512 Pixels

My favorite utility for making bootable backups for my Macs just got a big update. Version 5 brings a more helpful restore process, better task scheduling, a menu bar app, corruption checks on backup volumes and APFS support.

Amazon and Whole Foods have announced that the former’s acquisition of the latter will close on Monday, August 28. The companies say one of the immediate goals is to make Whole Food’s prices more affordable, starting next week.¹

Then there’s this:

In addition, Amazon and Whole Foods Market technology teams will begin to integrate Amazon Prime into the Whole Foods Market point-of-sale system, and when this work is complete, Prime members will receive special savings and in-store benefits. The two companies will invent in additional areas over time, including in merchandising and logistics, to enable lower prices for Whole Foods Market customers.

It will be interesting to see how much of Amazon ends up in Whole Foods. Will products beyond food start to appear on shelves?

Over at Apple Newsroom:

Apple today announced plans to build a 400,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art data center in Waukee, Iowa, to better serve North American users of iMessage, Siri, the App Store and other Apple services. Like all Apple data centers, the new facility will run entirely on renewable energy from day one.

Apple’s investment of $1.3 billion will create over 550 construction and operations jobs in the Des Moines area, and the company is contributing up to $100 million to a newly created Public Improvement Fund dedicated to community development and infrastructure around Waukee.

You know a support article is going to be good when it opens like this:

This information was provided by Claris Corporation on 16 March 1998, and incorporated into Apple Computer’s Tech Info Library.

The twice-dead YouTube channel lives on at the Internet Archive. If you’re into Apple history, you need to check this out.

This week on Query, things get nerdy. How do fitness trackers actually work? What about touch screens? Chemistry and science, that’s how!

Daisuke Wakabayashi at The New York Times is reporting that Apple is dialing back its self-driving car dreams, after hiring scores of employees under the banner of “the next big thing:”

These days, Apple’s automotive ambitions are more modest. The company has put off any notion of an Apple-branded autonomous vehicle and is instead working on the underlying technology that allows a car to drive itself. Timothy D. Cook, the company’s chief executive, said in an interview with Bloomberg in June that Apple is “focusing on autonomous systems.”

A notable symbol of that retrenchment is a self-driving shuttle service that ferries employees from one Apple building to another. The shuttle, which has never been reported before, will likely be a commercial vehicle from an automaker and Apple will use it to test the autonomous driving technology that it develops.

This system — dubbed PAIL for Palo Alto to Infinite Loop — would still give Apple a platform on which to develop self-driving tech, albeit with far lower stakes.¹

Compare this to some of the things this story claims the Project Titan team had been working on:

• Silent, motorized doors
• Interiors devoid of driving controls like pedals and steering wheels
• An improved, less-bulky Lidar system
• The possibility of using spherical wheels for better lateral movement

Wakabayashi goes on to detail some of the trouble at the center of the now-shrinking project:

There was disagreement about whether Apple should develop a fully autonomous vehicle or a semiautonomous car that could drive itself for stretches but allow the driver to retake control.

Steve Zadesky, an Apple executive who was initially in charge of Titan, wanted to pursue the semiautonomous option. But people within the industrial design team including Jonathan Ive, Apple’s chief designer, believed that a fully driverless car would allow the company to reimagine the automobile experience, according to the five people [familiar with the matter].

I’m of two minds when it comes to reading this. If technology companies do end up making the transition to being transportation companies, Apple may now be behind the likes of Google and what’s left of Uber. Would the company face serious trouble in the future if they can’t make the jump like its peers, or is this new focus on “technology systems” enough to keep it in the game?

However, I think it’s clear that Project Titan was a distraction to the company. There’s not much in the way of hard evidence of that, but as this has wound down, Apple’s actual products have seemed to receive more attention. If this is indeed the case, I’m glad to see a return to form when it comes to updating things like Mac hardware.

Either way, it sure is interesting to read about what’s going on behind those closed doors. Every big company has big projects that don’t end up living up to the original idea; Apple’s are just usually more secretive.

Yesterday, Jason Snell and I both witnessed the 2017 total solar eclipse. We recorded throughout the weekend and sat down this morning to compare notes. If you’ve never listened to Liftoff, this is a great episode to check out.

Code42:

Code42, the leader in cloud-based endpoint data protection and recovery, announced today that it will focus exclusively on businesses and organizations large and small and will discontinue its offering for personal consumer backup. The small business, education and enterprise markets have proven to be significant growth areas for the company.

Code42 will honor all existing CrashPlan for Home subscriptions, and will wind down support of CrashPlan for Home on Oct. 22, 2018. Its consumer customers will be offered extended subscriptions and special discounts throughout the transition, as well as dedicated support, resources and choices to transition to a new backup solution. To do this, Code42 selected Carbonite as its exclusive referral partner for CrashPlan for Home customers, offering a seamless transition path for those looking for personal backup.

If you’re a CrashPlan customer, check out Backblaze. It’s a million miles better than Carbonite, at least on macOS. I’ve been really happy with them for years after having nothing but problems with the CrashPlan app for Mac.

via Joe Kissell at TidBITS

On this week’s episode of Upgrade, I joined Alex Cox and John Siracusa in a draft. It was supposed to be our favorite Apple hardware, but I think it became “Apple hardware we think is important.” Either way, it was a ton of fun, and I really think you will enjoy it.

I’ve had CMD+Space mapped to Alfred for as long as I can remember. It’s one of those things that makes my computer feel broken if it isn’t running.

Over the last six months, Zapier has become that way too, at least on the web. I have it slinging data into spreadsheets and Todoist on a daily basis.

And now they can talk to each other. I haven’t played a ton with this yet, but the possibilities are exciting. Now using my Mac’s keyboard, I can feed data into a workflow, taking advantage of the 750 apps that Zapier interfaces with. Big thumbs-up from me.

I missed Connected this week, but the episode is a good one:

Myke and Federico discuss Apple’s supposed budget for original content, reviews of the Essential Phone, Apple’s iOS 11 marketing videos, and Federico’s unexpected trip to the Genius Bar.

My thanks to our sponsors:

• TextExpander, from Smile: Communicate smarter with TextExpander
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• Incapsula: Secure and accelerate your website. Connected listeners get one month free.