The unlikely dream of a large “Planet X” at the far reaches of the solar system — the same dream that motivated Clyde Tombaugh to find Pluto 100 years ago — is still alive. Scientists scanning the icy belts of material way beyond Pluto keep looking for signs that those distant objects are being influenced by a larger object.
Astronomers have already ruled out finding Jupiter- or Saturn-sized planets in the extreme reaches of the solar system. But finding even an Earth-sized body would be a dramatic moment that would change our understanding of the solar system forever.
Apple’s attempt at a TV revolution has been delayed again. Reports this week were all about Apple hitting “pause” on its streaming TV effort, with CBS CEO Les Moonves kicking things off by saying that Apple has “pressed the hold button,” followed by confirmation from Bloomberg.
I’ll just go ahead and say it: I’m bummed. Yes, TV is a luxury, and it feels like it’s not quite among Apple’s core interests, but I was looking forward to some further disruption of the market from Cupertino. So what’s the deal here?
Apple has released its own iPhone battery case: http://www.apple.com/shop/product/MGQM2LL/A/iphone-6s-smart-battery-case-white
Dan uses this Lightning adapter on his iPhone charger: http://www.amazon.com/Certified-Skiva-Lightning-microUSB-connectors/dp/B00HEU1JGI
Apple also released an SD card to Lightning cable: http://www.apple.com/shop/product/MJYT2AM/A/lightning-to-sd-card-camera-reader
The iPad Pro has USB 3.0: http://www.macworld.com/article/3004647/ipad/ipad-pro-innards-pave-the-way-for-usb-30-transfer-speeds.html
Stephen Hackett has had a less than stellar experience with iCloud Photo Library: http://www.512pixels.net/blog/2015/11/im-done-with-icloud-photo-library
Moltz has this iPhone/Watch stand which isn’t bad: http://www.amazon.com/NewRice®-Charging-Bamboo-Charge-Station/dp/B00YV9G2QM/
One caveat he forgot to mention: the Watch charger sits too low in the groove so he had to put a rubber washer under it to make it sit up a little more.
He’s also used this one for just the Watch which does the job nicely: http://www.amazon.com/Spigen®-Charging-Premium-Compatible-Nightstand/dp/B0109I9W24/
Dan likes this travel power strip: http://www.amazon.com/Belkin-SurgePlus-3-Outlet-Charger-Protector/dp/B00ATZJ5YS
We have some doubts about this rumor about 15-inch MacBook Airs: http://www.macrumors.com/2015/11/30/thinner-macbook-air-13-15-wwdc-2016/
Apple Maps is now the most used mapping app on iOS: https://www.yahoo.com/tech/s/apple-maps-once-laughingstock-now-164150636.html
Our thanks also to Canary, the complete home security system in one device. Go to meetcanary.com and use the promo code “REBOUND” to get free overnight shipping on your Canary.
Our thanks also to Bushel (http://www.bushel.com/rebound), the easy-to-use Apple device management system for the enterprise. Bushel makes device management accessible and affordable for everyone, so businesses can support their users without help from IT.
Note: This story has not been updated for several years.
djay Pro on the iPad Pro. Image: Algoriddim.
One of the requests in my iPad Pro wish list for Macworld was aimed straight at app developers: The iPad Pro will be much more useful when there are more apps that take advantage of its screen size and features.
This week we’ve see two major app releases that embrace the iPad Pro, and it’s great to see.
Algoriddim has released djay Pro for iPad, which supports mixing of up to four audio tracks, playback of two simultaneous 4K video streams, 70 keyboard shortcuts, access to Spotify, and iOS 9 multitasking features. The $30 app is currently on sale for a limited time for $20.
I’m no DJ so I can’t judge the app on that score, but people have raved about djay for a while now and the tech specs of this new version are quite impressive.
Pixelmator 2.2 on an iPad Pro.
A new version of image-editing tool Pixelmator for iOS also arrived this week, featuring Apple Pencil and palm-rejection support, as well as 3D touch support for iPhone 6s models and a whole bunch of other improvements.
A few months back, I wrote a column about how I had tried, and failed, to embrace smart-home tech to solve some problems I had in my house. The story ended with me triumphantly realizing that sometimes, the high-tech solution is not the best one.
Then today we got the news from Eddy Cue that Apple is working on “the full functionality of the Siri Remote on the iPhone,” and that’s coming next year.
I don’t know what it all means, but I’ve got a couple of guesses.
First, there’s plenty that the iPhone app could emulate that the Remote app doesn’t. Finger swipes on the Remote app are emulating a simple d-button layout, so there’s no support for the finer control that the Siri Remote can provide. The Siri Remote also has an accelerometer and gyroscope, which can be useful in games—and the iPhone has those sensors, too. And the Siri remote has several hardware buttons, while the Remote app only emulates the Menu and Play/Pause buttons.
So there’s plenty of room for improvement in how the iPhone emulates the Siri remote. Ideally, it would support everything the Siri remote does, essentially turning your iPhone into a second Siri remote for the Apple TV.
Now this next part is just speculation on my part, but bear with me: Once the iPhone can emulate a Siri remote, it might be the perfect time for a tvOS update that enables support for multiple Siri or iPhone remotes at once1. Right now, multiplayer gaming requires a paired iPhone running a specific app as a counterpart for the on-screen Apple TV app. Imagine a future software update where you could play a two-player game on an Apple TV with two Siri remotes, or a single remote and an iPhone running the remote app, rather than a specific app counterpart.
A lot of Apple TV games remind me of nothing more than the Nintendo Wii. The Wii handles four controllers (the Wii U, eight) with aplomb. Adding support for even a second generic controller would be a big boost to the Apple TV gaming experience. Here’s hoping that we’ll get that in 2016.
If you buy Bluetooth remote gamepads you can use several at once, which is nice, but that seems like a bigger investment than a casual game player would make. Lots of people have iPhones. ↩
Bloomberg is confirming comments by CBS CEO Les Moonves that Apple’s TV service is “on hold”:
While Apple isn’t giving up entirely on releasing a live-TV service, its plan to sell a package of 14 or so channels for $30 to $40 a month has run into resistance from media companies that want more money for their programming, said the person, who asked not to be named discussing a prospective product.
Well, I can’t say it isn’t disappointing, but it’s hardly surprising. Media companies have been wary of technology companies since the digital music revolution, and as tech has become an increasingly central part of their portfolios, the content providers may definitely be wondering why they should hand over the keys to the kingdom to Apple instead of rolling their own solutions.
For now, it seems like the Apple TV is going to remain largely a platform for apps. Here’s hoping Apple spends a little more time tying it all together.
Note: This story has not been updated for several years.
Tear the kids1 away from the video games and gather round the kitchen table for some honest-to-goodness real life gaming. Board games are a great way to get some family togetherness time, and always a good excuse to get some friends together. Here are a few of our favorites, if you're not sure where to start or what to get next.
“We’re working on a new Apple TV remote app that will give you the full functionality of the Siri Remote on your iPhone,” Cue said. “We’re hoping to ship that in the first half of next year.”
An interesting choice. We’ve already got Siri on our iPhones, why build it specifically into an app, rather than integrating Apple TV search functionality into the systemwide Siri? (“Hey Siri, show me the latest episode of Arrow on my Apple TV.”) Maybe something’s gotten lost in translation here, but it seems a little bizarre.
Note: This story has not been updated for several years.
Apple rolled out a bunch of software updates today, including tvOS 9.1, which adds a few key features to the product that were missing at launch: the ability to use an iPhone as a remote, and extended Siri support.
Apple TVs running tvOS 9.1 are detected by the same old Apple Remote app that hasn’t been updated in months—it just works, as if it was an older, previously-compatible Apple TV model. I was able to connect to my fourth-generation Apple TV and use my iPhone as a trackpad to navigate through the menus, tapping on the screen to emulate a click on the Siri Remote. When a text-entry area appeared, the iPhone vibrated and an on-screen keyboard slid up, allowing me to type the text rather than pecking it out using the keyboard on the TV set.
Music search has arrived for the Siri Remote, too. It works, but my results were mixed. When I said, “shuffle my ‘Latter Day Bob Mould’ playlist”, it starting playing from the playlist and displayed a button so I could choose whether I wanted to switch to the Music app or remain where I was. When I said “show me the album ‘Hamilton’,” rather than showing me the only album containing that string in my library or doing a search on the word in Apple Music, it showed me a single album by an artist named Hamilton.
Similarly, when I said “show me the musical artist Randy Newman,” the Music app launched and showed me a Pixar soundtrack by Randy Newman. Apple Music has an artist page for Randy Newman, and when I typed “Randy Newman” into the Music app’s search field, it was the first item offered to me. Seems like Siri’s music search results should err on being a bit more expansive—showing results that might match—rather than jumping straight to a questionable result.
Still, I use my Apple TV’s Music app more than any other—owing to the fact that it’s currently the only device that’ll play Apple Music on my living-room speakers—and I’m glad that I can use voice search to access it. It’s a great step forward, as is the addition of Apple Remote app support. Just in time for the holidays, the Apple TV is noticeably improved from its original release software.
Note: This story has not been updated for several years.
You may not have bought a battery case or Lighting to SD adapter, but Apple’s got something new for everybody: iOS 9.2 and OS X 10.11.2 should be waiting in your software update screen or Mac App Store, respectively. (As of this writing, they’re still propagating out, so don’t panic if you don’t see them immediately.)
iOS 9.2 has a bunch of fixes for Apple Music, including letting you download albums or playlists from your iCloud Music Library (and a new download indicator to let you know what you’ve already downloaded); the ability to see works, composers, and performers in the Classical music catalog; and letting you create a new playlist when adding a song to a playlist.
Not an Apple Music subscriber? No worries. There’s a bevy of other changes in the new version: a new Top Stories section in News, Mail Drop support, 3D Touch in iBooks, Siri support for Arabic, and a whole bunch of bug fixes and stability enhancements. Also, interestingly, 9.2 says it brings iPhone support for importing photos and videos from the USB Camera Adapter.
OS X 10.11.2, meanwhile, is a bit of a smaller update. It improves the reliability of Wi-Fi, Handoff, and AirDrop as well as fixing issues with Bluetooth, Mail, and sharing Live Photos via iCloud Photo Sharing.
[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.]
There are two major improvements in the $29 adapter: 1) If you’re using a brand new shiny iPad Pro, the adapter can take advantage of the fact that its Lightning port supports USB 3 speeds, for much faster data transfers.1 2) For the first time, the adapter supports the iPhone. Weirdly, previous versions were iPad-only, but if you’ve got any iPhone dating back to the iPhone 5 or any iPad back to the original iPad mini or third-generation iPad, you’re in luck.
Apple says inserting memory cards will automatically open the Photos app and organize your pictures. That’s probably all that iOS will allow, too, so if you were hoping for a way to sideload data or access it from other apps, keep dreaming.2
Seems a gimme that next year’s iPhones and iPads will follow suit here. ↩
[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.]
Even though Adobe has itself more or less driven the nails into Flash’s coffin, what is dead may never die. There are a few lingering sites which rely on Flash, among them Ookla’s Speedtest, which is still the most convenient way to check your Internet connection speeds. Fortunately, the company’s already got a beta version running in HTML51, which means we’re one step closer to eradicating Flash from the world…forever.
Of course, you can also get around the need for Flash if you use the iOS app. ↩
Note: This story has not been updated for several years.
Frustration, thy name is progress bars. We’ve all probably gotten fed up with waiting for them to creep along to the end, but worse is when they get to the end and don’t go away.
That seems to happen to folders in my Dock with stunning regularity, dating back I-don’t-know-how-many-versions of OS X. El Capitan is no different–apparently whatever needs to be done to rid the world of this corruption once and for all didn’t make the cut.
Fire up Terminal and type this magical incantation:
killall Dock
Offer up a prayer to whatever deity you believe in and hit Return. Away goes the offending creature, and in its place a new Dock rises, free of the encroaching blight of foul progress bars that show no progress! The kingdom has been saved…at least until the beast rears its head once more.
[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.]
Note: This story has not been updated for several years.
Well, can’t say I saw that coming. Apple’s decided it wants itself a piece of that lucrative battery case money, and so it has quasi-stealthily released the $99 iPhone 6s Smart Battery Case. Available in charcoal gray or white, the silicone case supposedly provides up to 18 hours of Internet use on LTE or up to 20 hours of video playback. (The original iPhone 6s specs report 10 hours of Internet use on LTE or 11 hours of “HD video” playback.) You can charge the case and phone simultaneously via a Lightning port, and the case’s battery level is reported on the iPhone lock screen and in notification center.
And none of that matters. Because all everybody’s going to be talking about is the hump.
It does apparently serve a practical purpose, letting you peel the silicone off the top and bottom of the phone and apply it more easily than a traditional battery case. (That said, I’ve had a couple of Mophie battery cases for previous iPhones and never had much trouble taking them on and off, in particular because I rarely took them off.)
Without getting my hands on one, it’s hard to say how bulky this makes the phone feel, but, well, for an Apple product it sure doesn’t look great.1 That said, I run my iPhone 6s down to the metal most days—something I feel like I rarely did on previous models—so more battery life would certainly be welcome. Say what you will about Mophie’s options, but I feel like they look better and potentially even provide more protection.
Over at Mashable, Christina Warren has a full review. One tidbit there that I didn’t see on Apple’s own site: the case apparently has “a passive coupled antenna on the back to help minimize cellular interference—something that can happen with other battery cases.” Not a problem I remember seeing on my previous battery cases, but maybe?
Note also that there’s no corresponding product for the 6s Plus, which already, by all reports, gets much better battery life than the 6s. Also, because can you picture a case like this on a phone that big without giggling just a little bit?
But if nothing else, the $99 price tag is at least close to what corresponding cases go for—for once, Apple’s not charging an arm and a leg above its competitors. And the Apple brand will likely sell a lot of these, though I am a little surprised that it’s showing up now, two weeks before Christmas, instead of back in September at the iPhone 6s announcement. Maybe Apple needed more time to work out some kinks, or perhaps it just wanted to provide something attractive for last-minute shoppers.
It kinda looks like a snake swallowing a rat. A square rat. ↩
[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.]
Note: This story has not been updated for several years.
Welcome back to the Six Colors gift guide, in which Dan and Jason tell you about of a bunch of stuff we liked in the past year. You might like them too!
Frankly, there are so many games on iOS it’s hard to know what to recommend: do you like action? Adventure? Puzzles? Strategy? We could go on all day. So here are a few of the games we’ve been playing the most in the past year, which might appeal to you or someone for whom you still need the perfect gift. And if this isn’t enough for you, we’ll remind you that the apps on last year’s list are still available, too.
Having spent a little more than a month with the Apple TV now, is it everything I hoped it would be?
Frankly, I’m a little underwhelmed. To me, the Apple TV feels a bit like the Wild West: an unregulated free-for-all where you’re as likely to strike it rich as you are to wind up in the town jail. I want to love the new Apple TV—I’ve been waiting for it long enough—but it turns out that I only like it. And I know much less about what it thinks of me.
The more I think about it, the more I conclude that the Apple TV lies all the way at the other end of the spectrum from the other new Apple product released this year. Tim Cook has called the Apple Watch “the most personal device we’ve ever created,” but the Apple TV may very well be the least personal.
When it comes to iTunes Match, the sky is the limit–where “the sky” now equals “100,000 tracks.” Following through on another before-the-end-of-the-year promise, Apple has quietly jacked its cloud-matching service up from its previous 25,000 limit; Apple senior vice president Eddy Cue confirmed the increase to MacRumors.
At $25 a year, iTunes Match is still a pretty darn good deal if you don’t want all the music-streaming features of Apple Music. I’ve been a subscriber since the service was announced, and though I don’t have anywhere near 100,000 songs, it’s reassuring knowing I’m not going to hit the limit anytime soon.
