In my very first post to this site, I linked to an article about how the original “Star Trek” USS Enterprise model had been moved out of the Smithsonian for a loving restoration. Seeing that model was the highlight of my childhood trip to the Air & Space Museum, despite all the historic, non-fictional stuff on display there.
Long relegated to the Air and Space Museum’s basement gift shop, “Star Trek’s” USS Enterprise has moved to the central atrium. The newly restored, 11-foot-long studio model of the fictional starship, used for special-effects shots in the original TV series, will be unveiled Tuesday. (Just in time for the museum’s all-night 40th birthday celebration.)
“It’s been brought into the light because, over time, its historical significance has grown,” museum conservator Malcolm Collum says. “This is a 50-year-old model and it was starting to show structural failures. It made me really nervous. It could have catastrophically fallen apart.”
I can’t wait to go back and see it in all its glory.
27 June 1997 marked the last day in the worst financial quarter in Apple history, in which Apple lost $56 million – effectively bringing an end to then-CEO Gil Amelio’s 500 days running the company.
Lately, people have been wondering about Apple’s financial performance and whether the company is still growing or not. That’s a fair question, but it’s still good to remember that Apple is hardly faltering. Losing $56 million?1That’s what a bad quarter looks like.
Cult of Mac also points out that the company lost $1.6 billion during Gil Amelio’s tenure as CEO. So, you know, everybody who suggests Tim Cook needs to be replaced can put that in their pipe and smoke it. ↩
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Once upon a time, all Apple wanted to talk about was apps. Then it wanted to talk about services. Now it wants to talk about apps… inside services… inside apps.
I’ve gotta say: it’s been a confusing progression.
Let’s back up. One of the most significant announcements to come out of this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference was that Apple was opening up several of its core services–iMessage, Maps, and Siri–to third-party developers. While each of those systems have strategic applications, they also all happen to be services that work particularly well with one of the company’s other burgeoning platforms: watchOS.
“We’re discontinuing the Apple Thunderbolt Display,” Apple told iMore. “It will be available through Apple.com, Apple’s retail stores and Apple Authorized Resellers while supplies last. There are a number of great third-party options available for Mac users.”
It’s possible that Apple will release a standalone display later this year—it’s hard to see why the company wouldn’t sell a high-margin external display product if it’s got one ready—but there are some technical hurdles to overcome. It may also be true that Apple’s just out of the standalone display business. (It is, at least for now.)
Apple won’t provide support for the Republican National Convention because of Donald Trump: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/06/apple-wont-aid-gop-convention-over-trump-224513
But Tim Cook will host a Paul Ryan fundraiser: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/06/tim-cook-apple-paul-ryan-fundraiser-224554
We discuss home automation and Apple’s Home app: http://www.macrumors.com/2016/06/13/apple-announces-new-homekit/
Craig Federighi and Phil Schiller were on the live edition of the Talk Show at WWDC: http://daringfireball.net/thetalkshow/2016/06/17/ep-158
There’s also a transcript: http://www.imore.com/our-full-transcript-talk-show-wwdc-2016-phil-schiller-and-craig-federighi
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The appeal of calling the time, for adults, was more practical. After an electrical outage, for instance, you might use the service to reset your clock. And though Verizon discontinued the line–along with a related telephone weather service–five years ago, the U.S. Naval Observatory still offers a time-by-phone service. (Call 202-762-1401 today, and you’ll hear a pleasant ticking sound followed by the announcement of the exact time, delivered in an old-timey-broadcasting voice.)
Not only does it still exist, but people still use it.
“We get 3 million calls per year!” said Demetrios Matsakis, the chief scientist for time services at the Naval Observatory. “And there’s an interesting sociology to it. They don’t call as much on the weekend, and the absolute minimum time they call is Christmas. On big holidays, people don’t care about the time. But we get a big flood of calls when we switch to Daylight [saving] time and back.”
I have fond memories of calling up the time lady as a kid; I think it was one of those things that my mom had me do to distract me. Later on, my friend and I had a habit of prank-calling the telephone operators and playing sound effects–once, one called back, though thankfully she was laughing pretty hard.
(Weirdly enough, I actually saw Matsakis speak at Balticon last month, though he was talking more about general understandings of time and its portrayal in science-fiction.)
It’s been a week since macOS Sierra was announced by Apple, and I’ve gotten a chance to spend a few days using it. If you’ve only seen the highlights from Apple’s keynote, though, you may have missed a bunch of cool features that have flown beneath the radar. Here’s a look at some interesting features that you might have missed.
“The kernel cache doesn’t contain any user info, and by unencrypting it we’re able to optimize the operating system’s performance without compromising security,” an Apple spokesperson told TechCrunch.
As a freelancer who’s had to start keeping meticulous track of his income and expenses, my least favorite thing is dealing with receipts. To date I’d been using Scanbot on those occasions when I need to take a picture of a receipt and save it for later records, but the latest Dropbox update may obviate the need for a separate app, since it now allows for much the same functionality.
Yes, many of the scanning apps already on the market have many more features than Dropbox does, but not having to rely on a second app may be attractive to many folks (me included).
And while I’m not sure if the feature came in this update or a previous one (the company is of the “opaque release notes” school on the App Store), Dropbox is now a registered document provider extension in iOS, which means it’s available from the standard Document Picker. Huzzah!
Update: That document provider support seems to only be partial. I was able to save a PDF from Mail into Dropbox using the Document Picker, but as reader David pointed out, trying to open a document from Dropbox using the picker still doesn’t work.
Note: This story has not been updated for several years.
Excited about the public beta of macOS Sierra? Don’t forget to read my lengthy hands-on preview, which I wrote late last month based on the first developer beta. It’s all still in there!
Note: This story has not been updated for several years.
Earlier today, I went to play a song in Music on my iPhone. I’d bought it a few weeks ago, so it should have been in my Recently Added list, but when I scrolled through, there was no sign of it. I tried searching the library. It didn’t show up.
So I searched for the album, which did show up…but only showed the other song I had from that album. Weird. I started to question my memory of whether or not I’d actually bought the song, so I checked the iTunes Store. Sure enough, when I went to the album in the store, that track was listed as Purchased. But then I checked the Purchased list in the iTunes Store: no dice. I checked the iTunes Library on my MacBook: only the other song from that album. I checked the iTunes Library on my iMac: same result. Was Apple secretly deleting my music?!1
By this point, I’d puzzled aloud about this on Twitter, and received a variety of suggestions, including updating my iCloud Music Library (there’s no longer an ability to Update iTunes Match independently), logging out and back in to the iTunes Store, and logging out and back into iCloud.2
Twitter user Mario eventually reminded me of the ability to hide purchases, which I actually wrote a story about almost a year ago. So I opened up my account, and sure enough found both albums by this artist listed as hidden–even though I swear one of them had still been visible the whole time. I unhid them and the missing track returned to my iOS device–as of this writing, it still hasn’t showed up again in the iTunes Library on my MacBook.
But here’s the bigger question for me: how the hell did these tracks end up as hidden? According to Apple’s tech doc on the feature, you have to go through a number of specific steps to hide tracks, which I’m pretty sure I would have remembered doing. (Also, I would have needed a reason to hide those tracks.) Have I accidentally invoked some keyboard shortcut that bypasses all those steps? Did a glitch in iCloud accidentally choose to hide them? Is it perhaps possible that a mischievous imp living somewhere in Apple’s network is giggling furiously with itself? All totally valid possibilities.
By this point, pleas to fix iTunes have become a broken record (ha ha), but the addition of Apple Music and integration of the iCloud Music Library have definitely upped the complexity of the system. What’s most damning about this is the silent nature of the issue: it wasn’t something I was going to notice until I went looking for that song. In the end, everything worked out, which is great, but it doesn’t exactly give me a lot of confidence in a system where, say, my Mac might want to automatically decide which files it can safely store in the cloud.
That was a bridge too far, so I left it as a last resort. ↩
[Dan Moren is the East Coast Bureau Chief of Six Colors, as well as an author, podcaster, and two-time Jeopardy! champion. You can find him on Mastodon at @dmoren@zeppelin.flights or reach him by email at dan@sixcolors.com. His next novel, the sci-fi adventure Eternity's Tomb, will be released in November 2026.]
The updates for the model are pretty mild: it has a slightly redesigned form factor that’s thinner and lighter, twice as much memory for faster navigation, and there’s a white option. There are also a few software updates, including the ability to export notes, built-in Bluetooth audio for accessibility, and a personalized home screen.
Other than that, the base Kindle still has the same touchscreen interface, weeks-long battery, and $100 retail price ($80 if you go with the ad-supported option). It does lack the 300-dpi screen of the higher end models, including the Paperwhite (which itself now has a white option as well).
[Dan Moren is the East Coast Bureau Chief of Six Colors, as well as an author, podcaster, and two-time Jeopardy! champion. You can find him on Mastodon at @dmoren@zeppelin.flights or reach him by email at dan@sixcolors.com. His next novel, the sci-fi adventure Eternity's Tomb, will be released in November 2026.]
In an unusual move, the iOS 10 beta’s kernel—i.e. the core of the operating system—is not encrypted, possibly to make it easier for security researchers to find vulnerabilities and report them to Apple, reports Technology Review:
Opening up its code would make sense in light of Apple’s recent faceoff with the FBI, Zdziarski notes. Originally the agency wanted Apple to help penetrate the San Bernardino iPhone, but it dropped that plan after finding a third party who could break into the device. It was the latest evidence of an expanding trade that sells software exploits to law enforcement (see “The Growing Industry Helping Governments Hack Terrorists, Criminals, and Political Opponents”). Opening up iOS for anyone to examine could weaken that market by making it harder for certain groups to hoard knowledge of vulnerabilities, Zdziarski says.
It’s a bold move, and I agree with Zdziarski that it’s like to be on purpose, since it being an accident is, as he puts it, a bit like “forgetting to put doors on an elevator.” This could also make it easier for folks to create jailbreaks, but in theory those same vulnerabilities should be easy for others to find as well.
Either way, I’m guessing we’ll know soon enough, depending on the state of the kernel in the next beta. Either way, it’s sure to be encrypted once again when the full version is released this fall.
Interesting piece from Kay Yin on Medium, describing the list of things that can apparently be recognized by the new Advanced Computer Vision in Photos, which Apple demoed at WWDC last week:
Photos app supports detecting 4,432 different scenes and objects. These scenes or objects can be searched for in all languages.
Additionally, you can search for various landmarks. For example, Photos can respond for search query of “Maho” (beach in Saint Martin), despite Photos is not programmed or trained to understand specific landmarks. Behind the scenes, Photos app first generates a generic categorization for the scene, “beach”, then searches through a built-in dictionary for all landmarks that has the name “beach” in its definition. Therefore, cleverly, despite Photos app knows nothing about “Maho” in particular, it is still able to return the right results. The same applies to nature scenes, water scenes and urban scenes.
There’s a truly huge list of all the things that Photos will be able to search for, from the everyday–”Corgi” and “Teapot”–to the somewhat less common–”Sousaphones” and “Bivouacking.” Also included are the seven facial expressions Photos can apparently recognize–Greedy, Disgust, Neutral, Scream, Smiling, Surprise, Suspicious–and the 33 categories of Memories.
Be right back: going to search for “suspicious corgis.”
Apple Inc. plans to break with its recent pattern of overhauling the design of its flagship iPhone every two years and make only subtle changes in the models it will release this fall, according to people familiar with the matter….
The biggest planned change in this year’s phones is the removal of the headphone plug, which will make the phone thinner and improve its water resistance… Apple plans bigger design changes for 2017, the 10th anniversary of the original iPhone.
I’m skeptical about any claims that a new iPhone model will only offer “subtle changes”—Apple usually makes major under-the-surface changes in years where the external design of the phone doesn’t change much.
That said, “The same as the last two years, but this time with no headphone jack!” is a pretty brutal summary.
Note: This story has not been updated for several years.
From the “finally” file, Sonos just released an iOS app update that adds support for music control from the lock screen. Now if your iOS app is locked, you can control the currently active Sonos device just as you can with other audio apps. Sonos has added some nice touches, like the name of the active player and the source of the music, overlaid on the album art.
And by picking up lock-screen support, this also means that you can also control Sonos players from the Now Playing glance on the Apple Watch.
I’ve been using a couple of Sonos speaker units for a little while now and need to write up my thoughts about the platform as a whole. Certainly, adding in support for AirPlay has improved my enjoyment. But in the meantime, if you’re a Sonos user, check out the app update. It will make you happy.
Note: This story has not been updated for several years.
Settlements from the Apple ebooks case are rolling out, at least to Amazon users. I just got this in my mailbox:
Dear Jason Snell,
You now have a credit of $78.61 in your Amazon account. Apple, Inc. (Apple) funded this credit to settle antitrust lawsuits brought by State Attorneys General and Class Plaintiffs about the price of electronic books (eBooks). As a result of this Settlement, qualifying eBook purchases from any retailer are eligible for a credit. You previously received an email informing you that you were eligible for this credit. The Court in charge of these cases has now approved the Apple Settlement. If you did not receive that email or for more information about your credit, please visit www.amazon.com/applebooksettlement.
I got $43.12 from the settlement. Which is awesome cos that’s like 3 free books
