shownotes_20141130

Opening
  Opening Music
    Music is Say Anything by Manda and the Marbles
News
  Apple tightens up manufacturing partners
    Foxconn's Innolux will build a new $2.6 billion sixth-generation plant in Southern Taiwan to supply displays exclusively to Apple
      A company representative spoke to Bloomberg and said they will begin mass production of panels exclusively for Apple by the end of 2015
      They don't state specifically what the displays they will make will be used for, but they said the new factory came about because of "an urgent request for exclusive capacity," from Apple
      Foxconn Technology Group expects employ about 2,300 people at the factory.
      Innolux is Taiwan's largest maker of LCD screens and it's believed that they supply the 4.7-inch Retina displays used in Apple's current iPhone 6
      Apple also uses LG, Samsung, and Japan Display for LCDs, but it's believed they have been slowly working Samsung out of their supply chain.
    Some users are complaining of scratched glass on iPhone 6 models
      AppleInsider pointed to a thread, with over 103,000 views and 626 replies, started on Sep. 23
      Users are alleging that the current phone is more prone to scratching than previous iPhone models
      Apple doesn't reveal what material is used, but it's believed to be Gorilla Glass 3. Apple calls it strengthened "Ion-X” glass.
      One users says he's seen scratches being in a microfiber case. (Possibly grit caught and rubbed?)
      Others complain the new rounded edges are more susceptible due to being exposed.
      I have no issues so far with my iPhone 6
  GT Advanced fallout continues
    The Wall Street Journal spoke with Pegatron and other Apple suppliers to get a sense of what it's like to be an Apple supplier or partner
    The general answer is it's not easy, but can reap bog rewards.
    The describe the company as tough but fair.
    Keys to success seem to be not promising more than you can deliver and diversifying, Apple can't be your only option.
    Both areas where GT Advanced made big errors in judgement.
    Apple is know for being strict and demanding, especially on quality, and GT Advanced had promised sapphire boules sized at 578 pounds.
  Devs get 10.10.2 Yosemite Beta
    The build, number 14C68k, didn't list any specific areas for developers to test
    Many are hoping it might finally address their wi-Fi issues, which seem to continue for many despite the last 10.10.1 update
    If you're impacted you're likely experiencing a Wi-Fi connection that becomes very slow or highly unstable, possibly dropping every few minutes
    One user and network CEO claims to have cracked the cause
      co-founder and CEO of Colorado Springs-based Quantum Metric and Mario Ciabarra thinks the issues is Apple's use of Bonjour over Apple Wireless Direct Link (AWDL)
      That's used for things like AirDrop, AirPlay and gaming connections.
      The solution he suggests is to disable AirDrop and doing AirPlay directly with other devices. Requires Jailbreak.
      There is a terminal hack for OS X, but you'll disable AirDrop and AWDL
    Will Apple switch the default browser in Safari
      Google's search deal with Apple is set to expire "in early 2015."
      "The Information" reporting that Apple Internet Software and Services SVP Eddy Cue is talking to Microsoft and Yahoo!
      There is also speculation that Apple could switch to other non-Google search engines in countries outside the US.
      Siri and Spotlight suggestions are already powered by Bing.
  A8 may have more power than advertised
    Softorino, developers of the cool Media loading app WALTR, have discovered some secrets inside Apple's A8 found in the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus.
    The A8 can seemingly play back 4K video.
    Using their app, they found that it was possible to load 4K videos onto an iPhone 6. Not only that, but the device managed to play it back without any issues.
    A 4K image is 3,840-by-2,160 pixels and the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus screens are 1,334-by-750 and 1,920-by-1,080 pixels respectively, so even though you can playback the 4K you really can't see it.
    Still it has promise for output to 4K displays or a new Apple TV.
  Analyst expects big 4Q Apple numbers
    KGI analyst Ming-Chi Kuo expects iPhone shipment to grow a whopping 82 percent in the 4th quarter
    The prediction is Apple will have shipped ship over 71.5 million iPhones with roughly 41.65 million of those, little less than 60 percent, being iPhone 6's.
    Interestingly he doesn't think the iPhone 6 Plus sales are a sign of weak demand, but rather strong demand with supply chain issues reducing sales.
    He feels Apple's ability to manage that as they finish out the quarter will have an impact on that final sales figure.
    Moving into the first quarter of 2015 Kuo expects a significant off season slowing of iPhone demand with unit shipments dropping to 49.4 million units.
      Interesting though he also sees quarter-on-quarter growth of 77.3 percent and 58.2 percent of the iPhone 5c and iPhone 4s respectively
      Even with their growth however he still expects Apple to cease production of both phones during the year.
      Commercial Times is saying it will happen the middle of next year.
      Even after iPhone 5c production stops Apple will still have months to clear inventory. Likely something will replace the low end when the iPhone 7 is announced.
    Is iPhone iPad cannibalisation happening?
      Data from Pocket app seems to indicate it may be.
      They looked at over 2 million article and video opens and compared before-and-after the release of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus.
      Their study included owners of both an iPhone and an iPad.
      In a blog post they said 55% of owners of the iPhone 5s viewed content on their phone rather than iPad, but the number leapt to 72% for the iPhone 6 and 80% for the iPhone 6 Plus
      Their study also so that those with bigger phones read more content. 33 percent more for those who upgraded to an iPhone 6 and 65 percent more for iPhone 6 Plus upgraders.
      Other observations
        People consumed more video once they had a larger phone.
        iPads seemed to stay home more frequently.
        iPads were still preferred in the evening, after 9 PM.
        Larger iPhones were used less, 22 percent less, during morning commutes. The one-hand dilemma.
        Pocket users preferred the iPhone 6 2.5 times more than the 6 Plus.
      Bear in mind the study is from one company looking at behavior data right after the new devices are released. Still interesting however.
      Are you using your iPad less since upgrading?
  Apple updates Apple Watch site
    Apple last week added some updates to it’s Apple Watch minisite that give new insight into the Apple Watch experience
    The 'Features' page has been expanded with three sections providing details on “Timekeeping,” “New Ways to Connect,” and “Health & Fitness.”
    The Timekeeping section
      Name and descriptions of the watch faces
      Multiple looks for many watch faces, more levels of detail if you’d like. For example show minutes, seconds, and milliseconds.
      "Complications", a few specialized functions. Things like moon phases or sunrises and sunsets are "complications". May have stock quotes, weather reports, your next calendar event, and daily activity as complications.
      The timekeeping section also has an "interactive" demo of the stopwatch. Shows hybrid, digital, and analog interfaces.
    Ways to Connect
      Goes into more detail on the 'Messages', Sketch', 'Tap', and 'Heartbeat' features demoed at WWDC.
    Health & Fitness
      New interactive animations for the Apple Watch’s move, exercise, and stand monitoring functions from the fitness app.
    The release of Apple Watchkit SDK to developers a few weeks ago revealed that early apps will rely on extensions running on the iPhone and pass data to actionable notifications, glances, and WatchKit apps. Native 3rd party apps won’t be available until later in 2015.
    Still no details on additional price points or release date
      Starting at $349.00 USD
      Best guess is still Spring 2015 based on comments Apple SVP Angela Ahrendts made to retail staff.
  Rumored schematics for 12-inch iPad
    Japanese magazine Mac Fan has published some possible schematics for what they are calling the "iPad Air Plus".
    The news of the images came from Mac Otakara and they purportedly reveal more specific details about the 12-inch iPad we’ve been hearing about for years.
    Mac Fan had previously reported some accurate details about the resolution of the iPhone 6 screen.
    The detailed plans show a device with a 12.2-inch screen measuring 12 inches x 8.7 inches x 0.28 inches
      If you remember early rumors pointed to a 12.9-inch iPad Pro, but more recent leaks seem to indicate a slightly smaller 12.2-inch size.
    Also in the report is that the "Air Plus" will contain a next gen Apple A9 processor, though some reports have believed it would use the new A8X from the iPad Air 2.
    Lastly the design show four speaker placements. Two on the top and two on the bottom, reportedly to allow for improved stereo sound. I would even speculate there could be a "Beats designed" audio tie in?
    The report also suggests that Apple will debut an iPad mini 4 that will feature the A8X processor. And that with the release of the iPad mini 4 Apple will discontinue sales of the iPad mini 3 and iPad mini. The 16GB iPad mini 2 would remain as the low priced option (seems like they’d want to use the iPad mini 3, since it has TouchID).
    They claim both of these tablets may launch between April and June of 2015. This timeline would be in-line with a report from KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo from a couple weeks ago. He claimed iPad Pro production had been pushed back to the second quarter of 2015.
Feedback, commentary, opinions
  Shutdown, Sleep, Restart shortcuts
    Last show I mentioned a cool GitHub project that had small "apps" for shutting down, restarting, locking, and sleeping your Mac.
    I thought these were cool for those of use who like to use Spotlight as an app launcher using the Command+Spacebar shortcut. Then you can quickly lock or sleep your Mac.
    Many pointed out that there are already keyboard shortcuts built in for these operations
      Display Sleep: Ctrl+Shift+Eject (power)
      Sleep Immediately: Cmd+Opt+Eject or press Power
      Restart Immediately: Cmd+Ctl+Eject (power)
      Shutdown Immediately: Cmd+Opt+Ctl+Eject (Power)
      Restart+Sleep+Shutdown, with dialog: Ctl+Eject or press and hold Power for 1.5 seconds.
      Trouble with this is you have to remember the combos and not get confused as to which ones do what. I often shutdown when I mean to sleep, etc.
  Screenshot to clipboard
    Last week we got into OS X’s built in screen shot feature a bit.
    I discussed the CMD+SHIFT+3 and CMD+SHIFT+4 options for a screen shot and a selection respectively. This drops an image file on the desktop.
    The question was changing the file format in Grab, which you can’t do. You can change the format with a Terminal hack, but that no longer seems to work in OS X Yosemite.
    My work around was that you can use the 'File' > 'Take Screenshot' option in Preview and then save out into any format you wish (TIFF, PNG, JPG, or PDF).
    Frank wrote in to give another handy tip:
      CTRL-SHIFT-CMD-3 or CTRL-SHIFT-CMD-4 this will cause your screen capture to be copied to the clipboard instead of saving a file to the desktop.
      Then you can open Preview and use the 'File' > 'New from Clipboard' option and save to your desired file format.
      Of course you can also paste your screenshots into another App like Mail or Pages, etc.
    Since Frank gave us a great tip he also has an OS X Yosemite Mail question:
      When you type a search in Mail it gives you filtered drop down options as it has for a while (“Subject” “Message Body” “From” “To” etcetera)
      Now in OS X Yosemite however it seems to start to weed out criteria where it believes there are no matches:
        For example the name 'Frank' start typing with the 'F' and it has options for "Mailbox, Person, From, Attachment"
        Once "Frank" typed out the Mailbox and Attachment option are removed since there are no attachments or mailboxes with the word "Frank" in them.
        The trouble is if you type a search term that doesn’t fit ANY filter criteria then all options disappear and there is no option to search the "Entire Message Contents".
        In OS X Mavericks there was always a "Message contains:" option. Frank tells me that is gone in OS X Yosemite Mail?
      My only thought for a workaround was to use search tokens in a Finder Search. Using the "type: Mail" and "contains: term" options together.
      So I turned to Twitter and Kevin came through.
        He pointed me to some discussion threads that indicated this issue may not be new to OS X Yosemite.
        The issue may lie with the Spotlight or Mail indexes somehow becoming corrupt.
        For me, like Frank, the issue manifested after the upgrade to OS X Yosemite.
        There are many "fixes" offered up and I’m not sure which one worked for me as I tried several.
        The fix seems to be different for different folks so I’ll offer as many up as I can.
      Possible fixes
        The one I believe worked for me was re-indexing Spotlight
          One method is to add your main hard drive to System Preferences > Spotlight > Privacy. Then remove it from Privacy and it should force a re-index (this did not work for me).
          I had the do the more forceful Terminal command, 'sudo mdutil -E /'. This deletes the index and forces the rebuild.
        Another fix is to re-build the Mailbox in Mail. Select the inbox and choose Mailbox > Rebuild Mailbox.
        If that doesn’t work then some suggest a Reindex just the relevant folders, by opening Terminal and running the command "mdimport ~/Library/Mail/V2", adding the folder name to the end.
        If that doesn’t work then a complete re-index of the Envelope files. Go to ~/Library/Mail/V2/MailData/ and delete the files that begin with "Envelope Index" (there should be three of them, plus possibly some undeleted temporary files). Restart Mail and let it reindex.
      All of these "fixes" have the potential for failure so please make sure your email files are backed up before you attempt them.
  Another developer story
    Play story from from Paul.
    I know many people who take a class or learn iOS development thinking they are going to write an an app for themselves and then either land a new job or end up creating an app at their company instead.
    Learning new skills can bring opportunities in surprising ways.
  Fix gigantasave sheet
    Since I haven’t upgraded fully yet I was unaware of a bug that has plagued some OS X Yosemite users and in your favorite apps will probably hit you at some point.
    The bug is in the "Save Sheet" dialog that comes down when you save a document in an OS X app. It’s length can grow over time to the point where you cant re-size it.
    Jason Snell revealed the details and fix on his Six Colors blog.
    The developer at St. Clair Software, makers of Default Folder X, filled Jason in on the why.
      Apple changed the file dialogs so that the title bar is now considered to be part of the window.
      That bar is 22px high and the trouble is that Apple changed the math everywhere except in save sheets.
      So each time you use the save function in an App that sheet length grows by 22px.
    One fix is to reset the size setting in the apps preferences so that it resets.
      There are a couple Terminal Commands you can run to do that.
        defaults delete -app [AppNAme] NSNavPanelExpandedSizeForOpenModedefaults
        delete -app [AppName] NSNavPanelExpandedSizeForSaveMode
        Replace [AppName] above with the name of the App you need to fix. For example, 'defaults delete -app BBEdit NSNavPanelExpandedSizeForOpenMode' if the App is BBEdit.
    An easier, non-Terminal hack, way pointed out by Daniel Ericsson is to hold down the shift key and drag inward on the edge of the save sheet, the sheet will get shorter—even if there’s no room for the sheet to actually get narrower!
  Text Edit, iCloud, and iOS
    Brad is a TextEdit user on the Mac and also uses iCloud to save his Text Edit files.
    This is great with multiple Macs. TextEdit with iCloud on another Mac can see, read, and edit those documents.
    The thing is there is not, yet, TextEdit on iOS, so Brad was asking how he can use TextEdit on the Mac, but still have access to edit and work with his TextEdit files on iOS as well while, of course, keeping everything in sync.
    Prior to OS X Yosemite and iCloud Drive this is all but impossible
      Each apps iCloud files are kept separate and are not accessible, at least not easily, on the Mac.
      You can find them in ~/Library/Mobile Documents, so you could possibly create an alias to the folder for an App and save your Text Edit documents to that folder.
    In OS X Yosemite with iCloud Drive enabled it’s a bit easier.
      iCloud Drive is now accessible in any Finder Window. If you don’t see it, choose Finder > Preferences, click Sidebar, and check iCloud Drive.
      Inside the iCloud Drive files are organized by the App (iOS or Mac) that they are associated with. So there would be a 'Text Edit' folder for example.
      The good news is all of your iCloud Drive folders are also should be accessible from the Open and Save dialogs in any apps (as long as the file type is supported by that app).
      So even if you create a file in Text Edit on your Mac when you save it you could simply save to an iOS compatible Text Editing app, say like 'ByWord' or 'Textastic'. (I have had trouble finding iOS Editors that support RTF).
      Once saved to the appropriate iOS app you can just open on your Mac from there and in the App on iOS.
    Looking for Text Editors for iOS you should check out Brett Terpstra’s extensive list of editors
      He has an awesome feature table for each one which includes if they support iCloud or not.
    Of course another option would be to not use iCloud and use a service like Dropbox that integrates with an editor that supports Dropbox.
  Clean iTunes Music Match Storage
    Andy sent me a voicemail because he encountered a bit of trouble in keeping his Music library clean since upgrading to iOS 8
    Andy, like me, is a Music Match customer and loves it. He likes a small and tidy Music library on his devices and iTunes Match lets you download just the music you want while still having access to the rest via iTunes in the Cloud.
    For non-downloaded Matched music you can simple press play and "stream" the music.
    The thing is Apple’s version of streaming is not what we typically think of as "streaming".
    They really do a progressive download and store the files "cached" in a secret area on the device. The Music app is aware of it, but you can’t really see it and manage it.
    To see the effects of this stream an iTunes Matched song and then go into Settings > Music and turn off the 'Show All Music' option. Back in the Music app you’ll see that the song is still there. Worse, swiping across the track doesn’t give you the delete option. With music you manually download you can always delete it when you want.
    This was the thing that was frustrating Andy, because in the past you could go to Settings > General > Usage > Manage Storage. Tap on the 'Music' category and then tap 'Delete All Music' to purge the downloaded data. This no longer seems to work in IOS 8.
    The only possible solution I found would be to go into Settings > Music, turn Off iTunes Match and then turn it back on again. And still for me it inexplicably left three track behind still.
    The only other workaround I read about was using some the the Mac apps that let you browse the iPhone’s storage areas and manually deleting it from there.
    Any other ideas?
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