Spotify Siri support could arrive with iOS 13 thanks to changes in SiriKit. It will work with third-party podcast, audiobook, music, and more apps.
Apple Park Campus is Ready for Earthquakes
As big as Apple Park campus is—about a mile around—it’s actually not attached to the ground. It has sliding mechanisms in the basement to reduce earthquake shaking by up to 80%.
Two stories underground, beneath offices where engineers design iPhones and MacBooks, the building rests on 692 huge stainless steel saucers. When the ground shakes, the building can shift as much as four feet in any direction on the saucers. Picture an ice cube on a plate. If you shake the plate back and forth, the ice cube slides to stay nearly stationary.
Completely fascinating. And as the article points out, apparently Jony Ive redesigned his own home to make it more earthquake resistant.
Foxconn Moving 155 Jobs From U.S. to Mexico
Key Apple supplier Foxconn is moving 155 jobs from the U.S. to Mexico. They offshored jobs come from a factory located outside of Indianapolis, according to Reuters, who broke the news. It comes alongside continued criticism of the firm for failing to meet its job creation targets in Wisconsin.
The Taiwan-based electronics maker said in a filing in Indiana in November 2018 that it would lay off 155 workers at a computer factory outside Indianapolis, citing “changes in our business and production objectives.” The Labor Department in February determined that the jobs were eliminated because the company had shifted some production to Mexico, records obtained by Reuters through a Freedom of Information Act request show….The company told the Indianapolis Business Journal in November that the plant in Plainfield, Indiana, was operated by a subsidiary firm and added that the layoffs would not affect other Foxconn-related companies.
Teen AirDrop Wars Get Serious
AirDrop wars between teenagers are apparently a thing. Teens use the file sharing tool to send each other memes and other content, and adults are getting caught in the crossfire. YouTuber and Adobe Spark product manager Veronica Belmont was amongst those who told their story to The Atlantic.
Anyone who has accidentally left their AirDrop settings open to everyone around a group of teens is likely familiar with the deluge of memes, selfies, and notes that arrives so quickly it can often freeze your phone. “Another day another group of French teens trying to AirDrop me memes on the subway,” one woman tweeted. “in a crowd of teens and they keep trying to AirDrop me memes!!!” said another. One young Twitter user joked that she was going to a music festival last weekend “just to AirDrop”… The photos swapped are usually memes or odd pictures teens find on Google Images.
WWDC 2019: Winners of Apple Design Awards Announced
Apple revealed the winners of its Design Awards at WWDC 2019 praising developers’ artistry and technical achievement.
WWDC Day Two – TMO Daily Observations 2019-06-04
Kelly interviews Ish Shabazz and Kendall Gellner about yesterday’s announcements and how it affects what they are developing.
YouTube Star Jailed for 15 Months After Tricking Homeless Man
YouTube star ReSet tricked a homeless man into eating biscuits filled with toothpaste and posted the video online. He has been sentenced to 15 months in prison, ordered to pay his victim €20,000, and banned from social media for five years, the Guardian reported.
ReSet, who was born in China but grew up in Spain, was among the 200 most popular YouTubers in Spain and Latin America, with 1.1 million followers. In 2017 he accepted a dare to scrape the cream out of Oreo cookies and replace it with toothpaste. He found a Romanian man who was living on the streets of Barcelona, handed him the doctored biscuits and a €20 note, and filmed the encounter. The man later vomited. “Maybe I went a little too far, but look on the bright side: this helped him clean his teeth,” ReSet, 21, said. “I don’t think he’s brushed them since he became poor.”
Square Sends Sensitive Receipts to the Wrong Person
It is always awkward if you purchase something embarrassing or sensitive, and someone finds the receipt, right? Or your partner finds the receipt for a present you bought them? Well, the Wall Street Journal found that Square has been sending millions of receipts to the wrong person. It has created some very difficult situations.
Square has forwarded receipts documenting transactions as mundane as a cup of coffee and as sensitive as an obstetrician’s visit to people who were uninvolved in the purchases, according to emails reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. In some cases, neither the purchaser nor the recipient could say why Square sent receipts to the people it did. At issue are the methods that tech companies employ to make money off of the financial data of their users, as well as the degree to which those companies disclose or get consent from their users about those efforts. Data on individuals’ credit-card transactions can be particularly delicate and more revealing than their social-media posts or web-browsing activity.
WDDC 2019: Apple is a Privacy-as-a-Service Company
Away from the excitement of new Mac Pros and operating systems for Mac and iPad, another thing stood out at WWDC 2019. Apple is making privacy-as-a-service a core part of its offering, as Darrell Etherington noted at TechCrunch.
Apple has been playing up its privacy game for at least a few years now, and in the Tim Cook era it’s especially come to the fore. But today’s announcements really crystallize how Apple’s approach to privacy will mesh with its transformation into becoming even more of a services company. It’s becoming a services company with a key differentiator – privacy – and it’s also extending that paradigm to third-parties, acting as an ecosystem layer that mediates between users, and anyone who would seek to monetize their info in aggregate.
Who Would Buy a Maxed Out 2019 Mac Pro? And For How Much?
The base model of the 2019 Mac Pro is US$5999. It’s a very basic model. How much would a fully configured system cost? Who would buy that? Let’s take a look.
