On this fortnight’s episode of Liftoff:
After going over some last-minute eclipse planning notes, Stephen and Jason start a new series looking at NASA’s pre-shuttle crewed missions, starting with testing for Project Mercury and America’s first astronauts.
I’m really excited about this series walking through Mercury, Gemini and Apollo.
Well, this is very interesting. Apple software wizard Steve Troughton-Smith spent some time digging though a firmware download for HomePod. In it is some information about Face ID, a rumored feature of the next iPhone:
I can confirm reports that HomePod’s firmware reveals the existence of upcoming iPhone’s infra-red face unlock in BiometricKit and elsewhere pic.twitter.com/yLsgCx7OTZ
— Steve T-S (@stroughtonsmith) July 31, 2017
Dubbed Pearl ID, this technology will use infrared to unlock an iPhone when a known face is detected.
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.
Balance uses Plaid.com, the best API for securely accessing your financial data. It gives the app a read-only token to access your account history.
With one click or keyboard shortcut you can pop open Balance and check all of your accounts. Lock the app with a password or TouchID.
My thanks to FlightLogger for sponsoring 512 Pixels this week.
With FlightLogger, you can get real-time flight tracking for updates on departure and arrival times, delays, cancellations, gate and baggage claim information.
Add your flights on your iPhone and your flight information will be automatically synced to your iPad and Apple Watch all with an easy-to-use and clutter-free interface.
It’s a free download on the iOS App Store.
Dan Moren, writing at Macworld:
Apple clearly still intends GarageBand to be primarily aimed at musicians; that’s understandable, given the company’s deep roots in the music business. But I wish it would spend a little more time considering those of us who edit non-music audio, because there are some changes that would definitely improve our lives.
It would be great if GarageBand had a podcasting-centric set of tools that would make creating content easier. I use Logic because GarageBand didn’t offer everything I need, but it’s crazy how much overkill I have to live with because of that choice.
The Unarchiver is one of those macOS utilities that every power user should have on their machine. It can unpack just about any archived file you can come across, doing far more than Finder can on its own.
The free app has been rather stagnant over the last few years, but that is going to be changing, as MacPaw has purchased the application:
When MacPaw team found out that [the developer] has no time whatsoever to work on the app, we swooped in and seized the amazing opportunity: to keep The Unarchiver alive for the users. Since millions of people love it and rely on it, it would be truly sad to leave the app with no support for the future OS or with no design updates.
The iPod world has ended not with a bang, but with a whimper, as apple.com/ipod now redirects to apple.com/ipod-touch. Both of the smaller music players were there just a few days ago.
Apple hasn’t published a press release on its website, but issued a statement to the press:
Today, we are simplifying our iPod lineup with two models of iPod touch now with double the capacity starting at just $199 and we are discontinuing the iPod shuffle and iPod nano.
On August 21st, a total solar eclipse will pass through the continental United States — traveling from the coasts of Oregon to South Carolina. It’s going to be an incredible sight, but the only way to watch it safely is to view the Sun with special solar filter glasses that block out the majority of the Sun’s light. Only certain solar filter glasses sold online have been properly certified.
This week on Connected, I tried to help Myke with his laptop as The Rock is having a great day with Siri. Then, Federico broke down Siri changes coming this fall.
My thanks to our sponsors:
Where we’ve seen a need to push content and interactivity forward, we’ve innovated to meet those needs. Where a format didn’t exist, we invented one – such as with Flash and Shockwave.1 And over time, as the web evolved, these new formats were adopted by the community, in some cases formed the basis for open standards, and became an essential part of the web.
But as open standards like HTML5, WebGL and WebAssembly have matured over the past several years, most now provide many of the capabilities and functionalities that plugins pioneered and have become a viable alternative for content on the web. Over time, we’ve seen helper apps evolve to become plugins, and more recently, have seen many of these plugin capabilities get incorporated into open web standards. Today, most browser vendors are integrating capabilities once provided by plugins directly into browsers and deprecating plugins.
This article comes with a photo:
Symptom: Some Power Mac G4 (Mirrored Drive Doors) and Power Mac G4 (FW 800) computers’ power buttons may require a firm push.
Solution: As a workaround, press the power button in its upper left quadrant to turn on the computer. The activator is directly behind this area.
Here’s the masterpiece, which is labeled “Where to press power button.”
Countdown is a new podcast from Time recounting some of the most dangerous missions in crewed space flight history. The first episode is about the Lunar Module mishap that could have turned tragic back on Apollo 10. The episode is well produced and short, and I enjoyed every minute of it.