Apple’s updated and more detailed Maps experience has now rolled out across the U.S., the company announced this morning. The redesigned app will include more accurate information overall as well as comprehensive views of roads, buildings, parks, airports, malls, and other public places. It will also bring Look Around to more cities and real-time transit to Miami.
Apple engineers have put forward a proposal today to standardize the format of the SMS messages containing one-time passcodes (OTP) that users receive during the two-factor authentication (2FA) login process.
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By doing this, the process of receiving and entering a one-time passcode could be automated, eliminating the risk of a user falling for a scam and entering an OTP code on a phishing site, with the wrong URL.
The NFL revealed today that all musical performances at this year’s big game will be released as a visual album on Apple Music. Along with the J. Lo/Shakira set, you’ll also be able to stream the National Anthem with Demi Lovato and America the Beautiful with Yolanda Adams.
The new batch includes overhead pans of coral reefs, closeups of underwater species like stingrays and humpback whale and a pod of dolphins. For people who were freaked out by the Palau jellyfish videos, you will be glad to know Apple has added two more of the same vein, this time featuring Alaskan jellies.
Word game addicts, say goodbye to your family, friends, and productivity: Spelltower is back and better than ever. The newly launched Spelltower+ from Zach Gage and Jack Schlesinger takes the original game, modernizes it for the latest iPhone and iPad screen sizes, adds lots of new game modes, and packs several other key feature enhancements. Whether you’re a longtime Spelltower fan, or the game missed your radar entirely in its glory days, Spelltower+ deserves your attention.
Anyway, the point is that if you see an app switch to a subscription model, it’s not necessarily doing so because it’s the trendy thing to do — instead, there may not be any other real choice.
Advanced iPad features are mostly invoked only by gestures — which gestures are not cohesively designed. The Mac is more complex — which is good for experts and would-be experts, but bad for typical users — but its complexity is almost entirely discoverable visually.
The danger of having artificially intelligent machines do our bidding is that we might not be careful enough about what we wish for. The lines of code that animate these machines will inevitably lack nuance, forget to spell out caveats, and end up giving AI systems goals and incentives that don’t align with our true preferences.
The rules of The Sims essentially state that if you work hard and do everything you’re supposed to do – get a job, buy a house, progress through the ranks to earn more money and buy more stuff – happiness will follow. It’s a beguiling capitalist fantasy – and even if things aren’t going well, you can always type in the “motherlode” cheat code to shower yourself in riches.
The challenge of adding visually discoverable features to the iPad is that nothing much should change for customers who don't want or need the new features -- on both the iPad and the iPhone. Please don't diverge iOS and iPadOS: the iPad-is-just-a-big-iPhone is a strength that shouldn't be easily discarded just because some pundits complaining about being too difficult to use the 'power-user' features.
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As reported by Maestri on Tuesday, Apple’s gross margin on products was 34.2 percent. Its gross margin on services was 64.4 percent. That’s right, Apple’s Services business has nearly twice the gross margin of products.
In other words, every dollar of Services revenue generates nearly twice the profit of product revenue. Apple’s product margins are really good, but its Services margins are spectacular. This is more than growing revenue—it’s growing revenue in an incredibly profitable segment.
The $700 iPhone 11, despite being Apple’s flagship model, is really the successor to 2018’s $750 iPhone XR – not the iPhone XS. Like the iPhone XR, the iPhone 11 comes in one size, is available in a variety of bright colors, and lacks some of the bells and whistles of its pricier siblings, such as an additional camera.
The decision to brand its least expensive new iPhone as its primary new model in 2019 marked a noticeable departure from 2018, when Apple launched the $1,000 iPhone XS and $1,100 iPhone XS Max as its flagships and positioned the iPhone XR as a less-expensive alternative that offers many similar features at a lower price.
Finally, the Now Playing screen. Arguably the screen I spend the most time on, and the screen that has progressively gotten worse as time passes. Upon first glance, it’s simple enough. Go back, play/pause, next song buttons. A volume slider, the album art, the song name and artist name. Very standard, very understandable. Swipe down to dismiss the page.
But let’s talk about four little icons that turn this page into a living nightmare. The ellipsis, the speech bubble, the Airplay (maybe?), and a queue-looking thing.
Of course, while this little trick worked beautifully, having to blow on a laptop until I almost pass out is not an ideal way to fix anything.
Not everyone is able to use their gadgets via the usual taps and swipes, which is why extra accessibility add-ons are so important – such as a new eye-tracking system called Skyle, which works with the 12.9-inch Apple iPad Pro.
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"Skyle has been specifically created to utilize the power of the iPad Pro, turning it into an AAC device that can be controlled completely with your eyes," explains developer Inclusive Technology, describing it as "the perfect solution for people with conditions such as cerebral palsy, ALS, Rett syndrome or spinal cord injury."
Portal doesn’t just offer a pleasant soundtrack to work or sleep by. As its name implies, its purpose is more specific and holistic than that, providing an escape portal into another environment entirely. Portal employs 3D soundscapes, Philips Hue integration, and imagination-inspiring visuals to make you truly feel, as much as possible, like you’ve escaped to a new place.
The startup, a maker of artificial intelligence software called Xnor.AI, had been involved in Project Maven, an effort by the U.S. Department of Defense to use AI software to analyze imagery captured by military drones. Apple acquired Xnor.AI recently and decided to terminate the work, a person familiar with the matter said. Google's participation in Project Maven sparked protests from thousands of its employees, prompting it to withdraw from the project.
Apple said it plans to appeal the verdict, but declined further comment. The company had said in court filings that it believed all of the university’s claims against it resulted from its using Broadcom’s chips in its devices, calling itself “merely an indirect downstream party.”
Right from the very first iTunes music store app to the latest incarnation of Apple Music, the app looked and behaved very much like a web site. (No, techically, it is not a web app.)
Apple should just accept that, and start adding web-browser-like features to Apple Music. The lowest of low-hanging fruits: bookmarks. There's simply too much of scrolling and clicking and waiting for things to load in order to navigate to 'favorite' places within Apple Music. After all, there are only three entry points: "For You", "Browse" and "Radio." It's like Apple is forbidden itself from deep linking into Apple Music.
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iOS 13.3.1 includes a "Networking & Wireless" toggle that turns off the U1 Ultra Wideband chip in the latest iPhones. [...]
Apple added this location toggle after it was discovered that the iPhone 11, 11 Pro, and 11 Pro Max continue to track user location even when location services options are disabled. This is because there are international regulatory requirements that mandate the U1 chip be disabled in certain locations.
According to Apple's release notes, the update includes Pro Display XDR optimizations and multi-stream video editing improvements.
Sales of Apple’s flagship product had fallen for the past year, but on Tuesday, Apple said iPhone revenue was growing again. The company said iPhone sales increased 7.7 percent to nearly $56 billion in the latest quarter from a year ago.
That growth helped lift Apple’s profit by 11.4 percent to $22.3 billion. The numbers easily beat Wall Street expectations and were welcome news to Apple investors, who had watched the company’s typically strong growth suddenly evaporate over the past year.
In the first fiscal quarter of 2019, Apple's services segment brought in $12.7 billion, up from $10.9 billion in the year-ago quarter, marking growth of 17 percent. Every geographic saw double-digit growth, setting new records.
If you were wondering about Apple’s strategy to make the successor to the iPhone XR the “real” iPhone 11, and rebranding the iPhone X successors as pro models, wonder no more. According to Apple, the iPhone 11 outsold the iPhone 11 Pro and 11 Pro Max every single week of the holiday quarter.
"We're restricting travel to business critical travel," Cook told CNBC's Josh Lipton Tuesday. "For employees that are in the Wuhan area, we are providing care kits and supplying them across our employee population in China as well."
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Apple has "some suppliers" in the Wuhan area, Cook told investors on Apple's quarterly conference call Tuesday, and added that at least some of its manufacturing facilities elsewhere in China will remain closed until Feb. 10, as recommended by the Chinese government.
We are primarily measuring ourselves on the number of subscribers. As you can tell from the way that we launched the product, we started with a very aggressive price at $4.99 and in addition to that, we have our bundle where if you buy pretty much any device, you’re getting a year for free. And so we’re very focused on subscribers. That said, the product itself is about storytelling. And we think if we do that well, then we’ll find that there will be some number of those that will also be critically acclaimed. And we’re seeing that with “The Morning Show,” We’re seeing that with “Little America,” and and others.
I’ve advocated a typical strategy for years: make a nightly clone of your startup volume for ease of fast recovery; have a secured internet-hosted backup, at least for critical documents; and swap two drives on a regular basis for local backup, so you always have a store of all your older data that can’t be destroyed by fire or other disaster or stolen from your home or work. (A simpler version is often summarized as 3-2-1: three copies, two local, one offsite.)
When you start amassing terabytes of data, all of which is precious, you might feel like you’re outstripping your ability to manage it, because you’ve added drives over the years instead of increasing volume storage. With the current low cost of high-capacity drives, and you’re starting to fill their capacity, it’s a good time to swap.
First, its distraction-free style helps you focus on the writing rather than the interface and options. Second, it doesn't cost much. Third, it's ideal if you mostly write short-form pieces, such as blog posts and articles. Lastly, it's really meant for people who love Markdown. If you tick those four boxes, then iA Writer is the app for you.
Fisheye lenses aren't generally everyday lenses, but they're useful when you need to shoot up close, in tight spaces (like taking a full photo of a room that you're in), or take shots of things like tall buildings. You can also get some great wide landscape shots, and while I don't do a lot of action photography, the Fisheye is a neat way to get close-up action shots and videos.
Based on the artwork in the update, the Powerbeats 4 will feature a design that's a cross between the current Powerbeats3 earbuds and the Powerbeats Pro wireless earbuds.
The fact that it is based on Apps as first-level objects, instead of files, is what hurts it most as a productivity device. An App-oriented user interface works well for playing games, browsing the web, and answering an email once in a while, but real work is typically file-centric. Even just writing an article means that you have collected sources like PDFs or links, images you want to include in your article, maybe spreadsheet files that contain data for a graph you want to show, a (hopefully versioned) text file for the actual body of your article, and so on.
YouTube, Audible, podcast apps, and now Netflix all allow you to speed up your media intake. Advocates say bumping up video or audio speed to 1.25x, 1.5x, or even 2x improves efficiency and saves precious time, allowing you to do and consume more. But at that rate, are you still getting the same information — not to mention enjoyment — out of the experience?
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In several studies, Pastore has shown that students’ comprehension of a lecture is not affected when the audio is compressed by 25%, which corresponds to speeding it up by 1.33x. Other researchers have reported similar results, with no difference in comprehension at 1.5x and 1.8x speed. Above that rate, our understanding goes off a cliff, as most people can’t recognize the words presented at 2x speed, much less understand the meaning of a sentence.
Rained all day outside. Cold air from air-con.
Sun clouded off sky. Anxiety radiates.
Calm on surface. Helplessness within.
Feels like Monday.
It is Monday.
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Apple has asked its suppliers to make up to 80 million iPhones over the first half of this year, people familiar with its planning told the Nikkei Asian Review, a rise of over 10% on last year's production schedule that could boost the company's near-record share price.
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However, suppliers warned that blistering pace of production could be complicated by the outbreak of the coronavirus in China's Hubei Province, given that their main manufacturing centers are in nearby Henan and Guangdong provinces, with more than 100 confirmed cases as of Monday afternoon, and in Shanghai, with over 50 confirmed cases.
The US government is once again reviving its campaign against strong encryption, demanding that tech companies build backdoors into smartphones and give law enforcement easy, universal access to the data inside them.
At least two companies that sell phone-cracking tools to agencies like the FBI have proven they can defeat encryption and security measures on some of the most advanced phones on the market. And a series of recent tests conducted by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) reveal that, while there remain a number of blind spots, the purveyors of these tools have become experts at reverse engineering smartphones in order to extract troves of information off the devices and the apps installed on them.
But the [iPad] camera is super funny. That's the other thing that we didn't anticipate being so big. But it was a segment of the population at the time that really was using the camera more than anything else. So I remember very clearly at the 2012 Olympics in London, if you looked around the stadium, you saw a lot of people using an iPad as a camera and generally that was people that just needed to have a bigger viewfinder for vision results, etc. Then seeing that, we went back in and redesigned the camera experience on the iPad — recognizing that this is going to be a thing that we just can't get people away from because they want this larger viewfinder.
Software is where the iPad has gotten lost. iPadOS’s “multitasking” model is far more capable than the iPhone’s, yes, but somehow Apple has painted it into a corner in which it is far less consistent and coherent than the Mac’s, while also being far less capable. iPad multitasking: more complex, less powerful. That’s quite a combination.
Filmic today released its DoubleTake camera app, which allows iPhone users to shoot with multiple cameras at the same time. An early version of the app was demoed during Apple's iPhone 11 Pro media event back in September.
MGM has held preliminary talks with a number of companies, including Apple and Netflix, to gauge their interest in an acquisition, two of the people said. MGM owns the James Bond catalog and its studio has made several current hit shows including "The Handmaid's Tale," which streams on Hulu, and "Live PD," a reality police show that has frequently been the most watched show on cable TV and airs on A&E. It also owns premium cable network Epix.
In the 1930s, at the time of the writing of the Wagner Act—the law which grants workers the right to form unions and collectively bargain— union organizing took place during shift changes on factory floors and over beers in union halls. The law protected workers from retaliation for this type of in-real-life organizing, and it still does.
But times have changed, and often the only points of contact for workers at any given company are email, Slack, and Facebook groups. Today, it’s difficult, even dangerous, to organize when you don’t know who is lurking in your emails or secretly spying on your social media groups.
When the Mac turned 10 years old, it was in a world, for many people, where there was only a single idea of what a computer was: A monitor, a CPU, and a keyboard and mouse that all sat on a desk. (Or a lap, for those who could afford.) It was likely that all computer-y stuff were all done on that single computer. (Or maybe just two computers: one at work, and one at home.)
That one computer had to be all things to all people. And if something cannot be done on that one computer: well, that spelt 'third-party oppurtunity'. Someone will rush in to fill that space.
Today, when the iPad turned 10 years old, the world is different. Many of us has multiple computers that we use at the same time. On the very desk that I am typing right now, I have a laptop, an iPad, as well as an iPhone. Many of the computer-y things that I do are already working well on at least one of the three computers.
If something doesn't work well on an iPad, for example, chances are the same task is already working well on the Mac or the iPhone. There isn't that much of a 'third-party opportunity', nor an incentive for Apple to fill the space. The 'good-enough' bar for any solution to exist has been raised much higher, because any computer is not the only computer.
Perhaps, the Mac in 1994 was so much more advanced than the Mac in 1984, when compared to the decade of iPad, is because there is less of an urgency and motivation.
The story is probably going to be very different if Apple's objective for the iPad is to completely replace the Mac. But, as far as I can tell, that is never Apple's objective. On the other hand, that was Microsoft's objective for a long time: One Windows.
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I hope you got your fill of the unofficial Apple Archive last week, because that expansive collection of over 15,000 classic Apple advertisements, internal training videos, and other eye-opening odds and ends from the Cupertino computer company’s history has now been ripped apart — late Friday, curator Sam Henri Gold received a veritable deluge of DMCA takedown notices originating from Apple’s lawyers, letting him know the vast majority of the videos he’d uploaded to Vimeo had been removed from the internet.
Shot in the British Colombia Interior, Canada, the video features past and present Winter X Games competitors snowboarding down slopes and valleys at Baldface Lodge.
If it detects water, Eve Water Guard will alert you with an audible (100-dB siren) and visible alarm (red warning light). You also receive an alert on your iPhone or Apple Watch.
Not just apps from Apple, but third-party apps from developers who have remained committed to providing high-quality tools for iPad users. Below, you'll find just a handful of iPad apps that make using the tablet for work-related tasks -- and not just browsing the web or watching Netflix -- possible.
Yet despite these flagrant abuses, plenty of people who work from home—in my experience, the majority—aren’t misusing the privilege. They’re just as productive from home (if not more so, given that it’s often easier to focus outside your office) and resent being treated with suspicion by managers who assume working from home means slacking off.
Apple files lots and lots of patents, and the vast majority of them that feature entire product designs don’t ever see the light of day. This filing doesn’t mean that Apple’s next iMac is going to look like this, or was ever going to. Apple didn’t even have to make a device like this in a secret lab to file its paperwork.
ccording to Sonos, a speaker they built just 10 years ago has reached its “technological limits.” It made me think about the way we’ve allowed companies to arbitrarily define what “technological limits” are, and what they look like, and how easily that phrase gets tossed about by companies to justify bricking hardware, removing features, or preventing customers from repairing their own equipment. It’s an issue that’s much bigger than Sonos or any single company.
To me, there are two separate meanings of what it meant to read a book.
On one hand, there's the 'traditional' meaning of looking at the shape of ink-on-paper and comprehending the meaning of these shapes.
And then, on the other hand, there's the more interesting meaning of understanding, discovering, and absoring the meanings of the text.
The important part about reading a book, to me, is the second meaning. I don't really care about one 'look' and 'comprehend', but if one can understand and absorb, it makes for a much better conversation.
All that is just my way of saying, yes, one can absolute read a book via audio.
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If there is a larger lesson to learn from The Code, it is that technology cannot be separated from the social and political contexts in which it is created. The major currents in society shape and guide the creation of a system that appears to spring from the minds of its inventors alone. Militarism and unbridled capitalism remain among the most powerful forces in the United States, and to my mind, there is no reason to believe that a new generation of techies might resist them any more effectively than the previous ones. The question of fixing Silicon Valley is inseparable from the question of fixing the system of postwar American capitalism, of which it is perhaps the purest expression. Some believe that the problems we see are bugs that might be fixed with a patch. Others think the code is so bad at its core that a radical rewrite is the only answer. Although The Code was written for people in the first group, it offers an important lesson for those of us in the second: Silicon Valley is as much a symptom as it is a cause of our current crisis. Resisting its bad influence on society will ultimately prove meaningless if we cannot also formulate a vision of a better world—one with a more humane relationship to technology—to counteract it. And, alas, there is no app for that.
“Apple does a great job making their OS more and more secure with every new release,” says Kuskov. “But it is hard to prevent such attacks on the OS level, since it's the user who clicks on a link and downloads Shlayer and runs it, like any other software.”
While Flash might seem like an outdated lure, given the numerous public warnings about its fallibility and the fact that it’s dying off completely this year anyway, it’s actually perversely effective.
When the company behind your smartphone’s software commits to backing up your device’s data online, how far should it go to have your back?
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What that means is that while the contents of your iPhone remain encrypted on Apple’s servers, you don’t have the only key to unlock them – the Cupertino, California, tech giant also has one.
Perhaps the Apple Watch Series 3 is the biggest case to be made that there's an audience for a lower-cost Apple Watch that doesn't have all of the bells and whistles of the latest model.
Today, I learnt that Apple did not release one particular episode of Little America here in Singapore.
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Apple on Thursday announced its new "Apple Watch Connected" gym initiative, a new series of partnerships with fitness facilities that makes it easier for people who own Apple Watches to track workouts, buy stuff and earn rewards for working out.
It's Apple's latest fitness expansion, helping it to build an entire ecosystem around the Apple Watch and providing owners with more places to use it to improve their fitness tracking. It creates yet another reason for people to buy Apple Watches: If you're trying to work out, why not get a watch that works seamlessly with the gym you're joining? And it helps gyms keep customers through rewards-based initiatives.
Apple and Microsoft will each be sending a representative to a meeting on Monday hosted by a group that's supporting efforts by the Department of Health and Human Services to make it easier for patients to access and share their medical information.
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They'll be meeting as part of an effort to push through a rule change proposed by HHS in 2019 to promote medical data interoperability. The proposal has been in a public comment period, with backers hoping it will be finalized in the coming weeks.
Starting February 1, select Apple Stores across the US will celebrate Black History Month with a special lineup of more than 40 Today at Apple sessions. This year’s lineup highlights creators shaping new cultural narratives through visual arts, photography, poetry, dance, film, and other mediums.
The battle royale game is essentially a family-friendly version of Fortnite, replacing assault rifles and rocket launchers with sauce-shooting, baguette-blasting modified kitchen tools as weapons.
Apple has overhauled its Jobs At Apple page to give it a brand new, striking look complete with colorful Apple logos and new feature sections!
Any time I am exploring or getting familiar with a new codebase in Xcode, especially very large projects, I use disabled breakpoints as “bookmarks” to keep track of where I am, where I have been, and things I want to remember or need to revisit. Sometimes I even do this when debugging issues in codebases that I know well.
I think, in general, it took a decade for the iPad to be ready to stand on its own because Apple has been trying to figure out the exact path forward for the iPad, and just how far to push it. The messaging from the marketing department didn't often align with what the iPad was truly capable of. Sure, it could replace a computer for some users, and with the iPad Pro lineup (and the added versatility it provided) that dream came closer to reality. Combine the hardware and the cascading of a dedicated keyboard for even the entry-level iPad, along with iPadOS, and it's clear that the iPad is more of a laptop now than it has ever been.
Apple CEO Tim Cook took to Twitter this morning to honor Chinese New Year, also adding Apple sends its “love and support” to everyone impacted by the coronavirus.
According to Cook, Apple will also be donating to “groups on the ground helping support all of those affected” by coronavirus.
Happy New Year!
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New information shows that the biggest source for all this location data–namely, the smartphones that we carry around everywhere–is drying up as Apple and Google offer stronger, clearer privacy controls on their platforms.
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None of this means that location tracking is going away, but with more people opting out of sharing their precise location with apps, advertisers now have to make do with less accurate information. That in turn could make them rethink overly invasive tracking in the first place.
But a world eaten by software is also one of overwhelming choice. The internet connects more than five billion people, who have collectively created 130 trillion web pages. We have instant access to those web pages along with all of their untold millions of apps, videos, photos, articles, and goofy memes.
It follows that a world of overwhelming choice is also one of overwhelming competition for attention. To have any chance of competing, products and services need to be easily understood, compelling, and even beautiful. With the internet now providing the most potent means of distribution, design has become the most potent means of differentiation.
To understand Apple Inc.’s evolving place in the tech world, consider that one of its most important executives today is a guy whose job is badgering suppliers to get costs down.
Tony Blevins, vice president of procurement, will stop at little to get a favorable deal. He has paraded manufacturers past competitors in Apple’s lobby and spurned a UPS contract by sending it back to UPS executives through FedEx. He persuaded subcontractors not to pay a chip maker that Apple was in litigation with, depriving the chip company of $8 billion, according to court documents and people who recall the case.
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For years, Mr. Blevins wore a tourist trinket from Hawaii, a cheap puka-shell necklace he had negotiated to a $2 price from $5. It was a reminder to his staff that nothing should fetch full price, said Helen Wang, who worked on his procurement team for years.
Oh, nothing should fetch full price, eh, Apple?
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Google researchers say that Safari left personal data exposed because the Intelligent Tracking Prevention List "implicitly stores information about the websites visited by the user." Malicious entities could use these flaws to create a "persistent fingerprint" that would follow a user around the web or see what individual users were searching for on search engine pages.
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Apple appears to have addressed these Safari security flaws in a December update, based on a release update that thanked Google for its "responsible disclosure practice," though full security credit has not yet been provided by Apple so there's a chance that there's still some behind-the-scenes fixing to be done.
This might sound like I’m railing against Apple for hypocrisy. I am not — yet. As I mentioned, data security is a spectrum and it’s difficult to understand how everything works in the first place. If I’m unhappy with Apple for anything, it’s for talking about data security and privacy in such absolutist terms.
Apple Arcade is leveling up in Apple Stores across the world with eye-catching new displays and a sharper focus on accessories to enhance the gaming experience. The new merchandising designs began appearing today at Apple’s latest stores in countries where Apple Arcade is available.
The biggest design change in MindNode version 7 is the addition of visual tags. Tags are a great way to categorize and organize your ideas and thoughts inside your mind map. For example, you might use visual tags to indicate priority or to group related ideas in separate branches of your mind map document that aren’t otherwise connected. Tags are displayed visually by colored dots at the end of node titles, and each node can have multiple tags applied to it.
This year officially marks the end of an era: as announced in 2017, Adobe will stop supporting the once-ubiquitous Flash by the end of 2020. With the newest release of its Safari Technology Preview browser today, Apple has taken the next step as part of its efforts to end all usage of Flash in Safari.
Experts like Tim Pychyl at Carleton University in Canada and his collaborator Fuschia Sirois at the University of Sheffield in the UK have proposed that procrastination is an issue with managing our emotions, not our time. The task we’re putting off is making us feel bad – perhaps it’s boring, too difficult or we’re worried about failing – and to make ourselves feel better in the moment, we start doing something else, like watching videos.
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The next time you’re tempted to procrastinate, “make your focus as simple as ‘What’s the next action – a simple next step – I would take on this task if I were to get started on it now?’”. Doing this, he says, takes your mind off your feelings and onto easily achievable action. “Our research and lived experience show very clearly that once we get started, we’re typically able to keep going. Getting started is everything.”
Shortly after rummaging through leaves and paper, he poked his head out of the hole and extended his hand. He was holding my AirPod.
I gasped. King had slightly restored my faith in the M.T.A. I knew that my next train would probably be delayed, but in that moment I didn’t care. The M.T.A. had taken care of me this time.
After I thanked King, he replied, “This is what I do.”
Apple executive Lisa Jackson met with Ukraine's foreign minister Vadym Prystaiko at Davos, two months after Apple controversially altered two apps to display annexed Crimea as part of Russia.
His tweet said the pair discussed Apple's "next steps" in the Ukrainian market, with a follow-up tweet hinting that the Crimea issue was also discussed.
If that is the case — that Apple’s legal department killed the project to avoid “poking the bear” — then it’s ultimately irrelevant whether Apple briefed the FBI in advance or not. It’s acquiescence, and users will be left unprotected. Not just in the U.S., where the FBI has jurisdiction, but everywhere in the world where encryption is legal.
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Surely there are hundreds, maybe thousands, of people every day who need to access their iCloud backups who do not remember their password. The fact that Apple can help them is a benefit to those users. That’s why I would endorse following the way local iTunes device backups work: make encryption an option, with a clear warning that if you lose your backup password, no one, including Apple, will be able to restore your data. I would be surprised if Apple’s plan for encrypted iCloud backups were not exactly that.
Both our security editor, Rich Mogull, and iMore’s Rene Ritchie have heard that part of the motivation for not offering a personal encryption key is the number of people who lock themselves out of their iCloud accounts. As long as Apple holds those encryption keys, the company can help users get back into their accounts and restore their data.
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Regardless, Apple is stuck between a rock and a hard place. The company’s privacy stance dictates that it should allow users to encrypt their iCloud backups such that even it can’t peek into them. Simultaneously, Apple also has to deal with accusations, now from both Democratic and Republican administrations, of protecting criminals. And it must also walk the more prosaic line of trading off a hard-line privacy stance against the very real need to deal with simple human error at a massive scale.
So while it isn’t the ideal approach by Apple, it is a pragmatic one with few downsides. And one that might, in the long-run, reduce the risk legislation forcing Apple to compromise iOS, which would create massively greater risks.
The district attorney of Manhattan, Cyrus Vance Jr., and the city’s cybercrime unit have built this electronic prison for a very specific purpose: to try, using brute force algorithms, to extract the data on the phones before their owners try to wipe the contents remotely.
Welcome to ground zero in the encryption battle between state and federal law enforcement officials on one side, and trillion-dollar tech giants Apple and Google on the other. About five years ago, with the introduction of its iOS8 operating system, Apple decided to encrypt all of its mobile devices—protecting both consumers and criminals from prying eyes. Google quickly followed suit, locking down its Android devices. The result has been an escalating cat and mouse game between Washington and Silicon Valley, with prosecutors like Vance trying to break into the phones, and Apple and Google racing to stop them.
One of the big questions I got around the time the Apple Card launched was whether you’d be able to download a file of your transactions to either work with manually or import into a piece of expenses management software. The answer, at the time, was no.
Now Apple is announcing that Apple Card users will be able to export monthly transactions to a downloadable spreadsheet that they can use with their personal budgeting apps or sheets.
There are several components that build on one another, like layers of a cake, to provide the infrastructure necessary for enabling zero-touch management. There is no one killer application or service that does it all, but rather a symbiotic environment that must exist to ensure that iOS devices are supervised and managed accordingly. I'll identify the different components, explain how they work, and how they integrate into the overall scheme.
Recently, I took a deep breath and a step back to see what kinds of cross-platform GTD options there are available to hybrid Mac and PC users. And while Todoist may be the immediate thought for most Sweet Setup readers, it was actually Microsoft’s own To Do app that caught my attention.
I can almost perfectly replicate my Things 3 setup inside Microsoft To Do and have cross-platform support to boot. In fact, it’s so close to be replicated functionality that I may abandon Things 3 for good.
Sensei is a brand new Mac app that monitors the status of various components of your Mac’s hardware and provides a set of utilities to optimize its performance. The app is certainly not the first to offer these features – there are tools built into macOS and third-party apps that can accomplish many of the same functions, and in some cases more. However, what sets Sensei apart, and what has quickly won me over, is its ability to translate the data it collects and implement its utilities in a beautifully-designed, standalone app.
Apple today updated its developer news site with details about two upcoming changes that developers should be aware of.
Apple sent out a request for pitches last summer, asking podcast producers to pitch ideas for audio programs with some connection to its shows, one of the people said. The company has since discussed making podcasts with producers of its original series, according to two of the people, who asked not to be identified because the plans aren’t final.
The driving force here is simple enough. Digital photos drive down the cost of archival research, allowing an individual to capture far more documents per hour. So, an archival visit becomes a process of standing over documents, snapping pictures as quickly as possible. Some researchers organize their photos swiping on an iPhone, or with an open-source tool named Tropy; some, like Alex Wellerstein, a historian at Stevens Institute of Technology, have special digital-camera setups, and a standardized method. In my own work, I used Dropbox’s photo tools, which I used to output PDFs, which dropped into Scrivener, my preferred writing software.
These practices might seem like a subtle shift—researchers are still going to collections and requesting boxes and reading papers—but the ways that information is collected and managed transmute what historians can learn from it. There has been, as Milligan put it, a “dramatic reshaping of historical practice.” Different histories will be written because the tools of the discipline are changing.
Interestingly, the tech CEO sees benefits for AR and connecting people, more than other available technologies. “I think it’s something that doesn’t isolate people. We can use it to enhance our discussion, not substitute it for human connection, which I’ve always deeply worried about in some of the other technologies.”
Cook is also “extremely excited” about tech in healthcare realm. “I’m seeing that this intersection has not yet been explored very well. There’s not a lot of tech associated with the way people’s healthcare is done unless they get into very serious trouble.”
Apple Inc dropped plans to let iPhone users fully encrypt backups of their devices in the company’s iCloud service after the FBI complained that the move would harm investigations, six sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.
The tech giant’s reversal, about two years ago, has not previously been reported. It shows how much Apple has been willing to help U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies, despite taking a harder line in high-profile legal disputes with the government and casting itself as a defender of its customers’ information.
Apple Watch sleep tracking app NapBot is out today with a big update that brings some handy new features including background tracking so it can work without iPhone, daily notifications, support for all complication types, redesigned Siri watch face card, trend for awake minutes, and more.
That “click” sound is familiar to me. I grew up in Detroit in the early 1980s, around the time when car door power locks were becoming standard, and I would assert that for probably any Black man who grew up in any American city at that time, it was a common experience to walk down a street and hear that sound (especially at night). Click. Click. Click. Even during the summer, folks would have their windows down and still lock their car doors as I walked by. This performance was not particularly secure, mind you. If my intentions were actually to harm someone sitting in their car, a locked door with an open window is a very ineffective barrier. But the sound perhaps served more as an audible and technological reminder of how I, along with other Black men, were seen by the culture. And it was inescapable. There was no “opting out” of this form of what we now refer to as “security theater”: practices that present the illusion of increasing security or safety, but have no meaningful effect.
Digital surveillance has grown exponentially in the last few years, and with it the scope and scale of security apparatus deployed across urban environments. How does the visibility—or invisibility—of these technologies elicit performative acts from people at each end of the surveilling gaze? How is one expected to act as the person watching, or as the person being watched? In the case of the mechanical door lock, the click emboldens a driver, making them feel safer, while at the same time signaling to those outside that the driver is aware of their presence. For the person outside of the car, the effect is quite different: The click signifies that you are seen, and indicates that you are perceived as a threat. A seemingly discrete act transforms not only the user of the tech and the person who is targeted by their act, but even the spatial context around it.
Taiwan’s Pegatron Corp. plans to set up production facilities in Vietnam, according to people familiar with the matter, becoming the latest Apple Inc. assembly partner to establish a presence in the Southeast Asian nation as they diversify beyond China.
Tim Cook rarely invests his time and money in products without the Apple Inc. logo. But when he tried a prototype shower head at his local gym about five years ago, he made an exception.
Philip Winter, who helped create the Nebia shower head, recalls moving to San Francisco in 2014 to get his idea off the ground. The shower head sprays in a way that uses less water, but still keeps people warm. Crafted from materials including aluminum, the system looks like something Apple might design, if it made bathroom hardware.
It will be a shame if Apple truly stopped working on encrypted iCloud backups. It is a further shame that cloud backups is not something that third-party apps can truly offer in iOS.
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Outside of the two renewals, Apple's announcements were focused on setting its spring slate as the company's rollout plans begin to take shape. Originals, be they scripted dramas and comedies or docuseries, will pick up in February with two series, Mythic Quest (all episodes on Feb. 7) and the LGBTQ doc Visible: Out on Television (Feb. 14, all episodes). The episodic anthology Amazing Stories is set to bow March 6 with its first five episodes, though there was no information about when the remainder of the series from executive producer Steven Spielberg will return.
In April, Apple ramps up its release pattern with three originals — Home Before Dark (April 3, three episodes); the real estate docuseries Home (all episodes); and the Chris Evans vehicle Defending Jacob (April 24, first three episodes). Apple's first U.K. comedy, Trying, arrives May 1, followed June 5 by the docuseries with all episodes of both available at launch. The animated comedy from Bob's Burgers creator Loren Bouchard and featuring a star-studded voice cast, will launch in early summer; a formal premiere date has not been revealed for the comedy that Apple picked up straight-to-series amid competition from both Netflix and Hulu.
If there was an early theme on Sunday, it was Apple’s commitment to diversity. Apple’s TCA slate featured series about immigrant stories, as well as one focusing on LGTBQ representation.
“They’re happy—that’s all we know,” said Witherspoon, who stars as newswoman Bradley Jackson in the series and also executive produces. “The only metric I really have of it is from Rotten Tomatoes.”
“That’s the thing with these streaming services,” added Aniston, who plays Alex Levy in the show. “There are no ratings.”
Apple TV Plus is on the board. The new streaming service won its first major Hollywood honor on Sunday, as “The Morning Show” star Jennifer Aniston picked up a SAG Award for best female actor in a drama.
The first spot is called "Whiteout" and shows a professional snowboarder crashing through a snow drift using the front facing camera's slow-mode feature.
This mode makes the most of the screen’s high refresh rate to deliver ultra-smooth performance.
Everyone knows that the global corporate tax system needs to be overhauled, Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook said on Monday, backing changes to global rules that are currently under consideration.
The growth of internet giants such as Apple has pushed international tax rules to the limit, prompting the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to pursue global reforms over where multinational firms should be taxed.
Ms. Winfrey said that she still believed Ms. Dixon, though she also thought there were inconsistencies in her account that the film had not adequately addressed, in addition to other issues she had with the film.
She said it was those reasons, and not Mr. Simmons’s protestations, that led her to pull support.
College career centers used to prepare students for job interviews by helping them learn how to dress appropriately or write a standout cover letter. These days, they're also trying to brace students for a stark new reality: They may be vetted for jobs in part by artificial intelligence.
At schools such as Duke University, Purdue University, and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, career counselors are now working to find out which companies use AI and also speaking candidly with students about what, if anything, they can do to win over the algorithms. This shift in preparations comes as more businesses interested in filling internships and entry-level positions that may see a glut of applicants turn to outside companies such as HireVue to help them quickly conduct vast numbers of video interviews.
The main reason you might think all of the windows associated with an app should also come forward when you click on one of them is because you got used to that behavior. It’s familiar, which is important, but not necessarily correct.
After the Northeast Mississippi Community College (NEMCC) implemented a new initiative called oNE Northeast, every student was required to purchase an iPad for use throughout the entirety of their education there. The initiative was introduced to reduce the cost of textbooks and engage more with the students in the classroom.
The initiative worked. NEMCC saw nearly $6 million in savings from textbooks alone. Student grades also saw a benefit, with students' work raising the average from 72% to 80%.
I'm so not optimstic about the future of work.
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“Listening to music on headphones is very different to speakers where there is a temporal and spatial difference between you and the music,” says Charlie Harding, one of the hosts of the podcast Switched On Pop and co-author of a new book on music theory in popular music. Harding partially credits the success of podcasting to headphones: listening that way creates a feeling of closeness between the hosts and listener.
Similarly, he hears this in the singing of some pop artists, particularly Selena Gomez and Billie Eilish. “Their style of singing is almost like a whisper, as if they are right in your head,” he says. The recent single by Gomez, “Look at Her Now” is a perfect example according to Harding.
Amid its ongoing encryption battle with the FBI, Apple has published its latest biannual transparency report. This report reveals how many requests were made for user data by governments around the world, and how many with which Apple could comply.
"It's not some simple trade-off that somehow increases national security at the cost of one person's individual privacy," Alan Butler, general counsel for the Electronic Privacy Information Center, told Business Insider.
Butler said the bigger threat is weaker encryption, which could make it easier for bad actors to access people's devices in addition to law enforcement. The very point of encrypting a device is to provide its user with increased security, he said, whether that means protecting their financial information against cyber theft or safeguarding their home against physical theft.
Some senior FBI officials say privately they are worried that Mr. Barr’s sharp tone could undermine relationships with technology companies they have worked hard to develop, people familiar with the matter said.
[...]
Some FBI officials were stunned by Mr. Barr’s rebuke of Apple, the people familiar with the matter said, and believe the Pensacola case is the wrong one to press in the encryption fight, in part because they believed Apple had already provided ample assistance to the probe.
The testimony came as part of a wide-ranging antitrust probe into Silicon Valley’s biggest players that House lawmakers aim to wrap up — with recommendations for regulation — in the coming months.
At some level it is unfair, but what’s the alternative? You’re either asking for Apple (and other big platform vendors) to be severely hamstrung from innovating with integrated new products, or you’re asking for third-parties to be given low-level access to the OS on mobile platforms — a privacy and security nightmare.
The result of all this is that you can have an iMessage conversation as you walk, without ever touching your iPhone or even your Apple Watch. I absolutely love it, and I get very few messages. If I got a lot of communications, I’d probably find it even more useful. Especially as you can choose which messages Siri announces: Everyone, recents, all contacts, or favorites.
Apple Inc. and the National Basketball Association on Thursday announced a partnership that includes an Apple Music playlist featuring independent artists from an emerging label.
Its features are in a language semi-pros and pros will understand. It works in a variety of image formats and aspect ratios.
When you, as a leader, start to change what you are doing, it gives everyone else permission to change. When you ask yourself, "What can I do differently?" Other people will start to ask that very same question. Behavior change at any point in life is difficult, that’s why when it happens, the results are powerful. And if you chose to be brave enough to share your vulnerable learnings, you will build a level of trust with your employees you couldn't have dreamed up.
Of course, a better idea would be to provide users with more granular power-management controls, perhaps even with location-aware presets like Connectix PowerBook Utilities offered in the early 90s. I know that Apple’s tendency is to prevent users from fiddling with their computers’ settings in detail, but let’s be honest—the Energy Saver system preference pane is already an enormous collection of sliders and checkboxes. Adding a few more wouldn’t hurt anyone.
In most cases, they say, the phone is just a mirror that reveals the problems a child would have even without the phone.
The researchers worry that the focus on keeping children away from screens is making it hard to have more productive conversations about topics like how to make phones more useful for low-income people, who tend to use them more, or how to protect the privacy of teenagers who share their lives online.
The day is approaching when commuters stuck in soul-crushing traffic will be freed from the drudgery of driving. Companies are investing billions to devise sensors and algorithms so motorists can turn our attention to where we like it these days: our phones.
But before the great promise of multitasking on the road can be realized, we need to overcome an age-old problem: motion sickness. “The autonomous-vehicle community understands this is a real problem it has to deal with,” said Monica Jones, a transportation researcher at the University of Michigan. “That motivates me to be very systematic.”
It is not a good sign that I started feeling anxious of Monday morning on Saturday morning.
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Until the 20th century, one had to leave the house for almost anything: to work, to eat or shop, to entertain yourself, to see other people. For decades, a family might have a single radio, then a few radios and a single television set. The possibilities available outside the home were far greater than those within its walls. But now, it’s not merely possible to do almost anything from home—it’s also the easiest option. Our forebears’ problem has been inverted: Now home is a prison of convenience that we need special help to escape.
The Apple TV app on the Apple TV is currently the bane of my existence. In theory, it should be a tidy way to manage everything you watch, bringing together content from Apple, Disney+, HBO, Hulu, and other streaming services (but still not Netflix, for some reason), plus live news and even sports. It sort of does that, but over time, Apple has started using the app to push the company’s own paid content, especially its Apple TV+ service. Open the Apple TV app and it inundates you with ads for Apple TV+ and its shows. Frankly, this bugs the heck out of me, especially since many of the ads are inappropriate for my kid to see, but before I succumb to the need to rant, here’s a tweak to make the Apple TV app a little more tolerable.
“We wanted to take the time to understand the situation at hand — and after reviewing the information available to us, including documentation of the filmmakers’ research, we’ve decided to make this important and enlightening film available to viewers.”
Apple has started sending out push notification reminders to users who are eligible to redeem a free year of Apple TV+, but have not yet done so.
The notification reads: “Expiring Soon: Your Free of Apple TV+”. Apple is also sending out email alerts in the same vein.
Zens' promise of "freedom of placement" on the mat turned out to be entirely accurate, allowing me to throw down my iPhone 11 Pro Max in nearly any orientation without having to worry about landing on the Qi "sweet spot," which is something I constantly fussed with on the Belkin charger.
This is a great way to lay out your day because it helps maximize your time. You’ll feel more driven to finish a task in an hour if you know not doing it will eat into the hour-long break you gave yourself afterward.
"Are you going to be hamstrung trying to collect those delinquencies because of the way it's been branded as an Apple Card, and it's not a bank?" he asked finance boss Stephen Scherr on Goldman's earnings call.
"Whoever lays claim to the creation of the card, there's only one institution that's making underwriting decisions, and that's Goldman Sachs," Scherr replied.
Early the following year, Tile’s executives read news reports of Apple launching a hardware product along with a service that resembled what Tile sold. By June, Apple had stopped selling Tile’s products in stores and has since hired away one of its engineers.
“After thoughtful consideration and months of bringing our concerns to Apple through regular ... channels, Tile has made the decision to continue raising concerns over Apple’s anti-competitive practices,” Tile general counsel Kirsten Daru told Reuters in an interview.
With no evidence of sensitivity, no increase in cancers, irreproducible studies that have led to dead ends, and no epidemic of conditions among the large, long-term population of cell-phone and Wi-Fi users, we’re led to one conclusion: There is no health risk associated with everyday exposure to common EMFs. That’s the case even if, intuitively, it feels like there must be a link. We may never get over that feeling, but we should base our behavior and policy on solid science, not feelings.
Two videos were posted to Apple's official YouTube channel on Wednesday, each offering viewers a behind-the-scenes look at the genesis of posters made for Apple TV+ series "Dickinson" and "For All Mankind."
The app lets you set a password in the 7- to 15-character range, and you can then choose to toggle on Face ID, Apple Watch unlock, or both. The drive offers remote-wipe capabilities, and can be set to automatically wipe if 10 incorrect passwords are entered.
Xnor.ai began as a process for making machine learning algorithms highly efficient — so efficient that they could run on even the lowest tier of hardware out there, things like embedded electronics in security cameras that use only a modicum of power. Yet using Xnor’s algorithms they could accomplish tasks like object recognition, which in other circumstances might require a powerful processor or connection to the cloud.
Apple has a team exploring satellites, a type of unmanned aircraft, and Ellman could assist in regulatory efforts that would need to be conducted to launch such an effort. Apple rivals, including Amazon.com Inc. and Alphabet Inc., have developed drones in recent years.
This sort of talk prompts one obvious, knee-jerk response: It’s simply hypocrisy. When Google and Facebook were start-ups, their executives said start-ups were good. Now that Google and Facebook are huge, their executives say huge companies are good. It’s cynical, if not unexpected.
But there’s a more troubling possibility. Maybe something has changed about the nature of innovation, at least in software.
Executives at Apple have been surprised by the case’s quick escalation, said people familiar with the company who were not authorized to speak publicly. And there is frustration and skepticism among some on the Apple team working on the issue that the Justice Department hasn’t spent enough time trying to get into the iPhones with third-party tools, said one person with knowledge of the matter.
[...]
This time, Apple is facing off against the Trump administration, which has been unpredictable. The stakes are high for Mr. Cook, who has built an unusual alliance with President Trump that has helped Apple largely avoid damaging tariffs in the trade war with China. That relationship will now be tested as Mr. Cook confronts Mr. Barr, one of the president’s closest allies.
The unit, which features the same build to order components as the regular Mac Pro, features rack mounting rails that ship in a separate box.
RTINGS published its findings today and does confirm that the 2C54 objectively worsens the AirPods Pro active noise canceling feature.
One of the key standout features of the Nomad Base Station Stand is support for wirelessly charging AirPods and AirPods Pro. Many stands aren’t capable charging AirPods because they only feature one charging coil, located in the center. The Nomad Base Station Stand features two wireless coils, each offering up to 10W of power.
This week’s update features overall improvements and bug fixes, including enhancements to compile Swift files.
“Games aren’t just an ordinary piece of software, they are a complex beast that require many different disciplines to successfully ship, and often on timelines that require sacrifices to be made,” said game developer James Simpson in an email. “I know many developers get bent out of shape trying to make their code perfect. Open source code like this makes it clear that you can successfully ship without that level of perfection.”
“The whole project began for me when the EveryAppleAds YouTube channel was taken down in April 2017,” Sam says. “I was away in Massachusetts at the time, so I just started by going on YouTube and typing in “apple commercial 1976,” downloading whatever I could, and stuffing the videos in an iCloud Drive folder. I only had a hundred or so videos when I started up a YouTube channel. I think it remained up for a whopping six days before my channel was abruptly removed without a trace. Had it remained up on YouTube, I think I would’ve neglected the archive a lot more than I have.”
I'm looking at all the old iMac advertisements -- the CRT version of the iMac -- and I was thinking: all that empty wasted space inside the case!
:-)
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"We reject the characterization that Apple has not provided substantive assistance in the Pensacola investigation. Our responses to their many requests since the attack have been timely, thorough and are ongoing," the company said in a statement. "We responded to each request promptly, often within hours, sharing information with FBI offices in Jacksonville, Pensacola and New York. The queries resulted in many gigabytes of information that we turned over to investigators. In every instance, we responded with all of the information that we had."
But Apple said nothing about actually unlocking the gunman's two iPhones. Instead, it reiterated its stance on privacy.
"We have always maintained there is no such thing as a backdoor just for the good guys," the company explained. "Backdoors can also be exploited by those who threaten our national security and the data security of our customers. ... We feel strongly encryption is vital to protecting our country and our users' data.
“I do think backdoors are a terrible idea, that is not the way to go about this,” Nadella said. “We’ve always said we care about these two things: privacy and national security. We need some legal and technical solution in our democracy to have both of those be priorities.”
Along those lines, Nadella expressed support for key escrow systems, versions of which have been proposed by researchers in the past.
The latest macOS Catalina 10.15.3 beta build contains references to a new “Pro Mode,” which can be turned on and off by users. Some strings mention that “Apps may run faster, but battery life may decrease and fan noise may increase” and “Fan speed limit overridden” when the Pro Mode is activated.
Please, Apple, make this feature official: give us a Low Power Mode for macOS that disables Turbo Boost to keep our laptops cool, quiet, and long-lasting at times when those are more important to us than speed.
Developers are able to modify the resulting file by customizing material properties with new textures, editing metadata and more. In addition, the resulting 3D objects can be previewed under various lighting and environmental conditions thanks to built-in IBL options, a useful tool for evaluation in an augmented reality space.
First, they came for headphone jacks. Buttons are next.
The answer probably has less to do with security and privacy, and more with tech companies like Google, Facebook and Amazon pivoting to A.I.-driven automation and relying on us to train their bots for free — and without our knowledge.
[...]
And, of course, there’s a darker side to all of this.
My very first iPhone -- the iPhone 3G -- was retired by me because the Home button stopped working. From that point on, I was wary of the home buttons of every single iPhone I owned. I was so happy when I upgraded to iPhone X.
The side and volume buttons never gave me problems. I always wanted a physical play/pause button, just like the old iPods. But I guess that button has migrated to my ears. (AirPods, that is.)
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“People have decided to stop their phones’ sharing location data at a universal level,” said Jason Smith, chief business officer at Location Sciences.
All the background location data that previously had been made available for targeted advertising is lost to marketers when people decide they don’t want their apps to share it with other companies.
Among younger viewers, Netflix is the most shared, with 56% giving out their password, but Disney rocketed up the charts – taking second place – with 31% of younger viewers sharing credentials. The other big names suffered similar fates, with Hulu at 30%, Apple TV+ at 17%, Amazon at 14%, and HBO Now at 10%.
If the results are representative of the larger population of viewers – and there's no reason to think they're not – this has huge implications for the future of streaming. Netflix has the most to lose, as the company has the deepest penetration of any streaming service – but this poses a similar problem for all the streaming providers.
Apple TV+ has scooped its first major awards win tonight. Billy Crudup won the Best Supporting Actor in a Drama Series Critics Choice Award, for his performance as Cory Ellison in The Morning Show.
In this year’s Critics Choice awards, Apple’s streaming service only got one nomination but it converted that into a win today.
This is the future, I’m afraid. A future that plans on everything going right so no one has to think about what happens when things go wrong. Computers don’t make mistakes. An automated future where no one actually knows how things work. A future where people are so far removed from the process that they stand around powerless, unable to take the reigns. A future where people don’t remember how to help one another in person. A future where corporations are so obsessed with efficiency, that it doesn’t make sense to staff a theater with technical help because things only go wrong sometimes. A future with a friendlier past.
Apple's products has clearly influenced others in all the industries to follow suit. All work laptops now look like MacBook Airs. (The clear exception are gaming laptops.) All phones look like iPhones. And all smartwatches do fitness and health.
The next step for Apple, then, is to influence others so that all companies look like Apple. Privacy is a good first step.
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As it has done for the past several years, Apple is celebrating Chinese New Year with a short film as part of its “Shot on iPhone” series. The short film comes in at 8-minutes long and is entitled “Daughter.”
Jed Schmidt, an independent programmer based in New York, found the omission particularly striking for a credit card launched in 2019 by a massive technology company in conjunction Goldman Sachs, a major bank. So he hacked a fix himself.
Schmidt created csv.wtf specifically to parse Apple Card statements and arrange the data onto a spreadsheet so consumers could export the information and dig into their expenses. The web app works on phones and desktops.
Clean code is not a goal. It’s an attempt to make some sense out of the immense complexity of systems we’re dealing with. It’s a defense mechanism when you’re not yet sure how a change would affect the codebase but you need guidance in a sea of unknows.
Yes, that little computer in your pocket can be used to shoot a nice little film. You'll also need some drones, and light equipement, and rain generators, and an entire crew… but that's not my point. My point is: the every-day equipments you have today are more than good enough already. It's the software -- the ideas, the stories, the performance -- that are even more critical today.
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According to Apple, some Smart Battery Cases can experience charging issues, including cases that will not charge or charge intermittently when plugged into power, or cases that will not charge an iPhone or charge it intermittently.
My search confirmed my initial hunch that there is only one official remaining use of the word “Macintosh” by today’s Apple: the default “Macintosh HD” name of the internal drive on a new Mac. Many Mac users personalize that name immediately, although less experienced Mac users often don’t realize they’re allowed to change it.
Apple Inc is trying to change the way electronics are recycled with a robot that disassembles its iconic iPhone so that minerals can be recovered and reused, but rising global demand for electronics means new mines will still be needed by manufacturers.
The Cupertino, California-based company says the robot is part of its plan to become a “closed-loop” manufacturer that does not rely on the mining industry, an aggressive goal that some industry analysts have said is impossible.
“I have decided that I will no longer be executive producer on The Untitled Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering documentary and it will not air on Apple TV+," Winfrey said in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter. "First and foremost, I want it to be known that I unequivocally believe and support the women. Their stories deserve to be told and heard. In my opinion, there is more work to be done on the film to illuminate the full scope of what the victims endured, and it has become clear that the filmmakers and I are not aligned in that creative vision.”
"I wanted people to see the difference between all of the services," Keating said. "Down at the lower levels, no one knows what everyone else makes and no one knows what services pay. How can you make decisions if you don't know what the numbers are?"
[...]
Streaming services cut massive checks to hitmakers like Billie Eilish, Taylor Swift, Post Malone, and other frequent chart-toppers each month, but some smaller artists like Keating feel the payment system isn't fair to them.
I have never renamed my Machintosh HD, and now, after realizing that's the last of the Macintosh name, I'll probably never will.
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Overnight, Apple has quietly slashed almost all of its maximum estimated trade-in values of second-hand iPhones, iPads, Macs, and Apple Watch models.
For example, yesterday on Apple's device trade-in program web page, the iPhone XS Max had an estimated trade-in value of up to $600, but today Apple is only offering up to $500 –– a full $100 less than it did 24 hours ago. The only devices that have been spared reductions are the MacBook Pro, Mac Pro, and Apple Watch Series 1, 2, and 3.
Customers can make Red Cross donations simply through the iTunes and App Store, using their associated payment method. Apple does not collect any commission or processing fees, 100% of donations go to the charity.
If you feel like we’ve been here before, it’s because we have. Back in 2016, the FBI wanted Apple to unlock a phone belonging to the San Bernardino shooter; Apple declined to help, as doing so would have potentially compromised the security of all of its devices. Eventually, the bureau sought help from an Israeli-based cyber security firm who was able to hack into phone in question.
Leaving aside the dangers inherent in the creation of backdoors into the technology we all rely upon, I think this is as good a time as any for Apple to double down on its (already pretty solid) security focus. Because when it comes to digital information and our devices, what we need is not less security, but more.
Clicking an app’s window brings it to the foreground, of course. But did you notice that only the window you clicked came forward. If that other app has any other windows open, they will stay hidden. It wasn’t always this way. In pre-OS X days, the default behavior was to bring all those windows to the front. And now, thanks to a new app called Front and Center, from John Siracusa, you can get this behavior on a modern Mac.
Streaming may have revolutionized our listening habits, but some of us still value a standalone music collection, and Doppler offers a streamlined way to enjoy it on the go.
The Jillian Michaels Fitness app and program seems best suited for people who are already at least a little bit fit and want to be fitter. While you can set a goal of losing weight, maintaining weight, or building muscle, the plan is poised to boost people along their fitness journey rather than help those who are starting from square one with issues like changing their eating mindset and their relationship to food.
So when you read about Tim Cook emphasizing Services and Wearables to financial analysts or in a quick interview on CNBC come January 28—this is why. In less than half a decade, Services and Wearables have gone from afterthoughts to a third of Apple’s business.
Apple's iPhone sales in China rose more than 18% last month, according to CNBC calculations using government data published by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, a government think tank.
The news drove Apple stock up more than 2% Thursday, bringing the stock to a fresh all-time intraday high of $310.01, according to FactSet.
“We’re bringing podcast advertising up to par with what marketers expect from digital advertising in general, and we’re working to do that while preserving what’s unique and good and effective about podcast advertising,” said Matt Lieber, Gimlet co-founder and now Spotify’s head of podcast operations. “We’re not trying to facilitate a radio advertising-style world.”
Apply Pay users have been getting charged by the MTA’s new fare readers — for simply walking by them, angry customers claim.
The OMNY tap-and-go fare readers have been taking a $2.75 charge from people with the passcode-skipping Apple fare service — which allows straphangers to enter the subway with just a swipe of their device at the turnstile — even if they don’t actually swipe.
The five winning photos will be announced on March 4th on the Apple Newsroom. Apple says the images may also be used in digital campaigns, at stores, on billboards, and in photo exhibitions.
Either it can be made, or it can’t. If it can, show it when it’s real.
Artificial intelligence is the heart and soul of several incredible new Luminar 4 features, including the eye-popping standout AI Sky Replacement which demonstrates the full potential of what the technology has to offer.
LaunchCuts’ sole purpose is to offer an alternative view for your shortcut library with folders and powerful search filters. If you have less than 20 shortcuts installed on your iPhone or iPad, you’re likely not going to get much benefit out of LaunchCuts’ advanced organizational tools; but if you’re like me and use hundreds of different shortcuts on a regular basis, and especially if your library has grown out of control over the past few years, you’re going to need the assistance of LaunchCuts to make sense of it all.
Why is TiVo backing off of its promise for an Apple TV app? Putting it bluntly, Malone said that such an app is unlikely to “move the needle” for TiVo’s business.
Even though the Apple story has been tied to services for the last couple of years, a lot of the attention has actually shifted to the company's wearables business, which includes AirPods, Apple Watch and the lineup of Beats headphones.
Cook will receive an award from Varadkar on Jan. 20 in recognition of the iPhone maker’s 40 years of investment in Ireland, according to IDA Ireland, the country’s investment agency.
"Our phones are relatively small and they get lost and stolen," Horvath said. "If we're going to be able to rely on our health data and finance data on our devices, we need to make sure that if you misplace that device, you're not losing your sensitive data."
Horvath said that Apple has a team working around the clock to respond to requests from law enforcement. But she said she doesn't support building so-called back doors into software that would allow law enforcement elevated access to private data to solve crimes like terrorism.
Apple has started scanning photos uploaded from iPhones to check for child sexual abuse images, as tech companies come under pressure to do more to tackle the crime.
Jane Horvath, Apple’s chief privacy officer, revealed at a tech conference that the company automatically screens images backed up to the company’s online storage service, iCloud, to check whether they contain the illegal photos.
Apple takes pains to encrypt and minimize some of our data it collects for its own services, Horvath said at the panel. It also requires apps to seek your permission before it collects your location and other highly sensitive data.
But what Horvath didn’t say is vetting the third-party iPhone apps Apple sells for their tracking behavior would be time-consuming and costly for the company, so it conveniently gets defined as beyond its responsibility. After my investigation last summer, Apple said it would stop children’s apps from using outside trackers — but why not all apps?
In a press release today, Apple shared App Store revenue numbers for the 2019 holiday season, which set an all-time record for single day sales on New Year’s Day.
The 11 Pro’s camera system also provides ample opportunity to shoot a specific type of photo that always required a dedicated camera in the past: product photos. I’ve been playing with the iPhone 11 Pro over the last few months to see if there’s a possibility I can leave behind my Fujifilm cameras for some product photography.
In some cases, I’m happy to report, I can use the iPhone in a pinch and nobody has noticed enough of a difference to make a comment. But it has required some extra hardware (and some extra patience) to arrive at a final result I’m happy with.
Mozilla made it possible to block website notifications altogether in a previous update to Firefox, but this update offers this new, ostensibly more manageable variation as well. Instead of showing these requests as a pop-up that interrupts your experience, it will now show a speech bubble in the address bar that you can use to opt-in to the notifications—similar to how some modern browsers handle other kinds of pop-up attempts.
When we tell prospective engineers that individual victories are the only kind worth winning, we set them up to enter the workplace as competent coders but poor collaborators. We squeeze out coders who do not see themselves in the image of lone wolf inventor. The industry cannot afford to lose out on that potential.
First off, let’s go back to where this feature comes from: Accessibility. Providing more ways for users to use the iPad makes the iPad more usable. Every body is different. Supporting a rich iPad experience with external pointing devices could make the difference between someone being able to use an iPad and not being able to use one.
Let’s not forget, too, that accessibility reaches different people in different ways—and more of them than you might think. One of my friends uses a mouse with his iPad all the time because of his repetitive-strain injuries. In many ways, the iPad an ergonomic miracle because at its core it’s just a screen—the user decides how they want to use it. The more flexibility it can offer, the better.
Considering I’ve spent roughly half my life in dark rooms staring at blisteringly bright screens, my eyesight is decent. Do you know what’s making me feel like I’m going blind, though? Video games. This isn’t a case of my peepers slowly withering away and losing their clarity – all other aspects of my life remain unaffected and unchanged. No, I blame developers who are intent on decreasing the size of their titles' fonts as each year passes by.
What makes the Trends talk interesting is not only the data presented, but also which parts of the talk are filled with more optimism than an eight-year-old riding a unicorn over a rainbow. What CES organizers and exhibitors never seem to understand is that truly revolutionary products don’t need hype. So when you hear hype at CES, it’s an indication that someone is covering for something. I enjoy this talk for its information, but also for pointing out what I’ve become skeptical of after attending CES on and off for thirty years.
I do like Apple TV+'s Dickinson very much, and I'm so glad that it has already been renewed for a second season.
Life, and death, is very much on my mind now.
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Web apps are a substantial part of most people’s workflows these days. Whether it’s Mailchimp and WordPress, which we use at MacStories, or something like Squarespace or your bank’s website, complex, desktop-centric web apps are everywhere. I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of MacStories readers gave up on using certain web apps in Safari on an iPad long ago and haven’t gone back. If that sounds like you, I encourage you to give Safari another shot. There are still a few rough edges as I’ve outlined above, but at least with the web apps I use regularly, they aren’t impediments to getting work done, which was absolutely the case with Mailchimp before iPadOS 13.
Using the Breathe app doesn’t just help you collect your thoughts and focus on what’s important to you. The Apple Health app on the iPhone can log data from meditation sessions with a metric called Mindful Minutes.
This helps you realize insights like whether or not guided meditation helps you sleep, eat healthier, or remember to exercise.
Apple today has launched its annual Back to Uni promotion for Mac and iPad buyers in New Zealand and Australia. This promotion is similar to the Back to School offer Apple runs in the United States every year and offers students discounts, free Beats, and more.
Customizable toolbar actions, contact avatars, and a sleek new look with support for Dark Mode add up to a winning update for Spark, which remains one of the best free alternatives to Apple Mail.
Turning the phone off and on again temporarily fixed the problem, O2 said.
Apple said the issue will be resolved in a new software release.
The randomized format would likely not be decipherable, or at least hard to, and it could also help to reduce fraud.
In a letter sent late Monday to Apple's general counsel, the FBI said that although it has court permission to search the contents of the phones, both are password-protected. "Investigators are actively engaging in efforts to 'guess' the relevant passcodes but so far have been unsuccessful," it said.
Million-dollar prizes like the Turing Award seize the public’s attention. Winners are sought-after, invited to give high-profile speeches, meet with business leaders, and advise politicians. For a certain nerdy cohort—one I belong to—they are heroes. In public programming emanating from the ACM Awards Banquet and beyond, they serve as role models to inspire young people. When women’s contributions are overlooked, the public forgoes opportunities to derive inspiration and gain advice from an important sector of computing pioneers.
Apple TV Plus has been shut out at its first-ever Golden Globes.
The #MeToo-inspired series was nominated in two categories at the 77th annual ceremony: drama series and TV drama actress for both Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon. Neither star won.
Many websites (including this one) have sidebars, overlays, autoplaying video, and other distractions—as well as text in a size you may find too small to read. Reader View is Safari’s way to override the parameters most sites have set to produce a simplified stream of text for which you can adjust the size.
The iPhone 11 model adds a 180-degree fisheye lens, 10x macro for close-ups and a circular polarizer to control reflections on water and reduce glare on bright days, while the Pro models go further.
In the mid-2000s, people knew in their hearts that they did not have the time or the attention to deal with it all, he claims. So they allowed messages to accumulate and let it drive them crazy, he explains. "You process your email. You have to delete or defer it. God forbid, you have turn it into a task or put it on a calendar. Six years from now, that pile has gotten taller and taller and everybody's still carrying around that secret shame."
But if you you part from the assumption that it is impossible to handle everything – and the majority of information thrown at you is not important – you can focus on what matters to you.
For a company that hopes to position itself as a kind of taste-making kingpin for news, entertainment, and music, its thin slate of content upon launch hinted that Apple’s own hubris may have impeded its ability to meet the expectations it had fanned for viewers and critics.
Tech companies and planners often make decisions without considering the needs of people who are not like them. A pilot project in St. Petersburg, Florida, that let residents use Uber to connect to bus stops faced low adoption rates. The local transit authority realized residents, many of whom were low-income, didn’t know how to use Uber. They needed help on how to use the app, a planner told WIRED in 2017. Elsewhere, “smart city” initiatives have been called out for their lack of inclusivity.
I had the idea of making our browser chrome match the actual hardware you were on. If your Mac’s bezel was Bondi blue, we’d make our UI Bondi blue. That way our “frame” around the web page would match the bezel and so would be seen as part of the background and be distinct from the content. By being more vivid we would paradoxically blend into the background, and look more at home.
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So somehow the Mac IE5 exec, Dick Craddock, let me, a newly hired engineer, hire a London design agency and I ended up art-directing on our side while also writing the new UI code to make it happen.
I hate to see an inbox filled with stuff. So I do try my very best to move things out of my inbox. Things I can do quickly, I do quickly. The rest goes into my To-do boxes.
I hate to see so many boxes filled with so many stuff. But the only way out that I can see is to retire.
:-)
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Unlike its rivals, Apple will make you work to volunteer. Within the general Settings, under Analytics and Improvements, Apple offers the ability to "help improve Siri and Dictation by allowing Apple to store and review audio of your Siri and dictation interactions," by clicking the feature on. By default, it's turned off.
But opting in, the users may be monitored. "A small sample of audio from Siri requests may be reviewed by Apple employees to measure how well Siri was responding and to improve its reliability," Apple says. "For example, did the user intend to wake Siri? Did Siri hear the request accurately? And did Siri respond appropriately to the request?"
The “Fire & Ice” video was shot on iPhone 11 Pro by Donghoon Jun and James Thornton of Incite and was commissioned by Apple. The video offers incredibly close-up looks at fire and ice in different forms and environments. The video shows off features such as slo-mo, 4K, and more, and focuses on highlighting the power and versatility of the iPhone 11 Pro camera.
If you’re likely to be struck by sudden inspiration, stuck in a lecture with no notebooks or watching your boss breeze through a flawless presentation, Notability is how you step up your game. It’s 2020, let’s save a tree and use an app.
This update adds support for HomeKit live streaming, snapshots, Siri integration and motion alerts. Despite being part of the initial HomeKit Secure Video announcement at WWDC, this week’s update does not include those features.
Four companies — Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google — already have big offices along the Hudson River, from Midtown to Lower Manhattan, or have been hunting for new ones in recent months, often competing with one another for the same space.
In all, the companies are expected to have roughly 20,000 workers in New York by 2022.
Customers who choose to personalize their AirPods during the purchase process can choose from several emoji characters, though not all emojis are available. Options like smiling face, face with tongue out, and thumbs up are available, as are multiple animals.
After several false starts, IKEA is finally ready to offer HomeKit support for its inexpensive line of Tradfri smart blinds. The update is rolling out now, although not all Tradfri owners are seeing the necessary firmware update just yet.
It gives long-time fans a new story with the original voice cast to revisit a beloved universe by a large community. And its interesting story, challenging battles, and easy-to-solve puzzles will keep newcomers hooked to the game and craving for more about the franchise and its weird but compelling lore.
As we make resolutions to start a new hobby or deepen our relationships in the new year, we’re also reflecting on what might be difficult, but ultimately worth it, to give up: a job, a friendship, even a dream. We spoke with eight experts about how to know when it may be time to do so.
I, for one, wish I’d had this advice when I was 15, and then 16, and then when I was 18. I would tell her: It’s okay to quit. One day, you’ll be more than a soccer player; you’ll be a journalist, and a loyal friend, and a loving daughter. You’ll have learned how to be a quitter, and maybe that’s the most valuable lesson of all.
Apple CEO Tim Cook's total pay decreased last year as the company failed to exceed its financial targets by as much as it did in 2018. But he still pulled in over $125 million in total compensation.
GitHub’s greatest asset is a community that allows for open sharing and what’s essentially free labor due to a good-faith assumption. But when the company is no longer aligned with contributors’ own personal value system, those contributors have few options other than speaking out and potentially removing their own work from the system and moving it to other open-source repositories.
“When the perception of the company is one that hinges on moral values, its users and customers start to have expectations that the company will behave in a certain way.” Jordan Harband, another developer, GitHub contributor, and open-source advocate, told me.“But once you do that, then your behavior is subject to a higher scrutiny that has nothing to do with legality and nothing to do with numbers on a balance sheet.”
So what really failed, maybe, wasn’t iTunes at all—it was the implicit promise of Gmail-style computing. The explosion of cloud storage and the invention of smartphones both arrived at roughly the same time, and they both subverted the idea that we should organize our computer. What they offered in its place was a vision of ease and readiness. What the idealized iPhone user and the idealized Gmail users shared was a perfectly functioning executive system: Every time they picked up their phone or opened their web browser, they knew exactly what they wanted to do, they got it done with a calm single-mindedness, and then they closed their device. This dream illuminated Inbox Zero and Kinfolk and minimalist writing apps. It didn’t work. What we got instead was Inbox Infinity and the algorithmic timeline. Each of us became a wanderer above a sea of content. Each of us adopted the tacit—but still shameful—assumption that we are just treading water, that the clock is always running, and that the work will never end.
Can apps ever replace classroom language learning or even help revive minority or dying languages?
The Zens Liberty doesn’t quite deliver on everything Apple’s AirPower had promised. For one thing, it only lets you wirelessly charge two, rather than three, devices simultaneously on the pad. It also can’t charge an Apple Watch natively — for that you’ll have to plug a $39.99 accessory into its USB-A port. Still, the fact that you can place your devices anywhere on its surface has the potential to make wireless charging a much more reliable experience, as opposed to having to find the exact sweet spot to place your device.
Benioff wrote that he and his executives actually gasped when they heard the name. Somehow, even after all that time had passed since that the original meeting, both companies had settled upon the same name. Only Salesforce had rejected it, leaving an opening for Benioff to give a gift to his mentor. He says that he went backstage after the keynote and signed over the domain to Jobs.
"Plse advise the Commissionaires that apparently Fort Frontenac is both a PokeGym and a PokeStop. I will be completely honest in that I have not idea what that is," wrote Maj. Jeff Monaghan at CFB Kingston.
Do we know why Apple canceled its AirPower project? Should we worry about AirPower clones having the same problems that caused Apple to cancel the project?
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There’s only two tools I really advise, because the rest of it is just removing stuff from your life. The fist tool is Screen Time, but not to track usage, instead to limit the usage of things you want to curb. Perhaps you think you ‘can’t’ dump something like Facebook, that’s fine, set a limit on it for yourself. And not a limit that you think is the ideal, set a limit that you guess is how much you use it already.
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Next, use reminders. Not to schedule things, but as a way of again keeping yourself honest. For instance, one I have is ‘Read Book’ which repeats everyday. I check it off everyday regardless of whether I read a book, but I do so knowing whether or not I actually did that thing. I would be careful about having too many of these, one at a time is ideal, but I find them powerful for forming a new habit.
In light of those changes, The Wall Street Journal today reported that some developers are concerned that the location tracking reminders will hurt adoption of their apps, while some iPhone users are said to have expressed frustration that the reminders appear every few days despite repeatedly selecting "always allow."
Apple responded to the report with a statement insisting that the changes were made to further safeguard user privacy.
If you’ve bought an Apple laptop in the last few years and you try out the new 16-inch MacBook Pro, you will be furious. It’s so good. It works precisely as a laptop should—the issues that have plagued Apple’s laptops in recent years seem absent. Everything about the device seems to follow an age-old Apple edict the company forgot: It just works.
So while I’m delighted by the existence of the new MacBook Pro, I’ll admit there’s some frustration, too. It very much feels like Apple should have been making this device or something like it for the last decade. Instead, we’ve been saddled with year after year of underpowered laptops that prioritize minimalism over functionality.
Leave the notepad behind and start using a digital note-taking app instead and start syncing your reminders across devices and adding extra information to make life admin less of a drag.
This is our pick of the best note-taking apps, ranging from free to paid, with so many functions that you might find they start replacing other apps too.
For those underwhelmed by the built-in Files app, do yourself a favor and install Documents 7, the free file manager worthy of being installed on every iOS device.
But while fears of fully automated warehouses haven’t come to fruition, there are growing concerns that keeping up with the pace of the latest technology is taking a toll on human workers’ health, safety and morale.
Warehouses powered by robotics and artificial intelligence software are leading to human burnout by adding more work and upping the pressure on workers to speed up their performance, said Beth Gutelius, who studies urban economic development at the University of Illinois at Chicago and has interviewed warehouse operators around the U.S.
Could this mean Apple will rely on Imagination GPUs once again or opt for the licensed chips in other categories beyond iPhone — like the long-rumored augmented reality headset?
If I am listening to an audio book while playing a game on my iPhone, how does Screen Time classify that?
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But the privacy co-pilot market is burgeoning with new ideas, joining the likes of password managers and security-focused WiFi routers. California’s new law smartly carves out protection for third parties to manage our data for us. Now we need clear professional rules for how these companies represent us and prove their trustworthiness.
I don’t know exactly how this will evolve. But we’re more likely to win when there are laws that stop data collection from being a secret — and when we have companies fighting to protect our privacy, not just exploit it.
There’s also water logging and adding meals up to a week ahead of time — a great feature for weekly meal planning.
Japan, the world’s third largest economy, hopes that robots and other types of automation will help solve its demographic problems and impending labor shortage. That priority is reflected in a government blueprint, dubbed Society 5.0 and repeatedly emphasized by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
But businesses are struggling as some jobs that seem ripe for a robotic takeover prove remarkably difficult to outsource to a machine.
This was the decade technology broke us. The products saturating our lives are released in the worst, most broken, untested, and often dangerously flawed forms imaginable. Think Skynet, but a dumbass. Terminator, controlled by Shitnet. We've seen the films, we know the dystopian warnings. It enslaved us as a species anyway. We cannot escape. Because Siri can't understand our pleas to unlock the door, the getaway vehicle won't start until it reboots, you can't even run away because your shoes are bricked from a bad update.
It's great that I can use a single pair of AirPods on multiple devices, dear Apple. Now, can you make the same thing for the Magic Keyboard too? Thank you.
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Thanks for reading.