Apple updated the MacBook, just not as much as we’d have liked: https://sixcolors.com/post/2016/04/apple-updates-macbook-rose-gold-no-thunderbolt-3/
Moltz is looking at new routers: http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-wi-fi-router/
Lex just bought a new one, even if he isn’t using it: http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-wi-fi-extender/
The Echo is on sale, but Moltz still isn’t getting one: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00X4WHP5E
Dan has a new iPad keyboard, the Logitech Type+: http://www.amazon.com/Logitech-Protective-Integrated-Keyboard-Electric/dp/B00ZT2WBLU
Moltz still likes his Zagg for the most part: http://www.amazon.com/ZAGG-Backlit-Bluetooth-Keyboard-ID6ZFK-BB0/dp/B00PZW9TX2
Lex’s kids are getting into Minecraft: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/17/magazine/the-minecraft-generation.html
Did you know Moltz wrote part of a book about Minecraft? It’s true: http://www.peachpit.com/store/visual-guide-to-minecraft-dig-into-minecraft-with-this-9780134033150
Our thanks also go to Harry’s (harrys.com). Harry’s sells premium shaving products for much less than those crappy blades that you have to get someone to unlock from a cabinet. Get $5 off your first order with coupon code “REBOUND”. Don’t wait, get the shave you deserve.
For a product that doesn’t exist and might not come to market for many years, there’s still an awful lot of talk about the Apple Car. Just this week there have been reports about a new European home for Apple Car development and a large feature package from a major magazine trying to envision what the Apple Car will look like.
It’s always fun to imagine future Apple products, so long as you remember that wild speculation is exactly that. But the Apple Car is worth considering as a way to understand some of the decisions Apple makes today and to envision what kind of company it might be tomorrow.
It turns out you can’t add devices to an iCloud account without triggering an alert because that analysis happens on your device, and doesn’t rely (totally) on a push notification from the server. Apple put the security logic in each device, even though the system still needs a central authority. Basically, they designed the system to not trust them.
Fascinating look into a system with really solid security that’s more or less invisible to the end user. The end result: it’s really hard for anybody—criminals or the government— to basically log a “phantom” device into your iMessage account and get copies of your messages.
Note: This story has not been updated for several years.
I’ve been using Comcast’s Stream TV service for a few months now, but it’ll really start earning its keep this weekend when Game of Thrones returns.
On the whole it’s fine. There’s a decent selection of channels to stream live, integration with some third-party apps, On Demand content, and a cloud DVR feature that’s nifty. Plus, I get access to HBO Go. And it costs the same $15 per month that HBO Go would cost on its own. Not too bad a deal.1
But. My chief frustration—and what keeps me from using more of the service’s functionality—is that the only way to get at the features is via my computer or iOS apps. I can’t stream any of this content where I watch most things: my TV.
That may be changing, though. Earlier this year, the FCC approved a proposal that would open up the set-top box market—a move that Comcast and other cable companies are understandably worried about. That move might, for example, let you use an Xbox or Apple TV to receive your cable content.
Through this new program, we will expand the range of retail devices our customers can use to access Xfinity TV cable service without the need to lease a set-top box. By leveraging the open HTML5 standard that has been widely adopted across the industry, we are providing a common framework to make it easy for TV and other device manufacturers to bring our Xfinity TV Partner App to customers on their devices.
Sooooo, basically more app platforms. Comcast says it’s launching later this year with Samsung Smart TVs and will also be available via the Roku. No news about the Apple TV or Fire TV, though I’d assume those will end on the list as well.2
In other words: no need to harsh our mellow, FCC!
In light of the success of the apps-based model in the marketplace, the far-reaching government technical mandate being currently proposed by the FCC is unnecessary. The FCC’s proposed set-top box mandate threatens to undermine this highly-dynamic marketplace, create substantial costs and consumer harms, and will take years to develop — only to be likely outdated by the time it reaches the marketplace – all in an effort to achieve what apps are already delivering for consumers.
In a statement to The Verge, an FCC official said that Comcast’s app is still too locked down to be a true solution to the cable box issue. “While we do not know all of the details of this announcement, it appears to offer only a proprietary, Comcast-controlled user interface and seems to allow only Comcast content on different devices, rather than allowing those devices to integrate or search across Comcast content as well as other content consumers subscribe to,” the official stated.
Apple and Amazon both support a universal search feature that should allow users of those set-top boxes to search Comcast and other services, assuming Comcast builds a half-decent app that will allow it.
So, I guess the good news is that I will eventually be able to watch TV on my TV? But there are currently still plenty of restrictions in place to bar cord-cutters, including availability windows and per-device content licensing (i.e. letting you watch a program via your browser, but not in an app or on a set-top box).
The cable companies and content providers have been resistant to the march towards cord-cutting and Internet-based television, but frankly they’re not going to be able to hold out much longer. This might be another small drift in that direction, but it’s part of an overwhelming tide that’s going to be hard to reverse.
The channel selection is pretty limited. I get broadcast—in HD and SD—all of HBO’s channels, a local cable news channel, and C-SPAN. If I want to watch outside of my house, it’s HBO and C-SPAN. That’s it. ↩
You’ve got an—admittedly kind of weak—iOS app already. Porting that sucker to Apple TV probably wouldn’t take long. ↩
[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.]
Xbox 360 means a lot to everyone in Microsoft. And while we’ve had an amazing run, the realities of manufacturing a product over a decade old are starting to creep up on us. Which is why we have made the decision to stop manufacturing new Xbox 360 consoles. We will continue to sell existing inventory of Xbox 360 consoles, with availability varying by country.
It’s fascinating how different the lifecycle of a game console is compared to, say, an iPhone or an iPad. We’re used to replacing those devices every few years, and our computer perhaps every three to five. My circa 2007 Xbox 360 was still in active use up to last year, but has now found itself supplanted by the Xbox One, especially with the recent addition of backwards compatibility for many 360 games.
Still, the Xbox 360 had a great run. It was the first game console I’d owned since the original Nintendo, and it was instrumental in helping me keep in touch with friends, both near and far. And though I’m only a relatively recently convert to the Xbox One, it’s hard not to look forward another decade and imagine the amazing advances we’ll be seeing in gaming then.
The entire reason Dupont started making paint was that the manufacturing process was very similar to gunpowder; the problem is that gunpowder sold on a tonnage basis to huge buyers (like the army), while paint was sold to individual customers in stores. The product may have been very similar but the business model was entirely different. The end result was that Dupont was using a sales and marketing organization that was built around selling to large customers to get their paint into retail stores, and it was massively inefficient; the more paint Dupont sold, the more money they lost.
Thompson’s point is that “iPhones may be gunpowder” but “services are paint.” And if Apple is truly committed to embracing the services portion of its business, it may need to dramatically change its organizational and product-development approaches.
The idea for the Echo was an offshoot of Project C, and many of the early employees on the Echo moved over from C. Amazon remains particularly eager to keep this project a secret, even though work on it has stopped. But a sense of the focus and scope of the idea can be gleaned from patent applications filed by engineers at Lab126.
The first activity showed up on Dec. 21 and Dec. 23, 2010, when Lab126 employees applied for five patents whose titles all included the phrase “augmented reality.” Augmented reality–hologram-like displays projected into the physical world–was already a buzzword at the time. An e-commerce company wouldn’t seem like an obvious leader in the field. But Amazon’s patent applications show it was pursuing a vision that goes far beyond anything that exists as a commercial product even today, almost six years after the first patent applications were filed.
Netflix for the first time Monday said it may consider implementing offline viewing to match Amazon, a major concession from Chief Executive Reed Hastings.
“We should keep an open mind on this,” Hastings said when asked about the possibility. “We have been focusing on the click and watch, and the beauty and simplicity of streaming. But as we expand around the world where we see an uneven set of networks, it’s something we should keep an open mind about.”
In the past, Netflix has been a little more negative about this. Back in December 2014, a company exec said the feature was “never going to happen.” They later doubled down on that assertion, responding to a query from The Verge by saying: “We have been asked the same question for several years and have always given the exact same answer.”
If we’ve learned one thing about corporate communications, though, “never” should always be understood as including the unspoken qualifier “…until we can figure out how to make sure it’s profitable.”
Amazon lets users download some videos for offline viewing, which is great if you’re taking a plane trip or going somewhere that has no Internet. Improved in-flight Wi-Fi–which will likely start to roll out more broadly this year–will solve the first of those problems, but not the latter. So I’d bet Netflix moves on in the next few months from the “keep an open mind” step to “thinking about it” phase.
There will be no NEO-only games, and Sony will not let developers separate NEO users from original PS4 players while playing on PSN. Likewise, Sony explicitly and repeatedly states that developers cannot offer exclusive gameplay options or special unlockables for NEO players—so don’t expect NEO owners to get a level editor or a special Rocket League car that you won’t have access to on your original PS4. That said, so long as both systems have the same feature, the NEO can run an improved version. A local co-op game that features four players on the base PS4 could offer an eight player co-op mode on the NEO, for instance.
This is exactly the right way to release an update like this. Consumers will never have to wonder if a game or an accessory works only on some PS4 models and not others; if you’ve got the upgraded hardware, you’ll get to take advantage of it, but everything will work everywhere.
Thankfully, until your battery dies or your device is forceably turned off, Lost Mode not only automatically locks your iOS device and displays information on the screen, it also keeps track of any movement. If my device was taken out of the rest stop, I’d see a red dotted line via iCloud that tracked it from its initial “Lost” location to any new location.
If you’ve wondered what to do if you lose an iOS device, this story has a bunch of good information.
Note: This story has not been updated for several years.
While the spotlight has been on Apple’s objection to the government’s request in the San Bernardino case, that’s hardly the only time that Cupertino has been asked by the authorities to provide information on devices or accounts. The company has detailed those requests for the latter half of 2015 in its latest transparency report (PDF).
The company breaks out requests into different types: the most common seems to be requests for device information, which Apple says are predominantly for lost iPhones and the like. The winners there are Germany, which made 11989 requests encompassing 31,360 devices, and Poland, which made just 22 requests…but which covered an eyebrow-raising 56,447 devices–a footnote does say that those were mostly requests from the country’s Customs and Revenue Authorities–so potentially a concern on smuggling phones into the country?
Account requests, where the authorities ask for information stored in, say, iTunes or iCloud accounts, were most prominent here in the U.S., where the government asked for information on 1015 accounts–Apple objected in 116 of those cases, and ultimately provided some data in 82 percent of cases. (In another interesting footnote, Apple mentions that China’s 32 requests for information on 6724 were largely those in phishing-related investigations.)
Finally, there are emergency requests–just 178 worldwide–the ever elusive National Security Orders (somewhere between 1250 and 1499, which is as precise as the company is allowed to be), and account deletion requests: just 3 in that six month period, all of which were honored.
Apple notes upfront that it tries to inform customers when it has complied with a government request “unless we are explicitly prohibited from doing so,” referring to the broad use of gag orders that Microsoft has recently challenged. And, of course, the company notes its ongoing thoroughness and objections when it believes requests are unreasonable. And Apple’s latest report still says that Apple has “to date…not received any orders for bulk data.”
[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.]
Relay FM just announced a live event in San Francisco on June 13 at 6PM. So if you’re going to be in town for WWDC, get a ticket and come join us. Open bar, good company, and a live panel with me, Serenity Caldwell, and the hosts from Connected.
The updated MacBook features sixth-generation dual-core Intel Core M processors up to 1.3 GHz, with Turbo Boost speeds up to 3.1 GHz, and faster 1866 MHz memory. New Intel HD Graphics 515 deliver up to 25 percent faster graphics performance, and faster PCIe-based flash storage makes everyday tasks feel snappier — from launching apps to opening files.* And now with up to 10 hours of wireless web browsing and up to 11 hours of iTunes movie playback, MacBook is the perfect notebook for all day, on-the-go computing.
(Generally Apple achieves improved battery life in processor-bump models such as this because the new processors are more energy efficient than the old ones. The new battery seems to be a bit more efficient, too. An hour of extra battery life is nothing to sneeze at.)
While it might seem to be surprising that the new MacBook doesn’t offer any physical changes (such as an extra USB-C port), that’s not really shocking: It’s rare that Apple would introduce a laptop and then change the external design the very next year. A bit more surprising is that, for all the speculation about how Thunderbolt 3 is the obvious future of the Mac given its plug compatibility with USB-C and its greater capabilities, the port on this MacBook is still just regular old USB-C.
In Zombie Laptop news, Apple also announced that it’s making 8GB of RAM standard on the 13-inch MacBook Air, which still exists even though it wasn’t updated and probably won’t ever be updated again.
New developer videos include profiles of Seriously (“Building a Brand on Social Media”), Evernote (“Localizing Evernote for Japan”), Grailr (“Making Carrot Weather for Apple Watch”), and Smule (“Releasing App Updates”).
Note: This story has not been updated for several years.
Looks like Siri has let the cat out of the bag. As first reported by 9to5Mac, if you ask Siri “when is WWDC?” the intelligent agent will respond by telling you it’s the second full week of June, the 13th-17th.
Those dates had been widely rumored, though Apple has still not officially announced them elsewhere. As of this writing, Apple’s WWDC page still only has information about last year’s event, though the Siri response indicates that such an announcement may be imminent.
Personally, I thought it was funny that Siri also pronounced the event’s abbreviation “Dub Dub Dee Cee,” as many regulars also do.
Update:It’s official! But in a first, day one events will be at Bill Graham Civic Auditorium, not Moscone West. The Thursday-night beer bash has also moved from the Yerba Buena Gardens to Bill Graham.
[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.]
Campbell ran companies like Intuit and worked in key jobs at Apple, Claris and Go, and also served on a plethora of boards, including Columbia University, Intuit and Apple. He had been a longtime adviser to Google execs including Page and Eric Schmidt —and really just about every major tech executive you could think of at some point. Andreessen Horowitz’s Ben Horowitz featured him in his book “The Hard Thing About Hard Things” and Kleiner Perkins’ John Doerr just referenced him as a key adviser in a recent decision to change his role at the firm.
Campbell was an Apple marketing VP back under John Sculley, then became the head of the Claris software division. He served on Apple’s board from Steve Jobs’s return in 1997 to his retirement in 2014, where he was long considered one of Jobs’s closest allies.
My favorite might be this one from FiveThirtyEight, which puts Curry’s record number of three-pointers in a season (402 was the final number) in context. Curry broke the record (his own, from last year) with an increase of 40 percent. That’s like someone hitting 102 home runs, scoring 129 goals, or throwing 77 touchdown passes. Most all-time records are broken; this one was shattered.
During these first two weeks, MLB fans spent 20 percent more minutes per day, on average, watching live video on iPad compared with the 2015 season, when multitasking was not available. (MLB says that any form of multitasking behavior was counted here, not just spilt screen viewing.)
In addition, fans who were using the new multitasking features and watching live video of MLB games in the At Bat application were spending 162 minutes per day on average consuming MLB.TV on iPad. That’s an increase of 86 percent from the 2015 season.
I’m one of those fans. I’m now able to keep a baseball game going in Picture in Picture while doing other things on my iPad. It’s pretty great.
Note: This story has not been updated for several years.
The 9.7-inch iPad keyboard overlaid on the 12.9-inch iPad keyboard.
Anyone who writes as a part of their profession—whether it’s technology articles, novels, business documents, you name it—cares about typing. Typing is how we put one word after another, and computer keyboards are the best tool yet devised to allow us to do that1.
The importance of typing has always been one of the problems with using an iPad as a device to get work done. Typing on glass offers limited tactile feedback compared to physical keys, and the iPad’s 9.7-inch screen is too small to fit a full keyboard. You can attach a Bluetooth keyboard (or with the advent of the iPad Pro models, a Smart Keyboard) and improve your typing speeds dramatically, but the ergonomics of using a keyboard with an iPad counteract the iPad’s small size and ability to be used just about anywhere.
When I first began using the original, 12.9-inch iPad Pro, I was skeptical of its software keyboard. Years spent with the original-sized iPad had trained me that while I could write long documents on the software keyboard, I could save a lot of time and effort by attaching an external keyboard. But over the time, as I use the 12.9-inch iPad Pro’s keyboard more, I started to appreciate it.
The 12.9-inch iPad Pro’s software keyboard is full sized. Which is to say, the main keys are the same size and location as a standard physical keyboard—a feat possible on the 12.9-inch model because its display is 10.4 inches wide. The display on 9.7-inch models only have 7.8 inches of width to work with, and as a result, the keys are slightly smaller and crammed more closely together. More importantly, there’s very little room left over for modifier keys, forcing the layout into three layers (regular text input, a number-and-symbol keyboard, and another keyboard for less common symbols).
The 12.9-inch keyboard offers tab and caps lock keys and a wide shift key, plus six additional symbol keys on the main key layout. And, most importantly, the big keyboard provides an entire extra row of 14 keys at the top of the screen, including numbers, more symbols, and the ability to generate 14 more symbols by holding down the shift key.
Now, this larger keyboard isn’t without its flaws. The top row of keys is only half the height of the other rows, and as a result, I find myself missing the delete key all the time. It might also be nice if it offered a Command key, so that I could use iOS 9’s expanded set of keyboard shortcuts from the software keyboard.
Once I started using the large software keyboard, I began to appreciate just how much better it was than the one on the smaller model. When I reviewed the 9.7-inch iPad Pro, one of the reasons I found myself preferring my large iPad Pro was its superior software keyboard. And while I praised the 9.7-inch Smart Keyboard as being less bulky and more convenient than the larger model, there’s no denying that its shrunken-down keyboard slows me down.
Last week I was writing a story on a warm, summery day—rare for early April, even in sunny California—and I was despairing about being inside rather than in my backyard. I ended up sitting out in the backyard and writing the story on my iPad Pro’s software keyboard, sitting under a redwood tree in a hammock. I kept the iPad flat in my lap and typed as I would on a laptop keyboard2. And I was shocked at how fast my typing speed was when I really focused on the large software keyboard—not hardware keyboard speeds, but noticeably faster than my experience with the smaller iPad software keyboards.
To quantify this experience, I decided to take a typing test with TapTyping, an app recommended by Fraser Speirs on the typing episode of the Canvas podcast. I took the test, which involves three different sessions of typing a few random sentences, on both iPad Pro models, using their software keyboards as well as their Smart Keyboards. I also took the test on the 12.9-inch iPad Pro with Apple’s Magic Keyboard attached via Bluetooth.
The results were pretty much as I expected. I was slowest on the 9.7-inch iPad’s software keyboard, at 80 words per minute. The 9.7-inch Smart Keyboard didn’t fare as well as I thought—once I was forced away from the letter keys for punctuation I lost track of the geography of the keyboard and made a bunch of mistakes. The software keyboard on the 12.9-inch iPad Pro clocked in at 96 words per minute, and I once would never have believed that I could type nearly 100 words per minute on a software keyboard. Attaching the 12.9-inch Smart Keyboard boosted my score to 104 words per minute. And typing full speed on the Magic Keyboard, I managed 116 words per minute.
Or to look at it another way, by foregoing a physical keyboard and typing with the smaller iPad’s software keyboard, I gain the benefit of portability and flexibility at the cost of 31 percent of my typing speed. On the 12.9-inch model, it’s only a 17 percent sacrifice.
I know that dictation technology has come a long way, and I use it on my iPhone, but I just can’t write via speech. ↩
I can’t endorse the long-term ergonomics of this approach, but it was pleasant enough for a half-hour writing session. ↩
