Intego:

Did you know that you can set up something called a “Medical ID” on your iPhone?

This can be accessed even while the phone is locked by clicking on the emergency options, and it can display things like name, date of birth (DOB), emergency contacts, medical conditions, and even blood type!

It can be managed by clicking on the little “Health” app that comes default on the iPhone.

The Medical ID is important because, in case of an emergency, medical responders can look at your phone and know any allergies or medical conditions you have and know who to contact for you without unlocking your phone.

This only takes a few seconds to set up but if the EMTs on scene know about it, they can quickly access important medical information or your emergency contact.

Fast Company:

Once upon a time, Apple was known for its ease of use, for computers and applications that were understandable, powerful, and could be used without reference to any manuals. All the operations were discoverable (the power of menus), all could be undone or redone, and there was considerable feedback so you always knew what had just taken place.

However, when Apple moved to gestural-based interfaces with the first iPhone, followed by its tablets, it deliberately and consciously threw out many of the key Apple principles. No more discoverability, no more recoverability, just the barest remnants of feedback.

Why? Not because this was to be a gestural interface, but because Apple simultaneously made a radical move toward visual simplicity and elegance at the expense of learnability, usability, and productivity. They began shipping systems that people have difficulty learning and using, getting away with it because people don’t recognize such problems until it is too late, and money has already changed hands. Even then, people tend to blame themselves for the shortcomings of their devices: “If I weren’t so stupid . . . !”

While I wouldn’t personally paint so broad a brush, this (long) article by a former Apple Human Interface Guideline guru does make some good points and should be read, particularly by those in charge at Apple. I know I’ve often had more trouble than I expect trying to assist new iOS and Mac users in “figuring out” the interface. Maybe I’m (we) are just getting older but it seems as if the User Interface, while more powerful, is much more confusing, especially for people new to the paradigms. I’m not saying we need to go back to OS 7 but a greater focus on the issues Tog brings up might alleviate that “If I weren’t so stupid . . . !” attitude I hear from far too many users.

Discovery:

Besides having one of the best names in the museum business, San Francisco’s Exploratorium is widely considered to be among the most beautiful and well-designed educational institutions on the planet.

Its oddball, hands-on exhibits are considered a model for the modern participatory museum. The Exploratorium has famously been termed a “mad scientist’s penny arcade.”

It turns out the Exploratorium makes apps, too. The latest from the museum team is called How Many Saturdays? and it’s a lot of fun.

San Francisco’s Exploratorium, a wonderful “participatory museum”, was always one of my favorite places to go when we had any extra time at a Macworld Expo. This app typifies the Exploratorium – quirky and weird but in the best possible way.

Buzzfeed:

Earlier this week, a video surfaced of three black teenagers from Sudan and Somalia being barred from entering an Apple store in Melbourne, Australia, because an employee thought “they might steal something.” The company subsequently apologized.

In an email obtained by BuzzFeed News, Tim Cook weighed in on the situation, calling it “unacceptable.”

“What people have seen and heard from watching the video on the web does not represent our values. It is not a message we would ever want to deliver to a customer or hear ourselves,” Cook wrote in the companywide email. “None of us are happy with the way this was handled.”

It is unclear if any disciplinary measures were taken against the manager involved in the incident, but multiple sources familiar with the situation say the employee hasn’t been at the store since.

Nor should they be. While this is yet another embarrassment for Apple this week, I think we can all agree that, as Cook says in the email, this doesn’t represent the company’s values.

iMore:

Earlier this week Mac App Store (MAS) apps, on launch, were showing up as “damaged” and couldn’t be opened. The old MAS security certificate seemed to have expired and a new one, at first, didn’t seem to be showing up. Here’s my current understanding of what happened.

Some consider this just a minor mistake on Apple’s part while others see it as endemic to the Mac App Store situation. Regardless, I’m told Apple is working hard on a fix and will have something “soon”.

Michael Tsai:

I woke up to an inbox full of e-mails from customers reporting that my apps wouldn’t launch. This included new customers who had just purchased from the Mac App Store as well as people who had purchased long ago, hadn’t made any changes, and expected that things would just keep working.

The Mac App Store is supposed to make things easier, but it’s also a single point of failure. Not only is it neglected, but sometimes even the existing functionality stops working.

In short, the system is broken on multiple levels, and there is no evidence to suggest that things will get better.

Tsai is the developer of SpamSieve, among other apps, and he reflects the frustration many developers feel towards Apple and the way the App Store works – or, as in the case a few days ago, catastrophically doesn’t work. This is a huge embarrassment to Apple (and one they haven’t explained or apologized for) as well as being a giant pain point for developers. After all, when your app stops working, who do you contact? The developer or Apple?

NPR:

Stan Lee is a legend. Along with artists Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, Lee helped populate the Marvel Comics universe with heroes like the Fantastic Four, the Incredible Hulk and Iron Man.

The man who dreamed up lots of backstories for Marvel characters has now put out his own origin story: A memoir, Amazing Fantastic Incredible, in comic book form.

Even if you’re like me and have only a passing familiarity with comic books, you’ve undoubtedly heard of Stan Lee. I think it’s entirely appropriate that his memoir is in the format he is so well known for.

The Verge:

The reviews are out on iPad Pro, and they address how big it is, whether it’s worth the price, and whether it can or can’t replace a laptop for average consumers. But as a design director at Vox Media, I was more interested in whether I could run all of the apps I normally use on it.

In a lot of ways, the computing devices I use have to feel like extensions of me. I’m always sketching, creating, and ideating on my MacBook Pro. And I don’t regularly use an iPad for work, so the promise of iPad Pro as a device for creatives was particularly intriguing.

I had high hopes that this new iPad would transform me into a rockstar designer. I mean, something this big should be life-changing… right?

There’s lots of discussion of the iPad Pro and where it fits into various workflows. This is an interesting take from the point of view of that group of people a lot of us think will be big buyers of the iPad Pro.

Apple:

The person on your list is a music lover. Gamer. Photographer. Whiz. Workout devotee. Nomad, even. No matter who you’re shopping for this holiday, you’re sure to find a great gift.

Ever since I was a kid, I’ve always loved gift guides and dreaming about the things I’d like to get for myself and now, as an adult, what I’d like to buy for others. Apple’s Gift Guide is the first in a long line of lists I’ll be perusing over the holidays. Do you plan on getting anything from this list?

The Guardian:

Apple’s chief executive has sharply criticised surveillance powers proposed by the British government, warning that allowing spies a backdoor route into citizens’ communications could have “very dire consequences”.

“You can just look around and see all the data breaches that are going on. These things are becoming more frequent,” Cook told the Daily Telegraph. “They can not only result in privacy breaches but also security issues. We believe very strongly in end-to-end encryption and no back doors. We don’t think people want us to read their messages. We don’t feel we have the right to read their emails.

“Any back door is a back door for everyone. Everybody wants to crack down on terrorists. Everybody wants to be secure. The question is how. Opening a back door can have very dire consequences.”

The proposed UK law would require ISPs and phone companies to keep records that would track every website visited for a year. The authorities would not need a warrant to access the data.

Fast Company:

At Fast Company’s Innovation Festival in New York, Angela Ahrendts, Apple’s senior vice president for retail and online stores, discussed the customer experience beyond selling products, uniting Apple’s online and offline stores, and her experience as one of the top executives at the world’s most valuable company.

I love these talks Apple execs give that allow us a little bit of insight into their thinking. And maybe these kinds of events can put to rest the meme that Ahrendts isn’t “involved” or “public” enough.

Apple:

There’s a great big universe in the new iPad Pro. It’s the largest iPad ever and takes your creativity and productivity to an epic scale.

Apple’s new ad for the iPad Pro. Damn that thing looks huge.

BGR:

Once Tesla rolled out its new Autopilot software a few weeks ago, it wasn’t long before we started seeing videos of Model S owners engaging in some downright foolish and dangerous behavior.

Say what you will about the guy shaving in the Model S while zooming down the Autobahn, at least he had the good sense to stay in the driver’s seat.

This is idiotic – not only on the part of the driver but also on the part of Tesla. It’s completely irresponsible to put this software out in the wild without proper controls in place.

Macworld:

You may not need to read this column for yourself, but read it nonetheless and help those with less wariness take better heed: Don’t download software for OS X from anywhere but the developer’s own website or Apple. Period.

But the experience last week of a user noticing that a download of Skype from MacUpdate was wrapped in an installer that contained adware and trialware reminds me to run the flag up the pole again to remind folks who weren’t aware—and to ask all of you who understand the issue to help your friends, colleagues, and family avoid these risks.

We old-timers remember the days of lots of sites to download software. Sadly, those days are long gone. Tell your friends and family about this article and warn them about downloading software from any place other than the Mac App Store or the developer’s own web site.

Bloomberg:

Apple Inc. persuaded a judge to throw out a lawsuit by employees of the company’s retail stores in California seeking back pay for time spent in “demoralizing” security searches when they left work for the day.

The ruling by a San Francisco federal judge Saturday releases the company from having to compensate as many 12,400 former and current employees from 52 stores throughout the state a few dollars a day for time spent over a six-year period having their bags and Apple devices searched at meal breaks and after their shifts.

I’m sure this is very disappointing to the workers. Having worked in this kind of environment, it is not a fun thing to have to do, especially during a rush. You can waste a lot of time waiting for a security droid to check bags. But the writing was on the wall last year when the Supreme Court ruled against Amazon employees in a similar case.

Cool Material:

Here we are, some 83 years later, and the Zippo brand continues to thrive. Why? Well, there are a number of reasons—a determined founder, some clever ad placements, war—but one that shouldn’t be overlooked is collectibility, which is something Zippo has catered to—both knowingly and unknowingly—since its earliest days.

My father(s) all had Zippos and as a kid, it was a treat to be allowed to light their cigarettes (it was a different time) with one of them. They were Canadian sailors and had Zippos that were custom made with the name and image of their ships on them. I haven’t used a Zippo in a dozen years but I can still hear the click of it opening and closing in my head.

Quartz:

Perhaps most universal of all color systems is Pantone—the lingua franca of color.

Sound familiar? Unless you work in design, chances are your first encounter with the mythic New Jersey-based color standards company was via a color-coded mug, iPhone case or in a Sephora makeup counter. In recent years, the design of Pantone’s color chips have become a graphic trope: always a plain band of color with a white bar and some words and black numbers in Helvetica on the bottom.

This chip design is strictly technical, lifted from the layout of a tool used by designers to specify and standardize color when communicating with printers and fabric dyers. So how did it find its way onto mugs, home goods, hospital scrubs, nail polish and even boxer briefs?

The story of Pantone is very interesting. I once sat in a pub in San Francisco during a Macworld Expo with a very drunk Pantone executive who spilled some insider details on how the company orchestrated its way out of the restrictions of the design studio and into the wide open world of pop culture.

TidBITS:

Reports emerged yesterday that a security exploit broker paid $1,000,000 for a browser-based iOS 9 attack, setting a record for buying and selling a computer exploit, at least in public. Security firm Zerodium announced the news via its Twitter feed, and stated that the exploit is an “untethered jailbreak” that works on all the latest versions of iOS.

As is typical with Apple security stories these days, you shouldn’t be overly concerned, but it should raise a few hairs on the back of your neck.

As always, Mogull writes clearly and non-technically about these issues. With his background in security, he offers up many details in this post that will have many of you shaking your head.

CBC:

A five-year-old girl’s bravery in saving her mother and baby brother following a car crash last summer was recognized in a ceremony at Edmonton police headquarters Monday.

The SUV careened down a 12-metre embankment, slammed into a tree and came to rest on its roof. The Royal Canadian Humane Association described how Lexis awoke to her 10-week-old brother’s cries.

After unsuccessfully trying to wake her mother, she took things into her own hands.

What an amazing little girl.

Plex:

There truly isn’t any other platform we’ve wanted to be on for as long as we have the Apple TV. Today’s the day, and we’re celebrating. The app is free in the app store for everyone, and requires the latest media server.

The instant the fourth generation Apple TV was announced with an app store, we here at Plex pumped our fists in the air with excitement, as we raced to download the new Xcode and read the developer documentation.

I used Plex in its original iteration but not since. It’s come a long way and many readers will swear by the software and be very excited by this Apple TV version.

The Verge:

Twitter’s “favorite” button, the service’s primary way for users to signal agreement, acknowledgement, laughter, support, and occasionally (and perversely!) utter hatred, is officially dead.

The company said today that it is replacing favorites with “likes,” to be represented in its apps and on the web by red heart icons. The changes, which also apply to Twitter-owned Vine, represent the company’s latest effort to simplify the user experience as it looks to attract new users.

“We want to make Twitter easier and more rewarding to use, and we know that at times the star could be confusing, especially to newcomers,” product manager Akarshan Kumar said in a blog post. “You might like a lot of things, but not everything can be your favorite.”

I’m not sure how this change will make Twitter “easier and more rewarding” for new users. We’ll all get used to it eventually but, personally, I like the idea of “favoriting” more than using the Facebook “Like”. Probably because I’m more of a Twitter user/fan than Facebook.

Atlas Obscura:

When you travel internationally, power outlets provide a pretty good reminder that you’re not in Kansas anymore.

Outlets vary wildly depending on the part of the world, both in the shape of their sockets and the voltage with which they’re compatible. For those who travel across multiple regions, it can be frustrating. And it’s probably too late to solve this problem, because of decisions made more than a century ago.

If you don’t travel internationally, you won’t know the aggravation of the world’s power outlets. Here is an interesting video about the British outlets and why they may be the best design.

Wired:

Although South By Southwest has long been one of digital culture’s foremost summits, recent events suggest it’s time to re-assess that. SXSW’s organizers have publicly foundered over some of the event’s programming on online harassment—undoubtedly one of the most important and complex topics facing digital culture today. And that they’ve messed this up so monumentally exposes a fundamental problem with the very events that purport to champion the issue.

This may seem too “inside baseball” and uninteresting but it’s actually an important issue on many fronts – it’s about the continuing and vehement online harassment of women by cowards and the companies and organizations, like SXSW, who don’t have the courage to stand up to that same harrassment themselves.

Mashable:

Inside the Apple bubble, a giant campus with more than 10,000 employees, it’s easy to lose introspection. Yet, when I ask Schiller if Apple does everything well, his answer surprises me.

“No, of course not, of course not,” he said. “And we don’t want to sound like we’re perfect. We never are, we always have to get better and always have to listen to where we’re not doing well.”

Well written and visually interestingly laid out piece by Ulanoff. I’ve met Schiller several times and I’ve always found him interesting and engaging. Then again, we both love hockey so that means I’m biased.

ZDNet:

During its quarterly earnings call on Tuesday, Apple CFO Luca Maestri was keen to point out how beneficial swapping out PCs for Macs can be.

“There are currently over 30,000 Macs deployed within the company with 1,900 more being added each week. IBM tells us that each Mac is saving $270 compared to a traditional PC, thanks to the much reduced support cost and better residual value.”

Those of you who work in IT have known this for years. When I worked in a corporate environment, it was obvious there was more tech support needed for the PCs than the Macs. One company I worked for had 40 PC support techs who were busy all day, every day. They had two Mac guys for the same number of machines. They spent most of their day doing “fun IT” stuff and not troubleshooting and putting out fires. When you’re talking about thousands and thousands of Macs, that $270 per machine adds up to real cost savings for corporations.

John Coates:

Aerial is a Mac screen saver based on the new Apple TV screen saver that displays the aerial movies Apple shot over New York, San Francisco, Hawaii, China, etc.

Aerial is completely open source, so feel free to contribute to its development!

These Apple TV screen savers are beautiful and they look just as good on your Mac’s desktop.

Fusion:

The Nobel Prize for chemistry was announced earlier this month: three scientists shared the almost $1 million award for their work on how cells repair DNA.

Once again it did not go to John Goodenough, the 93-year-old physicist regarded as the father of the lithium ion battery. You probably haven’t heard of him, but for years, pundits have predicted that Goodenough would win science’s highest honor. And for good reason. His work transformed society. His is possibly the most revolutionary invention yet not to win the prize. What’s it to you? Well, your life wouldn’t be the same without his work.

It’s hard to disagree with this characterization of the importance of the lithium ion battery. And that importance will only grow as we move forward with more and more kinds of electronics — in particular, electric cars.

Alphr:

Time to flex your Apple knowledge, with a quiz that delves into the company’s history and pulls out past classics (along with some lesser known products). Are you an Apple nerd extraordinaire or do you find it hard to tell your iPods from your iPhone? Take the quiz and see how you fare.

As I suspected, I’m not nearly as familiar with this stuff as many of you are. To be fair, I wasn’t around during the time of the really early Apples and Macs so I don’t recognize many of them. Still, I made it to the “Apple Nerd” category of the quiz.

CBC:

Turned, the tables have been.

After what seems like light-years of griping about the fact that Netflix users get more (and sometimes better) titles in the U.S., Canadians will soon have exclusive access to something our American friends might actually install a VPN for: Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

A representative from Netflix confirmed to CBC News on Sunday that Canada is its only territory in which streaming rights for the hotly-anticipated forthcoming Star Wars film has been secured.

“The reason Netflix will be able to offer the much-anticipated movie in Canada next year — and not in the U.S. or anywhere else — has to do with the timing of when Disney’s pay-TV distribution deals were up for grabs,” reports Variety, which broke the news Friday.

Once again, Americans will pretend to be Canadians.

Variety:

After racking up the year’s best per-screen average in its opening weekend and doing strong business in limited expansion, “Steve Jobs” hit a stumbling block in its national release. It debuted to a measly $7.3 million, only a little more than the $6.7 million that “Jobs,” a critically derided film about the iPhone father with Ashton Kutcher, made in its initial weekend. Going into the weekend, some tracking suggested that the picture would do as much as $19 million.

So what went wrong?

This dissection by Variety is really interesting. I never expected it to do Star Wars box office but I am a little surprised it has done so little. Apparently, there’s lots of blame to go around.