Linked List: July 13, 2021

Tuesday, 13 July 2021

2021 Emmy Nominations ★

The New York Times:

Netflix’s The Crown and the Disney+ Star Wars drama The Mandalorian led the way with 24 nominations each. HBO led all the networks with 130 nominations.

Apple TV+ did well, too, with 34 total nominations, led, no surprise, by the delightful Ted Lasso. Maybe Apple TV+ isn’t the new HBO but just a new HBO. Just a lot of good stuff from these premium platforms last year. We loved HBO’s Mare of Easttown, which was justly rewarded with numerous nominations. I still think the HBO Max branding is off — just call the damn thing “HBO” — but HBO is holding its own in its decade-old race to become Netflix before Netflix can become HBO. They’re both in good shape.

What’s shocking now isn’t that premium streaming services do well with Emmy nominations, but that traditional network scripted shows — comedy and drama — are nearly shut out. All the best shows now are on the new streaming platforms.

Weather Strip ★

New weather app for the iPhone and iPad (and, on Apple Silicon Macs, MacOS — thanks to their ability to run iPad apps) from data visualization researcher Robin Stewart. I’ve never seen weather forecasts presented quite like this. A very glanceable presentation of precipitation chances, cloud cover, and, of course, temperature. (Weather Strip cleverly only shows the “feels like” temperature when it differs from the actual temperature by at least 4 degrees Fahrenheit. The biggest downside is that it’s U.S.-only:

Weather Strip forecasts come directly from the U.S. National Weather Service (NOAA), so the app is currently limited to the United States. Forecasts usually span 168 hours (7 days) but can occasionally be longer or shorter.

Just $1/month, or a mere $4/year. Insta-buy for me at that annual rate — and there’s a one-month trial period.

Apple Launches $99 MagSafe Battery Pack ★

It’s a little late in the annual iPhone cycle — we might learn about this year’s new iPhones in two months — but presumably this battery pack will work with MagSafe-compatible iPhones for a few years to come. (Mark Gurman first wrote about this product back in February.)

The closest competitor is probably Anker’s $46 PowerCore Magnetic 5K. Apple’s battery pack is smaller — maybe quite a bit smaller — but Anker’s has more storage capacity. With Apple’s, you can plug your iPhone into a wall charger and it will reverse-charge the battery pack, if attached. Anker’s only charges in one direction, from the battery pack to the iPhone, but you can charge the iPhone while the battery pack is connected to a wall charger.

Apple’s battery pack works at 15W — the full speed of MagSafe — but only when the battery pack itself is plugged into a wall charger. When it’s in your pocket, it charges your iPhone at 5W, the same speed at which Anker’s always charges. The other notable difference is that only Apple’s battery pack shows its charge level in the iOS Battery widget.

A bit of a shame that Apple is only selling it in white (for now?) — most of their recent battery cases have been available in both black and white (and sometimes pink and Product Red).