Linked List: June 2, 2015

Tuesday, 2 June 2015

You remember PaintCode — it’s the cool Mac drawing app/developer tool that outputs Cocoa source code. You can use it to “draw” your app’s UI and the result is rendered by native code. They just gave me a heads-up on their latest feature: “telekinesis”. It lets you change the UI while the app is running on a device. Looks cool.

Apple Watch Face Off: Astronomical Faces ★

Jason Snell, writing at Six Colors:

These two faces, Astronomy and Solar, are beautiful, well-designed creations, and the Astronomy face really is a stunning demonstration of the Apple Watch’s computing power and the high quality of the display.

And I never use either of them.

Tim Cook Delivers Speech on Encryption and Privacy ★

Matthew Panzarino:

Yesterday evening, Apple CEO Tim Cook was honored for ‘corporate leadership’ during EPIC’s Champions of Freedom event in Washington. Cook spoke remotely to the assembled audience on guarding customer privacy, ensuring security and protecting their right to encryption.

“Like many of you, we at Apple reject the idea that our customers should have to make tradeoffs between privacy and security,” Cook opened. “We can, and we must provide both in equal measure. We believe that people have a fundamental right to privacy. The American people demand it, the constitution demands it, morality demands it.” […]

“We believe the customer should be in control of their own information. You might like these so-called free services, but we don’t think they’re worth having your email, your search history and now even your family photos data mined and sold off for god knows what advertising purpose. And we think some day, customers will see this for what it is.”

The Grand Overlook Hotel ★

Nice editing work by Steve Ramsden.

Recode: ‘Apple Subscription TV Service Won’t Be Announced Next Week’ ★

Peter Kafka and Dawn Chmielewski, reporting for Recode:

Apple won’t be announcing its much-anticipated subscription TV service next week at its Worldwide Developer Conference, according to several people with knowledge of the situation.

The Cupertino technology company has told network executives the planned unveiling will be postponed because Apple has yet to finalize the licensing deals. Industry executives predict Apple’s Web TV offering may not launch until later this year, or in 2016. Technology and money issues remain sticking points.

Do they still announce new Apple TV hardware and a new SDK for developers, even if they’re not ready to announce the subscription content service? My guess is “yes” — assuming it’s all ready to go. They could launch a next-generation Apple TV with the content they already have.

A Humble Suggestion for Activity Rings ★

David Smith:

I love the Apple Watch activity rings. I really do. Whoever at Apple came up with the idea of showing your activity as three concentric circles that you close when you complete your goal deserves a raise. It taps into the completionist part of my brain a way few other things do. It bothers me to leave one un-closed, which is exactly what it should do.

But I do have one problem with the current approach.

I like his idea.