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The International-Local Edition Saturday, March 20, 2021

Apple Music Expands 'Up Next' Spotlight Program, Reveals New Class Of Featured Artists, by Chris Eggertsen, Billboard

Apple Music will now be bringing an “international local focus” to its global artist spotlight program, Up Next, Billboard can exclusively reveal.

First launched in April 2017, Up Next elevates an emerging artist each month by providing editorial and promotional opportunities courtesy of Apple Music. With this expansion, one artist each month will be the beneficiary of the company’s marketing muscle in several “local” regions, including, at launch, the U.S., Canada, Australia, the U.K., South Africa, India, France, Germany, Mexico, Russia and Japan. The program will also be debuting in China next month.

Apple Music Scraps Personalized Artwork For Personal Radio Stations, by Hartley Charlton, MacRumors

‌Apple Music‌ previously generated a custom personal radio station graphic based on a user’s ‌Apple Music‌ profile picture, but Apple now appears to have removed this feature, replacing all personal radio station artwork with an identical red graphic.

Apple Teams Up With FaZe Clan For Exclusive Powerbeats Pro, by Juli Clover, Macrumors

FaZe Clan is a professional esports organization and its merchandise is largely red and black, so Apple has designed red and black ‌Powerbeats Pro‌ in the pattern that FaZe Clan often uses.

On Interface

Nobody Designs For Small iPhone Devices Anymore, by Law Gimenez

Nobody designs for small iPhone devices anymore. Why do I say this? Well, if you’ve been rocking the iPhone SE 2020 you would know. What I’m saying is there a lot of UI glitches from apps running in iPhone SE.

Stuff

iMac Pro Officially Discontinued, Removed From Apple's Site And No Longer Available For Purchase, by Juli Clover, MacRumors

With the ‌iMac Pro‌ page eliminated, there is no longer an option to buy an ‌iMac Pro‌ in the United States or in any other country, and the machine is no longer listed in the Apple Store app, nor does a search bring up ‌iMac Pro‌ listings.

Apple Stores Reorganized To Emphasize Subscription Services, by Michael Steeber, 9to5Mac

Step inside an Apple Store with the latest design, and the world of Apple services will unfold. Glowing signs for Apple Music, Apple Arcade, Apple TV+, and large text announcing Apple Fitness+ dot the Avenues around the store perimeter.

Acorn 7 Brings M1 Compatibility, Tons Of Refinements, by Dan Moren, Six Colors

Acorn’s interface has also been given a significant makeover in this release: bringing it firmly into the Big Sur era, floating palettes are out, replaced with a unified window that incorporates the tools, inspectors, filter settings, and so on, in different panes. As someone who always felt like Acorn’s many palettes seemed to be constantly underfoot, this is a welcome change, but if you miss those days, don’t worry—there’s an option to go back to the old style.

Sidekick Browser Wants To Be A Productivity-honed ‘Work OS’ On Chromium, by Natasha Lomas, TechCrunch

Fire up a web browser and it’s hard to deny it’s the best of times for knowledge work. Yet working across multiple browser tabs and windows can feel like the friction-filled, frustrating worst.

This is the problem Sidekick Browser is taking aim at by adding a productivity-focused layer atop Chromium that it bills as a “work OS”.

Notes

Tim Cook, Craig Federighi, Phil Schiller And Scott Forstall To Testify In Epic V. Apple Trial, by Juli Clover, MacRumors

Apple today submitted its witness list for its upcoming bench trial with Epic Games, and several Apple executives will be testifying, including Apple CEO Tim Cook, Apple Fellow Phil Schiller, and Apple Senior Vice President of Software Engineering Craig Federighi.

[...]

In a statement to MacRumors, Apple said that its executives are eager to share the impact the ‌App Store‌ has had on innovation and economies around the world.

Bottom of the Page

I've encountered a very weird bug last night when I was getting ready for bed.

So, as like most nights, I plug in my EarPods with Lightining Connector. (I don't use my AirPods because I don't want to accidentally fall asleep and accidentally ate my AirPods.) And I launch the BBC Sounds app and tune in to World Service.

And discovered the streaming audio was very choppy, with the sound being cut off every five to ten seconds for about one second. So I switched to Apple Music to stream the same station, with the same problem. Strange. I switched to another radio station, not from BBC. And the problem persisted.

Next I start up my podcast player to play downloaded audio: Here, the problem didn't surfaced.

Well, in this modern age, whenever you find problems with your computer, the first thing to try: reboot!

Which I did.

After the lengthly (by modern standards) reboot, the problem did not go away.

Now, I have no idea why I did the next thing, but I did: I unplug the EarPods, and plug it back in. And the problem went away.

I don't even know how to begin explaining this bug.

~

Thanks for reading.