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Jason Snell Reviews the iPhone 8: The Inessential iPhone 

Jason Snell:

This is the fate of the iPhone 8. It will be ignored by many of Apple’s most committed followers, who see it as a speed bump on the road to the release of the iPhone X in early November. Instead, it will soldier on, doing its job as the latest iteration of the existing iPhone line, providing a substantial upgrade to people who haven’t bought an iPhone in two or three years and aren’t interested in paying $999 for the very first generation of a new iPhone, if they could even find one in stores. These people are ready for a better version of their existing phone, and the iPhone 8 will deliver that to them.

After a month I’m kind of meh about Qi charging. As Snell notes, you have to put it on the pad just so, and it can move off the sweet spot when the phone vibrates from notifications. I’m hoping Apple’s own AirPower pad works better than the Belkin dingus I got to test.

There’s something to be said for taking your time with a review, letting the experience settle in before writing about it.

Paul Newman’s Rolex Sells for $17.7 Million 

A gorgeous watch with a great story behind it.

Friday, 27 October 2017

Apple Says iPhone X Pre-Orders Are ‘Off the Charts’ 

Reuters:

“We can see from the initial response, customer demand is off the charts,” an Apple spokeswoman told Reuters.

“We’re working hard to get this revolutionary new product into the hands of every customer who wants one, as quickly as possible.”

I was up to order when it went live last night. My wife’s order went through with a delivery date of “November 17-24” after about 10 minutes of force-quitting/relaunching the iOS Apple Store app; my order went through a few minutes later, with delivery slipping to “December 5-11”.

Even today, though, orders are still only 5-6 weeks out. I was worried supply would be so tight that they’d be into January by now.

Extract From Plato’s Republic: On That Which Is Correct Politically 

Perfect little piece by Mark Paglia for McSweeney’s.

Private-Prison Giant, Resurgent in Trump Era, Gathers at President’s Resort 

Amy Brittain and Drew Harwell, reporting for The Washington Post:

In recent years, the private prison company GEO Group has held its annual leadership conference at venues near its Boca Raton headquarters. But this year, the company moved its gathering to a Miami-area golf resort owned by President Trump.

The event last week, during which executives and wardens gathered for four days of meetings, dinner receptions and golf outings at the luxurious 800-acre Trump National Doral, followed an intense effort by GEO Group to align itself with the president and his administration.

Sure, this is normal.

Girl With Cerebral Palsy Detained by Immigration Officials Cries for Help 

Melissa Chan, reporting for Time:

Rosamaria was being rushed to a hospital for emergency gall bladder surgery early Tuesday when she was stopped at a Border Patrol checkpoint east of Laredo and detained. U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents “escorted” Rosamaria to a Corpus Christi hospital to have her operation, the agency said in a statement. After becoming medically cleared, Rosamaria was taken to a federal facility for refugees in San Antonio on Wednesday and processed, officials said.

“She has been crying. She knows her mom is not there,” Galvez said.

Another story, by Yale senior Viviana Andazola Marquez, writing in The New York Times, “I Accidentally Turned My Dad In to Immigration Services”:

Most people can’t wait to turn 21 so that they can drink. For me, it was the day I could finally petition the government to change my dad’s immigration status. I filed the paperwork in February and believed it would be the beginning of sleeping easier at night, of not worrying about “la migra” every time the phone rang.

Eight months later, my father and I showed up at the immigration services office with our lawyer and notebooks full of supporting documents. The officer told us our petition should be approved, but not that day. We took this as an indication of another waiting period, but we remained upbeat: The officer told my father how to learn about his rights as a lawful permanent resident and acknowledged that he had paid the appropriate fees.

After the officer left the room several times, something changed in her demeanor, and the air in the room became thick with mounting uncertainty. She asked me to leave. I didn’t want to, so she turned to my father and asked him to tell me to leave. I told myself I was just being paranoid and walked outside. As I waited, three Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents came in and took custody of my dad.

When our lawyer reappeared, the look on his face told me everything I needed to know. The world felt ripped from under my feet.

ICE, under Trump, is a terrorist organization.

Thursday, 26 October 2017

Jeff Williams on Apple’s Planning 

Jeff Williams, speaking in Taiwan at the 30th anniversary ceremony of TSMC:

The nature of the way Apple does business is we put all of our energy into our new products, and we launch them, and if we were to bet heavily on TSMC, there would be no backup plan. You can not double plan the kind volumes that we do. We want leading edge technology, but we want it at established technology kind of volumes.

Vin Scully Throwing Out the First Pitch in Last Night’s Game 

This is so great, I’ve watched it three times.

If It’s New, It’s Scary 

Rene Ritchie, responding to this piece at Wired positing that iOS 11’s Core ML machine learning engine could be a privacy problem:

For an example of where that could go wrong, think of a photo filter or editing app that you might grant access to your albums. With that access secured, an app with bad intentions could provide its stated service, while also using Core ML to ascertain what products appear in your photos, or what activities you seem to enjoy, and then go on to use that information for targeted advertising.

Also nothing to do with Core ML. Smart spyware would try to convince you to give it all your photos right up front. That way it wouldn’t be limited to preconceived models or be at risk of removal or restriction. It would simply harvest all your data and then run whatever server-side ML it wanted to, whenever it wanted to.

That’s the way Google, Facebook, Instagram, and similar photo services that run targeted ads against those services already work.

To present Core ML as a privacy risk is talking about a hypothetical risk while Google and Facebook are currently ransacking your privacy.

Face ID FUD

Wednesday, 25 October 2017

Seemingly-sensational Apple story from Bloomberg today, reported by Alex Webb and Sam Kim, “Inside Apple’s Struggle to Get the iPhone X to Market on Time”:

As of early fall, it was clearer than ever that production problems meant Apple Inc. wouldn’t have enough iPhone Xs in time for the holidays. The challenge was how to make the sophisticated phone — with advanced features such as facial recognition — in large enough numbers.

As Wall Street analysts and fan blogs watched for signs that the company would stumble, Apple came up with a solution: It quietly told suppliers they could reduce the accuracy of the face-recognition technology to make it easier to manufacture, according to people familiar with the situation.

That sounds terrible. But what exactly does it mean? Does it mean Face ID will create too many false positives? Does it mean it will be too slow? Does it mean there will be too many false negatives? Surprise surprise, Bloomberg doesn’t say.

Apple is famously demanding, leaning on suppliers and contract manufacturers to help it make technological leaps and retain a competitive edge. While a less accurate Face ID will still be far better than the existing Touch ID, the company’s decision to downgrade the technology for this model shows how hard it’s becoming to create cutting-edge features that consumers are hungry to try.

“Downgraded technology” sounds terrible. But which components, exactly, were “downgraded”?

Apple spokeswoman Trudy Muller said “Bloomberg’s claim that it reduced the accuracy spec for Face ID is completely false and we expect Face ID to be the new gold standard for facial authentication. The quality and accuracy of Face ID haven’t changed; it continues to be one in a million probability of a random person unlocking your iPhone with Face ID.”

It is extraordinary for Apple to issue a blanket “this is completely false” statement on any news story. Apple, as policy, no-comments every news story, even when they know it’s bullshit. So either this story is particularly strong bullshit, or Apple is lying, on the record, under one of their own real names (as opposed to the anonymous “an Apple spokesperson” attribution).

And what exactly is the point of Bloomberg’s story if, as reported, “Face ID will still be far better than the existing Touch ID”?

To make matters worse, Apple lost one of its laser suppliers early on. Finisar Corp. failed to meet Apple’s specifications in time for the start of production, and now the Sunnyvale, California-based company is racing to meet the standards by the end of October. That left Apple reliant on fewer laser suppliers: Lumentum Holdings Inc. and II-VI Inc.

Apple didn’t “lose” a supplier — Apple cut the supplier because they weren’t producing adequate yields.

To boost the number of usable dot projectors and accelerate production, Apple relaxed some of the specifications for Face ID, according to a different person with knowledge of the process. As a result, it took less time to test completed modules, one of the major sticking points, the person said.

It’s not clear how much the new specs will reduce the technology’s efficacy.

Now we get to the real heart of the story. Did Apple adjust the specifications for the components, or just the testing parameters? And if “it’s not clear how much the new specs will reduce the technology’s efficacy”, what is the point of this story? When did Apple “relax” these specifications? Before or after the September event?

To be clear, I have no idea whether Face ID works as advertised or not. I haven’t used it even once yet. Maybe it stinks, maybe it’s great, maybe it’s somewhere in between. But Bloomberg clearly doesn’t know either, yet they published this story which has a headline and summary — “The company let suppliers reduce accuracy of the phone’s Face ID system to speed up production” — which suggests that Face ID is going to stink because Apple’s suppliers couldn’t get enough good components out the door. If this weren’t merely clickbait, they’d be able to say how well it actually works.

Frankly, I don’t trust anything Bloomberg reports about iPhones any more. On July 3, they published this piece by Mark Gurman, “Apple Tests 3-D Face Scanning to Unlock Next iPhone”:

Apple Inc. is working on a feature that will let you unlock your iPhone using your face instead of a fingerprint.

For its redesigned iPhone, set to go on sale later this year, Apple is testing an improved security system that allows users to log in, authenticate payments, and launch secure apps by scanning their face, according to people familiar with the product. This is powered by a new 3-D sensor, added the people, who asked not to be identified discussing technology that’s still in development. The company is also testing eye scanning to augment the system, one of the people said.

The sensor’s speed and accuracy are focal points of the feature. It can scan a user’s face and unlock the iPhone within a few hundred milliseconds, the person said. It is designed to work even if the device is laying flat on a table, rather than just close up to the face. The feature is still being tested and may not appear with the new device. However, the intent is for it to replace the Touch ID fingerprint scanner, according to the person. An Apple spokesman declined to comment.

Apple did in fact replace Touch ID with Face ID in the iPhone X, but the timing on Gurman’s story is wrong. They weren’t “testing” the viability of any of this in July. According to several trusted sources within Apple, including multiple engineers who worked directly on the iPhone X project, the decision to go “all-in on Face ID” (in the words of one source) was made over a year ago. Further, the design of the iPhone X hardware was “locked” — again, a source’s word — prior to January 2017. If I had to wager, I’d say it was locked a few months before the end of 2016. This was a nine-month-old decision that Bloomberg reported in the present tense.

Beyond Bloomberg, there are the slew of reports from various “analysts” that suggested Apple was still working to incorporate Touch ID into the iPhone X display as late as this summer.

Ming-Chi Kuo in January:

In a note sent out to investors on Friday, and subsequently obtained by AppleInsider, well-connected KGI analyst Ming-Chi Kuo says he believes Apple is developing a new class of bio-recognition technologies that play nice with “full-face,” or zero-bezel, displays. Specifically, Kuo foresees Apple replacing existing Touch ID technology with optical fingerprint readers, a change that could arrive as soon as this year, as Apple is widely rumored to introduce a full-screen OLED iPhone model this fall.

By January of this year there were no plans to embed an “optical fingerprint reader” in the display of any Apple device this year. Apple did, of course, investigate ways to embed Touch ID sensors in edge-to-edge displays, but, again, those efforts were abandoned in favor of Face ID over a year ago.

Cowen and Company analyst Timoth Arcuri, on June 21 (of this year), under the AppleInsider headline “Apple Still Undecided on Fingerprint Tech for ‘iPhone 8’, No Shipments Until October”:

The OLED-embedded fingerprint technology for Apple’s “iPhone 8” is “still being worked out,” an analyst claimed on Wednesday, with the company only deciding on one of three options by the end of June.

The one settled point appears to be that there won’t be a sensor on the back of the phone, Cowen and Company’s Timothy Arcuri indicated in a memo obtained by AppleInsider. The three options include thinning the cover glass over a sensor area, creating a pinhole through the glass for an optical or ultrasonic sensor, or trying a “film” sensor integrated into the display, using either capacitive or infrared technology.

This, it turns out, was complete nonsense. Again, Apple was “all-in” on Face ID over a year ago. The idea that they were still “working this out” in June is a joke.

And back to Ming-Chi Kuo, in August:

Apple has decided against an embedded Touch ID solution for its forthcoming “iPhone 8” handset, according to well-connected analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, leaving the door open for competitor Samsung to debut similar technology in next year’s Galaxy Note 9.

In a note to investors obtained by AppleInsider, Kuo says Apple has “cancelled” plans to embed a fingerprint recognition solution in the next-generation flagship iPhone. The analyst left embedded Touch ID off a list of standout “iPhone 8” features published in July, but did not indicate that Apple had abandoned the initiative altogether.

As with Gurman’s report in June, the problem here is with the timing, not the facts. By August of this year, this was a nearly year-old decision.

The Wall Street Journal, in a September 7 report attributed to reporters “Yoko Kubota in Tokyo, Tripp Mickle in San Francisco, and Takashi Mochizuki in Tokyo”:

The production delays earlier this summer stemmed in part from Apple’s decision to build new phones using organic light-emitting diode, or OLED, screens similar to those used by rival Samsung Electronics Co. At the same time, Apple decided to ditch the physical home button that contains fingerprint sensors for unlocking the device. Apple tried to embed the Touch ID function, or fingerprint scanner, in the new display, which proved difficult, the people familiar with the process said.

As deadlines approached, Apple eventually abandoned the fingerprint scanner, the people said, and users will unlock the phone using either an old-fashioned password or what is expected to be a new facial-recognition feature. Nonetheless, precious time was lost and production was put back by about a month, according to people familiar with the situation.

I quote the two Tokyo datelines in the byline because I don’t think this information came from Apple. Again, my sources at Apple, directly familiar with the decision, have told me that they chose Face ID over a year ago because they were convinced it was better than Touch ID. Touch ID was not abandoned because it was difficult to embed in the display.

For good measure while I’m pouring out the claim chowder, here’s Zach Epstein, writing for BGR on July 20, “I Might Know the Truth About Touch ID on Apple’s iPhone 8” (note that the device he refers to as “iPhone 8” is the iPhone X):

I have now received information from three different well-placed sources over the past few weeks, and they have all told me the same thing: The iPhone 8’s Touch ID fingerprint sensor is in the power button.

The news first came to me about a month ago from a source I know well. I’ve since been told the same thing by two additional sources I haven’t known for quite as long. All three sources have provided information to me in the past that has proven to be accurate.

That’s a lot of “well-placed sources” for a bullshit story.

All of this fits with what I’ve heard from rank-and-file engineering sources within Apple for years. To wit, producing hardware at the iPhone’s scale, while pushing the boundaries of the industry in technology, is so difficult, so complicated, that it requires hardware designs to be locked down far in advance of when iPhones are actually announced and released. Apple’s iPhone hardware engineering teams did not spend 2017 working on the iPhone X and iPhone 8 — they spent this year working on new iPhone hardware for 2018 and 2019 (and perhaps beyond). Hardware is nothing like software. If Apple had really been dithering over Touch ID-embedded-in-the-display vs. Face ID in June of this year, iPhone X wouldn’t be hitting the market until 2018. And the final decisions on the hardware for the iPhones that will be debuting next year are being made right now.

So where do these rumors come from? I don’t know. My guess is that if there’s an intent behind them, it’s that competitors (cough, Samsung?) within the Asian supply chain are attempting to sow doubt about Face ID. The narrative presented by analysts and certain news reports this summer was that Apple was still scrambling to get Touch ID working embedded within the iPhone X display, suggesting that Face ID was their Plan B.

People are naturally skeptical about biometric ID systems. They were skeptical about Touch ID when it was still only rumored, just like they’re skeptical now about Face ID. Today, though, Touch ID is both trusted and familiar. So rumors claiming that Apple really wanted to get Touch ID into iPhone X but had to settle for Face ID play into both the skepticism of the new and the comfort of the familiar. FUD is one of the oldest tricks in the book.

The other, simpler explanation is that it simply takes 9 months or longer for engineering decisions made within Apple to percolate out to the rumor reporters and analysts — and their sources are so far removed from the halls of Cupertino that they mistake old news for new news. 

Wednesday, 25 October 2017

The Oatmeal: Reaching People on the Internet 

The Oatmeal on how Facebook turned into a protection racket. Here’s the real kicker.

Tuesday, 24 October 2017

Max Boot: ‘Republicans Have Stockholm Syndrome, and It’s Getting Worse’ 

Max Boot, writing for Foreign Policy:

It becomes ever harder to disagree with the verdict of foreign-policy sage Robert Kagan, like me an erstwhile Republican, who writes that the GOP in its current form is doomed and that Republicans who cannot stomach Trumpism “should change their registration and start voting for Democratic moderates and centrists, as some Republicans did in Virginia recently, to give them a leg up in their fight against the party’s left wing.” As I’ve explained before, I have my qualms about the Democratic Party, which is lurching to the left, but I am done, done, done with the GOP after more than 30 years as a loyal Republican.

This is truly Trump’s party, and that leaves me to root for Democrats to win a landslide victory in the midterm elections next fall. I have my differences with many Democratic candidates, but on the most important issue facing our nation — whether Trump is fit for office — they are right and Republicans are a disgrace.

Stealing Sensitive Browser Data With the W3C Ambient Light Sensor API 

Lukasz Olejnik:

In this post we describe and demonstrate a neat trick to exfiltrate sensitive information from your browser using a surprising tool: your smartphone or laptop’s ambient light sensor. […]

To better compete with native apps, websites might soon be able to access ambient light readings. There is currently an ongoing discussion within a W3C Device and Sensors Working Group whether to allow websites access the light sensor without requiring the user’s permission. Most recent versions of both Chrome and Firefox have implementations of the API.

I don’t want web browsers to compete with native apps. I want web browsers to be document viewers that I can trust with anything. I don’t want websites to have access to any sensors on my machine. The good news is it doesn’t matter what Chrome and Mozilla do — I doubt there’s any way that Safari would allow access to this sensor without the user’s explicit permission.

Apple Pay Accounts for 90 Percent of All Mobile Contactless Transactions Where Active 

Ingrid Lunden, reporting for TechCrunch:

The advances point to how Apple wants to steal a march when it comes to using phones as a proxy for a card or cash, and there is some anecdotal evidence that it’s working: merchants and others who have partnered with Apple say that Apple Pay is accounting for 90 percent of all mobile contactless transactions globally in markets where it’s available.

“Apple Pay is the future of everyday spend,” said Bailey on stage at the Money 20/20 conference that kicked off in Las Vegas yesterday.

90 percent market share for all mobile payments is rather remarkable for the platform with second-place market share overall.

The Talk Show: ‘Unused VIPs’ 

Posted over the weekend: a new episode of The Talk Show, with special guest Serenity Caldwell. Topics include watches, the problems with the current MacBook keyboards, iOS 11 battery life, my massive windfall from the iBooks antitrust settlement, and more.

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Apple Announces iPhone X Availability 

Apple Newsroom:

iPhone X, the future of the smartphone, featuring a revolutionary new design with a stunning all-screen display, wireless charging and an incredible rear camera with dual optical image stabilization, will be available to customers for pre-order on Friday, October 27 at 12:01 a.m. PDT on apple.com and the Apple Store app.

iPhone X will be available in more than 55 countries and territories, and in Apple Stores beginning Friday, November 3 at 8:00 a.m. local time. Stores will have iPhone X available for walk-in customers, who are encouraged to arrive early.

“Encouraged to arrive early” — yeah, like maybe today.

Monday, 23 October 2017

Pixel 2 XL Review Units Exhibiting Screen Burn-In After Just One Week 

Andrew Martonik and Jerry Hildenbrand, writing for Android Central:

Consternation surrounding the display in the Google Pixel 2 XL is well known at this point, and to be honest most of it has been pretty overblown. But we have something new to talk about now: screen burn-in. It’s something people with OLED screens worry about (to varying degrees) and something people who prefer LCDs like to poke fun about. But one of our Pixel 2 XL review units, in use for about a week, is already seeing some pretty crazy levels of burn-in.

Dieter Bohn is seeing it on his review unit as well. What a disaster this display is. I popped into my local Verizon store over the weekend to see the new Pixels firsthand. The blue tint when looking at the Pixel 2 XL from even a slight angle is a real issue. The display on the regular Pixel 2 — which is an LCD display, not OLED which is an OLED from Samsung, not LG — looks terrific, though.

Singapore to Stop Adding Cars to City From February 2018 

Sebastian Tong, reporting for Bloomberg:

Singapore, among the world’s most expensive places to own a vehicle, will stop increasing the total number of cars on its roads next year.

The government will cut the annual growth rate for cars and motorcycles to zero from 0.25 percent starting in February, the transport regulator said on Monday.

“In view of land constraints and competing needs, there is limited scope for further expansion of the road network,” the Land Transport Authority said in a statement on its website. Roads already account for 12 percent of the city-state’s total land area, it said.

Basically, if you don’t already own a car and want one, you’re shit out of luck. With the rise of ride sharing, though, maybe that’s not a problem.

The Information: Snap Has ‘Hundreds of Thousands’ of Unsold Spectacles Sitting in Warehouses 

Tom Dotan and Reed Albergotti, reporting for The Information (paywall):

Snap badly overestimated demand for its Spectacles and now has hundreds of thousands of unsold units sitting in warehouses, either fully assembled or in parts, according to two people close to the company. The disclosure undercuts Snap CEO Evan Spiegel’s recent contention that Spectacles sales of more than 150,000 had topped the company’s expectations.

Jiminy christ almighty, how stupid do you have to be to stockpile hundreds of thousands of these stupid-looking $130 sunglasses?

Also interesting to consider this fiasco when thinking about Nintendo’s oft-criticized conservative approach to inventory — no one wants to get stuck with hundreds of thousands of units of unsold merchandise.

Sunday, 22 October 2017

DuckDuckGo 

My thanks to DuckDuckGo for sponsoring this week’s DF RSS feed. DuckDuckGo is the search engine that doesn’t track you. DuckDuckGo and Safari’s Intelligent Tracking Prevention together address the top three private browsing misconceptions:

  • 41% of users believe private browsing prevents websites tracking them.
  • 39% of users believe private browsing prevents ads from tracking them.
  • 35% of users believe private browsing prevents a search engine from knowing their searches.

I’ve been using DuckDuckGo as my primary search engine for a few years now and I haven’t looked back.

Saturday, 21 October 2017

Apple and AT&T Activate LTE Band 8 to Give iPhone Users in Puerto Rico Cellular Service by Loon Balloon 

Matthew Panzarino, writing for TechCrunch:

Apple, AT&T, the FCC and Alphabet’s X division have all put into motion efforts to give residents of Puerto Rico more cellular connectivity.

Apple has been working with AT&T to extend and activate cell service for users in Puerto Rico. To improve what is a terrible connectivity situation there, it’s going to enable a provisional band of LTE that has been recently approved, but not activated in the US and Puerto Rico, where it has not been licensed. This will allow iPhones to connect to Alphabet X’s Project Loon balloons in the region, which were activated today.

This should allow users to send text messages and access some critical online services.

Friday, 20 October 2017

‘It’s All Screen’ 

Ken Segall:

Apple advertising was always creative and fun, but it was also intelligent and accurate. That’s what made it the industry’s “gold standard” for marketing.

That’s why it makes me nervous when I see today’s Apple playing loose with words and images to sell a product.

Case in point: the “all-screen” iPhone X.

Of course we can see with our own eyes that iPhone X is not all-screen. It has a noticeable edge around the entire display, which even the Samsung S8 does not have. And then there is “the notch” — the object of many a critic’s venom.

I don’t have a problem with the side and bottom edges of the iPhone X being described as “all screen”. It’s not the same as Samsung’s Galaxy Edge sides, but I dislike the way those Edge phones look when I hold them. If there were no notch — that is to say, if the top of the iPhone X looked exactly like the bottom — I would have no problem declaring that “all screen” would be a fair description.

But with the notch? No way. Here’s one simple way to think about it: what does Apple do 2-3 years from now if they ship an iPhone with no notch? Describe it as “Really all screen this time”?

On Apple’s New Chicago Flagship Store 

Blair Kamin, architecture critic for The Chicago Tribune:

Chicago’s new Apple store is thrillingly transparent, elegantly understated and a boon to the city’s riverfront.

With its huge sheets of laminated glass and an ultra-thin roof of lightweight carbon fiber the store, opening Friday, is simultaneously present and absent, there and not there. From North Michigan Avenue, you look through its glassy membrane and see the river’s blue-green waters and passing tour boats. A plaza of tiered granite steps spills down to the riverfront.

Looks beautiful — very much in the same spirit as Apple Park.

Tom’s Guide: ‘iPhone 8 Plus vs. Google Pixel 2 Camera Shootout’ 

They scored it 6-4 in favor of the iPhone 8 Plus but the bottom line is that both are good cameras. My favorite in favor of the iPhone is the fountain photo; for the Pixel, low light no-flash photo.

David Letterman on the Jimmy Kimmel Show 

“You’re looking at a man who’s laughing on the outside and crying on the inside. For a year, I’ve been looking high and low, I’ve been trying to find a shirt that looks good untucked. I can’t find one.”

Thursday, 19 October 2017

Developer Camp 10th Anniversary 

The 10th anniversary edition of Developer Camp — formerly iPhoneDevCamp and iOSDevCamp — is being held November 10–12 in San Jose. This is a great event, organized by Dom Sagolla, with a great record of diversity. Use this URL (with the “DF2017” code) and you’ll save 50 percent on tickets. This isn’t a sponsorship — I’m just happy to promote this event, and feel like the DF audience includes a lot of people who would enjoy this.

The Pixel 2 Costs More at Google’s Own Pop-Up Stores 

Chris Welch, writing for The Verge:

But the worst part of this is that these pop-ups, which are basically Google stores in the minds of visitors, are overcharging people for the new Google phones. The one in Manhattan definitely is, at least. All models of the Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL are marked up by $30. The $649 Pixel 2 is marked up to $680. The 128GB model is $780. 64GB XL 2? $880, and it’s $980 for the 128GB version.

Apparently they’ll price match the regular rates if you call out this nonsense, but it’s still pretty inexcusable. Not even Verizon itself is charging a penny extra for the Pixels when you buy direct from the carrier. And you’re walking out of here with a Google shopping bag. How is the company okay with this?

Bizarre.

Vlad Savov on the Pixel 2 XL’s ‘Awful’ Display 

Vlad Savov, writing for The Verge:

I’m a satisfied Android user, and I know for a fact (because I’ve reviewed every other major flagship out there) that no other Android device can bring me as close to mobile nirvana and contentment as these new Pixels do. But for the majority of this week, I’ve opted to use the smaller Pixel 2, owing to just how poor the Pixel 2 XL’s screen is.

This situation upsets me because the 2 XL has numerous desirable advantages over the 2: much smaller bezels, a larger battery that lasts longer, and just a bigger canvas on which I can pen my letter of complaint to LG Display, the maker of the offending screen in question. […]

Another big chunk of the “why” is in the blue cast that befalls the screen if you ever hold it at an angle that’s less than perfectly in front of you. You’ll know this issue from the year 2011, when Samsung was just getting started with its mobile OLED technology and phones like the Galaxy S II looked gorgeous up front but had the weakness of looking blue from almost any oblique angle. The OLED panel on Pixel 2 XL doesn’t even have the decency to look stunning when viewed under perfect circumstances. But it does have that aggravating blue cast that we thought we’d left in the past.

This sounds dreadful. And this is why Apple had to source all of its OLED displays for the iPhone X from Samsung. There’s no way Apple would ship a display like this.

Apple Machine Learning Journal on How ‘Hey Siri’ Works 

Deep dive into how “Hey Siri” actually works. I’m really enjoying these layman’s explanations of how these things work. The Machine Learning Journal is the new “open” Apple at its best.

Consumer Reports Expects Tesla’s Model 3 to Have ‘Average Reliability’ 

Phil LeBeau, writing for CNBC:

There may be only a few hundred Tesla Model 3s on the street, but Consumer Reports already has an opinion on the new car’s dependability.

“We are predicting that the Model 3 should have about average reliability,” said Jake Fisher, director of auto testing for Consumer Reports.

Why is Consumer Reports making predictions like this? Their entire reputation is built on the idea that their scores are based on rigorous testing and large scale surveys. Is this just clickbait? It comes across as an unjustified hit piece.

Wednesday, 18 October 2017

‘I Am Pressing the Spacebar and Nothing Is Happening’ 

Somehow I don’t think Apple is going to play this one as the prelude to their next event.

Maybe the Dumbest Two Paragraphs About the Mac I’ve Ever Read 

Steven Max Patterson, writing for Network World:

In 2007, the Mac was on life support. Consumers and companies bought Windows XP and Vista machines instead of Macs. The Mac had been very proprietary up until then. The hardware platform was based on the Motorola 6800 family, which came in third behind Intel and AMD and the PowerPC. It ran a proprietary OS with components of FreeBSD Unix, but it was not Unix compliant.

The Mac transitioned that same year. It had been a proprietary device running a proprietary operating system, with a beautiful proprietary user interface (UI) in an elegant ergonomically designed enclosure. Apple pivoted by shifting to the Intel platform and FreeBSD Unix, complying to the Single UNIX Specification (SUS). The Mac today is a PC running an open-source operating system with beautiful proprietary UI in even more elegantly designed enclosures. FreeBSD influenced the evolution of the MacOS. Since the transition, many FreeBSD Unix components were rewritten and many APIs were added.

I count at least 10 glaring errors in just these two paragraphs. The only thing he’s right about is that switching the Mac to Intel’s x86 architecture was good for the platform and good for sales. But they announced the switch at WWDC 2005 and began shipping them in January 2006. And though Mac sales did rise after the switch, the Mac was not “on life support” prior to that — Mac sales were doing pretty well, growing in 2005 with thriving retail stores and talk of an “iPod halo effect” driving new customers to the Mac. And Apple was switching from PowerPC CPUs, which they’d been using for over a decade. And the original Mac CPUs were from Motorola’s 68000 family, not 6800. And the proprietary-ness of the OS didn’t really change at all, and could trace its roots back to NeXTStep in 1989. Good god.

Tuesday, 17 October 2017

Dieter Bohn’s Google Pixel 2 Review 

Dieter Bohn, reviewing the new Pixel phones for The Verge:

Without fail, every person who has picked up the Pixel 2 XL has said virtually the same thing: “It feels like it’s made out of plastic.” I said it myself when I first held it. Of course, neither the Pixel 2 nor the Pixel 2 XL are made out of plastic. They’re made out of Gorilla Glass and aluminum, just like every other high-end phone these days.

But Google coated all that aluminum with a textured finish that hides most of the antenna lines and also makes the phones easier to grip. Google took what could have been a visually impressive design and covered it up in the name of ergonomics. It literally made a metal phone feel like a plastic one. It chose function over form.

Interesting design decision. Apple has moved from aluminum to glass (and last year a glassy-feeling coating on the jet black iPhones). Samsung has moved to glass. Part of this is that most top-tier phones this year support inductive charging (which doesn’t work through aluminum), but even here with the Pixels, they’ve moved away from feeling like aluminum.

On the display colors:

The screen, especially on the 2 XL, has been polarizing. Google opted to tune the display to sRGB (the Galaxy S8, by comparison, offers four gamut options), so it looks a little more like the iPhone’s screen. But more than that, on the 2 XL the colors look muted in a way that many Android users I’ve shown it to found distasteful (even with the “vivid colors” setting turned on). I think many Android phones, especially from Samsung, are so vivid as to be phantasmagoric, so Google’s choice was to make this more “naturalistic.”

My take ever since last year (I bought a Pixel 1) is that the Pixels are targeting people whose taste runs toward the iPhone hardware-wise, but who prefer Android over iOS. Actually, not Android over iOS, but the Google ecosystem over Apple’s. They’re iPhones for Google people. I find Samsung displays to be technically impressive but downright garish in terms of saturation.

Behind the Google Pixel 2 Camera Technology 

Stephen Shankland, writing for CNet on the ways “computational photography” improve the cameras in the new Google Pixel phones:

Some of Google’s investment in camera technology takes the form of AI, which pervades just about everything Google does these days. The company won’t disclose all the areas the Pixel 2 camera uses machine learning and “neural network” technology that works something like human brains, but it’s at least used in setting photo exposure and portrait-mode focus.

Neural networks do their learning via lots of real-world data. A neural net that sees enough photographs labeled with “cat” or “bicycle” eventually learns to identify those objects, for example, even though the inner workings of the process aren’t the if-this-then-that sorts of algorithms humans can follow.

“It bothered me that I didn’t know what was inside the neural network,” said Levoy, who initially was a machine-learning skeptic. “I knew the algorithms to do things the old way. I’ve been beat down so completely and consistently by the success of machine learning” that now he’s a convert.

‘A Soulless Coward’ 

San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich:

This man in the Oval Office is a soulless coward who thinks that he can only become large by belittling others. This has of course been a common practice of his, but to do it in this manner — and to lie about how previous presidents responded to the deaths of soldiers — is as low as it gets. We have a pathological liar in the White House, unfit intellectually, emotionally, and psychologically to hold this office, and the whole world knows it, especially those around him every day.

The NFL is a decidedly conservative sports league — certainly in the lowercase-c literal sense of the word, and I would argue in the political sense of the word too. The NBA, not so much. NBA players could take this kneeling-during-the-anthem issue with Trump to the next level.

(My two cents on the kneeling issue: Kneeling is not disrespectful. In fact, kneeling is universally seen as a deep sign of respect, everywhere from church services to Game of Thrones. When Colin Kaepernick began his silent protests during the national anthem, he did so by remaining seated on the bench. I can see the argument that sitting is disrespectful. I’m not saying Kaepernick should have been punished or vilified for sitting. I’m just saying that if you want to base your argument on “respect” for the flag and national anthem, if players are sitting on the bench, you have a case. But not kneeling. Kneeling is respectful — that’s why Kaepernick and his 49er teammates switched to it. Anyone objecting to players kneeling during the anthem is, no matter what they say, arguing about something other than “respect” for the flag and anthem. My take is that they’re objecting to a lack of compliance and obedience, a refusal to just let the matter fade away.)

‘Maybe It’s a Piece of Dust’ 

Casey Johnston, writing for The Outline:

I was in the Grand Central Station Apple Store for a third time in a year, watching a progress bar slowly creep across my computer’s black screen as my Genius multi-tasked helping another customer with her iPad. My computer was getting its third diagnostic test in 45 minutes. The problem was not that its logic board was failing, that its battery was dying, or that its camera didn’t respond. There were no mysteriously faulty inner workings. It was the spacebar. It was broken. And not even physically broken — it still moved and acted normally. But every time I pressed it once, it spaced twice.

“Maybe it’s a piece of dust,” the Genius had offered. The previous times I’d been to the Apple Store for the same computer with the same problem — a misbehaving keyboard — Geniuses had said to me these exact same nonchalant words, and I had been stunned into silence, the first time because it seemed so improbable to blame such a core problem on such a small thing, and the second time because I couldn’t believe the first time I was hearing this line that it was not a fluke. But this time, the third time, I was ready. “Hold on,” I said. “If a single piece of dust lays the whole computer out, don’t you think that’s kind of a problem?”

The reliability of the new MacBook/Pro keyboards seems like a huge problem. A piece of fucking dust? Say what you want about the feel (and sound) of these new keyboards, the one thing that must be true for any good keyboard is that it has to be reliable. Like totally reliable. So reliable that it’s confusing when something does go wrong. That’s how Apple laptop keyboards have always been, dating back to the earliest days of the PowerBooks. There’ve been some I didn’t enjoy — the squishy-feeling iBook G3 keyboard comes to mind — but they’ve always been reliable.

I find these keyboards — specifically, the tales of woe about keys getting stuck or ceasing to work properly — a deeply worrisome sign about Apple’s priorities today.

Monday, 16 October 2017

BBEdit 12 

Jason Snell:

Have I written more than a million words in Bare Bones Software’s BBEdit? I probably passed that mark a while ago, but who’s counting? It’s been my primary writing tool for the last 20-plus years, and it’s still going strong. Today marks the arrival of version 12, with a bunch of new features and changes — Bare Bones Software says more than a hundred of them. “Almost every line of code has been touched,” according to BBEdit author Rich Siegel. […]

I do a lot of text and data formatting in BBEdit, and one of the great additions in this version is a Columns editing command, that enables quick processing of comma- and tab-delimited text ranges — you can cut, copy, delete, and rearrange columns. You might think that sounds like an esoteric feature, but I’ve probably pasted a tab-delimited text block from BBEdit into Microsoft Excel purely for column management hundreds of times at this point. Now I don’t have to. (Though I’d love it if BBEdit would add support for even more functions on columnar data, like sorting and maybe even styling.)

BBEdit’s longevity and continuing excellence are simply remarkable. I’ve been using it since sometime in 1992 (version 2.2?), and in 1993 I bought the first commercial release, version 2.5. 25 years.

BBEdit’s release notes remain the gold standard for comprehensiveness and clarity. One important change: Bare Bones has officially sunsetted TextWrangler — it’s replaced by a free mode in BBEdit itself. BBEdit’s free mode has more of BBEdit’s full feature set than TextWrangler ever did.

See also: Michael Tsai’s roundup of commentary on the release.

Tesla’s New Car Smell 

Jean-Louis Gassée, on Tesla’s production problems with the Model 3:

My first serious doubts about Tesla didn’t stem from missed schedules, I’ve been guilty of too many of these, they’re part of tech life. What seriously worried me was a July 2016 visit to Tesla’s manufacturing plant in Fremont, California. In taking delivery of my wife’s Model S, we were treated to a group tour of the site. Everyone marveled at the robot porn, at the activity on the assembly line, at the endless stores of spare parts piled to the ceiling.

Everyone but yours truly. […]

As I watched Tesla’s messy, hiccuping line, with workers dashing in to fix faulty parts in place, my mind travelled back to the Honda plant I had visited years ago in Marysville, Ohio. Clean, calm, everything moved smoothly. I was so shocked by the contrast that I imprudently voiced my concern. That didn’t go over well with my fellow Tesla owners. I was a killjoy, I was calling their choice into question.

The Impossible Dream of USB-C 

Marco Arment:

I love the idea of USB-C: one port and one cable that can replace all other ports and cables. It sounds so simple, straightforward, and unified.

In practice, it’s not even close.

USB-C normally transfers data by the USB protocol, but it also supports Thunderbolt… sometimes. The 12-inch MacBook has a USB-C port, but it doesn’t support Thunderbolt at all. All other modern MacBook models support Thunderbolt over their USB-C ports… but if you have a 13-inch model, and it has a Touch Bar, then the right-side ports don’t have full Thunderbolt bandwidth.

If you bought a USB-C cable, it might support Thunderbolt, or it might not. There’s no way to tell by looking at it. There’s usually no way to tell whether a given USB-C device requires Thunderbolt, either — you just need to plug it in and see if it works.

USB-C is a dual disaster. It’s fundamentally confusing because all USB-C ports and plugs look the same, but can have very different features. It’s a fundamental axiom of good design that things that look the same should be the same, and things that are different should look different. USB-C breaks this.

Second, even if you do your homework and know exactly what to look for, there is severe dearth of USB-C products out there. The USB-C hub market is horrendous, but Apple’s MacBook has just one USB-C port, effectively demanding a hub for certain tasks that require external peripherals. Now that all modern Apple MacBooks are USB-C-only, USB-C’s problems are MacBook problems, too.

Why Is Apple the Only Company Making Smartwatches for Women? 

Serenity Caldwell, revisiting a topic she first wrote about two years ago:

When I first ran into this back in 2015, I figured the problem to be more of a marketing challenge than a technical one: Targeting the consumers most likely to buy early-adoption gadgets (men with larger-than-average-sized wrists) over the general consumer market.

But as the years progressed, Apple found massive success attracting women to its watches, while other watchmakers… released similar sizes in rose gold. The 2017 LG Watch Style was arguably designed to appeal directly to women, but even then, LG couldn’t get the case smaller than 42mm-by-45.7mm — a massive difference from the Apple Watch’s 38mm-by-33.3mm. And it apparently didn’t work: The $250 smartwatch has seen massive discounts since its launch (including a crazy drop to $108 in August of 2017, just six months after its release).

I don’t think it’s that they don’t care about the women’s market. The LG Watch Style referenced above is clearly designed for women. I think it’s simply the case that Apple is in a class by itself when it comes to miniaturizing computers. No other company makes a smartwatch anywhere near the size of the 38mm Apple Watch, because they can’t.

Cultural Insularity and Apple TV

Thursday, 28 September 2017

From Shannon Liao’s roundup for The Verge of yesterday’s Amazon announcements:

Amazon Fire TV has had 4K support for a while, but a new device will now support 4K HDR video with 2160p resolution at 60 frames per second. It has Dolby Atmos integration and an Alexa voice remote. It costs $70; that makes it priced far lower than the rival Apple TV 4K, which starts at $179. The Fire TV is available for preorder now and will come out on October 25th.

The lack of Dolby Atmos support in the Apple TV 4K was a sticking point in several reviews. Atmos support is supposedly coming to Apple TV in a software update, though, so the obvious difference between these products is price.

Without ever having looked at the new Fire TV (I did pre-order one, though, so I can), I’m sure that Apple TV is a more powerful device. The new Fire TV doesn’t even have a power cord — it just dangles as a dongle plugged into an HDMI port. [Update: I was wrong about this — it does take power, with an ungainly micro-USB cable. Boo-hiss to Amazon for not using USB-C.] But explain the difference to a typical person looking for a set-top box. Apple TV 4K’s main feature is obviously 4K playback — it’s right there in the name. The new Fire TV does 4K (with HDR at 60 FPS) too. Even.

Earlier this week I wrote about my vague concern about Apple’s insular culture. Apple TV is the product line where I think that might really be a problem. Apple charges a significant premium over the average product in PCs, tablets, and phones. It works for them in those markets. That’s what Apple does and has always done: they make superior, premium products for people willing to pay for them.

But with Apple TV, I’m hearing from a lot of people who are in the Apple ecosystem — people who own MacBooks, iPads, and iPhones — who just don’t want to spend $200 for an Apple TV when they can get a Roku or Fire TV for a lot less. The primary selling point of an Apple TV over these devices is iTunes. I love iTunes — I’ve bought hundreds of movies and TV series from iTunes over the years, knowing full well these purchases would be locked to the Apple ecosystem. I feel like my loyalty to iTunes is being rewarded now that I can get 4K versions of the movies I’ve already bought without paying another dime. No one sent me Blu-ray versions of the many movies I purchased on DVDs back in the day.

But for people who don’t buy movies from iTunes — and generally don’t buy movies period, choosing only to stream from Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, Amazon Prime, etc. (and/or to assemble their home movie collection from copies that fall off trucks) — what does Apple TV offer to justify costing over twice as much? The computing power of the device and the popularity of iOS for gaming make Apple TV a decent casual gaming device, but it doesn’t ship with a gaming controller and even Apple describes Apple TV as a video platform first, gaming platform second.

I like Apple TV a lot, but I think Apple is ceding marketshare by not having a box that competes on price. I think there are a lot of people who look at iPhones, iPads, and MacBooks and see them as “expensive but worth it” but who look at Apple TV and see it as “ridiculously overpriced”.

Apple still sells the previous generation Apple TV, but it costs $149 and doesn’t support 4K. There are ways that it’s a better computer than a Fire TV or a Roku, but without 4K and HDR it’s inarguably worse at the primary task of playing back video content. The fact that it’s a more powerful computer is irrelevant. And yet it costs twice as much.

It’s not enough to make a better set-top box. It has to be obviously better. I don’t think Apple TV’s current lineup makes that case. 

iPhone X Supply Is Going to Be Tight

Wednesday, 27 September 2017

Debby Wu, reporting for Nikkei Asian Review:

Two executives working for iPhone suppliers told Nikkei Asian Review that makers of 3-D sensor parts are still struggling to reach a satisfactory level of output, and to boost their yield rate. […] Both sources were unable to offer clarity on whether Apple could meet demand after launch of the iPhone X. One said the phone was being produced in small quantities, around tens of thousands daily.

Jeff Pu, an analyst at Taipei-based Yuanta Investment Consulting, also identified the 3-D sensors as the only major issue remaining. […] According to Pu’s estimate, Foxconn churned out 2 million units of the iPhone X in September, and in October that number should rise to 10 million. He said that Foxconn will have assembled a total of 40 million iPhone X phones by year-end, lower than his estimate of 45 million earlier this year.

“Supply will still be tight after Nov. 3,” Pu noted.

This should come as no surprise. When an Apple product is late, supply is constrained when it ships. The two go hand-in-hand. AirPods didn’t ship until December last year, and they were deliverable in “4-6 weeks” until earlier this month. Apple Watch shipped late, and supply was severely constrained for months.

This makes pre-ordering iPhone X a bit of a gamble. I do not know when Apple is going to seed review units of iPhone X. My guess, though, based on how they’ve seeded review units in the past, is that they’ll go out the week before pre-orders begin. The dates Apple has announced are Friday October 27 for pre-orders, and Friday November 3 for “available”. So my guess is that review units will go out on October 23 or 24 (Monday or Tuesday). But the embargo on reviews will probably end Monday or Tuesday the next week, October 30 or 31 — after pre-orders begin.1

If supplies are going to be severely constrained, that means you’ll have to place your pre-order Thursday night at midnight PT (3 am here on the east coast) if you want it delivered any time soon. I think it’s going to be the case that you’ll have to get lucky and get your order in within the first few minutes of it going on sale to get yours on November 3. Within minutes, I’ll bet shipping dates will slip to December. If you wait until you read the reviews the next week, you might be waiting until January for delivery.2

The embargo date for reviews has always come after pre-orders begin in my experience, and I don’t think that will change for iPhone X. But with iPhone X, I think people are a little bit more on the fence because so much is new. Does Face ID really work so well that you won’t miss Touch ID? Is the swipe from bottom gesture really a good replacement for the home button? Is moving Control Center from the bottom to the top right corner a good idea (especially on a 5.8-inch display)? Has Apple really made an OLED display with the color accuracy we expect from an Apple product? Personally, I’d like answers to all these questions before I order one. If the answer to any of these questions is no, it’s a problem. If the answer to several of these questions is no, it’s a disaster. I don’t think that’s likely, but it’s within the realm of possibility.

The reviews of iPhone X will be the most anticipated since the reviews of the original iPhone in 2007.3 But if you want an iPhone X before 2018, I suspect you’re going to have to pre-order before you read them. This won’t be that much of a gamble though: if you pre-order and the subsequent reviews give you pause, you should be able to cancel your order.

The smarter move, though, might be to let the phone ship anyway and resell it. However the reviews turn out, the gray market for iPhone X is going to be insane. 

  1. I can speculate about these dates now because I don’t have an iPhone X review unit. But once I do, I’ll be under an NDA and won’t be able to talk about it. Apple’s NDA for review units doesn’t permit you to say anything about the product until the embargo drops. ↩︎

  2. If the number of iPhone X units available on day one is anywhere in the ballpark of only 12 million, that won’t even come close to meeting demand here in the U.S. alone. But keep in mind that a lot of these are likely going to China, where iPhone sales have been slumping and the “status item” aspect of iPhone X could be a huge factor in turning that around. ↩︎︎

  3. There were only four reviews of the original iPhone prior to its release: Walt Mossberg’s for The Wall Street Journal, David Pogue’s for The New York Times, Ed Baig’s for USA Today, and Steven Levy’s for Newsweek. ↩︎︎