Apple Archive

Some very smart people I've been talking to suggest that, by building a platform, Apple is generating leverage that it can use to great effect in these negotiations. A mid-market breakout box offering is one thing, but a huge, rumbling platform with an upward trajectory of living-room dominating apps and third-party content is another beast. If, obviously if, Apple is successful with the Apple TV, it could be in a position to dominate content in a way that no other 'smart' TV platform has before it.

If Apple did indeed 'delay' the Apple TV from being released at WWDC, then it probably had a reason. And, if my sources are correct, that reason could well be polish, polish, polish. The experience of using it is said to blow away the types of junky smart TV interfaces we've had to deal with so far. This is the first real Apple TV product.

Over the last few days I've been testing an experimental content blocker called Crystal, which promises to speed up browsing on iOS. I've been particularly impressed by the results and taken aback by how much removing trackers, ads and other scripts makes a difference over a cellular connection.

On Wednesday I wrote about a problem I've been seeing with GMail, or so I thought. Messages that I knew I must be getting were not showing up in any of my mailboxes in GMail. But when I searched for them, they would show up.

I heard from other people who had seen the same behavior.

And I heard from two people from Google who work on GMail, who asked all the right questions. And gave me really detailed instructions on how to help them debug this.

The change should help end the annual frustration experienced by app developers when users running beta versions of iOS discovered a third party app wasn't compatible with the beta software and then left a 1-star rating on the App Store. Poor reviews on the App Store can hurt sales, and developers often can't do anything to fix the problem because they can't submit software built for the new versions of iOS whilst it remains in beta, and the bug could be one for Apple to fix, not the developer.

Beats 1 radio wasn't the only Apple service to temporarily go down during the MTV's VMA nominee announcements. As TechCrunch first reported and Apple's own status page confirmed, many more of Apple's services experienced issues Tuesday morning that stretched into the afternoon. Normal service was restored just before 2PM ET. The outages appeared limited to services related to Apple's online storefronts, but "limited" here is a relative term as many popular services are apparently tied in: Apple Music, Apple Radio, the App Store, Apple TV, the Mac App Store, iTunes Match, and even OS X Software Update all suffered problems. The outage wasn't universal, but still proved an unexpected headache for users.

The FTC has launched an investigation into Apple's dealings with competing music streaming services in its App Store, according to multiple sources. The investigation is targeting Apple's 30 percent fee charged to subscription services who sign up new users through the App Store. This has been a major point of conflict between Apple and rival music services as The Verge reported back in May.

The FTC's inquiries have picked up over the recent weeks, on the heels of its initial investigation into whether Apple pressured labels to kill Spotify's free streaming tier. Sources with direct knowledge of the matter tell The Verge that the FTC has already issued subpoenas to music streaming services as it gathers more information to determine whether Apple's App Store rules are anticompetitive.

With this week's update to the entire iPod lineup, many have been asking "Who are iPods even for these days?" Well, I worked the last 3 years managing an electronics department for Target, and have sold a lot of Apple devices over that time. Since Apple doesn't break down demographics for who is buying each device, I thought I would share my experience.

Recently there has a been a lot of debate wether Safari is the new IE, or Apple simply is building a user-centric web, but I think that removes focus from the real problem.

The problem isn't Safari. It's a somewhat modern browser that in the eyes of some might lack some important features, but overall is still pretty good and modern.

The real problem is Apple's lack of browser-choice in iOS, and that's a problem for several reasons.

Set backstage at three iconic product launches and ending in 1998 with the unveiling of the iMac, Steve Jobs takes us behind the scenes of the digital revolution to paint an intimate portrait of the brilliant man at its epicenter.

At this point, we in the web community need to come to terms with the fact that Safari has become the new IE. Microsoft is repentant these days, Google is pushing the web as far as it can go, and Mozilla is still being Mozilla. Apple is really the one singer in that barbershop quartet hitting all the sour notes, and it's time we start talking about it openly instead of tiptoeing around it like we're going to hurt somebody's feelings. Apple is the most valuable company in the world; they can afford to take a few punches.

If you've been watching the news recently, you'll know of the huge debate in the U.S over the role of the Confederate flag in contemporary America. Many see it as a reminder of the many pre-Civil War injustices while others see it simply as a way to honor the soldiers who died for the Confederacy. Many large US companies, like Walmart and Amazon, have already banned the sale of any Confederate flag merchandise as a reaction to the recent events. Now, it appears that Apple has decided to join them by pulling many Civil War wargames from the App Store. As of the writing of this story, games like Ultimate General: Gettysburg and all the Hunted Cow Civil War games are nowhere to be found. Apple is famous for reaching for the axe rather than the scalpel when it comes to political issues (like rejecting Hunted Cow's Tank Battle 1942 for depicting Germans and Russians as enemies), so this move doesn't come as a great surprise.

I took a little time out today to watch WWDC Session 511 to learn about how Safari Content Blocking will work in iOS 9 and OS X El Capitan. After an hour, I had a little concept app running. I wont really explain the technical details of how the extensions work or how to create them, that is better done by watching the WWDC Session video directly, but I will say its frightfully easy and the code I used for the blocker detailed below is at the bottom of this page.

A new iOS 9 feature added in beta 1 was only discovered when users attempted to update to beta 2 earlier today. This new feature will allow the operating system to intelligently delete applications if you don't have enough free space to perform a software update. Once the update is complete, the apps will automatically be reinstalled and your data will remain intact.