Inside Apple’s HomePod Audio Lab

Designing Farrago

An Audiophile’s Review of HomePod

★ The Threat to the Mac: the Growing Popularity of Non-Native Apps

The real problem facing the Mac are the number of developers creating non-native “Mac” apps and the number of users who don’t have a problem with them.

IDC: Apple Watch Outsold the Entire Swiss Watch Industry in Holiday Quarter

Mark Gurman on Apple’s OS Development Strategy

VLC update to 3.0.0

Video Lan Client, the nigh-indispensable open source media player for multiple audio and video formats (MPEG, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, Divx, ogg, etc.), was updated to version 3.0.0. The new version, a 46.8 megabyte download, adds a massive series of changes…

iBoot source code leak traced back to low-level Apple employee

Last last week, the source code for iBoot, a core component of iOS, was leaked to GitHub. Although the code was older, designed for iOS 9, it was quickly yanked from GitHub following Apple’s issuance of a DCMA takedown notice. Per Motherboard, which…

Oxford Comma Dispute Is Settled as Maine Drivers Get $5 Million

Why Paper Jams Persist

The Talk Show: ‘Only Wireless. Less Smart Than an Echo. Lame.’

Apple Support: ‘How “Hey Siri” Works With Multiple Devices’

NFL Team Logos, Drawn From Memory

Jason Kelce’s Speech From Today’s Philadelphia Eagles Super Bowl Victory Parade

First HomePod orders begin heading to final destinations for U.S., U.K., and Australian customers

Your pre-ordered HomePod unit is on its way to your loving arms. The HomePod is en route, and customers in the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia have begun receiving shipment notifications from Apple letting them know their orders have sh…

iOS’ “iBoot” component leaked to GitHub, quickly pulled by Apple

Apple, and its legal department, do not like it when you leak source code for core components of iOS on GitHub. This is exactly what happened, as a chunk of source code, labeled “iBoot”, which is the part of iOS that is responsible for ensuring a tr…

MacUpdate accidentally hosts malware, cryptocurrency miner packages for February 1st downloads, fixes and apologizes for mistake

Even though it was corrected, this could be called a snafu. Download aggregator web site MacUpdate briefly linked to three malicious applications masquerading as legitimate downloads for Firefox, OnyX, and Deeper, that not only install the apps, but…

Unicode 11.0 will include 157+ new emoji, be released later this year

There shall be additional emoji available to you. To be specific, 157 additional emoji. The Unicode Consortium today announced it has finalized a new set of 157 emoji that companies like Apple will be able to implement later this year. There are act…

iOS 11.3 beta 2 released, sports battery monitoring/management features

iOS 11.3 has entered its second developer beta and it appears that the new version of the operating system will add battery health information and management feature to iOS 11.3 in response to customer complaints about the way the company fixed an i…

Apple may be considering full rebates for full-priced iPhone battery repairs following speed throttling controversy

Apple may be looking to offer rebates to customers who purchased a full-cost replacement iPhone battery only to get around throttled performance. One of the questions submitted in January by Senator John Thune, chairman of the U.S. Senate Commerce C…

★ HomePod

I’ve been testing Apple’s new HomePod for the last week or so, and this is the first product review I’ve written that could be accurately summarized in the length of a tweet, and an old-school 140-character tweet at that: HomePod does exactly what A…