512 Pixels

Myke and Brad are doing a live show again this year:

The Atlanta Pen Show is scheduled for April 15th - 17th, 2016, and The Pen Addict posse is ready to take over once again! Like last year, we are asking for your help to get this done.

Thanks to your support, we were able to fly in Myke Hurley and Ana Reinert to record live with Brad Dowdy and film it for all to see. We plan on doing the same thing this year, this time with a live studio audience!

While I’m not a big pen guy, it was a blast to work on this last year and meet a lot of great people. I’m looking forward to returning to Atlanta in April to do it again.

A heart-breaking oral history of the Challenger disaster.

Today, on the 30th anniversary of the Challenger disaster, NASA is remembering its fallen astronauts.

Sadly, 1986 doesn’t mark the only tragedy in the agency’s history. On January 27, 1967 the crew of Apollo 1 was killed during a test on the launchpad. A year earlier, on February 28, 1966 two Gemini astronauts were killed in a flight in St. Louis, Missouri.

On February 1, 2003, the space shuttle Columbia broke up on re-entry, killing all seven crew members.

There’s a saying that “space is hard.” It gets thrown around when things like unmanned rockets explode. The phrase, however, lacks the gravitas that should be used on days like today. America, Russia and Israel have lost men and women during missions and training exercises. It’s dangerous, envelope-pushing work, and in this age of renewed progress, it’s something that we should not forget.

With iOS 5, Apple introduced Notification Center, the pull-down shade that houses missed notifications and messages all in one place.

With iOS 7, Apple added Today, a section of Notification Center that users can fill with first- and third-party widgets, as well as Control Center, a quick way to get at commonly-used utilities with a flick up from the bottom of the display.

I don’t think this has aged very well, unfortunately, and it’s mostly Control Center’s fault. In addition to it being confusing to have a hidden panel at the top of the screen, having one at the bottom too is a lot to handle for some users. But there’s a bigger problem in my mind: Control Center just does way too many things.

I love the top row and screen brightness settings, but as I get closer to the bottom of the screen, the usefulness of Control Center lessens. With the exception of maybe the flashlight button, I’d be fine if the bottom row went away, Calculator and that creepy new Night Mode button included.

I think Apple could simplify all of this by looking to Android’s Notifications Drawer, where all of this stuff is in one pull-down tray from the top of the screen. Pull down a little to see notifications; pull down further to reveal a set of utilities:

(Android will even re-arrange those utilities based on what you use often. Tether a bunch, and a toggle for it will appear in the Drawer, but that’s probably a lot to ask for from iOS.)

Control Center could very easily become a set of widgets that users could use to populate Notification Center in any way they want. I’d probably keep the screen brightness and hardware toggles, but that’s about it. Others may want to just have shortcuts to Clock and Calculator. This would allow for greater customization and a cleaner user interface. Seems like a win to me.

The DeLorean Motor Company has some news:

In December 2015, the language from the “Low Volume Motor Vehicle Manufacturers Act” (H.R. 2675) - which creates a reasonable regulatory structure allowing small companies to produce a limited number of completed replica motor vehicles that resemble the appearance of cars produced 25 years ago or more was inserted to the federal highway bill (H.R. 22) and signed into law.

[…]

In anticipation of this legislation, DeLorean Motor Company has been working for some time to identify a supplier for engines and other parts that must be reproduced to facilitate this production for 2017. A number of hurdles exist before production can begin, and we’re still early on in this process of determining the feasibility of moving forward. Further updates will be posted here.

Great scott!

This article is linked to in almost all of Apple’s recent software release notes:

For the protection of our customers, Apple does not disclose, discuss or confirm security issues until a full investigation has occurred and any necessary patches or releases are available. To learn more about Apple Product Security, see the Apple Product Security website.

This document describes recent updates and releases.

Today, Apple announced its first quarter results:

The Company posted record quarterly revenue of $75.9 billion and record quarterly net income of $18.4 billion, or $3.28 per diluted share. These results compare to revenue of $74.6 billion and net income of $18 billion, or $3.06 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 40.1 percent compared to 39.9 percent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 66 percent of the quarter’s revenue.

Revenue

This is an all-time quarterly record; up 2% over last year. Tim Cook and Apple made a point that if currencies around the world were stable, that growth would have been 8%.

Two thirds of Apple’s revenue was generated outside of the United States, making these fluctuations’s impact felt more then ever before.

iPhone

The company sold 74.7 million iPhones, an all-time high for any quarter, edging out Q1 2015, when 74.5 million were sold:

That’s 34,000 iPhone sold every hour of the quarter. Holy moly.

Tim Cooks says that Apple’s customer satisfaction for the iPhone 6S and 6S Plus is 99%, with unparalleled customer loyalty. Tim Cook “blown away” by the number of Android switchers Apple saw this quarter.

iPad

The iPad had the best quarter its had in a year, but at 16.1 million, was still 5.3 million units behind the same quarter a year ago:

The iPad Pro doesn’t seem to have made a big difference this holiday season. Jason Snell tweeted:

The iPad results here are not great. Year over year shrinkage continues, and average selling price went up only $6 despite iPad Pro

I think at this point, we can all agree the iPad may be in trouble. That said, the iPad has 85% of the US tablet marketshare, and 67% of the US commercial, enterprise and education market.

Mac

The Mac was down from the previous quarter, selling 5.3 million units. The Mac is less likely to see big gains due to the holidays, and this number is more or less in line with that the product line has been doing, so it’s not super interesting, but hey, graphs are fun:

The Mac saw big growth in China this year.

Miscellaneous

• Apple is reporting an active installed base of 1 billion “iPhone, iPad, Mac, iPod touch, Apple TV, and Apple Watch devices that have been engaged with our services within the past 90 days.”
• Apple says there are 3,600 Apple TV apps on the App Store now.
• Apple Watch is now in 48 countries. The company says Q1 was the best quarter yet for the Watch, but no numbers were shared.
• Gross margin was 40.1%, higher than Apple had predicted.
• Apple has $215.7 billion in cash; 90% of that is outside of the United States.
• There is a lot of discussion about India being a big opportunity for Apple.
• Gene Munster Apple asked about VR. Tim Cook replied saying, “I don’t think VR is a niche, it’s really cool and has some interesting applications.”

This week, we talk about Myke’s new security system, Podcasts.app on the Apple TV, iPhone 5se rumors, Garageband and Crashlands.

My thanks to our sponsors this week:

• Ministry of Supply: Menswear made smarter. Use ‘connected’ for 15% off your first purchase.
• Igloo: An intranet you’ll actually like, free for up to 10 people.

Today’s Apple TV update brings support for podcasts via a new first-party application.

It’s very much what you would expect. There’s a storefront, just like other platforms, and you can search for new shows to subscribe to very easily. There’s full support for both audio and video podcasts, and the audio keeps playing even if you leave the app, so you can bounce back to that amazing screensaver without the audio stopping.

If you subscribe to podcasts in iTunes or the built-in Podcasts app on iOS, your shows will appear on the TV automatically, complete with information about which episodes have been played.

Frustratingly, iCloud doesn’t seem to sync play position within an episode, so if you pause a show on your iPhone to start it back up on your Apple TV, you’re in for some scrubbing.

Scrubbing is very confusing in this app. Long-pressing on the episode allows you to view the full description, but there are no player controls to be found. I was only able to scrub back and forth by navigating to the Now Playing screen and swiping down on the remote. It feels pretty half-baked.

Apple’s solution is not what I’m looking for, but I’m glad it’s here. Podcasts being front and center in the living room is only good for the industry

However, I hope that this opens the door for third-party podcast clients on the Apple TV. I’d love to be able to listen to a show while in the living room or in the front part of the house without carrying my iPhone around in my pocket with the speaker cranked up. That is going to continue to be my game plan for now.

Nick Heer, following up on my article about the Harry Potter iPod:

Coincidentally, I remembered just recently that this particular special edition iPod existed. It carries model number MA215LL/A and only occasionally seems to crop up on eBay. I could find very few photos of it, one of which is on a fantastic Polish “iPod museum” site, and another in a MacRumors thread.

In trying to find photos of that, I came across some more collector edition iPods which are arguably even harder to find, each engraved with the signatures of Beck, Madonna, or Tony Hawk. There was even one more engraved with the No Doubt logo.

Ugh, my shopping list keeps getting longer.

This month in my column at iMore, I wrote all about iTools, iCloud’s great-grandfather:

In the beginning — 1994, to be exact — there was eWorld. It was weird, expensive, and poorly marketed. To no one’s surprise, it went away.

Six years later, there was iTools. iTools begat .Mac; .Mac begat MobileMe — and a lot of yelling; MobileMe begat iCloud.

Maybe the best article intro I’ve ever written.

Sure, the U2 and even the HP iPods are well-known to us nerds, but until yesterday, I had totally forgotten about this gem:

The Harry Potter Collector’s iPod was originally released in 2005, as a 4th-generation iPod with color display to mark the release of the debut of Harry Potter audiobooks on iTunes:

“We are honored that J.K. Rowling has picked iTunes for the debut of the Harry Potter audiobook series,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We’re delighted to be able to bring these wonderful and wildly popular stories to iTunes Music Store customers.”

The complete Harry Potter Digital Box Set is equivalent to almost 100 CDs, but customers can purchase this entire audiobook collection with just one click and then transfer all six books onto their iPod to take with them wherever they go.

Up to now, The Harry Potter audiobook series from Listening Library (a division of the Random House Audio Publishing Group) has been available only on CD and cassette. It is by far the best selling series in the history of audiobook publishing, with the six books selling over five million copies. The narrator of all six books available in North America, Jim Dale, won a Grammy award in 2000 for “Best Spoken Word” as well as earned three Grammy nominations for his work on the series. The audiobook series is available online for the first time exclusively on iTunes.

The iPod was engraved with the Hogwarts crest on the back, and was revved to a 30 GB, 5th-generation iPod shortly after release.

It could only be purchased with the audiobooks, for a combined cost of $548, and there were some special terms and conditions that applied to the offer. It’s important to note that the iPod didn’t come pre-loaded with the audiobooks; this was a digital purchase alongside an iPod. Customers had to download the files and sync them over themselves.

This is a pretty interesting — and exceedingly rare — bit of iPod history. There’s hardly anything online about it except some pages on the Wayback Machine. For instance, I can’t tell when the promotion was discontinued, nor can I find any decent photos of the device. It’s all very strange.

Don’t miss the follow-up post to this, with photos and some additional information.