Photos from the Apple Watch Sneak Peek in Paris

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Big thanks to long time Loop reader Patrick Crowley for pulling together this fantastic collection of images from yesterday’s Apple Watch event at the Colette boutique on Rue Saint Honoré as part of Fashion Week.

The images were all taken with Patrick’s brand new iPhone 6. Thanks, Patrick. Great job.

Ebay to spin off PayPal, adopting strategy backed by Icahn

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New York Times:

EBay said on Tuesday that it would spin off its PayPal payments unit into a separate publicly traded company, taking a step the activist hedge fund magnate Carl C. Icahn first demanded nine months ago.

On Apple’s Irish tax issue

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A few days ago, an article appeared in the Financial Times (paywall) alluding to a ruling by the European Commission that Apple benefited from a favorable Irish tax rate:

Apple will be accused of prospering from illegal tax deals with the Irish government for more than two decades when Brussels this week unveils details of a probe that could leave the iPhone maker with a record fine of as much as several billions of euros.

Today, the PDF of the ruling itself was posted. If you really want to understand the nature of the European Commission’s ruling, this document is the place to go. It is well-written (though slightly redacted) and makes its case, step-by-step.

BlackBerry: The Endgame

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Jean-Louis Gassée on the coming teardown of BlackBerry’s corporate assets, as well as the mistakes that cost them the game.

Why Europe will likely say ‘meh’ to Apple Pay

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Kirk McElhearn, writing for MacWorld, makes the case that though Apple Pay will certainly be a big deal in the US, it won’t have the same disruption potential in Europe.

BendGate backfires

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Nice writeup from AppleInsider focuses on the controversy itself, how it ultimately benefits Apple and injures the companies that have tried to take advantage of it.

On iOS 8 and predictive typing

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There’s a world of difference between autocorrect and predictive typing. Here’s my take on the huge strides Apple has made with this particular corner of iOS 8.

DxO Labs iPhone 6 and 6 Plus camera review: Apple set gold standard for smartphone image quality

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From the overview page:

Achieving the highest overall DxOMark Mobile score to date of 82 points each, the Apple iPhone 6 and 6 Plus tie in first place wresting the coveted top spot from Samsung S5 and Sony Xperia Z3 /Z2 each with 79 points.

I’m new to the DxO review process. They do a nice range of tests. Note that there are 4 sections to the review, with links to the overview page, imaging results, video, and iPhone vs the competition.

Apple turns on iPhone 6 and 6 Plus sales in 22 more countries this morning

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From the original press release, here’s the current list of countries:

iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus will be available in the US, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Puerto Rico, Singapore and the UK beginning this Friday, September 19 and in more than 20 additional countries beginning on Friday, September 26 including Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Isle of Man, Italy, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Turkey and United Arab Emirates.

The power of friction

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[VIDEO] Bet you’ve never seen this sort of welding before. It’s called friction welding.

Technically, because no melt occurs, friction welding is not actually a welding process in the traditional sense, but a forging technique. However, due to the similarities between these techniques and traditional welding, the term has become common. Friction welding is used with metals and thermoplastics in a wide variety of aviation and automotive applications.

So very cool. Science! [h/t Daniel Mark]

Bash Bug vulnerability affects most Unix installs, including OS X

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There’s a new vulnerability that impacts most Unix installs, including many embedded systems (devices that run Unix but don’t expose the OS interface) as well as OS X, the operating system at the heart of all modern Macs.

The issue is a flaw in the Bash shell that allows you to redefine a shell variable from the command line.

Apple creates iOS 8.0.1 support page

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From Apple’s 8.0.1 support page:

We have a workaround for you if you have an iPhone 6 or iPhone 6 Plus and you lost cellular service and Touch ID functionality today after updating to iOS 8.0.1. You can reinstall iOS 8 through iTunes by following the instructions below. We are also preparing iOS 8.0.2 with a fix for the issue, and will release it as soon as it’s ready in the next few days.

The support page walks you through the process of reverting from 8.0.1 back to 8.0 and closes with this comment:

The Health app won’t work in iOS 8 after these steps. It will be fixed in our upcoming iOS 8.0.2 software update.

VIDEO: Google Chairman Eric Schmidt addresses brutal competition with Apple

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[VIDEO] This 15 minute interview starts with some softball questions, but gets to the heart of the matter at about 4:19 when they bring in a clip from Digicel founder Denis O’Brien who accuses Google of not being a good partner, likening Google and Facebook to selfish party guests.

Schmidt is also pressed about his take on seeing the huge lines for the iPhone 6 rollout and the discussion turns to Google’s brutal competition with Apple. Fascinating to watch.

The competitive advantage of Apple’s privacy push

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Spend a few minutes browsing Apple’s privacy pages. Privacy is a big issue and Apple has clearly made protecting user privacy a primary design pillar in its products. That’s great for consumers, but privacy also offers a significant competitive advantage against competitors like Google and Facebook.

MIT’s slick new UI merges your iPhone and laptop interaction

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[VIDEO] MIT’s experimental THAW UI project lets you overlay your iPhone over your computer screen, capturing data from your computer and interacting with objects, creating a single, fluid environment. To get a sense of it, watch the video below. The real fun starts about 45 seconds in.

Apple rolls out Actual Size print ads

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When Apple announced the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, I wrestled with the question of how big the new models were with respect to my existing iPhone 5s. Will the 6 Plus fit in my pockets? Obviously, a trip to the Apple Store is one solution, but not everyone has access to one.

Apple is clearly aware of this issue and has responded in a number of ways.

A business suit onesie

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Yes, this is a real thing.

The Suitsy is a jacket connected to a shirt connected to pants. A zipper is hidden behind the shirt-button placket (with false buttons) and pants zipper. Fake shirt-cuff material extends from the end of the jacket sleeves to give the impression of a complete dress shirt worn underneath. It’s as if a jumpsuit and a business suit had a lovechild.

Engineers, come get your $250K salary

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Silicon Valley is slowly drifting into the pay model used by sports franchises, with extraordinary salaries for franchise level talent.