Six Colors
Six Colors

by Jason Snell & Dan Moren

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The Max launch and prioritizing tech stacks; Netflix’s ad viewers and the future of ad-free streaming; and in Sports Corner the regional sports network collapse has begun. Also, we announce our own plus—Downstream+!


Our current device-charging setups, how we manage our windows, our weather apps of choice, and the travel items that have saved our bacon.



by Jason Snell

Reddit has it in for third-party clients

Every now and then I type something into Spotlight on the iPad and I see that Twitterrific is still installed. I can’t bear to uninstall it, but since Twitter killed third-party client apps, I don’t use Twitter very often. Maybe I check one of my lists once a day. That’s it. And I used Twitter a lot—with my third-party client of choice.

The geniuses who own Reddit have apparently decided to walk the same path as Twitter. Here’s the report from Christian Selig, the developer of Apollo, a leading (and beloved) Reddit app:

Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing. Bad news for third-party apps, their announced pricing is close to Twitter’s pricing, and Apollo would have to pay Reddit $20 million per year to keep running as-is.

Apollo made 7 billion requests last month, which would put it at about 1.7 million dollars per month, or 20 million US dollars per year. Even if I only kept subscription users, the average Apollo user uses 344 requests per day, which would cost $2.50 per month, which is over double what the subscription currently costs, so I’d be in the red every month.

Not only is the price ridiculous, but (as Selig shows with some back-of-the-envelope math) it’s far beyond what Reddit itself makes on its users. As with Twitter, there is a path for Reddit to walk that allows Selig to build a sustainable app business and for Reddit to be compensated for its service. But this isn’t it.

If Reddit continues on this path, it may discover that some of its most devoted users are devoted because they love Apollo. And if it vanishes, many of those users will too.

—Linked by Jason Snell

By Dan Moren

The Back Page: Release Notes for Apple Reality 1.0.1

We’re delighted you’ve chosen to embark upon Apple Reality. Today is the first day of a whole new world for you, and we hope that you enjoy living in it as much as we did creating it.

With Apple Reality, we’ve taken it upon ourselves to not only provide you with an immersive experience but to actually improve on reality itself.

We’re committed to making Apple Reality the best reality you can experience, and to that end we plan regular updates to add new features, improve existing capabilities, and fix any bugs that may arise. A major update coming later this year will add one of our most requested features: the ability to experience multiple realities.

Today, we’re releasing Reality 1.0.1. This launch-day update is recommend for all Reality users and includes the following enhancements, bug fixes, and security updates:

  • Corrected inconsistent rendering of sky that could make it appear white or gray and fixed issue where it could leak.

This is a post limited to Six Colors members.


by Jason Snell

How I edit podcasts (2023 update)

I’ve updated another eight-year-old article of mine, bringing my discussion of my podcast editing technique a bit more up to date.

Interestingly, my methodology hasn’t really changed much. I still use the Remove Silence command in Logic to separate sounds into visible blocks, and then edit left to right, looking for collisions and interruptions.

The big changes since 2015: I’ve abandoned Skype for Zoom, and Skype Call Recorder for Audio Hijack. And Ferrite Recording Studio on iPad is now in the mix. But my article also covers editing in GarageBand, since it’s free. It’s been literally a decade since I pointed out that GarageBand would be fantastic for podcast editing with a few very small feature additions that already exist in its big brother, Logic. Unfortunately, Apple has never bothered to add them.

—Linked by Jason Snell


by Jason Snell

‘MLB to produce and broadcast Padres games’

After the failure of bankrupt Diamond Sports to pay licensing fees, Major League Baseball will take over all San Diego Padres broadcasting starting Wednesday:

As a result of the new arrangement, Padres fans can now obtain a new direct-to-consumer streaming subscription for $19.99 per month or $74.99 for the rest of the season by registering at MLB.TV.  This offer is only for Padres fans in the Club’s Home Television Territory and is a separate service than the MLB.TV out of market package.  By offering a direct-to-consumer streaming option on MLB.TV in the Club’s territory for the first time, MLB is able to lift the blackout for Padres games previously distributed on Bally Sports San Diego.  Fans can also find more information about the availability of Padres games at Padres.com/tunein.

The oncoming failure of regional sports networks in the face of cord cutting is one of the more interesting media stories of our times. While some local cable channels have begun to sell games to cord cutters—Red Sox broadcaster NESN was the first—this is the first time that Major League Baseball itself has taken over all production for a team’s games, and is streaming them directly in the MLB app. (For continuity’s sake, the games will also be on local cable, satellite, and Internet TV providers in the Padres’ geographic territory.)

It sure feels like a milestone moment in the future of sports broadcasting—and the unwinding of the exclusivity of cable TV for sports broadcasting.

—Linked by Jason Snell

By Dan Moren for Macworld

A lot will be announced at WWDC, but wearables will steal the show

After months of rumors and speculation, Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference is imminent. In just a few short days, all that rumor and speculation will finally be answered, and we can make way for…new rumor and speculation. (At least then it will be based on things we’ve actually seen.)

But as we enjoy our last hurrah before the hurricane of news and updates hits, it’s time to compile a look at what exactly we might be expecting when Apple executives appear (in a no doubt slickly compiled video) at Apple Park next week, and what isn’t likely to make the cut.

Continue reading on Macworld ↦


Apple Classical launches on Android before Mac and iPad

Zac Hall at 9to5Mac:

Prioritizing Apple Music Classical for Android over Apple’s other platforms does make sense, though. The separate app is based on Apple’s acquisition of Primephonic, which was a standalone classical music subscription service, and the Android app went away with Apple’s purchase. That’s similar to how Apple Music for Android has served as a replacement for Beats Music for Android.

Well, yes and no. I’m sure the Apple Classical app leverages a lot of Primephonic’s work, but just looking at the app also makes it clear that it’s drawing heavily from Apple Music; it seems unlikely that it’s more technically challenging to bring Apple Classical to the Mac and iPad than it is for Android.

That said, Apple could very well have metrics from both Apple Music and Primephonic showing which devices people use to listen to classical music, and it decided to prioritize where there were more users. I also wonder if developers of Android apps at Apple might have somewhat more availability than engineers working on apps for its own platforms—especially right now.

Despite all that, the lack of support for macOS, iPadOS, tvOS, and CarPlay definitely feels a bit awkward. Here’s hoping a subsequent release will not only improve the Classical app for iOS (which hasn’t been substantively updated since launch) but also bring users of the rest of Apple’s platforms into the fold.

—Linked by Dan Moren

It’s time for our eighth annual competition regarding what will happen at Apple’s WWDC keynote! Jason and Myke will be there in person—but what will be announced? Is the Apple mixed-reality headset really going to happen? Will there be room for new Mac hardware? And what do we anticipate for macOS, iOS, iPadOS, and watchOS?


By John Moltz

This Week in Apple: The flaw of averages

Hey, it’s our antepenultimate week talking about the Apple headset speculatively! New apps are a-shipping and generative AI asks “How many fingers am I holding up?” The answer may surprise you.

Will the realOS please stand up?

Cue the “IT’S HAPPENING!” gifs because it turns out that all these headset rumors have legs, unlike Meta’s offering.

[rimshot]

If you needed more proof of the actual thingness of Apple’s headset, this week did not disappoint. According to one of the outlets that received an invitation, Apple has invited a number of XR media outlets to WWDC. This is the first time the company has done so.

So, either Apple will be announcing a headset at WWDC or this is a really amazing troll. Either way, should be exciting.

Apple has also gone through a flurry of trademarking activities, including scooping up xrOS as well as realityproOS and realOS. Rest assured it will be called something.…

This is a post limited to Six Colors members.



By Jason Snell

Apple TV’s multiview feature is so good, I want it everywhere

Twice as much baseball, if you want it.

Sometimes you want to watch more than one thing on your TV.

This impulse was initially satisfied by the introduction of TVs with picture-in-picture functionality, but as access to TV began to come from various decoder boxes, picture-in-picture became less practical.

In recent years, set-top-box software has become more sophisticated, home Internet bandwidth has gotten faster, and multi-view TV has returned as an option. Apple introduced picture-in-picture to tvOS, and some apps like ESPN and Fubo have built their own features to allow you to tile multiple live video streams at one time.

Three MLS games at once on Apple TV.

With tvOS 16.5, Apple has added multi-view functionality to the TV app for its live sports broadcasts. This past weekend I was able to try it out with both Friday Night Baseball and Saturday MLS games.

I use Fubo’s multi-view feature all the time; Apple’s is similar but with some uniquely Apple touches. (For example, every box has rounded corners.) To enter multi-view while watching a live event, bring up the player controls and choose the new multi-view option (it looks like a four-square grid; the classic picture-in-picture feature is also still available).

When you enter multi-view, a row of available live events will slide up from the bottom of the screen. The event you’re currently watching will be selected, and you can click on other events to add them to the stack. You can watch two, three, or four events at once and even select which layout you’d prefer. (For example, you can have four events displayed in four tiles taking up quadrants of your TV—at 4K resolution, it’s like you’ve got four 1080 HD TVs!—or you can opt to display one feed at a large size with three others as thumbnails stacked up to the right.)

You can switch audio between feeds by moving around using the Apple TV remote. Clicking on the selected feed will slide it forward into full-screen; tapping the back button will return the interface to multi-view. It’s all pretty straightforward and easy to figure out.

Unfortunately, this excellent implementation is currently limited to the TV app itself. That’s great for Apple’s sports ambitions, but Apple is also the owner of the entire tvOS platform—and this feature should really be a part of tvOS itself. I watch live sports on the Fubo, MLB, ESPN, Peacock, and Paramount+ apps, sometimes at the same time.

The TV app’s multi-view feature is good. So good that I want it everywhere, and I’ll be crossing my fingers that Apple might offer such support in the next version of tvOS.


Whether we’d be comfortable in a driverless taxi, our thoughts on the U.S. Surgeon General’s advisory regarding kids and social media, using Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro on the iPad, and the last time technology blew us away.



By Jason Snell for Macworld

Why Apple hasn’t missed the boat in AI… yet

Everyone wants to talk about AI. Most of them don’t know what it is, but they still want to talk about it. Who’s got it, and who doesn’t. What industries it’s ripe to disrupt. And the one company that’s not in the middle of that conversation is Apple.

Viral images generated by Stable Diffusion and pathological chatbots from OpenAI, Microsoft, and Google are the story of the day. Apple, meanwhile, has nothing. Or perhaps, considering the current state of Siri, less than nothing.

Apple’s nowhere when it comes to AI. That’s the narrative. The thing is, it’s not true. At least, not yet.

Continue reading on Macworld ↦



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