Rolandt

I am stuck at home sick today, so I decided to provide a relational analysis of the Stats Package Wars that have been bubbling away for the past week.

If you want something slightly more constructive, consider Data Visualization: A Practical Introduction, or The Plain Person’s Guide to Plain-Text Social Science.

After putting in more than 60 hours of research and testing, we’re confident that the Duxtop 9100MC is the best portable induction cooktop, and a reliable extra burner for small or busy kitchens. This moderately priced model heats quickly and cooks more evenly than the competition. Its easy-to-use interface allows you to choose between a power mode for general cooking and a temperature mode for specific tasks such as frying.

Deutsche Welle: Kartellamt untersagt Facebook Datensammelei. “Eine “marktbeherrschende Stellung” löst im deutschen Kartellrecht Alarm aus. Im Fall des sozialen Netzwerks sieht das Bundeskartellamt den Wettbewerb gefährdet – und setzt eine Frist.”

“Das Bundeskartellamt hat Facebook untersagt, außerhalb des Online-Netzwerks Daten seiner Nutzer zu sammeln – wie dies zum Beispiel über “Gefällt mir”-Buttons auf anderen Webseiten geschieht. Behördenchef Andreas Mundt erklärte, Facebook besitze in Deutschland eine marktbeherrschende Stellung und missbrauche sie. Dies sei ein Wettbewerbsverstoß. Facebook will sich gegen das Votum vor Gericht wehren. Wegen der Verknüpfung von Datenschutz und Wettbewerbsaufsicht könnte der Fall wegweisend werden – und jahrelang durch die Instanzen gehen.

Das Kartellamt untersagte Facebook auch, die auf fremden Websites gesammelten Daten mit Informationen zusammenzuführen, die bei Einträgen der Nutzer auf der eigenen Online-Plattform gespeichert wurden. Die Behörde betrachtet dabei zum Konzern gehörende Dienste wie Instagram und Whatsapp ebenfalls als Drittquellen. Das Online-Netzwerk bekommt ein Jahr Zeit, sein Verhalten zu ändern, und muss innerhalb von vier Monaten Lösungsvorschläge präsentieren.”

Today, Apple issued an update to iOS that fixes the serious bug that we reported on last week, which could be exploited to eavesdrop on someone using FaceTime. With iOS 12.1.4 in place, Apple has turned Group FaceTime back on server-side too, but it will only work with the updated version of iOS and later releases.

In a statement to MacRumors, BuzzFeed, and other media outlets Apple said:

Today's software update fixes the security bug in Group FaceTime. We again apologize to our customers and we thank them for their patience. In addition to addressing the bug that was reported, our team conducted a thorough security audit of the FaceTime service and made additional updates to both the FaceTime app and server to improve security. This includes a previously unidentified vulnerability in the Live Photos feature of FaceTime. To protect customers who have not yet upgraded to the latest software, we have updated our servers to block the Live Photos feature of FaceTime for older versions of iOS and macOS.

In the security update notes released alongside the update, Apple credits Grant Thompson, the teenager who first reported the bug, along with Daven Morris of Arlington, Texas.

FaceTime

Available for: iPhone 5s and later, iPad Air and later, and iPod touch 6th generation

Impact: The initiator of a Group FaceTime call may be able to cause the recipient to answer

Description: A logic issue existed in the handling of Group FaceTime calls. The issue was addressed with improved state management.

CVE-2019-6223: Grant Thompson of Catalina Foothills High School, Daven Morris of Arlington, TX

According to Nicole Nguyen of BuzzFeed, Apple is also compensating Thompson’s family and making a gift towards his education:

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Apple is telling app developers to remove or properly disclose their use of analytics code that allows them to record how a user interacts with their iPhone apps – or face removal from the app store, TechCrunch can confirm.

In an email, an Apple spokesperson said: “Protecting user privacy is paramount in the Apple ecosystem. Our App Store Review Guidelines require that apps request explicit user consent and provide a clear visual indication when recording, logging, or otherwise making a record of user activity.”

Your move, Google. Glassbox is also available for Android.

More >

Google has announced new encryption technology that will help protect lower-end Android devices.

Currently, Google encrypts most of its Android devices through Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) tech, which has been a requirement since Android 6.0.

However, some lower-end Android devices can’t properly run AES and, therefore, miss out on the AES encryption.

To help with that, Google is now introducing ‘Adiantum,’ which has been built to run on phones and other smart devices that lack the necessary hardware to encrypt locally stored data.

Now, Android device manufacturers can enable Adiantum for either full-disk or file-based encryption on devices with poor AES performance.

Google says it will bring Adiantum to the Android platform as part of the upcoming Android Q OS.

Source: Google

The post Google unveils new encryption tech for lower-end Android devices appeared first on MobileSyrup.

Following ‘Safe Internet Day,’ Facebook-owned Instagram has rolled out changes to how the platform deals with safety, specifically self-harm.

Now boasting over 1 billion users worldwide with 500 million active every day, Instagram took to its blog to outline its strategy to ensure the people in its community feel secure.

“Following a comprehensive review with global experts and academics on youth, mental health, and suicide prevention, we’re announcing further changes to our approach on self-harm content,” said Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram.

“We will not allow any graphic images of self-harm, such as cutting on Instagram — even if it would previously have been allowed as admission. We have never allowed posts that promote or encourage suicide or self-harm, and will continue to remove it when reported,” said Mosseri. “We will not show non-graphic, self-harm related content — such as healed scars – in search, hashtags and the explore tab, and we won’t be recommending it. We are not removing this type of content from Instagram entirely, as we don’t want want to stigmatize or isolate people who may be in distress”

The company has come under fire following several deaths related to self-harm being linked to the platform.

Instagram noted that “it will take time and we have a responsibility to get this right,” with the goal to “create a safe and supportive community for everyone.”

Source: Instagram

The post Instagram commits to banning ‘graphic images of self-harm’ appeared first on MobileSyrup.

Update: In an email statement to TechCrunch, an Apple spokesperson stated, “Protecting user privacy is paramount in the Apple ecosystem. Our App Store Review Guidelines require that apps request explicit user consent and provide a clear visual indication when recording, logging, or otherwise making a record of user activity. We have notified the developers that are in violation of these strict privacy terms and guidelines, and will take immediate action if necessary.”

This statement is a direct aim at Air Canada and other hotel, airline and retail apps that secretly record your iPhone screen when the app is being used.

Many notable hotel, airline and retail iOS apps record users’ iPhone screens without first seeking consent, according to a recent TechCrunch investigation.

The process in question usually involves a third-party analytics gathering company that embeds its technology in the app’s code. TechCrunch’s comprehensive investigation cites a specific analytics firm called Glassbox as being used by most travel apps for this purpose.

Glassbox’s technology records every action the user takes while using the app, including any screenshots that are snapped. The report specifically mentions Air Canada’s app, as well as other travel sites recording sensitive information, such as passport numbers, credit card and other personal data.

In the case of Air Canada’s app, the airline isn’t masking Glassbox’s files when they’re sent from the user’s mobile device to the analytics firm’s servers. This means that the transfer process is potentially susceptible to a man-in-the-middle style security threat.

In August of 2018, Air Canada reported that its mobile app suffered a data breach, resulting in the profile information of 20,000 users, including passport numbers and other sensitive data, being leaked. It’s unclear if the use of Glassbox’s analytics tracking tool is the cause of this security breach but there is a possibility it could have been.

TechCrunch says most of the travel apps that implement Glassbox’s technology do not disclose that they are doing so in their privacy policy. Further, the apps also don’t seek user consent regarding screen recording.

Some of the apps mentioned in the publication’s report include Air Canada, Abercrombie & Fitch, Expedia, Hotels.com, Singapore Airlines and more.

Source: TechCrunch

The post Air Canada’s iOS app and other travel apps secretly record your iPhone screen [Update] appeared first on MobileSyrup.

Netflix has updated its iOS app with a new ‘Smart Download’ feature that automatically downloads shows for you to watch.

The feature has been available on Android since July 2018, but now it’s available on iOS.

The feature automatically downloads new episodes and deletes older shows once you’ve watched them if you’re on Wi-Fi.

There’s a toggle to turn the feature on or off in the app’s ‘Downloads’ section.

Source: Netflix

The post ‘Smart Downloads’ feature now available in Netflix’s iOS app appeared first on MobileSyrup.

It was recently unearthed that Google has added a new slate of PDF annotation tools to the Chrome OS Canary and Developer channels.

A flag that can be enabled lets users mark up PDF files in the browser. The toolset is limited to various colours of digital highlighters, markers and an eraser.

While this isn’t the most powerful tool, it is more convenient than downloading the Android version of Adobe Acrobat PDF reader.

The feature is available to users running Chrome OS 74, according to Android Police. To enable it, visit the website ‘chrome://flags’ then search for ‘#pdf-annotations’ and enable the flag to get the feature.

This adds a small ‘Pen’ icon to the PDF viewer that triggers the tools.

Source: Android Police 

The post Google adding PDF annotation tools to Chrome OS appeared first on MobileSyrup.

It looks like Apple will compensate the 14-year-old who uncovered the now fixed FaceTime Group chat security flaw.

The Verge confirmed Apple plans to compensate Michele Thompson’s 14-year-old son Grant Thompson for discovering that if you add yourself to a Group FaceTime Chat, it forces the receiver to automatically answer the call before it is picked up.

Though Michele Thompson repeatedly reached out to Apple via multiple avenues regarding the bug, the tech giant did not take note of it. It remains unclear how long Apple was aware of the Group FaceTime security flaw. The company pulled the Group Chat feature from FaceTime shortly after the security flaw was revealed.

Apple has since fixed the Group FaceTime issue with the release of iOS 12.1.4. 

It’s unclear how much money Apple is paying the Thompson family, though the tech giant says that it is also providing funding for Grant Thompson’s college tuition along with additional monetary compensation.

Source: The Verge 

The post Apple is compensating the teenager who uncovered FaceTime Group Chat security flaw appeared first on MobileSyrup.

Last week, I showed a map of European cities and how they got warmer since 1960. Yesterday, NASA announced that 2018 was the fourth hottest year since 1880 on this planet. The New York Times put the following chart on their first page today, and on nytimes.com yesterday:

That’s curious. Because on the NASA website, it looks like this:

Spot the difference? No? Maybe it’s more obvious in this chart by the Guardian, also published yesterday:

The charts by both NASA and the Guardian show other values than the New York Times chart. The year with the highest temperature – 2016 – is more than 1.2 degree Celsius warmer than the average in the New York Times chart, but “only” 1.0 degree warmer in the two other charts. Why?

Different time ranges, different values

Here’s the explanation: NASA and the New York Times compared the same values to two different mean temperatures. In the chart above, NASA calculated the average temperature of the years 1951-1980 and then compared all the other values with this average. The New York Times took the 1880-1899 average. This average is lower – so 2016 was even hotter in comparison.

When looking at a baseline chart like this one, we need to ask: “What are values compared to?” Compared to the 2014-2018 temperature average, all other years since 1880 are “too cold”. Compared to the averages of the cold-ish years 1902-1913, 2016 is an astonishing 1.37 degree hotter. (I had some fun with different averages in this Google Sheet.)

“Pre-industrial”?

So what is the best time frame to compare the current temperatures with? We might turn to the Paris Agreement from 2015 to see what’s written in there, but it is surprisingly vague on that. The nations signing it agreed to keep “the increase in global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels”. They didn’t agree on what defines as “pre-industrial”.

I asked the creator of the chart, Nadja Popovich, why she chose averaging the temperature of the earlier time range. She explains:

If you follow climate change news even casually, the one number that is likely in lodged in your brain is 2˚C. That’s the common goal set by policymakers for decades: to prevent Earth’s temperature from rising more than 2˚C above pre-industrial times. With that in mind, I thought it would be more useful to show readers the data in comparison to a roughly pre-industrial baseline (the late 19th century is a little later, but close enough). This representation would allow them to see how much the world has warmed already in comparison to a time before we started pumping large amounts of CO2 and other greenhouse gases from industry and transportation into the atmosphere. The late-19th century average does a better job of providing context for the amount of warming the world has already experienced.

By the way: In 2017, the NYT still went with the 1951-1980 average. In 2016, they even took the 1901-2000 average. But since the byline states Nadja’s name – last year and this year – the charts show the 1880-1899 average. I’ll see you next week!

Toyota has shown off a number of new vehicles ahead of the Chicago Autoshow, and it looks like the company is finally bringing Android Auto and CarPlay to more of its cars.

The 2020 Tacoma, Tundra, Sequoia and 4Runner SUV are all getting the new infotainment standard and Amazon Alexa support.

Apparently, all trim levels will feature CarPlay, Android Auto and Alexa, but the screen size will vary between seven and eight-inches depending on the trim.

There’s no word yet on if the implementation will be wired or wireless, but since Toyota’s other consumer-level cars use wires, it’s expected that these will be as well.

So far, the only Toyota car with Wireless CarPlay is the new Supra since it utilizes a BMW platform, according to MacRumors. 

MobileSyrup has reached out to Toyota for clarification regarding if the infotainment options are coming to Canada.

Source: Toyota, MacRumors

The post Toyota adds CarPlay, Android Auto and Alexa to 2020 Tacoma, Tundra and more appeared first on MobileSyrup.

According to this study (4 page PDF) that compared VR with hands-on and computer-based activities in an astronomy class, there was "no difference across conditions in average levels of performance on a pre/post knowledge test." Now it should be noted that this is a small study in one particular class, and it would be improper to generalize based on these results (though the Campus Technology article doesn't try very hard to restrain itself). What's interesting, though, is that this result is consistent with the "no significant difference" phenomenon reported in the 1990s. But the real question facing VR (as it was facing digital technologies generally back then) isn't whether you can do the old things just as well, it is what new things can you do with VR that you couldn't do with traditional methods?

The lesson here is that you can't just depend on companies to do the right thing just because you them to. Even though people option for "do not track" in their browser settings, websites basically ignored this preference. Worse - as the article notes - your selection of "do not track" became another data point that was tracked. That's why "modern browsers that include tracking protection don’t wait for a “common understanding” to develop in the industry. Instead, they proactively block trackers." Note that you don't have such protections on your iPhone apps - as this report suggests, for some apps, "every tap, button push and keyboard entry is recorded — effectively screenshotted — and sent back to the app developers."

The idea of “gamification,” like other technological innovations, has started to become invisible. Coined in 2002 by programmer Nick Pelling to describe consumer electronics interfaces, gamification entered broad usage after its 2008 adaptation to software, where it meant applying game dynamics to web enterprises to increase engagement. A decade later, the word, like “Web 2.0″ or “teleconferencing,” already feels like outdated jargon not because it’s obsolete but because gamification is everywhere and finally ordinary. According to Google Trends, usage of “gamification” peaked in 2014, at least in the United States. But the term’s declining use is more an indication of how ubiquitous it is — life is so thoroughly mediated by apps that the condition doesn’t seem to require a special word. It is just life as we live it.

Initially, “gamification” helped individuals make sense of the perceptual revolution sparked by the widespread adoption of smartphones. Though the logic of gamifying behavior is not new, the sensors and connectivity of phones allowed tech companies to bring gamification’s necessary prerequisite — behavioral tracking — into many new domains. Countless apps exhibit gamelike principles that have become as normal and familiar to their users as crossing the street. The phone, as a handheld sensor, not only records the world around it but inscribes its apps’ logic onto the world, orienting users’ behavior toward newly legible metrics and rewards — not merely content-level metrics such as likes and retweets but also badges, follower counts, verified checkmarks and other indicators of personal status improvement. Hence Foursquare could gamify going places by prompting regulars at bars and restaurants to quantify their loyalty and vie for “mayor” status, while Instagram gamified photography, turning it into a performative act with public-facing stats. The idea of caring how many likes a tweet or Instagram post gets may seem absurd until you start to use them. Then it seems absurd to behave as if you don’t care about those results. Internet users have learned to value these apps’ once-frivolous symbols that now, in many cases, amount to professional credentials, potentially as important as a grade point average or SAT score.

As game mechanics have become more naturalized and more commonplace in more facets of daily experience, games themselves have converged upon a similar mixture. The recent evolution of video games, particularly the massively popular Fortnite, suggests a seamless merging of game and nongame activities. In practice, Fortnite is less an outright game than a gamified environment where last-person-standing competition coexists with activities that don’t serve the players’ overarching game objectives — such as DJ sets and ambient socializing. That juxtaposition, in turn, is not so different from everyday life, also a gamified environment characterized by intense and often unacknowledged interpersonal competition.

But games like Fortnite also suggest a line of flight from gamification’s narrow fixation on explicit goals. In an environment that presents its players with an urgent, all-or-nothing imperative, as most video games do, Fortnite shows us the possibility of opting out, however temporarily, even if we don’t reject the premise of the game itself. Game dynamics need not dictate every aspect of behavior, even within an actual game. As life is increasingly pervaded by such dynamics, this lesson is more useful than the belief that we can simply escape to a reality free of games. The gamification of digital existence, by this reasoning, was a key precursor to the popularity of Fortnite.

An old, variously attributed piece of corporate wisdom advises that an organization can’t manage what it can’t measure. This turned out to be a prophecy for digitally saturated life, as our devices have become a means for making more of our experience quantifiable. This, in turn, changes the way we view that experience. Formerly unquantified practices, once recontextualized as app-assisted activities, enter a framework of metrics, KPIs, and measurable goals, which we tackle with a business-like enthusiasm for progress and improvement.

While fitness, for example, has always been a sort of game, its scope was previously confined, spatially and temporally, to the workout itself, along with the few outcomes we could actually measure, like running pace or maximum weight lifted. But iPhones quietly count the total daily steps we take by default, opting us into a daily competition against ourselves that we didn’t necessarily sign up for. Measuring steps expands the gym’s logic of self-competition to all of waking life, making everything an exercise opportunity. If we once recognized this as “gamification,” we’re more likely now to view it as just another part of daily routine. For that matter, we might find ourselves playing these fitness games to serve the priorities of other parties, like health insurance providers.

Wherever there is quantification, there is gamification. This has long been the case, but so much more is now being quantified. We learn each January how many miles we ran last year, how many minutes we spent meditating, and which songs we listened to most frequently. In all likelihood, we didn’t specifically ask to know most of those statistics, but once we do, the activities they measure feel illegible if not impossible without them. Our behavior is thereby continuously nudged to adapt itself to the device’s affordances. That feeling, of course, increases our dependence on those apps — it “engages” us — and thus supports the apps’ underlying business models.

Games are a vector for the rationalization and monetization of new spaces, the perfect neoliberal mechanism, even when (or especially when) they make those spaces more “fun.” Games capture our attention and draw us in, asking us to accept their rules and adopt their priorities. They are a way of seeing the world, despite whatever distortions of reality they urge us to accept. What is gamified becomes more visible and more palpable, even as the gamification dynamic itself vanishes into familiarity.

Gamification as a label may be receding from consciousness, but games are obviously still everywhere. The video game industry earns well beyond $100 billion in global revenue annually, and this doesn’t include activities that are merely “gamelike” or gamified. Augmented reality games like Pokémon Go and Ingress merely bring gamification logic to a conclusion: Is the now-ordinary quest to accumulate 10,000 steps in a day by any means necessary so different from the circuitous journeys made in pursuit of digitally rendered creatures? The distinction between game and nongame environments blurs. In both cases, behavior is encouraged that appears irrational to anyone outside the context of the app providing guidance. Both environments appear equally amenable to being modeled by software and administered through a codified set of formal rules.

Marc Andreessen famously observed that “software is eating the world,” but that statement has as its corollary that games, too, are eating the world. Software’s ability to model, measure, and otherwise represent reality allows it to layer game mechanics atop behavioral data. The potential for digital abstraction and simulation are nearly unlimited, and so is the potential scope of game dynamics. But representation in software necessarily simplifies reality by eliminating certain details to better emphasize others: Facebook reduces the messy variability of relationships to a standardized social graph with equally weighted connections, while Yelp and Foursquare depict the urban landscape as nothing more than a constellation of bars, restaurants, and retail stores. These simplifications amount to an expedient map-territory distinction, removing information to emphasize what remains and make it easier to navigate and interact with, if mostly on the app’s terms.

If we’re constantly engaging with reality through the kinds of simplified models that apps and games represent, we might wonder where the more “real” reality that supposedly lies behind this software is found, if anywhere. But as Venkatesh Rao argues in his essay “On the Design of Escaped Realities,” the history of civilization consists not of a falling away from reality but of a long succession of attempts at escapism, which he defines as “a deliberate entrance into a simpler reality, as opposed to an unplanned entrance into a messier one.” There is not some ultimate, pure reality that we might eventually access after peeling away all the simplifying layers — such a reality, in his view, exists more as a theoretical ideal than something possible to experience in everyday life. Rather, he points out that there is a deep history of escapism through a variety of changing means that are determined by technological possibilities as well as cultural conditions.

Environments characterized by game dynamics are no more artificial than their nongame counterparts. Instead, games are yet another interface for reality. The practice of playing games is an escaped reality just like school, the workplace, or any of the other environments in which we spend most of our time: That is, the space of games distorts and simplifies a broader enveloping reality to make certain practical purposes seem more achievable. Institutions, ideologies, and games are all escaped realities in the sense that they, like software, simplify a universe that is too complex and overwhelming to apprehend directly. The formalized rules and rituals that characterize all these environments help streamline and orient experience at the expense of a broader, more complex reality. Virtual reality and augmented reality are merely the latest examples of such simplified realities, drawing upon the most recent technological developments. But the simplifications that gamification requires are not native to the digital realm; they are everywhere. And as Rao’s essay suggests, logging off from them will not re-immerse us in genuine reality.

The difference, then, between game and nongame spaces may be slighter than we’re tempted to imagine. What distinguishes the two is not their relative fidelity or authenticity, but the directions of escape they offer, or the lines of flight they facilitate. Michel Foucault, in a 1967 lecture and subsequent essay, posited as heterotopias those “real places … which are something like counter-sites” that create “a space of illusion that exposes every real space, all the sites inside of which human life is partitioned, as still more illusory.” He lists gardens, cemeteries, fairs, and prisons as examples of heterotopias. The spaces shaped by gamification may also serve this purpose: Instead of merely offering an escape from reality, these spaces are counter-sites that can remind us of the nested artifice that pervades and constitutes civilization — outside of which we can’t perceive reality at all.

In this sense, games are environments that make it easier to see the world in general as a kind of simulation. If subtle, manipulative gamification conceals its presence as a neoliberal apparatus, other types of gamification can shed light on the very same mechanisms, exposing their operation more broadly across different sorts of spaces.

This potential for illumination may help explain what has driven Fortnite’s unprecedented popularity. Keith Stuart compares Fortnite to a skate park, full of “‘dead time’ to mess around and chat.” He contrasts it to the “highly directed experience” of the Call of Duty games, where “every map is dense and claustrophobic and usually designed with three parallel channels that funnel players toward each other.” If Fortnite is a skate park, then Call of Duty, in its contrast, evokes the airport- and mall-like spaces that characterize so much contemporary urbanism, where the tight control and total design that software facilitates are mapped back onto the physical world.

It may just be that Fortnite, unlike Call of Duty, achieves a more seamless unification of game and nongame environments. Though there is nothing exactly new about it as a game — multiplayer gaming has existed for decades, after all, and Second Life and Minecraft had already refined the noncompetitive aspects of such gameplay — what is new about Fortnite is how it foregrounds the intersection of game and nongame space rather than disavowing it. That acknowledgment opens the game’s potential as a counter-site. Fortnite refines the non-competitive qualities of its predecessors inside the context of a battle royale. It rejoices in how gamification has eroded the boundary between game and nongame space to the point that it’s impossible to say where one ends and another begins.

Fortnite, by displaying the easy coexistence of games and nongames, could be seen as a kind of utopia in which players can inhabit both contexts as fluidly as in other domains, with the terms of each made more transparent. If apps allowed the physical world to be more intensely gamified, the inherently gamelike digital universe has the equivalent need to be de-gamified. Previous examples of this shift, like Second Life, didn’t occur within the context of an unavoidable, overarching competition, like Fortnite does. The lesson of Fortnite is that, on an island where every player is trying to hunt one another down, it makes sense to stop and dance for a while. Maybe learning to thrive amid such unresolvable tension is key to surviving the harsh, competitive conditions of neoliberalism — and for this reason, the game could be seen as a mixed blessing, making tolerable an arrangement that would be better upended altogether.

Many people who have spent too much time hanging out on gamified Twitter, posting 140-character missives in the quest for likes, retweets, and followers, might find the Fortnite dynamic inscrutable, but the game represents the full embrace of that experience. We come to social media to hang out and find ourselves gradually playing a game, often to our dismay, and without a clear grasp of the rules. But Fortnite inverts that: It attracts us with the intention to compete and then actually encourages players to hang out and socialize. For all the attempted behavioral engineering to which our devices and apps subject us, we should welcome this development.

Rather than escapist fantasies, then, we can understand games as spaces to relearn a kind of being that has receded from many other environments. Games can remind us or teach us how to carve out oases of calm in the midst of a cutthroat, omnipresent battle royale. As one more of many simplified environments with its own rules and constraints, Fortnite isn’t necessarily more free than the others. But its particular contours offer a different kind of freedom than other spaces where we spend our time. Instead of luring us toward a mirage of more authentic experience, games might teach us how to better inhabit the spaces where we must inevitably live.

iPad Diaries is a regular series about using the iPad as a primary computer. You can find more installments here and subscribe to the dedicated RSS feed.

After several years without updates to a product that, somewhat oddly, "remained in Apple's lineup", the Mac mini was revived by the company last November with a major redesign geared toward pro users and designed for flexibility. As listeners of Connected know, one of the show's long-running jokes was that I would buy my last Mac ever as soon as Apple released a new Mac mini¹; when it happened, I took the opportunity to completely rethink my home office with a new desk, well-specced Mac mini, and 4K display that supported both modern Macs and iPad Pros via USB-C.

Effectively, I had never owned a desktop Mac until² this Mac mini arrived. I always preferred portable Macs to workstations, and over the years I moved from a late 2008 MacBook Pro to a 2011 MacBook Air and, in 2015, back to the (now Retina) MacBook Pro again. Over the past couple of years, however, and particularly since the introduction of iOS 11, my penchant for Mac laptops started clashing with the realization that the iPad Pro had become my de-facto laptop. I was using a MacBook Pro because I thought I needed a portable Mac machine just like when I started MacStories in 2009; in reality, the iPad had been chipping away at the MacBook's core tasks for a while. Eventually, I saw how my MacBook Pro had become a computer I'd open twice a week to record podcasts, and nothing more.

With the iPad Pro as my primary computer, the Mac's role in my life evolved into a fixed environment that was necessary for multi-track audio recording and Plex Media Server. And as I shared on Connected on several occasions, I realized that my workflow in 2018 wasn't the same as 2009 anymore: it no longer made sense for me to have a Mac laptop when what I really needed was a small, but powerful and extensible Mac desktop. That's why I started waiting for a new Mac mini, and my wishes were granted with the 2018 relaunch of the mighty desktop machine.

For the past three months, I've been busy setting up the Mac mini and optimizing it for the tasks that inspired its purchase. I bought external SSD drives (these two) to use for Plex and Time Machine backups; I set up a homebridge server to add unsupported accessories to HomeKit (such as our 2017 LG TV) and turn iTunes playlists into HomeKit scenes; I rethought my podcasting setup (I now have a Zoom H6 recorder and a taller microphone stand) and arranged my desk to make it easier to use the same UltraFine 4K display with the Mac mini and iPad Pro (I just need to plug in a different USB-C cable). Because this Mac mini is fast enough to handle 4K transcoding for Plex without breaking a sweat, I started using youtube-dl to enjoy 4K YouTube videos on iOS devices with the Infuse or Plex apps. I'm trying to take advantage of a powerful, always-on Mac server in any way I can, and I'm having lots of fun doing it.

This doesn't change the fact that the iPad Pro is my main computer, and that I want to interact with macOS as little as possible. Aside from recording podcasts using Mac apps, I rely on the Mac mini as a server that performs tasks or provides media in the background. Any server requires a front-end interface to access and manage it; in my case, that meant finding apps, creating shortcuts, and setting up workflows on my iPad Pro to access, manage, and use the Mac mini from iOS without having to physically sit down in front of it.

In this multi-part series, I'm going to cover how I'm using the 2018 iPad Pro to access my Mac mini both locally and remotely, the apps I employ for file management, the custom shortcuts I set up to execute macOS commands from iOS and the HomePod, various automations I created via AppleScript and Keyboard Maestro, and more. Let's dive in.

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Table of Contents

• Accessing macOS Files from iOS: FileExplorer and the Files App
• Mixed Automation: iOS Shortcuts for macOS Automation
  • Wake Mac
  • Wake Mac with Login
  • Sleep Mac
  • Set Mac Clipboard
  • Check YouTube Formats
  • iTunes Shortcuts
    • Play and Pause iTunes
    • Play iTunes Playlist on Shuffle
    • Current iTunes Song
    • HomePod Speaker Volume
    • Set Active HomePod Speakers and Volume
• Preparing for Podcasts with Keyboard Maestro
• Coming Next...

Accessing macOS Files from iOS: FileExplorer and the Files App

When Panic announced Transmit for iOS was going to be discontinued last year, I set out to find a suitable alternative for connecting to FTP servers on iOS, and I ended up choosing FileBrowser. While I initially approached FileBrowser because it offered native support for SanDisk's iXpand USB-Lightning flash drive, I decided to start using the app full-time because, unlike Transmit and other similar apps, it embraced modern-day iOS with a file provider extension.

The ability to log into an FTP server or local macOS computer and export documents directly from the Files app (and any other app that integrated with Files) was the perfect example of the benefits provided by the system-wide Files framework. Although I remain convinced that Apple should offer built-in connectivity options in Files to support FTP/SFTP/WebDAV and other server types, FileBrowser was an acceptable solution that I used for months, despite some limitations.

As I noted in my initial coverage of FileBrowser, the app's Files extension didn't support logging into servers unless you launched the main FileBrowser app first and opened the connection from there. Between having to do this every time the iPad restarted or the FileBrowser app had been suspended in memory by iOS, the issue got annoying fast. But I didn't know where else to look for an app that supported exposing servers to Files without requiring additional layers of authentication.

The authentication error in FileBrowser's file provider.

Thankfully, MacStories reader Matthew brought FileExplorer to my attention last December; having used the app every day for over a month now, I can say this is my new gold standard for integration between Files and external servers.

FileExplorer shares more than a few similarities with other third-party file managers for iOS. Its icon and user interface aren't what I would describe as "pretty" – the UI is functional at best, though it sometimes veers towards Android-ish traits (such as the odd contextual menu); the app comes with its own local storage space that can accept any kind of file passed by other apps; like Readdle's Documents, FileExplorer offers its own photo viewer and built-in web server to receive files wirelessly from nearby devices (I never use these features); there's even the ability to play music and videos inside the app. All of these options are now common among Files alternatives for iOS and they're not the reason why you should pay attention to FileExplorer.

FileExplorer's main app UI.

What sets FileExplorer apart is its excellent integration with the Files app, which, unlike FileBrowser, is fully independent from the main app and doesn't require a separate authentication step. Connections you create in FileExplorer (and I tested this with FTP, SFTP, and macOS servers) show up as folders in the FileExplorer location in the Files app; even if the main FileExplorer app has been force quit, selecting a server inside its Files extension will open a connection in the background and display the contents of the connected server, allowing you to browse its file structure.

Browsing Mac folders in Files with no authentication errors.

Coming from FileBrowser's constant authentication errors, FileExplorer's reliable integration with the Files app is a game-changer: (S)FTP or SMB servers can be accessed from Files (and therefore any iOS document picker that uses Files, including Mail, Safari, or Slack) with just a couple of taps, as if they were a native feature of the Files app. Thanks to FileExplorer, any compatible server can become part of Files' UI and integration with the rest of iOS, which includes functionalities such as drag and drop, multiple views and sorting options, asynchronous transfers, and the share sheet. Technically, this was possible with FileBrowser too; FileExplorer's superior Files extension makes the whole experience faster and more pleasant to use.

I've been taking advantage of FileExplorer's support for the Files app in a couple of ways. I set up multiple locations for different folders on my Mac mini such as Home, Downloads, Desktop, and the youtube-dl folder where I download YouTube videos offline. These are folders that I don't sync with iCloud Drive or Dropbox and that contain files or sub-folders I still want to access from iOS.

To add multiple locations, I started from an initial macOS connection in FileExplorer and duplicated it multiple times, changing the initial path to different folders of my macOS user account.³ In the Files app, these connections appear as special folders with an 'X' logo in the FileExplorer location and I can tap on one to start browsing the contents of a folder on the Mac mini from my iPad Pro.

My local and remote connections in FileExplorer's file provider extension.

In addition to local connections to the Mac mini, I also added SFTP servers to FileExplorer to connect to my web server as well as my Mac mini when I'm outside of my home network. The latter is based on a dynamic DNS service that gives me a unique domain (whose IP address is constantly updated by my ISP's modem) that points to the mini's internal address on the home network. This way, even when I'm not at home, I can SSH into the Mac mini⁴ and, say, grab a file from its Downloads folder without having to upload it to cloud services such as Dropbox first. Again, none of this is necessarily new to iOS power users, but the ability to do so from Files or a Files picker without authenticating inside another app first is unprecedented.

This is not to say that FileExplorer is perfect. As I noted above, the app isn't the prettiest to look at and I've spotted a handful of typos throughout the UI. FileExplorer can't sync connections across devices with iCloud⁵, doesn't support Picture in Picture for video playback, and doesn't integrate with the Open-in-Place API for files and directories yet. This means that, for now, you won't be able to edit FileExplorer's documents in-place inside other apps. There's also an argument to be made about the fact that FileBrowser offers more contextual options for selected files, supports Siri shortcuts on iOS 12, and provides an overall nicer app experience than FileExplorer.

But that's exactly the point: I don't want to spend time in a third-party file manager because my iPad already has one that can be enhanced with extensions. Considered through the lens of Files integration, FileExplorer beats FileBrowser thanks to the speed and reliability of its Files provider, which requires no management once it's been set up. With FileExplorer's Files integration, my most-used Finder folders are always a couple of taps away, which has dramatically simplified how I can exchange files between the Mac mini and iPad Pro.

Mixed Automation: iOS Shortcuts for macOS Automation

Ever since I got the Mac mini, I was interested in exploring an idea I had long been putting off: blending iOS and macOS automation using Siri and the Shortcuts app.

For lack of a better name, I'm calling this mixed automation – which I'm going to use to indicate a series of techniques to trigger AppleScripts, Keyboard Maestro macros, shell commands, or even BetterTouchTool actions on the Mac by mixing them with actions and native iOS features via Shortcuts.

At a basic level, mixed automation consists of using the 'Run Script Over SSH' action of Shortcuts to send a command to a Mac on the same local network and execute an action included in the script itself. This method in itself is not new to Shortcuts (it was possible with Workflow before too) and, in the case of AppleScript, relies on the well-oiled machine that is the osascript command. However, I've been trying to expand this approach further by going beyond AppleScript alone and triggering Keyboard Maestro macros (which I find easier to put together than AppleScript); more importantly, I am trying to combine the automation possibilities of the Mac with iOS-only features of Shortcuts, such as the ability to activate these commands with Siri, present native UIs with dialogs and lists, or activate other native iOS app shortcuts in addition to sending commands to a Mac.

Mixed automation is a topic I plan to cover on a regular basis going forward here on MacStories as well as Club MacStories. For this reason, the shortcuts in this article are only an initial batch of the ones I've been working on; there's lots more I'd like to share in the future and other solutions I want to test and explain when it comes to fusing Shortcuts and Mac automation.

That being said, allow me to detail some examples of shortcuts for macOS that I've been using for the past couple of months.

A Note on Mojave's Privacy Controls

As part of Mojave's revamped privacy controls, upon executing a shell command from Shortcuts via SSH you'll be asked to grant a given process access to the macOS feature or app you want to control.

SSH is an example of a process started by Shortcuts that requires authorization on Mojave.

After granting access, you can review these permissions under System Preferences ⇾ Security & Privacy.

Wake Mac

This is the shortcut I'm using most frequently when I want to access my Mac mini from the iPad Pro. Built using the caffeinate command of the macOS shell (which sends a request to wake the computer from sleep), the shortcut wakes the Mac mini, bringing up the login screen.

This is all it takes to run a shell command on a Mac from Shortcuts.

Here's why this shortcut is a good example of Apple's seamless integration of different pieces of its ecosystem: because I'm wearing the Apple Watch and my apartment is small enough for the Mac to consider the Watch "nearby", as soon as the shortcut has finished running I feel a series of taps on my wrist that tell me the Apple Watch has unlocked the Mac mini.

Of course, we can go even further and remove the need to run the shortcut from the Shortcuts app altogether. I assigned a "Wake my Mac" phrase to the shortcut, so I can now ask any permutation of Siri around the house (iOS, Watch, or HomePod) to wake my computer before I even walk into the office.⁶ "Wake my Mac" should be a native Shortcuts action, but caffeinate works well enough for now.

Wake Mac

Wake the display connected to a Mac on the same local network as your iOS device.

Get the shortcut here.

Wake Mac with Login

There are times when I need to log into my Mac mini but I'm either not wearing an Apple Watch or sitting too far from the mini for the proximity-based Watch unlock to work. Fortunately, there's still a way for Shortcuts to call a script on macOS and log in by "typing" the user's password; it's not elegant, but it gets the job done.

By telling System Events to keystroke the Mac's password as text, it's possible to create a shortcut that wakes the Mac first (with caffeinate), waits a second, then pastes the password in the secure text input field that is selected by default when a Mac is awoken from sleep.

I don't run this shortcut often (like I said, my apartment is small enough for the Apple Watch login to never fail, and I'm rarely without my Apple Watch), but it's good to have the option if needed.

Wake Mac + Login

Wake the display connected to a Mac on the same local network as your iOS device and paste your password in the login screen by simulating keystrokes.

Get the shortcut here.

Sleep Mac

This shortcut is the exact opposite of Wake Mac and I use it whenever I don't want to wait for the Mac mini to go to sleep on its own. Maybe I'm about to fall asleep and am bothered by the display's light, or perhaps Silvia and I are watching a TV show and don't want to see another light source in our field of vision. With this shortcut, I can instantly put the UltraFine display connected to the Mac mini to sleep.

Sleep Mac uses the pmset shell command with the displaysleepnow setting. The pmset command is used to modify and interact with power management settings of a macOS machine, and it supports a variety of options including network sleep, Power Nap, disk sleep, proximity wake, and more. In my case, I don't want to put the entire computer to sleep – just its display. With this shortcut, the display is turned off immediately and, if activated via Siri and voice, I even get a response back saying "The Mac's display is off". It's nice to be able to say "Hey Siri, sleep Mac" on iOS and see an instant result on another computer running a different OS.

Sleep Mac

Put the display connected to a Mac on the same local network as your iOS device to sleep.

Get the shortcut here.

Set Mac Clipboard

I, like others at the time, was not completely satisfied with Universal Clipboard when it launched as part of the Continuity initiative for Mac and iOS. For a long time, Universal Clipboard just straight up didn't work or was too slow to paste the contents of another device's clipboard; the feature was, at least for me, "fixed" at some point last year, and I would say it now works about 80% of the time, particularly if I'm copying and pasting between iOS devices. Still, there are occasions when Universal Clipboard just doesn't want to sync the clipboard between platforms, and because I noticed the issue was more frequent when attempting to paste on the Mac something that had been previously copied on iOS, I decided to fix it myself with a shortcut.

At a high level, the shortcut works by chaining the printf and pbcopy shell commands so that the iOS clipboard is formatted as a string of text and "piped" to the Mac's clipboard, ready to be pasted in any text field. As you can imagine, the shortcut takes advantage of the fact that Shortcuts comes with a native 'Get Clipboard' action that passes whatever has been copied on iOS as input for the next step.

Cleaning up the iOS clipboard before sending it to a Mac.

Before sending the iOS clipboard over to the Mac's shell, however, the shortcut performs some cleanup tasks: line breaks are replaced by \n and both single and double quotes are escaped. Then, it's just a matter of running a script over SSH with a pipe character (|), passing the output of the first command to the second one. Considering the manual Find/Replace that I do in the shortcut itself, the printf step is probably not even necessary, but I stole this approach from the excellent Mac Maestro shortcut launcher, and I prefer the additional check it involves.

Set Mac Clipboard

Set your Mac's clipboard to the contents of the current iOS clipboard. The shortcut cleans up the iOS clipboard by escaping line breaks and quotes.

Get the shortcut here.

Check YouTube Formats

This is part of a longer story about how I'm using youtube-dl to download YouTube videos on the Mac mini and watch them in 4K on iOS (which I am going to write about at a later date), but I wanted to mention this shortcut because, despite its simplicity, it's become one I run on an almost daily basis.

I have a whole setup (consisting of iCloud Drive, Hazel, shell scripts, Pushover, and Shortcuts) dedicated to converting YouTube links to audio or 4K video using my Mac mini. For those unaware of youtube-dl, it's an amazing command line program that can download YouTube content in a variety of formats with support for dozens of custom settings and different scenarios (such as YouTube playlists). While the program can download the file behind a YouTube video and can do so automatically provided the right configuration flags, I prefer to use my own syntax to download – whenever possible – 4K videos in the WebM format with the highest frame rate available. However – and this is quite common for newly uploaded videos – 4K versions aren't immediately available for download (or streaming) because YouTube is slow at processing high-quality formats. Which means I usually have to check if the format I want is actually available, otherwise I won't bother with the download at all. For this reason, I had to write a shortcut to make it easy to check available video formats from iOS with two taps.

Checking the available formats for a YouTube link copied to the clipboard.

This is easy to do with youtube-dl thanks to its -F flag, which returns a plain text list of formats, resolutions, and file sizes for each version of a video available for download. My shortcut does the following: assuming there is a YouTube link in the system clipboard, the shortcut runs youtube-dl -F on the Mac mini via SSH and returns the output from the shell, which is cleaned up a little by adding the line breaks between each format. This takes about two seconds to run and it's faster than any alternative I've tried on iOS (including running youtube-dl via iSH and Pythonista, but we'll get into that in the future).

The result isn't pretty, but it's easy enough to scan the list for "2160p" or "2440p" entries once you get used to how the output is formatted. If the format I want is available, I'll run another shortcut to start a download on the Mac mini, but I'm not covering that aspect today.

Check youtube-dl Formats

Use youtube-dl to check the available download formats for a YouTube link copied to the clipboard on iOS. The shortcut assumes youtube-dl has been installed on a local Mac under the /usr/local/bin folder.

Get the shortcut here.

iTunes Shortcuts

It may sound anachronistic in 2019, but one of the advantages of having a Mac mini always running and multiple HomePods around the house is iTunes. Yes, Apple's music player/media manager gets a bad rap (and rightfully so; the app is a mess), but it's got one thing going for it still: iTunes has extensive integration with AppleScript, including actions that can connect to AirPlay speakers and set their volume to play a specific song, album, or playlist. With iTunes, I can write AppleScripts that play Apple Music items from my library on specific HomePods/AirPlay 2 speakers; therefore, all these scripts can be triggered from Shortcuts on iOS and chained together in a multitude of interesting ways.

Play and Pause iTunes

This is an obvious one: I wanted a super-fast shortcut to instantly play or pause iTunes (which is usually sending audio to three HomePods at once) from either the Shortcuts widget on iOS or Siri. Thanks to osascript, this shortcut checks the player state of iTunes and either pauses it (if it's already playing) or starts playing (if it's paused).

Unlike Control Center on iOS, iTunes on the Mac always remembers the last AirPlay speakers it was connected to (even across restarts) as well as their individual volume levels. With this shortcut, I have a one-tap solution to resume iTunes' playback on all the speakers it was previously connected to without having to manually select them each time. This is particularly nice when combined with the next shortcut. 

Toggle iTunes

Toggle the player state of the iTunes app on a Mac on the same local network as your iOS device.

Get the shortcut here.

Play iTunes Playlist on Shuffle

Over the years, I've been curating a selection of playlists I like to listen to either by myself, with my girlfriend, or when we have friends over at our place. With AppleScript and iTunes, four lines of code are all it takes to start playing a specific playlist on shuffle:

tell application "iTunes"
    set shuffle enabled to true
    play playlist "Playlist Name"
end tell

In theory, I could have built a shortcut that played a specific playlists and duplicated it multiple times, changing the name of the playlist in each version. But that wouldn't be a great use of what Shortcuts has to offer with its visual automation on iOS. Instead, my shortcut sends a Magic Variable to the AppleScript that runs on the Mac: a list of playlists is displayed by the 'Choose from List' action, and the chosen item is expanded as text upon running the AppleScript on macOS via the SSH action.

After picking a playlist from Shortcuts, you'll be able to see the song playing on HomePod (via iTunes) from Control Center.

This approach allows me to have one shortcut in my library that lets me choose which playlists I want to shuffle with iTunes, which is going to resume playback with the last-selected speakers and volume levels – no need to pick them individually.

Play iTunes Playlist

Choose a playlist to start playing with iTunes on a Mac. The shortcut requires you to enter the exact name of playlists you want to play once, upon configuring the shortcut for the first time.

Get the shortcut here.

Once music starts playing on my HomePods, the last step of the shortcut is running another shortcut that returns details (including artwork) for the song that just started playing.

Current iTunes Song

The image part of this shortcut was adapted from Mac Maestro; the author of the shortcut figured out how to get raw data of the currently playing song's artwork, which is returned as binary data to Shortcuts, which can feed it to 'Get Images from Input' to get the actual artwork from iTunes.

This shortcut lets you see the artwork of the song currently playing on iTunes on the Mac from the widget on iOS.

In addition to the artwork image, my shortcut returns the track name, artist, and album information from iTunes using a separate AppleScript. These bits of metadata are then set as the image's title, which is presented in a 'Choose from List' action. This approach makes it possible to preview the artwork and track information both in the Shortcuts app and its widget, which is my preferred way of launching all these iTunes shortcuts.

iTunes Current Song

Get the album artwork of the song currently playing on iTunes on the Mac.

Get the shortcut here.

HomePod Speaker Volume

I love listening to music around the house with my three HomePods (one in the kitchen, one in the hallway, one in the bedroom), but I've often found myself wishing there was a quick way to change the global volume level without speaking to Siri. I mostly need to do this when my girlfriend and I listen to music at night before falling asleep. I don't want to talk to Siri in the middle of the night and wake the dogs in the process.⁷ Similarly, when loud music is blasting through every room of the house during the day, I'd rather tweak the volume from the Shortcuts widget on my phone than have to a precise set of instructions to Siri. For me, tapping a widget is faster than saying "Hey Siri, set the volume to 45 in the kitchen and hallway".

Ideally, Shortcuts should offer native AirPlay 2 actions to activate speakers and set their volume levels programmatically. In their absence, the solution once again lies in starting playback from iTunes on the Mac and using AppleScript.

How can something so trivial, so obvious in iTunes – by and large, the epitome of cruft in legacy software – be completely foreign to Shortcuts, the up-and-coming star of a new breed of automation? And yet here we are – while Shortcuts has no idea how to change the volume levels of connected AirPlay 2 devices, this AppleScript is all it takes iTunes to get it done in a second:

tell application "iTunes"
    set sound volume of AirPlay device "Kitchen" to 10
    set sound volume of AirPlay device "Hallway" to 20
    set sound volume of AirPlay device "Nightstand" to 35
end tell

Sometimes cruft has its advantages.

The syntax is easy to comprehend: it literally says to set the volume of an AirPlay device with a specific name to a number between 0 and 100. The name of the AirPlay device is the name of the HomePod you can change in the Home app, which is reflected in iTunes' AirPlay connection popup as well.

The names of the AirPlay speakers are the same ones used by iTunes on the Mac.

In this type of shortcut, multiple volume levels are changed at once by repeating the same command for different AirPlay devices. The numeric volume level is provided by a menu that fills a 'Number' action at the beginning of the shortcut, so I can choose to set my HomePods at 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 40, or 60 percent volume with just a couple of taps.

HomePod Speaker Volume

Change the volume of multiple HomePods (or AirPlay speakers) connected to iTunes at once. The list of preset volume levels is customizable. The shortcut can also be run from the iOS widget.

Get the shortcut here.

Set Active HomePod Speakers and Volume

Sometimes I seek more control over my HomePods than a shortcut designed to tweak the volume alone can give me. Sometimes I want to choose which HomePods are the active speakers in iTunes and type out their exact volume levels. For that, I employ a different shortcut.

The 'Set Speakers and Volume' shortcut is comprised of two separate, yet entwined parts. First, I can choose which AirPlay devices to set as active speakers by selecting them from a list. The list carries the names of individual AirPlay devices, which are all selected by default. After choosing which HomePods I want to stream iTunes music to, an 'Ask for Input' action lets me enter a number for the volume level I want to set on the speakers. None of this is currently possible with Shortcuts alone on iOS.

Then, a repeat block takes care of assembling AppleScript code using 'Text' actions and Magic Variables until it prepares code that, behind the scenes, looks like this:

The script tells iTunes to change the speakers it's currently connected to and, in the process, set their volume levels to a new percentage. Like the simpler volume shortcut above that inspired it, this one takes a second to run the command via SSH, but it's got the added complexity of requiring user interaction to pick speakers and type numbers.

Selecting active iTunes speakers from Shortcuts is instantly reflected in Control Center's AirPlay widget.

The shortcut works well and I wish this kind of control over AirPlay devices was supported in Shortcuts too. I'd love to be able to create shortcuts that play music on specific HomePods over AirPlay 2 with a specific volume and no manual interaction required whatsoever. As I wrote when Shortcuts launched in September, I continue to be astounded by its lack of AirPlay 2 actions.

Set Active Speakers and Volume

Change the volume of individual HomePods (or AirPlay speakers) connected to iTunes and choose which ones should be currently active. The shortcut lets you select one or multiple speakers as well as enter an exact volume level.

Get the shortcut here.

Preparing for Podcasts with Keyboard Maestro

For years, I sat down at my desk to record podcasts and went through the process of opening each app I needed for the recording, carefully arranging its windows, and typing URLs to open specific documents and webpages I needed in Safari. I checked audio inputs and manually started a new audio recording in QuickTime. I started my Toggl timer if I remembered to and changed the lights in the bedroom to a specific color, dimming them so I could focus on the show notes in front of me. I didn't have multiple displays then. You see, I recognize that I'm a little particular when it comes to my podcasting setup: I like things my way even though I profoundly despise the act of resizing and moving windows on a Mac. Yet I need this to quell the part of my brain that laments an ever so imperfect setup should I record with a slightly off-center Safari window. It's probably a silly problem to have, but it's my problem.

As soon as I got a Mac mini, a larger monitor, and the iPad Pro running next to it thanks to Luna Display, I knew it was time to automate the entire thing. I knew it couldn't be done with Shortcuts and AppleScript alone, so I turned my attention to two old friends of my former Mac OS X days – Keyboard Maestro and BetterTouchTool.

The result is this setup, ready for me to record a podcast, which only takes a single Siri phrase to spring to life:

Lights dimmed, a shade of purple, and lots of app windows – this is how I like my podcasts.

And here's a quick video version of it:

Of course, I still need to physically place the microphone on my desk. But you get the idea.

This automation involves different parts: on iOS, Siri activates a shortcut that triggers a Keyboard Maestro macro on the Mac; Keyboard Maestro opens URLs, creates windows and repositions them, and calls for BetterTouchTool to move them to the Luna Display monitor; then it's back to iOS again, with Shortcuts starting a specific Toggl timer and setting the lights a certain shade of purple. It's a beautiful intricacy of mixed automation, and I've been using it for the past month to great effect. Let me describe how it all works.

Before I sit down to record a podcast, I invoke a shortcut on my HomePod. The shortcut looks surprisingly sparse:

In reality, it's anything but.

The first step of the shortcut is a 'Run Script Over SSH' action that tells my Mac to run a specific Keyboard Maestro macro aptly called "Podcast Time". This is possible thanks to Keyboard Maestro's AppleScript dictionary, which lets you control the app from other places on macOS and, in this case, iOS via osascript. Automations to run other automations – a common theme in what I'm about to describe.

The Podcast Time macro is where most of the action takes place. A screenshot wouldn't do it justice, so let me go through the broad strokes of this cornucopia of actions. The macro starts by launching Safari and resizing its frontmost window so that it occupies two thirds of my UltraFine display. Another action selects the first tab that I always keep pinned in Safari for Google Docs. This is where the document for the episode's show notes will be open, allowing me to have plenty of room to look at the outline without much scrolling. Keyboard Maestro then opens a new Safari window and, if I'm recording a Relay show that involves a live chat, points it to relay.fm/live.⁸ The window is then resized to be a narrow rectangle that fills half of the remaining third of the display. I calculated these dimensions by testing several different combinations until I got the layout I wanted and the window width that worked best for me.

Opening and resizing windows with Keyboard Maestro.

After opening and placing Safari windows on screen, the macro turns to other apps I typically keep open while recording podcasts. If the show is being streamed live on the Relay website, I open Tweetbot and put it on the rightmost side of the screen so I can keep an eye on additional real-time follow-up from listeners. Note how, throughout the macro, I dispersed an array of 'Pause Until Conditions Are Met' actions to make sure that apps can fully activate and come to the foreground before invoking actions that control them. It's easy for Keyboard Maestro to get ahead of itself and attempt to, say, select a menu in an app that isn't visible yet.

In five seconds, the main UltraFine display is filled with windows and I don't have to lift a single finger. Apps are launched, tabs are selected, their windows resized and all I did was utter a command to Siri on a device that isn't even a Mac. But the best part of the macro has just begun.

The final result on the UltraFine display.

Now that the UltraFine is plastered with windows, I want other apps to launch and their windows to be automatically shuffled to the display next to the UltraFine – the iPad Pro running Luna Display. This is where BetterTouchTool comes in.

Other audio apps opened on the Luna Display.

To the best of my knowledge, Keyboard Maestro doesn't offer any actions to interact with connected monitors and the app windows displayed on them. BetterTouchTool (also known as BTT), with its myriad of options to rewrite the behavior of keyboard shortcuts, trackpad gestures, and more, does.⁹ So I decided to put together some BTT actions (grouped together) to launch, move, and resize windows that need to go on the iPad's display.

Let's use Audio Hijack as an example. First, BTT launches the app; then, thanks to the 'Move Windows to Next Monitor' action, the window is flung to whatever monitor is sitting next to the UltraFine (which is my primary display).

My action groups in BetterTouchTool.

At this point, a third linked action in this group uses the 'Move/Resize' action of BTT with a series of custom parameters. Here's what it looks like:

How I resize windows on the Luna Display with BTT.

In plain English, this action takes the active window (Audio Hijack in this case) and resizes it to specific dimensions on the monitor that is sitting left from the display where the mouse cursor is. This is an additional check to make sure that the Audio Hijack window stays on the Luna Display and is resized there without being transported back to the UltraFine. The size and placement of the window was, once again, optimized by me through trial and error based on personal taste.

This cluster of actions linked together by BTT in a single flow – launch app, move it, resize it – is repeated for the three apps I use to converse and record audio: Skype, QuickTime, and Audio Hijack. The only difference between them are the values used to position their windows on the iPad's display.

Once I had the actions to move and resize windows set up in BTT, I had to figure out a way to trigger them from the Keyboard Maestro macro. Thankfully, the developers of BTT thought about this possibility as well: BTT actions can be triggered from external apps in a variety of ways, one of them being an AppleScript that runs a specific action by calling its unique ID. The AppleScript looks like this:

tell application "BetterTouchTool"
    execute_assigned_actions_for_trigger "CFDA72F8-E2DD-4F0D-93B3-A424895R5BBD"
end tell

The UUID of a BTT action can be retrieved by right-clicking on an action and selecting the 'Copy UUID' option from the contextual menu. In an action group, running the first action from the top will automatically continue executing subsequent ones.

You can guess what I did next. I created three separate AppleScript files for the three aforementioned audio apps, saved them in the /Scripts folder of my Mac, and used the 'Execute AppleScript' action of Keyboard Maestro to run them from my macro.

Because BetterTouchTool expects each app to be already opened (how can you move windows if there are no windows to begin with?), I first had to make sure each app was opened and in the foreground before invoking the BTT scripts. Here's what this looks like in Keyboard Maestro for Audio Hijack and Skype:

Triggering BTT actions from Keyboard Maestro.

The only exception is QuickTime player, for which I also need to create a new audio recording by selecting File ⇾ New Audio Recording. But, of course, I don't really need to select this menu item myself – Keyboard Maestro can do it for me with one of its inbuilt actions. So after launching QuickTime player but before running the AppleScript that tells BTT to move it across displays, this single step in Keyboard Maestro selects the menu item I need and prepares a window for a new audio recording:

Now, all the apps I need for recording a podcast have been launched, their windows resized and hurled through displays. Less than 15 seconds have passed since I asked Siri to prepare my Mac for podcasting, and the Keyboard Maestro macro is done. I might as well sit down and do the actual thing. Or at least you'd think so.

Back on iOS, there are two more steps the shortcut needs to finish running. First, I want my desk lights to be purple because I like that color when I'm talking to my friends on Skype. Don't ask why. This is easily done with the 'Run Home Scene' action in Shortcuts, which runs my 'Purple Bedroom' scene that I set up months ago in the Home app.

Finally, the shortcut has to start a Toggl timer specific to the podcast I'm about to record. This is where the last step of all this, the ingeniously-named 'Record Podcast' shortcut, comes in to finish everything off.

This shortcut was built for my personal needs, but it's easily adaptable to anyone who deals with recurring events and wants to start a timer when they're about to start. The Record Podcast shortcut starts a Toggl timer if an event in my calendar matches one of the multiple podcast names I set up. If my Podcasts calendar has 'Record Connected' in it at 7 PM, the shortcut will start a 'Recording Connected' timer when I run it; if 'Record AppStories with John' is found, a Toggl timer for AppStories will start instead. And so forth. It's a simple solution that I integrated with the automations I use to prepare my Mac for podcasts so that I never forget to track the time I spend recording them.

My shortcut to start Toggl timers for specific calendar events.

Given a list of event names (could be podcasts, could be meetings, could be soccer practice – anything that is recurring on your calendar works), the shortcut scans the iOS Calendar for events whose start date is between the past and next hour. This way, the shortcut will find events whether I run it before the event begins or if I'm late. Then, a regular expression matches the event found in the calendar (if any) against my list of podcast names; if there is a match, it means a podcast session is about to begin. A block of 'If' actions uses a different Siri shortcut to start a Toggl timer in the background depending on which podcast is found. The app I'm using to prepare these Toggl shortcuts is called Timery and is currently in beta (and I can't wait to write about it), but you can replicate the same setup by using the Siri shortcuts donated by the official Toggl app for iOS.

When I run the shortcut on my iPhone, nothing else is shown besides the Toggl shortcut started at the end.

Start Timer for Event

Start a Toggl timer (with the Timery app) based on an event name found in a specific calendar (or multiple calendars). You have to specify the event name in a list and replace the Siri shortcuts for Timery if you don't have the app installed.

Get the shortcut here.

Dozens of actions, 20 seconds, and zero manual interactions after I told Siri that it's "recording time", the shortcut is complete at last. Mac apps are ready and waiting for me in their dual-screen setup; my lights are just the shade of purple I like; and a timer is ticking on Toggl. For years, I did all of this manually, and it took me several minutes to carefully position windows – when I had the patience to do so. Most of the time I just left a jungle of windows sprawling across the screen and forgot to track my time.

I love this new system I've put together. It has never failed me over the past couple of months – a testament to the Mac's dependability as much as a validation of macOS' greatest advantage compared to iOS: the absolute freedom to tinker, modify, and mold a computer to one's needs. I prefer using the iPad Pro as my computer for everything else, but I still have to use a Mac and Mac software for podcasting. Who's to say I can't combine the best aspects of automation on both platforms to make the entire process better suited for me?

Coming Next...

There is much left to explore in this new approach to accessing and controlling a Mac from iOS, and I'm still figuring out new ways to take advantage of my Mac mini. In this article, I've only detailed how to access the Finder from Files, shared a handful of shortcuts, and described my advanced macro to prepare a Mac for podcast recording.

I'm not done yet. I have more BetterTouchTool and Luna Display tips to share. I need to explain my different uses of VNC and Luna Display from the iPad Pro. There are more shortcuts, more Keyboard Maestro macros to examine. As I promised, I'll have to write about youtube-dl and homebridge, for which I'm glad I decided to abandon Mac laptops and get an always-on Mac mini server instead. And then I'll have to explain how I built my own command panel with shortcuts that simplify using a Mac from an iPad Pro:

But that's a story for another time. It's going to be a fun ride.

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Flickr is tightening the restraints on its free tier account by limiting users to only being able to store 1,000 pictures.

That means anyone who uses the free version of Flickr and has over 1,000 images will lose some of their images if they don’t back them up by March 12th.

Flickr originally planned to delete the images on February 6th, but complications made the company push the date back until early March.

Now, users have around a month to go online and download their Flickr files. If you only want to download enough photos to get your library under the cap, then start with the oldest ones first. TechCrunch reports that Flickr is deleting the oldest images first.

To retrieve your photos, log into Flickr on the web and enter the settings menu. From there scroll down and choose the ‘Request my Flickr data’ button.

If you’re Flickr account is attached to your email you’ll receive a zip file containing all of your images in one easy step.

Source: TechCrunch

The post Online photo storage site Flickr won’t delete your photos until March 12th appeared first on MobileSyrup.

Microsoft’s Surface Headphones are set to launch in Canada in March.

The Surface Headphones launched in the United States back in October, alongside the Surface Laptop 2, Surface Pro 6 and Surface Studio 2.

The Surface Headphones, which were relatively well-received by critics, are the tech giant’s first pair of headphones. The headphones feature Bluetooth connectivity and are compatible with Cortana, Microsoft’s voice-activated assistant.

Specs wise, the Surface headphones include 13 levels of noise cancelling, 40mm drivers and a sleek-looking on-ear volume and noise cancellation adjustment dial.

It’s unclear how much Microsoft plan to sell its Surface Headphones for in the Canadian market or what day in March they’ll hit Northern shelves. In the U.S. the Surface Headphones are priced at $350 USD (roughly $449 CAD). Along with Canada, the Surface Headphones are also launching in Australia, Austria, France, Germany, Ireland, New Zealand and Switzerland.

In the same press release, Microsoft also confirmed the Surface Studio is coming to additional regions, including China, Hong Kong, India, Japan and more. Unfortunately, Canada was not included in this list of launch regions.

Source: Microsoft

The post Microsoft’s Surface Headphones are coming to Canada in March appeared first on MobileSyrup.

The Callister Block, to the right, is the newest structure in this picture. The Dunn-Miller Block to the east was completed in 1889, and the McIntosh Block to the west, completed soon after. (The part of the Dunn-Miller block seen on the left of this image became a hotel in 1907, the Crown Hotel. Clarke and Stewart, stationers, occupied the main floor. in earlier years. It’s possible that Mr. Callister hired N S Hoffar to design the building.

John Callister arrived in Vancouver in April 1885, settled in the town of Granville, and a year later lost everything he owned in the fire that destroyed the city. He was born in Ballaugh in the Isle of Man and emigrated to the States and was a builder in Chicago and San Franscisco. In 1891 he was aged 40, a carpenter and builder. He never married, and was sufficiently successful to part own the Ellesmere Rooms in 1887, and to build this building around 1890. The earliest tenant on the main floor was L Davis, who ran a clothes house here in 1891. It appears the upper floors were initially a hotel, the Dufferin House, run by Miss Kearns.

For a few years the main floor were occupied by a furniture store owned by Sehl Hastie and Erskine Co, employing a cabinetmaker and an upholsterer, and by 1895 C Hach, who took over the business and also lived here. James Stark had his dry goods store here in 1898, moving on to new premises in 1904, replaced by Alexander Ross and Co, another dry goods merchant. Upstairs James Thomson & Sons were manufacturers agents for Stewart & McDonald of Glasgow, but in 1908 they moved to Water Street and two unions moved in: the Brotherhood of Painters Decorators and Paperhangers, and the Lathers Union.

A couple of years later they were replaced by the Apostolic Faith Mission from 1913 until around 1935. The other tenant was the Industrial Workers of the World, a radical labour union started in Chicago and often referred to as ‘The Wobblies’. In 1912, when Vancouver authorities tried to ban street demonstrations, the Wobblies started and won a spectacular free-speech fight. Still operating today, the IWW’s website notes that “After building mass workers’ power, the arrival of the First World War saw the IWW declared a banned organization by the Government of Canada from 1918 until 1923, which debilitated the union for many years afterwards”.

The building was purchased by the Army & Navy Store in 1960. Initially it was used as the Outdoor Store (seen in this 1965 W E Graham photograph), but a remodeling of the building in the 1970s saw it incorporated into the main retail store, with new construction behind the preserved facades.

John Callister, seen here in the early 1900s, didn’t live in the city. He acquired land and built his home in a forested area covering about three blocks in 1904 at Hastings Townsite, some kilometers to the east, across from today’s PNE location. Upon his death Callister, a bachelor, left his property to two nieces. One of the sisters died and Mrs. Ada M. Stevenson inherited all of the property.

In 1920, sports promoter and tobacconist Con Jones entered into an agreement to purchase “lot 5, Town of Hastings, Suburban Lands” for $10,000 from Stevenson. According to the Vancouver city archives only three payments of $1,000 were made. In the space of a year, Jones supervised the building of a grandstand and field and Con Jones Park opened in 1921. Later the field was acquired by the City of Vancouver, and renamed as Callister Park.

Image source: City of Vancouver Archives CVA 1135-55 and Port P600

Credit Spotify CEO Daniel Ek with honesty; in a blog post announcing a major move into the podcast space, Ek wrote:

More than 10 years ago we founded Spotify to give consumers something they couldn’t get — music any time, anywhere, and at the right price. Along the way, we broke the grip piracy had on our industry and restored the growth of global music through paid on-demand streaming. I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished, but what I didn’t know when we launched to consumers in 2008 was that audio — not just music — would be the future of Spotify.

There is a lot packed into this paragraph. First and foremost, Ek is absolutely justified in taking a victory lap: as I noted last month music revenue is growing sharply; over the next few years the industry’s total revenue will likely exceed the peak of the CD era, something that seemed unthinkable a decade ago.

What happened is that Spotify dragged the record labels into a completely new business model that relied on Internet assumptions, instead of fighting them: if duplicating and distributing digital media is free (on a marginal basis), don’t try to make it scarce, but instead make it abundant and charge for the convenience of accessing just about all of it.

The problem for Spotify is that the company’s financial returns are not nearly representative of its impact on the music industry. The company did make its first operating profit of last quarter on revenues of €1.5 billion, but the biggest driver was the fact its operating costs were down 17% due to lower “accrued social costs” in Sweden that resulted from Spotify’s stock price going down. To be fair, Spotify said it would have made a small profit even without that adjustment, but the long-term outlook is tough when the company’s gross profit is, as it was last quarter, only 27%.¹

The issue, as I laid out last year in Lessons From Spotify, is that Spotify’s primary cost driver is not, like most tech companies, fixed investments in R&D or Sales & Marketing, but rather marginal payouts to record labels. Basically, the more revenue Spotify makes the more its costs increase, which can be overcome at large enough revenue numbers — see last quarter — but limits the company’s long-term upside.

At least, that is, as long as Spotify was a music company; thus the new declaration from Ek that Spotify is now about audio — the honesty was his admission that he didn’t originally see this coming.

Podcasts Versus Music

The shift in purpose from “music” to “audio” is, for now anyways, about podcasts. And, at least from a user perspective, it is a natural extension: playing music and playing podcasts entail downloading or streaming some sort of digital file, decoding it on a device, and playing it back through some sort of speaker. That one involved melodies and harmonies and the other primarily the spoken word (although there are plenty of music podcasts) is, from a technical perspective, a distinction without meaning.

From a value chain perspective, though, music and podcasts could not be more different:

• Music is primarily controlled by three large labels; podcasts are controlled by individual podcasters
• Music can only be played legally through licensed services or via licensed downloads; podcasts can be played by anyone
• Music generated $8.7 billion in revenue in the U.S. in 2017; podcasts generated only around $300 million in the U.S.

This last point is directly related to the first two: the money that can be made from a value chain is directly related to the degree of friction and centralization in that value chain. Consider Spotify’s two primary business models:

• Subscriptions capture money directly from consumers who, as noted above, are paying for the convenience of accessing all of the music they want (i.e. overcoming friction) in one centralized place.
• Advertisements capture money from advertisers who wish to reach listeners; effectively selling advertising, though, means having one place for advertisers to go to reach a large number of listeners.

This importance of centralization to an advertising business model is best seen by the fact that Spotify drove €542 million ($616 million) in advertising revenue last year, far outpacing all of podcasting, even though half of the company’s users didn’t hear any ads at all. Moreover, the total amount of advertising revenue driven by music is even greater when you add in YouTube.

Podcasts and the Web

The current state of podcast advertising is a situation not so different from the early web: how many people remember this?

These ads were elaborate affiliate marketing schemes; you really could get a free iPod if you signed up for several credit cards, a Netflix account, subscription video courses, you get the idea. What all of these marketers had in common was an anticipation that new customers would have large lifetime values, justifying large payouts to whatever dodgy companies managed to sign them up.

The parallels to podcasting should be obvious: why is Squarespace on seemingly every podcast? Because customers paying monthly for a website have huge lifetime values. Sure, they may only set up the website once, but they are likely to maintain it for a very long time, particularly if they grabbed a “free” domain along the way. This makes the hassle of coordinating ad reads and sponsorship codes across a plethora of podcasts worth the trouble; it’s the same story with other prominent podcast sponsors like ZipRecruiter or SimpliSafe.

The problem is that the affiliated marketing for large lifetime-value purchases segment is not a particularly large one; that meant that the amount of consumer attention paid to the Internet far exceeded the amount of advertising spend. From Mary Meeker’s 2005 Internet Trends report:

It seems very likely that were a similar slide to be made about podcasting it would look very similar: according to Edison Research 73 million people in the U.S. listen to podcasts monthly, and 48 million weekly; the average listener listens to seven podcasts a week. That seems like it should be worth a lot more than $300 million or so!

Ad Centralization

Again, what happened to the web is likely instructive: in 2003 Google launch AdSense, an advertising network for websites. Now advertisers could buy ads in one centralized place, and those ads could be better targeted by one company that spread its cookies across the entire Internet (and, of course, combined them with data from search, email, etc.).

By 2010, five years after the above slide, Meeker had an update:

Internet attention still outpaced monetization, but the gap was significantly closer: yes, the ad formats were still mostly the same, but increased centralization brought far more advertisers on board.

To be sure there have been attempts to centralize podcast advertising as well: a company called Midroll, which was acquired by E.W. Scripps in 2015, is the largest player in the space. Midroll sits between advertisers and mostly larger podcasts like the Bill Simmons Podcast or WTF with Marc Maron, and handles the nitty gritty of coordinating ad reads and distributing discount codes and specialized URLs in exchange for about a third of revenue.

Three years ago Midroll also acquired a podcast player called Stitcher; as I explained at the time there was a lot of value to be gained from controlling both the listening experience and ad sales, particularly in terms of data: with better data Midroll could more easily sell podcast advertising inventory to companies with business models that did not rely on generating outsized lifetime values.

The problem for Midroll, though, is that Stitcher never gained a meaningful share of the market, which meant Midroll never achieved the sort of data necessary to expand the podcast advertising market. Sure, some brand advertisers are dipping their toes in the market, but the leading advertisers are the same sort of companies they have always been, and while users no longer need to punch any monkeys, they do still need to punch in those discount codes and specialized URLs.

Meanwhile Apple, which does have the users thanks to the dominance of the iOS Podcast app,² has shown little inclination of being that centralized player. I wrote about the company’s opportunities in the space two years ago, but despite the shift in strategy to services nothing has changed.

The Value of Gimlet Media

All of this is critical context for understanding Spotify’s strong interest in the podcasting space. Spotify needs (1) a way to differentiate its service from Apple Music in particular, and (2) content that it does not have to pay for on a marginal cost basis.

Gimlet Media fits the bill in both cases. While the company’s current roster of podcasts will remain freely available, future podcasts will almost certainly be exclusive to Spotify. More importantly, it seems likely that Spotify bought the company not simply for its library but also its management: expect a big jump in output with additional investment.

It’s worth considering why it is exclusivity in podcasts will likely play out differently in podcasts than in music. CEO Daniel Ek said on the company’s earnings call yesterday:

I think these are two very, very different businesses. We’ve spoken in the past about the music industry and not being a space, where exclusivity makes sense for a number of different reasons, but including one of them, that music, radio can put any piece of music up. So exclusivities won’t have the same effect, as you won’t be able to keep it exclusive.

And the second thing obviously is the artists and the label have the incentive to push the content out in many places as possible, because so much of an artist revenue derives from touring. I think in audio and certainly in podcast, the dynamics is very, very different, and what we’re doing here and what we’re excited about is really building the market, it’s at a very, very different stage of maturity. So we’re investing in that and we think we can be one of the tent-pole players in that space.

Basically, the wall that Spotify can put up around podcasts is much stronger than the one it can put up around music, and podcasters have fewer alternatives. Or, to put it another way, podcasts are a market where Spotify — to the extent they are willing to pay — actually has power over supply.

Meanwhile, for Spotify podcasts are fixed costs: that means that driving more listening flows directly to the company’s bottom line in a way that increased music listening does not. This is a very big deal — it is entirely possible that if Spotify succeeds in the space that podcasts will drive a relatively small percentage of revenue and a much larger percentage of profit.

Spotify’s Aggregation Play

At the same time, the Gimlet Media acquisition on its own does not seem like a sustainable strategy: paying three-quarters of the amount generated in annual revenue by an entire industry for 25 or so podcasts does not scale. That, though, is where the Anchor acquisition comes in: Anchor is a service for easily making and distributing podcasts, with a nascent advertising service for monetization.

To put it another way, Anchor is a means of generating supply, and it is supply that has always stood in the way of Spotify’s ambitions to be an Aggregator. Aggregators bring suppliers onto the platform on their terms; Spotify, on the other hand, has had to scratch and claw to get labels to give them the music they needed to be viable. And again, the acquisition of Gimlet Media, while better from a long-term leverage perspective, is not a big improvement: Spotify almost certainly overpaid if the only goal was to obtain supply.

What I think Spotify senses, though, is that while podcasts, at least in theory, solve many of their business model problems, Spotify is also uniquely positioned to solve the problems of many podcasters/suppliers. To wit:

• Increasing advertising revenue for the entire industry requires a centralized player that can leverage a large userbase. Spotify is still a distant second to Apple in podcasts, but they are growing fast. Just as importantly, Spotify already has a strongly growing advertising business — again, larger than the entire podcast market — that it can extend to podcasts.
• The open nature of podcasts means it is very difficult to monetize users directly; Spotify, though, has already built an entire infrastructure around monetizing users directly. Podcasts exclusive to Spotify can likely make meaningful money from Spotify subscribers that still gives Spotify far higher margin than music.

This explains Spotify’s multi-prong approach:

• Anchor provides a way to capture new podcasters, leading them either to Spotify advertising or, in the case of rising stars, to Spotify exclusives. Critically, because Spotify has access to all of the data, they can likely bring those suppliers on board at a far lower rate than they have to pay for established creators like Gimlet Media.
• Spotify Advertising, as I just suggested, makes a strong play to be the dominant provider for the entire podcasting industry. Spotify Advertising is already operating at a far larger scale than Midroll, the incumbent player, and Spotify has access to the data of the second largest podcast player in the market.
• Gimlet Media becomes an umbrella brand for a growing stable of Spotify exclusive podcasts. Critically, as I noted above, the majority of these podcasts come to Spotify not because Spotify pays them millions of dollars but simply because Spotify is better at monetizing than anyone else.

This will be the determinant as to whether or not Spotify’s podcast gambit succeeds: being an Aggregator doesn’t simply mean acquiring a large pool of captive customers, it means controlling the value chain such that suppliers come on to your platform on your terms because you monetize them better than anyone else, even as you capture the excess value.

To that last point, it’s worth highlighting this comment from Gimlet Media co-founder Matt Lieber to Peter Kafka on the Recode Media podcast:

We did tell [Gimlet Media employees] that based on what we were talking about this would be a great thing for the company because really what everyone here is motivated by is making amazing shows for listeners who crave more, and…being acquired by Spotify puts us with the world’s largest audio platform that’s reaching more than 200 million people globally, so it’s a way for our storytelling and our work to have a lot more impact. So generally people are really excited about it.

This is the Aggregator’s advantage: particularly when it comes to media, whether it be print, video, or audio, suppliers are often motivated to simply reach the most people and make a living doing so. It is a fundamentally short-term outlook that is entirely understandable and defensible. That, though, leaves the Aggregator with an arbitrage advantage: by controlling access to customers and, by extension, the most attractive means of monetization, Aggregators can offer the best relative deal to suppliers that is still, in absolute terms, a great deal for the Aggregator.

To that end, it is worth considering if this is good for the podcasting industry generally. After all, to return to the web analogy, the price of the Internet finally monetizing effectively was the shift of content to centralized platforms like Facebook. Is the web better today than it was when we were punching monkeys?

I do think the answer is yes, but I don’t mind if you disagree: granted, most supply has moved to Facebook and other social networks; it is no longer possible to build a viable web business with display ads. At the same time, the web is still as open as can be, which means there is room for new business models like subscriptions, a model that has only gotten started and is already producing far better content than the old mass market media model ever did (I’m obviously biased in this regard!).

I can see a similar future for podcasts: Spotify, if they are successful, may end up being the biggest player, but that doesn’t mean new and different business models that directly link suppliers and consumers won’t emerge. It will, in other words, look like everything else touched by the Internet: very large winners on one end, and small niche winners on the other.

1. This number was slightly inflated due to a one time accounting change
2. iTunes is very important to podcasting, but it is only a directory of podcasts that are hosted elsewhere; that means it is not a means to collect user data

I’ve been working with brilliant thinkers this month. Their brilliance doesn’t make them great writers — in fact, it sometimes gets in the way. The brilliant thinker often falls into what you might call the professor mode. After studying a subject in great deal — and often after accumulating massive amounts of experience — they … Continued

The post Editing brilliant thinkers appeared first on without bullshit.

What do you do if you are a world-famous city that has suffered horrendous terror attacks and a famous artist decides to “gift” you with a sculpture you really are not that happy with?

That was the scenario for Paris when American artist Jeff Koons offered a ten meter long work called “Bouquet of Tulips” as a ‘remembrance to the victims of the terrible tragedies”.

The Mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo originally planned the art being installed opposite the Eiffel Tower. The piece called “Bouquet of Tulips” has a hand grasping flowers, kind of a reference to the Statue of Liberty which was given to the United States by the people of France. But France’s art world were not so happy with this gift, or the fact that it was going to be beside some  Paris landmarks that had no reference or place in the attacks.

As The Telegraph  dryly states critics observed that Mr. Koons had his day over thirty years ago, and described his work as “assembly line”.  No less than 23 prominent members of the art world slammed the potential location of the art work, and months of deliberations came up with a compromise.  The culture minister bluntly stated “Can you just imagine the international controversy if the city had told the Americans ‘We don’t want your present?”

The compromise location for the sculpture was the municipal gardens of the Beaux-Arts museum near the location of the American embassy. The city is on the hook for maintenance of the piece, while private foundations will pay for installation.

You can take a look at the announcement of the public art gift in the YouTube below, and get an idea of the size and scale of the piece, and why it stirred such strong feelings in Paris.

The Art of the Personal Project is a crucial element to let potential buyers see how you think creatively on your own.  I am drawn to personal projects that have an interesting vision or that show something I have never seen before.  In this thread, I’ll include a link to each personal project with the artist statement so you can see more of the project. Please note: This thread is not affiliated with any company; I’m just featuring projects that I find.  Please DO NOT send me your work.  I do not take submissions.

Today’s featured artist:  Robin O’Neill

My photography is driven by my curiosity and attraction toward different cultures. Thirty minutes from my culturally homogenous home in Whistler is a small community called Lil’wat Nation. This is a First Nations reserve at the base of the majestic 8500-ft Mount Currie, surrounded by the Coast Mountain range.

As a local backcountry skier, I make a weekly pass through the Lil’wat Nation in the winter. I look forward to this part of my day. I crane my neck to investigate the random items on the lawns, examine the texture of old paint cracking off the sides of houses, and watch the dogs roaming freely. Seeing the chimney smoke and warm condensation in the windows, all I want is to know the people inside.

Last winter I decided to drive out there more regularly, bring along my camera, and document the beauty I saw in these homes and in this community. Only 40 kms away, and a vastly different view of the world. I am left wanting more.

To see more of this project, click here.

APE contributor Suzanne Sease currently works as a consultant for photographers and illustrators around the world. She has been involved in the photography and illustration industry since the mid 80s.  After establishing the art buying department at The Martin Agency, then working for Kaplan-Thaler, Capital One, Best Buy and numerous smaller agencies and companies, she decided to be a consultant in 1999. She has a new Twitter feed with helpful marketing information because she believes that marketing should be driven by brand and not by specialty.  Follow her at @SuzanneSease.  Instagram

The post The Art of the Personal Project: Robin O’Neill appeared first on A Photo Editor.

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Starz content on Bell’s Crave streaming platform will require an additional $5.99 CAD per month subscription fee starting on March 1st, 2019,

Bell confirmed to MobileSyrup that current Crave subscribers will still have access to “selected” Starz content, though it remains unclear what television shows can still be viewed with the streaming service’s base $9.99 per month subscription tier.

In order to access the entire Starz catalogue, including upcoming shows like Now Apocalypse and The Rook, the additional $5.99 per month subscription fee is required.

Starz content includes television shows like Vida, Counterpart, Sweetbitter, Black Sails, Party Down and The Girlfriend Experience.

Along with Starz content now costing an additional fee through Crave, Bell also announced that its pay TV channel Encore has now been rebranded to Starz.

Bell recently relaunched its CraveTV streaming service as Crave. Along with the rebranding, the service also got a new $9.99 additional subscription tier that adds current HBO content like Game of Thrones to the platform. This add-on brought the total cost of the service to $19.99 per month.

Crave also includes content from Showtime like SMILF, Black Monday, Escape at Dannemora and more, at no additional fee. It’s unclear if Bell has plans to also charge an additional subscription fee for Showtime content in the future. U.S.-exclusive streaming service Hulu charges an additional $10.99 USD (about $14.59 CAD) per month on top of its $7.99 USD (roughly $10.61 CAD) a month base plan to access Showtime content.

Bell also announced the Crave’s subscriber base is now at 2.3 million users. Bell reported a strong end to the year in its Q4 2018 results, showing it earned $6.215 million CAD in revenue, a three percent increase from the $6.036 million it earned in 2017.

Crave is available on iOS, Android and the 4th-generation Apple TV. Bell says the service will be rolling out to additional platforms in the coming months.

Image credit: Starz

Source: Newswire

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