Stephen’s keyboard is disintegrating as Federico explains AirPlay 2, and Sonos and Google have new products out for the holiday season.
My thanks to our sponsors:
The Dow Jones newswires had a ‘technical error’ which caused the portal to report several spurious stories including several headlines claiming Google was acquiring Apple for $9 billion, and that the deal was pre-arranged with Steve Jobs in his will.
Fake News!
The serial number for these iBook models is located in the battery bay.
If the computer is on, shut down it down and close the lid.
Turn the computer over so you are looking at the battery door.
Remove the battery door. For information on how to do this, see technical document 58447, “iBook: Replacing the Battery”.
The serial number is located near the bottom edge of the battery door. See below.
Apple has released iTunes 12.6.3, an update to application for those customers who still want or need access to iOS App Store:
Apple offers Volume Purchase Programs and Apple Configurator on Mac to help enterprise environments manage and mass-deploy apps on iOS devices. But certain business partners might still need to use iTunes to install apps.
If you don’t need this, iTunes 12.7 is still the version you want. Apple notes that it will not provide technical support for this version of the app, which I find kind of funny.
You deserve a break.
It is very easy to fall into bad habits when using a computer for hours on end.
You care about what you are doing, so can sometimes push yourself too far, or over-strain yourself. Dejal Time Out is here to help. It will gently remind you to take a break on a regular basis, with flexible customization if you want it.
You can configure how long each kind of break lasts, and how much time will elapse between them. When a break starts, your screen slowly dims, and a break theme appears. When the break is complete, it fades in again.
You can choose from several break themes, a progress bar shows how long till it is over, and optional buttons are available to postpone or skip the break if you can’t be interrupted right then.
What’s more, you can optionally perform various actions before, during, or after breaks. You can display a notification, play a sound, speak some text, run a script and more.
The app can even automatically track your activity so you can see what breaks were taken and what apps were used each day.
Time Out is available for free directly from the Dejal website or via the Mac App Store.
The macOS High Sierra Supplemental Update that fixed a nasty Disk Utility bug has been out for a few days has been picked apart by Daniel Martín. There’s some interesting (and very nerdy) stuff in here.
via @_inside
We’ve had an Amazon Echo in our kitchen for over a year now. We use it for the things people use an Echo for, including check the weather, get caught up on the news, turn on light, set timers and listen to music.
That last use is an important one. Most evenings, we have something playing. I pay for a Spotify account that I have hooked up to the Echo, as Amazon’s Prime Music offering only includes around 2 million songs, and in our testing last year, often lacked what we (or the kids) wanted to listen to in the kitchen.
This has been the setup for a while now, and it works well. Spotify has a large music library, and it can be set as the default source the Echo uses when it is asked to play music. I’ve been fine paying the $9.99 a month for it.
Recently, I signed up for Apple Music, and just a few weeks ago, upgraded to a family plan so my wife could use it as well. We’re both really liking it, but I’m not thrilled at the thought of paying for both Spotify and Apple Music. Spotify’s apps are great, but it plays music at a noticeably lower volume than Apple Music, and that was an issue when paired with my car’s mediocre stereo.
When Amazon introduced the new Echos a few weeks ago, I pre-ordered a new one, hoping that the speaker really is improved. The sound quality out of the original Echo is fine but it could be a lot better. I had settled into the thought of paying for two music services. I even thought about trying out Amazon Music Unlimited, which at $7.99/month, would be $2 less than Spotify Premium. There is a $3.99 Echo-only plan, which does help.
Then Sonos went threw a real wrench into things. The new $199 Sonos One will no doubt sound way better than the new Echo, and it supports Apple Music. Unfortunately, that has required the use of Sonos’ somewhat clunky iOS app. However, the Sonos One has a trick up its sleeve: Alexa.
That means I could use the music service I want, on a device that sounds great and use that device for all the other Alexa-powered stuff I have come to enjoy using. As a bonus, the new Sonos One will support Google Assistant and AirPlay 2 in 2018, meaning I could have two assistants in my kitchen and be able to stream stuff like podcasts to it.
There’s a problem though. It appears that Apple Music will not be accessible by voice commands. Here’s a bit from The Verge’s article on the new speaker:
Amazon Music, Pandora, iHeart Radio, and other music services can play music through Alexa commands at launch. A few key popular music services including Spotify and Apple Music won’t immediately support voice controls, however. Sonos has said Spotify in particular is coming “soon” after release. Until then, you’ve still got the option to play Spotify on the Sonos One through both the Sonos and Spotify mobile apps, and some voice commands like “pause,” “skip this track,” and volume controls work for all services out of the box.
And then there is this reply by a Sonos support staff member to a forum post about using Alexa with Apple Music:
In regards to the question on plans to extend Alexa functionality to Apple Music, I would forward that feedback directly to Amazon. They are still the main point of contact in regards to future functionality with Amazon Alexa. Defaults for Alexa are all handled inside the Amazon Alexa app itself.
That doesn’t sound super promising, given Amazon and Apple’s cold war, but maybe the forth-coming Prime Video app for Apple TV could be the start of a new chapter.
Until then, I feel a little stuck. We are not in the market for the HomePod, as we’ve come to like a bunch of Alexa-specific features and don’t want to drop $349. I would cancel my second-generation Echo order and order a Sonos One if Apple Music could be controlled by voice, but in the kitchen, fiddling with an app for music isn’t easy much of the time. I think I’m on the hook for two music services for the foreseeable future.
Balance is a powerful menubar app for your money built by a team from Apple, Stripe and Ethereum. It was featured in the U.S. Mac App Store when it launched in February.
Thanks to Balance for sponsoring 512 Pixels once again this week.
Michael Albers, VP of Communications Product at Oath, the company that now owns AOL, Yahoo and every other dead Internet brand you can think of is here with some sad news:
AIM tapped into new digital technologies and ignited a cultural shift, but the way in which we communicate with each other has profoundly changed. As a result we’ve made the decision that we will be discontinuing AIM effective December 15, 2017.
If you’re my age, AIM defined life on the Internet for a long, long time. It’s how I kept up with friends in high school, college and even for several years after that. I’m from a time where you thought long and hard about what your Away Message should say. I spent hours customizing Adium to be just right on my Mac.
Goodbye, old friend. Time has moved on, but we won’t forget you.
Yours truly on iMore, writing about the Apple Watch with LTE:
Leave your silly phone behind, it whispers, and it’ll just be you and me. For basic connectivity, it does the bill: My spouse can call me if something comes up, and my business partner can send me an iMessage if he needs anything. I can take a call or reply with Siri quickly and easily, all while I take a quick break from filling my rings. If I am involved in an accident or need help, I can get in touch with anyone in my Contacts list with ease.
But living that Watch-only lifestyle with the iPhone behind me isn’t quite as easy as I had hoped it would be.
Matheus Mariano found a nasty High Sierra bug: the system dialog box to unlock an encrypted APFS container exposed the password for that container in the hint field.
As plaintext.
Whoops.
Mariano alerted Apple, and the company has replied with details on how to make sure your data is secure. According to Rene Ritchie, Apple is pushing a supplemental update to High Sierra to fix the dialog box and close the security issue, a little over a week since Mariano’s post went up.
It’s one to install as soon as it hits the Mac App Store today.
IBM’s first ThinkPad debuted exactly 25 years ago today, with a bright red TrackPoint nub and a classic design that still exists in a modern form. Lenovo, the company that bought ThinkPad from IBM, is celebrating the laptop’s 25th anniversary today with a special anniversary edition of the ThinkPad. Even if every ThinkPad looks retro, this is a particularly retro version of the ThinkPad design based on the current ThinkPad T470 model.
I’ve long said that if I were to switch to Windows, I’d run it on a Thinkpad. If I was buying a PC laptop today, it would be this one.
You can pick one up for $1,899 from Lenovo.