China iPhone 6 and 6 Plus online Apple Store preorders start today, in store in one week

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From Apple’s press release:

Apple® today announced that iPhone® 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, the biggest advancements in iPhone history, will be available in China beginning Friday, October 17 from the Apple Online Store (www.apple.com), Apple’s retail stores, and an expansive network of retail stores through all three major carriers and Apple Authorized Resellers. With support for TD-LTE and FDD-LTE, iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus provide customers access to 4G/LTE networks from China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom across mainland China. Customers can pre-order iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus from the Apple Online Store beginning Friday, October 10. Beginning Tuesday, October 14, customers can reserve the new iPhones for in-store pick-up starting Friday, October 17.

“We are thrilled to bring iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus to our customers in China on all three carriers at launch,” said Apple’s CEO Tim Cook. “With support for TD-LTE and FDD-LTE, iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus customers will have access to high-speed mobile networks from China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom for an incredible experience.”

Satya Nadella stirs up hornets nest, then apologizes with company wide letter

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[VIDEO] Satya Nadella was speaking at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing conference on Wednesday. He was asked to offer advice to women who are uncomfortable asking for a raise. His response opened up a viral firestorm of criticism. Take a minute to listen to what Nadella actually said, starting at about 1:33:56 in the video below, then read the rest of this post.

Tuck me in

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[VIDEO] A one minute movie, based on a short (and I mean teeny) story suggestion from Reddit, winner of the Filminute International Film Festival. Something about this just grabbed me.

Vogue profile piece on Jony Ive

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A lot has been written about Jony Ive, much of it biographical and centered on his design milestones. This piece is different. It paints a picture of Ive, does a better job capturing his spirit.

The empire reboots

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This Vanity Fair interview with Bill Gates and Satya Nadella for their upcoming November issue does a good job capturing both men’s personalities and, even more importantly, offers a sense of the nature of the challenge facing Microsoft 2.0.

Jumping the gun on teens and the Apple Watch

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Recode:

“The concept of wearing a watch for teenagers is foreign — and I think that’s part of what is reflected in that response,” said Munster. “The second piece is, it’s still something that people need to hear more about, beyond what Apple has to say about it, before people get interested in it.”

Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster responding to a survey of 7,200 teens, calling teen embrace of Apple Watch tepid. Seems to me, anticipating response to a product that has not yet hit people’s wrists is a fool’s errand.

Using predictive text to quickly Capitalize or ALL-CAPS a word

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If you are editing some text in iOS and spot a word you meant to capitalize (e.g., May instead of may), the old approach was to press and hold, then slide the cursor to just after the letter to be capitalized, then hit delete and retype the letter.

In iOS 8, there’s a better way.

Why Apple’s iPhone encryption is a godsend, even if cops hate it

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Thoughtful editorial from Wired. The upshot:

However it got there, Apple has come to the right place. It’s a basic axiom of information security that “data at rest” should be encrypted. Apple should be lauded for reaching that state with the iPhone. Google should be praised for announcing it will follow suit in a future Android release.

Also worth reading, this essay from Salon, entitled America’s huge iPhone lie: Why Apple is being accused of coddling child molesters.

The definitive West Wing

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If you are, or ever were, a fan of Aaron Sorkin and The West Wing, this oral history is a must read. Delicious.

Samsung earnings expectations plummet

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AP Wire:

The steep decline in income, likely the widest fall in Samsung’s earnings history, shows how the company’s quick rise to the world’s top smartphone maker with the Galaxy phones faces what might be its biggest challenge. Its struggle is apparent in both the high-end phone segment where it competes with Apple Inc. and the low-end segment where it faces rising competition from the likes of China’s Xiaomi and Lenovo.

This has been coming for a while now, but there’s no proof like watching earnings projections fall by half in a very short time.

iOS 8 adoption rate stagnation

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On September 23rd, Apple reported an adoption rate of 46% for iOS 8.

As of October 5th (this past Sunday), Apple’s official numbers show that, in the ensuing weeks, the adoption rate crept up to only 47%. Interestingly, the iOS 7 rate went down from 49% to 47% (as you might expect), but the pre-iOS 7 adoption number actually increased from 5% to 6%.

Windows 95 running on an Android watch

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[VIDEO] The Verge:

What happens when you give an Android Wear smartwatch to a 16-year-old with a bit too much time on his hands? You get Windows 95 on your wrist. Now, we frankly have no idea why you’d load a desktop operating system from twenty years ago onto a Samsung Gear Live smartwatch with a 1.63-inch display, but, hey, why not? Thanks to emulator software available for Android, this technology mishmash is a reality.

I am mesmerized! Watch the video.

Bill Gates on Apple Pay

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Bill Gates, in last weeks Bloomberg interview:

“Apple Pay is a great example of how a cell phone that identifies its user in a pretty strong way lets you make a transaction that should be very, very inexpensive,” he said.

He explained: “So the fact that in any application I can buy something, that’s fantastic. The fact I don’t need a physical card anymore, I just do that transaction and you’re going to be quite sure about who it is on the other end, that is a real contribution.”

How the world sees Apple Pay

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Cincinnati Enquirer:

How it works: Customers with the new iPhone 6 and the Apple Watch will be able to pay at registers with a wave of their devices. Customers buy virtual encrypted “tokens” from Apple to be stored on their phones – so in the event they’re lost or stolen, no credit card info is on the device. More details will be released this month by Apple.

I still struggle to get my head around exactly how Apple Pay works, but I do know that customers won’t be buying “virtual encrypted tokens” from Apple.

Hewlett-Packard to break in two

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NY Times:

The company, considered a foundational institution of Silicon Valley, said in a news release that it intended to divide itself into a company aimed at business technology, including computer servers and data storage equipment, software and services, and a company that sells personal computers and printers.

Both companies will be publicly traded. The business-oriented company will be called Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, while the PC company will be called HP Inc. and will retain the company’s current logo.

iPhone prototype for sale on eBay

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This original iPhone 2G prototype was used for external (outside the company) testing and was not loaded with the official iOS interface. Instead, it ran the “skankphone” testing interface (see “skank is the new black” in small print on the picture in the auction listing).

I love looking at these old phones. Amazing how far the world has come since the original iPhone was introduced.

15 year old Google Science Fair finalist, an iPhone, and a huge boost for Alzheimer’s patients

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[VIDEO] 15 year old Kenneth Shinozuka lives in New York City with his parents, aunt and grandfather. He’s one smart kid.

Kenneth’s grandfather suffers from Alzheimer’s and tended to wander out of their apartment at night, getting out in the streets of New York City, causing a number of accidents, not to mention a lot of worry.

Kenneth’s solution won him one of the 15 finalist slots at the 2014 Google Science Fair. Watch the video. Incredible work.

How Megadeth, back in 1994, helped the record industry discover the web

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Back in 1994, the internet was still a wide open frontier. WebCrawler was the state of the art in search engines. It was able to index the complete text of every site on the web. Excite, the first real portal site, was just getting started. And the music industry had no concept of what was coming.

Great read.

4 million preorders for iPhone 6 in China

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Want China Times:

China’s “big three” telecom carriers — China Telecom, China Unicom, and China Mobile — recorded over 1 million preorders for the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus only six hours after they began accepting them for the new phone’s Oct. 10 debut.

Buyers have been able to place their preorders at operators’ online and brick-and-mortar stores as well as their subsidiaries. The total number of preorders could exceed 2 million if they included those sold through distributors such as Suning Appliance and D.Phone.

UPDATE: Benjamin Mayo at 9to5mac reports the number is now 4 million preorders.

Rumor tracker

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Emergent is a real-time rumor tracker. The idea is to track rumors and, ideally, confirm them as true or false.

Understanding how Apple Pay works

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Yoni Heisler does an excellent job of demystifying Apple Pay. Here’s my take on how all this works. Now with corrections.

Samsung and the pitch to stay on Apple’s ARM

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ZDNet (via 9to5mac):

Kim Ki-nam, president of the Korean electronic giant’s semiconductor business and head of System LSI business, told reporters at Samsung’s headquarters in Seoul that once the company begins to supply Apple with chips using its latest technology, profits “will improve positively”.

Why Samsung and not TSMC? Because size matters.