Tim Cook Talks Apple Car ⇢

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Alex Webb and Emily Chang at Bloomberg:

After years toiling away in secret on its car project, Apple Inc. Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook has for the first time laid out exactly what the company is up to in the automotive market: It’s concentrating on self-driving technology.

“We’re focusing on autonomous systems,” Cook said in a June 5 interview on Bloomberg Television that amounted to his most detailed comments yet on Apple’s automotive plans. “It’s a core technology that we view as very important.” He likened the effort to “the mother of all AI projects,” saying it’s “probably one of the most difficult AI projects to work on.”

Well there you go.

Replicating Old Computers

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Two different stories caught my attention as I spent some time today catching up from a week at WWDC:

  1. Jeff Rule built a replica of a long-lost Apple prototype from the early 1990s. The work done in this prototype led to the 20th Anniversary Mac, and Rule’s work really brings the concept back to life in an amazing way.

  2. Chris Larkin has put a project together to build a tiny Apple II, complete with emulation. Tested published a video of the model and what goes into making one. It’s pretty incredible the Apple II can be emulate on such cheap hardware these days.

Preparing for High Sierra

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I’m watching macOS High Sierra install on my MacBook Pro. I plan on reviewing it this fall, and wanted to jump in a little earlier than I normally do.

However, I expect that I will need to work on my notebook some this summer, so I’m installing it on an external SSD. Specifically, the Samsung T3 Portable SSD. It’s fast and small, and has a USB C port on the back of the drive. I’m using the included USB C to A cable, but am going to swap it with a USB C cable for a little less clutter.

High Sierra is set up to be this generation of release’s Snow Leopard. That’s a big set of shoes to fill, and I’m hopeful macOS 10.13 is as good as 10.6 was.

Mossberg’s Tech Museum ⇢

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Nilay Patel:

Walt Mossberg is retiring this year — he’s already written his last column, hosted his last Code Conference, and taped the final episode of Ctrl-Walt-Delete in front of a live audience in New York. But Walt’s also assembled an impressive collection of notable gadgets over his two decade run as a reviewer and columnist, and we asked him to talk us through some of the more notable items as he cleared out of his office.

There’s some fun stuff in here.

WWDC 2017 Hit Apple Nerds Right in the Feels

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WWDC is winding down here in San Jose, and I think everyone’s pretty happy.

Most people I’ve spoken to like the move from San Francisco to San Jose. I know I do; I feel like WWDC has taken over the downtown area in a good way. It’s easy to run into people in a venue or restaurant and strike up a conversation because chances are, they are here for the conference. The badass WWDC jackets helped make it easy to spot each other.1

I’ve gone to the same events I always have, in venues that are pretty spectacular in most cases.

(If you came to a Relay FM event, thank you! We are already making plans for next year to accommodate bigger crowds.)

The good feelings apply to the conference, too. Except for the diehard Mac mini fans, I think everyone has something to be happy about this week.

iPad users got new hardware, and an impressive software update that is going to redefine multitasking and file management on iOS. I’ve spent some time with iOS 11 on an iPad already, and it is very impressive.

I can’t wait to get my hands on that 10.5-inch iPad Pro. Everyone I have talked to says the new screen is incredible to behold. I guess I’ll find out early next week when FedEx brings mine by the house.

Mac users got a lot of new hardware. The MacBook has been revised with a better keyboard, the MacBook Pros are faster and the iMacs are now equipped with Thunderbolt 3. For the pro users among us, the preview of the iMac Pro is the news of the week, despite the Mac Pro’s future form still unknown.

macOS High Sierra may not the best-named or most exciting release of all time, but that’s what many of us wanted. Taking some time to breathe, the macOS team has fixed lingering issues and made improvements across the board. A Snow Leopard year is just what the Mac needed.

With WWDC in the rearview mirror, Apple’s year can begin. Developers are hard at work tuning their apps, podcasters have months of content to discuss and we can all enjoy the updates to the products we use and love so much.

  1. I really like this year’s jacket, and usually I don’t care for them. The pins were a great addition, too. I am avoiding eBay for a while. ↩

Podcast Changes at Apple ⇢

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Jason Snell:

New extensions to Apple’s podcast feed specification will allow podcasts to define individual seasons and explain whether an episode is a teaser, a full episode, or bonus content. These extensions will be read by the Podcast app and used to present a podcast in a richer way than the current, more linear, approach. (Since podcast feeds are just text, other podcast apps will be free to follow Apple’s lead and also alter how they display podcasts based on these tags.)

Users will be able to download full seasons, and the Podcasts app will know if a podcast is intended to be listened to in chronological order—“start at the first episode!”—or if it’s more timely, where the most recent episode is the most important.

Apple is also rolling out new analytics tools. Back to The Snell Zone:

Apple said today that it will be using (anonymized) data from the app to show podcasters how many people are listening and where in the app people are stopping or skipping. This has the potential to dramatically change our perception of how many people really listen to a show, and how many people skip ads, as well as how long a podcast can run before people just give up.

Dropbox Coming to Files in iOS 11 ⇢

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I’ve heard several questions from people wanting to know if Dropbox will be a part of iOS 11’s Files app. The answer is yes:

iOS users have been requesting better file management on iPhone and iPad for a long time. The new Files app, coming later this year, does just that, letting you more easily manage and access files in your Dropbox throughout iOS 11. Much like macOS Finder, Files will give you an easy way to browse, open, edit, move, rename, upload, create folders and download files stored in Dropbox with your iOS device.

Dropbox is my file system. This is going to be huge for how I work.

A Trip to Infinite Loop … Two Decades Later

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Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by James Thomson, the indie iOS and Mac developer behind apps like PCalc and DragThing. He has a long history with Apple, and was recently sharing some old photos on Twitter. I badgered him into sharing some more with me here.

I visited Infinite Loop for the first time around twenty years ago, and decided to properly document my visit. All these photos were all taken on my trusty film camera, and the negatives scanned some years later. They were promptly forgotten about until now.

The view from outside of Infinite Loop building 1. It looks pretty much the same today, with the exception of the six colour Apple logo. Steve’s office was at the top right. At this point Infinite Loop had only been open for four years.

The Icon Garden, featuring Clarus the Dogcow who was the mascot of the Developer Technical Support group, and appeared in the print dialog. One day, Steve got rid of the icon garden in the middle of the night and everybody was very sad.

Continue Reading → “A Trip to Infinite Loop … Two Decades Later”

Connected #145: LEGO For Shortcuts ⇢

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This week on Connected:

Live from San Jose, the trio talk about the news from a little event known as WWDC.

This is a really good episode, and the first time we’ve done it sitting around a table together.

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