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John Martellaro

John Martellaro was born at an early age and began writing about computers soon after that. With degrees in astrophysics (B.S.) and physics (M.S.), he has worked for NASA, White Sands Missile Range, Lockheed Martin Astronautics, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Apple. At Apple he worked as a Senior Marketing Manager, a Federal Account Executive and a High Performance Computing manager. His interests include chess, science fiction and astronomy. John is the host of the TMO podcast Background Mode.

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Articles by John Martellaro

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If There Really is an iPhone 'Pro' Coming, Just How Will it be so?

John Martellaro ·

Once you name a product “Pro,” you have a lot of explaining to do. At 9to5Mac, Ben Lovejoy explains, referring to a previous post.

Just the idea of a ‘Pro’ iPhone is a little annoying.

Don’t misunderstand me. Modern iPhones are amazing devices. There was a time when such a powerful and flexible pocket computer would have stretched the credibility of science fiction stories, yet we now take them totally for granted.

And they are sometimes used for professional purposes. There are, for example, all those ‘Shot on iPhone’ movies and ads. But let’s not kid ourselves about those. The reasons for shooting on iPhone have little to do with it being a ‘pro’ device.

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And Now For the Downside of the Apple Card

John Martellaro ·

There have been some rave reviews of the Apple Card. But, in the end, it’s a credit card with the usual, attendant downsides. Michael Simon at Macworld brings us back to earth.

While the Apple Card might be filled with the delightful little details that we’ve come to expect from Apple—beautiful spending trackers, an animated digital card that reflects light as if you were holding it, privacy and security at the forefront—at its core, Apple Card is still a credit card backed by a bank that will charge you interest if you don’t pay on time….

With Apple Card, Apple may be selling you something that could end up costing you way more than an iPhone—or a Mac Pro for that matter.

TMO Deals

A Frank and Thorough Assessment of the Apple Card

John Martellaro ·

Raymond Wong at Mashable has put the Apple Card through its paces: application process, convenience, UI, benefits, cash back, APR, payments, security and iPhone lock-in. If you’re on the fence about this new credit card, author Wong has every detail covered.

The Bottom Line: Apple Card is a credit card experience unlike any other, but it’ll tempt you to stick with Apple devices and services.

Good stuff here. Detailed and systematic.

TMO Deals

YouTube's Original Content May be Reacting to 'Subscription Fatigue'

John Martellaro ·

Either YouTube’s original content managers are reacting to consumer ‘subscription fatigue’ or they’ve somehow learned of Apple’s (possible) plans for its Apple TV+ service to be free to Apple hardware customers. Or Disney’s recent announcements have taken the wind out of their sails. (sales?) PC Magazine writes:

YouTube’s original series, movies, and live events will be available for free starting Sept. 24. Here’s the catch: non-paying viewers will see ads when watching this content, and “only select episodes may be available for streaming [for free] at any time,” YouTube said.

The TV original content subscription war is heating up.

Podcast

Science Communicator Dr. Kiki Sanford (#7) - TMO Background Mode Interview

John Martellaro · · Add Comment

Dr. Kiki Sanford makes her seventh appearance on Background Mode. Kiki is a neurophysiologist with a B.S. in conservation biology and a Ph.D. avian neurophysiology from the University of California. She’s a popular science communicator and creator of This Week in Science (TWIS) podcast and radio show.

In this episode, we chat about Elon Musk’s Neuralink, Tardigrades on the Earth’s moon, how Dark Matter may have actually preceded the Big Bang, how older parents tend to have children with fewer behavior problems, the latest findings from the exoplanet hunter, TESS, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, and, finally, how climate change is affecting the size of some birds. Dr. Kiki is always a delight to listen to and learn from.

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Forget Foldable iPhones. How About Foldable MacBooks?

John Martellaro ·

Dennis Sellers at AppleWorld.Today offers an intriguimg proposition.

We hear rumors about upcoming iPhones with foldable screen. But what about Macs with bendable displays. Imagine a MacBook Pro with a screen that measured 13-inches when you’re, for example, on an airplane. Get to your hotel room, however, and you can unfold it to 17 inches or bigger.

Author Sellers makes a good case.

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Robotics Video: Evan Rachael Wood Meets Sophia

John Martellaro ·

Mashable writes about an upcoming short film featuring two famous robots, one of whom is an actress and one is real.

Unless you live under a rock, you might know of the world’s most famous real-life humanoid, Sophia, the robot…

An enticing trailer for has recently come out for a short film called SophiaWorld starring HBO’s Westworld actress Evan Rachael Wood…

Television’s most famous Robot, actress Evan Rachel Wood, and arguably the world’s most famous real-life humanoid, Sophia the Robot, have a chance encounter in a swanky NY hotel bar…

The short film will premiere on September 4 on Futurism.com.

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Facebook's Digital Currency, Libra, in Trouble

John Martellaro ·

The pushback against Libra is increasing. BBC News writes:

Financial bigwigs are upset because Facebook, a corporation, appears to want to take on a government-like role, creating a currency and perhaps even setting monetary policy.

Big Money is power. Facebook is trying to seize power at a governmental level. Sparks are gonna fly.

Podcast

TMO Contributor Kelly Guimont - TMO Background Mode Interview

John Martellaro · · Add Comment

Kelly Guimont is a long-time podcaster, Contributing Editor for The Mac Observer, the host of the Mac Observer’s Daily Observations podcast, a tech support guru, and a Founding Volunteer of App Camp for Girls.

Kelly first appeared here in December, 2015 to tell her career story and has returned many times for interesting technical and media discussions. In her 7th appearance, we chat about our favorite TV shows of late. John: Anne With an “E” (Netflix) and Outlander (Netflix). Kelly: Good Omens (Amazon), Stranger Things S3 (Netflix), and Battestar Galactica (SyFy). Join us as we explore together what’s great about these shows. We also put in a good word for Chuck Joiner’s new podcast Trek Favorites.

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All About Apps Phoning Home. And Firewalls

John Martellaro ·

The Eclectic Light Company writes:

A few years ago, most Mac users had firewalls in their routers which blocked all incoming connections, and that was all they wanted. Over those years, we’ve increasingly installed software firewalls on our Macs to block outgoing connections. This article looks at some of the issues that arise from doing that.

The rules of the game keep changing, and this article brings us up-to-date.

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After Bashing Apple, Samsung Caves, Deletes Headphone Jack

John Martellaro ·

The Verge writes:

… today’s just-announced Samsung Galaxy Note 10 doesn’t include the 3.5mm socket, even though it’s the phone that would have been most likely to keep it around….

Now, like some of its competitors, Samsung just has to pretend it never made fun of Apple for doing the same damn thing. Because even if you try to delete these videos, Samsung, the internet has a long memory.

The excuses  explanations Samsung makes are hilarious.

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The Cloud is Good for Mac Backups - Except Time Machine Files

John Martellaro ·

Many Mac users also back up everything to a cloud service. Glenn Fleishman at Macworld explains why Time Machine files should not be on your list.

Now you might think that on top of that … Time Machine or a local copy plus cloud archives … you should back up your Time Machine volume to an online cloud service too.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t play out in practice.

Glenn explains, in detail, why you shouln’t even think about that practice.

Podcast

ZDNet Sr. Technical Editor Jason Perlow - TMO Background Mode Interview

John Martellaro · · Add Comment

Jason Perlow is a a well-known technical journalist. He is also also a technologist with over two decades of experience in cloud computing, IoT, mobility, security, open source, enterprise systems architecture, Microsoft technology, and Software as a Service. Today, he is a Senior Technical Editor at ZDNet and an Information Security Threat Writer at Proofpoint.

Jason started his tech life at age 12 with an Apple II Plus thanks to a very technical father. But after college, Jason was hired by IBM and years later by Microsoft. The result was a standoffish approach to Apple. Today, however, Jason is all in with Apple, and he told me the story of how that happened. In fact, Jason thinks Apple and Microsoft should be working more closely together, and we explored his recent article about that.

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What to Know About RTF vs. RTFD Files on a Mac

John Martellaro ·

The Eclectic Light Company writes:

Macs and iOS devices have the benefit of not one variety of Rich Text documents, but two: RTF and RTFD. This article explores some of their features and limitations, and considers the problems of working with them alongside one another.

This is a very readable and helpful article that explains the nature of RTFD files and their history going back to the origins with NeXT Corp.

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With This New Contact Lens: Blink Twice to Zoom

John Martellaro ·

Would you believe? The Next Web writes:

Scientists from the University of California, San Diego, have created a new robotic soft contact lens that lets you zoom by blinking twice. The lens can be controlled by your eye movements.

Of course, it’s a long way from the lab to commercial production. For now, it’s probably destined for use by spies. Or pilots.

Podcast

Future Historian Steve Carper - TMO Background Mode Interview

John Martellaro · · 1 Comment

Steve Carper is a Future Historian, researching how the dazzling future that dominated the Golden Age of science fiction was created—starting with the technological frenzy of the late 19th century.

Steve writes a bi-weekly robot column at BlackGate.com and his latest book, published in June 2019, is Robots in American Popular Culture. This book examines society’s reactions to robots and androids such as Robby, Rosie, Elektro, Sparko, Data, WALL-E, C-3PO and the Terminator in popular culture.

Steve and I discussed his new book, covering some of the most famous robots of fiction and then all aspects of robot technology in our culture: robots as servants, enemies, lovers, children, successors and doubles. Where will the evolution of robots take our society next? Klaatu barada nikto.

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Evidence Mounts: Apple's Butterfly Keyboard is on the Way Out

John Martellaro ·

Evidence is mounting that the ill-fated Butterfly mechanism keyboard that Apple has been using in its notebook computers ever since the MacBook debuted in 2015 will eventually become history. AppleInsider has the goods:

Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo suspects that the [rumored] 16-inch MacBook Pro will be the first Apple laptop to shift [back] to a scissor mechanism …

Furthermore, Kuo is predicting that the entire MacBook Air and MacBook Pro lines will migrate in 2020 to the technology.

Some think this is evidence of the subtle hand of Apple’s COO Jeff Williams.

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The DIRECTV - CBS Dispute is a Mess

John Martellaro ·

CBS has blocked DirecTV’s CBS feed since July 19. Customers are angered. CBS All Access subscriptions have surged.( Duh.) Finger pointing abounds. Bloomberg writes: “CBS Blackout on DirecTV Is What’s Wrong With the TV Market.”

If the market for television and video-streaming services wasn’t frustrating enough for consumers, now comes news that millions paying for DirecTV suddenly can’t watch CBS, the most popular TV network in the U.S., due to a contract dispute between the media giants. The good news is that it’s not yet football season, and it’s also in both companies’ interests to reach an agreement soon. The bad news is that the channel-blackout trend is only getting worse.

I’d love to see Stephen Colbert’s take on this. If I could watch him.

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About the macOS Transparency Consent and Control System

John Martellaro ·

The Eclectic Light Company writes:

The Transparency Consent and Control (TCC) system [in macOS] maintains a database of each user’s consents.

This article explains what you must do when uninstalling software in Mojave, and presumably Catalina, in order to remove previous consents for access to protected resources.

If you were to reinstall that software, you would see that it was immediately granted the same access as when it was removed, without your consent being sought again.

This is an interesting and informative article about the seldom discussed macOS TCC.

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How to Move Your Apple Mail Files From Old to New Mac

John Martellaro ·

Tom Nelson at Lifewire writes:

Moving your Apple Mail to a new Mac, or to a new, clean install of the operating system (macOS), may seem like a difficult task, but it actually only requires saving three items and moving them to the new destination.

And if you have all your email account passwords handy, the number of files to move drops from three to two. Tom goes into great detail, which is good, but one might have to exercise some care and thought for specific cases.

Podcast

Theoretical Physicist Dr. Jim Gates - TMO Background Mode Interview

John Martellaro · · 1 Comment

Dr. Jim Gates is a theoretical physicist and currently the Brown Theoretical Physics Center Director, Ford Foundation Professor of Physics, Affiliate Mathematics Professor, and a Watson Institute for International Studies & Public Affairs Faculty Fellow at Brown University. He is known for his work on supersymmetry, supergravity, and superstring theory.

We opened the show with a discussion of Jim’s early career, a B.S. with a dual major in mathematics and physics at MIT and, later, his Ph.D. in physics, also from MIT. In the heart of the podcast, Jim explained Superstring theory—its successes, failures and issues with dark energy. He also explained supersymmetry and supergravity for us. We finished with what’s considered the hottest topic in theoretical astrophysics. Jim is an extraordinary teacher and science communicator, so tune in and get your science hat on!

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In Honor of Apollo 11, Orbitrack Will Be Free on July 20th

John Martellaro ·

Southern Stars Group, LLC has released the following:

On the 50thanniversary of Apollo 11’s first manned moon landing, a new iOS app – Orbitrack – lets you explore the universe of spacecraft in orbit around our home planet today, using cutting-edge augmented and virtual reality technology.

Better yet: for just one day, July 20th, 2019, Orbitrack will be offered for free on the iTunes Store.

Highly rated, Orbitrack is available in the Apple App Store now for $4.99 (free on 7/20) and for Android in the second half of 2019. For more information, visit Southern Stars Group.