The team behind Apple Music and a select group of artists, songwriters, producers, and industry professionals picked the 100 best albums ever made, and Apple published the results this week. Any ranking like this is necessarily subjective and thus likely to lead to debate. For example, there are no country albums on this list, which may cause some to cry foul. But it is still a list of some fantastic albums and may give you some ideas for what to listen to next on your iPhone. Scroll down the website to see the album covers fly by. The top 10 on the list are: (1) The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill (1998), Lauryn Hill; (2) Thriller (1982), Michael Jackson; (3) Abbey Road (1969), The Beatles; (4) Purple Rain (1984), Prince & The Revolution; (5) Blonde (2016), Frank Ocean; (6) Songs in the Key of Life (1976), Stevie Wonder; (7) good kid, m.A.A.d city (2012), Kendrick Lamar; (8) Back to Black (2006), Amy Winehouse; (9) Nevermind (1991), Nirvana; and (10) Lemonade (2016), Beyoncé. You can learn more about why those ten made the list in this article from Apple. And now, the rest of the news of note from the past week:
- Speaking of winners, Apple announced the finalists for this year’s Apple’s Design Awards, and John Voorhees of MacStories shares the list. As is true every year, there are some apps on the list that make me say “oh, of course,” and others that I haven’t heard about that I now want to check out.
- Filipe Espósito of 9to5Mac reviews an interesting app called Controller for HomeKit that lets you create a 3D floor plan of your house and then put buttons to control your various HomeKit devices in the different rooms.
- Brent Dirks of App Advice reviews a new app called Kino, made by the team behind Halide Camera, which can be used to improve videos that you take with an iPhone. For example, you can use the Instant Grade feature to apply professional color presets that provide a film-like look.
- John Voorhees of MacStories includes a video with his review of Kino that shows the different filters being used.
- Malcolm Owen of AppleInsider compares the former Apple Magic Keyboard for iPad with the new model that works with the iPad Pro G4.
- Samantha Wiley of iLounge reports that the Apple Vision Pro was recognized as the recipient of the Black Pencil design award.
- Yesterday, Marvel launched a new, free app for the Apple Vision Pro called “What If…? An Immersive Story” (click here to download) which tells an interactive story in an immersive environment. Jason Snell of Six Colors liked it, noting that it is “a single app that demonstrates all the features of the Vision Pro at its best.”
- I tried the “What if…?” app last night, and I liked it. The interactive portions of it didn’t always work for me as well as it seemed they should, but the story proceeds even if you don’t make every hand gesture necessary to cast every spell. The one-hour presentation itself was beautiful, a 3D cartoon in which I seemed to be a participant, which was a new experience for me. This is yet another example of how immersive content on the Vision Pro is something special, and I love it.
- David Sparks of MacSparky discusses the new immersive content for the Vision Pro such as Apple’s new Parkour video and this new Marvel app, noting that “it is simultaneously promising and overdue.” Don’t get me wrong, I’m thrilled to see this new content and would love to see more, but the Vision Pro is such an early adopter device with, I presume, a relatively small number of current users, that it doesn’t really surprise me that it takes time for everyone to ramp up. Indeed, the system is so new that it wouldn’t surprise me to see some major software updates announced at WWDC next month.
- Ed Hardy of Cult of Mac looks at all of the comedies and dramas coming to Apple TV+ this summer. There are lots of shows on that list that seem like they could be quite good.
- Someone who goes by the handle LegoTruman thinks it would be a good idea for Lego to sell an Apple Store, so he came up with a model to show what it would look like and posted it on the Lego Ideas site. He did a great job with this one!
- Michael Potuck of 9to5Mac shares three recent videos released by Apple to promote using the Apple Credit Card.
- And finally, Apple shot a video of an actress moving around against a green screen and then gave the video to three different artists who used the Procreate app on an iPad Pro M4 to create a different video. The end result is interesting as you see three completely different ideas even though they start from the same video: