» Troubletown
Reuters reports on Samsung’s lowered second quarter guidance which would be the fifth consecutive quarter of annual decline.
A failure to make enough curved-screen S6 edge models to meet demand likely hurt mobile-related earnings, analysts believe. While the company says it has fixed the problem, it may be too late to fully capitalize on a lull in competition for new high-end devices ahead of the launch of the latest Apple Inc. iPhones, expected as early as September.
Maybe they should focus on their weapons division.
Coming soon to your neighborhood
It shouldn’t be surprising to learn that Apple Maps vans are making their way to more and more locations but somehow I was surprised to be sitting at my dining room table and see one drive down our street. I didn’t realize that they were marked now, otherwise it probably wouldn’t have occurred to me until later that that’s what it was.
Fortunately, we live on a dead end so it had to turn around and I was able to snap a picture of it as I ran to the curb like an idiot (or as an idiot, depending on your point of view).
People often don’t believe me so I feel the need to provide photographic evidence for practically everything.
It is not newsworthy that Apple Maps vans are combing the streets or that they’ve gotten down to Tacoma level in terms of size and/or risk to life and limb of the driver. The most newsworthy thing here is that, yes, a grown man will wave to an Apple Maps van driver and the van driver will feel obligated to wave back.
Now I kind of wish I had saluted. I wonder what he would have done then.
» ‘No, Apple is not adding DRM to songs on your Mac you already own’
Serenity Caldwell clears up the misunderstanding.
There. NOW LET US NEVER SPEAK OF IT AGAIN.
» The Rebound #41: Contempt is One of Our Core Competencies
Lex is away this week so the lovely and talented Guy English joins Dan and me to talk about Apple Music.
» ‘Steve Jobs’ trailer
If you know anything about me, well, I’m very, very sorry. But it’s incorrect to say I don’t care about these Steve Jobs biopics. I loathe the idea of them. They’re all going to be fictionalized in some way and, because of that, I just don’t care. So I was doing my level-headed best to ignore Steve Jobs and it wasn’t easy because “SORKIN, SORKIN, SORRRRRRKIIIIIN!”
Now, Brian Michael Bendis — writer of the amazing Alias — has written that it’s the “best screenplay i’ve read in years”. Of course, if he was asked to work on it, that’s what he’s going to say. What else are you going to say?
But, still…
» Turning This Car Around #67: This Ain’t SeaWorld, Grandma
This episode was recorded a few weeks back and covers summer plans, so it’s a good time for a gut check. We also give some great tips for how to smuggle booze onto a cruise ship and Jon and I go off on a tangent about our ’70s crushes.
We talk about kids and fatherhood in there somewhere, too.
» This is what it sounds like when subscribers cry
Oscar Raymundo for Macworld:
Apple Music scores with Taylor Swift and Thom Yorke,
This is kind of why I use music streaming for discovery but not for general listening.
(An earlier version of this post said Led Zeppelin was not included. That was incorrect. Also, the Macworld piece has since been updated. The Black Keys do show up but apparently not all their tracks actually play.)
» Getting better
In an email to Microsoft employees, Satya Nadella reveals the company’s new mission statement:
To “empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.”
I’m not a fan of mission statements but this one is fine as far as these things go. His email was almost exactly half as long as his previous one and less jargony so that’s good, too.
» Turning This Car Around, 66: Bill OReilly Parts
This week on the dadcast to end all dadcasts, we talk about Father’s Day and Dance Party USA.
Watch your language
The other day I went to respond to a text from my wife on my Apple Watch and here’s what I saw:
All the canned replies were in Japanese. OK, my wife and I both speak some Japanese but not so much we message each other in it. What the nabeyaki udon? The weird thing was, it was only for her. All my other replies to Messages sessions were in English.
I’m sure bilingual Watch owners probably already know this but it took me a little while to figure it out. If you have a foreign keyboard up in a Messages reply on the iPhone, it forces canned Watch responses to that language.
I have the Japanese keyboard enabled on my iPhone because I sometimes use it. What had happened was that I went to respond to my wife on my iPhone, had thought about using an emoji and started cycling through the keyboards but decided to go talk to her instead so I stopped at the Japanese one and left it there.
Obviously, this is done so the Watch responses are in the same language you use to message someone on the iPhone, which makes sense. And it works if the keyboard is showing on the iPhone or hidden. It’s just a little surprising if it kicks in by mistake. It only works for languages that are enabled on the Apple Watch, so Russian works but Hebrew doesn’t, you just get English (or whatever your default language is set to). And it’s only a language thing, so it only changes the canned Watch responses. It doesn’t do anything if you put up the emoji keyboard on your iPhone.