Apple originally said it would buy a certain number of the display panels from the South Korean company, but disappointing iPhone sales meant it was unable to live up to the agreement. The payment was made in the second quarter of this year.
We have millions and millions of songs in Apple Music's database. It will be a shame if the only means of browsing and discovering these songs is limited by Apple resources and imagination.
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Everyone had an opinion last week, when news broke last that Apple’s longtime design chief Jony Ive was stepping down. But what of the people who worked with him? What better way to evaluate the legacy of a design leader than through the colleagues who toiled alongside him?
We reached out to three former Apple employees—Don Norman, Ken Kocienda, and Imran Chaudhri—who collaborated with Ive during different eras and in various capacities at Apple. Their stories shed new light on one of the most remarkable, if checkered, design careers of the past 30 years.
Everyone has that one app. The one that mocks you from your home screen. The app that lures you to the folder where you’ve tried to hide it. The app you’ve signed out of and deleted — only to download again the next morning. The app you can’t quite quit.
Apple's latest round of billboards continue to tout is strict stance on user privacy. The billboards are a continuation of Apple's marketing campaign focusing on privacy that began at CES in January.
The new billboards spotted in Canada feature catchy slogans like "We're in the business of staying out of yours" and "Privacy is King" punctuated with the line "That's iPhone." The rest of the billboard is black and white with a silhouette of the iPhone XS. It's simple and direct to the point.
Miximum addresses a key missing feature from Apple Music on iOS, and in a way that elegantly complements Apple’s native app. Through integration with your Apple Music library via MusicKit APIs, the app becomes a natural extension to Music and an important utility for users who wish the iPhone and iPad had a more powerful Music app.
While LogMeIn could refresh its interface and clean up its graphics, it provides solid remote access at an affordable price when at several people need to access the screen and files on a desktop computer.
You know what happens next. Right on schedule, as if my device has turned into a Black Mirror-style personal trainer, I get a push notification (this time, one I actually like!) pumping me up for my workout and telling me exactly what’s on deck for the day. It allows me to mentally prep for what’s ahead and, once I get to the gym and crush the workout, I can even—gasp—check my workout off in the Reminders app.
I know some managers say “don’t bring me problems, bring me solutions,” but personally I don’t subscribe to it.
I love when people complain to me. Of course, complaining is a national past time for the British, and we don’t just limit ourselves to complaining about the weather, or the poor availability of good tea when traveling. Brexit has provided some strong fodder for complaining (where do we begin?) but really your average British can complain about anything.
But, here’s why complaining is so useful to me as a manager.
Apple applied for a consent order June 4, the Fair Trade Commission said, meaning the company has initiated a process to close a case early by voluntarily agreeing to take corrective action to restore order to the market and rectify the harm it has caused, if the FTC approves the application.
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The FTC did not disclose any details about the consent order but said such a path normally involves the company agreeing to take two kinds of corrective action. First, it agrees to halt its unfair practices and restore order to the market. It also agrees to rectify the harm it has caused other companies and consumers.
The beloved satire publication will no longer be sold on newsstands after the August issue, and future editions will no longer feature new content and instead shift to previously published material — with new covers.
MAD Magazine, the irreverent and highly influential satirical magazine that gave the world Alfred E. Neuman, will effectively cease publication some time later this year after 67 years, The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed.
My iPhone is jealous that my iPad will soon be able to have both home app icons and Shortcuts widgets on the same screen, side-by-side.
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But the argument that Jony derailed product at Apple looks like complete nonsense when you observe the facts. And every design team member I’ve spoken to over the last 4 years has said that Jony, while at times difficult, demanding and intense, has also been an enormous enabling force when it comes to spending the time, resources and energy it took them to get a product or feature to the level they wanted. Resources like on-the-ground materials consultation in China, collaborations with artists around the world, research into the effects of a design — the willingness to ‘do the most’ in search of a solution. None of that went away.
[...]
I think it’s also smart of Apple not to announce a single ‘Jony replacement’ at this juncture. Any immediate comparison would likely not do them any favors and this gives the team time to find a new center and a new direction over the next couple of years. I think someone will emerge as the design lead here eventually, but I’m not sure who.
It’s not like Apple is going to put Intel stickers on Macs, or preload some silly virus scanner on the iPhone. But will Apple degrade the user experience in order to push its own services? It’s a conflict that’s playing out as iPhone sales flatten out and the company explicitly shifts its focus to paid services across news, TV shows, games, payments (even a credit card!), and music. The temptation to boost those services by littering the iPhone with crap is growing stronger every day, and you can see some clear examples of Apple compromising user experience to drive them already.
When the guy in the Bounce ad says Hey Siri at the beginning and asks it to play him something new, HomePods are being triggered.
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Apple seems to have gotten the message, as the version posted to the company’s YouTube channel omits the Hey Siri command.
“The best,” says Cue simply. “If you want to watch the best shows, we have them.” Better than anything on HBO? “You know, it’s hard to compare. I think HBO has had a great reputation.” There is definitive emphasis on the word. Had? Past tense?
“Look, they have Game Of Thrones that’s just finished... but no, I don’t think it’s past tense.”
The feature, spotted in the third beta of the new software update that went out this week, apparently does a terrific job of making it look like you’re looking directly into the camera even when you’re looking at the screen during a FaceTime call.
After years of neglect, the antivirus industry has finally begun to recognize stalkerware's danger and flag the apps as malicious, a development that's long overdue given that a quarter of women in the US and one in nine men experience some form of physical abuse or stalking by an intimate partner.
But antivirus alone may not be enough, one group of researchers at Cornell Tech and NYU warned me. Abusive phone-snooping, they point out, doesn't necessarily require software explicitly built for that purpose. Mainstream app stores are well-stocked with what those researchers call "dual-use" applications. These are apps that advertise features for a legitimate purpose—such as letting families consensually track one another for convenience or safety, or for locating stolen and lost devices—but can easily be abused by stalkers who install them without their target's knowledge, or secretly change the configuration of those apps to share the victim's location or data.
Apple has overhauled its “Close Your Rings” webpage today with new stories from Apple Watch users. The webpage highlights how everyday Apple Watch users are taking advantage of features such as competitions, heart rate tracking, and more.
Overall, the Brydge Keyboard for the latest iPad Pro is a great keyboard that carries on the quality and experience of previous Brydge keyboard models. If typing is the majority of what you do on your iPad, then it provides an excellent typing experience. If you mark up PDFs or use your iPad to draw regularly, then another keyboard may be better, and if you’re big on portability, then Apple’s Smart Keyboard Folio is the lightest. The Brydge is also cheaper than some of the other offerings, including Apple’s own, and more flexible than many like the Logitech Slim Folio Pro. At any rate, it makes the act of typing on an iPad Pro feel more like a “Pro” experience, and that’s easily worth the cost of admission.
More to the point, disconnecting from Dropbox was time consuming, but it wasn’t difficult. Which is to say that although the process was high friction it was relatively straightforward, and not at all technically challenging. At the outset I had expected that switching away from Dropbox would break many parts of my workflow; in practice, very little has, even though the iCloud Drive features that are ostensibly allowing me to switch are still in beta. I’m certainly not extolling the virtues of leaving Dropbox if you find it indispensable in your own work—it’s still the best option if you need to share files across non-Apple platforms. But the relative ease with which I was able to leave it illustrates well Steve Jobs’s famous criticism that Dropbox is a feature, not a product.
If you’re a high achiever who feels unusually distant from work, take stock, says Davis-Laack. “I always say that if your health or close relationships are being negatively impacted, you need to have a serious conversation about whether you are in the right environment,” she advises.
Should the problem turn out not to be burnout but simple ennui, there’s no shame in admitting you’re just not feeling your job anymore. Just keep in mind, if you’ve really checked out of your job, perhaps it’s a sign there’s somewhere else you want to check in.
Now, as open-office backlash mounts, companies are trying to figure out a way to bring back the privacy of the closed-plan office but without the square footage. To do it, they’re buying their own mini-isolation chambers in the form of personal phone booths, or “pods.”
In its latest transparency report published Tuesday, the tech giant said it received 80 requests from 11 countries to remove 634 apps from its localized app stores during July 1 and December 31, 2018.
Apple didn’t list the apps that were removed but noted in most cases why the apps were pulled. China made up the bulk of the requests, seeking to remove 517 apps claiming they violated its gambling and pornography laws. Vietnam and Austria also requested the takedown of several apps which violated its gambling laws, while Kuwait asked Apple to pull some apps that fell foul of its privacy laws.
What I see in Superhuman though is a company that has mistaken taking advantage of people for good design. They’ve identified a feature that provides value to some of their customers (i.e. seeing if someone has opened your email yet) and they’ve trampled the privacy of every single person they send email to in order to achieve that. Superhuman never asks the person on the other end if they are OK with sending a read receipt (complete with timestamp and geolocation). Superhuman never offers a way to opt out. Just as troublingly, Superhuman teaches its user to surveil by default. I imagine many users sign up for this, see the feature, and say to themselves “Cool! Read receipts! I guess that’s one of the things my $30 a month buys me.”
I blame Javascript for so many things wrong with the web, and I blame HTML for so many things wrong with email.
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In a rare, scathing statement sent exclusively to NBC News, Cook took issue with a report published Sunday night by The Wall Street Journal that said Ive had grown frustrated with Cook’s leadership and alleged lack of interest in the design production process. Cook said the report does not match reality and fails to understand how Apple's design team actually works.
"The story is absurd," Cook said in an email. "A lot of the reporting, and certainly the conclusions, just don’t match with reality.”
Security researches have discovered new malware that targets macOS users and evades popular antivirus tools.
“CrescentCore” is distributed as a DMG package that’s disguised as Adobe Flash Player. It can now be found on multiple websites — one of which is “a high-ranking Google search result,” according to Intego.
Apple recently announced a new series of live concerts that will be held in retail locations around the world this summer, under a new initiative called "Up Next Live." All of the artists playing concerts are alumni of Apple Music's Up Next program, which highlights up-and-coming musicians.
In the app, Mac Pro users will be able to manually assign bandwidth between pools or enable automatic bandwidth configuration. The latter option will allow the Mac Pro itself to dynamically assign bandwidth between PCI Expansion accessories.
The app will also tell users when their installed PCI cards are not arranged in a configuration that will produce the best performance. In this case, Expansion Slot Utility will offer suggestions on where to move specific cards in order to improve performance.
Apple has a big update coming to Reminders in iOS 13, and despite all that’s changing in the app, one important thing is not: developers will still be able to integrate with Reminders so you can create, check off, and manage your tasks from a third-party app. The latest app to take advantage of this is Agenda, the date-based note-taking app which launches full Reminders integration in version 6.0 today on both iOS and the Mac.
While some apps aim to be a complete Reminders replacement, such as GoodTask, Agenda’s approach is to use Apple’s built-in task system for two main purposes: creating to-dos linked to Agenda notes, and complementing the existing calendar integrations.
The free-to-play title lets you build a Lego skyscraper world, with apartments, hospitals, stores, and more. The higher you build, the more options you have — and you’ll collect a bunch of awesome Lego toys along the way.
Today, I've decided that a pizza cannot be called a pizza, if I cannot taste the difference between the pizza pie and an ordinary piece of bread.
And, get off my lawn.
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Dubbed Project Catalyst, it promised to increase the number of quality native apps on the Mac platform by leveraging developers' existing work in the arguably more robust iOS (and now, iPadOS) app ecosystem. But it does raise questions: what does this mean for Mac users' future experiences? Will this change the type of software made for Macs? Is Apple's ecosystem a mobile-first one?
Then there are developer concerns: is Catalyst just a stepping stone to SwiftUI? What challenges can devs expect when adapting their iPad apps for the Mac?
Ars spoke with key members of the Apple team responsible for developing and promoting Project Catalyst, as well as with a handful of app developers who have already made Mac apps this way. We asked them about how Catalyst works, what the future of Apple software looks like, and what users can expect.
Mr. Cook, an industrial engineer who made his name perfecting Apple’s supply chain, sought to keep Mr. Ive happy over the years, in part with a pay package that far exceeds that of other top Apple executives, a point of friction with others on the executive team, people familiar with the matter say. Apple doesn’t disclose Mr. Ive’s pay. But people in the design studio rarely saw Mr. Cook, who they say showed little interest in the product development process—a fact that dispirited Mr. Ive.
Mr. Ive grew frustrated as Apple’s board became increasingly populated by directors with backgrounds in finance and operations rather than technology or other areas of the company’s core business, said people close to him and to the company.
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Members of the human interface and industrial design teams viewed approval from their new leaders as merely tentative. “They still wanted Jony’s thumbs-up to go forward,” this person said.
Mr. Ive promised to hold a “design week” each month with the software designers to discuss their work. He rarely showed up.
The world's most-streamed artists are a parade of major-label household names: Ariana Grande, Post Malone, Billie Eilish. But hidden below the top rankings, independent artists and labels are taking over a greater share of the music channeling into your headphones.
Why? Music-streaming services like Spotify, Apple Music and Pandora -- and the quirks of how they funnel music you may never have heard otherwise -- are helping fuel an indie golden age just below the surface.
Apple has updated its list of recommended eGPUs and chassis for specific graphics cards. More than a list of supported products, Apple's recommendations include some suggestions for what each item is suited, plus how different apps may utilize them to a greater or lesser degree.
What JustPlay lacks in pro features, it more than makes up for in overall presentation and utility—for the money this is a slick, more than capable Mac media player.
Some of the earliest architects of smartphone notifications were simply trying to come up with ways to bring popular desktop communication apps to emerging mobile platforms. One of those people is Matías Duarte. His current role is head of material design at Google. But from 2000 to 2005, Duarte was the director of design at Danger, the predecessor to Android. (Remember the Hiptop, also known as the Sidekick? That was Danger.)
A quarter of a century after the first dot-com boom, the battle for San Francisco’s soul is over and the tech industry has won. But what happens when the victors realize they don’t particularly like the spoils?
Tech workers are increasingly vocal about their discontent with the city they fought so hard to conquer. In May, the median market rent for a one-bedroom apartment reached an all-time high of $3,700 a month, according to the rental site Zumper. Meanwhile, the city saw a 17% increase in its homeless population between 2017 and 2019, and residents complain of visible drug usage, fear of crime and dirty streets. Even Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce and a San Francisco native who has long urged comity between the techies and the city, has taken to calling his hometown a “train wreck”.