Linked List: August 2019

Friday, 30 August 2019

Jack Dorsey’s Twitter Account Was Compromised ★

Zack Whittaker, writing for TechCrunch:

A hacker has compromised Jack Dorsey’s Twitter account.

A stream of rogue tweets — including racial slurs — were posted to the Twitter chief executive’s own Twitter account just after 3:30pm ET. It’s not immediately known how the hacker gained access to Dorsey’s account.

A lot of people are cracking jokes about this — on Twitter, of course. I might joke too, if not for the fact that I worry if this could happen to Dorsey, it could happen to Trump.

Thursday, 29 August 2019

NetNewsWire 5.0 ★

F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote, “There are no second acts in American lives”. Brent Simmons and NetNewsWire prove otherwise. Brent is one of my closest friends, so take my perspective with a grain of salt if you wish, but I just love this app. It is fast, small, and remarkably stable. It looks and feels and acts exactly how a modern Mac app should — and at same time it feels and acts exactly like the NetNewsWire of a decade ago. It is scriptable and accessible, of course. And it is free of charge and open source.

I’d write more, but Josh Ginter has written a spot-on review for The Sweet Setup, and he pretty much nails it. He begins with this quote from Shawn Blanc, writing about NetNewsWire 12 years ago:

What makes NetNewsWire so great is that it at once appeals to every level of user.

For the basic user who checks a few feeds once a day, NNW provides a familiar and friendly environment. For an average user who has several dozen feeds to keep up on, NNW is quick and effective. And even the power user, who lives and breathes inside their feed reader, will discover that NNW has the horsepower to feed their need for feeds.

Being usable for everyone from beginners to experts is so hard to do, and is a hallmark of great consumer applications.

Filmmaker Mode (a.k.a. Death to Motion Smoothing) ★

The UHD Alliance, in conjunction with a large number of the best filmmakers working today:

Filmmakers, Hollywood Studios, consumer electronics companies and the UHD Alliance have collaborated to make this next-level home theater viewing experience possible. By disabling all post-processing (e.g. motion smoothing, etc.) and preserving the correct aspect ratios, colors and frame rates, Filmmaker Mode enables your TV to display the movie or television show’s content precisely as it was intended by the filmmaker.

Launch partners include LG, Panasonic, and Vizio. Importantly, the mode is supposed to kick in automatically when cinematic content is detected. Important, because — according to the UHD Alliance — 85 percent of TV owners never change the factory default settings.

Apple Expands Third-Party Repair Program ★

Apple Newsroom:

Apple today announced a new repair program, offering customers additional options for the most common out-of-warranty iPhone repairs. Apple will provide more independent repair businesses — large or small — with the same genuine parts, tools, training, repair manuals and diagnostics as its Apple Authorized Service Providers (AASPs). The program is launching in the US with plans to expand to other countries. […]

There is no cost to join Apple’s independent repair program. To qualify for the new program, businesses need to have an Apple-certified technician who can perform the repairs. The process for certification is simple and free of charge. To learn more and apply, visit https://support.apple.com/irp-program. Qualifying repair businesses will receive Apple-genuine parts, tools, training, repair manuals and diagnostics at the same cost as AASPs.

Good news for everyone involved. Jason Snell:

It’s all for the best. Apple retail stores have proven to be spectacularly successful hubs for selling new products, but nobody talks about taking broken stuff to the Apple Store with any enthusiasm. Perhaps Apple should focus even more on what it does best—selling shiny new stuff—and let the rest of the professional repair world help support its customers.

Apple Sends Invitations for September 10 Event ★

Certainly lends a bit more credence to the scuttlebutt that Apple is bringing back their classic six-color logo for at least some products. Although I can’t imagine those products would include the new iPhones or Apple Watches set to be unveiled at this event. If there’s any truth to this, I’d bet on the upcoming new MacBook Pro.

Wednesday, 28 August 2019

The Talk Show: ‘Contact Heineken’ ★

Special guest Jim Dalrymple returns to the show. Topics include Apple Card and the latest rumors on Apple’s upcoming product announcements.

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Trump Wants to Hold Next Year’s G7 at His Own Golf Resort ★

Aaron Rupar, reporting for Vox:

President Donald Trump wants to host 2020’s G7 meeting of international leaders at Trump Doral in Florida, a private club he still owns and profits from — a move that would serve as perhaps the starkest illustration yet of how Trump is normalizing corruption.

Having the G7 at Doral would be tantamount to “a free, giant international promotion” for Trump’s business, said Jordan Libowitz, the communications director for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), in an interview with Vox.

“Jimmy Carter”, in The Onion: “You People Made Me Give Up My Peanut Farm Before I Got to Be President”.

Tuesday, 27 August 2019

iOS 13.1 Developer Beta 1 Is Already Out ★

This is new — iOS 13.0 won’t be out until next month, but Apple is already seeding a developer beta for iOS 13.1. Given how buggy iOS 13 betas have been this summer, this is good news. Better to push some features back than ship them in too buggy a state. Basically, I think we need to get used to WWDC announcements being a roadmap for the next year of OS releases, not a list of what’s going to ship in the initial dot-zero release in the fall.

It’s a solid bet that Apple’s top priority has been getting iOS 13.0 into good enough shape for the new iPhones to be announced, reviewed, and shipped on schedule. Everything else slated for iOS 13 could be pushed to a 13.1 update in late October (when I expect the new iPads to be announced).

Monday, 26 August 2019

‘Apple Car(d)’ ★

Horace Dediu:

The old cliche is that we were promised flying cars but ended up with x where x is something trivial or mundane. Perhaps the best “x” is “140 characters”. This statement is meant to de-value the technologies developed in the last few decades. Instead of building grand things, we build trivialities. The irony is that x is often wildly popular and ubiquitous. x also generates a lot of profits and is likely to change behavior. Indeed, the flying car alternatives are almost always better ideas.

Woman Wins 50K Ultra Marathon Outright, Trophy Snafu for Male Winner Follows ★

Runner’s World:

When Ellie Pell took first overall, the surprised race organizers realized they had no trophy for the first place male.

What a great story.

Location Tracking Running Amok ★

Dom DiFurio, writing for The Dallas Morning News:

Analysis from Fort Worth-based Buxton Live Mobile Insights sheds light on where Chick-Fil-A customers go on Sunday when the restaurant is closed. The company tracked location data from the mobile devices of customers on Chick-fil-A properties Monday through Saturday, and then studied where those same customers ate on Sundays.

Buxton told The Dallas Morning News it “purchases and analyzes consumer location data from multiple data aggregators where the data is collected from mobile devices which have pre-opted in to location services tracking.”

The story is ostensibly about fried chicken, but the fact that a marketing firm is tracking people like this is so fucked up. Whatever these people opted into, I’ll bet most of them have no idea how closely they’re being tracked. This is dystopian.

Facebook’s ‘Clear History’ Tool Is, of Course, Bullshit ★

Tony Romm, reporting for The Washington Post:

The feature comes more than a year after Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg first pledged to build a function called “Clear History” that he said would work much the same way a browser allows people to see and delete information about the sites they visited. The goal had been to empower users to “flush your history whenever you want,” he said in May 2018, admitting the company hadn’t been clear about all the ways it learns about its users.

But the implementation of those controls doesn’t exactly flush data, as Zuckerberg had promised. Instead, it disconnects information from being identified to a specific user, and it isn’t deleted outright.

Absolutely shocking. Get me to the fainting couch.

Facebook officials previously said users could “delete this information from your account,” a pledge that might have led users to believe Facebook would remove it entirely.

Who would have thought “delete” meant “delete”?

Sunday, 25 August 2019

Morning Brew ★

My thanks to Morning Brew for once again sponsoring last week at DF. There’s a reason over 1 million people start their day with Morning Brew — the daily email that delivers the latest news from Wall Street to Silicon Valley. I subscribed months ago when they first sponsored DF, and I’ve stayed subscribed. Not because they’re a sponsor but because I genuinely enjoy their daily briefing.

Business news doesn’t have to be dry and dense. Make your mornings more enjoyable, for free. Check it out.

Friday, 23 August 2019

Deconstructing Google’s Excuses on Tracking Protection ★

Jonathan Mayer and Arvind Narayanan, writing at Freedom to Tinker:

Blocking cookies is bad for privacy. That’s the new disingenuous argument from Google, trying to justify why Chrome is so far behind Safari and Firefox in offering privacy protections. As researchers who have spent over a decade studying web tracking and online advertising, we want to set the record straight. […]

Google is trying to thread a needle here, implying that some level of tracking is consistent with both the original design intent for web technology and user privacy expectations. Neither is true.

If the benchmark is original design intent, let’s be clear: cookies were not supposed to enable third-party tracking, and browsers were supposed to block third-party cookies. We know this because the authors of the original cookie technical specification said so (RFC 2109, Section 4.3.5).

Similarly, if the benchmark is user privacy expectations, let’s be clear: study after study has demonstrated that users don’t understand and don’t want the pervasive web tracking that occurs today.

A bad look for Google.

Thursday, 22 August 2019

News Corp Readies News App to Address Publishers’ Concerns About Google and Facebook ★

Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg and Lillian Rizzo, reporting for The Wall Street Journal:

News Corp is developing a news-aggregation service meant to address concerns that Alphabet Inc.’s Google News and other digital platforms don’t reward publishers’ work adequately and play down articles from certain types of sites, according to people familiar with the plans.

The service, currently called Knewz.com, is expected to be a website and a mobile app.

No gnews is good gnews with Gary Gnu.

EFF: ‘Apple’s New WebKit Policy Takes a Hard Line for User Privacy’ ★

Bill Budington, writing for the EFF:

The policy ends with the clause

We want to see a healthy web ecosystem, with privacy by design.

We couldn’t agree more. We sincerely hope more browsers, such as Google’s Chrome, adopt the tenet of “privacy by design” as well.

MLB Warns Sexual Enhancers May Include PEDs ★

Jeff Passan, reporting for MLB:

Major League Baseball in a memo warned about the “very real risk” of over-the-counter sexual-enhancement pills after at least two players this year were suspended for performance-enhancing drugs and said the banned substances found in their urine came from the unregulated products, sources familiar with the situation told ESPN.

The use of over-the-counter pills, which are often sold at gas stations, is prevalent among baseball players, according to multiple sources. It prompted the league to send out a memo on Monday that outlines the risk of consuming non-NSF-certified supplements.

Michael Kay:

You can’t make it up. Millions of dollars at risk and you pop a couple of pills you buy at a gas station. Mind boggling.

“Gas Station Boner Pills” would be a good name for a band.

Apple Support: ‘How to Clean Your Apple Card’ ★

Apple Support:

Some fabrics, like leather and denim, might cause permanent discoloration that will not wash off. […]

Place your card in a slot in your wallet or billfold without touching another credit card. If two credit cards are placed in the same slot your card could become scratched.

My first instinct was to make fun of this: This is no big deal, because it’s not like anyone uses a leather wallet or wears denim jeans. I mean, who cleans a credit card? But after thinking about it, I feel like this really is no big deal because all of the credit cards I’ve ever owned get used-looking over time. If Apple Card gets genuinely sloppy-looking after carrying it like you would any other card — if it’s atypically prone to staining or scratching — that’s a problem. But I suspect these are instructions for obsessives who want to keep their cards in mint condition.

Wednesday, 21 August 2019

Steven Sinofsky on Steve Jobs’s ‘Bicycle for the Mind’ Metaphor for Personal Computers ★

It’s a Twitter thread collected in a Medium post, so the narrative doesn’t read perfectly straight through, but it’s worth your time. Jobs’s 1981 appearance on Nightline is worth it alone. I hadn’t seen this before, and both Jobs (on the potential of personal computers, and their inevitable ubiquity — at a time when only 1 in 1,000 U.S. households owned one) and his counterpart David Burnham (who, even then, was deeply concerned about the privacy implications of computing) are remarkably prescient.

WebKit Tracking Prevention Policy ★

Major new policy from WebKit, with inspiration credit given to Mozilla:

We treat circumvention of shipping anti-tracking measures with the same seriousness as exploitation of security vulnerabilities.

If a party attempts to circumvent our tracking prevention methods, we may add additional restrictions without prior notice. These restrictions may apply universally; to algorithmically classified targets; or to specific parties engaging in circumvention.

No Exceptions

We do not grant exceptions to our tracking prevention technologies to specific parties. Some parties might have valid uses for techniques that are also used for tracking. But WebKit often has no technical means to distinguish valid uses from tracking, and doesn’t know what the parties involved will do with the collected data, either now or in the future.

Unintended Impact

There are practices on the web that we do not intend to disrupt, but which may be inadvertently affected because they rely on techniques that can also be used for tracking. We consider this to be unintended impact.

Equating tracking with malware and security exploits is a major policy change, and absolutely correct. Notably, they are not respecting commercial interests at all. The user’s privacy comes first, and if there is commercial collateral damage from that, fuck it:

WebKit will do its best to prevent all covert tracking, and all cross-site tracking (even when it’s not covert). These goals apply to all types of tracking listed above, as well as tracking techniques currently unknown to us.

If a particular tracking technique cannot be completely prevented without undue user harm, WebKit will limit the capability of using the technique. For example, limiting the time window for tracking or reducing the available bits of entropy — unique data points that may be used to identify a user or a user’s behavior.

Hopefully, this will help close the email tracking-pixel loophole as well.

The ball is now in Chrome’s court to follow suit. I think Google could aggressively close these same privacy-invasive loopholes without losing their ability to serve targeted ads — they’d simply be limited to serving targeted ads to users who sign into Chrome with their Google accounts.

Google DeepMind Co-Founder Mustafa Suleyman Placed on Leave ★

Giles Turner and Mark Bergen, reporting for Bloomberg^*:

The co-founder of DeepMind, the high-profile artificial intelligence lab owned by Google, has been placed on leave after controversy over some of the projects he led.

Mustafa Suleyman runs DeepMind’s “applied” division, which seeks practical uses for the lab’s research in health, energy and other fields. Suleyman is also a key public face for DeepMind, speaking to officials and at events about the promise of AI and the ethical guardrails needed to limit malicious use of the technology.

“Mustafa is taking time out right now after 10 hectic years,” a DeepMind spokeswoman said. She didn’t say why he was put on leave.

Probably not a good sign.

* Bloomberg, of course, is the publication that published “The Big Hack” last October — a sensational story alleging that data centers of Apple, Amazon, and dozens of other companies were compromised by China’s intelligence services. The story presented no confirmable evidence at all, was vehemently denied by all companies involved, has not been confirmed by a single other publication (despite much effort to do so), and has been largely discredited by one of Bloomberg’s own sources. By all appearances “The Big Hack” was complete bullshit. Yet Bloomberg has issued no correction or retraction, and seemingly hopes we’ll all just forget about it. I say we do not just forget about it. Bloomberg’s institutional credibility is severely damaged, and everything they publish should be treated with skepticism until they retract the story or provide evidence that it was true.

Tuesday, 20 August 2019

‘No Time to Die’ ★

Good title, I say, and the brief black-and-white teaser hearkens back to the opening of Casino Royale, before Bond earned 00 status. The most exciting thing about the movie remains the fact that it’s directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga — so much potential with his talent.

As the years pass, Sam Mendes’s Skyfall and (especially) Spectre age worse and worse. Neither film’s story makes a lick of sense. My feeling remains that Daniel Craig has had a very good run as Bond, but that’s held up almost entirely by how spectacularly good Casino Royale was.

Interesting tidbit from the BBC:

007 fans may be aware that famed Bond producer Cubby Broccoli was also behind a 1958 prisoner of war film called No Time To Die (which was also known as Tank Force). That film was directed by Terence Young, who also worked on the Bond movies Dr No, From Russia With Love, and Thunderball.

If You Get an Apple Card, Opt Out of Arbitration ★

John Moltz:

If you get an Apple Card today, remember to reject arbitration! It’s crazy easy. Go to the card in Wallet, tap the ellipsis and then Message. Then just text that you want to reject arbitration and they’ll connect you with the poor sap at Goldman Sachs who’s doing all these.

See also: Barbara Krasnoff at The Verge: “You Should Opt Out of the Apple Card’s Arbitration Clause — Here’s How”.

Apple Card Account Information Is Only Accessible Via iOS Wallet App ★

Nicole Nguyen, writing for Buzzfeed News:

Apple Card is a new cash-rewards credit card that — Apple purports — is designed to be simple and transparent. But it’s also aimed at keeping you locked into your iPhone.

There are no paper statements with the digital-first Apple Card. Unlike a traditional credit card, everything is accessed through the Wallet app on the iPhone, including transaction histories, total balances, previous statements, and payments. There’s no website to view the latest transactions made on the card or make a payment if you lose access to that Wallet app.

I don’t think the reason for this is to keep you locked to your iPhone, although that’s certainly a side effect. I think this simply reflects Apple’s internal culture. Apple’s culture is to make native apps for everything as a first priority, with web interfaces as a much lower priority. And in recent years, that’s shifted from native apps for iOS and Mac to just native apps for iOS. (E.g. the craptacular Catalyst apps for Stocks, News, Voice Memos, and most especially Home.) It feels ridiculous that you can’t access your Apple Card account from a Mac, whether from a native Mac app or from a website.

In some ways making the iOS Wallet app the primary interface to your Apple Card probably makes for a great experience. (I haven’t signed up for one — yet? — so I can’t say firsthand.) But not having access from a desktop computer is severely limiting in ways. Nguyen focuses on the scenario of what happens if you only have access to one iOS device and lose it (or it breaks). That’s a legitimate scenario. But what about being able to, say, export your monthly and annual statements? Or being able to search?

My hope is that Apple Card is only accessible via the iOS Wallet app for now, and that wallet.apple.com will eventually be a full-featured interface to your card account.

Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg on What’s Next for Tumblr ★

Great interview by Nilay Patel and Julia Alexander from The Verge with Matt Mullenweg, on Automattic’s acquisition of Tumblr from Verizon.

A lot of people are making hay over the price — Yahoo paid $1.1 billion for Tumblr six years ago, and Verizon apparently sold it to Automattic (best known as the parent company of WordPress) for just $3 million. But it seems clear that Verizon wasn’t looking for the best price — they were looking for the best home. Might be hard to believe because we’re talking about Verizon here, but there’s no other explanation than that they wanted to do what was best for Tumblr — both its employees and its users. Admirable.

Mullenweg’s remarks on the influence of app stores — and I think it’s pretty clear he was largely talking about Apple’s, and that he talked about them in the general lowercase sense so as not to come across as impolitic — was rather eye-opening. Automattic pretty much embodies the ideal of a for-profit company that fully embraces the open web. Their core product, WordPress, is and always has been fully open source. But apps are so important today — and so important for Tumblr users, apparently — that app store policies have significant influence on Automattic’s decisions on content policies.

Monday, 19 August 2019

Counterfeit George Orwell Books on Amazon ★

David Streitfeld, writing for The New York Times:

In George Orwell’s “1984,” the classics of literature are rewritten into Newspeak, a revision and reduction of the language meant to make bad thoughts literally unthinkable. “It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words,” one true believer exults.

Now some of the writer’s own words are getting reworked in Amazon’s vast virtual bookstore, a place where copyright laws hold remarkably little sway. Orwell’s reputation may be secure, but his sentences are not.

Over the last few weeks I got a close-up view of this process when I bought a dozen fake and illegitimate Orwell books from Amazon. Some of them were printed in India, where the writer is in the public domain, and sold to me in the United States, where he is under copyright.

Amazon’s credibility problem with counterfeit products is as bad as ever, but it’s particularly rich when it comes to bastardized versions of Orwell’s oeuvre.

Rambo: Apple Arcade to Cost $5/Month ★

Guilherme Rambo, writing at 9to5Mac:

Today, I was able to get information about the price of an Apple Arcade subscription to customers. This information is available in one of the APIs used by the App Store app. According to a promotional message found in the service, the price for Apple Arcade will be $4.99 / month, including a one-month free trial. As Apple previously announced, the service will allow access to all members in a Family Sharing account.

That’s a very appealing price, especially considering that it includes family sharing. And from what I hear, Apple is aggressively recruiting developers to create exclusive games for Arcade. I not only think this will be very successful for Apple and participating developers, but I think it could disrupt the whole mobile gaming industry. Pay-to-win games could see a big decline.

Sunday, 18 August 2019

Jamf Now ★

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Saturday, 17 August 2019

Yankees Clinch 27th Straight Winning Season ★

Bryan Hoch, MLB:

Securing their 27th consecutive season with a winning record, a streak that dates to 1993 and is second in Major League history only to their 39-season run from 1926-64, the Yankees peppered rookie starter Aaron Civale for three runs and eight hits over six innings.

What a streak. Next best in MLB are the Cardinals with 11.

Trump’s Large Union Crowd at Shell Was Given the Option of Not Showing Up — and Not Getting Paid ★

Anya Litvak, reporting for The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

The choice for thousands of union workers at Royal Dutch Shell’s petrochemical plant in Beaver County was clear Tuesday: Either stand in a giant hall waiting for President Donald Trump to speak or take the day off with no pay.

“Your attendance is not mandatory,” said the rules that one contractor relayed to employees, summarizing points from a memo that Shell sent to union leaders a day ahead of the visit to the $6 billion construction site. But only those who showed up at 7 a.m., scanned their ID cards, and prepared to stand for hours — through lunch but without lunch — would be paid.

“NO SCAN, NO PAY,” a supervisor for that contractor wrote.

Easy call to boycott all Shell products — forcing your employees to serve as paid supporters is authoritarian bullshit. And this is why Trump accuses protestors of being paid stooges — pure projection.

WatchOS 6 Beta Suggests New Series 5 Watches in Titanium and Ceramic ★

Nice scoop from iHelpBR. Marco Arment’s take:

Two fantastic watch materials. Titanium in watches can be made to look like steel but slightly darker and much lighter-weight, and the previous white-ceramic Editions were really cool.

Agreed. Watch-grade titanium is a very different beast than the titanium in the original PowerBook G4 models. The fact that it’s much lighter should make haptics better than in the stainless steel models.

Friday, 16 August 2019

‘Performance Matters‘ ★

Hillel Wayne:

Many ambulances now have electronic PCRs, which fix a lot of these problems. The report is automatically filed with the hospital. The software can enter timestamps and fill in necessary boilerplate. By spellchecking known medications it saves time at the hospital. Nobody has to guess whether you scrawled “100mg” or “160mg”.

The ambulance I shadowed had an ePCR. Nobody used it. I talked to the EMTs about this, and they said nobody they knew used it either. Lack of training? «No, we all got trained.» Crippling bugs? No, it worked fine. Paper was good enough? No, the ePCR was much better than paper PCRs in almost every way. It just had one problem: it was too slow.

It wasn’t even that slow. Something like a quarter-second lag when you opened a dropdown or clicked a button. But it made things so unpleasant that nobody wanted to touch it. Paper was slow and annoying and easy to screw up, but at least it wasn’t that.

I think about that a lot.

I think the difference between UI design and UX design often gets lost in a lot of highfalutin jargon. But at a basic level there is a clear difference: the interface might be well designed and clear, but if it is slow and laggy, the experience of using it will be unpleasant, and people will go out of their way to avoid using whatever it is.

I repeat this point often, but it’s a moral obligation for designers to keep in mind what users will do, not what they “should” do. These EMTs perhaps should use the ePCRs because doing so might reduce errors; but in practice they stick with paper and pen because the ePCR machines are slow.

‘WeWork Isn’t a Tech Company; It’s a Soap Opera’ ★

Elizabeth Lopatto, writing for The Verge:

On August 14th, The We Company (the company formerly known as WeWork) filed its mandatory S-1 paperwork to go public, and it’s worth reading in full. I mean, forget the serious stuff for a moment. The thing begins with an epigram: “We dedicate this to the energy of we — greater than any one of us, but inside all of us.”

The energy of we. I get it from a branding perspective — they’re literally calling themselves The We Company — but, you know, normal people would just say “our energy.” I tease Silicon Valley’s tech companies a lot, but New York easily matches them in ego. Look at these kids, literally bending the English language to their will!

Anyway, please join me on an annotated trip through my favorite parts of the mandatory filing.

Lopatto’s piece is a truly joyful look at a wacky company. Anyone who thinks The We Company should be valued at $50 billion is nuts — they’re more like a cult than a tech startup.

Version Museum: A Visual History of Your Favorite Technology ★

Neat project from an anonymous (?) father and son team:

Version Museum showcases the visual history of popular websites, operating systems, applications, and games that have shaped our lives. Much like walking through a real-life museum, this site focuses on the design changes of historic versions of technology, rather than just the written history behind it.

(Via Kottke.)

Thursday, 15 August 2019

App Store Editorial Stories Are Now Available on the Web ★

Benjamin Mayo, writing for 9to5Mac:

Apple has recently updated its App Store Preview pages for stories to allow users to view the full content of stories from inside their desktop web browser. App Store stories have always been shareable as links, but the web version was just a title and a navigation link to ‘open this story in the App Store’.

Between August 9th and August 11th, Apple has upgraded the experience and now includes full imagery, app lists and paragraphs copy in the web version. This means you can access the same content online as you would be ale to find in the native App Store experience.

Apple has put together a great editorial staff for the App Store, and works with many talented freelance writers and artists, so it’s great that their work can now be seen on the regular web. I have many times decided against linking to App Store articles simply because the stories weren’t on the web — prior to this, the only way to read them was using a recent version of iOS or MacOS. I get that these stories are intended to drive engagement with the App Store, but it just seemed spiteful not to put them on the open web.

Here, for example, is a nice write-up about Yoink, one of my very favorite Mac utilities.

Update: Mayo, on Twitter, points to one significant shortcoming of these articles on the web — they don’t include video.

Ugly Gerry ★

Type design as political activism — very clever.

Monday, 12 August 2019

Trump’s Horrific Photo With El Paso Victim ★

Rhonda Garelick, writing at The Cut:

Imagine this: A shooter has entered a public place, where you are walking with your family. You have but a minute to realize you can save your 2-month-old by using your own body to shield him from the bullets raining down around you. Mere days later, your baby, the youngest survivor of the El Paso massacre, will appear on television with the very man who inspired the terrorist who killed both you and your husband. A photograph is taken, for posterity. […]

Neither the president nor Melania so much as glances at Baby Paul. Oblivious (as ever) to the solemnity of their occasion, they smile broadly, matching veneers on full beam. Your husband came from a family of Trump supporters. Perhaps, in a different world, you might even have wanted to meet Donald Trump, or take a photo with him as he gave one of his signature thumbs-up gestures — everything is A-OK here.

This photo isn’t emblematic of what’s truly wrong with Trump’s kakistocratic administration, but it is emblematic of the fact that he is clearly mentally unwell, so deeply in the grips of narcissistic personality disorder that he can smile and thumbs-up his way through a profoundly tragic moment. His supporters and shoulder-shruggers might look at this photo today and chalk it up to Trump being Trump, but the rest of us see what history will judge: he’s a sociopath with no capacity for empathy.

Trump Administration Weakens Protections for Endangered Species ★

Lisa Friedman, reporting for The New York Times:

The Trump administration on Monday announced that it would change the way the Endangered Species Act is applied, significantly weakening the nation’s bedrock conservation law credited with rescuing the bald eagle, the grizzly bear and the American alligator from extinction.

Why in the world would they do this?

The changes could clear the way for new mining, oil and gas drilling, and development in areas where protected species live.

Oh, that’s why.

Saturday, 10 August 2019

Tim Cook Meets With U.S. Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Karl Schultz at Apple Park ★

Steve Jobs, 1983: “It’s better to be a pirate than join the navy.”

The Talk Show: ‘A Clear Eyed Look at Dishwashers’ ★

Special guest John Siracusa finally returns to the show. Topics include the Siri voice recording fiasco, Siracusa’s epic Mac OS X reviews, and making good ice.

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iOS 13 Will Let You Delete Apps Right From the App Store Update List ★

Old news from WWDC two months ago, but this is a feature I’ve long been wishing for.

Thursday, 8 August 2019

Mud Maker: The Man Behind MLB’s Essential Secret Sauce ★

Emma Baccellieri, writing for Sports Illustrated:

This always does the trick. It prevents anyone from exploring what he’s actually doing, which is what he’s done for decades, what his father did before him, and his grandfather before him: Bintliff is collecting the mud that is used to treat every single regulation major league baseball, roughly 240,000 per season.

Mud is a family business; it has been for more than half a century. For decades, baseball’s official rule book has required that every ball be rubbed before being used in a game. Bintliff’s mud is the only substance allowed. Originally marketed as “magic,” it’s just a little thicker than chocolate pudding — a tiny dab is enough to remove the factory gloss from a new ball without mucking up the seams or getting the cover too filthy. Equipment managers rub it on before every game, allowing pitchers to get a dependable grip. The mud is found only along a short stretch of that tributary of the Delaware, with the precise location kept secret from everyone, including MLB.

I’ve long known that baseballs are treated with mud, but I had no idea it all comes from the same source. And it’s crazy that even MLB doesn’t know the exact location.

The History of Clarus the Dogcow ★

With FileMaker changing its name back to Claris — with an i — it’s worth revisiting Stephen Hackett’s history of Clarus — with a u — the dogcow.

FileMaker Goes Back to ‘Claris’ ★

Claris:

“Claris stems from the Latin root ‘clarus,’ which means ‘clear, bright and shining,’” said Brad Freitag, Claris CEO. “Nothing better encapsulates the company’s mission: to empower the problem-solver with smart solutions that work for their business. By extending the reach of our platform as a modern, multi-faceted, and powerful merger of on-premises custom apps and third-party services, our customers can streamline their business processes across the cloud services that they use every day.”

If this name change doesn’t bring a nostalgic smile to your face, you probably weren’t a Mac user in the 1990s. FileMaker is still going strong, but back in the day, Claris had a slew of great Mac productivity apps.

Uber Posts $5.2 Billion Loss and Slowest Ever Growth Rate ★

Kate Conger, reporting for The New York Times:

Uber set two dubious quarterly records on Thursday as it reported its results: its largest-ever loss, exceeding $5 billion, and its slowest-ever revenue growth.

The double whammy immediately renewed questions about the prospects for the company, the world’s biggest ride-hailing business. Uber has been dogged by concerns about sluggish sales and whether it can make money, worries that were compounded by a disappointing initial public offering in May.

Is there any evidence to suggest that Uber will ever turn a profit? I just don’t see it.

Samsung Galaxy Note 10 ★

Dieter Bohn, writing for The Verge:

The Note 10 starts at $949 and comes in just one configuration: 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. The Note 10 Plus starts at $1,099 with 12GB RAM / 256GB storage and you can spend $100 more to get 512GB of storage. Both are available for preorder today and will ship on August 23rd.

Kind of interesting to ship the regular Note with just one storage configuration. Also: Samsung’s first flagship phones without headphone jacks.

The Note 10 Plus 5G — temporarily exclusive to Verizon in the U.S. — will cost $1,300. I don’t think that’s crazy — for most people, their phone is both their most-used, most-important computer and their main camera.

Sunday, 4 August 2019

Shape Up ★

My thanks to Basecamp for sponsoring DF last week to promote Shape Up. If your team struggles to make progress on projects, it’s time to reconsider the way you work.

There’s a whole new approach called Shape Up. It’s not agile, it’s not scrum, and your walls won’t be lined with Post-It Notes. There are no daily stand ups, design sprints, backlogs, velocity tracking, or busywork. None of that.

Shape Up is an entirely different approach. One developed and honed over 15 years of building one of the world’s most popular collaboration tools. The method is unlike anything you’ve tried — and quite a bit better.

I’ve been friends with and following the team from Basecamp for as long as DF has existed and I’ve always been inspired by their willingness to share everything they know. Read up for free at basecamp.com/shapeup.

Thursday, 1 August 2019

The Talk Show: ‘Start a Bakin’ Timer’ ★

Another new episode, with special guest Marco Arment. Topics include MacBook Pro rumors, breakfast cereal, Siri frustrations, and more.