The iPhone 5s came in in third place overall, behind Nelson Mandela and Paul Walker. Among smartphones, though, Apple’s iPhone 5s took the top spot, beating out the Galaxy S4 for the most searched-for handset. The iPhone 5c took third place, followed by the HTC One and Google’s Nexus 5.

Impressive.

I hate when companies do stuff like this.

Dustin Curtis:

The best way to predict the future is to think about desire. The problem with desire is that it tends to be bounded by what’s actually possible; as we grow older, our imaginations seem to develop artificial caps that limit our ideas to things that are reasonably achievable in the short term. But who cares about what is reasonable? Here’s what I want.

Yes, far fetched, but if you’re going to dream, dream big.

Samsung is said to be planning its own Apple-like retail push across the U.S., as the company recently hired an ex-Apple senior store designer, according to a new report.

Why the fuck not, they copied everything else Apple did.

Steven Aquino:

From a pure design perspective, aesthetically speaking, it’s perfectly reasonable to criticize the new shapes. They are indeed ugly, but the overall importance of this new addition trumps the way in which they’re presented. That is to say, regardless of how the buttons look, the sheer fact that they add a level of desprately-needed contrast makes the buttons a huge usability win, and likely — rightfully — will garner much praise from the visually impaired segment of the accessibility community.

Designers need to remember this when criticizing the new button shapes.

The Loop Magazine 2.1 was released today with a few significant changes including:

• Push notifications for new issues including background download
• App now remembers your previous location
• Improved sharing
• Cover art will change with each issue on your device
• Bug fixes

The update is free and is available from the App Store.

Apple released released its “Best of 2013” list this morning, naming the top apps, music, podcasts, TV shows and movies in the App Store. I’m very proud to say that The Loop Magazine was chosen as one of the top magazines in Newsstand.

Thank you.

Infographics are all the rage these days. If you’re looking for a great way to go viral through social media, you can’t do much better than an entertaining infographic. Our friends at MightyDeals are having an awesome deal for 35 infographic templates which you can download and customize as needed. Discounted over 50% for a limited time only. See the templates here.

Dylan Seeger put more into rethinking BlackBerry than the company has. This is certainly worth a read.

A directory of direct links to delete your account from web services.

Great idea.

Boston Bruins’ Milan Lucic attacked in his hometown of Vancouver:

“That’s one of the worst parts, it’s in my hometown,” he said. “Going back to the spray painting of the church and my grandparents and parents and family getting harassed during the [Stanley Cup] finals against the Canucks in 2011, and now it’s escalated to a point where I get attacked for just minding my own business. I have no reason left to defend my city and then the people of my city. I’m just disgusted and outraged that it had to come to something like that. As far as that goes, other than being at Rogers Arena, no one will ever see me in downtown Vancouver ever again.”

Vancouver is just crazy. They riot when Canada wins the Olympics and they riot when they lose the Stanley Cup. Now they attack one of their hometown hockey players. The city is an embarrassment.

There’s no guarantee this will work, but sometimes it’s the last thing you think of that works.

I’ll admit, I haven’t even heard of some of these.

Congrats Tim.

I went to update some apps on my iPad. But instead of being greeted on the update screen with the normal buttons with ‘update’ written on them, they had ‘free’ on them instead. Everything exactly the same, just the wording was different.

It certainly would be interesting if they did allow developers to start charging for updates.

Serenity Caldwell has a good article with some tips on getting Touch ID to work better and some things that may cause it to fail intermittently.

Google Inc has removed an experimental privacy feature from its Android mobile software that had allowed users to block apps from collecting personal information such as address book data and a user’s location.

[…]

A company spokesman said the feature had been included by accident in Android 4.3, the version released last summer.

So a feature to help users keep their info private was included by accident. Makes sense considering it comes from a company that makes its money on knowing every little thing about what you do.

“We are suspicious of this explanation, and do not think that it in any way justifies removing the feature rather than improving it,” said Peter Eckersley, technology projects director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The digital rights website first publicized the change in a blog post on Friday.

Android users who wish to retain the privacy controls by not upgrading to Android 4.4.2 could be vulnerable to security risks, Eckersley said. “For the time being, users will need to chose between either privacy or security on the Android devices, but not both.”

So, what’s it gonna be Android users? Fucked by Google or fucked by hackers?

Tourism is a dangerous job in Canada.

Matthew Ungar sent me these pictures today that he took of iPhones and iPads at China Mobile. Great to see.

I enjoyed reading this piece by Rene Ritchie, especially when he talked about the future. This is what I’ve been saying about Apple’s future devices—expect some magic, not a smart watch like the shit Samsung is putting out.

I’ve seen people posting on both sides of this issue tonight.