Linked List: September 15, 2017

Friday, 15 September 2017

The Talk Show: ‘200: Episode CC’, With Special Guest Craig Federighi 

Very special guest Craig Federighi returns to the show to talk about Face ID, the perils of live demos, Apple’s approach to designing the iPhone X, privacy, security, and more. A great way to close out Apple’s big week and mark the 200th episode of the show.

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Still No Charity Money From Leftover Trump Inaugural Funds 

Jeff Horwitz and Julie Bykowicz, reporting for the AP:

President Donald Trump’s inaugural committee raised an unprecedented $107 million for a ceremony that officials promised would be “workmanlike,” and the committee pledged to give leftover funds to charity. Nearly eight months later, the group has helped pay for redecorating at the White House and the vice president’s residence in Washington.

But nothing has yet gone to charity.

Shocker.

Nikon Selects 32 Pro Photographers for Promotion: None Are Women 

Jason Vinson, writing for Fstoppers:

The only problem with such an amazing monster of a camera is that Nikon thinks it’s too much for women to handle.

I know what you are thinking. No way Nikon would ever make such a claim. It seems absurd that only men could handle the D850. I myself can think of a large number of women photographers that would be more than capable of producing spectacular images with any camera, let alone this camera. But when Nikon created a team of 32 professional photographers to be the faces of the Nikon D850, they didn’t choose a single woman photographer.

This is just astonishingly bad. It would be worth complaining about if there were only a handful of women in the group, but zero? How did that ever get approved?

Attention to Detail in the Steve Jobs Theater 

Nice catch by Brad Ellis: not only were the tables in the hands-on area concentric with the walls of the room, but the pads on the tables were too.

You Can Double-Tap to Obscure the Notch While Playing Video on iPhone X 

I’m not on board with Apple’s “embrace the notch” user interface, but I do find it commendable that they showed the notch everywhere during the keynote Tuesday. Compare and contrast with accusations that Apple was hiding the camera bumps on the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus in promotional photos back in 2014.

Apple truly did the opposite with the notch: they emphasized it, showing it even while playing full-screen video. There is very good news here: you can just double-tap video to toggle between filling the screen (which shows the notch on the left side, obscuring the left edge of the video) and preserving the video’s true aspect ratio (which hides the notch with black bars). And I think, but can’t confirm, that it will default to hiding the notch while playing video.

Update: Ben Bajarin did get an answer from Apple on this at the event, and I was correct: the default is for video not to zoom to fill every pixel, so you won’t see the notch in video playback unless you double-tap.

‘Craig Federighi’ Answers Face ID Questions on Conan O’Brien 

(a) I thought this was pretty funny; and (b) I’m kind of blown away that Federighi is famous enough to spoof.