Linked List: March 30, 2016

Wednesday, 30 March 2016

OS X to Be Rebranded ‘macOS’ at WWDC? ★

Apple Insider:

Following the naming conventions of iOS, watchOS and tvOS, Apple’s Mac operating system could soon return to the name “macOS,” if code spotted in the latest release of El Capitan is to be believed.

I thought Phil Schiller sort of hinted at this last year when he was on my WWDC podcast. From iMore’s excellent transcript:

Gruber: watchOS, with a lower-case “w”. Are you trying to kill me?

Laughs.

Schiller: [laughs] It’s, um… I think it works really well. I think it’s nice, it’s ownable, it’s special…

I think, you’ll see. Give us time, we’ve been through many fun naming things. This is an easy one. There have been many fun naming things through the years — some very emotional, some very easy — and most of the time, when all’s said and done, you look back years later, people say “Yeah, you guys were right, it all made sense together.”

So I think we’re doing the right thing.

David Sparks on What’s New in Fantastical 2.2 ★

Great video documenting what’s new in one of my very favorite apps.

ACLU Map Documents the 63 Known Cases in Which Government Has Tried to Use All Writs Act to Overcome Encryption: ★

Eliza Sweren-Becker, writing for the ACLU:

The FBI wants you to think that it will use the All Writs Act only in extraordinary cases to force tech companies to assist in the unlocking of phones. Turns out, these kinds of orders have actually become quite ordinary.

The Colbert Emoji ★

Kinda weird to see the deliberations of the Unicode Consortium discussed on a late night talk show. Fun, though.

Introducing Safari Technology Preview ★

Ricky Mondello, from Apple’s Safari team:

Starting today, there’s a new, convenient way to see what features and improvements are coming to Safari and other applications that use WebKit. Safari Technology Preview is a version of Safari for OS X, distributed by Apple, that includes a cutting-edge, in-development version of the WebKit browser engine. It’s a great way to test upcoming WebKit features and give feedback to the people building them when it’s most useful — early in development.

Safari Technology Preview is a standalone application that can be used side-by-side with Safari or other web browsers, making it easy to compare behaviors between them. Besides having the latest web features and bug fixes from WebKit, Safari Technology Preview includes the latest improvements to Web Inspector, which you can use to develop and debug your websites. Updates for Safari Technology Preview will be available every two weeks through the Updates pane of the Mac App Store.

Very cool. Once installed, updates will come every two weeks through the Mac App Store — but you have to initially install from the website download. And unlike Webkit nightly builds, Safari Technology Preview is signed by Apple, which allows it to work with iCloud features (bookmark and tab syncing, etc.).

SoundCloud Go and Artist Payments ★

Dave Wiskus, on the fact that SoundCloud’s new $10/month streaming music service only pays artists who are in their invitation-only “Premier Partners” program:

You can slice it, package it, or spin it however you like, but the bare fact is that you’re making money off of songs you aren’t paying for. Worse, you’re doing it while perpetuating an air of exclusivity around the concept of making money. All while you’re pretending to be a friend to the little guy. There’s nothing artist-friendly about this approach.

But wait! There’s more!

Airplane Mode has a SoundCloud Pro account to get access to unlimited uploads and a few other features that make the service useful. This account costs us $15 per month. So not only are you getting our music for free and paying us nothing, we’re actually paying you to take it. What an excellent deal. For you.

MLB and Apple Announce Deal to Put iPads in the Dugout ★

MLB:

Major League Baseball (MLB) today announced its latest technology collaboration with Apple to integrate powerful new on-field capabilities through the approved use of iPad Pro and a newly developed advance scouting, analytics and video app - MLB Dugout - during MLB games. The announcement, made by Baseball Commissioner Robert D. Manfred, Jr., brings iPad Pro into all 30 Major League dugouts and bullpens and marks the first-ever on-field integration of next generation technology, putting advance scouting video and customizable reports at the fingertips of all managers, coaches and players.

Entering the 2016 MLB season, each iPad Pro has been customized for each Club and loaded with the MLB Dugout app, allowing every team’s manager, coaches and players to utilize their own proprietary and strategic statistical reports, data visualizations and advance scouting videos during every MLB game from dugouts and bullpens giving them easy access to valuable, actionable baseball insights. Clubs also will have the ability to include any of their own reports with data generated from last year’s first full season of Statcast tracking technology, bringing new stats for pitch tracking, hitting, baserunning and fielding, right on iPad Pro.

So the NFL has Surface, MLB has iPad.