Jack Nicas at The New York Times has a fascinating look at the inner workings of Apple News. I firmly believe Apple’s method of using humans rather than algorithms is the right call.
Category: Apple
Safari Technology Preview 68 Brings Dark Mode Support to Web⇢
Jon Davis on the WebKit blog, listing the updates includes in the current STP build:
- Added
prefers-color-schememedia query support for styling dark mode content (r237156)
This should allow websites to use a darker stylesheet when the system is in Dark Mode. Now I just need to work on an alternate stylesheet.
Phil Schiller, on the iPhone XR⇢
Chris Velazco at Engadget spoke to Phil Schiller about the upcoming iPhone:
Apple just released its flagship XS and XS Max to a chorus of positive reviews, and now here it is, a month later, preparing to launch another smartphone that packs many of the same features found in those really expensive ones. For Apple, this is all a little unheard of.
To add to the curiosity of it all, the R doesn’t mean much either. Phil Schiller, gingerly gripping a cup of coffee across from me, said the letters Apple uses never stand for something specific. But then his voice softened a little as he started to tell me about what the letters mean to him.
Tim Cook, on Bloomberg Server Hacking Story⇢
John Paczkowski and Joseph Bernstein at BuzzFeed News:
“There is no truth in their story about Apple,” Cook told BuzzFeed News in a phone interview. “They need to do that right thing and retract it.”
This is an extraordinary statement from Cook and Apple. The company has never previously publicly (though it may have done so privately) called for the retraction of a news story — even in cases where the stories have had major errors or were demonstratively false, such as a This American Life episode that was shown to be fabricated.
Apple Announces October 30th Event
I’m looking forward to seeing what Apple is planning. The invites are fun this time around. Every time this page is refreshed, the artwork changes.
Update: @alixrezax has found 370 different variations of the Apple logo used for this event:
Found them all, total is 370 completely different Apple Logos. Grab the full quality image from here: https://t.co/fFofU4zrMZ
Enjoy! pic.twitter.com/2vIipeDxwd— Alireza (@alixrezax) October 19, 2018
October 30th. New York.
Everybody got different art too pic.twitter.com/xSnRbP9ySh
Some 2018 MacBook Pros Showing Signs of Keyboard Failure⇢
Casey Johnston, writing about the newest MacBook Pro, which as a set of silicone membranes designed to keep dust and debris from killing the keyboard:
Every time I described the 2017 MacBook Pro I sold because I couldn’t stand its non-functional keyboard and asked an Apple store employee if the new one would screw me over the same way, each assured me that Apple had changed the keyboards so that that would never happen again. I described my issues with “dust” to one shop associate at the Apple Store at the World Trade Center and asked if the new computers were any better. “Yeah, yeah, they fixed that problem… it was a BIG problem,” she told me. “So it doesn’t happen at all?” I asked. “No, it shouldn’t happen,” she said. Maybe the bad days were finally over.
Reduced Transparency in Mojave is Bad⇢
Craig Grannell, writing on something that has really been bothering me:
The standard macOS interface has quite a few semi-transparent elements, which like frosted glass provide a glimpse of what’s beneath them. At Apple events, execs go giddy about how pretty this is. In use, these elements vary from being distracting to outright dangerous. For example, if you have a motion-sickness issue and an animating web page is sitting behind a semi-transparent element, it can take a while before you realise it’s affecting you, by which time it’s too late and you’re already dizzy.
The Case for a HomePod with a Screen⇢
Amazon and Google have set up a new category: smart home speakers complete with screens. Is the market ready for Apple to stroll in and raise the bar?
The Modern Hackintosh⇢
I haven’t done anything in the Hackintosh scene since I installed Mac OS X Leopard on a Dell Mini 9 nine years ago, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t kept up with that world. This video recently caught my eye:
In it, Quinn Nelson walks through a $1,400 machine that gives my $5,000 iMac Pro a run for its money, despite having a worse GPU and an i7 CPU.
Clear Apple Case Coming for iPhone XR⇢
On iOS 12’s Adoption Rate⇢
As noted by Apple on its Developer site:
53% of devices introduced in the last four years are using iOS 12. As measured by the App Store on October 10, 2018 based on devices introduced since September 2014.
Juli Clover points out this is faster than iOS 11’s adoption rate:
iOS 12 adoption has outpaced iOS 11 adoption rates at the same time last year. In early October of 2017, iOS 11 was only installed on approximately 38.5 percent of devices. It took until early November for iOS 11 adoption to hit 50 percent, based on Apple’s official numbers.
iOS 12.0.1⇢
John Voorhees, writing at MacStories, has the details.