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The cast for Apple’s “Are You Sleeping?” TV series starring Octavia Spencer is complete. Variety reports Lizzy Caplan, Aaron Paul, Ron Cephas Jones, Elizabeth Perkins, Mekhi Phifer, Michael Beach, Tracie Thoms, and Haneefah Wood round out the powerhouse the cast. The series is based on the book of the same name and follows a woman dealing with a podcast that’s investigating her father’s murder. Apple’s TV series lineup is looking strong, and “Are You Sleeping?” is one show I can’t wait to see.

Writing for Quartz, Mike Murphy presents the argument that Apple’s new design language has “killed fun.” He says that the company has become less colorful and more monochromatic:

When founder Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, he infused a sense of color and vibrancy that had been lacking from a company that had become stuck in a rut of selling beige boxes. He introduced the iMac, a spheroid bubble of green and white plastic and glass, a little over a year later. It was like no computer on the market, and it revitalized Apple.

By refining its products to near-impenetrable pieces of glass and metal, and bringing the aesthetic of the entire consumer electronics market along with them, Apple has stamped out much of the fun within its own company, and the greater industry.

Federico Viticci wrote another killer piece at MacStories about iOS 12 automation with Shortcuts. It’s an informative article wherein he explains the difference between “Shortcuts the app and Shortcuts the feature.” The app replaces Workflow, but Shortcuts as a feature is a powerful new way to customize Siri. Apple is optimizing Siri in a different way than Google and Microsoft can, and it leverages the power of people, similar to services like IFTTT.

On the surface, Shortcuts the app looks like the full-blown Workflow replacement heavy users of the app have been wishfully imagining for the past year. But there is more going on with Shortcuts than the app alone. Shortcuts the feature, in fact, reveals a fascinating twofold strategy: on one hand, Apple hopes to accelerate third-party Siri integrations by leveraging existing APIs as well as enabling the creation of custom SiriKit Intents; on the other, the company is advancing a new vision of automation through the lens of Siri and proactive assistance from which everyone – not just power users – can reap the benefits.

Ken Segall, at The Observatory, takes retrospective look at Ron Johnson’s tenure as CEO of JCPenney. Recall Ron Johnson was Apple’s SVP of Retail Operations at Apple from roughly 2000 to 2011 and is believed to have been a major force in the success of Apple’s retail stores. In 2011, he was enticed to take the CEO position at JCPenney. Author Segall looks at how two CEOs did after Johnson was forced out in 2013. It’s a sparkling, fascinating look, in hindsight, about what Johnson tried to achieve, why he failed and why his successors also failed.

Unlike Apple TV, Apple’s streaming television and movie businesses isn’t a hobby. Apple’s latest hire, Kelly Costello, helps drive that point home. Variety reports she’s serving as business affairs executive reporting directly to Apple’s head of business affairs for worldwide video, Philip Matthys. She previously served as executive vice president of business and legal affairs for Broadway Video, and served stints at Viacom and NBC Universal Television, too. With each new hire Apple is showing it’s playing for keeps in the streaming entertainment market.

A court granted AT&T the right to acquire Time Warner, which makes sense because the Trump Administration’s blocking of that deal was political, rather than a true issue of antitrust. But when combined with the death of Net Neutrality, which ended Monday, Danny Crichton at TechCrunch had a sobering observation. In a piece arguing the merits of Alphabet and Netflix becoming ISPs (I’d throw Apple on that list), he noted that the world of video is effectively closed to startups. It’s a good read, and here’s a snippet:

One sad note though is how much the world of video is increasingly closed to startups. When companies like Netflix, which today closed with a market cap of almost $158 billion, can’t necessarily get enough negotiating power to ensure that consumers have direct access to them, no startup can ever hope to compete. America may believe in its entrepreneurs, but its competition laws have done nothing to keep the terrain open for them. Those implications are just beginning.