Bloomberg:
Apple Inc. will reap fees from banks when consumers use an iPhone in place of credit and debit cards for purchases, a deal that gives the handset maker a cut of the growing market for mobile payments, according to three people with knowledge of the arrangement.
Game changer.
Fashion is tricky. Some looks emerge white hot but don’t look great in history’s rear view mirror, others stand the test of time.
The Apple Watch is a marriage of form and functionality and has to answer to two masters. It has to pass muster as fashion and has to pack a lot of functionality into a small form factor. [Read More…]
[VIDEO] Following yesterday’s keynote, and after the regular press had all gone, ABC News’ David Muir had a chance to talk about the Apple Watch with Apple Senior Vice President of Design, Jony Ive.
If you made it to the very end of yesterday’s keynote (not easy, given the stream stuttering and Mandarin overdub), you got the chance to watch U2 perform live and Tim Cook give away the new U2 album to all comers.
Finding the album can be a bit tricky, though. If that’s you, click through to the original post for instructions.
[VIDEO] > Microsoft may be understandably peeved about this after committing to spend $400 million on an exclusive advertising and equipment deal with the NFL, but then the networks that cover the games aren’t under the league’s control. Educating their commentators may be as important to Microsoft as enlightening the rest of the world to the Surface’s advantages.
I disagree. These announcers are well educated. Watch the video below. They know an iPad-like device when they see one.
Pavan Rajam, writing about a potential iWatch and its place in your device ecosystem:
The smartphone is easily the most personal device we own today. It is our life in our pockets. It is our connection to the rest of the world. We take them with us and use them where ever we can.
There is simply no guarantee that the person using a smartphone is the person to whom it belongs.
Not the case with your watch, which is a much more personal device.
The event will stream live from Apple’s web site: Live video from our special event will be right here. And so will a whole lot more. Join us at Apple.com on September 9 at 10 a.m. PDT to follow every … Continued
Two iWatch speculation essays with some added Loop commentary.
Jean-Louis Gassée weighs in on the potential for Apple to introduce an iPhone 6 with some form of payment system tomorrow.
If Apple does introduce the ability to use a near field communication enabled iPhone 6 as part of a larger payment system, will a transaction fee be part of the model, or will the added value to the ecosystem be enough?
Writing for the LA Times, Chris O’Brien poses the question, are we as consumers ready for the iWatch?
Are we ready? I’m not entirely convinced that the answer is yes. I’ve tried many smartwatches and never found anything particularly compelling about them. I’ve played with a few mobile payment services and never felt like they offered a greater convenience than just whipping out a credit card. And I’ve never taken the plunge to use any of the various health monitor gadgets.
And that’s Apple’s strong suit. They are uncanny at judging our appetites as consumers, a craving that frequently can’t be explained by simple logic. Apple has a savant-like savviness at predicting just what we’ll respond to, and at what price point.
Then again, when I first saw the iPad back in January 2010, I didn’t feel particularly moved by it. It was only when I eventually bought one that I suddenly couldn’t remember how I’d managed without it. Just like I did with my first iPhone and iPod.
Exactly.
Terminal is the Mac OS X command line tool that gives you access to unbridled destructive power (i.e., step carefully). You’ll find it in Applications / Utilities. If you are brand new to Terminal, here’s a very gentle intro.
If you use Terminal on a regular basis, take some time to dig into Craig Hockenberry’s fantastic Terminal tricks blog post. Some of these you’ll know, but some will likely be new to you. It’s deep, it’s long, and so well written. Pass this one along to your tech friends.
This just makes it all so much more real.
[Review and Video] Earlier this year, Motorola ended its short stay with Google when it was sold to Lenovo.
TechCrunch has confirmed reports that Lenovo is buying Motorola Mobility from Google. This is the division within Google that the company purchased in 2011 for $12.5 billion. Motorola Mobility will go to Lenovo for $2.91 billion.
Lenovo-owned Motorola quietly released a smart-watch yesterday, the Moto 360. Everyone’s tastes differ of course, but for me, this is the watch that sets the bar for Android and for smart-watches. This is the watch that you should keep in mind when and if Apple announces an iWatch next Tuesday.
Amazing. It’ll be interesting to see how big this line gets. If anyone is in NYC and happens by the 5th avenue Apple Store, please tweet me (@davemark) with the current line count. I’ll retweet.
There’s an alleged comment by Jonathan Ive on traditional watchmakers, plus a solid take on the existing state of wearables.
Fine watches are a passion for many people. It’ll take something really special to get those people to turn away from Tag Heuer and the like. If Apple does indeed deliver the goods here, the traditional watchmakers may well be in trouble.
Apple released an updated version of their App Store review guidelines in preparation for the release of iOS 8. Whoever wrote the prose for these guidelines deserves a pat on the back. They are clear and written for humans. Notable are the callouts of creepy apps and the addition of a HealthKit section.
Great explanation of lossless compression from Kirk McElhearn.
This is a postmortem, lessons learned from a sequence of attempts to build a promo video for a specific iPhone app. Some terrific insight into the process.
[VIDEO] This footage was shot about a week ago.
Dan Frommer makes the case that the existing US mobile payment ecosystem is not easy to tame. What’s Apple’s edge? Unlike Google, Apple controls their ecosystem, makes their own hardware and, most importantly, has a big head start on account holder signup.
AnandTech CEO and Editor-in Chief Anand Lal Shimpi is retiring from the tech publishing world and moving on to Apple to rejoin AnandTech colleague Brian Klug, who left for Apple earlier this year.
Twitter user @hackappcom posted a proof of concept, called iBrute, to GitHub on Saturday, that took advantage of an alleged hole in Find My iPhone…
[VIDEO] The FLIR ONE personal thermal imager is an infrared camera that snaps on to the back of your iPhone 5, allowing you to shoot infrared videos and stills. I’ve played with one and they are fun, easy to use and work well.
The down side of the FLIR ONE is that it can be used to pick up pin codes and other lock combinations by tracking the heat signature left by your fingers. The video embedded below shows how this is done and how to prevent it. Worth a watch.
Testing the Yosemite beta? You might want to read this post by Kirk McElhearn.
Samsung inked a deal with Nokia to bring HERE maps to Samsung smartphones and watches. This will further splinter Android as Samsung moves further away from reliance on Google services.
Tapdaq put together a survey of 50 indie iOS developers. A worthwhile read for anyone involved with the App Store.
Kirk McElhearn wrote a nice little rant on the limited organization options iTunes give you when it comes to apps. I weighed in with my thoughts as well.
[VIDEO] The Washington Post ran this video showing a series of seven iPhone shooting tricks. Some of them were just OK, but I found a few of them to be brilliant.
Did you know you can use your headphone switch to take a picture? Combine that one with a water glass and you have a clever, albeit slightly risky way to take some underwater shots. I wonder if you could achieve the same thing with a very tall baggie.
Last week, Walmart knocked down the price of the iPhone 5c (to 97 cents – Yes, 97 cents) and the iPhone 5s ($79 with a new contract). Now T-Mobile has joined the fray.
The LA Times:
L.A. schools Supt. John Deasy suspended future use of a contract with Apple on Monday that was to provide iPads to all students in the nation’s second-largest school system amid mounting scrutiny of the $1-billion-plus effort.
The suspension comes days after disclosures that the superintendent and his top deputy had especially close ties to executives of Apple, maker of the iPad, and Pearson, the company that is providing the curriculum on the devices. And an internal report that examined the technology effort showed major problems with the process and the implementation.
Jump to the original Loop post for more detail and a link to the internal LA school district document that lays all this out.