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Check out this great piece by Ben Zotto at Medium. It’s about how he used an original Mac to study Susan Kare’s Chicago, Geneva, New York, and San Francisco fonts. He was looking to better understand the magic that was Chicago, the original proportional font on the Mac. What he found, though were sheep. I don’t want to give it away because it’s a good read, but here’s a snippet:

So what was that thing about the hidden sheep, anyway, you ask? Well, the deconstruction of the original Mac font resources revealed something puzzling: in several of the fonts — though not all of them — there is an unexpected secret character hidden alongside all the normal ones.

AppleInsider‘s Stephen Silver took a trip to Consumer Reports to talk about that magazine’s approach to Apple. It’s a very good read, full of direct information about some of CR’s high-profile criticisms of Apple’s report. Here’s a snippet:

This all said, there are a few things we conclude from our visit to Consumer Reports. Having viewed their testing process and met with their team, we are confident that they do not harbor a purposeful anti-Apple agenda, nor is there any sort of conspiracy against Apple afoot behind the CR walls. Their complete testing and evaluation process is conducted with integrity and in good faith.

However, there may very well be something about CR’s analytical, numbers-driven process that clashes with the design-heavy Apple ethos, and makes their conclusions about Apple products different from those of more traditional reviewers. Even so, this hasn’t stopped them from recommending most of Apple’s lineup.

This, from John Gruber:

But everything about the way Google announced this — the curious details of the calls released so far, the fact that no one in the media has been allowed to see an actual call happen live — makes me suspect that for one or more reasons, the current state of Duplex is less than what Sundar Pichai implied on stage.

This was my thought from the get-go, and John Gruber does a great job of walking through the reasons. He also explains that he’s not bagging on Google’s ability to get to a true human-sounding AI that can book our appointments, and I agree with him there, too. There’s simply a lot that doesn’t add up about the Google Duplex demo and the information about that demo that’s come to light. It’s a good read I recommend.

The internet pretty much had a meltdown when SyFy announced about two weeks ago there wouldn’t be a season 4 for The Expanse. Now Amazon is stepping up and is negotiating to keep the show alive through Amazon Prime. Amazon already has the rights to stream the first three seasons, so adding first-run rights for season 4 makes sense. The Hollywood Reporter makes it sound like the deal is practically a done deal, and hopefully they’re right. After all, we need to know what the protomolecule is up to.

Apple is hard at work on a lower-priced version of the HomePod, or so the latest reports claim. The report comes from the Chinese website with a claim that “foreign media” is reporting a US$199 HomePod is on the way this year. It looks like this all spins out of an article from money.udn.com from early March (english translation) speculating that Apple could decide to make a lower priced HomePod model. The information available so far doesn’t even amount to a rumor, so no, Apple isn’t releasing a sub $200 HomePod this year.

With Apple officially dropping its AirPort Base Station product line it’s no surprise the remaining inventory is dwindling. Reports are cropping up saying some models from Apple’s Wi-Fi router lineup are already gone, although we’re still seeing AirPort Extreme, Express, and Time Capsule as in stock in the Apple Store app. Still, if you’re looking into getting a new Wi-Fi router it may be time to check out the wireless mesh network options. Dave Hamilton has done a great job of explaining what your options are, and how to pick the right product for your needs.

Apple owns 6% of the global smart speaker market, according to Strategy Analytics. The research firm says Apple sold about 600,000 HomePods during the first quarter of 2018. Of course, that’s only an estimate because Apple doesn’t share sales HomePod figures. Considering Amazon holds 43.6% of the smart speaker market, and Google has 26.5% with far more than a single quarter’s sales, it’ll be interesting to see how many people say this proves HomePod is a failure. It’s possible HomePod is a flop, or it’ll own the market. Either way, a single quarter’s sales isn’t enough to make a definitive conclusion.

I was going to write a rant—OK, another rant—about how stupid Twitter is being its APIs and third party apps. The company announced a change that will effectively render third party clients useless without change—this after the company killed its own Mac client. Twitter has confused its ^#%$ desire for me to use its service on a browser with my desire to do so. Because I do not want to. At all. Anyhoo, enter John Gruber, who already wrote the rant. It’s a good one.

To me this is like finding out you’re now required to access email entirely through a web browser. Sure, lots of people already do it that way and either prefer it or think it’s eh, just fine, who cares — but a lot of others hate it and find it completely disruptive to longstanding workflows.

Apple and Samsung are back in court for the next round in their years-long legal fight over copying the iPhone’s design. This new trial is to determine how much money Samsung owes Apple for patent infringement. Apple is pushing for US$1 billion in damages, and of course Samsung is balking. It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out considering Apple was originally awarded over $1 billion, but that was cut back dramatically over the years in the ongoing legal fight. Maybe now Apple can get that number pushed back up. Bloomberg has more about the new damages trial.

Personal Audio’s fight to use a patent to force podcasters to pay royalties is finally at an end. The U.S. Supreme Court won’t hear PA’s appeal in a ruling that invalidated its patent, which means the EFF won its legal fight. That’s great news because now PA can’t claim all podcasters have to pay royalties. It’s also an example of something going right in our painfully broken patent system. You can read more about the ruling at Ars Technica.

Should our modern robots have emotions? If not, should they at least be able to detect and respond to human emotions?  If they do, how can/will we, in turn, treat them? What happens when a Boston Dynamics Atlas inherits the abilities of Google’s Duplex? Should robots on the phone divulge who they are? Should we permit them to lie? More questions than answers, but the awesome Particle Debris readers are, as always, up to the challenge.

According to a Bloomberg Technology report, Facebook Inc. is building a team to design its own semiconductors. Just what this new hardware will be used for is not known for sure, but one surmise is for artificial intelligence applications on its servers. But the hardware could also extend to personal electronics. Like Han Solo, I have a bad feeling about this.

The myriad of different traffic, road, lighting, and weather conditions  presented to autonomous cars will pose endless challenges to automotive software engineers. The complexities are beginning to temper initial optimism and portend a future of continuous updates, according to this Particle Debris linked article at Wired.

Steve Jobs really wanted Tim Cook to leave Compaq to work for Apple, but kept getting stonewalled. Tim wouldn’t even agree to a meeting, which makes sense because this was before the iMac and iPod were introduced. When the two men finally met, Steve had to convince Tim to take the job as Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide operations. CNBC has a great look at how that played out from Tim’s perspective, and it’s worth checking out.

If all that were required for brilliant engineering solutions is oodles of cash, Apple would have flawless products that seem to have been beamed from the future. Alas, this is not possible. Particle Debris page 2 links to an illustrative article.

After years of leapfrogging each other, Tidbits security editor Rich Mogull thinks Windows 10 security is now on par with macOS. The U.S. military agrees. Both links are on Particle Debris page 2.

Mark Zuckerberg was in the audience that day in 2010, at AllThingsD, when Apple’s Steve Jobs told Walt Mossberg how his company works to protect customer privacy.  And here’s a link to the video.

Neil Cybart at Above Avalon goes into considerable detail as he explains Apple’s strategy to control sound products. And that means, amongst other things, the dedicated headphone jack  on the iPhone had to go.

Google’s Chromebooks and office G-Suite are doing a good job of luring business and education away from Apple and Microsoft and into their fold. Here’s the analysis from Friday’s Particle Debris page 2.

I am both happy and thankful to welcome Evgeny Cherpak as our sponsor here at TMO this week. As a solo developer, Evgeny has created a series of apps aimed at making your life easier by remote controlling your Mac in purpose-built ways, and this week we’re talking about Remote for Mac. Remote for Mac turns your iPhone or iPad into a very full-featured, easy-to-use remote controlfor your Mac. Not to be confused with screen-sharing, Remote is built for when you’re looking at your Mac’s screen either directory or via AirPlay but don’t want to use your typical keyboard and mouse to control it.

macOS is brilliant. It’s the best GUI and development environment ever put on top of a UNIX OS. So why does Apple engage in so many silly things that annoy (or imperil) users? Particle Debris page 2 looks at three.

Consumer Reports says: Samsung and Roku Smart TVs Vulnerable to Hacking. Read what you can do to secure your TV.

Reviewing the new Apple HomePod on a very personal basis instead of thinking about what it’s designed to be for the customer is destined for difficulties.