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Is Apple the Company That Can Transform the AR Industry?

Andrew Orr ·

Lucas Matney wrote for TechCrunch and asked if Apple can keep the AR industry alive.

AR startups have already been struggling and hardware efforts have largely cratered. The software platforms have had some success building what Apple hasn’t or won’t for niche enterprise customers, but as the economic realities shift, all bets are off.

First, I don’t think there’s much of an AR industry right now to keep alive. We have a scattering of AR features on iPhones and Androids, but right now it still seems niche. Second, in my biased opinion as an Apple blogger, I think Apple is the one to truly make AR mainstream. As an example, Apple didn’t invent the cellphone, but the iPhone transformed our lives and the cellphone industry. For the company to do the same with AR, we need an AR headset.

TMO Deals

KeepSolid VPN Unlimited 3-Year Subscription: $42.50

Bryan Chaffin ·

We have a deal on a 3-year subscription to KeepSolid VPN Unlimited. The subscription includes unlimited connection speeds and traffic bandwidth, access to more than 400 VPN servers in more than 70 locations globally, access to VPN protocols IKEv2, OpenVPN, and the company’s own technology KeepSolid Wise, and more. This subscription is $50 through our deal, but coupon code SPRINGSAVE15 brings the checkout price down to $42.50.

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Craig Federighi Demonstrates Trackpad Support in iPadOS

Charlotte Henry ·

Apple’s Senior Vice President, Software Engineering, Craig Federighi stars in a new video, published on The Verge. In it, he demonstrates trackpad support in iPadOS. The way the cursor changes is particularly clever, I think.

The iPad’s UI is powerful, but in many ways it’s difficult to learn, in part because so many of us still have desktop UI paradigms in our heads. One interesting thing you can’t do is just have a bunch of traditional windows like you’re used to having on a desktop or even a Windows tablet. Apple is sticking to its guns on its attempt to rethink how we move and rearrange windows on the iPad screen, with stuff like split screen and Slide Over. For better or worse (and I think for the better), the new trackpad features don’t turn the iPad into a Mac. Whether any of that radically changes this year with iPadOS 14 is anybody’s guess. Federighi himself recently said, “If you like what you’ve seen us do with iPadOS, stay tuned, we’re going to keep working on it.”

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Coronavirus Outbreak Might be Actually Reducing Music Streaming

Charlotte Henry ·

In a somewhat counterintuitive development, the coronavirus outbreak may actually be reducing the amount of music people stream. Quartz had a look at the data.

In Italy, one of the countries hardest hit by coronavirus, the top 200 most streamed songs on Spotify within the country averaged 18.3 million total streams per day in February 2019. Since Italy’s prime minister announced a national quarantine on March 9th, the total streams for the 200 most popular songs have not topped 14.4 million. There was a 23% drop in top 200 streams on Tuesday March 17th compared to Tuesday, March 3rd… The trend is similar in the US. On March 17th, total Spotify streams of top 200 songs fell to 77 million streams. This was the lowest number of top-200 streams in the US for any Tuesday in 2020, and about 14 million streams fewer than just a week before. Total top-200 streams are also down in the UK, France, and Spain as well.

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watchOS 6.2 Golden Master Arrives With Developers

Charlotte Henry ·

Apple seeded the golden master of watchOS 6.2 to developers on Wednesday. MacRumors had a look at what it contained.

watchOS 6.2 introduces ‌Apple Watch‌ App Store support for in-app purchases, which will allow developers to create and sell ‌Apple Watch‌ apps that offer in-app purchase options and subscriptions. Apple’s release notes for the update are below: watchOS 6.2 includes new features, improvements, and bug fixes: Introduces in-app purchases for ‌Apple Watch‌ apps. Fixes an issue where music playback could pause when switching from Wi-Fi to Bluetooth connectivity. ECG app on ‌Apple Watch‌ Series 4 or later now available in Chile, New Zealand, and Turkey. Irregular heart rhythm notifications now available in Chile, New Zealand, and Turkey.

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Book Publisher Macmillan Cancels Plan to Stifle Libraries

Andrew Orr ·

The Big Five book publishers had a plan to hurt consumers by imposing limitations on eBook licensing to libraries. One of them—Macmillan—is backing out.

There are times in life when differences should be put aside,” Macmillan CEO John Sargent wrote in a memo to librarians obtained by Publishers Weekly. “Effective on Friday (or whenever thereafter our wholesalers can effect the change), Macmillan will return to the library e-book pricing model that was in effect on Oct. 31, 2019. In addition, we will be lowering some ebook prices on a short term basis to help expand libraries collections in these difficult times. Stay safe.

You have literally no “differences” with libraries other than money. And implying that you’re doing this because of the coronavirus is, to put it politely, shady. Not to mention all the libraries boycotting Macmillan. No, this is entirely a gesture of good will because of “these difficult times.”

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Standby for a Major Slack Redesign

Charlotte Henry ·

Slack is rolling out its biggest ever redesign. It is all centered around major changes to the sidebar. Senior exec Ethan Eismann explained the company’s thinking in an interview with The Verge.

“This is the largest redesign in Slack’s history,” explains Ethan Eismann, vice president of design at Slack, in an interview with The Verge. “We’ve taken a lot of the historical features and reorganized them in a way that makes them much more apparent in the right way and simple to use. That was very much the goal of this process.” Slack’s new redesign all starts with the sidebar. The biggest change is that messages, channels, and apps will all now support grouping into collapsible sections within the Slack sidebar. That means if you’re working on a project that has certain channels and group DM conversations, then you can nest them all under one handy section and drag and drop it to exactly where you want it in the sidebar. Unfortunately, the new sidebar sections feature will only be available on paid Slack plans, not free versions.

TMO Deals

The 2020 Mac Productivity Essentials Bundle: $25.49

Bryan Chaffin ·

We have a deal called the 2020 Mac Productivity Essentials Bundle, a collection of productivity apps for the Mac. It includes a VPN, an app organizer, a PDF editor, a password manager, a movie editor, and four more Mac apps. It’s $29.99 through our deal, but coupon code SPRINGSAVE15 brings the checkout price down to $25.49.

Podcast

Musician and Programmer John Nastos - TMO BGM Interview

John Martellaro · · Add Comment

John Nastos is a multi-instrumentalist, music composer and improvisor, saxophonist, an iOS app developer, book author and is currently on faculty at Portland State University as a Jazz Saxophone Instructor.

John is one of those special people who is an accomplished jazz musician, iOS developer and author. He tells a fascinating story about how he got started as a jazz musician and the people who mentored him. Along the way, he also fondly adopted the Mac, and that stood him well when it came time to develop some very popular, technical music apps that had never existed before. As an instructor, John teaches his students the principles behind music improvisation. His first book, The Mechanism lays out those core concepts. John is a gifted speaker and educator, so don’t miss this show.

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U.S. Government Wants to Track Coronavirus Spread With Location Data

Andrew Orr ·

The U.S. government is in talks with Facebook, Google, and others to use location data to track the spread of the coronavirus.

Public-health experts are interested in the possibility that private-sector companies could compile the data in anonymous, aggregated form, which they could then use to map the spread of the infection, according to three people familiar with the effort, who requested anonymity because the project is in its early stages.

On the surface, it’s for good intentions (They always seem good on the surface). But we know that in certain situations, data can be de-anonymized. Some questions: How will they use this data? How effective would this be? Will the government keep the database afterward? My initial thought is that I have no problem with medical experts and scientists doing this. But I have no faith in this current administration, or faith in companies like Facebook and Google. What if they created an app to collect this data? That way it’s optional. And please password–protect the server.

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On Being a Woman in The Gaming Industry

Charlotte Henry ·

Just because it isn’t International Women’s Day anymore, that doesn’t mean we should not celebrate women in tech! iMore has a great interview with Camilla Avellar, a designer at Supercell – the firm behind Clash of Clans. She discusses how she got into the industry, and how it has changed over the years.

Back in the beginning of the App Store era, many people were playing games, but there still wasn’t an established market. So there were some trial games that you could get for free and then buy the premium version. There wasn’t really this free to play model yet. That came a bit later. But with the free to play model, it just exploded. Everyone had a very small barrier to entry. You could just download a game and play it for free for years. And yeah, I think that a shift in this mentality towards mobile games came with the fact that the audience is just huge and it’s an audience that is largely untapped because it’s not all gamers.