Apple Announces 2022 Podcast, App Winners

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Apple Newsroom has been busy. Today, the company announced the first-ever Apple Podcasts Award winner:

Apple today announced the Apple Podcasts Award honoring a Show of the Year and its team for outstanding quality, innovation, and impact. Inspired by the signature app icon, the Apple Podcasts Award represents Apple’s decades-long commitment to supporting creators as they share their voices with the world and helping listeners to discover the best podcasts.

The recipient of the Apple Podcasts Award is Slate’s critically acclaimed narrative history series, Slow Burn, for its latest season, Roe v. Wade, hosted by Slate executive editor Susan Matthews. Published throughout June 2022, the four-episode season explores the events leading up to the landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision, offering listeners an in-depth perspective on this universal and timely human rights issue.

I haven’t heard this particular season of Slow Burn, but have loved previous seasons that I have heard.

Yesterday, Apple announced the 16 winners of the 2022 App Store Awards:

“This year’s App Store Award winners reimagined our experiences with apps that delivered fresh, thoughtful, and genuine perspectives,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “From self-taught solo creators to international teams spanning the globe, these entrepreneurs are making a meaningful impact, and represent the ways in which apps and games influence our communities and lives.”

Orion Space Capsule Reaches Farthest Point From Earth During Artemis I Mission ⇢

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Leah Cheshier, writing yesterday for NASA:

NASA’s uncrewed Orion spacecraft reached the farthest distance from Earth it will travel during the Artemis I mission — 268,563 miles from our home planet — just after 3 p.m. CST. The spacecraft also captured imagery of Earth and the Moon together throughout the day, including of the Moon appearing to eclipse Earth.

Reaching the halfway point of the mission on Flight Day 13 of a 25.5 day mission, the spacecraft remains in healthy condition as it continues its journey in distant retrograde orbit, an approximately six-day leg of its larger mission thousands of miles beyond the Moon.

That distance breaks the previous record for distance from Earth achieved by a crew-rated vehicle set by Apollo 13.1 As impressive as that is, the imagery is even better:

Artemis I Flight Day 13: Orion, Earth, and Moon

  1. Or Apollo 10’s spent lunar module, depending on who you ask. ↩

Kbase Article of the Week: Mac OS: How to Move the Control Strip ⇢

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Apple Support, on the Control Strip:

To move the Control Strip:

  1. Press and hold down the Option key.
  2. Drag the tab at the end of the Control Strip. If you drag it more than halfway
    across the display, the Control Strip moves to the other edge. If you have more than one display, you can drag the Control Strip to the left or right edge of the other display as well. The Control Strip always stays on the left or right edge of your display.

Changing the display’s resolution from a smaller setting to a larger one and restarting the computer moves the Control Strip higher up on the display.

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The 512 Pixels Holiday Gift Guide for People Like Me

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It’s that time of year, so I’m happy to present my annual gift guide. If you have someone like me in your life, consider these suggestions:

Alexa, Where Did My $10 Billion Go? ⇢

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Ron Amadeo, writing for Ars Technica:

Amazon is going through the biggest layoffs in the company’s history right now, with a plan to eliminate some 10,000 jobs. One of the areas hit hardest is the Amazon Alexa voice assistant unit, which is apparently falling out of favor at the e-commerce giant. That’s according to a report from Business Insider, which details “the swift downfall of the voice assistant and Amazon’s larger hardware division.”

Alexa has been around for 10 years and has been a trailblazing voice assistant that was copied quite a bit by Google and Apple. Alexa never managed to create an ongoing revenue stream, though, so Alexa doesn’t really make any money. The Alexa division is part of the “Worldwide Digital” group along with Amazon Prime video, and Business Insider says that division lost $3 billion in just the first quarter of 2022, with “the vast majority” of the losses blamed on Alexa. That is apparently double the losses of any other division, and the report says the hardware team is on pace to lose $10 billion this year. It sounds like Amazon is tired of burning through all that cash.

Wooooof.

John Gruber:

What is (was?) Alexa about, strategically? I’ve often heard that the vague idea was that people would buy Alexa devices for obvious stuff (playing music, setting timers) but that eventually they’d starting using Alexa to buy stuff from Amazon — and thus wind up buying more stuff from Amazon than they would if they didn’t have an Alexa device in their house. That never made sense to me. Buying stuff via voice commands seems inherently uncertain — like buying a lottery ticket where you need some luck to actually get the product you think you told Alexa to buy. Even if it works, how is it any better than just shopping at Amazon on your phone, iPad, or computer? It seems worse to me, and no more convenient. How do you comparison shop via voice?