aNewDomain — Happy Wednesday morning to you. Here are the top tech stories for today, January 11, 2017, delivered to your digital doorstep.
Consumer Report’s original review.
First up is Apple, who experienced a little redemption and rejection.
Working with data provided to Apply by Consumer Reports, Apple claims to have found the bug that caused Consumer Reports to experience erratic battery life when testing the new MacBook Pros. Because of these erratic results, Consumer Reports chose not to recommend the laptops. A
Apple claims a change in an obscure browser setting is to blame.
“We appreciate the opportunity to work with Consumer Reports over the holidays to understand their battery test results,” Apple said in a statement to TechCrunch. “We learned that when testing battery life on Mac notebooks, Consumer Reports uses a hidden Safari setting for developing web sites which turns off the browser cache…. We have also fixed the bug uncovered in this test.” Consumer Reports plans to retest the laptops.
While the bug fix is a public relations win for Apple, the loss of a top engineer is a real-world loss. Chris Lattner is leaving Apple to become VP of Autopilot Software at Tesla. Well liked by developers. Lattner headed up the Swift programming language at Apple. Apple observer extraordinaire John Gruber laments the loss of Lattner:
Lattner is a really smart, very well-liked, and deeply respected guy. His leaving is a loss for Apple.
Swift really is Lattner’s baby — he developed the earliest versions of it by himself starting in 2010, before work expanded to a larger group in Apple’s Developer Tools group. (Swift wasn’t announced publicly until June 2014.) The Apple developer community is still in the middle of the transition to Swift. I’m a little surprised he’d leave in the midst of the upheaval. It’s a thriving language, but it is far from a completed project — neither the language itself nor the OS frameworks.
Lastly in Apple news, BGR’s Zach Epstein is not happy with the Bluetooth issues plaguing some iPhone 7s.
Three Things that Make Me Happy
1. Studio Ghibli is releasing an original series Original Series on Amazon. “Ronja, the Robber’s Daughter” premiers Jan 27.
2. It’s becoming increasingly likely the new Zelda game — The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild — will be a launch title when the Nintendo Switch (NX) is released this March.
3. And Starcade, the awesome gaming TV show from the 1980s is coming back. Pure heaven.
And here are three things you should read today …
- The Detroit News is providing top-notch coverage of the International Auto Show.
- Check out this great reporting from TechCrunch on the tech side of the incoming secretary of the Department of Homeland security.
- Fitbit buys another wearable company.
For tech news throughout the day, just follow me on Twitter. Now get back to work, people. See you tomorrow.
For aNewDomain, I’m Mike Olsen.
Cover image of Morning Tech Report with Mike Olsen: Tom Ewing for aNewDomain, All Rights Reserved; all screenshots, Mike Olsen.
