512 Pixels

The Henry Ford, keeper of many of technology’s most important artifacts¹ has recently acquired the first project between Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak:

Created to make free illegal phone calls, Blue Boxes were the first joint business venture between the two innovators, three years before the founding of Apple Computer Inc. in 1976. The new acquisition joins The Henry Ford’s collection, which also includes an original 1976 Apple I Computer. The Blue Box was purchased at Bonhams’ History of Science and Technology Sale.

“The Blue Box, an early invention of Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs gives us insight into two innovators who went on to change the world,” said Patricia Mooradian, president and CEO of The Henry Ford. “At the time when this device was created, they were just young adults who had an unbridled passion for learning how things worked, and making things for their own use. This artifact speaks to ingenuity, curiosity and resourcefulness and fits perfectly within The Henry Ford’s Archive of American Innovation.”

This is very cool, as the blue box was an important step in the formation of Apple.

Feeling stranded on your Lisa? There’s a way out:

You need the Lisa to Macintosh Migration Kit, available from Sun Remarketing. It converts LisaDraw, LisaWrite, LisaProject, and LisaCalc files to their Macintosh counterparts.

John Voorhees, in his review of the new update:

Workouts++ has come up with a solution that works surprisingly well given the audio API limitations of watchOS. It has a dedicated tab in the iOS app where you can subscribe to your favorite podcasts, which show up in the ‘All’ section of the tab. If you tap on an episode, it downloads and is transferred to your Apple Watch, a process which can take a while. The advantage of downloaded episodes is that there’s a little button on the Watch’s playback screen to skip ahead and back 30 seconds or one minute at a time depending on the length of the episode.

When you start a workout on your Watch, you simply swipe left once to display two sets of podcast episodes. At the top of the view are the downloaded episodes that play immediately when you tap the play button. The remainder of the podcast view lists streamable episodes. Tap one of those episodes and it doesn’t start playing until (at least in my tests) about 4 MB of data has been transferred to the Watch. The initial buffering doesn’t take very long on a good connection, but if you’re headed out for a run, the wait can feel longer than it in fact is.

I still want Overcast on my Watch, but this update from _David Smith is incredible, and the best part is that’s free.

This week on Connected:

Myke was surprised by Apple’s Shazam acquisition, Ticci is living that 4K life and Stephen is thinking about an iMac Pro.

We are collecting stories for our year-in-review episode. Please tweet your favorite Apple and tech topics from 2017 with #ConnectedYear and we’ll see them!

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Over on iMore, I’ve written about my justification for an iMac Pro:

I make stuff for a living. While even one of my old PowerBooks is enough computer to blog with, the podcasts and videos I produce follow Parkinson’s Law: “Work expands to fill the time available.” The same is true for computing. No matter how fast my Mac may be, the applications I use will steal every scrap of power available.

My most intense tasks are multithreaded, and the iMac Pro is uniquely suited to crush all other Macs in this type of work. I look forward to seeing the various pricing options on Thursday.

Apple has updated the iMac Pro webpage, indicating that the machine will be for sale on Thursday, December 14.

Some hands-on coverage is surfacing this morning, including this video by MKBHD. In it, he mentions the 18-core option won’t ship until early 2018. There’s also a previously-unannounced 14-core model.

I’m extremely interested in this machine. I’m going to let the dust settle a little bit, but at this point, am really considering picking one up early next year.

Apple:

You can now make your new apps available for pre-order on the App Store on all Apple Platforms. Customers can see your product page and order your app before it’s released for download. Once your app is released, customers will be notified and it will automatically download to their device. Let your customers know your app is coming by using the pre-order badges in your marketing materials.

This will be great for developers who want to build hype for their new apps. I like it.

Jen Rae Wang, NASA:

President Donald Trump is sending astronauts back to the Moon.

The president Monday signed at the White House Space Policy Directive 1, a change in national space policy that provides for a U.S.-led, integrated program with private sector partners for a human return to the Moon, followed by missions to Mars and beyond.

Under Obama, NASA had a directive to go to the Red Planet that side-stepped lunar missions. Trump follows both Bushes in wanting to return to the moon. Republican leadership really likes the idea of putting Americans back on the lunar surface, it would seem. Assuming we see another president after Trump,¹ will they change direction yet again?

Big projects like this take time, especially on NASA’s anemic budget. That, coupled with administrations that want to leave their own mark on the agency means that it is very hard to see something big like this through. This line speaks volumes in NASA’s press release:

Work toward the new directive will be reflected in NASA’s Fiscal Year 2019 budget request next year.

The agency is already building its next-generation rocket, which will be capable of sending a crew to cislunar space, but landing on and getting around on the moon are different things. This rocket has been plagued with technical and budgetary problems. Some have suggested NASA scrap it and throw-in with a company like ULA or even SpaceX.

I’d love to see Americans on Mars, but the moon would be amazing, too. I just can’t get my hopes up about this announcement.

Michael Cole at Spaceflight Insider:

Engineers at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio, are reinventing the wheel in a way that may allow rovers and other future mobile vehicles to traverse the treacherous surface of Mars with greater and longer success. They have developed a woven mesh tire made of a shape-memory alloy, or SMA, that “remembers” its ideal shape and immediately springs back into form after absorbing the bumps and beatings of traversing rocky terrain.

In a recent test, the newly-developed tire was subjected to 6 miles (10 kilometers) of difficult driving over a punishing simulated Martian surface. At the end of the test the tire was as good as new. By comparison, the rigid aluminum wheels of the Curiosity rover, which has driven not quite twice that distance during its entire mission so far, are currently riddled with holes and dents from the rougher-than-expected punishment of traveling over the Martian landscape.

One reason I love space agencies is that their design project are just so … practical.

Ingrid Lunden at TechCrunch:

As Spotify continues to inch towards a public listing, Apple is making a move of its own to step up its game in music services. Sources tell us that the company is close to acquiring Shazam, the popular app that lets people identify any song, TV show, film or advert in seconds, by listening to an audio clip or (in the case of, say, an ad) a visual fragment, and then takes you to content relevant to that search.

We have heard that the deal is being signed this week, and will be announced on Monday, although that could always change.

I assume this will just become a Siri feature, and that the stand-alone app will go away. Or maybe the recognition engine behind the app is what Apple is after as they continue to push into AR. Wild.

Update: They did.

As nerds, we are picky about the tools that we use, and that includes what we use to work on the go. Here’s what I have in my tech bag:

Zac Hall at 9to5Mac:

A HomeKit vulnerability in the current version of iOS 11.2 has been demonstrated to 9to5Mac that allows unauthorized control of accessories including smart locks and garage door openers. Our understanding is Apple has rolled out a server-side fix that now prevent unauthorized access from occurring while limiting some functionality, and an update to iOS 11.2 coming next week will restore that full functionality.

The hits just keep coming.