Linked List: April 2, 2018

Monday, 2 April 2018

The 50th Anniversary of ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ 

Warner Brothers:

Celebrating the 50th anniversary of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, Warner Bros. Pictures will debut an ‘unrestored’ 70mm print of the director’s groundbreaking science fiction epic at the 71st annual Cannes Film Festival. Widely considered among the greatest films of the 20th century, 2001: A Space Odyssey will return to select U.S. theatres in 70mm beginning May 18, 2018.

Set for Saturday, May 12, the world premiere will be held during the Cannes Classics section of the Festival, featuring an introduction by award-winning filmmaker Christopher Nolan. The screening will also be attended by members of Stanley Kubrick’s family, including his daughter, Katharina Kubrick, and longstanding producing partner and brother-in-law, Jan Harlan.

For the first time since the original release, this 70mm print was struck from new printing elements made from the original camera negative. This is a true photochemical film recreation. There are no digital tricks, remastered effects, or revisionist edits.

This is the unrestored film that recreates the cinematic event audiences experienced 50 years ago.

A longtime admirer of the late American auteur, Nolan worked closely with the team at Warner Bros. Pictures throughout the mastering process.

I am so insanely excited about this, I can barely contain myself. I’ve seen 70mm prints of 2001 on big screens twice. Once was a so-so older print. The other time was a cherry print. But this print sounds like something else altogether, and I can think of no one better than Christopher Nolan to have overseen it.

Apple Now Selling the iMac Pro’s Space Gray Keyboard, Mouse, and Trackpad at $20 Premiums 

Raymond Wong, writing for Mashable last week:

Following Apple’s education-focused event, the tech giant has quietly added the coveted Space Gray Magic Keyboard, Magic Trackpad, and Magic Mouse 2 to its online store. In other words, you no longer need to buy a iMac Pro just to get them, or fork over your life savings to scalpers on eBay.

Apple’s selling the Space Gray Magic Keyboard for $149 — a $20 premium over the regular silver model which costs $129. The Space Gray Magic Trackpad is also $149 and also costs $20 more than the $129 silver version. As for the Space Gray Magic Mouse 2, it $99 compared to the $79 silver version.

Speaking of “working hard to charge you more”.

Apple Increases Number of Job Openings With ‘Siri’ in the Title 

Joshua Fruhlinger, writing for Thinknum:

Apple hiring trend data suggests that the company is finally taking its Siri intelligent assistant seriously. According to hiring data that we track at Thinknum, the number of open positions that contain the term “Siri” has accelerated in recent weeks, with a current all-time high of 161 job listings posted today alone. This marks a jump in hiring for the keyword of 24% in just over a month.

I would caution against drawing any conclusions from this other than that Apple has increased the number of job openings which include “Siri” in the title. Does this mean they’re taking Siri “more seriously”? Maybe. But I don’t think they ever didn’t take it seriously. A lot of people seem to take it for granted that because Siri has stalled compared to Google Assistant and Alexa, it means Apple doesn’t care about Siri. I don’t think that conclusion follows at all — you can care passionately about something and fail.

This increase in “Siri” job openings could mean Apple has concluded they need to increase the headcount on the Siri team. Or it could mean there’s been a lot of turnover. And keep in mind Fred Brooks’s axiom from The Mythical Man-Month, which is almost universally regarded as true: “Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.” (I hesitated to include the Brooks’s law reference here, because Siri is not a single monolithic project. It’s more like a system of smaller sub-projects. But still, throwing engineers at a poorly organized software project can have the effect of throwing water on a grease fire.)

I think the true answer to the question “What’s gone wrong with Siri at Apple?” is almost certainly complex and multivariate. It’s naive to think it’s simply been understaffed.

Siri’s Problems With Women’s Sports 

Paul Kafasis, writing at One Foot Tsunami:

Look, men’s sports are undeniably more popular than women’s sports. Given that, if both the men’s and women’s teams were playing at the same time, it might be reasonable to default to the men’s game. This, however, is simply ridiculous. Rather than showing what is likely the single most popular women’s college event (the championship game of the women’s basketball tournament), Siri is instead showing a fifteen day old men’s game from the second-rate NIT.

In a footnote, Kafasis notes that rather than defaulting to men’s sports if both teams are playing on the same day, it would be better for Siri to ask. I will add that after asking, Siri should remember. And, on shared devices like HomePod, these voice assistants need to recognize our voices. I want Siri to recognize my voice and remember which sports (and which teams) I’m generally interested in. But if there’s another sports fan in my house, they shouldn’t be presumed to be fans of the same sports and teams.

The Talk Show: ‘Spending Tim Cook’s Money’ 

Serenity Caldwell returns to the show to talk about Apple’s education-focused event last week in Chicago.

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Bloomberg: ‘Apple Plans to Use Its Own Chips in Macs From 2020, Replacing Intel’ 

Bloomberg:

Apple is planning to use its own chips in Mac computers beginning as early as 2020, replacing processors from Intel, according to people familiar with the plans, Bloomberg News’ Ian King and Mark Gurman report.

The initiative, code named Kalamata, is still in the early developmental stages, but comes as part of a larger strategy to make all of Apple’s devices — including Macs, iPhones, and iPads — work more similarly and seamlessly together, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing private information.

Hell of a scoop if it pans out. We’ve all been speculating about ARM-based Macs for years. In broad strokes it seems like a rather obvious idea:

  • Apple seeks to control its own future. With Intel, Apple has often been stuck waiting for new Intel chips. The update schedule for new Mac hardware is often in Intel’s hands, not Apple’s.
  • Apple’s internal chip team has been killing it. They’ve never had a bad year. I think you can argue that they’ve never had anything but a great year. iPhones and iPad Pros have been faster than most MacBooks for years now, and that just seems wrong.

But when you start thinking about the details, this transition would (will?) be very difficult. First, while Apple’s existing A-series chips are better for energy-efficient mobile device use (iPhone, iPad, just-plain MacBook), Apple’s internal team has never made anything to compete with Intel at the high-performance end (MacBook Pros, and especially iMacs and Mac Pros). I’m not saying they can’t. I’m just saying they haven’t shown us anything yet.

And then there’s all sorts of questions about the transition period. Will there be something like Rosetta — an emulator or translator that allows existing x86 Mac software to run on the new ARM-based Macs? How far in advance will Apple announce this, so that developers can adapt their apps? (Apple announced the switch from PowerPC to Intel at WWDC 2005, and started shipping Intel-based MacBook Pros in early 2006.)