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Archive for November 2022

The Less-Power Edition Wednesday, November 30, 2022

Apple Won’t Let Staff Work Remotely To Escape Texas Abortion Limits, by Caitlin Harrington, Wired

Managers were clear on one point: Employees could not work remotely or switch their job to another Apple office simply because they disliked a particular state’s anti-abortion laws. Attendees say this was presented as a companywide policy: Any employees who wished to relocate to another Apple campus would have to apply for a new job within the company, although managers did offer to help employees find new roles. Now that Apple was pushing workers to return to the office, one manager said, individual teams had less power to grant remote work exemptions than before the pandemic.

Apple Announces Free Today At Apple Coding Course: Coding Lab For Kids, by Filipe Espósito, 9to5Mac

According to the company, the new session is designed to inspire participants ages 10 and older to “explore app development in a fun, welcoming environment.” Apple says that the new Coding Lab for Kids session is part of the company’s library of resources to help students, families, and educators enter the world of computer science.

If It Doesn’t Exist, Make It Yourself: How Apple’s iPad App Of The Year GoodNotes Was Born, by Asha Barbaschow, Gizmodo

“Studying math, it was easier to handwrite notes, given you’re writing equations a lot, but I used too many papers because I would often make mistakes working on math problems,” Chan said, speaking with Gizmodo Australia. “What I would do is peel the pages off and then throw them on the floor.”

But then, in 2010, a little object by the name of an iPad came out (when Chan was just about to start his final year of uni) and the screen size was similar to a standard notebook, which he thought was actually perfect for going paperless. After trying all of the note-taking apps that were available at the time, he couldn’t find one he liked.

So, he did what anyone would do – made his own.

Stuff

Apple Announces Winner Of First-Ever Apple Podcasts Award, by Joe Rossignol, MacRumors

Apple today announced that Slate’s narrative podcast series “Slow Burn” has won the first-ever Apple Podcasts Award for Show of the Year.

Apple says the podcast won the award in recognition of its latest season “Roe v. Wade,” in which Slate executive editor Susan Matthews explored the events leading up to the landmark Supreme Court decision in 1973. The four-part miniseries was released throughout June and is being awarded for “outstanding quality, innovation, and impact.”

New Apple Fitness+ Weekly Workout Streak Award Is Coming, by William Gallagher, AppleInsider

A new Weekly Workout Streak award is coming to Apple Fitness+, encouraging users to take at least one workout every week.

Mimestream 0.40.1, by Agen Schmitz, TidBITS

Mimestream released beta version 0.40 of its native macOS client for Gmail with calendar banner support for joining Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, and Skype events with a single click.

Kensington's New SlimBlade Pro Trackball Is Ergonomic & Ambidextrous, by Andrew Orr, AppleInsider

Kensington designed the product for nearly anyone with its ambidextrous design that requires little hand and wrist movement, making it comfortable during extended use.

UAG Launches MagSafe-compatible Lucent Power Battery With Kickstand For iPhone, by Michael Potuck, 9to5Mac

If you’re looking for a simple and compact way to charge up your iPhone seamlessly while adding in a useful stand, and don’t need lots of capacity, the Lucent looks like a solid option.

Elago Intros New iMac-inspired Magnetic iPad Pro Stand And Folio Covers In Four Colorful Styles, by Rikka Altland , 9to5Toys

Sporting an adjustable viewing angle, the hinged build is nearly identical to the form and function of Apple’s latest desktop machines.

WaterField Introduces Elegant Leather Carrying Bag For Apple Watch, by Andrew Orr, AppleInsider

Made by hand from full-grain leather, the Time Travel Apple Watch Case organizes and protects Apple Watch accessories with interior pockets lined in soft Ultrasuede. The Ultrasuede also acts as a screen cleaner for the Watch display.

Notes

Judge Approves Apple's Plan To Pay $50 Million To Settle Butterfly Keyboard Lawsuit, by Juli Clover, MacRumors

Apple’s plan to pay $50 million to settle a long running class-action lawsuit over the faulty butterfly keyboard today received preliminary approval from a California federal judge. The payment will include $13.6 million in attorney fees, up to $2 million in litigation costs, and $1.4 million in settlement administration costs, with the rest distributed to class members.

Apple Music Reveals Top Music In 2022 And Listener Charts, by Mark Kennedy, AP

The data shows the growing presence of non-English-language tunes, with African songs on the rise on the Shazam chart as well as the global daily 100, while Japanese-language songs made big gains on the most-read lyrics chart.

“It’s really the rise of what was once very niche genres creeping into the mainstream, which is an exciting new development on the platform,” said Rachel Newman, global head of editorial.

Apple’s Cook Goes To Washington To Meet With Top GOP Lawmakers, by Emily Birnbaum and Mark Gurman, Bloomberg

Cook has scheduled sessions with Republican Representatives Jim Jordan of Ohio, Darrell Issa of California and Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington, according to two of the people familiar with the meetings, who asked not to be identified discussing private travel plans. Jordan and McMorris Rodgers are likely to chair the top committees overseeing the tech industry when the GOP retakes the House next year.

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Microsoft -- famous for stealing ideas from others for their Windows operating system -- failed to steal Apple's trackpad correctly? The trackpad on my work laptop is so bad that every time I use the trackpad to click, the cursor will inadvertently move just a little distance away before the click registers. Yes, I'm constantly clicking on the wrong thing.

In the end, I have to use two fingers. One finger to move the cursor on the trackpad, another finger to do the actual clicking on an actual button.

(Yes, the laptop I'm using has a trackpad that actually moves at the bottom for clicking, two physical buttons north of the trackpad for left and right clicks, and a red nose between the G and H keys for moving the cursor. I think you can guess what brand this laptop is.)

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Thanks for reading.

The Experiences-Reimagined Edition Tuesday, November 29, 2022

Apple Announces The Winning Apps And Games In The App Store Awards, by William Gallagher, AppleInsider

The winners of this year's App Store Awards for apps and games have been announced, with 16 titles singled out for their excellence and cultural impact.

[...]

"This year's App Store Award winners reimagined our experiences with apps that delivered fresh, thoughtful, and genuine perspectives," Tim Cook said in a statement. "From self-taught solo creators to international teams spanning the globe, these entrepreneurs are making a meaningful impact and represent the ways in which apps and games influence our communities and lives."

Peace Of Mind, by Michael Steeber, Tabletops

The Derby Street Shops have a layout similar to many suburban strip malls. Rows of outdoor storefronts face a massive parking lot, and vehicles park perpendicular to each store entrance. Apple Derby Street was somewhat insulated from the asphalt by a small plaza, but there were no bollards to stop a vehicle from crashing through.

I studied every Apple Store in the car-addled United States to see how common bollards actually are. 97 of the 272 stores in the country have public entrances that are directly connected to a parking lot or roadway. Of these, I identified 36 locations that are already protected by bollards or other effective safety barriers. That means 61 stores — Derby Street included — are completely vulnerable to vehicles or protected by arguably inadequate barriers. I am not publishing the list here for obvious security and safety reasons.

I Text Myself All Day Every Day — And You Should, Too, by David Pierce, The Verge

Texting yourself sounds weird until you try it. Then it becomes indispensable. For a while now, my highest-volume messaging conversation has been with myself (which sounds sad now that I say it, but we’ll leave that for another day), and it has become a key part of how I live my digital life.

To be clear, I’m not texting with the voices in my head. I’m using my messaging app the way millions of people use their email — to send myself quick notes, reminders, links, photos, and stuff I need to be able to get to later. It all becomes searchable, available across devices, and accessible in the same app that’s already in my dock and opened a hundred times a day to chat with friends and family.

Dive Data

‘Oceanic+’ Deep Dive Tracker Now Available For Apple Watch Ultra Users, by Filipe Espósito, 9to5Mac

When Apple announced Apple Watch Ultra in September, the company also showed how it can be used to track deep dives thanks to advanced new sensors. During the keynote, the company also promoted a third-party app named Oceanic+, which shows detailed dive data. Now this app is finally available for Apple Watch Ultra users.

We Went Diving With The Apple Watch Ultra, by Haje Jan Kamps, TechCrunch

I’d trust it as long as Huish Outdoors ensures that the stability and reliability of the app remain its No. 1 priority over all the fun bells and whistles it could be tempted to add over the next months and years. And if the app continues to stay stable, I can’t imagine it will take very long before the skeptic in me fully embraces it.

Stuff

Apple Music Replay Overhauled For 2022 With Animated Highlight Reel Of Your Favorite Songs And Artists, by Benjamin Mayo, 9to5Mac

Apple has overhauled the Apple Music Replay experience for 2022. Although it still is a web browser only experience, the Replay section now features a dynamic stories-esque design of highlights based on your listening history.

Best Digital Journals For Your Mental Health Journey, by Alli Sim, Vogue

“When we journal for only ourselves, without any filtering, or having it be performative, such as sharing it on social media, we remove some internal blocks which then allows us to come into contact with our psyche/soul/unconscious,” says Leong.

Apple Watch Ultra Can Now Start Ski And Snowboard Workouts With Auto-resort Detection, by Zac Hall, 9to5Mac

Slopes on Apple Watch Ultra doesn’t just use the Action button to fast track you to a ski workout. The app can also “automatically figure out what resort you’re at when starting (or if you’re in the backcountry)” in the latest update. The makers of Slopes add that today’s release also improves Siri support for starting workouts in the app.

Long Covid: The Patient Who’s Made An App To Track Symptoms, by Nicola Davis, The Guardian

Leeming, co-founder and CEO of Visible, said the goal is to help those with these conditions manage their illness – such as the worsening of symptoms after exertion.

“It doesn’t happen immediately after you have exerted yourself. It actually happens hours or even days later when your symptoms get worse. So because that feedback loop is so long, it’s very difficult to tell if you’re overdoing it,” he said.

Notes

Apple Store Opening At Massive American Dream Mall Outside New York City, by Joe Rossignol, MacRumors

American Dream is the second-largest shopping mall in the U.S. behind the Mall of America in Minnesota. Opened in 2019, the three-million-square-foot shopping destination has several indoor attractions, including the Nickelodeon Universe amusement park, DreamWorks Water Park, a year-round indoor skiing and snowboarding resort, an NHL-sized ice skating rink, a burger restaurant owned by YouTube star MrBeast, and more.

Union Busting Lawsuit Planned, As Battle Between Apple And Its Store Staff Intensifies, by Ben Lovejoy, 9to5Mac

The global Apple support network, AppleTogether, is working with the UK union United Tech & Allied Workers (UTAW) to gather information on tactics used by Apple management to try to fend off unionization moves. It tweeted that a class action lawsuit is “in the works.”

Iger Says He Won't Sell Disney To Apple In His First Town Hall After CEO Shake-up, by Ryan Faughnder, Los Angeles Times

Among Iger’s key points: Disney is powerful enough to compete on its own. He pooh-poohed speculation that has already cropped up about the possibility of selling Disney to a tech giant like Apple. Such a move would end Disney’s history as a standalone entertainment company. But Iger long had close ties with Apple and its late co-founder Steve Jobs, who launched Pixar before Disney acquired it.

“What you’ve read about in that regard is just pure speculation,” Iger said.

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If you write down what you need to tell your future self -- todos, reminders, whatnots -- then your brain is free to forget all these things and can focus on remembering the more beautiful things.

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Thanks for reading.

The Biggest-Biggest-Biggest Edition Monday, November 28, 2022

Apple Removes Vocals From iPhone 14 Launch Ad After Lyrics Were Confused For Racial Slur, by Benjamin Mayo, 9to5Mac

The original lyrics went something like ‘Biggest, biggest, biggest, biggest, biggest, it’s the biggest bounce of the summer’. This was obviously a reference to the ‘biggest’ launch of a new iPhone yet, with the introduction of the larger screen 6.7-inch iPhone 14 Plus. But without context, the pronounced syllables of ‘biggest’ overlaid with the music meant that people could instead hear the n-word.

Stuff

Apple TV 4K 2022 Review: Cheaper, But Still Premium Streaming Box, by Samuel Gibbs, The Guardian

There are cheaper streaming boxes available, and every television comes with a smart TV built in. But if you want a simple, reliable and high-quality streamer, the third-gen Apple TV 4K is unbeatable.

How iPads, iPhones, Macs Are Used In The Special Education Classroom, by Michael Dobrin, AppleInsider

Using iOS and iPadOS in the classroom opens up little-to-no-cost options for students and teachers alike after the initial investment. Let a special education teacher tell you what can be done with Apple gear in education.

Notes

Apple To Lose 6 Million iPhone Pros From Tumult At China Plant, by Vlad Savov, Bloomberg

Turmoil at Apple Inc.’s key manufacturing hub of Zhengzhou is likely to result in a production shortfall of close to 6 million iPhone Pro units this year, according to a person familiar with assembly operations.

[...]

Apple and Foxconn increased their estimates of the Zhengzhou shortfall over the past two weeks due to growing disruptions, said the person, adding that they expect to be able to make up the 6 million units in lost output in 2023.

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I'm not worried that Apple misses earning forecast by 6 million iPhone Pros. A large portion of these 6 million customers is likely to stay within Apple's ecosystem. The demand will not drop too much just because of a slight delay.

What should be worrying is if the supply doesn't pick up by next year. Not worrying for Apple, for Apple is going to be fine. But something will have gone quite wrong in the middle kingdom.

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Thanks for reading.

The A-B-C Edition Sunday, November 27, 2022

Inside Foxconn’s ‘iPhone City’: How Apple’s Biggest Contractor Fell Victim To China’s zero-Covid Policy, by Ben Jiang, Coco Feng, and Iris Deng, South China Morning Post

The Covid-19 fiasco at Foxconn’s plant in Zhengzhou provided fresh impetus to the argument that China was becoming too risky to rely on for hi-tech manufacturing, amid increasing calls for “reshoring”, “friend shoring” and even “ABC” – anywhere-but-China. New investments by Apple’s own suppliers in countries such as Vietnam and India seemed to provide further evidence that China was dismantling its own advantages by sticking to the zero-Covid-19 approach.

[...]

Regardless, the contrast could not have been more stark; from 8,000 workers willing to do an extra 12-hour shift after an offer of tea and biscuits, to today’s situation where thousands have fled assembly lines despite the offer of cash bonuses. China’s manufacturing miracle, facilitated by an immense supply of cheap but skilled labour, favourable local government incentives and foreign capital, is quickly being undone by three years of Covid-19 controls.

Mixfly Ultra-compact Apple Watch Charger Review: Good Enough, And Inexpensive, by Mike Wuerthele, AppleInsider

Despite weirdly having "iWatch" in the name, this one-inch metal and plastic Apple Watch charger does what it says it will do, does it pretty well, and does it on the cheap.

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Living near the equator means I don't get to mark the passage of time through the changing of seasons, but rather by the changing of music piped in at my local supermarket.

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Thanks for reading.

The Empty-Handed Edition Saturday, November 26, 2022

Many Shoppers Can't Find Apple's Latest iPhones On Black Friday, by Hilary Russ and Siddharth Cavale, Reuters

Many shoppers looking for Apple's latest high-end phones returned empty handed from its stores this Black Friday as the technology company struggles with production snafus in China.

[...]

At an Apple store in a Bethesda, Maryland mall, an employee said there were almost no 14 Pro and Pro Max in stock. Another employee at a store in Raleigh, North Carolina said that iPhone 14s were in low stock, while the iPhone 14 Plus was completely out of stock.

Affinity Photo 2 Review, by James Abbott, Digital Camera World

There’s no denying that Affinity Photo has long been the best Photoshop alternative available, and Affinity Photo 2 is Serif’s most impressive version of the software to date. The new features, in some cases, are remarkable, despite a useful image browser/cataloging for Raw files remaining absent. But if you’re looking for a highly capable Adobe alternative with an incredibly good value perpetual license to boot, then look no further than Affinity Photo 2.

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My first Thanksgiving when I was in U.S., back in the late eighties, I've had 7-Eleven hotdogs for dinner. (I wish there was Wikipedia then. Or someone on Usenet warning me to stock up on food.)

That mistake was never repeated for Thanksgiving nor Christmas. :-)

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Thanks for reading.

The Optimising-Airflow Edition Friday, November 25, 2022

I Spoke To Apple To Find Out The Secret Behind The AirPods Pro 2’s Audio Success, by Kashfia Kabir, What Hi-Fi?

In the AirPods Pro 2, the venting system was simplified: there’s now one vent at the back of the buds, rather than two (one in the front and one in the back) as found in the previous Pro model.

It’s thanks to this new back venting system that the AirPods Pro have been able to reach those higher, cleaner highs and better, deeper bass. Andersen says the biggest challenge has been to improve the high frequency response in particular. And they have been able to do so by optimising “the airflow for the driver so we can get better excursion.”

And as any turbulence in the airflow can result in distortion to the sound, the acoustic team has been able to minimise these turbulence issues - especially in the bass, which is now more precise. The amplification used inside helps by having fewer unwanted artefacts and a lower noise floor.

Apple's Black Friday Shopping Event Is Kicking Off Around The World, Here Are The Details, by Chance Miller, 9to5Mac

The “Apple Shopping Event” in celebration of Black Friday and Cyber Monday is starting to kick off around the world. This annual “event” from Apple offers a bonus Apple Gift Card when you buy an eligible product. It runs from November 25 through November 28 and offers gift cards ranging from $25 all the way up to $250.

Foxconn Woes Could Hit At Least 30% Of iPhone Nov Shipments From China Plant -Source, by Yimou Lee and Taipei newsroom, Reuters

Production of Apple Inc's iPhones could slump by at least 30% at Foxconn's factory in China's city of Zhengzhou after worker unrest disrupted operations, a person with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters on Friday.

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I find AirPods Pro 2 to be more comfortable in my ears personally than the original AirPods Pro. In fact, I've never enjoyed any in-ear headphones until AirPods Pro 2, which I can wear all day (almost).

(But I do use in-ear headphones for many years now; outside is noisy, and I do want to focus more on audiobooks and podcasts.)

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Thanks for reading.

The Reskin-of-Something-Else Edition Thursday, November 24, 2022

App Subscription Fatigue Is Quickly Ruining My Smartphone, by Christine Romero-Chan, Digital Trends

Many years ago, I got my start in the industry by reviewing mobile apps and games for iOS. I remember I loved seeing whatever hot new app just released, and I was eager to grab a copy and check it out myself.

It’s different now. Most apps today are now very similar to something that I’ve already used before — innovation is rare to see, and everything is pretty much a reskin of something else. And it’s just so disappointing when I launch a new app that does pique my interest, and I see a pop-up on the first launch talking about in-app purchases or subscriptions.

Why The N.F.L.’s Big Streaming Deal Is Going Into Overtime, by Kevin Draper, New York Times

The league’s negotiations with Apple, Google and others have become protracted because it is trying to bundle the package of out-of-market Sunday N.F.L. games with other media assets, including NFL Network and the NFL RedZone channel, according to these people.

[...]

One media executive who has negotiated with both Apple and the N.F.L. cited another reason for the monthslong impasse: Both sides are used to getting their way in negotiations.

Stuff

Apple Logic Pro Review, by Angel Garden, TechRadar

This music-making software is Apple’s full professional Digital Audio Workstation (DAW). Its a major step up from its stripped-down progeny Apple GarageBand for Mac and IOS, and its versatility and power have assured Logic Pro wide professional use, as well as gaining a huge cult following.

Apple Has Improved Mac MDM With This Important Feature, by Jonny Evans, Computerworld

Mac admins can now manage login and background items on their Mac fleets remotely via their choice of MDM software. That means they can insist on some items running on every Mac or disable items that don’t meet security policy requirements.

Notes

Apple Supplier Foxconn Apologises For Hiring Blunder At COVID-hit China Plant, by Yimou Lee, Reuters

Foxconn said on Thursday a pay-related "technical error" occurred when hiring new recruits at a COVID-hit iPhone factory in China and apologised to workers after the company was rocked by fresh labour unrest.

[...]

The apology was an about-face from a day earlier when Foxconn said it had fulfilled its payment contracts.

St. Louis Apple Store Abandons Plans To Unionize Due To Alleged 'Increased Hostility', by Michael Potuck, 9to5Mac

Last week we heard the latest Apple Store moving toward unionization was in St. Louis. With what seemed like strong enthusiasm from employees and the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) as the representation, an official filing to start the bid to unionize was made with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Just seven days later, the Apple Store employees have made a U-turn and dropped the effort, at least for now.

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Thank you.

The Never-Ever-Anticipated Edition Wednesday, November 23, 2022

Why I'm Thankful For Universal Control On My Mac And iPad, by Jason Snell, Macworld

It’s been about eight months since Universal Control arrived–remember, it was announced in June 2021 but gestated for nine months before being released in March of this year–and I’m finally ready to weigh in on Universal Control.

It’s great. It is one of my favorite operating-system feature additions in recent memory. And most surprising of all, I’m using it in ways I had never, ever anticipated. Here’s why I’m thankful that Universal Control exists.

Apple Urged To Address Privacy Gaps To Protect Reproductive Health Data, by Jessica Davis, SC Media

The latest state-led effort centers on Apple’s “long-promoted” privacy policies, which are touted as the company’s core values on iOS devices and its app store. The state attorneys general believe that Apple has indeed adopted consistent privacy and security measures to meet consumer data privacy goals.

However, “apps that collect private reproductive health data from consumers frequently fail to meet these same standards or to implement appropriate protections for this sensitive data, exposing consumers that seek or provide reproductive health care to potential action and harassment by law enforcement, private entities, or individuals,” the state leaders wrote.

I Followed Myself, For Months, Through Apple’s Find My Network, by Stephan Janssen, Medium

So, to summarize, while the openness of Apple’s Find My network is a nice change, it also opens it up for abuse. Since devices that Apple doesn’t control also don’t seem to trigger any warnings, this allows nefarious people to abuse the system to create a cheap, hard to identify, tracking devices and follow anyone around, without having to pay for cell service and with only a small chance of getting caught.

On Privacy

Thinking About Taking Your Computer To The Repair Shop? Be Very Afraid, by Dan Goodin, Ars Technica

If you’ve ever worried about the privacy of your sensitive data when seeking a computer or phone repair, a new study suggests you have good reason. It found that privacy violations occurred at least 50 percent of the time, not surprisingly with female customers bearing the brunt.

[...]

Besides finding widespread snooping, the study uncovered other problems. Among them: The vast majority of repair shops provide no privacy policy and those that do have no means of enforcing them. Even worse, repair technicians required a customer to surrender their login password even when it wasn’t necessary for the repair needed.

On App Stores

Apple To End App Commission Policy Charging More In Korea, by Laura Dobberstein, The Register

According to South Korea's Fair Trade Commission, Apple said it will correct an oddity that sees local developers charged even more than the usual 30 percent Cupertino demands for sales of software in its App Store.

News of the change comes after the Commission (FTC) in September launched an antitrust probe into Apple – in part because it added a ten percent sales tax before charging commission fees in South Korea, and only South Korea. The unusual billing policy resulted in Korean app developers paying a 33 percent rate of commission while their overseas counterparts paid only 30 percent.

U.K. To Investigate Apple And Google's 'Stranglehold' Over Browsing, by Ashley Capoot, CNBC

The authority will explore the companies' "stranglehold" over browsing, as well as Apple's control over cloud gaming through the App Store, it said in a release. The agency said Google and Apple powered 97% of all web browsing that took place in the U.K. in 2021.

iPhone Pro This Christmas

iPhone Delays Weigh On Apple Ahead Of Holiday Season, by Subrat Patnaik, Bloomberg

The delays, resulting from Covid lockdowns around a Chinese plant run by a contract manufacturer of iPhones, could cause analysts to trim their earnings estimates for this quarter, which accounts for 35% to 40% of iPhone unit sales. That in turn could further pressure Apple’s stock price, which has been a relative haven in this year’s tech meltdown.

iPhone 14 Pro Supply Dwindling From Third-party Retailers, Best Buy CEO Warns, by Chance Miller, 9to5Mac

iPhone 14 Pro availability continues to wane as the holiday shopping season enters full swing. Now, Apple partner Best Buy is warning that it is seeing strong demand for the flagship iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max devices, and it doesn’t have the supply to be able to keep up with that demand.

Hey Siri

Amazon Alexa Is A “Colossal Failure,” On Pace To Lose $10 Billion This Year, by Ron Amadeo, Ars Technica

While Google and Amazon hurt each other with an at-cost pricing war, Apple's smart speaker plans focused more on the bottom line. The original HomePod's $350 price was a lot more expensive than the competition, but that was probably a more sustainable business model. Apple's model didn't land with consumers, though, and the OG HomePod was killed in 2021. There's still a $99 "mini" version floating around, and Apple isn't giving up on the idea of a big speaker, with a comeback supposedly in the works. Siri can at least be a loss leader for iPhone sales, but Apple is also hunting around for more continual revenue from ads.

Report: Amazon Alexa Is A ‘Colossal Failure’ On Pace To Lose $10 Billion This Year, by John Gruber, Daring Fireball

Siri is there to make iPhones, iPads, Macs, Apple TVs, Apple Watches, and even AirPods better. And Apple isn’t losing money on any of those. Siri will serve the same purpose on future platforms from Apple, too. Apple’s investments in Siri are part and parcel investments in their OS strategy for everything they make.

Everybody Promised To Disrupt The Smartphone — And The Smartphone Outlasted Them All, by David Pierce, The Verge

Smartphones may be boring now, but that’s only because they’ve been so good for so long

Smartphones may be boring now, but that’s only because they’ve been so good for so long. As they’ve become so entrenched and ubiquitous in our lives, they’ve become even harder to disrupt. How do you beat the device that can do everything and is always with you? Battery life, I suppose. But good luck with that on your AR glasses.

Stuff

ReadKit 3.1 Adds Smart Folders, More Customization Options, And New Lifetime Purchase Options, by John Voorhees, MacStories

However, what sets ReadKit apart is its thoughtful gesture and keyboard-driven interface that makes scanning through lots of feeds easy. Now, with smart folders, anyone following a long list of feeds can also create complex filters to pull a subset of the most relevant stories from their feeds.

Improve Your Safari Browsing Experience With These Automatic Redirects, by Pranay Parab, LifeHacker

Sometimes the desktop versions of websites have options that are missing from their mobile counterpart—you can make a redirect to switch to the desktop version of any site automatically. In other cases, you may prefer to open some sites in an app as opposed to the browser. Or you might want to automatically redirect a URL to remove paywalls from certain sites. In all of these cases, you’re going to need a browser extension to help.

The App Every Hiker Needs To Find Great Trails And Stay Safe, by Joe Cuhaj, TravelAwaits

The best thing about AllTrails is that all of the trail information you need, everything from an overview of the trail to turn-by-turn navigation to the weather forecast, is right there at your fingertips. No need to carry that guidebook or ripped pages from the guidebook with you.

Review: Belkin's MagSafe Car Charger Brings Faster Wireless Charging To Your Vehicle, by Juli Clover, MacRumors

Aside from the price, Belkin’s Car Charger has few downsides. There is a strong connection between the ‌iPhone‌ and the charger that keeps it in place, and it also adheres strongly to the vent, which is even more important. It does not move and it stays in place while you’re driving, plus it’s the fastest wire-free charging you can get in a vehicle at this time.

Develop

Asahi Linux For Apple Silicon Has Come A Long Way In A Few Months, by Andrew Orr, AppleInsider

A project to port Linux to Apple Silicon Macs, the latest update to Asahi Linux has new hardware support, new features, and fixes for "longstanding pain points." It also features a new bleeding-edge kernel branch with support for suspend and the display controller.

Notes

Apple's Green Rhetoric Suggests Macs And iPads Should Merge, by Mark Pesce, The Register

But shouldn't that be a matter of choice – by which I mean user choice, not Apple's? Why should I carry both an iPad Pro and a MacBook Air, when it's nothing more than a wasteful duplication of hardware resources?

More Headaches For Apple In China As Protests Erupt At Foxconn, by Rita Liao, TechCrunch

Two weeks after Apple warned of production delays in China amid heightened COVID-19 restrictions, the giant is facing more challenges as worker protests broke out at its largest manufacturing partner Foxconn.

Hundreds of workers at the world’s largest iPhone plant in central China clashed with the police, according to videos shared over the last few days by Foxconn workers on Douyin and Kuaishou. Some videos showed workers breaking out of their dormitories and security personnel beating them.

Why Bob Iger's Ultimate Power Move May Be Selling Disney To Apple, by Joe Bel Bruno, The Wrap

Now that Disney CEO Bob Iger has regained the keys to the Magic Kingdom — less than three years after his chosen successor, Bob Chapek, took over — insiders suspect they know how the beloved executive will find a new way to go out on top during his final two-year stint.

“He’s going to sell the company,” one Disney insider who has worked for Iger predicted. “This is the pinnacle deal for the ultimate dealmaker.”

Landing a deal with Apple (or some other megabuyer) would also cement Iger’s legacy. “I think he’d welcome it — he’d be the last CEO of Disney,” a former top Disney executive told TheWrap, noting that the two companies have “similar brand identities” and could benefit from a merger.

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I am doubtful about Apple buying Disney. Sure, I do think Disney's shareholders and board will welcome the move, and if Mr Bob Iger, the new old CEO of Disney, wants to do it, he will have little trouble making a convincing proposal.

However, I am skeptical that Apple want to buy Disney. Disney has so many businesses from network television to cruise ships that I don't see Tim Cook and his team being interested in running. And buying Disney just for the studios and the streaming business doesn't really make sense: so much of Disney's properties are valuable because of these other businesses.

Moreover, Apple doesn't have anyone within the company that fully grasp Disney, so Apple will have to find someone from Disney to run the Disney that Apple buys. I think Tim Cook learnt his lesson well with John Browett: this new person not only have to understand Disney, they will also have to understand Apple.

Bob Iger probably already have a difficult time finding and grooming a successor that understand Disney. (After all, Bob Chapek's lack of experience with the creative side of Disney is probably one of the major reason why he has make the mistakes he made.) Between Iger and Chapek, they have also pushed out a lot of leaders out of Disney over the past few years.

Now, to groom a new leader that not only understand Disney, but also understand Apple, I will say that is verging between very hard to quite impossible.

And I don't see Bob Iger want to sell Disney to Apple, just for Apple to break up Disney and sell parts of Disney away. If he can't that new leadership for Apple, that's probably exactly what Apple will do. I see Bob Iger as a proud Disney man, and I don't think that's what he want for his legacy.

So, my prediction: no Apple buying of Disney in the next two years.

~

Thanks for reading.

The Moving-Cards Edition Tuesday, November 22, 2022

Apple’s Taken The Joy Out Of Its Books App With iOS 16, by Mitchell Clark, The Verge

Apple Books has been my main reading app for years for one very specific reason: its page-turning animation is far and away the best in the business. Unfortunately, that went away with iOS 16 and has been replaced by a new animation that makes it feel like you’re moving cards through a deck instead of leafing through a digitized version of paper. And despite the fact that I’ve been trying to get used to the change since I got onto the beta in July, I still feel like Apple’s destroyed one of the last ways that my phone brought joy into my life.

Oh, The Places Your Apple ID Will Go, by Nick Heer, Pixel Envy

I may be getting something wildly wrong here, but I am not sure I see the presence of this Apple ID proxy in Apple’s services logs to be a violation of either its own policies or users’ expectations for using internet services in general. Its highly granular analytics are more comprehensive than I think many people would believe is necessary, to an extent they violate the spirit of what Apple professes to stand for, and it would be better if this identifier were sandboxed to avoid any association with real-world activity like service requests. I do not think it is news that device analytics are not the same as services analytics, certainly not to the extent that it justifies a lawsuit.

But there is a quirk that interests me: does Apple continue to view the iPhone as a device with a unified and interconnected set of hardware, software, and services it controls at a platform level?

NFL's Clock Ticking For New Sunday Ticket Partner. Why Is It Taking So Long?, by Daniel Kaplan, The Athletic

The individual said part of the problem is the contract: Apple expected that categories not specifically excluded would belong to them, while the NFL way of doing business is only what is mentioned in the contract is given as rights.

“Because you have to think about, not the way things are today, not just the way things are tomorrow,” the individual said. “But the technology that has never even been invented, delivery systems that have never even been invented yet, ways people want to consume that have never been invented yet.”

In other words, Apple wants rights to the unknown.

Stuff

Chaka Khan Hopes To Inspire People To Get Moving Through Apple’s “Time To Walk” Series, by Jonathan Landrum Jr, AP

In the 32-minute episode, Khan reflects on her upbringing in Chicago, how she found her better self in Europe, learning the music business and the importance of friendships during a walk through her neighborhood in Santa Monica, California. The episode features songs including Khan’s “Woman Like Me,” Joni Mitchell’s “California” and Mile Davis’ “Tomaas.”

iCloud For Windows Users Complain Of Corrupted Videos, Photos From Strangers, by Juli Clover, MacRumors

Apple’s iCloud for Windows software appears to experiencing serious issues for some users, with complaints on the MacRumors forums about corrupted videos and images from strangers appearing in Photo Libraries.

Finally, A Formidable Response To Amazon-owned Goodreads: Introducing The StoryGraph, by Laura Rosenberg, 9to5Mac

The StoryGraph – an app that lets you track, rate, and review the books you’ve read amongst many, many other things – is something every book lover should have in their app library. Complete with beautiful analytics, personalized recommendations, and a 1.2 million-member community, The StoryGraph is everything Goodreads isn’t. We spoke with cofounders Nadia Odunayo and Rob Frelow to dig more deeply into everything we love about our new favorite book app.

Flighty Update Brings Live Flight Tracking Data To Your iPhone, Even When You're In Airplane Mode, by Chance Miller, 9to5Mac

With a new update this week, Flighty has a trick up its sleeve: it can download real and live data using free in-flight Wi-Fi, even when your iPhone is in Airplane Mode. This means you don’t have to pay for premium Wi-Fi on your flight. “Get live data even in Airplane Mode: Simply connect to the free ‘messaging only WiFi’ on most major airlines.”

Gibson Launches The Digital Amp, An App That Uses Your Phone’s Mic To Detect And Amplify Your Guitar Signal – No Cables Required, by Matt Owen, Guitar World

As the name implies, the Digital Amp offers Gibson App users a wealth of sound-sculpting tools, allowing guitarists to make the most of the app’s expanded features while simultaneously employing a more appropriate guitar song.

Mondo Announces Collectible Vinyl Soundtrack For Apple TV+ Series 'Severance', by Mitchel Broussard, MacRumors

Collectibles company Mondo today announced an exclusive vinyl soundtrack for the first season of the Apple TV+ series Severance. There are two versions of the vinyl with different artwork, packaging, and merch included, and both go on sale this Wednesday.

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I think Apple can afford to wait for a better deal from NFL.

~

Thanks for reading.

The Bugs-and-Exploits Edition Monday, November 21, 2022

A Leak Details Apple's Secret Dirt On A Trusted Security Startup, by Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai, Wired

Corellium, a cybersecurity startup that sells phone-virtualization software for catching security bugs, offered or sold its tools to controversial government spyware and hacking-tool makers in Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and Russia, and to a cybersecurity firm with potential ties to the Chinese government, according to a leaked document reviewed by WIRED that contains internal company communications.

The 507-page document, apparently prepared by Apple with the goal of using it in the company’s 2019 copyright lawsuit against Corellium, shows that the security firm, whose software lets users perform security analysis using virtual versions of Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android, has dealt with companies that have a track record of selling their tools to repressive regimes and countries with poor human rights records.

[...]

For years Corellium has painted itself as a crucial defender against software bugs on Android and iOS. But the leaked document shows that Corellium worked with several companies that use bugs and exploits to hack into cell phones, as opposed to helping Google and Apple patch vulnerabilities.

The iPad Mystery. New Episode: Food Fight Strategy., by Jean-Louis Gassée, Monday Note

What we’ve seen in recent years are efforts to make the iPad more powerful, more helpful in more usage scenarios. But the expanded utility has come at a price: The iPad has become more complex and, in the latest salvo of hardware and software announcements, more Mac-like.

Given his exhortation to Tim Cook and his team use their own judgment, it might be inappropriate to wonder what Steve Jobs would think of the current iPad line, but one has to wonder about the loss of simplicity that Steve gave the device. The iPad’s recent creeping “Mac envy”, the abandonment of intuitive intelligibility for dubious “productivity” features reminds one of the proverbial Food Fight Product Strategy: Throw everything at the wall and see what sticks.

Apple Device Analytics Contain Identifying iCloud User Data, Claims Analyst, by Sami Fathi, MacRumors

On Twitter, security researchers Tommy Mysk and Talal Haj Bakry have found that Apple’s device analytics data includes an ID called “dsId,” which stands for Directory Services Identifier. The analysis found that the dsId identifier is unique to every iCloud account and can be linked directly to a specific user, including their name, date of birth, email, and associated information stored on ‌iCloud‌.

Stuff

How A Pomodoro Timer App Helped Me Regain My Focus, by Victoria Song, The Verge

Everyone has their own way of dealing with grief and the mental fog of the past three years. But if, like me, you’ve been scrambling for a way to organize your time, this is a free, widely available tool to try. You don’t have to use the one I do or follow the Pomodoro Technique to the letter. (I definitely don’t.) You could use an actual kitchen timer or an app on your phone. But sometimes, you just need a little push. Tomato timers are great for that.

The 7 Best Free Puzzle Games For Your Mac, by Dreamchild Obari, MakeUseOf

The Mac App Store is a treasure trove of fun puzzle games if you know which ones to pick. But we did some digging and saved you some time by making a list of our favorite ones.

Notes

Apple Executive Phil Schiller Deactivates Twitter Account Amidst Chaos Surrounding The Platform, by Palash Volvoikar, iMore

The chaos tax isn't just coming in with Twitter losing some adveritsers, but also with the company losing some users. The latest seems to be Apple's Phil Schiller, who has deactivated his Twitter account. While this doesn't automatically have to mean that Twitter is in trouble with Apple, it could signal that trouble may be on the way.

Twitter’s Survival As A Subscription Service Depends On Apple And Google, by Mark Gurman, Bloomberg

So there are two potential scenarios in which the app stores block Twitter: if it tries to circumvent in-app purchases and if it doesn’t police its content to the satisfaction of Apple and Google. That means the road to Musk creating a successful subscription service runs right through those two tech giants.

TSMC Planning Advanced Chip Production In Arizona, Says Company's Founder, by Sarah Wu, Reuters

Taiwanese chipmaker TSMC is planning to produce chips with advanced 3-nanometre technology at its new factory in the U.S. state of Arizona but the plans are not completely finalised yet, the company's founder Morris Chang said on Monday.

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Apple should be worried that the three major software interface design projects -- Safari last year, Stage Manager and System Settings this year -- ended up to be much less than successful. It does seem that Apple is making iPadOS too complicated, and macOS too simplified; Which, of course, is the opposite of what the strength of the two different operating systems are.

~

Thanks for reading.

The Continuous-Rediscovery Edition Sunday, November 20, 2022

Bring Yourself Recurring Joy With Apple’s New Lock Screen Photo Shuffle, by Glenn Fleishman, TidBITS

It turns out you can design a product to produce joy. Apple has chosen to hide the details of how it engineered this kind of delight, and that unpredictability might just be a key aspect of the pleasure of continuous rediscovery.

Anti-union Talks Continue At Apple Store In Reston, VA, by Malcolm Owen, AppleInsider

As Apple Store employees continue discussing the possibility of unionizing, and with a few stores unionizing or taking steps in that direction, Apple is keen to fend off other efforts to do the same. In one case, this seemingly includes attempts to dissuade workers from unionizing in the daily download meetings.

Warren Buffett's First Big Semiconductor Investment In His Career Is Also A Bet On Apple's Future, by Yun Li, CNBC

Warren Buffett this week disclosed his first significant investment in semiconductors in his long career, and the value pick is seen as a way to double down on his No.1 stock — Apple . Berkshire Hathaway built a new, $4.1 billion stake in Taiwan Semiconductor in the third quarter, becoming the biggest holder of the Taiwanese chipmaker's American depositary receipts.

It’s Official: The Leap Second Will Be Retired (A Decade From Now), by Alanna Mitchell, New York Times

The time has come — or will come, in 2035 — to abandon the leap second.

So voted the member states of the international treaty governing science and measurement standards, at a meeting in Versailles, France, on Friday. The near-unanimous vote on what was known as Resolution D was met with relief and jubilation from the world’s metrologists, some of whom have been pressing for a solution to the leap second problem for decades.

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Well, I've just set up a whole new bunch of Mastodon RSS feeds in my RSS reader. Oh, and I've also deleted a whole bunch of bookmarks in Safari. (Coincidentally, all the bookmarks I've deleted have this little logo of a blue bird.)

Be kind. Let's all rewind back towards Web 1.0.

~

Thanks for reading.

The Meager-and-Tokenistic Edition Saturday, November 19, 2022

Apple’s US Chip Move Is As Much About Marketing As Technology, by Tim Culpan, Bloomberg

You won’t hear politicians crow about spending billions of dollars (or euros) to lure a factory that makes “old” chips. But that’s the reality, and it’s a perfectly acceptable one because these are the very components the world needs most. Of course Apple, Nvidia, Qualcomm and AMD will be eager to announce their made-in-the-US chips, but the actual supply will be meager and tokenistic.

Tumblr Gets The Last Laugh, by Kaitlyn Tiffany, The Atlantic

Today, Tumblr has a reputation as a refuge from the louder and busier social-media landscape, and those who still spend time there—or who returned to the site, as many did at the start of the pandemic—love it for being somewhat creepy and overlooked.

Stuff

SwiftKey Is Unexpectedly Back On iOS, by Jay Peters, The Verge

“Based on customer feedback, SwiftKey iOS has been relisted on the Apple App Store,” Microsoft’s Caitlin Roulston said in statement to The Verge. [...]

Despite the return, SwiftKey’s latest update is still from August 11th, 2021. It’s unclear if or when it will be updated — users had complained about issues ahead of the discontinuation — but it seems like there will be some changes to look forward to.

VMware Fusion 13 Now Available With Native Support For Apple Silicon Macs, by Juli Clover, MacRumors

With Fusion 13, Intel and Apple silicon Mac users can access Windows 11 virtual machines. Intel Macs offer full support for Windows 11, while on Apple silicon, VMware says there is a first round of features for Windows 11 on Arm.

Mujjo Debuts Waterproof Vegan Leather Sleeve For MacBook Pro With Expandable Storage, by Michael Potuck, 9to5Mac

Mujjo is out with another new Apple accessory, a vegan leather sleeve that offers protection for 14 or 16-inch MacBook Pro laptops. It comes with a magnetic closure, expandable storage for your power adapter, cables, and iPhone, along with more handy features.

Notes

Quantum Researchers Discover The AND Gate, by Charles Q. Choi, IEEE Spectrum

The AND gate is a fundamental ingredient of both classical and quantum algorithms. However, the demand for reversibility in quantum computing makes it challenging to implement.

Tech Giants’ Role In Qatari App That Lets Men Stop Women From Leaving The Country, by Simon Murphy, The Independent

Google and Apple have been accused of facilitating discrimination by making an app available for download which men can use to stop unmarried Qatari women aged under 25 from leaving the country.

[...]

James Lynch, co-director of human rights group FairSquare, said: “This is just the latest example of tech giants facilitating discrimination and abuse by apps using their systems in the Gulf.”

He added: “Tech giants have to get a grip of how the apps that sit on their platforms are actually used, and the harms they can cause. By making apps like Metrash2 available in its current form, they lend legitimacy of their brands to legalised gender discrimination, in this case against young women in Qatar.”

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I'm happy to find out that Mastodon has RSS feeds.

~

Thanks for reading.

The Winter-Wonderland Edition Friday, November 18, 2022

Apple Brings Snow To Buenos Aires In Juan Cabral's Joyful Holiday Ad, by Tim Nudd, Muse by Clio

Directed by MJZ's Juan Cabral and choreographed by Damien Jalet (doing his first commercial work), the film opens on two friends languorously lounging in a cafe. But soon, a winter wonderland arrives, as if by magic, with a little help from the Audio Sharing feature on the Apple AirPods Pro.

[...]

The soundtrack is "PUFF" by Argentine producer Bizarrap and Belgian Argentine hip-hop artist Bhavi. This is Apple's first global holiday campaign with an entirely Spanish-language anthem. The onscreen talent features dancers Vinson Fraley and Gal Zusmanovich.

Apple May Finally Bring Monthly Security Updates To iPhones, by David Price, Macworld

Apple today began the rollout of its new Rapid Security Responses feature to iOS 16.2 and iPadOS 16.2 beta testers. The mechanism, which is designed to speed up the delivery of security fixes on iPhone, iPad, and Mac, was announced at WWDC and began testing back in October and appears to be ready to go–although we don’t yet know when it will first be made available to macOS testers.

David Ma’s iPhone 14 Pro Film, PINCH, by Josh Rubin, Cool Hunting

Food artist, culinary filmmaker and director David Ma has created a cinematic, stirring short film using the Apple iPhone 14 Pro. In just over one minute, PINCH tells the tale of two crustaceans—a King Crab and a Horseshoe Crab—fighting for dominance. The animals’ sizes and movements, the close-up shots of their pincers and the smoky surface of the water all combine to create a dramatic film that pays homage to Kaiju films.

Stuff

Apple’s Annual Holiday Ad Is Here: ‘Share The Joy’ With AirPods Pro , by Chance Miller, 9to5Mac

Apple is out with its annual holiday ad, and the focus is entirely on AirPods Pro this year. The video, titled “Share the Joy,” focuses on the popular Audio Sharing feature of AirPods Pro. “Share the joy of the holidays with Audio Sharing on AirPods Pro,” Apple says.

App Lets iPhones Shoot Time-lapse, Without Having To Stay In One Place, by Ben Coxworth, New Atlas

Created by a team of researchers at Cornell University, the iOS app allows the user (and their iPhone) to come and go from a specific location, shooting aligned images of the same subject every time they're there.

Audible Now Works Independently On Apple Watch With Streaming And One-tap Downloads, by Michael Potuck, 9to5Mac

Shifting away from the reliance on a connection with your iPhone, the popular audiobook app now works independently on Apple Watch for both streaming and downloading content.

Google Maps For iOS Gaining Augmented Reality Live View Search In Select Cities, by Juli Clover, MacRumors

Using Live View, you can open up Maps and tap the camera icon in the search bar to see what’s around you, from shops and banks to ATMs and bars. Google Maps will provide AR-powered directions and arrows, giving you an idea of how far a location is from you and how you can get there.

iPod Touch Lives On With GRID Studio's Wall Art, by Joe Rossignol, MacRumors

GRID Studio is known for creating custom wall art showcasing the history of iconic devices, ranging from the original iPhone to the original Game Boy. Each device is disassembled and the components are artistically displayed and labeled in a frame.

Develop

Command K Bars, by Maggie Appleton

Well-designed GUIs make interfaces easier for new users to learn, improve discoverability, and are better suited to multi-tasking workflows. But they don't scale very well to complex systems with hundreds of commands – especially if those commands can be combined to create emergent complexity.

Notes

1Password Passkeys Demo Shows The Passwordless Future You Can Expect Next Year, by Ben Lovejoy, 9to5Mac

1Password passkeys functionality will launch next year, but to help people understand the benefits and prepare for a world without passwords, the company has put together an interactive demo.

The Arc Browser Is The Chrome Killer I’ve Been Waiting For, by David Pierce, The Verge

Switching to the Arc browser is hard. You should know that right up front. It’s not that it’s technically difficult: Arc has some simple tools for importing bookmarks, it runs the same underlying engine as Chrome, and the onboarding process is actually thoroughly delightful. It’s just that Arc, the new browser from a startup called The Browser Company, is such a divergent idea about how browsers should work that it takes some time, and some real effort, to get used to.

[...]

Arc wants to be the web’s operating system. So it built a bunch of tools that make it easier to control apps and content, turned tabs and bookmarks into something more like an app launcher, and built a few platform-wide apps of its own. The app is much more opinionated and much more complicated than your average browser with its row of same-y tabs at the top of the screen.

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If I did watch Apple's holiday ad correctly, the dog survived, but the chicken didn't. :-)

~

If you are relying on Twitter for anything, like maybe you are logging in using Twitter authentication, or if your web CMS template mandates Twitter links under the bylines, or if your podcast's theme song references your Twitter handles, maybe it's time to get Plan B ready to go?

~

Thanks for reading.

The Gift-Card Edition Thursday, November 17, 2022

Apple To Hold Black Friday Shopping Event Starting On November 25, by Sami Fathi, MacRumors

Apple today announced it will hold a special “Apple Shopping Event” between Black Friday on November 25 and Cyber Monday on November 28 where customers will be eligible to get a gift card when they purchase select products.

Apple Launches Revamped iCloud.com Website With All-New Design, by Joe Rossignol, MacRumors

Apple today rolled out a new design on iCloud.com following several weeks of beta testing. The page now features a colorful wallpaper with tiles for your Apple ID account and Apple apps like Photos, Mail, iCloud Drive, Calendar, and Notes. There is also a tile with icons for additional apps like Find My, Pages, Numbers, Keynote, and more.

MLS Season Pass Will Cost $14.99 Month Or $99/season, Discounted Price Available For Apple TV+ Subscribers, by Benjamin Mayo, 9to5Mac

Apple and Major League Soccer today announced pricing and availability details for the MLS streaming service, available through the Apple TV app beginning February 1, 2023 ready for the season start on February 25.

Named “MLS Season Pass,” the subscription unlocks access to all MLS games, live and on demand.

Stuff

Astropad Studio Adds New ‘Magic Gestures’ And Apple Pencil Hover Support On macOS Through M2 iPad Pro, by Michael Potuck, 9to5Mac

Headlining the release is Apple Pencil Hover coming to your favorite desktop creative apps through the M2 iPad Pro. There are also new Magic Gestures and 3D sculpting support in Blender and ZBrush.

Weather On The Way iOS App Gains CarPlay Support With Live Radar For Your Roadtrip Navigation, by Michael Potuck, 9to5Mac

Weather on the Way is a clever app that blends navigation and weather and shows you what conditions to expect throughout your travels. Arriving today is the newest update that brings CarPlay support which means live weather radar plus navigation on your vehicle’s display.

Evernote's Fall From Grace Is Complete, With Sale To Italian App Maker, by Brandon Vigliarolo, The Register

Note-taking app Evernote, once a darling of busy tech aficionados, announced the end of its 14-year run as an independent company today with its sale to Italian mobile app company Bending Spoons.

Notes

Lessons From A Decade Of ‘Candy Crush’, by Tim Bradshaw, Financial Times

The barriers to creating a new Candy Crush-scale hit are far higher today than 10 years ago, requiring huge investments in promotion to get noticed in the overcrowded App Store. Moreover, the advertising model that allowed lacklustre mobile games to buy their way to the top of the App Store charts has been hobbled by Apple’s restrictions on ad targeting. But if this forces developers to focus more on quality in the coming years, perhaps mobile games will one day get the cultural credit they deserve.

Journalists Want To Recreate Twitter On Mastodon. Mastodon Is Not Into It., by Mathew Ingram, Columbia Journalism Review

There are approximately 12,000 Mastodon servers at the moment, so the fact that 45 of them block one server of journalists isn’t really the end of the world. But it remains to be seen whether Mastodon overall will welcome an influx of reporters fleeing Twitter and hoping to recreate what they had there.

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I was expecting Apple to do another TV+-like rollout for it's MLS channel, especially in countries where the league is not that well-known. Well, I was wrong.

~

Thanks for reading.

The Personal-Sound-Amplification Edition Wednesday, November 16, 2022

Apple AirPods Can Work As More Affordable Hearing Aids, Study Finds, by Andrew Liszewski, Gizmodo

Apple does not position Live Listen as a tool for those dealing with hearing loss but as a way for users with normal hearing to boost desired sounds, like the calls of a bird. However, the researchers found that, in some situations, consumer-level personal sound amplification products faired quite well against pricier medically prescribed solutions, and given the popularity of products like Apple’s AirPods, there’s no stigma associated with wearing them.

Ensure Sufficient Free Space Before Upgrading To Ventura, by Adam Engst. TidBITS

My best guess is that there’s an edge case where the installer believes there’s enough space available to start (assuming that an upgrade is either opportunistic or important), but when it starts copying files, APFS doesn’t always release the needed purgeable space.

Charles reported that since he published that article, he has also heard from a handful of people who have suffered a failed Ventura upgrade and have thus been forced to start over with a clean install.

Craig Federighi Admits Apple's Beta Programs Don’t Provide The Interaction And Influence Many Users Desire, by Sami Fathi, MacRumors

In an email exchange with MacRumors reader Kieran, Federighi responded to a complaint that Apple’s beta program doesn’t effectively listen to user feedback and suggestions, noting the challenge Apple faces when “literally millions of people participate in our betas, and many, many, many of them want to provide feedback to help influence Apple’s products.”

Coming Soon

Apple Is Making iPhone 14 Pro Always-on Display Work Like Android In iOS 16.2, by Chance Miller, 9to5Mac

After complaints from some users, iOS 16.2 beta 3 includes a new option that allows users to disable wallpaper and notifications from appearing on the iPhone’s always-on display.

Latest watchOS 9.2 Beta Includes Race Route Workout Feature For Runners, by Tim Hardwick, MacRumors

Designed especially for runners, Race Route lets you compete against yourself on a route you’ve already completed and tracked as an outdoor run on Apple Watch.

Stuff

Apple Demonstrates Emergency SOS Via Satellite In New Ad As Feature Launches, by Joe Rossignol, MacRumors

The dramatic video shows first responders boarding a helicopter and flying towards a couple on the top of a mountain after they contacted emergency services with the Emergency SOS via Satellite feature, which launches later today in the U.S. and Canada.

'Descript' Podcast And Video Editor Gets Major Update With AI-powered Features, by Filipe Espósito, 9to5Mac

The new version of the app adds more than 30 new visuals and AI-powered features, which should make editing videos “as easy as editing a doc or slides.”

Meross’ New Smart Plug Is One Of The First Matter Devices You Can Buy, by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy, The Verge

This might be the very first device you can buy with the Matter logo on it, indicating that it's ready to go with Matter out of the box.

Notes

Why Does Apple Hate The Mac Mini?, by Roman Loyola, Macworld

So, what’s another five or six months for a Mac that turned four years old tlast month? Well, the fact that any company (let alone Apple) sells a four-year-ago computer at its original price is ridiculous. Maybe Apple’s reasoning is that virtually no one is buying the $1,099 Mac mini, so there’s no harm in keeping it around. But there is harm–it’s taking advantage of people who might not know better by selling them extremely outdated tech. It’s a bad look for the Mac mini and for Apple.

Apple Prepares To Get Made-in-US Chips In Pivot From Asia, by Mark Gurman, Bloomberg

Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook made the disclosure during an internal meeting in Germany with local engineering and retail employees as part of a recent tour of Europe, according to remarks reviewed by Bloomberg News. He added that Apple may also expand its supply of chips from plants in Europe.

“We’ve already made a decision to be buying out of a plant in Arizona, and this plant in Arizona starts up in ’24, so we’ve got about two years ahead of us on that one, maybe a little less,” Cook told the employees. “And in Europe, I’m sure that we will also source from Europe as those plans become more apparent,” he said at the meeting, which included Apple services chief Eddy Cue and Deirdre O’Brien, its head of retail and human resources.

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If the Mac Pro turns out to be just a faster Mac Studio, I suspect many people will be quite disappointed. You don't (probably) miss the deadline with just a faster Mac Studio.

And if the missing Mac mini turns out to be just like the current Mac mini, just a little faster, that will also be disappointing.

(Yes, I know we are still living in strange times. And the longer one waits, the wilder the imagination goes. So, discount what I wrote.)

~

Thanks for reading.

The Rotate-the-Phone Edition Tuesday, November 15, 2022

iPhone 14 Emergency SOS Via Satellite Rolling Out Today, by Sami Fathi, MacRumors

Apple has announced that the iPhone 14’s Emergency SOS via Satellite service will officially start rolling out today, the company said in a press release.

iPhone 14's Emergency SOS Via Satellite Feature To Expand To France, Germany, Ireland, And The UK Next Month, by Hartley Charlton, MacRumors

Apple mentioned that the feature will be coming to France, Germany, Ireland, and the UK in December, following the debut of the service in North America.

Here’s What It’s Like To Use Apple’s Emergency SOS Via Satellite, by Victoria Song, The Verge

Regular texting is pretty instantaneous, but texting via satellite requires more patience. If you’re blessed with clear open skies, it takes around 15-30 seconds to send a message. But if there are hills blocking the horizon or you’re in an area with dense foliage, you could be waiting for a minute or longer. I was on a hill under a big oak tree in Prospect Park. Sometimes my messages sent relatively quickly. (And by quickly, I mean about 15-30 seconds.) Other times, I was distinctly reminded of loading pages on 56K dial-up.

[...]

Because satellites move quickly across the sky, there’s a high chance you’ll have to turn around a lot, sort of like a dog chasing its tail. I was concerned about that, given you might not be able to move around easily if you break a leg. So it was reassuring to know that you can rotate the phone around if you’re immobile. It’s just easiest to get the clearest signal if you can move.

On App Stores

Epic's 'Failure Of Proof' In Apple Antitrust Case Questioned By Appeals Panel, by Paresh Dave, Reuters

Judge Milan Smith told Epic’s attorney Tom Goldstein near the end of the 1-hour, 15-minute hearing, “The one thing that really troubles me is this failure of proof. Looking at the record, it seems (Apple’s attorneys) have made a good case."

Smith and Goldstein then agreed that the lower court ruling ultimately delivered mixed messages on whether Apple's "walled garden" approach to managing the App Store was legally justified, which the Ninth Circuit must now sort.

Apple-Epic App Store Legal Battle Worries US Antitrust Enforcers, by Malathi Nayak, Bloomberg

While the DOJ said in a court filing that it’s not siding with either Epic or Apple, it argued that two provisions of the Sherman Act, a central pillar of US antitrust law, were misapplied in the September 2021 ruling by US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers.

The department didn’t specify what kinds of enforcement actions might be imperiled, but it’s likely concerned about its own investigations of Apple’s and Google’s business practices. The DOJ will have 10 minutes at Monday’s hearing to air its concerns.

Ad Business

Report Reveals Apple Employees Internally Unhappy With Plans To Show More Ads To iPhone Users, by Sami Fathi, MacRumors

A new report has revealed internal disagreement within Apple, causing some employees who work on the company’s ads business to raise concerns that showing more ads to iPhone users ruins the premium experience that’s been long offered to its customers, The Information reports.

Report: Apple Currently Doesn't Plan To 'Significantly' Increase Number Of Ads On iPhone, by Benjamin Mayo, 9to5Mac

In a new report on Apple’s ad business, The Information cites an insider source regarding Apple’s ambitions for advertising. They are cited as saying that Apple is not seeking to add significantly more ads on the iPhone, and is satisfied with the current revenue growth.

Stuff

tvOS 16.1 Bug Wrongly Identifies New 128GB Apple TVs As 64GB Models, by Sami Fathi, MacRumors

A bug on tvOS 16.1 is causing models of the latest Apple TV with 128GB of storage to virtually run out of memory once a user has used 64GB of storage.

Some iPhone And iPad Users Seeing Strange Safari Crashes When Searching, by Juli Clover, MacRumors

Some iPhone and iPad users appear to be experiencing a curious bug in Safari at the current time, with the app crashing when certain search terms are entered. The bug has been going on since last night, from what we can tell, and affected users are running a variant of iOS 16.

Apple Offers Rare MacBook Deal To Businesses To Spur Holiday Quarter Sales, by Mark Gurman, Bloomberg

The company is offering a discount of as much as 10% off its 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros with M1-based chips, according to businesses and Apple retail employees. That tops the typical markdown given to small and midsize businesses.

The tactic is unusual for Apple and suggests it’s stepping up efforts to reinvigorate sales. The company warned last month that its holiday quarter would see slower growth than in the previous period due to Mac revenue declining “substantially.” The company doesn’t have as much of an enticement for Mac shoppers this holiday period: New high-end MacBook Pros launched in the year-ago quarter, and no such product is debuting this time around.

Mujjo Leather Magnetic Wallet For iPhone Offers Three Useful Features That Apple Doesn't, by Michael Potuck, 9to5Mac

The first two things that make a big difference are the asymmetrical design at the top and the small cutout and the bottom. In contrast to Apple’s wallet, that means you can easily get your cards out without having to remove the Mujjo Leather Magnetic Wallet from your iPhone (I also enjoy Mujjo’s angular design which ends up being more functional).

Facades App For iOS And Mac Launches As The Comprehensive Apple Store Guide, by Michael Potuck, 9to5Mac

Following up on his amazing app experience “Apple Store Time Machine,” Apple Retail aficionado Michael Steeber is back with a new app for iPhone, iPad, and Mac. With a beautiful UI, Facades makes it easy to “browse, discover, and bookmark a catalog of every current and former Apple Store.”

Notes

Apple Being "Very Deliberate" On Hiring Amid Economic Uncertainty, Says CEO Tim Cook, by Nate Burleson, Sarah Lynch Baldwin, CBS News

"What we're doing as a consequence of being in this period is we're being very deliberate on our hiring," Cook told "CBS Mornings" at Apple's headquarters in California. "That means we're continuing to hire, but not everywhere in the company are we hiring."

[...]

But Cook said Apple believes strongly in investing for the long term, "and we don't believe you can save your way to prosperity."

How A Translation App Helped My Mother And Me Say ‘I Love You’, by Jean Trinh, Wired

Sometimes you don’t realize what you’ve been missing out on until it finally happens. For me, it was hearing my Chinese mother tell me she loved me for the first time. I was 39 years old.

A language translation app helped make that possible.

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Somebody should work on a translation app that is able to tell me that this person said this, but actually he meant this and you are supposed to get the hint but since you can't interpret messages beyond what was literally said, let me translate what he said for you.

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Thanks for reading.

The Yet-to-Come-to-Pass Edition Monday, November 14, 2022

Apple Is Likely Going To Miss These 2022 Deadlines, by Dan Moren, Macworld

The calendar, of course, is an arbitrary inflection point. But it’s one that people (and companies) adhere to. Apple, for example, has pegged a handful of things to 2022–with varying degrees of precision–that have not yet come to pass and, at this late date, may not.

Is this inability to hit targets derived purely from the challenging environment the world finds itself in? Or does even a very large, very profitable company struggle to marshal its resources accordingly?

Why The iPad Is The Pilot’s New Best Friend, by Mark Vanhoenacker, Financial Times

Removing the paper versions in favour of an iPad-based library saves not only trees but fuel, and we can access any manual without unstrapping our seatbelt, removing our headset and climbing out of our seat.

[...]

Our iPads also hold a navigation app, called Lido mPilot, which opens to a map of the world and that day’s route across it. From that view we can zoom in to see airways, minimum altitudes, navigation beacons and the pleasingly sweeping isogonic lines that indicate magnetic variation. To display or remove layers of data or declutter the screen, we need only tap a button; and we can tap anywhere on the planet to see air traffic control frequencies, satellite phone numbers and local instructions and notices.

Stuff

America Has An Earthquake Early-warning System Now — On Your Phone, by Geoffrey A. Fowler, Washington Post

This feat of science and personal technology is the best example I’ve seen of how smartphones can help protect tens of millions of us from significant danger. I’ll show you how to get it.

Known as ShakeAlert, America’s earthquake early-warning system was developed by the U.S. Geological Survey and partners to give you typically up to 20 seconds of advance warning before significant shaking arrives, or even a minute in extreme circumstances. If you’re close to the epicenter, you might not get much notice — but it could still be enough to protect yourself.

Disk Drill 5 File Recovery Tool Comes With Support For macOS Ventura, Prediction, And More, by Filipe Espósito, 9to5Mac

The new version brings full support for the recently released macOS Ventura, as well as a new prediction feature, increased chances of recovering files, and other enhancements.

Notes

Apple Plans A 3D World And Video Service For Its Mixed-Reality Headset, by Mark Gurman, Bloomberg

A few job listings indicate that Apple is ramping up its work to bolster the device with content. The company is searching for a software producer with experience in visual effects and game asset pipelines who can create digital content for augmented- and virtual-reality environments.

[...]

The most interesting job listing is one that specifically calls out the development of a 3D mixed-reality world, suggesting that Apple is working on a virtual environment that is similar to the metaverse—though don’t expect Apple to embrace that term. Its marketing chief said at a recent event that metaverse is “a word I’ll never use.”

Is Time Running Out For The Leap Second?, by Alanna Mitchell, New York Times

The process of squaring these two time scales has become so unruly that the world’s time mavens are making a bold proposal: to abandon the leap second by 2035. Civilization would wholly embrace atomic time; and the difference, or tolerance, between atomic time and Earth time would go unspecified until timekeepers come up with a better plan for reconciling the two. A vote, in the form of Resolution D, is expected on Nov. 18 at a meeting in Versailles of the Bureau’s member nations.

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I don't think Apple can blame the supply chains when making software. And I don't think it can blame work-from-home when many other companies have been developing software just fine with remote developers. Apple missing its self-imposed deadline for Apple Classical, from outside, does seem to be an indication of problems in its software development processes.

And when we combine this with the trouble with design problems with Safari last year and Stage Manager this year, and if Apple Classical also have some fancy-smancy design that innovate (read: deviate) on how a regular music-playing app behaves, we can probably make some educated guess on where the problem lies.

Let's wait and see.

~

Thanks for reading.

The Vast-Market-Size Edition Sunday, November 13, 2022

‘Once-in-a-lifetime Opportunity’: How A Mass Lockdown At The World’s Biggest iPhone Factory Is India’s Big Chance To Beat Out China As Apple’s Favorite Supplier, by Yvonne Lau, Fortune

The Modi government has recognized the current moment as a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” to sway global companies as China’s zero-COVID strategy rattles their supply chains, Akshobh Giridharadas, adviser at business advocacy group U.S.-India Strategic Partnership Forum, told Fortune. “India has limited time—and [Narendra Modi] realizes that. The government is fast-tracking policies that will give India an advantage as companies increasingly diversify their supply chains,” he said.

India’s strong state support for smartphone manufacturing, coupled with its large labor force of skilled and young professionals, is incentivizing the world’s mobile-phone makers to ramp up production in the country, Tarun Pathak, research director at smartphone-focused consultancy Counterpoint Research, told Fortune. And one key selling point that differentiates India from other emerging markets is its vast market size.

Controller For HomeKit 6.0 Introduces Advanced HomeKit Notifications, by Bradley Chambers, 9to5Mac

Controller for HomeKit’s Advanced HomeKit notifications let you interact with your home in a new way. With them, your smart home can tell you about events that occur and gives you the option to respond immediately.

Slopes iOS App Gains Garmin Auto-imports As Winter Sports Season Nears, by Michael Potuck, 9to5Mac

Apple Design Award-winning ski and snowboard tracking app Slopes has received another handy update ahead of winter arriving in the Northern Hemisphere. Now Garmin users can set up auto-imports and even bring in past ski/riding data from the last five years.

iCloud Class Action Settlement Payout Won't Even Buy A Cup Of Coffee, by Malcolm Owen, AppleInsider

Users of Apple's iCloud in the U.S. are starting to receive notifications they are getting paid from Apple's $14.8 million class-action lawsuit settlement, but that payment will be less than a dollar for most users.

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Debugging SwiftUI is not that fun.

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Thanks for reading.

The Open-the-Doors Edition Saturday, November 12, 2022

Apple Fitness+ Aims To Make Yoga More Approachable For Runners, by Mallory Creveling, Runner's World

With this conundrum in mind—runners wanting to do yoga, but not making the time for long sessions—Apple Fitness+ teamed up with well-known ultrarunner, Scott Jurek, who won the Western States 100-Mile Endurance Run a record seven straight times and once held the fastest known time for completing the Appalachian Trial, and who has also been practicing yoga for about 20 years. They also tapped yoga instructor and Fitness+ trainer, Jessica Skye, and created a six-session series, with classes lasting just 10 minutes each.

Runner’s World sat down with Jurek, Skye, and Jay Blahnik, vice president of fitness technologies at Apple to talk about the yoga program, what it’s all about, and how it aims to open the doors to the mind-body practice for more runners.

Visiting An Apple Store: The Value Of In-Person Impressions, by Adam Engst, TidBITS

It’s easy to pretend that you can learn everything you need to about a tech product online, and frankly, I’ve thought that I’ve been doing a decent job of describing these products based on the specs and information that Apple makes available. However, it became clear on this trip just how important it is to lay your hands on something you’re planning to buy before committing to it.

Coming Soon

Apple’s Freeform Aims To Be A Collaborative Whiteboard For Everyone, by Ivan Mehta, TechCrunch

Apple’s Freefrom app caters to all kinds of users who just want to dump their ideas with multiple media formats on a board. On the face of it, Freeform is just a large board with a grid that lets you put different things like text, images, videos, notes, objects, documents, and more. Apple wants to provide users with an infinite board and basic tools that hardly requires onboarding. Most folks would have used some of these editing tools like Apple’s own apps like Photos and Notes.

iOS 16.2 Brings New Watchlist Options To The Stocks App And Home Screen Widgets, by Chance Miller, 9to5Mac

The update brings new sorting options for your different watchlists in the Stocks app, which are also reflected in updated widgets for your iPhone and iPad home screen.

Notes

Apple Investors Seek Votes On Unions, Human Rights And Working From Home, by Patrick McGee, Financial Times

The union proposal filed by Trillium Asset Management, which manages $5.3bn, asks Apple’s board to step up its oversight of how management has handled unionising campaigns, months after the first Apple unions were formed at two US retail stores.

While Apple has stated employees can organise without interference, employees had accused Apple of “intimidation tactics to deter organising”, said Trillium, which owns about $155mn of Apple stock.

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There are many products that Apple doesn't sell in Singapore, where i live. HomePods -- mini or otherwise -- are still not available. Fitness+ is also not available.

And here's something I've just realized: the Apple Store here also does not sell printers.

Not that I'm buying printers every other year. But I so happen to be looking to buy a printer today.

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Thanks for reading.

The New-CEO Edition Friday, November 11, 2022

How The Apple Archive Ended Up At Stanford, by Anna Mancini

It quickly became obvious that we could not leave the collection at Apple. No one would take it on, and even if someone did, there was no guarantee that the collection wouldn’t be destroyed later. After a couple of days of discussion, we concluded that the only way to save the Apple historical collection was to donate it.

Every corporate librarian or archivist keeps a plan to save their archives in their back pocket. We have to. Corporate archives can come under attack at any time when someone in power—a new CEO, a legal department, the consulting firm behind an acquisition, even a random IT person cleaning up servers—suddenly doesn’t like the idea of a bunch of old stuff lying around.

More Firmware Updates

Apple Releases New Firmware For AirPods 2, AirPods 3, AirPods Pro 1 And AirPods Max, by Juli Clover, MacRumors

Apple today introduced new 5B58 firmware for the AirPods 2, the AirPods 3, the original AirPods Pro and the AirPods Max, up from the 4E71 firmware that was released back in May. Apple released the 5B58 firmware for theAirPods Pro 2 earlier this week.

Apple Releases New Firmware Update For AirTag Item Tracker, by Filipe Espósito, 9to5Mac

Unfortunately, it’s uncertain at this point what changes with the update, as Apple has yet to share update notes for today’s firmware.

Coming Soon

Apple Tests Lyrics For The Apple Music Web Player, by Andrew Orr, AppleInsider

Apple is preparing to expand Apple Music on the web by adding song lyrics, putting it in line with the native app.

Stuff

Apple Highlights iPhone 14 Pro's Action Mode In New 'Shot On iPhone' Video, by Juli Clover, MacRumors

Apple’s video demonstrates a number of Action Mode shots using 360 rotating, aerial tracking, rolling, and more. Each demo includes a side-by-side of the video with and without Action Mode enabled, clearly showing the difference and the benefit of the feature.

Raycast For Mac. The Next-generation Alfred?, by Matt Birchler, The Sweet Setup

I’ve fully switched to Raycast as my full time app launcher, but it’s worth noting that not everyone here at The Sweet Setup likes it as much as I do, so I’m not expecting everyone to make the move. Raycast is not “Alfred, but better” for me, it’s a whole different experience, and different people with different workflows will react differently to it.

Stable Diffusion In Your Pocket? “Draw Things” Brings AI Images To iPhone, by Benj Edwards, Ars Technica

On Wednesday, a San Francisco-based developer named Liu Liu released Draw Things: AI Generation, a free app available in the App Store that lets iPhone owners run the popular Stable Diffusion AI image generator. Type in a description, and the app generates an image within several minutes. It's a notable step toward bringing image synthesis to a wider audience—with the added privacy of running it on your own hardware.

Philips Hue Debuts Smart Christmas Lights With HomeKit, But They Aren't Cheap, by Chance Miller, 9to5Mac

Philips Hue is expanding its line of smart home products with something many people have been waiting on: Festavia string lights. These new string lights pack HomeKit connectivity, among a number of other useful smart home features. They’re perfect for holiday decorations but can also be used year-round for accent lighting and other special occasions.

Marvel Snap Review – Superhero Showdown Card Game Is Utterly Compulsive, by Keith Stuart, The Guardian

Thanks to the compact, unpredictable nature of matches, Marvel Snap is a really fun game to experiment with even if you’re a newcomer. In a lot of ways it’s the Super Mario Kart of the deck-building world, as even veterans can be thrown off course if a location pops up that completely ruins their battle plan.

Notes

Think Twice Before Pouring Your "Heart And Soul" Into A Corporate Job, by Rani Molla, Vox

Having a transactional mindset about work — that it is something you do in exchange for pay — can help put things into perspective, and so can finding meaning outside of work, said Stolzoff.

“Try and see this as an opportunity, while you’re searching for other jobs, to also invest in other sources of identity and self-worth that no employer or job market has the power to take away from you,” he said.

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Three more things We are expecting from Apple before the year ends: the introduction of the new Mac Pro, the new Classical Music app, and the pricing of the company's real foray into sports programming.

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Thanks for reading.

The Discreet-Manner Edition Thursday, November 10, 2022

Apple Limits iPhone File-Sharing Tool Used For Protests In China, by Mark Gurman, Bloomberg

After the 10-minute period expires, the system reverts to the mode where files can only be received from contacts. That means that individuals won’t be able to get an AirDrop transfer from a stranger without actively turning on the feature in the preceding few minutes. It makes it harder for anyone seeking to distribute content and reach people in a discreet manner.

Apple made the change to AirDrop on iPhones sold in China. The shift came after protesters in the country used the service to spread posters opposing President Xi Jinping and the Chinese government. The use of AirDrop to sidestep China’s strict online censorship has been well-documented over the past three years and was highlighted again recently.

Emergency SOS Via Satellite For iPhone 14 Launching Later This Month, Announces $450 Million Investment, by Benjamin Mayo, 9to5Mac

Apple confirmed today in a press release that the new satellite features for iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Pro will indeed launch in November for customers in the United States and Canada, as originally announced. When out of cell service, iPhone 14 users will be able to connect to a satellite overhead to send a short emergency text message, and share their location with family.

Apple today announced a $450 million investment, as part of the Advanced Manufacturing Fund, to support the satellite features. A significant chunk of that money will be going to Globalstar, the company actually in charge of running the satellites.

OS Updates

Apple Releases iOS 16.1.1 With Bug Fixes And Security Improvements, by Chance Miller, 9to5Mac

The company hasn’t shared any specific details on what’s been fixed, but there were issues affecting the SKAdNetwork for developers as well as complaints about Wi-Fi connectivity.

Apple Releases macOS Ventura 13.0.1 Update With Bug Fixes, by Juli Clover, MacRumors

macOS Ventur 13.0.1 is a bug fix update, and it addresses two security vulnerabilities that could allow for unexpected app termination or arbitrary code execution by a remote user. Neither was known to have been exploited in the wild.

Coming Soon

iOS 16.2 Dynamic Island Keeps Signal Bars Visible While Playing Music On iPhone 14 Pro, by Benjamin Mayo, 9to5Mac

Now when playing music, the island compresses down in width to allow all three status icons to be visible — complete with a sleek animation.

Stuff

Apple Music Announces Its 2022 Artist Of The Year, by John Voorhees, MacStories

Today, Apple Music announced that Bad Bunny is its 2022 Artist of the Year. Un Verano Sin Ti, which Bad Bunny released in May, is the most streamed album on Apple Music and the biggest Latin album of all time.

Quick Tip: Smart Albums Based On Photos Searches, by Jason Snell, Six Colors

Last week on the Accidental Tech Podcast, John Siracusa bemoaned the fact that Smart Albums in Photos on the Mac don’t take advantage of the sophisticated searches you can do from the app’s Search box, which include face, object, and scene detection.

It turns out they do, if you know where to look.

Microsoft’s iCloud Photos Integration For Windows 11 Is Now Rolling Out, by Tom Warren, The Verge

Microsoft is starting to roll out iCloud Photos integration into Windows 11. A new update to the Photos app in Windows 11 is now available, which will include the ability to link an iCloud Photos library straight into the built-in Windows Photos app.

Serif Overhauls Whole Affinity Range, Adds New iPad Publisher, by William Gallagher, AppleInsider

Affinity Photo 2, Affinity Designer 2, and Affinity Publisher 2 have all been launched by Serif for the Mac and iPad, with reworked interfaces, new features, and new licensing options.

How To Curate Your Own News Service With The Best RSS Apps, by William Gallagher, AppleInsider

This is a type of app that you need to try in order to appreciate it. Three of the most ardent RSS fans on AppleInsider all agree you need a newsreader — they just don't agree on which one.

Love Birds? Help Protect Them With This Free Birding App, by Greg Nichols, ZDNet

I've found Birda to be a free, easy-to-use tool for logging the birdlife around me, and it provides the lowest possible barrier to entry for new birders while giving old hands a range of useful tools.

Spotify’s Redesigned Apple Watch App Is Easier To Use And Nicer To Look At, by Chris Welch, The Verge

In a blog post today, Spotify shared details of a revamped Apple Watch app that makes improvements to usability and offline playback. It also adds more visual polish with bigger album art and new animations.

Develop

Only Solve One New Problem At A Time, by Ben Nadel

When we apply constraints - either implicitly or artificially - to our work, we are forced to think more deeply and more creatively. And this ultimately leads to better outcomes.

Notes

Apple’s Hold-out Strategy Nears End & Appears To Backfire In UK, by Michael T. Renaud, Daniel B. Weinger, Brad M. Scheller, National Law Review

Although Justice Arnold criticized both parties for what he perceived as dual-attempts to “game the system,” he noted that, “Apple’s behavior in declining to commit to take a Court-Determined Licence once they had been found to infringe…and their pursuit of their appeal, could well be argued to constitute a form of hold-out." This seems to foreclose certain gamesmanship by implementers and sends a clear message that Apple’s approach to hold-out will be at the risk of an injunction.

Apple Taps Facebook Veteran As Information Chief After Departures, by Mark Gurman, Bloomberg

Timothy Campos will lead the Information Systems and Technology department, better known as IS&T, which handles the infrastructure behind Apple’s online services, customer support and website. Apple refers to the operation as its “nerve center” because it lets employees, suppliers and customers stay connected. The division reports to Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri.

Tech’s Talent Wars Have Come Back To Bite It, by Erin Griffith, New York Times

“The pressure is to just spend the money quick enough so you can grow fast enough to justify the kinds of investments V.C.s want to make,” said Eric Rachlin, an entrepreneur who co-founded Body Labs, an artificial intelligence software company that Amazon bought.

Expanding head count was also a way for managers to advance their careers. “Getting more people on the team is easier than telling everyone to just work super hard,” Mr. Rachlin said.

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I am planning for a long walk this weekend. No reason except to get the monthly award for the step-counting app I have on my iPhone.

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Thanks for reading.

The Smart-Acoustic Edition Wednesday, November 9, 2022

AirPods Pro 2 May Be Harder To Find For The Holidays As Apple Loses One Supplier Over Possible Production Issues, by Zac Hall, 9to5Mac

Reliably supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo highlights a notice from AirPods Pro 2 supplier Goertek received by a “major overseas client” with instructions “to suspend the assembly production for a smart acoustic product.”

Kuo believes that product to be AirPods Pro 2.

Apple Releases New AirPods Pro 2 Firmware As Users Complain Of Audio Drift Issues, by Chance Miller, 9to5Mac

Apple is rolling out a new version of firmware to AirPods Pro 2 this afternoon, bringing Apple’s latest AirPods Pro to version 5.1.58 with build number 5B58 (up from 5A377). The update comes as users continue to complain of issues surrounding audio drifting and audio syncing.

Apple Releases New Firmware For Powerbeats Pro And Beats Studio Buds, by Juli Clover, MacRumors

Apple does not provide details on what’s included in refreshed firmware updates for the Beats earbuds or for the AirPods, so we are not sure what improvements or bug fixes the new firmware brings.

Apple Debuts Special Edition Powerbeats Pro In Fun New Colorways, by Juli Clover, MacRumors

Apple’s Beats by Dre brand today announced the upcoming launch of a new set of limited edition Powerbeats Pro earbuds that have been designed in collaboration with fashion designer Melody Ehsani.

Coming Soon

iOS 16.2 To Introduce 'Custom Accessibility Mode' With Streamlined Experience For iPhone And iPad, by Filipe Espósito, 9to5Mac

Codenamed “Clarity,” this new mode basically replaces Springboard (which is the main iOS interface) with a more streamlined one. The feature, which is still unavailable to users in the current beta, will be available as an accessibility option, aimed at making the iPhone and iPad interface more user-friendly for those users who may find it too complicated.

Stuff

Apple Frames 3.0 Launches With iPhone 14 Pro And Apple Watch Ultra Support, Multiple Resolutions, More, by Michael Potuck, 9to5Mac

The fantastic Apple Frames Shortcut created by MacStories’ Federico Viticci has been upgraded today with a major new version. The latest iteration was completely rewritten for improved performance and reliability. And it comes with support for iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max, Apple Watch Ultra, and M2 MacBook Air, multiple display resolution options, and more.

Native Union Launches Ultra-portable 'Fold' MacBook And iPad Stand, by Michael Potuck, 9to5Mac

The unique design offers a durable and stable surface to lift your MacBook or iPad and packs up neatly into an included carry pouch.

Notes

Apple Can Be Great Or It Can Be Google–but It Can't Be Both, by Jason Snell, Macworld

Some ads are good, and some are bad. And to protect Apple’s brand and products from bad ads, someone in charge needs to get perspective and be able to tell the difference. Apple’s public image and the image of Apple’s products are on the line. It would be a shame for the company to wreck itself for such a minor revenue boost.

It's Official: Two-storey Apple Pacific Centre Store To Open Next Week, by Kenneth Chan, Daily Hived

Apple announced today the Apple Pacific Centre store will officially open on Friday, November 18, kicking off weekend-long grand opening celebrations. This will be the largest Apple Store in Metro Vancouver.

The two-storey structure replacing the former mall rotunda entrance spans a total floor area of about 14,000 square feet, based on the 2019 development permit application. The main entrance into the store also boasts an impressive terraced plaza.

Apple’s Brain Drain Hinders Efforts To Pick Its Next Jony Ive, by Mark Gurman, Bloomberg

In some ways, the department has been in flux since the death of Steve Jobs more than a decade ago, according to people with knowledge of the situation. The Apple co-founder had forged a partnership with Ive that helped establish the clean, simple aesthetic that remains the tech giant’s hallmark today. But an increased emphasis on costs, along with other distractions, created new difficulties, they say.

[...]

Over the past few years, the team has lost the majority of senior designers who worked under Ive, with many of them going to his new firm, LoveFrom. That has now made it harder to replace Hankey, people with knowledge of the matter said. An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment.

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I am uncomfortable with the idea the only way to prevent Apple from updating the firmware on my AirPods -- podOS? -- is to not charge my AirPods and not use my AirPods.

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Thanks for reading.

The Digital-Therapeutic Edition Tuesday, November 8, 2022

Veterans Find Relief From Nightmares With NightWare And Apple Watch, by Apple

NightWare is a digital therapeutic system that works in conjunction with Apple Watch and iPhone to disrupt nightmares related to post-traumatic stress disorder. Available by prescription only, it’s also the first and only digital therapeutic developed specifically to treat nightmares that is cleared by the FDA. NightWare uses information from the Apple Watch heart rate sensor, accelerometer, and gyroscope to detect a nightmare and then disrupt it through haptic feedback, generating gentle pulses on the wrist that gradually increase until the user is roused from the nightmare, but not from sleep.

The Apple Watch Ultra’s Impact On My Focus And Presence, by Josh Ginter, The Sweet Setup

Therefore, it doesn’t take much to create a simple shortcut to launch a “Do Not Disturb” Focus mode and tie that directly to the Action Button on the Apple Watch Ultra. If you’re in a suddenly important meeting or conversation, a quick reach down to your wrist and a click of the Action Button silences the outside world and puts your attention on where it needs to be. If you simply need some peace and quiet to get a job done, the Action Button can kick you into action.

This has been revolutionary for my Watch use. With the help of the Action Button, I’ll jump in and out of Do Not Disturb mode a few times a day, and I’m often left astonished at how much I can get done in short bursts of focus.

Apple In China

Apple Built Its Empire With China. Now Its Foundation Is Showing Cracks., by Daisuke Wakabayashi, New York Times

Apple raked in profits as China’s economy roared. But as U.S.-China relations falter, and both governments meddle in Apple’s business, the company has gone from one of globalization’s greatest success stories to a symbol of its fracture.

“Apple is discovering that geopolitics drive business models — not the other way around,” said Matthew Turpin, a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution specializing in U.S. policy toward China. “This whole collection of supply chain risks are creating a real liability for them.”

Apple’s Bargain With Beijing: Access To China’s Factories — And Consumers, by Patrick McGee, Financial Times

The record profits underscore the bargain Apple has struck with Beijing, allowing the iPhone maker to sail through president Xi Jinping’s crackdown on homegrown tech groups while reaping the rewards from US sanctions helping to damage its only real competitor in the country — national champion Huawei.

[...]

Apple has worked hard to satisfy the tastes of Chinese customers. When local competitors rolled out smartphones with bigger screens, more advanced cameras with lowlight photography and a dual-SIM card slot, it was Apple’s Chinese employees who pushed the Cupertino-based company to follow suit, said one person close to the China operations.

Stuff

Apple Promoting All (RED) Version Of The Metropolitan Apple Watch Face Ahead Of World AIDS Day, by Filipe Espósito, 9to5Mac

While the company has yet to add the new watch face to its website, there’s already an App Clip available that lets you download it to your Apple Watch using the iPhone’s camera. It’s worth noting that the Metropolitan watch face is already part of the watchOS 9 update and Apple is simply letting users add a pre-custom red version of it.

I Turned My iPad Into A Smart Home Hub And Don’t Regret A Thing, by Zachariah Kelly, Gizmodo

It mostly just sits there, beside my desk, for controlling lights, checking the weather, answering voice commands and receiving video calls. But it has the added benefit of portability and the entire app store, including social media apps, games and so many other things that aren’t available on smart home screens.

Regain Control Of Your Inbox With SaneBox, by Josh Centers, TidBITS

SaneBox is an add-on service for any email account that adds powerful custom filtering. It’s more powerful and granular than a spam filter, and it’s much smarter and easier to manage than email filters in clients like Apple Mail and Gmail.

Halide Update Adds 2x Virtual Zoom For iPhone 14 Pro Models, by Filipe Espósito, 9to5Mac

Halide has also added a toggle to the app that makes it easier for users to quickly switch between 12-megapixel and 48-megapixel photos.

Nanoleaf Debuts 'Lines Squared' LED Light Bars, by Juli Clover, MacRumors

Nanoleaf today updated its Lines LED Light Bars to add a new configuration that allows the lights to be arranged at 90 degree angles using new square Mounting Connectors. The Lines Squared can be set up around door frames and corners, and new geometric shapes are possible.

Review: Mophie Powerstation Pro Hides Enough Power To Charge iPhone, iPad, And Mac Inside A Slim Battery Pack, by Michael Potuck, 9to5Mac

The lightweight and slim design mean this is a lot easier to carry whether that’s day-to-day or for travel.

Notes

Apple May Keep Track Of Everything You Tap While Browsing The App Store, by Filipe Espósito, 9to5Mac

Two developers and security researchers who identify themselves as “Mysk” have raised privacy concerns about the App Store getting more ads. More specifically, the developers revealed that iOS sends Apple a detailed log of how users interact with the App Store.

Bottom of the Page

Today I learnt that curl and curl.exe are two completely different commands in Windows' PowerShell.

(My brain, which grew up with MS-DOS and PC-DOS, just gave up on Windows.)

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Thanks for reading.

The Adventure-Features Edition Monday, November 7, 2022

What I Love And Hate About The Apple Watch Ultra After Six Weeks Together, by Jakob Schiller, Outside

After a few weeks of testing the Ultra I set up an interview with several top Apple executives who were involved with the development of the watch. All three had their talking points down pat, but it was useful to be able to get a little more behind-the-scenes information. One point they hammered home was that the Ultra is not just an adventure watch but an Apple product with adventure features, which I’ve come to agree with.

As with all of their products, Apple designers first made the Ultra a joy to use every single day, easy to figure out, and beautiful to look at. They then found a way to add in features that those of us in the adventure world would appreciate and use regularly.

Apple Says iPhone 14 Pro And iPhone 14 Pro Max Availability Is Very Constrained Following Factory Closures In China, by Benjamin Mayo, 9to5Mac

Apple today released a statement warning investors and customers that iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max availability is very constrained following recent factory closures due to recent COVID-19 restrictions in the region.

This means Apple is likely lowering shipment estimates for the critical holiday period, potentially impacting revenue figures for the quarter, and customers should expect longer wait times when ordering a new iPhone 14 Pro model at the moment.

Even With Record Profits, Apple Can't Buy Our Trust, by Dan Moren, Macworld

But that near-death experience left an indelible mark on the company. Like Scarlett O’Hara declaring that, with god as her witness, she’ll never go hungry again, Apple seems to labor under the paranoia that all these riches could someday suddenly vanish, leaving the company once again just steps from dissolution. The Titanic, after all, took under three hours to sink. (Not to mix my cinematic metaphors.)

That’s the main reason, I believe, that the company sat on a gigantic cash hoard for so long: it wanted a cushion to soften the blow if its business was yanked out from underneath it. It’s only relatively recently that the company’s embarked on its attempt to reach a “cash-neutral” position–something that’s proved remarkably difficult since it turns out it’s actually pretty difficult to get rid of the sheer amount of money it has.

Stuff

PowerPhotos 2.1 Review: Brings Even More Power To Photos Library Management, by Glenn Fleishman, Macworld

The app is the solution for many of the problems with Photos that people routinely write to us about at Mac 911. The program lets you merge Photos libraries, view multiple libraries without quitting Photos and re-selecting them (including in separate windows simultaneously), create libraries on external files, and move or copy images and videos among libraries without losing information you’ve added or edits you’ve made.

These Time-saving Apps Can Restore Your Workspace After Shutting Down Your Laptop, by Shubham Agarwal, Laptop Magazine

Your best option for managing Mac workflows is a straightforward app called Warp. With Warp, you can save your desktop sessions — the open windows and their locations on your screen at any moment — and restore them from your Mac’s menu bar.

What’s even handier is that Warp enables you to build separate presets. For example, when you click your “Work” preset, it will automatically launch all your enterprise apps and place them in positions you prefer for multitasking.

Notes

Apple’s Copyright Claims Ripped Down A Fan’s Archival WWDC YouTube Channel, by Emma Roth, The Verge

After Apple issued several copyright claims, YouTube took down an archival channel containing hundreds of decades-old videos from past Apple Worldwide Developer Conferences (WWDC). Brendan Shanks, the owner of the Apple WWDC Videos channel, says his account’s been permanently disabled after receiving well over three copyright strikes — the maximum number of violations you can incur before YouTube removes your account.

Apple’s Next Change For Siri: Dropping ‘Hey’ From ‘Hey Siri’ Trigger, by Mark Gurman, Bloomberg

If successful, the shift from “Hey Siri” to “Siri” would match Amazon.com Inc.’s Alexa, which requires to users to simply say “Alexa” rather than “Hey Alexa.” Google requires the prompt “OK Google” or “Hey Google,” but has been working to let users make follow-up requests without repeating the wake word.

By removing the “Hey” in “Hey Siri,” Apple would also, in turn, speed up back-to-back requests.

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Little things that I do not like on macOS Ventura:
The menu popup when selecting the "share" menu item in the contextual menu
The lack of GUI to set a schedule for my Mac to wake up and to go to sleep
The notification system still sucks
And so does the name macOS

Surprisingly to me, I don't dislike the new System Settings app. (Though, my opinion may change if I have to use this app often.)

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I also don't see why Apple is spending resources to try to shorten "Hey Siri" to just "Siri." But then, I am also not a big user of Siri. In fact, I am not even a regular user of Siri.

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Thanks for reading.

The Logo-on-a-Box Edition Sunday, November 6, 2022

Hands-on With The First Matter-enabled Smart Home Devices, by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy, The Verge

But I also saw that Matter has a long way to go before it fully delivers on its promise of an interoperable and simple smart home. A phrase I heard a lot throughout the two-day event was, “Matter is a journey,” followed by, “This is just the beginning.”

In the short term, don’t expect to be using Matter in your home reliably until early next year. Too many companies have yet to fully implement Matter support despite having had a lot of time to prepare. It’ll take even longer before you can just look for the Matter logo on a box and confidently manage it seamlessly in your smart home.

Twelve South HiRise 3 Review: Great Design But Not MFi-approved, by Andrew O'Hara, AppleInsider

One big differentiator between the HiRise and other MagSafe chargers is the charging surface. Twelve South opted for a very large, flat surface to hold your iPhone.

The idea is that as you try to interact with your phone, it is more stable. Think along the lines of a 6am alarm going off and you're trying to smack that snooze button for a few more minutes of shut-eye.

The 6 Best Speech-to-Text Apps For Note-Taking, by Sandra Dawes-Chatha, MakeUseOf

Whether you're taking meeting minutes, interviewing someone, or researching for a project, speech-to-text apps are an excellent tool that saves time.

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Are we ready to rewind back to Web 1.0?

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Thanks for reading.

The Holiday-Shopping Edition Saturday, November 5, 2022

Apple Launches 2022 Holiday Gift Guide, by Hartley Charlton, MacRumors

Starting today, Apple’s annual Holiday Gift Guide is available via its website to help customers choose appropriate gifts more easily. Simultaneously, Apple Store locations around the world will provide personalized support for holiday shopping, gift recommendations, and delivery and pickup options.

Apple Debuts New Holiday Gift Card Design, Extended Return Policy Now In Effect, by Chance Miller, 9to5Mac

In addition to launching its annual Holiday Gift Guide today, Apple has also officially started offering its extended return window for holiday shopping. This means that products received between November 4, 2022 and December 25, 2022 can be returned through January 8, 2023.

Matter Is Here, But Does It Matter Right Now?, by Josh Centers, TidBITS

I’m optimistic that Matter will be tremendous in the long run given its wide industry backing. However, I don’t think it’s something to get too excited about just yet. Let those of us on the cutting edge put it through its paces, and I think Matter will naturally fall into place over time.

Stuff

Belkin Debuts Official MagSafe Car Charging Mount, by Juli Clover, MacRumors

Belkin today announced the launch of the first official 15W MagSafe charger designed for in-vehicle use, debuting the Boost Charge Pro Wireless Car Charger with MagSafe.

There are other magnetic car charger solutions on the market, but this is the first that provides full 15W charging for compatible MagSafe-enabled iPhone models.

Photos Search 4.0, by Agen Schmitz, TidBITS

The update improves recognition capabilities for rotation and handwriting and adds support for new languages.

18-Year-old College Student Launches Discover Me, A Gender-Identity Discovery App, by Gigi Fong, Hypebae

Understanding your identity in a binary world is damn near impossible, which is why 18-year-old college student Joshua Tint created the app, Discover Me.

During the pandemic, Tint witnessed many changes, one of which, was witnessing his friends transition, in terms of gender identity. This made him realize that the resources available to his community were scarce. Not only that but “there’s an overwhelming stigma that surrounds the idea of questioning, which makes it incredibly difficult to seek help during the process,” hehe revealed to Hypebae.

Notes

Apple To Expand Live TV Advertising For Major League Soccer Deal, by Juli Clover, MacRumors

Apple is building a live television ad network in preparation for streaming Major League Soccer games, reports Bloomberg. Apple has agreed to expand its advertising as part of its deal with MLS.

Apple Quickly Expands iPhone 14 Production In India With Pegatron As Second Manufacturer, byMichael Potuck, 9to5Mac

Apple is expected to shift up to 25% of its iPhone production to India by as soon as 2025. Following up on iPhone 14 manufacturing kicking off in September by Foxconn in the country, Pegatron has become the second vendor to start making Apple’s latest smartphone in India.

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The Mac mini I am using was purchased just when we were moving into strange times back in 2020 -- about three months before Apple announced the Apple Silicon transition. So, probably like many people, I've waiting to see the new Mac mini. Well, there is the M1 Mac mini, but just because the Mac mini with Intel inside is still available for sale, I've never decided to buy, and continue to wait.

And right now, it definitely looks like I will continue to wait until 2023 before I have to make any decisions.

Apple has already unveiled new designs for all the Mac computers -- except the Mac mini and Mac Pro. Which is one more reason I will continue to wait.

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Thanks for reading.

The Sliding-Down Edition Friday, November 4, 2022

Apple TV App Now Hides ‘Up Next’ Row, Making It Harder To Find What You Want To Watch, by Chance Miller, 9to5Mac

This new dedicated row for “Featured” content replaces the new previous top-level row for “Up Next.” The Up Next row aggregates the next episodes of TV shows you’re watching from any app that integrates with the TV app, which is essentially any streaming service app other than Netflix.

This change appears to be a server-side update, although right now the majority of users noticing the change are running the tvOS 16.2 beta.

Up Next? Disappointment., by Joe Rosensteel, Six Colors

If Apple wants to say that the Apple TV device, and the Apple TV app, are worth the money because they provide a premium experience, then they can’t keep sliding down into the same mediocre moves as any other platform owner.

The Apple TV in my living room isn’t Apple’s electronic billboard. If I wanted to own one of those, I’d have saved some money and just bought an Amazon Fire TV Stick.

Why Is Apple Gambling Its Brand Reputation On Selling Ads?, by Rob Walker, Fast Company

True, the company itself draws a big distinction between its approach and the strategies used by online-ad giants. Most notably, it says it doesn’t track users via third-party data (although it does have plenty of data it collected all by itself), and it won’t share your data. Also, the company notes, you can turn off personalized ads altogether.

But as Apple knows as well as any consumer-facing company, the technical details matter less than user experience: That’s what shapes a brand reputation. All the back-end distinctions in the world don’t matter to someone who feels they’ve just been given a creepy or inappropriate pitch.

Coming Soon

iOS 16.2 Surfaces Relevant Apple News Stories In The Weather App, by Andrew Orr, AppleInsider

Apple is introducing integration between the Weather and News apps, as noticed in the latest iOS 16.2 beta.

People in cities such as San Francisco will find weather-related news stories and reports, which will likely be available for more regions over time. A link to a story will appear in the Weather app, and tapping it brings the user over to the News app to read it.

Stuff

Darkroom Photo Editing App Gains New Highlight And Shadow Recovery Tools, by Juli Clover, MacRumors

Darkroom says that the Exposure, Whites, Highlights, Shadows, and Blacks sliders have been rebuilt from the ground up in a major technical investment that allows users to access edits that were previously out of reach.

Nanoleaf Announces Matter Support For A19 And Light Strip Along With New Smart Bulb Types, by Michael Potuck, 9to5Mac

Nanoleaf is out with the news that it’s bringing Matter support to some of its popular smart lights along with two brand-new bulbs. Arriving soon, the lineup will feature GU10 and BR30 options in addition to its popular smart Lightstrip and A19 bulb.

Eve Announces Matter Updates For Eve Energy, Eve Motion And Eve Door & Window, by Juli Clover, MacRumors

Eve Systems today announced an upcoming firmware update for three of its devices, with the new firmware set to add Matter integration. The latest models of the Eve Energy, Eve Motion, and Eve Door and Window devices will receive Matter firmware updates on December 12.

Cheaper Netflix With Ads Plan Is Not Supported On Apple TV, by Benjamin Mayo, 9to5Mac

In a statement, Netflix told 9to5Mac that Basic with ads plan support is coming soon to Apple TV devices.

Notes

AirPods Max Noise Isolation Reduction May Be Related To Ongoing Court Battle, by Wesley Hilliard, AppleInsider

Active lawsuits cannot be discussed with the public, so that could explain why Apple changed how active noise cancellation works on its devices without notice. This assumption was shared by a Reddit user named facingcondor with a range of evidence to support the theory.

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There are many reasons one can quit Twitter. There is no need to advise people to wait and see what the new Twitter will be like. (One very good reason is to help flush that $44 billion down the toilet.)

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Thanks for reading.

The All-Consuming-Passion Edition Thursday, November 3, 2022

Seven App Store Creators Share Their Tips For Forging A Career In Coding, by Apple

It often starts with a spark — a fledgling curiosity that develops into a more dedicated interest and then slowly grows into an all-consuming passion for solving unique problems and forging long-lasting connections in an entirely new language.

For some app developers, this spark was ignited in school by an encouraging teacher or parent, while others came to coding later in life, driven by an innate desire to pull things apart and understand how they work.

Ahead of National STEAM Day on November 8, seven inspiring creators — from college roommates who bonded over their love of sneakers to a pair of engineers looking to help fellow moms find quality childcare — are sharing their unique journeys that led them to entrepreneurship through app development and the App Store. Below, they offer insights for those looking to take the leap into coding and underline the endless opportunities available for aspiring app developers at all stages of life.

Jony Ive On Life After Apple, by Elisa Lipsky-Karasz, Wall Street Journal

“I don’t know anything about business,” Ive demurs, but he abhors the current fascination with disruption. “I’m not interested in breaking things,” he says. “We have made a virtue out of destroying everything of value,” he says. “It’s associated with being successful and selling a company for money. But it’s too easy—in three weeks we could break everything.”

[...]

Ive is quick to look ahead. “Success is the enemy of curiosity,” he says. And for Ive, curiosity has taken on an almost moral or religious quality. “I am terrified and disgusted when people are absolutely without curiosity,” he says. “It’s at the root of so much social dysfunction and conflict…. Part of why I get so furious when people dismiss creativity is that [when] it’s an activity practiced in its most noble and collaborative form, it means a bunch of people who come together in an empathic and selfless way. What I have come to realize is that the process of creating with large groups of people is really hard and is also unbelievably powerful.”

Lessons From The Deep History Of Work, by Cal Newport, New Yorker

Given the necessity of complex skills for survival throughout most of our history, it’s not surprising that we enjoy the feeling of doing practical, difficult tasks. “The satisfactions of manifesting oneself concretely in the world through manual competence have been known to make a man quiet and easy,” Matthew Crawford writes in his 2009 ode to skilled handiwork, “Shop Class as Soulcraft.” There’s scientific support for these satisfactions as well. Self-determination theory, a well-cited psychological framework for understanding human motivation, identifies a feeling of “competence” as one of the three critical ingredients for generating high-quality motivation and engagement.

Returning to the context of our protesting Apple employees, we find our instinct for skilled effort once again impeded by modern obstacles. To be sure, knowledge work does often require high levels of education and skill, but in recent years we’ve increasingly drowned the application of such talents in a deluge of distraction. We can blame this, in part, on the rise of low-friction digital communication tools like e-mail and chat. Office collaboration now takes place largely through a frenzy of back-and-forth, ad-hoc messaging, punctuated by meetings.The satisfactions of skilled labor are unavoidably diluted when you can only dedicate partial attention to your efforts. Our ancestors were adapted to do hard things well. The modern office, by contrast, encourages a fragmented mediocrity.

macOS Ventura

Two Great Things In MacOS Ventura, by Nick Heer, Pixel Envy

Above all, what I am most surprised by in MacOS Ventura is that the maturity of this operating system has not stopped rethinking even basic elements like window management and printing. Neither improvement has gotten in my way or made me feel uncertain about how to use MacOS, either. That is a hard balance to strike and I think these are both successful examples of making big changes that do not break workflows in their quest for improvement.

The Ventura Problem, by Rui Carmo, Tao Of Mac

Like pretty much every single filesystem-related weirdness we’ve been subject to throughout the history of macOS, it may look like an edge case to the Finder team at Apple, but it is a breaking issue for anyone using their otherwise perfectly good Mac for a perfectly normal thing that just works on every other operating system.

Apple TV 4K

Apple TV 4K (2022) Review: Unmatched Power, Unrealized Potential, by Chris Welch, The Verge

It’s a speed demon of a streaming box that ticks off all the crucial boxes if you want to enjoy the richest possible home theater experience. And the price is now more reasonable. It’s still more expensive than the budget Roku and Fire TV streaming sticks of the world, but that added cost frees you from ads plastered on the homescreen and comes with some reassurance that Apple isn’t as interested in tracking your viewing habits at every waking moment like some rivals. If you count yourself as an A/V nerd, I wouldn’t hesitate to spend the extra 20 bucks for the 128GB model that includes ethernet and Thread support. It will only help the Apple TV 4K last longer in your media cabinet.

The 2022 Apple TV 4K Offers Solid Updates To The Best Streamer, by Darrell Etherington, TechCrunch

Was the Apple TV 4K crying out for a hardware refresh? Definitely not. The outgoing version is an excellent performer that will continue to satisfy the needs of many customers for a long time yet. But the 2022 model adds some great hardware improvements that, along with the price cut, make it a no-brainer for anyone looking to get their first Apple TV or upgrade an aging Apple TV HD model.

Stuff

Apple Updates GarageBand, MainStage And Logic Pro With New Features, by Andrew Orr, AppleInsider

All three apps help musicians create music in the studio or live onstage with their MacBook. They received improvements to stability and bug fixes, along with updates to unique features in each tool.

New Pixelmator Pro 3.1 Adds macOS Ventura And AVIF Image Support, by Andrew Orr, AppleInsider

AVIF, or AV1 Image File Format, is a next-generation image format designed to produce high-quality images for the web with small file sizes.

Apple added support for AVIF files in Safari on macOS Ventura, and Pixelmator Pro can now open and edit these images.

Timery 1.5 Updated Released With Lock Screen Widgets, Live Activities, New Shortcuts Actions, And More, by John Voorhees, MacStories

It was already easy to track your time with Timery, but its developer, Joe Hribar, has gone to great lengths to make managing timers and monitoring them easier than ever. Timery is also a stellar example of the power of adapting an app to every Apple platform and implementing the latest technologies on each.

Edison Email Adds New Smart Subscription Insights And Timed Summary Options, by Bradley Chambers, 9to5Mac

Subscription insights will help you see email clutter before it overloads your inbox, and a new Summary Timer helps take control over when your favorite subscriptions arrive in inboxes.

DuckDuckGo's Mac Browser Is Amazing For YouTube, But Still Needs Work, by Jason Cross, Macworld

Perhaps my favorite new feature of the DuckDuckGo desktop browser is something the company calls “Duck Player.” It opens YouTube videos in a nice large distraction-free view, and while it still uses the YouTube player, most of the tracking and identification code is blocked. It strips out all the targeted ad code and cookies. You can still get ads, they just won’t be targeted at you based on your web use, but rather simply ads that paid to be on videos that match certain criteria. You know, the way advertising used to be on the web–ads pay to be on certain content, not to reach targeted individuals.

Develop

Better Developer Platforms Are The Key To Better Digital Products, by Ken Mugrage, MIT Technology Review

The move to thinking about “products” instead of “projects” should be welcomed when it comes to developer tooling. At a time when hiring and retaining talent—technical or otherwise—is one of the biggest concerns for organizations, paying attention to the needs of internal customers can only be a good thing.

Notes

Oy: Air New Zealand Bans Apple AirTags, by Ben Schlappig, One Mile at a Time

Air New Zealand has become the latest airline to ban AirTags, though is seemingly not enforcing this restriction. The airline is interpreting the general restriction on lithium batteries in checked bags to also apply to AirTags. The airline isn’t technically wrong based on existing guidance, but this isn’t how the industry is overwhelmingly interpreting the current rules.

The Adobe And Pantone Color Apocalypse: Frequently Asked Questions, by Dan Vincent, Userlandia

If you’ve been reading some parts of the internet lately, you might’ve seen a brouhaha over the quote-unquote “fact” that Pantone has “copyrighted colors.” They’re forcing Adobe to pay them oodles of money for color swatches, and Adobe said “no you.” Now users have to pay $15 a month just to use COLORS? Madame is outraged!

Well, it’s more complicated than that. The reality is that the world of color is difficult, even for those of us that see and feel it every day. Many working designers don’t know all the fiendish intricacies surrounding the tools of their trade. Your real questions are “how does this affect me” and “what can I do about it?” Or maybe you’re used to picking colors from all those swatch books in Photoshop and wondered why it’s such a big deal that they went away.

Apple Has Put Hiring Freezes In Place For The Next Year, Insiders Say, by Reed Alexander, Claire Atkinson, Insider

Staff across divisions, the sources said, have been told the company won't be onboarding new hires for a number of months, possibly through the end of the company's fiscal year, which is September 2023.

[...]

Officially, Apple has said it's taking a cautious approach to onboarding new recruits.

Apple Employees At Unionized Maryland Store File Labor Board Complaint After Being Denied Benefits, by Juli Clover, MacRumors

The unionized Towson Apple Store in Maryland today filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board after its employees were excluded from some benefits that Apple recently introduced for non-union workers, reports Bloomberg.

Scottish Apple Store Staff Make History After Becoming First In The UK To Unionise, by Catriona Stewart, The Herald

Glasgow staff had said a priority would be to push for a pay rise from their £12 an hour income should union recognition be achieved.

In response, Apple said it is one of the highest paying retailers in Scotland.

Supply Fears As China Lockdown Hits World’s Largest iPhone Factory, by Verna Yu, The Guardian

Chinese authorities have announced a seven-day coronavirus lockdown in the area around the world’s largest iPhone factory, stoking concern that production will be severely curtailed ahead of the Christmas period.

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I've learnt programming when I was young because this is something that has an obvious answer: either something works, or it doesn't, and no amount of arguing can make change black to white or vice-versa. This is also why I enjoyed doing mathematics.

(Of course, I was naive. And I was wrong.)

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Thanks for reading.

The Willingness-to-Spend Edition Wednesday, November 2, 2022

Apple's Products Are More Expensive Than Ever–and Prices Are Only Going To Go Up, by Jason Snell, Macworld

Sure, maybe in emerging markets, Apple’s price increases are met with a shrug because it’s appealing to the most wealthy people in those countries, and there’s a limited supply of those. But maybe it also reveals something about Apple’s brand and people’s willingness to spend more to get Apple products. Sure, Apple’s products are pricey now–but if they were even more expensive, would we still buy them? Early results say yes.

What Are Apple’s Audiobook Rules, Anyway?, by Jacob Kastrenakes, The Verge

I’m not writing this to call out Amazon for skirting Apple’s rules — I’m writing this because… well, what even are Apple’s rules? Apple approved Spotify’s email approach, then later retracted the approval and said the app needed to change. Has the company also missed a rule-breaking behavior from one of the biggest e-commerce companies on the planet? Or is there some kind of wiggle-room exception here because Audible is a subscription service?

The Unintended Consequences Of Apple’s Fertility Tech, by Amanda Hoover, Wired

When the new Apple Watch was unveiled this fall, it came with an intriguing feature: the ability to estimate whether someone had ovulated by measuring their temperature from their wrist. Apple said that the feature could help people understand their bodies, or help people know the optimal time to try to get pregnant. It also warned that this information should not be used as a form of birth control. Problem is, Apple says one thing and people do another.

Stuff

iPhone 14 Pro Camera Review: A Small Step, A Huge Leap, by Sebastiaan de With, Lux

But what Apple has delivered in the iPhone 14 Pro is a camera that performs in all ways closer to a ‘proper’ camera than any phone ever has. At times, it can capture images that truly render unlike a phone camera — instead, they are what I would consider a real photo, not from a phone, but from a camera.

'HazeOver' Dimming Tool For macOS Updated With Support For Shortcuts And Focus Filters, by Filipe Espósito, 9to5Mac

HazeOver is a productivity tool that lets users dim background windows to focus on just one task – which can be useful for those working on a large display with multiple windows open at the same time. The app was updated this week with many new features, including support for macOS Ventura, Shortcuts, and Focus Filters.

Birda App Turns Your Smartphone Into An Ornithologist, by Kehl Bayern, Light Stalking

Millions of people worldwide do and for most people, it can be quite difficult to distinguish one bird from another.

It can even be difficult for the experts themselves. For both groups of people, the new Birda app hopes to take some of the mystery out of identifying birds while robbing neither of the joy of discovery.

Develop

You Should Propose More Things, by Allen Pike

The point is: once you understand the problem at hand, your team is most effective when people are talking about proposals – not when they’re waiting around hoping somebody will propose something.

So go ahead. Propose something.

Notes

Adobe Just Held A Bunch Of Colors Hostage, by Chris Stokel-Walker, Wired

Aaron Perzanowski, coauthor of The End of Ownership, researches intellectual and personal property law at the University of Michigan Law School. He says the standoff shows “how the shift from products to services erodes consumer ownership and puts us at the mercy of largely unaccountable companies.” He adds that Pantone has no underlying intellectual property rights when it comes to either individual colors, or the color libraries of which they are a part. “There’s no copyright protection available for individual colors, and the limited trademark rights for specific colors don’t apply here either,” Perzanowski says.

A Tale Of Apple’s Two Yiddish Keyboards, by Zach Golden, Forward

Apple is known for taking great care with their products, down to the most minute details; and normally, Apple does make distinctions between dialects and layouts in their languages. It is a mystery how their Yiddish keyboards turned out so different, without any explanation. Did they find that Hasidic Yiddish writers are more likely to type on their phones, and Standard Yiddish users on their computers? Or did their teams not communicate? It’s hard to know.

Rewind App Wants Your Mac To Record Every Moment Of Your Life, by Malcolm Owen, AppleInsider

Rewind claims to offer a way for Mac users to keep track of everything they've seen, said, or heard through their desktop, a history that could then be searched for references in the future.

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Apple seems to be differentiating the top-tiers of its product lines further from the less-expensive offerings. That has always been the case for Mac computers; most customers simply doesn't need the power of the Power Mac / Mac Pro. And it seems that the iPhone Pro and iPad Pro are also moving into being much more feature-rich products, with matching higher price tags.

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Thanks for reading.

The Not-Locked-into-Ecosystem Edition Tuesday, November 1, 2022

With Apple’s New Home App, It's Easier Than Ever To Make Your House A Smart Home, by Jacob Krol, Parade

A key advantage for Apple Home and Matter, as a whole, is that you’re not locked into just one ecosystem with a Matter accessory. Dantas dubs it as “giving users more choice and flexibility, and really helping fulfill the vision that matter has for greater interoperability.” And that’s a pretty big step for the smart home world.

macOS Ventura: Here's How The New Clock App Can Be Useful On Mac, by Zac Hall, 9to5Mac

The Mac gains Apple’s Clock app in macOS Ventura, and it’s a surprisingly useful addition. The new app includes proper Mac integration, Siri control, and more.

The Best Thing About The New AirPods Pro Is The Extra Small Eartips, by Jay Peters, The Verge

My favorite change to the new AirPods Pro is perhaps the smallest one. Apple’s second-generation AirPods Pro come with a new extra small eartip size, and they finally make Apple’s pro wireless earbuds a near-perfect fit for me.

Stuff

How To Get The After Dark Classic Screensaver For macOS Ventura, by Chip Loder, AppleInsider

After Dark Classic Set 1.2 is a fun and inexpensive way to get that vintage After Dark feel on your modern Mac.

Pantone Colors Now Cost $15/month In Adobe Products – With Old Files Otherwise Unusable, by Ben Lovejoy, 9to5Mac

Pantone colors have long been free to use in Photoshop, InDesign, and Illustrator – but that’s now changed. If you want to use the industry-standard colors in future, you’ll need to pay a $15/month subscription.

Worse, if you have existing PSD files which use the color set, you may find that they have been replaced with black if you don’t buy the subscription.

Notes

Apple Sues Over Rejection Of 'Smart Keyboard' Trademark, by Reuters

Apple Inc is entitled to a federal trademark for its "Smart Keyboard" iPad accessory and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office was wrong to decide otherwise, the tech giant told a Virginia federal court in a lawsuit against the agency on Friday.

Apple said the PTO erred when it found that "Smart Keyboard" is a generic phrase instead of a distinctive name that customers would associate with Apple's accessory.

Apple’s Online Store And Information Systems Chiefs Are Leaving, by Mark Gurman, Bloomberg

Apple Inc.’s top executives in charge of its online retail store and information-systems divisions are stepping down, according to people with knowledge of the matter, bringing changes to two key parts of the tech giant’s operations.

[...]

The job running Apple’s online store has been a revolving door for several years. The original head of the business, Jennifer Bailey, left that role in 2014 to launch Apple Pay. She now oversees that feature alongside Apple Wallet, the Apple Card and other consumer financial services. Her replacement, Bob Kupbens, left after two years for EBay Inc. His successor lasted a few years and was replaced by Matthiasson.

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Dear Apple, you need to figure how to give your products better names. You are the company who gave us great names like Macintosh, PowerBook, and Safari. Sure, there was also CyberDog, but that's probably because the actual product is not great.

The Air has lost its meaning, and calling everything Smart and Magic just confuses the heck out of everyone.

And then, there is Apple TV, TV, and Apple TV+.

Maybe the PTO is doing you a favor.

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Thanks for reading.