Yearly Archives: 2015

iMore:

Jony Ive will give Charlie Rose a look inside “Apple’s secret design studio” in an upcoming episode of 60 Minutes that will be aired on Sunday, December 20 at 7:30PM ET & 7PM PT on CBS. Rose’s tour of Apple’s “store of the future” with retail chief Angela Ahrendts will also be highlighted on the show.

While this may be interesting viewing, don’t get your hopes up to see any “secrets”. I’ve been inside Apple’s labs and studios and whenever an outsider is present, all the good bits are well hidden and/or covered in black cloth.

Apple:

Apple and China UnionPay announced a partnership to bring Apple Pay, which transforms mobile payments with an easy, secure and private way to pay, to China. China UnionPay cardholders will be able to easily add their bank cards to Apple Pay on iPhone, Apple Watch and iPad, providing added convenience and security to everyday shopping.

“China UnionPay is dedicated to promoting payment innovations and providing secure, convenient mobile payment experiences for its hundreds of millions of cardholders, aligning multiple parties in the industry,” said Chai Hongfeng, executive vice president of China UnionPay. “We’re very excited to offer Apple Pay among a diverse set of innovative payment options that work with China UnionPay QuickPass.”

“Apple Pay has revolutionized the way millions of people pay every day with their iPhone, Apple Watch and iPad,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services. “China is an extremely important market for Apple and with China UnionPay and support from 15 of China’s leading banks, users will soon have a convenient, private and secure payment experience.

“Extremely important” may be the understatement of the year. This is the single most important thing to happen to Apple Pay since it was first announced.

Ars Technica:

John Chen, the Blackberry chairman and CEO, is ripping Apple’s position that granting the authorities access to a suspected criminal’s mobile device would “tarnish” the iPhone maker’s image.

“We are indeed in a dark place when companies put their reputations above the greater good. At BlackBerry, we understand, arguably more than any other large tech company, the importance of our privacy commitment to product success and brand value: privacy and security form the crux of everything we do. However, our privacy commitment does not extend to criminals,” Chen wrote in a blog post titled “The encryption Debate: a Way Forward.”

Well, if anyone would know a thing or two about a tarnished brand, it would be the CEO of Blackberry. I’d rather have Apple making sure law enforcement requests have a “clear legal authority” rather than Chen’s plan to roll over whenever the government wants to “help us be safe”.

Macstories:

Pigment works in a rather unsurprising way: the app launches to a library of digital coloring books, ranging from animal figures such as butterflies and birds filled with smaller patterns to flowers, geometric shapes, 3D structures, and the omnipresent mandalas for a total of 200 illustrated works. Most of the books’ artworks have been licensed from Shutterstock, but there are also books by independent artists as well as patterns created with Assembly, Pixite’s innovative design tool for iOS. It’s a good selection of themes and patterns, in line with popular trends in adult coloring books and a solid start for an app that wants to replicate the coloring experience on an iPhone and iPad.

Adult coloring books have been around for a while. As soon as I saw the iPad Pro and the Apple Pencil, I knew they would be a good fit for people like me who can’t draw but like to color.

BusinessInsider:

Apple announced a sweep of management changes on Thursday, which includes the appointment of Tor Myhren, who has become the company’s vice president of marketing and communications.

43-year-old Myhren will join in early 2016 from well-respected ad network Grey Group, where he was worldwide chief creative officer and president of its New York shop Grey New York.

Now he’s moving client-side. At Apple he’ll be responsible for all the brand’s marketing efforts — everything from its big TV campaigns, to packaging, and retail store displays.

It’s been rumored for a while that Phil Schiller hasn’t been happy with Apple’s ad campaigns in the past 18 months. This is a sign the company is looking to shake up how it projects itself to the consumer.

Westjet:

On December 9, 2015 we celebrated WestJet’s 12,000 mini miracles day. WestJetters wearing blue Santa hats joined Blue Santa with a goal of making 12,000 mini miracles happen across our network over a 24-hour period. A mini miracle is simply an act of kindness that evokes a positive response from someone.

Thanks to everyone who helped make this day a success. We ended up counting a grand total of 31,793 mini miracles

Canadian airline WestJet does this Christmas themed video every year and every year, it brings a tear to my eye. It shows that it doesn’t take much to spread a little goodwill during the holiday season. You can do it too. Try something as simple as buying a coffee for the person in line behind you.

The Deck Network is booking First Quarter and 2016 schedules now. There are efficient packages available for multi-month campaigns and The Deck can offer a nice price to first-time advertisers too. If you want to get your message in front of millions of curious and savvy readers, start your new year marketing right, and drop a note to The Deck.

I use The Deck here on The Loop because they deliver small, tasteful ads and they work with some of the best sites on the Internet.

The Verge:

This isn’t an investment column, and I am not an investment adviser. But here’s a free financial tip: if any company actually mass-produces a new, safe, practical, affordable, reliable, proven, much longer-lasting type of battery for digital devices, buy stock. Buy a lot of it. Because batteries are the key to every electronic device we now depend upon — especially smartphones and laptops — and they are the weak link in the system.

He’s right. And it’s not just digital devices. Better batteries are the key to the electric car’s future, too.

Apple adds LA to the growing list of world-wide cities, plus more than 300 cities in China.

Great find by Tina Roth Eisenberg. I have cables everywhere that could benefit from this.

Jim and Dan talk about the new Apple Smart Battery Case for iPhone and more Apple news.

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You can get the new Sonos Controller app from the App Store and try Apple Music on your Sonos system beginning today. I’ve been testing it out for the last couple of weeks and it works just like the other services on Sonos.