Sarah Jones, Joel Kinnaman, Michael Dorman Cast in Ronald D. Moore's Apple Sci-fi Series

Sarah Jones, Joel Kinnaman, Michael Dorman are joining the cast of Ronald D. Moore’s sci-fi series for Apple. Variety says,

Joel Kinnaman, Michael Dorman, and Sarah Jones have all been cast in the series, which takes place in a world where global space race never ended. Kinnaman will play Edward Baldwin, one of the top NASA astronauts. Dorman and Jones have been cast as Gordo and Tracy Stevens, a prominent NASA couple.

Apple is lining up what looks like a power house of shows with big names writing and producing, as well as very talented actors. The first shows are expected to start rolling out some time in 2019, and I’m really looking forward to see how they stack up against Netflix and Amazon original content.

We Shoot Lightning Into Rocks and Metal to Create iPhones

Wired offers a fascinating behind-the-scenes article about the “ultra-pure, super-secret sand” we use to create iPhones.

Spruce Pine, it turns out, is the source of the purest natural quartz—a species of pristine sand—ever found on Earth. This ultra‑elite deposit of silicon dioxide particles plays a key role in manufacturing the silicon used to make computer chips. In fact, there’s an excellent chance the chip that makes your laptop or cell phone work…

Siri on macOS Isn't a Good Feature

I agree with Jeremy Horwitz when he writes that Siri on macOS “barely registers as a feature.” He specifically refers to the Hey Siri functionality though. I’ve used Siri once or twice on my Mac when it first came out, but that’s it.

Apple first added “Hey Siri” — a voice trigger for the assistant — to iOS devices four years ago. Since then, I’ve found that I can consistently rely upon it for basically three things: to tell me the time, to recite the most basic weather when I’m in bed, and to stop or start playback on my office’s infrequently used HomePod. On occasion, I ask it to do more, but frequently have to ignore or manually correct its irritatingly wrong responses.

Voice control is not a good interface for a computer, at least in my life.

Samsung Portrays Apple Employees as Idiots, So ZDNET Put that to the Test

Samsung’s latest Galaxy Note 9 marketing campaign bags on Apple store employees, portraying them as bumbling fools blindly pushing iPhones. ZDNET decided to put that to the test. Spoiler alert: they aren’t. My take is that the employee in the ads is a proxy for Apple customers and Samsung is saying you’re stupid for buying an iPhone. They do more to bolster people who are already Samsung customers, and if all your ad campaign does is slam the competition what does that really say about your product?