Month: December 2016

AirPods Reportedly Delayed Due to Audio Synchronization Issues ⇥ macrumors.com

Tripp Mickle, writing for the Wall Street Journal (MacRumors has a copy of the salient paragraphs):

In the case of AirPods, the cause remains unclear. The earbuds contain a new chip that Apple developed. But the same chip is included in two models of headphones, which are available for sale, from Apple’s Beats unit.

A person familiar with the development of the AirPod said the trouble appears to stem from Apple’s effort to chart a new path for wireless headphones. In most other wireless headphones, only one earpiece receives a signal from the phone via wireless Bluetooth technology; it then transmits the signal to the other earpiece.

Apple has said AirPod earpieces each receive independent signals from an iPhone, Mac or other Apple device. But Apple must ensure that both earpieces receive audio at the same time to avoid distortion, the person familiar with their development said. That person said Apple also must resolve what happens when a user loses one of the earpieces or the battery dies.

This is a bizarre delay, but it’s not the only one for an announced piece of hardware this year: LG has yet to start shipping the 5K display announced alongside the new MacBook Pro models.

What’s more curious to me about the AirPods is that this issue isn’t something I saw reported in any of the early reviews published back in September. That’s not to say that the reviewers were lying, but if this is the reason for the AirPods’ delay, it must happen regularly enough that Apple wasn’t happy with it.

It also makes me wonder why the BeatsX model is also delayed. As Mickle points out, other Beats models are shipping with the W1 and they work just fine. Does the BeatsX use the same dual-W1 setup as the AirPods, or is its delay more about protecting the AirPods’ in-ear style thunder?

Update: There’s something here that keeps rattling around in my brain:

That person said Apple also must resolve what happens when a user loses one of the earpieces or the battery dies.

“That person” is ill-informed. When the battery dies, the AirPods go back in the charging box; when that battery dies, you plug it in. When you lose an AirPod, you have one AirPod and one empty ear.

Delays like this are why Apple normally announces products only when they’re ready to ship. Not only is this embarrassing, it’s costly — the days are ticking down in the all-important holiday quarter.

The Finder GUI Tax ⇥ robservatory.com

Rob Griffiths:

If you work with lots of compressed files, you’re probably familiar with what happens in Finder (see note) when you go to expand any semi-large number of files: The infamous Dancing Dialog™.

[…]

Not only is this randomly-resizing dialog box visually annoying, it turns what should be a super-fast process into one that takes a ridiculous amount of time. The end result is that users think they have a slow machine — ”it took over 12 seconds to expand 25 tiny little archives!” — when what they really have is a horrendously slow GUI interface to a super fast task.

I get the need for visual feedback and a more elegant, “gentle” interface — hence the gratuitous animation when using the “New Folder With Selection” command — but many archives will take less than a second to expand using the Terminal. Those files should, ideally, be unarchived in place, without opening an additional window.

Live, for the Moment ⇥ theoutline.com

Writing for the Outline, Joe Carmichael, on the increasing pressure on extreme athletes to top each other with filmed and live-streamed events:

“Backcountry social media users should be challenged to consider the questions to whom and for what purpose they are constructing their online narratives,” Isaak wrote. Decisions made in dangerous situations are no longer made only by the adventurer, he said; research shows they are influenced by the people nearby, and these days, that includes Facebook followers.

The impulse to do dangerous things isn’t new, he concluded. Extreme athletes are motivated by a sense of personal fulfillment and the yearning to compete with peers. “That impulse, to figure out who we are and our place in a community, that’s a human impulse, regardless of whether you were born in 1950 or 1990,” he said. The difference today is that every adventurer is expected to produce videos and build a fanbase, and now that fanbase is always looking over their shoulder. “Now, they’re able to tell stories with YouTube and Instagram, or Snapchat, or any of the other social media tools. So it’s just the publication cycle that is changing the desire to tell our story or to compete.”

There’s this kid I discovered recently on YouTube. He goes by the name “Illsight”, is about 17, and climbs cranes in Hong Kong without any safety equipment. Part of me is, of course, absolutely amazed by his skill. Yet, I can’t help but wonder whether he’d be taking these risks if he didn’t see others doing the same thing, or putting the videos on YouTube.

Apple Said to Fly Drones to Improve Maps Data ⇥ bloomberg.com

Mark Gurman and Alan Levin, Bloomberg:

Apple Inc. plans to use drones and new indoor navigation features to improve its Maps service and catch longtime leader Google, according to people familiar with the matter.

[…]

Apple wants to fly drones around to do things like examine street signs, track changes to roads and monitor if areas are under construction, the person said. The data collected would be sent to Apple teams that rapidly update the Maps app to provide fresh information to users, the person added.

Coincidentally, when I read this article on Friday, my girlfriend told me that the store where she works received a visit from a Google representative. The rep said that they were confirming the store’s location and details for Google Maps. I asked my girlfriend if her store had ever seen a visit from an Apple Maps representative to do the same thing; she said they hadn’t.

Any improvement to Apple’s mapping data is a very good thing, in my books. If flying drones around to confirm roads and street signs is what it takes, so be it.1 I also think they need more people who are familiar with each city to physically go door-to-door and confirm that the details in Maps are correct. Just recently, I had to add a store location that has been open in the biggest mall in the city for the past six years. This would have been resolved far sooner if anyone from the Maps team paid a visit to the mall. I could say the same about dozens of reports that I’ve filed since Apple Maps launched.

  1. Many of these issues could easily be fixed if Apple’s cartographers bothered to look at the satellite view. Many of the reports I’ve filed are something along the lines of “just look at the actual road and you’ll see that there’s no corner in it”. ↥︎

A History of the ‘Get a Mac’ Campaign ⇥ campaignlive.com

A wonderful two-part article and podcast about the “I’m a Mac; I’m a PC” ads that began airing ten years ago. Douglas Quenqua, writing for Campaign:

Scott Trattner: I have a much younger sister, and I was seeing these really charming little theatrical things at her school, where like a kid plays a tree and a kid plays a rock. I remember being so charmed by this notion that your part in a play could be a rock.

Eric Grunbaum: I was surfing with Scott somewhere in Malibu, and we were discussing our frustration with coming up with an idea, and I said to him, “You know, it’s almost like we have to get so basic. It’s like, we need a Mac and a PC sitting on a white site, and we need to say, ‘This is a Mac. It’s good at A, B and C. And this is a PC, and it’s good at D, E and F.'”

Scott Trattner: I then remember saying to Barton, “What if we embody the two characters? One guy could say, ‘I’m a Mac.’ One guy could say, ‘I’m a PC.’ The Mac could be on roller skates circling the PC saying how fast he is.” Barton just took it and really ran.

The second part contains some smart observations from Justin Long and John Hodgman about what it’s like to become a ubiquitous character, and the impact it had on their careers.

‘Very Small Number’ ⇥ mjtsai.com

Something I noticed in the mentions about my piece on Apple’s support gap are reports from lots of people claiming that their local retail outlets don’t have enough iPhone 6S batteries for the repair program.

Priyanjana Bengani:

Friend in London got an appointment to get her battery replaced. Went in only to be told they’re out of stock.

Timothy King:

[Just] noticed that recently (trying to set up 6S battery repair; & yes, out of stock on battery). Totally infuriating

Andy Welland:

3 day wait, then told no batteries for a week – ring helpline instead. Also no communication between phone & store support. Odd

Keegan Sands:

I got an appt for the 6S battery replacement, got to the store and they were out of batteries and have to go back this week

Matt Ruzz:

Call center sets up battery repair appointment at store but store won’t reserve replacement battery kits for appointments

Michael Tsai:

When I talked with Apple about what to do, I had two options. I could do a mail-in repair, which would mean not having a phone or camera for a week or so. Or I could wait 2+ weeks until one of the local Apple Stores might be accepting appointments to replace the battery. (There is apparently a shortage of replacement batteries.)

The problem here seems twofold. First, and perhaps most obvious, is the poor communication between AppleCare and retail stores. Second is that the “very small number” of iPhones affected might be a greater number than expected.

Tim Cook Says That the Watch Is Having Its Best Quarter Yet ⇥ reuters.com

In what appears to be a rebuttal of a popular IDC report claiming that Apple Watch shipments dropped by 71% year-over-year in the third quarter, Tim Cook revealed to Reuters that the Watch is on track to have its best quarter yet. Julia Love quotes Cook:

“Our data shows that Apple Watch is doing great and looks to be one of the most popular holiday gifts this year,” Cook wrote.

“Sales growth is off the charts. In fact, during the first week of holiday shopping, our sell-through of Apple Watch was greater than any week in the product’s history. And as we expected, we’re on track for the best quarter ever for Apple Watch,” he said.

I don’t think IDC’s estimates, if accurate, are entirely unexpected; nor do I think Cook’s response is incongruous with what IDC said. IDC specifically looked at the third calendar quarter: July through the end of September. The new Apple Watch lineup was announced on September 7 and began shipping on September 16, just 14 days before the end of the quarter IDC measured. Furthermore, even at the beginning of the quarter, the then-current Watch was over a year old. Those combined factors are enough to make Watch sales decline significantly for those three months.

Apple is going into this holiday quarter with a fresh Watch lineup that starts (and tops out) at a lower price, is easier to use, and has even more integrations. Cook’s statement seems solid to me, and he seems exuberant about the sales prospects of the Watch this quarter.

Then again, as Jason Snell says:

Or, to put this in a form Amazon’s Jeff Bezos would understand…

I wonder if there’s a time when Apple will start revealing hard sales figures for the Watch.

Joshua Topolsky and Friends Launch the Outline ⇥ theoutline.com

Joshua Topolsky:

Welcome to The Outline, a new kind of publication for a new kind of human. We made this thing because we believe that the right story told in the right way can change someone’s life.

I have no idea what this means.

We wanted to make something from the ground up that is capable of rejecting and/or subverting conventional wisdom about what a media company does. That means at every level of what we’ve built we’re trying to create what is right for us and what is right for you, not what the industry is demanding.

We built a brand new platform for our team so that we can tell stories in the form that seems most appropriate for that story. Obviously we made this for a mobile-everything world (because we’re not insane), but it actually scales to lots of devices in lots of ways.

This new platform isn’t a complete rethink of the web. There’s a <marquee>-esque element across the homepage, and some stories are sometimes placed into a slider, which the Outline calls a “stack”. Like many new web-based publications, the developers behind the Outline have re-built standard browser features, like HTML rendering and scrolling. As a result, the pages are big — really big — and the back button is broken for some reason.

What makes the Outline a little different from most of its peers is its business model. Mike Shields of the Wall Street Journal explains (behind a paywall again, naturally):

There will be no standard ad placements on The Outline, and no programmatic selling, said Amanda Hale, chief revenue officer. Like its editorial, The Outline’s ads are designed to be full-screen, highly visual placements that are not unlike classic magazine ads on a phone.

Direct sales aren’t anything new or innovative, even on the web. But combining these ads with a policy that makes programmatic advertising verboten is deeply interesting to me. It ought to reduce the number of trackers that are on the Outline,1 and completely eradicate the chance for “malvertising”. It’s not a complete boon for privacy — their policy permits additional third-party trackers as advertisers request them — but it’s progress.

All of this is wrapped in Topolskified design elements: brash colours, ’70s and ’80s throwbacks, and a lot of animation. It’s not necessarily beautiful, but it is a statement. Whether this package will work is anyone’s guess, but the killer team behind it is probably enough to get me to check it out daily.

  1. Four, by my count: Google Analytics, Parse.ly, Facebook remarketing, and Amplitude. ↥︎

Tech Companies Delay Diversity Reports ⇥ wsj.com

Georgia Wells, Wall Street Journal (paywalled, of course, but you know how to get around that):

Twitter Inc. and Pinterest Inc. are set to release their updates this month, according to spokeswomen at each company, about 16 months after their previous reports. This year, however, they will both focus on hiring goals, rather than just the racial and gender breakdown of their employees that has become the industry standard.

“It’s not about hitting a number for the sake of doing so,” said Candice Morgan, Pinterest’s head of diversity and inclusion. “The goals are about fundamentally making progress towards doing our most innovative work.”

Salesforce.com Inc. released its report on Monday after having pushed it back by three months to accommodate the hiring of its first equality chief. The report showed women and underrepresented minorities made up the same portion of the company’s workforce as a year ago EBay Inc., which hasn’t reported its diversity breakdown since April 2015, said it would not issue an update until early next year because of the July 2015 spinoff of its PayPal Holdings Inc. unit.

I’ve been trying to track down updated reports for my annual survey and it has not been easy. These reports shouldn’t be delayed to give the companies a chance to make themselves look better; they should be doing better, and if they aren’t, they should own up to that.

Apple’s Support Gap ⇥ 9to5mac.com

I’ve been trying to book some time at my local Apple Store to get my iPhone’s battery swapped, and it has not been easy — at least, not compared to the way it used to be. Previously, I’d open the Apple Store app on my phone, open up my store’s page, and tap the button to get support. I could easily make a Genius Bar appointment from there with just a few taps.

An update to the Store app earlier this year removed the ability to create a Genius Bar appointment from within the app. Instead, it sends you to Safari to complete the booking with a button confusingly labelled “Contact Apple Support”.

Once you’re directed to Apple’s support site, you’re in for another blow: it’s probably the least-stable online service Apple offers, in a really big way. It frequently doesn’t load at all; when it does, I often see some form of server-side failure midway through the booking process. This isn’t new — a friend of mine asked me several months ago to help him book an appointment because the website wasn’t loading for him, and I wasn’t able to make it work either.

Apple appears to be aware of this gap in support offerings because they began rolling out an app about a month ago that allows users to book Genius Bar appointments, see their Apple ID history, and chat with an agent. Unfortunately, this app is region-limited and doesn’t appear to be available in Canada or the United States.

It’s even difficult to get an appointment via a phone call. I’ve only phoned my Apple Store a few times over the past several years, but they have twice told me to complete the support request online.

This seems like a pretty significant gap. Of all the things that may have changed about Apple in the past fifteen years, the ability to walk into one with your gear and get personalized service hasn’t wavered. Whenever I ask someone why they stick with Apple over time, one of the reasons I almost always hear is the retail and support experience. I sincerely hope that this gets resolved soon.

Update: Apple appears to have brought the Support app to the U.S. Judging by the replies to that linked tweet, it appears that Support is now in a total of two countries: the U.S., and the Netherlands. No word on how soon Apple will be rolling Support out to any other country where they have a retail presence.

Nico Rosberg Announces His Retirement From Formula 1 ⇥ topgear.com

Ollie Kew, Top Gear magazine:

Nico Rosberg has retired from Formula One with immediate effect. The German Mercedes-AMG F1 driver made the shock announcement at the 2016 FIA prizegiving in Vienna less than a week after clinching his first world championship title at the 2016 Abu Dhabi grand prix.

Rosberg has had an incredible career, and has managed to cap it off with a hard-fought championship win. It takes guts to stop when you’re well and truly ahead, but he’s done it. Kudos.

FCC Says AT&T and Verizon Are Violating Net Neutrality Rules ⇥ arstechnica.com

Jon Brodkin, Ars Technica:

With Sponsored Data, AT&T charges other companies for the right to bypass customers’ data caps on AT&T’s wireless network. At the time same, AT&T lets its subsidiary DirecTV stream on the mobile network without counting against data caps. DirecTV technically pays AT&T for the privilege, but the money is just shifting hands from one part of AT&T to another. AT&T is using DirecTV’s data cap exemption to market the new DirecTV Now streaming service.

[…]

Separately, Wilkins sent a letter to Verizon yesterday about the company’s FreeBee Data 360 program, which also charges online service providers for data cap exemptions. The FCC’s wireless bureau “believes that the FreeBee Data 360 offering to edge providers unaffiliated with Verizon, combined with Verizon’s current practice of zero-rating its affiliated edge services for Verizon subscribers, has the potential to hinder competition and harm consumers.”

These programs — and others like them — effectively create a tiered system that benefits only the providers, not consumers. This is why it’s so important that there’s a strong FCC that rigorously enforces net neutrality regulations.

WordPress Will Begin Requiring SSL for Some Features ⇥ wordpress.org

Matt Mullenweg [sic]:

We’re at a turning point: 2017 is going to be the year that we’re going to see features in WordPress which require hosts to have HTTPS available. Just as JavaScript is a near necessity for smoother user experiences and more modern PHP versions are critical for performance, SSL .

Presumably, Mullenweg aimed to end that sentence with something like “SSL is necessary for additional functionality and greater security”.

At any rate, this is a good move. WordPress powers an inordinately high percentage of the web — something like one in four websites is built on WordPress. Between their encouragement and nudges from Google and Apple, it’s time that the web became more secure.

On that note, I plan on making HTTPS mandatory for Pixel Envy over the winter break, when I have some time to make sure nothing goes awry.

Brookings: U.S. Manufacturing Sector Is More Productive Despite Fewer Jobs ⇥ brookings.edu

Somewhat related to the earlier post about Uber’s economics and its autonomous future, I found this article today from Alison Burke of the Brookings Institution:

Many are quick to blame trade for a loss of jobs in the manufacturing sector, yet [Foreign Policy Senior Fellow Mireya Solís] affirms that the predominant force behind losses in manufacturing employment has been technological change (85 percent), not international trade. As she explains, automation has transformed the American factory, and the advent of new technologies (like robotics and 3D printing) has rendered many low-skilled jobs unnecessary.

Coincidentally, this article was released the same day that the Nikkei Asian Review published their scoop that Foxconn was looking into what it would take to move iPhone production to the U.S., should a large tariff be imposed on goods imported from China. Manufacturing automation would be absolutely critical should such a move occur.

Do the Twist ⇥ joecieplinski.com

I empathize with people who struggle with the durability of their cables, but I’m always a little surprised when I hear about friends who see their Lightning and power cables fray after just a few months. I’ve never had this problem. My first Lightning cable, acquired in 2012, only stopped working a month ago — and it’s the one I keep in my bag so it constantly gets wrapped and unwrapped.

Joe Cieplinski has shared a tip that I also use, perhaps because of a common background in live audio:

I won’t speculate why my friends’ cables are so often yellowed, sticky, etc. But I can say with certainty that the way most developers wrap their cables has a great deal to do with the condition they end up in after a few months. I’ve seen all sorts of variations of wrapping the cord around itself, around devices, twisting them into knots, etc. Usually, the ends are completely stressed when they are done wrapping. And then they throw them into a bag that way for several days at a time.

I’m not saying that Apple’s cables shouldn’t be able to withstand a bit more torture than they get from most people, but there is something to be said for being a bit more careful.

And that’s where the “twist” comes in.

I suspect the very tight cable wraps I’ve seen around most MacBook power bricks is one reason Apple removed the small “arms” on the side of the brick that comes with the newest MacBook Pros.

George Hotz Releases Open-Source Autonomous Driving Software ⇥ theverge.com

Sean O’Kane and Lauren Goode, the Verge:

Famed iPhone and PlayStation cracker George Hotz is resurrecting the DIY autonomous car project he canceled in October. But this time, there’s a twist: instead of selling a physical product, Hotz’s Comma.ai is releasing the company’s self-driving software, as well as the plans for the necessary hardware, which Hotz calls Comma Neo. All of this code will be available for free — in fact, it is already on Github.

[…]

Hotz compared Open Pilot to Android, and said that it’s really aimed at “hobbyists and researchers and people who love” self-driving technology. “It’s for people who want to push the future forward,” he said. When asked how or if Comma.ai plans to make any money off of this project, Hotz responded: “How does anybody make money? Our goal is to basically own the network. We want to own the network of self driving cars that is out there.”

On a tangentially related note, Check Point Research announced yesterday that they had found malware that compromised over a million Google accounts. The good news is that the malware affects Android 4 and 5, not more recent versions. The bad news is that those two version families represent around three-quarters of all Android devices in use today because the manufacturers and carriers have no incentive to upgrade.

Imagine the above paragraph, but instead of “Android” and “devices”, it’s “Open Pilot” and “cars”.

Understanding Uber’s Bleak Operating Economics ⇥ nakedcapitalism.com

Hubert Horan (bio), in a guest piece for Naked Capitalism:

There have been hundreds of articles claiming that Uber has produced wonderful benefits, but none of these benefits increase consumer welfare because they depended on billions in subsidies. Uber is currently a staggeringly unprofitable company. Aside from the imposition of unilateral cuts in driver compensation, there is no evidence of any progress towards breakeven, and no one can provide a credible explanation of how Uber could achieve the billions in P&L improvements needed to achieve sustainable profits and investor returns.

Uber’s growth to date is entirely explained by its willingness to engage in predatory competition funded by Silicon Valley billionaires pursuing industry dominance. But this financial evidence, while highly suggestive, cannot completely answer the question of how an Uber-dominated industry would impact overall economic welfare.

Uber is about to relaunch in Calgary after councillors capitulated to an adjusted fee structure; no other parts of the law were changed, despite Uber’s claim that the rules are “unworkable”. Unfortunately, this means that we’re about to see an influx of cars subsidized by venture capitalists in California, operating at a rate entirely unsustainable for traditional taxi companies.

Two questions:

  1. What happens to taxi drivers and truck drivers who are displaced by Uber’s predatory intrusion into their markets?

  2. What happens to drivers who work for Uber when they will, eventually, be made redundant by the company’s growing interest in self-driving vehicles?

See Also: Washio’s Legacy.