As usual, Jason Snell is on top of things over at Six Colors:
Apple on Thursday announced its fiscal first-quarter results, and it was a step backward. The company’s year-over-year revenue fell $6.7 billion, though with total revenue of $117.2 billion it was still the company’s second largest quarter ever.
Click through for loads of charts.
Jess Weatherbed, writing at The Verge:
Twitter will no longer provide free access to the Twitter API from February 9th. As announced by the official Twitter Developer account late Wednesday night, Elon Musk’s social media hobby will stop supporting free access to the Twitter API and will instead provide a “paid basic tier.” Twitter hasn’t provided any information regarding pricing, but said that it will provide “more details on what you can expect next week.”
“Over the years, hundreds of millions of people have sent over a trillion Tweets, with billions more every week,” said the Twitter Developer account. “Twitter data are among the world’s most powerful data sets. We’re committed to enabling fast & comprehensive access so you can continue to build with us.”
This probably means the end of this site auto-posting things to Twitter, so now is probably good time to get subscribed in other ways:
Back in 2017 I had created a site which took the the audio of some of my favorite podcasts and tried to make them searchable by passing them through an automated speech-to-text engine.
In the original version of this the transcription was done with very rough, slow, low accuracy system which resulted in transcripts that were fit for keyword searching but not much else.
Thankfully since then OpenAI has released Whisper a powerful speech-to-text engine that I can run right on my Mac and results in transcripts that are shockingly good. They aren’t quite at the level of a human transcriber but they get darn close in many instances. Getting close to the level where you could use them to grab a pull quote with only a little bit of tidying up to do.
I’m thrilled that Connected is archived in the new version of PodSearch. This tool is amazing.
Stephen talks a bit about what has been going on in Memphis, Federico gets folded up over rumors and Myke has a surprise.
Two decades ago, the space shuttle Columbia broke up during re-entry. I was in high school, and remember it well, feeling the connection with the shuttle disaster that took place the day I was born.
There’s a lot of great stuff out there marking the anniversary:
If you’ve never heard the Song Exploder episode on The Long Winters song “The Commander Thinks Aloud,” it’s a great listen.
When using Boot Camp and Microsoft Windows 7, FireWire (IEEE 1394) devices may affect system responsiveness if they are connected to the FireWire port of an Apple Thunderbolt display.
Apple includes directions on how to update the FireWire driver within Windows.
Updates are coming to Apple Tice’s Corner in Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey. The store will be temporarily closed from January 31. I’m a little bit nervous about this renovation because Apple Tice’s Corner is the last location in the world with an original 2001 storefront design, and I wish for it to remain intact perpetually.
I can’t imagine the original design will remain after the remodel, so it’s a good time to soak in this iconic design:
With Audio Hijack, you can record any audio on your Mac. Whether you want to save audio from individual applications like Safari or Skype, hardware audio devices like microphones and mixers, and even the entire system audio output, Audio Hijack can handle it.
Simply put, if it can be heard on MacOS, Audio Hijack can record it.
Audio Hijack 4.1 just shipped, and it adds over 50 enhancements on top of the award-winning version 4.0.
Through the end of February, 512 Pixels readers can save $10 when you purchase with coupon code 512AHTEN. Learn more and download a free trial on the Rogue Amoeba website.
This week on Mac Power Users, David Sparks and I return to our “Software Club” episode format and talk about Fantastical before being joined by one of the people behind the app. Michael Simmons discusses Fantastical’s history and the changes he’s seen in the Apple software ecosystem over the years. It was a really interesting conversation about an app that has been a mainstay for Apple users for a long time.
Ah yes, a Friday evening news dump from Apple:
On February 13, 2023, prices of apps and in-app purchases (excluding auto-renewable subscriptions) on the App Store will increase in Colombia, Egypt, Hungary, Nigeria, Norway, South Africa, and the United Kingdom. Prices in Uzbekistan will decrease to reflect a reduction of the value-added tax rate from 15% to 12%. Your proceeds will be adjusted accordingly and will be calculated based on the tax-exclusive price.
If you live in one of these countries, I’d check out this article to know what to expect.
Remember the 30th Anniversary Mac font from a few years ago? Robb Knight has recreated those glyphs as SVGs and they are glorious.
This week on Connected, I read some poetry, some Macs got reviewed and Federico makes a confession about his computing life.
On the longer ad-free version of the show, Federico tells me about running Ethernet through his new home.