Apple suggests that not only can the iPad Pro replace your standard laptop, but in many ways is a superior device. Ads tout the new Apple Pencil and processing horsepower that "exceeds 93% of laptops," but also cause one to wonder who is the target market for the device. While commercials for the device show a shot or two of creating documents and slides, they spend significantly more time on drawing and DJ'ing. While my art skills don't extend much beyond stick figures, and my mixing career ended in the '90s with the mixtape, it seems one could reasonably consider me a "professional," with 20 years in my field, and a leadership role in one of the top global consulting firms. Unlike the Apple commercials, I'm more likely to be on an airplane doing slides for a client pitch than sitting in a laundromat drawing comics, but the promise of a lightweight, long-lasting device that changes how one thinks of and uses mobile computing does have significant appeal.
Under the new rules, which Apple had planned to implement next month, kids apps on Apple’s App Store will be banned from using external analytics software — invisible lines of code that collect extremely detailed information about who is using an app and how. Apple is also severely curtailing their ability to sell ads, which underpins the business model that results in many apps being free. The changes were prompted in part by some children viewing inappropriate ads, Apple says.
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Following an inquiry from The Washington Post, Apple said Friday that it now plans to delay the rule changes. “We aren’t backing off on this important issue, but we are working to help developers get there,” Apple spokesman Fred Sainz wrote in an emailed statement. The statement said some developers had asked Apple to clarify the new rules, but that “generally we have heard from them that there is widespread support for what we are trying to do to protect kids."
Apple's health team has seen a slew of departures in the past year after a series of leadership changes and internal disagreements about direction.
Tension has been increasing in the health care team in recent months, according to eight people familiar with the situation, although that undercurrent started several years ago. Some employees have become disillusioned with the group's culture, where some have thrived while others feel sidelined and unable to move their ideas forward. Four of the eight noted that some employees hoped to tackle bigger challenges with the health care system, such as medical devices, telemedicine and health payments. Instead the focus has been on features geared to a broad population of healthy users.
According to code strings found in macOS Catalina, Apple will apparently allow videos to be downloaded for offline viewing, but with limitations on the total number of downloads, downloads per show or movie, or the total number of times a show or movie can be downloaded.
Vosburg explained that this product is more secure because users get a one-time-use number in the Wallet app. "The real key to the enhanced security here is happening behind the scenes where we're tokenizing the card credentials."
While the company wouldn’t say much specifically about how the chart is tabulated, it uses “Shazam’s proprietary algorithms [to offer] a unique predictive view on rising artists and reacting tracks to Apple Music subscribers.” With 20 million Shazams each day and over 1 billion downloads of its app, that’s a fairly significant test audience.
It’s the simplest possible way to get an additional backup of precious photos and videos — and very possibly their only backup if they won’t fork out the cash for a paid iCloud storage tier. In that scenario, it could be a small price to pay.
The app allows users to see video of the signing of the document, view background on Canada's Bill of Rights and learn some of the stories about people and human rights.
Non-profit organization Girls Who Code today announced plans to begin offering a new Swift coding tutorial option for its upcoming 6th to 12th grade clubs as part of Apple’s ongoing Everyone Can Code initiative.
Practically speaking, the Roundtable statement doesn’t do much. Tim Cook can tell anyone he wants that Apple has lots of different stakeholders, and doesn’t just answer to the whims of its shareholders. But the next time investors decide they want the company to start dropping cash on stock buybacks, they can still pressure him to do it. Likewise, just because a lobbying group got together and decided that the purpose of a corporation is to help humanity, that doesn’t make it so. “They don’t get to do that,” Stephen Bainbridge, a law professor at UCLA, told me. “The law gets to do that. And in corporate law, Delaware is the only law that matters.”
About that: Elizabeth Warren has produced a plan that would require corporations with revenues of more than $1 billion to get a corporate charter from the federal government that would instruct them to consider multiple stakeholders in their planning (so no more worrying about Delaware law) and give workers up to 40 percent of the seats on a company’s board of directors. That might be a little high for some CEO tastes. But if the Roundtable signatories really think employees are one of the groups they should be answering to, then they shouldn’t have any problem giving those people a seat at the literal conference table. As a matter of fact, they should welcome it, since that would dilute some of the power of the activist investors they’re supposedly so tired of.
“My TV habits have changed completely,” says O’Brien, who has been on late night since 1993, first at NBC and later at TBS. “I used to be someone who checked out late-night TV all the time. But I wouldn’t be watching me right now. I’d be binge-watching ‘Killing Eve.’”
O’Brien’s not the only big name looking to connect with audiences through earbuds. A confluence of A-list talent is trying to create the next downloadable smash. At the same time, a medium once seen as more of a hobby than a vocation has been professionalized as it’s grown more profitable. “There’s been a creative explosion around podcasting, but in terms of the business opportunities, we’re still in the early stages,” says Jacob Weisberg, who co-founded podcasting company Pushkin Industries in 2018 with The New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell.
The iPad that I really want: size of the iPad mini, smart connector, and a good smart-connector keyboard.
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