Yearly Archives: 2015

Longreads:

“I must admit that it was intended consciously as a social document. … [but] the storyteller’s first duty is to the story.”

Not a “long read” but a 90 minute documentary on the making of what many, myself included, consider the greatest film of all time. If you get a chance to grab a DVD of it, make sure you get the one with the commentary tracks – one by Roger Ebert and the other with Peter Bogdanovich. It will give you a new and greater appreciation of this magnificent film.

Federico Viticci came up some a list of things he would like to see in the next version of iOS. As you might expect, some of the things on the list are fixes for the current operating system, but it’s an interesting read.

Swedish music streamer Spotify has more to lose from Apple’s anticipated Beats Music revamp than its competition, according to new usage data, as iOS accounts for a majority of Spotify’s active users.

Apple really has to do this right. We’ve seen music services do big, splashy relaunches and users really don’t care—I really don’t care. There are some key points that Apple needs to take care of to beat out Spotify—if they don’t, it’s going to be a tough road ahead for them. Music is very important to Apple, there is no doubt about that, but they have to keep the focus and intensity on this that they’ve shown for their other products.

Vinepair:

In America Cinco de Mayo has evolved to become one of the country’s largest drinking holidays. In 2013, over $600 million dollars worth of beer was sold, according to Nielsen data, which is more beer than is sold for St. Patrick’s Day or the Super Bowl, two holidays where beer consumption is the primary focal point. And most of that beer is Mexican in origin, which has also meant that the Mexican beer sector, thanks to Cinco de Mayo, has continued to grow and thrive north of the border, experiencing the best sector growth in the American market according to EuroMonitor data, second only to the rapid growth of American craft beer.

Suffice it to say, Cinco de Mayo is a behemoth when it comes to selling booze, but how did a holiday that isn’t really even celebrated in Mexico – Mother’s Day, which occurs around the same time, is a much bigger deal – become not only the most powerful U.S. holiday when it comes to selling alcohol, but also the only connection most Americans have to our largest immigrant group? You can thank Texas distributors of Corona in the 1980s.

Yet another completely made up “holiday” created in the service of marketing.

Craig Hockenberry:

I started reporting these issues early in the Yosemite beta release and provided tons of documentation to Apple engineering. It was frustrating to have a Mac that lost its network connection every few days because the network interfaces were disabled while waking from sleep (and there was no way to disable this new “feature”.)

Marco Arment and many others are having similar issues.

They pay for shipping and promise a three-day turnaround. I feel like doing it just to see how it works.

Great performance.

CBC News:

It was a busy weekend in Torbay, as the first iceberg of the season arrived in eastern Newfoundland just off the coastline near Tapper’s Cove.People flocked to the area over the weekend to take advantage of the site.

The Canadian Coast Guard says there’s currently more than 100 icebergs off the province’s coastlines, so it’s just the beginning of iceberg season in Newfoundland and Labrador.

This is how cool Canada is – we have icebergs, baby! By the way, if you ever want a fun vacation, visit Newfoundland. Starkly beautiful province and wonderful people.

CBC News:

To mark Star Wars Day, as May the 4th has come to be known, the carillon bells inside the Peace Tower on Parliament Hill rang out the Imperial March music for Star Wars, among other space-related tunes.

It was part of a 15-minute carillon concert with a space theme that began at noon.

The concert included the Star Wars theme by John Williams, arranged by Janet Dundore; Princess Leia’s Theme, arranged by Janet Dundore and Andrea McCrady; and The Imperial March, arranged by Andrea McCrady.

There’s nerdy and there’s cool. Rarely do the two intersect but this is definitely Nerd Cool.

When an app isn’t responding or working correctly, it might use more of the processor (CPU) than it should, even when the app doesn’t seem to be doing anything. As the CPU gets busier, it uses more energy, which reduces the length of time that your Mac can run on battery power. It also generates heat, which can cause the fans in your Mac to spin faster. 

I’ve used this from time to time to see if an app was dragging the system down.

I’m not a huge Star Wars fan, but obviously the people at Amazon are. They are selling everything from toys to dog outfits in the Star Wars theme.

As you design your Apple Watch app, understand the foundations on which Apple Watch itself was designed:

Some great information posted on Apple’s developer Web site.

A new and exciting website has recently been launched for web designers and developers.

You likely spend hours every morning browsing through hundreds of posts on your RSS feeds, hoping to stumble across relevant stories. Webdesigner News was built to provide web designers and developers with a single location to discover the latest and most significant stories on the Web.

They search through hundreds of posts on blogs, social media, and news channels, to deliver the most essential stories of the day. The content covers quality news, fresh tools and apps, case studies, code demos, inspiration posts, videos and more.

With frequent updates throughout the day, you’ll always find something interesting and fun to read.

Click here to visit the Webdesigner News website and subscribe to the newsletter for the latest stories of the day.

Techcrunch:

The idea behind Dufl is that frequent travelers waste a lot of time trying to clean and prep their clothes for each trip, especially when those trips are pretty much back-to-back. With Dufl, the user never has to pack a bag or clean their travel clothes ever again.

I’d hate to be such a frequent business traveller I’d need this kind of service but it does sound like a pretty cool idea and an example of a business that wouldn’t have been possible ten, maybe even five years ago.