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.

A nice set of images from Abdel Ibahim—it’s hard to argue with the logic.

Tim Higgins for Bloomberg:

Apple Inc. (AAPL)’s newest iPhones are fueling a surge in trade-ins of Android-based smartphones, threatening to loosen Samsung Electronics Co. (005930)’s grip on the large-screen smartphone segment as users switch allegiances.

When Apple’s main product, featuring bigger displays and faster chips, goes on sale starting in Australia, they may be best remembered as the generation of iPhones that won over consumers from rival smartphones. Trade-ins of Samsung phones with smartphone reseller Gazelle Inc. tripled last week and about a quarter of potential iPhone 6 buyers are new to Apple’s ecosystem, according to RBC.

It should be interesting to see Samsung’s next quarterly results.

I absolutely love 1Password and have beta tested the new version for quite a while. The new extensions work great—it’s a must have app.

Microsoft gave notice to 2,100 employees on Thursday, 747 of those in the Seattle area, a company spokesman said. That is in addition to 13,000 laid off in July, which means a further 2,900 are set to be laid off over the next nine months or so.

I hate seeing people lose their jobs, especially when it’s caused by executive mismanagement.

Storehouse is a visual storytelling app that was previously only available for iPad, but now an iPhone version has been released. I love this app.

Apple statement:

We discovered a bug that prevents us from making HealthKit apps available on iOS 8 today. We’re working quickly to have the bug fixed in a software update and have HealthKit apps available by the end of the month.

I’m sympathetic, but Apple should never have allowed this to happen. This isn’t good.

Last year Apple stripped iOS bare in order to redefine how we do things. This year they build atop everything that came before in order to redefine what we can do.

I always love reading Rene’s reviews.

I really like the new interface myself. You can update directly from your Apple TV by going to Settings. This is what it looks like now.

A bug quietly reported on September 1 appears to have grave implications for Android users. Android Browser, the open source, WebKit-based browser that used to be part of the Android Open Source Platform (AOSP), has a flaw that enables malicious sites to inject JavaScript into other sites. Those malicious JavaScripts can in turn read cookies and password fields, submit forms, grab keyboard input, or do practically anything else.

I’m shocked. Shocked, I tell you.

iOS 8 is, by any measure, a big update. A lot of it is refinement to last year’s drastic design overhaul, but there are also a lot of notable new features. Sitting amongst those refinements and big new features are little nuggets of delight in which Apple has designed or implemented something (whether it be a feature, design flourish or a shortcut) that you might not notice until one day you stumble upon it accidentally.

As usual, Federico Viticci, Graham Spencer and the crew at MacStories put together a great set of tips for the new iOS.

With Dan still out, Shawn fills in and talks to Jim about his iPhone 6 and 6 Plus review, where the Apple Watch will be sold and “is U2 the New Nickleback?”

Sponsored by MailChimp (Send 12,000 emails per month, to 2,000 subscribers, forever).

I love the apps that Cabel Sasser and the guys from Panic make. I’ve been using Transmit on my Mac for years and now there’s Transmit iOS.

With all of the ridiculous things being written about Apple giving away a U2 album, I thought it was time for a good laugh. I laughed at this.