Jim and Shawn talk about Samsung, the Apple Watch and teens, Steve Ray Vaughn and “Does the iPhone 6 get lost in The Beard?” Special guest appearance on this Amplified by a crow!
Sponsored by lynda.com (Visit lynda.com/thebeard to get access to all their courses FREE for 7 days).
I did an iTunes Festival wrap-up piece on Fortune today, which includes an exclusive interview with Oliver Schusser, Apple’s head of iTunes Europe.
Apple on Wednesday sent out an invite for a special event being held on its Cupertino, Calif. campus on October 16. The event will begin at 10:00 am PT. […]
EVH is one of the all-time greats. It’s nice to just watching him having fun.
So, the next big thing to complain about is here: Hairgate. One of the community articles on 9to5Mac talks about people getting their hair caught in the iPhone 6—I don’t even know what to say about this shit. […]
csstyle is a modern approach for crafting beautifully maintainable stylesheets. The csstyle method is implemented using a set of SASS mixins that make your CSS readable and semantic, generate your selectors for you, and automatically handle things like specificity and nesting. csstyle makes your project’s styling refreshingly consistent.
Geohopper Beacons unite Apple’s iBeacon technology and proximity-based notifications in a single easy-to-use bundle. Using Geohopper 2.0 for iOS, a single tap configures the beacon which then sends notifications to your selected contacts when you enter or exit the beacon location. No additional setup or maintenance is required.
Very cool.
Magic Script Creator lets you experiment with creating custom AppleScripts by just answering a few questions. No prior knowledge of AppleScript is needed in order to use this application. Included in Magic Script Creator are 24 different examples that you can configure hundreds of different ways. Most examples contain UNIX command line tools, combining their power with AppleScript’s strengths.
Version 4.0 contains two new major features. First, you can choose to compile your scripts with line by line remarks. This will help you understand what each line of code is executing. Second, for those examples containing UNIX command tools, you can export the MAN (or manual) page in an easy to read PDF. No more trying to read these manuals in a tiny terminal window! To learn more about Magic Script Creator, watch an instructional video, purchase the application, or try a demo version, please visit our homepage.
The GRAMMY Museum, based in Los Angeles, will be honoring Stevie Ray Vaughan’s birthday with FREE admission to its exhibits on October 3, 2014 from 11:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. PDT. In June, the museum unveiled Pride & Joy: The Texas Blues of Stevie Ray Vaughan, on display through July 2015. Jimmie Vaughan, Stevie’s brother, served as a guest curator.
Happy Birthday SRV. You were always one of my favorites.
I think Schmidt underestimates the intelligence of the general public. If you don’t buy a product, you are the product being sold.
The publication claims former PayPal president David Marcus was against the Samsung partnership as it would hinder future operations with Apple, but eBay CEO John Donahoe forced PayPal to accept. The dynamic just got more interesting with news today that PayPal will be spun off from eBay in 2015, possibly opening the door to policy changes and realigned alliances.
M O R O N S
Tom’s version doesn’t do much to change my mind.
In his first interview since joining Apple, industrial designer Marc Newson discusses his latest product – a domestic draft beer machine he says is the equivalent to a Nespresso coffee maker for beer lovers.
Sweet mother of God, I must have this!
After nearly six months of searching and deliberation, Apple appears to have settled on a successor to Katie Cotton, its former VP of worldwide corporate communications — and it’s not former White House Press Secretary Jay Carney. It’s Apple comms veteran Steve Dowling. Sources close to Apple tell Code/red that Dowling was tapped as interim head of public relations last week by CEO Tim Cook, who has been looking to put a friendlier, more approachable face on Apple’s public relations efforts.
Personally, I think this is the first step to Dowling getting the position full time.
My name is Rick Smolan and I’m a former Time, Life, and National Geographic photojournalist. When I was twenty-eight, National Geographic Magazine sent me on the assignment of a lifetime: to document the 1,700 mile journey of a mysterious twenty-seven-year-old woman named Robyn Davidson, who was trekking across the Australian outback alone with four camels and her dog, Diggity. During Robyn’s nine-month journey I tracked her down five times, spending about three months traveling with her and shooting tens of thousands of photographs.
What an amazing book this will be.
Yosemite is a conference for Apple developers, designers, and enthusiasts. It will be held next Spring, in the heart of Yosemite National Park.
Dave Klein and the folks at CocoaConf are putting on a great conference in 2015 in Yosemite. I will be speaking at the conference, along with many very talented people in the Mac and iOS communities.
Yesterday we reported that Samsung’s earlier-than-planned September 26th launch of its new Galaxy Note 4 had been met with complaints from customers regarding a ‘screen gap’ manufacturing issue. Today, a reference in Samsung’s Note 4 manual has been discovered confirm that the gap is actually a feature, not a flaw.
This issue doesn’t take anyone sneaking into a store and forcibly bending a phone, it’s an actual manufacturing flaw, but yet the mainstream press let’s them get away with it.
This is what Samsung says about the gap:
A small gap appears around the outside of the device case… This gap is a necessary manufacturing feature and some minor rocking or vibration of parts may occur… Over time, friction between parts may cause this gap to expand slightly.
What the holy fuck! Seriously?
In the wake of the uproar that followed last week’s purported iPhone 6 Plus pliability problem, some people have apparently taken it upon themselves to go into Apple Stores and bend iPhones. And while it pains us that this even needs to be said, guys, please: Breaking private property doesn’t prove anything. Except that you’re an asshole.
That sums it up for me.
Apple provided me with the following statement today:
“The vast majority of OS X users are not at risk to recently reported bash vulnerabilities. Bash, a UNIX command shell and language included in OS X, has a weakness that could allow unauthorized users to remotely gain control of vulnerable systems. With OS X, systems are safe by default and not exposed to remote exploits of bash unless users configure advanced UNIX services. We are working to quickly provide a software update for our advanced UNIX users.”
Clearly, most users do not use the advanced UNIX services.
Here is a statement Apple provided to me today about the iPhone bending:
“Our iPhones are designed, engineered and manufactured to be both beautiful and sturdy. iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus feature a precision engineered unibody enclosure constructed from machining a custom grade of 6000 series anodized aluminum, which is tempered for extra strength. They also feature stainless steel and titanium inserts to reinforce high stress locations and use the strongest glass in the smartphone industry. We chose these high-quality materials and construction very carefully for their strength and durability. We also perform rigorous tests throughout the entire development cycle including 3-point bending, pressure point cycling, sit, torsion, and user studies. iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus meet or exceed all of our high quality standards to endure everyday, real life use.
With normal use a bend in iPhone is extremely rare and through our first six days of sale, a total of nine customers have contacted Apple with a bent iPhone 6 Plus. As with any Apple product, if you have questions please contact Apple.”
If you purposely bend your phone, any phone, you’re a fucking moron.
Apple sent the following statement to me tonight regarding iOS 8.0.1:
We have received reports of an issue with the iOS 8.0.1 update. We are actively investigating these reports and will provide information as quickly as we can. In the meantime we have pulled back the iOS 8.0.1 update.
I haven’t updated yet, so I have no experience with any issues.
It’s just incredible to see how many people are buying iPhones. Every year analysts say sales are slowing and every year Apple proves them wrong.
“What was a complex environment with hundreds of phone types now has two: (Google) Android and Apple,” notes Thomas Noyes, former head of sales channels at Citigroup’s Global Consumer banking business who now heads Silicon Valley data-sharing firm Commerce Signals.
It’s the “complex environment” that Apple is so good at fixing. They’ve done it over and over again with products released in the past 15 years or so.
Today, Apple released an update to iCloud which gives Windows users early access to iCloud Drive. Ironically, Apple’s new cloud storage solution is not yet available on the public build of Mac OS X.
GODDAMNIT!
This is just great. Tim stops and chats with people, takes selfies and then opens the store.
I love the Scottish accent.
CARROT is a sadistic AI construct with one simple goal: to transform your flabby carcass into a Grade A specimen of the human race. She will do whatever it takes – including threatening, inspiring, ridiculing, and bribing you – to make this happen.
This really is a great app.
I always enjoy reading Shawn’s thoughts and reviews. I never really got the Kindle and still don’t.
Some have pointed out that password fields are excluded from using an alternative keyboard. This tells me that even Apple is a bit concerned about the consequences of logging key strokes. I’m not sure about everyone else, but I generally use a password to protect all of the other things I write with my keyboard. If every other keystroke is logged and transmitted to a server, my password becomes far less relevant.
This is worrisome.
There are some great tips here. No. 1 is my favorite, mostly because I learned that one the hard way. You don’t have to—and shouldn’t—make everything louder in a mix.