Posts in Linked

Tim Cook Reflects on Apple’s Success in Fast Company Interview→

Earlier this week, Fast Company released its annual ranking of the most innovative companies of the year. Apple scored the top spot, moving up from its fourth-place grade a year prior. In a follow-up piece, Robert Safian of Fast Company today published an exclusive interview with Tim Cook focusing on the company’s success.

The whole interview’s worth reading, but one segment of it stuck with me most. In response to a query regarding whether Cook views some years at Apple as better than others, the CEO replied that every year is a good year, because even if public launches aren’t as exciting, there’s always something big in the works behind the scenes.

Even when we were idling from a revenue point of view…those were some incredibly good years because you could begin to feel the pipeline getting better, and you could see it internally. Externally, people couldn’t see that. With the iPod, before it came out, we didn’t really know that it would become as big. But it was clear it was changing things in an incredibly good way. Of course with the iPhone it was clear that that was a huge change, a category definer, but who would’ve thought [it would have impact] to the degree that it [did].

Though the example isn’t as extreme as the years leading up to launching the iPod or iPhone, one recent proof of what Cook’s talking about is the contrast between Apple’s 2016 and 2017. The former was viewed as a somewhat unexciting year by many of the company’s closest followers. Major product launches included the iPhone SE, 9.7-inch iPad Pro, Apple Watch Series 2, iPhone 7, MacBook Pro with Touch Bar, and just barely squeaking into the calendar year, AirPods. It was a solid lineup to be sure, but many of the product updates felt more iterative than evolutionary, particularly when compared with the impressive year that followed.

In 2017 Apple introduced a low-budget iPad, new 10.5-inch and 12.9-inch iPad Pros, revisions across the entire MacBook lineup, the Apple Watch Series 3 with cellular, the Apple TV 4K, iPhone X and iPhone 8, the iMac Pro, and they took the veil off HomePod. It was the sort of strong year, hardware-wise, that you simply can’t have every year.

From inside the company, however, it’s easier to view every year as a good one – because regardless of what the world at large sees, you’re working to build the future.

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Homecam for Apple TV Adds Room-Based Accessory Details and Controls→

I first covered Aaaron Pearce’s Homecam app last week, noting how this is the app you need to have if you own multiple HomeKit cameras and want a dashboard to monitor them all at once.

I wrote:

Homecam displays a live grid of all the HomeKit-enabled cameras in your house. That’s it. Instead of having to look for cameras in specific rooms or at the bottom of the main accessories list in Apple’s Home app, you can launch HomeCam and see them all at once. Then, you can tap on a camera to watch live footage in full-screen, and optionally add a camera to the Today widget as well. Soon, you’ll also be able to control accessories in the room where the camera is located.

Homecam’s widget is particularly impressive as it can also display live footage from each camera without having to load the main app – and it works both over WiFi and with remote access on cellular connections. I can’t recommend Homecam enough if you own multiple HomeKit cameras and have been looking for a quick way to switch between them.

While my story focused on iOS, Homecam is also available on the Apple TV, where it takes advantage of the big screen to let you keep an eye on even bigger real-time video feeds from HomeKit cameras around the house. And today, Homecam for tvOS received a substantial update with a feature I hope Pearce will soon bring to the iOS version as well: room-based accessory details and controls.

In the new Homecam for Apple TV, you can long-press on the Siri Remote to bring up a menu that lists controls for sensors, switches, and lights located in the same room as the camera. This allows you to, say, monitor your sleeping baby and progressively dim the lights, or remotely check on the state of any appliance connected to a smart plug. In addition, Homecam can now pull in details from sensors (for temperature, humidity, and air quality) and overlay them on the full-screen video, so you can see what the temperature is, turn the fan off, and visually confirm that it worked.

I’ve been testing this Homecam update for the past couple of days, and, while I continue to fundamentally dislike the Siri Remote’s fiddly touchpad, it was fun to watch the dogs sleep on the sofa and wake them up by changing the color of the lights or turning the TV on and off (yes, we did apologize to them with treats afterwards). Pairing a live video feed from a HomeKit camera with data layers and controls from the same room makes perfect sense, and I hope this feature makes it to the iOS app soon.

Homecam for iOS and tvOS is available on the App Store at $4.99.

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Motherboard Offers Inside Look at iFixit’s iPhone X Journey→

After several years of inquiries, Jason Koebler and the team at Motherboard were granted permission last November to follow iFixit on its journey of tearing down the latest iPhone. Video of that job, which included a plane ride from California to Australia for the iPhone X’s launch, is now available.

iFixit is best known for its commitment to tearing down new tech as soon as it becomes available, but as the video documents, the company’s primary mission is to equip people to repair their devices. Whether you’ve followed iFixit’s work in the past or not, the video is a fascinating look into the efforts that fuel each device teardown.

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New iOS Apps Must Be Built with iOS 11 SDK and Support iPhone X Display Starting in April→

Juli Clover, writing for MacRumors:

Apple today sent out a notice to developers letting them know that starting in April of 2018, all new apps submitted to the App Store must be built using the iOS 11 SDK, which is included in Xcode 9 or later.

Furthermore, Apple says that all new apps designed for the iPhone, including universal apps, must support the iPhone X’s Super Retina display.

“Must be built”, unfortunately, doesn’t mean apps have to support new features like drag and drop. Speaking of which, I don’t think supporting the native resolution of the 12.9-inch iPad Pro is a requirement yet, and the device launched in November 2015.

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Apple Music’s Archaic Album Categorization→

Benjamin Mayo sums up one of the most annoying features of Apple Music: the way the service thinks everything is an “album”, making it extremely inconvenient to find what you’re looking for.

These artefacts of compact discs show up again when looking at an artist page. What a human would think of as an artist’s albums, and what Apple Music lists, are completely different. EPs, singles, specials, deluxe, originals are all shoehorned under one name ‘Albums’. There is no way to filter these out. This really makes finding what you want hard. When you know what you want to find, all this backwardly organised catalogue gets in your way.

There has to be a better method than packaging everything up with the same ‘album’ label. This is not a hard problem, I thought to myself. In fact, it’s already been solved … by Spotify. As you have probably noticed by now, I have included a graphical illustration of Apple Music’s biggest flaw alongside this article. If you can’t see it, your browser isn’t wide enough. If you are reading outside of a browser, like RSS, this probably won’t show up for you either. Use a browser. I encountered this exact scenario in my first day of using the service. I did not fabricate it.

Don’t miss the effective visualization of this problem on his post.

I like Apple Music, but this has been a problem since the service launched almost three years ago, and it’s time for a fix.

Here’s what makes this even more annoying: Beats Music – the very service Apple Music is largely based on – visualized albums, compilations, and different editions in separate tabs/views. Two of the worst Apple Music features (album categorization and the separation of playlists made by you vs. those made by others) had already been fixed by Beats Music, but Apple went for an inferior design that is still with us today.

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‘sodes Embodies Beauty and Minimalism in a Podcast Player→

Jared Sinclair launched a new iPhone app today, ‘sodes. Short for ‘episodes,’ the app offers a simple, no-frills podcast listening experience.

Unsurprisingly considering Sinclair’s previous work, ‘sodes is a beautiful app. Perhaps my favorite designed area is the Now Playing view; after I first tried it, going back to another app’s Now Playing screen was painful. The app especially shines on the iPhone X’s full-width display. As was highlighted in Federico and John’s discussion on AppStories last year, an indie app’s little human touches can elicit such delight – and ‘sodes is a great example of that.

‘sodes was designed to be nearly feature-absent (at least to the user’s eye), so you won’t find things like chapter support, Smart Speed, playlists, or any such extras. You can adjust the duration of skips forward and back, there are multiple color themes, and playback speed can be set anywhere from 0.5x to 2x – but that’s about it. Mainly, the app gives you podcasts in a clean, minimal, delightful wrapper. If that’s enough for you, you might just love it.

‘sodes is available on the App Store.

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Connected, Episode 180: Our True Tiny Head Form→

We have HomePod opinions, dreams about WWDC and an amazing new t-shirt.

On this week’s episode of Connected, we talk about our HomePod impressions and Apple’s plans for iOS and macOS this year. You can listen here.

As a side note, we’ve launched a new t-shirt design for Connected. You can find the t-shirt (in three colors) on Cotton Bureau.

I think this artwork (by the talented Chris Rowland) is amazing, and I’d love to see many of these t-shirts at WWDC later this year. You can get yours here.

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HomePod Leaving Residue on Some Wooden Furniture→

John Voorhees' HomePod ring; the device now sits on a coaster.

John Voorhees’ HomePod ring; the device now sits on a coaster.

Nearly a week after its launch, HomePod owners are discovering that in some cases, the device leaves a white ring in its place when stored on wood furniture. John Chase of The Wirecutter reports:

An unhappy discovery after we placed a HomePod on an oiled butcher-block countertop and later on a wooden side table was that it left a defined white ring in the surface. Other reviewers and owners (such as Pocket-lint, and folks on Twitter) have reported the same issue, which an Apple representative has confirmed. Apple says “the marks can improve over several days after the speaker is removed from the wood surface,” and if they don’t fade on their own, you can basically just go refinish the furniture—the exact advice Apple gave in an email to Wirecutter was to “try cleaning the surface with the manufacturer’s suggested oiling method.”…In other testing, we have seen no visible damage when using it on glass, granite countertop, nice MDF, polyurethane-sealed wood, and cheap IKEA bookcases.

Among the MacStories team, Federico and John have both encountered this issue, while I have not. Serenity Caldwell of iMore explains the inconsistency:

Not all whole-wood table finishes are alike: Certain wood oil treatments include drying agents that have organic compounds present in them — compounds that could potentially interact with the silicone in Apple’s base.

It appears that for those who will face this problem, it doesn’t take more than a couple days for the white ring to become at least faintly visible. If you’re not seeing anything after several days of HomePod use, it’s likely that your furniture will be fine, but if you’re concerned, using a coaster seems like the best low-budget fix at this point.

Update: Also per Serenity Caldwell, Apple has now put together an official support document, dubbed “Cleaning and taking care of HomePod.” It provides official details regarding HomePod and wooden surfaces:

It is not unusual for any speaker with a vibration-dampening silicone base to leave mild marks when placed on some wooden surfaces. The marks can be caused by oils diffusing between the silicone base and the table surface, and will often go away after several days when the speaker is removed from the wooden surface. If not, wiping the surface gently with a soft damp or dry cloth may remove the marks. If marks persist, clean the surface with the furniture manufacturer’s recommended cleaning process. If you’re concerned about this, we recommend placing your HomePod on a different surface.

The new document also addresses the matter of cleaning HomePod – only with a dry cloth, or, if necessary, a slightly damp one – and informs users to keep HomePod away from liquids and heat sources.

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