by Jason Snell

April 17, 2023 7:40 AM PT

Apple’s quad box arrives in new tvOS beta

Benjamin Mayo of 9to5Mac took Apple TV’s new multi-view feature for a spin:

With tvOS 16.5 beta, Apple is testing a new feature for the Apple TV app on the Apple TV 4K set-top box: the ability to watch more than one game at a time.

Multiview allows users to watch up to four simultaneous streams at once. The feature is available for live sports streamed through the TV app, like MLB Friday Night Baseball and MLS Season Pass …

The “quad box” is the killer feature on Fubo, my TV provider of choice, and it’s coming to YouTube TV just in time for its integration of the NFL Sunday Ticket package. Given Apple’s investment in MLS, it makes sense there. Sports is the perfect application for watching more than one live channel at a time.

In the long run, though, this needs to be a tvOS-wide feature. Right now if there’s a game on Fubo and another on ESPN+ and a third on MLB and a fourth on the TV app… I can watch one at a time or, if I am very lucky and it’s the right combination of apps, two at a time—one in a tiny picture-in-picture view. The OS should put it all together. Maybe this is a step in that direction… or maybe it’s just something Apple had to build for MLS. I hope it’s the first one.

—Linked by Jason Snell

by Jason Snell

April 17, 2023 7:31 AM PT

Apple Cash becomes Apple savings account

Apple Newsroom:

Starting today, Apple Card users can choose to grow their Daily Cash rewards with a Savings account from Goldman Sachs, which offers a high-yield APY of 4.15 percent — a rate that’s more than 10 times the national average. With no fees, no minimum deposits, and no minimum balance requirements, users can easily set up and manage their Savings account directly from Apple Card in Wallet.

Essentially, Apple is turning the limbo state of Apple Pay Cash (which is where all the money earned from Apple Card rewards) into an actual savings account with a high interest rate, at least for Apple Card customers. (The account, like the card, is from Goldman Sachs.)

I am not a financial-industry analyst, so I’m curious about what the motivation for this product might be. My first thought is that by offering a good interest rate, it will encourage Apple Card users to keep their money in Apple’s accounts rather than transfer them back to their home banks. And I assume there’s a long game here involving Apple encouraging people to be comfortable leaving their money with Apple, to be extended with future financial products.

—Linked by Jason Snell

by Jason Snell

April 15, 2023 9:54 PM PT

The end of the computer magazine

My old PC World counterpart, Harry McCracken, calls the time of death:

The April issues of Maximum PC and MacLife are currently on sale at a newsstand near you—assuming there is a newsstand near you. They’re the last print issues of these two venerable computer magazines, both of which date to 1996 (and were originally known, respectively, as Boot and MacAddict). Starting with their next editions, both publications will be available in digital form only.

But I’m not writing this article because the dead-tree versions of Maximum PC and MacLife are no more. I’m writing it because they were the last two extant U.S. computer magazines that had managed to cling to life until now. With their abandonment of print, the computer magazine era has officially ended.

My personal computer magazine journey ended nearly nine years ago, but the final curtain has now fallen.

—Linked by Jason Snell

by Jason Snell

April 12, 2023 2:49 PM PT

‘Make Something Wonderful’

The Steve Jobs Archive has released a book, edited by Leslie Berlin, with a small selection of Steve Jobs’s interviews, speeches, and emails—many of them to himself. There’s a limited print run being given to Apple, Pixar, and Disney employees, but anyone can download a copy for free from Apple Books or from the Steve Jobs Archive website in ePub format, or you can read it on the web in its entirety.

I have to admit that the existence of the Steve Jobs Archive generates mixed feelings in me. It’s dedicated to curating the work of an important historical figure, but also feels a bit like it’s designed to be a hagiographic tool for influencing how Jobs is remembered by history. (Given how history tends to flatten people’s life stories and accomplishments into caricature or outright falsehood, I entirely understand the impulse.)

In any event, “Make Something Wonderful: Steve Jobs in His Own Words” is a good, short read. It’s neither a dry business-school tome nor some sort of detailed historical analysis of his email trail. Instead, it’s a carefully curated collection that ranges from the familiar to the obscure.

I found the first two sections of the book, covering his early days through his return to Apple, to be the most compelling. Once Jobs returns to Apple and Pixar is riding high, the text tends to become a bit more familiar set of keynote addresses and memos from the CEO.

The highlight of the book, however, is his Stanford commencement address from 2005. It’s a remarkable speech to begin with, one that will likely be quoted for years to come. But the book also provides Jobs’s notes to himself as he began planning what to say in the speech! (He just kept sending himself emails whenever he thought of something, and because of that quirk, we get to peek inside his thought process.)

“Make Something Wonderful” is worth your time, even if it’s just to marvel at the beautifully executed web version.

—Linked by Jason Snell

by Jason Snell

April 7, 2023 3:16 PM PT

Andy Baio on designing for colorblindness

Like me, Andy Baio is colorblind. People don’t get how many design elements rely on color:

For some people, colorblindness is a serious liability that closes doors on career dreams. It’s hard to become a pilot, train conductor, or pathologist if you can’t differentiate colors in critical instruments, signals, or tissue samples. For others, it seriously impacts their day-to-day ability to do their jobs, like surveyors spotting flags, doctors looking at skin conditions, or electricians looking for colored wires.

But for me, it’s just a lifelong series of unnecessarily confusing interactions, demonstrating that the world wasn’t designed for people like me.

Accessibility comes in lots of forms. I have flabbergasted people by explaining that the little charging light that turns from amber to green when a device is completely charged is utterly indecipherable to me. And my colorblindness is apparently far less severe than Andy’s.

If you are a web designer or app designer, you should always keep colorblind people in mind.

—Linked by Jason Snell