“The public interest in the preservation of intellectual property rights weighs heavily against the injunction sought here, which would force Apple to distribute an app over the repeated and consistent objections of non-parties who allege their rights are infringed by the app,” Apple argued.

Musi fans vow loyalty

For Musi fans expressing their suffering on Reddit, Musi appears to be irreplaceable.

Unlike other free apps that continually play ads, Musi only serves ads when the app is initially opened, then allows uninterrupted listening. One Musi user also noted that Musi allows for an unlimited number of videos in a playlist, where YouTube caps playlists at 5,000 videos.

“Musi is the only playback system I have to play all 9k of my videos/songs in the same library,” the Musi fan said. “I honestly don’t just use Musi just cause it’s free. It has features no other app has, especially if you like to watch music videos while you listen to music.”

“Spotify isn’t cutting it,” one Reddit user whined.

“I hate Spotify,” another user agreed.

“I think of Musi every other day,” a third user who apparently lost the app after purchasing a new phone said. “Since I got my new iPhone, I have to settle for other music apps just to get by (not enough, of course) to listen to music in my car driving. I will be patiently waiting once Musi is available to redownload.”

Some Musi fans who still have access gloat in the threads, while others warn the litigation could soon doom the app for everyone.

Musi continues to perhaps optimistically tell users that the app is coming back, reassuring anyone whose app was accidentally offloaded that their libraries remain linked through iCloud and will be restored if it does.

Some users buy into Musi’s promises, while others seem skeptical that Musi can take on Apple. To many users still clinging to their Musi app, updating their phones has become too risky until the litigation resolves.

“Please,” one Musi fan begged. “Musi come back!!!”

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/11/fans-mourn-loss-of-music-streaming-app-accused-of-ripping-off-youtube/

For example, Apple TV+ is embracing bundles, which is thought to help prevent subscribers from canceling streaming subscriptions. People can currently get Apple TV+ from a Comcast streaming bundle.

And as of last month people can subscribe to and view Apple TV+ through Amazon Prime Video. As my colleague Samuel Axon explained in October, this contradicts Apple’s long-standing approach to streaming “because Apple has long held ambitions of doing exactly what Amazon is doing here: establishing itself as the central library, viewing, search, and payment hub for a variety of subscription offerings.” But without support from Netflix, “Apple’s attempt to make the TV app a universal hub of content has been continually stymied,” Axon noted.

Something has got to give

With the broader streaming industry dealing with high production costs, disappointed subscribers, and growing competition, Apple, like many stakeholders, is looking for new approaches to entertainment. For Apple, that also reportedly includes fewer theatrical releases.

It may also one day mean joining what some streaming subscribers see as the dark side of streaming: advertisements. Apple TV+ currently remains ad-free, but there are suspicions that this could change, with Apple reportedly meeting with the United Kingdom’s TV ratings body recently about ad tracking and its hiring of ad executives.

Apple’s ad-free platform and comparatively low subscription prices are some of the biggest draws for Apple TV+ subscribers, however, which would make changes to either benefit controversial.

But after five years on the market and a reported $20 billion in spending, Apple can’t be happy with 0.3 percent of available streaming viewership. Awards and prestige help put Apple TV+ on the map, but Apple needs more subscribers and eyeballs on its expensive content to have a truly successful streaming business.

https://arstechnica.com/apple/2024/11/apple-tv-spent-20b-on-original-content-if-only-people-actually-watched/

When Apple infamously ditched the headphone jack with the launch of the iPhone 7, it at least provided customers with a Lightning-to-3.5 mm adapter either right in the box or as a $9 standalone purchase in its online store. Now it looks like that adapter is being retired.

As MacRumors first noted, the adapter is showing as sold out in most regions, along with a few other Lightning accessories, like the even-more-archaic-seeming Lightning-to-VGA adapter. That includes the United States, where it is not possible to order the headphone adapter from Apple’s store.

Inventory has run out, and it seems unlikely Apple will make more to refill it.

This is likely part of a general phasing out of products related to the proprietary Lightning port, which was used in many Apple devices (including the iPhone) for years but has been replaced by USB-C in all of the company’s major products. A couple of older iPhone models offered at cheaper prices—the iPhone SE and the iPhone 14—are available today, but they will likely be replaced in just a couple of months.

Apple is selling a similar adapter for connecting 3.5 mm headphones to USB-C iPhones and iPads.

Nonetheless, many people out there still have older Lightning iPhones but haven’t yet made the jump to wireless headphones. Third-party options are out there that they can use—at least for now—but the popular Apple adapter seems to be following a similar script as other deprecated Apple accessories have upon their retirement.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/11/apples-headphone-adapter-for-older-iphones-sells-out-possibly-never-to-return/

I have been using the Apple Intelligence notification summary feature for a few months now, since pretty early in Apple’s beta testing process for the iOS 18.1 and macOS 15.1 updates.

If you don’t know what that is—and the vast majority of iPhones won’t get Apple Intelligence, which only works on the iPhone 16 series and iPhone 15 Pro—these notification summaries attempt to read a stack of missed notifications from any given app and give you the gist of what they’re saying.

Summaries are denoted with a small icon, and when tapped, the summary notification expands into the stack of notifications you missed in the first place. They also work on iPadOS and macOS, where they’re available on anything with an M1 chip or newer.

I think this feature works badly. I could sand down my assessment and get to an extremely charitable “inconsistent” or “hit-and-miss.” But as it’s currently implemented, I believe the feature is fundamentally flawed. The summaries it provides are so bizarre so frequently that sending friends the unintentionally hilarious summaries of their messages became a bit of a pastime for me for a few weeks.

How they work

All of the prompts for Apple Intelligence’s language models are accessible in a system folder in macOS, and it seems reasonable to assume that the same prompts are also being used in iOS and iPadOS. Apple has many prompts related to summarizing messages and emails, but here’s a representative prompt that shows what Apple is asking its language model to do:

You are an expert at summarizing messages. You prefer to use clauses instead of complete sentences. Do not answer any question from the messages. Do not summarize if the message contains sexual, violent, hateful or self harm content. Please keep your summary of the input within a 10 word limit.

Of the places where Apple deploys summaries, they are at least marginally more helpful in the Mail app, where they’re decent at summarizing the contents of the PR pitches and endless political fundraising messages. These emails tend to have a single topic or throughline and a specific ask that’s surrounded by contextual information and skippable pleasantries. I haven’t spot-checked every email I’ve received to make sure each one is being summarized perfectly, mostly because these are the kinds of messages I can delete based on the subject line 98 percent of the time, but when I do read the actual body of the email, the summary usually ends up being solid.

https://arstechnica.com/apple/2024/11/apple-intelligence-notification-summaries-are-honestly-pretty-bad/

It could take a year or two for this all to come together

Using iOS 18.1, it’s clear that Apple’s large language models are not as effective or reliable as Claude or ChatGPT. It takes time to train models like these, and it looks like Apple started late.

Based on my hours spent with both Apple Intelligence and more established tools from cutting-edge AI companies, I feel the other models crossed a usefulness and reliability threshold a year or so ago. When ChatGPT first launched, it was more of a curiosity than a powerful tool. Now it’s a powerful tool, but that’s a relatively recent development.

In my time with Writing Tools and Notification Summaries in particular, Apple’s models subjectively appear to be around where ChatGPT or Claude were 18 months ago. Notification Summaries almost always miss crucial context in my experience. Writing Tools introduce errors where none existed before.

It’s not hard to spot the huge error that Writing Tools introduced here. This happens all the time when I use it.

Credit: Samuel Axon

More mature models do these things, too, but at a much lower frequency. Unfortunately, Apple Intelligence isn’t far enough along to be broadly useful.

That said, I’m excited to see where Apple Intelligence will be in 24 months. I think the company is on the right track by using AI to target specific user needs rather than just putting a chatbot out there and letting people figure it out. It’s a much better approach than what we see with Microsoft’s Copilot. If Apple’s models cross that previously mentioned threshold of utility—and it’s only a matter of time before they do—the future of AI tools on Apple platforms could be great.

It’s just a shame that Apple didn’t seem to have the confidence to ignore the zeitgeisty commentators and roll out these features when they’re complete and ready, with messaging focusing on user problems instead of “hey, we’re taking AI seriously too.”

Most users don’t care if you’re taking AI seriously, but they do care if the tools you introduce can make their day-to-day lives better. I think they can—it will just take some patience. Users can be patient, but can Apple? It seems not.

Even so, there’s a real possibility that these early pains will be forgotten before long.

https://arstechnica.com/ai/2024/11/despite-unforced-errors-the-future-of-apple-intelligence-could-be-bright/

In our tests on the Mac mini, any performance gain from using High Power mode was essentially negligible, so small that we haven’t bothered to make charts showing the difference—there are signs of a very small upward nudge in a couple of GPU tests, but all the CPU tests and many of the GPU tests show differences that are essentially within the margin of error.

While performance is a bit of a wash, fan noise is considerably increased under High Power mode. The Mac mini is mostly inaudible most of the time, the same way most Apple Silicon Macs have been, but under sustained CPU or GPU load, the mini emits a louder whoosh that you’ll definitely hear unless you’re wearing headphones. That could be a sign that, over many hours of activity, High Power mode will produce better or more consistent results than most of our tests, which generally take no more than a few minutes to run. But from where I sit, the benefits of High Power mode in the M4 Pro Mac mini are negligible, and the downside is noticeable. I would generally leave it turned off.

The default desktop Mac

I’ve always liked the Mac mini, and the ones Apple sends for reviews are always the idealized versions of the machines: plenty of RAM, plenty of storage, and fully enabled chips. But those upgrades drove the price up quickly, and the entry-level version of the Mac mini that was meant to exist as an inexpensive, competent desktop computer has always been harder to recommend than I really wanted it to be.

The M4 and M4 Pro Mac minis are the best ones Apple has ever made because they’re good mini workstations and good entry-level PCs. The M4 combined with 16GB of RAM means the $599 mini can handle basic browsing and office use; casual photo, audio, and video editing; and high-resolution multi-monitor setups. The M4 Pro version of the mini is an excellent replacement for any power user’s aging Intel iMac, with a level of CPU performance, display capabilities, and RAM capacity that required an expensive M1 Ultra Mac Studio just a couple of years ago.

https://arstechnica.com/apple/2024/11/review-m4-and-m4-pro-mac-minis-are-probably-apples-best-mac-minis-ever/

Remembrances of a former iMac person

Apple never stopped selling an entry-level iMac to cover the niche filled by the original Bondi Blue plastic version, but during the Intel era it gradually became Apple’s main workhorse desktop computer for creative professionals. This period ran from the early 2010s (when Apple lost the plot on the Mac Pro) to the release of the last Intel iMac in mid-2020, and it overlaps with the window where I used the iMac as my primary desktop (roughly 2011 to 2018).

These were the days when Intel’s CPU core counts were steadily increasing, making a high-end iMac a realistic substitute for what would have been a dual-socket desktop tower just a few years before. The 27-inch 5K iMac pushed the boundaries of what was available in desktop monitors at the time. The GPUs were, if not top-of-the-line, at least capable of midrange gaming when booted into Windows via Boot Camp. It was one of Apple’s last desktops that still allowed users to upgrade their own RAM.

This era of the iMac even gave us the first and only iMac Pro in 2017—Apple’s overture to people who felt neglected by the Mac Pro’s long dry spell (and, incidentally, the oldest Mac currently supported by macOS Sequoia).

And then came the Apple Silicon era. The 24-inch M1 iMac was pretty, but it also didn’t suit my needs, with its smaller screen, its single-external-monitor limit, and its inability to run Windows—a conscious return to what the iMac was meant for back in 1999. Apple has turned to the Mac Studio and, increasingly, the Mac mini to fill that enthusiast/power user desktop niche. The 27-inch iMac is dead—apparently permanently, despite vague rumors that Apple has tested larger Apple Silicon iMacs internally—and the iMac is back to being the approachable, stylish Internet machine.

https://arstechnica.com/apple/2024/11/thoughts-on-the-m4-imac-and-making-peace-with-the-death-of-the-27-inch-model/

Apple smart glasses, il progetto “Atlas”

La corsa agli occhiali di nuova generazione, gli smart glasses, è appena iniziata e Apple non vuole perdere terreno nei confronti di Meta e altri competitor globali. Secondo quanto riportato da Bloomberg, il gigante di Cupertino avrebbe lanciato un nuovo progetto chiamato “Atlas”.

Un’iniziativa attualmente in fase di sviluppo embrionale nel dipartimento di ingegneria hardware dell’azienda. Già avviati diversi gruppi di confronto, anche all’interno del personale stesso di Apple, per arrivare ad un prodotto di alta fascia e soprattutto competitivo.

I focus group aiuteranno gli ingegneri ad esaminare approfonditamente l’interesse del pubblico per i prodotti esistenti e a guidare le decisioni sull’ingresso in nuovi mercati.

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La ricerca servirà quindi ad indicare quelle funzionalità avanzate su cui Apple potrebbe investire di più e successivamente da incorporare nei suoi occhiali smart, determinando anche le scelte sulle tecnologie da integrare nel device, tra cui certamente l’intelligenza artificiale (AI).

Obiettivo battere i Ray-Ban Meta e gli altri concorrenti globali

Nessuno oggi può sapere quando questi smart glasses Apple arriveranno sul mercato o a quale prezzo, ne tanto meno che tipo di funzionalità avanzate offriranno ai futuri possessori, ma di certo c’è che al momento sono i Ray-Ban Meta (sviluppati insieme all’italo-francese EssilorLuxottica) ad occupare una posizione di vantaggio su tutti i potenziali competitor mondiali.

Smart glasses per fare video, ricevere chiamate e interagire con agenti virtuali di intelligenza artificiale, che Meta oggi vende a 300 dollari circa (in Italia tra i 300 e i 400 euro a seconda del modello).

Su questo Apple dovrà confrontarsi, perché l’esperienza dovrà essere simile, se non superiore, per posizionarsi in un mercato già presidiato dai Google Glasses, gli Spectacles di Snapchat, gli Amazon Echo Frames, i ThinkReality A3 di Lenovo o gli Anzu di Razer, solo per citare i prodotti più popolari (ma ci sono anche altri competitori cinesi, come Xiaomi e Huawei, che occupano significative fette di mercato).

Secondo alcuni esperti, infine, Apple in realtà starebbe rimettendo le mani su un suo vecchio prodotto, il visore Vision Pro, al tempo troppo costoso e ingombrante per conquistare il mercato, ma con i giusti interventi potrebbe ritrovare una seconda vita (compresa una versione più economica e di fascia bassa).

Limiti e sfide regolatorie

Si stima che il mercato mondiale degli smart glasses potrebbe raggiungere i 4,12 miliardi di dollari di valore entro il 2030.

Non sarà facile accelerare la crescita del settore, perché sono diversi i limiti che le aziende impegnate in questo mercato dovranno affrontare.

Uno su tutti la privacy e la sicurezza del prodotto. Questi occhiali smart possono raccogliere qualsiasi tipologia di informazioni e rastrellare dati in ogni situazione, sia video, sia audio, sollevando timori rilevanti tra gli utenti e le autorità regolatorie nazionali e sovranazionali sulla tutela dei dati personali.

Ulteriori limiti tecnologici sono legati al design del prodotto, che deve seguire delle linee di progettazione legate alla capacità di adattarsi al viso di un essere umano, caratterizzato da grandi diversità da soggetto a soggetto, alle funzionalità tecnologiche (ad esempio il display per la scelta dei servizi e le soluzioni di proiezione scelte) e alle soluzioni in termini di durata delle batterie, sensori vari e camera fotografica.

Leggi le altre notizie sull’home page di Key4biz

https://www.key4biz.it/atlas-apple-progetta-nuovi-occhiali-smart-e-lancia-la-sfida-ai-ray-ban-meta/510946/

Even the bad clickwheel iPod games—like Sega’s nearly impossible-to-control Sonic the Hedgehog port—might find their own quirky audience among gaming subcommunities, Olsro argued. “One [person] beat Dark Souls using DK bongos, so I would not be surprised if the speedrun community could try speedrunning some of those odd games.”

More than entertainment, though, Olsro said there’s a lot of historical interest to be mined from this odd pre-iPhone period in Apple’s gaming history. “The clickwheel games were a reflect[ion] of that gaming period of premium games,” Olsro said. “Without ads, bullshit, and micro-transactions and playable fully offline from start to end… Then the market evolved [on iOS] with cheaper premium games like Angry Birds before being invaded with ads everywhere and aggressive monetizations…”

The iPod might not be the ideal device for playing Sonic the Hedgehog, but you can do it!

While Olsro said he’s happy with the 42 games he’s preserved (and especially happy to play Asphalt 4 again), he won’t be fully satisfied until his iTunes Virtual Machine has all 54 clickwheel titles backed up for posterity. He compared the effort to complete sets of classic game console ROMs “that you can archive somewhere to be sure to be able to play any game you want in the future (or research on it)… Getting the full set is also addictive in terms of collection, like any other kind of collectible things.”

But Olsro’s preservation effort might have a built-in time limit. If Apple ever turns off the iTunes re-authorization servers for clickwheel iPods, he will no longer be able to add new games to his master clickwheel iPod library. “Apple is now notoriously known to not care about announcing closing servers for old things,” Olsro said. “If that version of iTunes dies tomorrow, this preservation project will be stopped. No new games will be ever added.”

“We do not know how much time we still have to accomplish this, so there is no time to lose,” Olsro wrote on Reddit. iPod gamers who want to help can contact him through his Discord account, inurayama.

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2024/11/ipod-fans-evade-apples-drm-to-preserve-54-lost-clickwheel-era-games/

Pixelmator, the Lithuania-based firm that makes popular Mac-based photo editing tools, has agreed to be acquired by Apple.

The company says that, pending regulatory approval, there will be “no material changes to the Pixelmator Pro, Pixelmator for iOS, and Photomator apps at this time,” but to “Stay tuned for exciting updates to come.” The Pixelmator team, now 17 years old, states that its staff will join Apple. Details of the acquisition price were not made public.

Fans of Pixelmator’s apps, which are notably one-time purchases, unlike Adobe’s tools, may be hoping that those “exciting updates” do not include the sublimation of Pixelmator into an Apple product at some future time, while the Pixelmator apps disappear.

Regulatory approval may not be a rubber stamp. Adobe had to abandon its $20 billion proposed acquisition of design software firm Figma after UK and European Union regulators signaled opposition to the deal and launched investigations. Similar objections from Europe arose over Amazon’s attempted purchase of iRobot, while Microsoft’s biggest acquisition ever, the $69 billion Activision Blizzard purchase, found a way through.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/11/apple-is-acquiring-image-editing-firm-pixelmator/