In the song “Smile,” Jay raps about his beef with Apple and the streaming music industry as a whole:
“F— a slice of the apple pie, want my own cake / Chargin’ my own fate / Respect Jimmy Iovine / But he gotta respect the Elohim as a whole new regime / And n—– playin’ for power, huh / So our music is ours”
But Tidal has struggled to grow its business and faced numerous setbacks over the past couple of years, and Apple was rumored to be eyeing a takeover last fall.
Month: June 2017
Hands-on with Apple Music’s new social discovery feature in iOS 11
“Apple Music in iOS 11 brings new social features that help you discover new music based on what your friends are playing. The new friends feature is already available to test in the iOS 11 developer and public beta to give us an idea of how it will work on Apple Music later this fall.”
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John Gruber on the iPhone introduction:
The iPhone’s potential was obviously deep, but it was so deep as to be unfathomable at the time. The original iPhone didn’t even shoot video; today the iPhone and iPhone-like Android phones have largely killed the point-and-shoot camera industry. It has obviated portable music players, audio recorders, paper maps, GPS devices, flashlights, walkie-talkies, music radio (with streaming music), talk radio (with podcasts), and more. Ride-sharing services like Uber and Lyft wouldn’t even make sense pre-iPhone. Social media is mobile-first, and in some cases mobile-only. More people read Daring Fireball on iPhones than on desktop computers.
In just a handful of years, Nokia and BlackBerry, both seemingly impregnable in 2006, were utterly obliterated. The makers of ever-more-computer-like gadgets were simply unable to compete with ever-more-gadget-like computers.
Ten years in and the full potential of the iPhone still hasn’t been fully tapped. No product in the computing age compares to the iPhone in terms of societal or financial impact. Few products in the history of the world compare. We may never see anything like it again — from Apple or from anyone else.
A “Perfect” looking back piece on the iPhone introduction from John Gruber. Encapsulating the “Where were you when the iPhone was introduced” moment, the “Holy shit!” experience when holding it in your hands for the first time and its remarkable effect on the industry. Here’s to another ten years.
Apple macOS High Sierra preview: the biggest Mac update you’ll never see
“There’s no avoiding it: High Sierra, the next major release of macOS, is going to feel like a somewhat boring update to most people. It’s full of foundational refinements and new technologies that will prepare your Mac for very cool things that are coming over the next few years.”
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Alpine’s aftermarket, wireless Apple CarPlay receiver is now for sale
“Alpine showed of its wireless Apple Carplay receiver, the iLX-107, at CES this year, and now, that device is available from authorized retailers in North America. The 7-inch VGA touchscreen also controls external accessories through a separate controller.”
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Ex-Apple engineer tells how the company’s manufacturing works
“Almost all electronic products are still assembled by hand, even hundreds of millions of iPhones. But that’s changing. Apple’s supply chain is rapidly automating using AI and robots.”
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“Getting Things Done”
Matt Gemmell on the recent “iPad replacing laptop” discussions:
In terms of the tasks I need my computing device for, I do some dorky technical stuff, and I use automation utilities, and some scripting, and I also produce actual work. Plus I do all the usual web browsing and email and social media. The iPad isn’t a laptop replacement, because it’s not a laptop. I wasn’t looking for one. I can’t remember the last time I saw anyone under twenty years of age with a laptop, either. But the iPad has replaced my MacBook. That’s a fact.
No-one’s saying that it either can or can’t replace yours, or whether you’d want it to. Except the pundits and journalists who can’t seem to let go of the idea that it’s an either-or situation, where we need to have a winner and a loser. I’m not sure what they’re afraid of.
Meanwhile, the rest of us are just getting things done.
Matt, as per usual with the frank, spot on view.
Today in Apple history: Fans line up to get their hands on the very first iPhones
“June 29, 2007: The first iPhone goes on sale, giving excited Apple fans lined up outside stores their first chance at owning the game-changing smartphone. These days, queuing up for the latest “insanely great” product is a part of Apple culture.”
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Relive Steve Jobs’ original unveiling of the first iPhone
“Whether you write about it on a daily basis or just use it to stay in touch with your friends, family, and the world around you, the iPhone is such a big part of our lives today that it’s difficult to remember what it was like before it existed.”
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Inside story of the iconic iOS rubber band effect that launched the iPhone
The first thing Jobs says is that the conversation is super-secret, and must not be repeated to anyone. Ording promises not to.
“He’s like, ‘Yeah, Bas, we’re going to do a phone,’” Ording told Cult of Mac, recalling that momentous call from long ago. “‘It’s not going to have any buttons and things on it, it’s just a screen. Can you build a demo that you can scroll through a list of names, so you could choose someone to call?’ That was the assignment I got, like pretty much directly from Steve.”
However, as he worked on his scrolling list, Ording noticed that when he got to the bottom or the top of the list it just stopped. He’d pull the list down but it would just sit there. It looked like it had crashed. Every time he saw it, it bugged him, but he didn’t know how to fix it.
He tried adding some space at the top. When he got to the top of the list, the small space would appear. But that didn’t solve the problem — it just repeated it.
The space just sat there, unmoving.
Ording figured the space would need to move with the user’s finger to show that it was still responsive. But that didn’t feel right, so Ording tried making it move more slowly than the user’s finger, just as an experiment. The effect was to make it feel elastic.
“I’m like, ‘Ooh this is kind of fun,’ and then, ‘Oh wait, now it needs to move back,’” Ording said.
When he made it snap back, it acted like a rubber band — it moved down, but then bounced back to its correct position.
Fascinating excerpt into a feature we use every day and take for granted which shows the delight in the details of design.