Allen Pike writes on the cultural shift within Apple:
With the WWDC NDA lifted, other Apple employees, from the creator of Swift to various API maintainers, took to Twitter to gather feedback on all the goodies they’d dumped on developers. In the web community this would be expected behaviour. In the Apple community, it’s a delight.
Terrific read.
The Cleveland Clinic has developed a series of tests that measure a variety of factors identified with Multiple Sclerosis. The data is gathered on an iPad. Groundbreaking.
[VIDEO] CNBC:
Apple has hired the sales director of luxury Swiss watch maker TAG Heuer to help with the launch of its new iWatch, as the technology group intend on using the prestigious “Swiss made” label to market its new gadget, the head of LVMH’s watch brands Jean-Claude Biver told CNBC.
Check out the video in the original post, in which Biver talks about the importance of talent. I think Biver has the right attitude here. He regrets losing a talented person, but he recognizes the value in moving on for a better opportunity.
This article was translated from Swedish using Google Translate.
After the financial crisis of 2008, the country has not recovered.
“We had two pillars that supported us. Nalle Wahlroos described it pretty well when he said that iPhone struck down Nokia and iPad hit the forest industry. “
So Steve Jobs struck Finland?
“Yes, Steve Jobs took our jobs,” said Alexander Stubb.
TechCrunch:
Nielsen’s U.S. music report on the first half of 2014 shows digital music consumption rapidly shifting from downloads to streaming. On-demand streaming was up 42% over the first half of 2013, racking up 70 billion play in the first half of 2014. Meanwhile, digital track sales fell 13% to 593.6 million and album sales fell 11.6% to 53.8 million. The report on US trends (not international) makes Apple’s acquisition of Beats looks smart, as its iTunes download sales model is quickly dying out. As a whole, dismal digital and physical sales dragged total music sales plus streaming industry down 3.3%.
Tech Crunch:
Amazon is refusing to comply with a request from the Federal Trade Commission to implement stricter controls that would prevent children from making in-app purchases.
US District Court Judge Lucy Koh oversees a case pitting Apple against GPNE. GPNE is suing Apple for infringing on one of its patents.
The case itself is important, in that GPNE is demanding payment for every iPhone sold. To my untrained eye, the claim seems laughable, were it not for the fact that much money is being spent to defend this case.
Judge Koh issued this order:
In an unusual order, a federal judge last week told Apple that it may not call a Hawaii-based company names like “patent troll” or “privateer” or “bandit,” nor tell a jury that the company is engaged in a “shakedown” or “playing the lawsuit lottery.”
My iPhone is a bit of a mess. My front page contains the apps I use the most, but the rest of my pages are in a random order that slightly resembles the order in which I purchased the apps, shuffled in my attempts to move apps to my front page. Sound familiar?
The linked article talks you through the relatively simple process of sorting all your apps in alphabetical order. This might not work for all people, but it does make it much easier to home in on an app when you have 9 pages of apps.
Read the full post for an exception and solution.
James Kendrick writes for ZDNet. He is currently using an Android phone and writes about the logic behind his decision to by pass the Windows Phone, which he was considering, and move to whatever phone Apple releases next.
Unfortunately, the article is behind a paywall. In a nutshell, Apple replaced last year’s winner, Berkshire Hathaway. Apple won the award two years ago as well.
[VIDEO] Apple rolled out the latest iPhone 5s ad yesterday. This one was called Parenthood. The ad was part of the With the power of iPhone 5s, you’re more powerful than you think series. It featured the song The Life of Dreams by Julie Doiron.
Apple announced a 16GB iPod touch with a 5 Megapixel camera for $199. Not too shabby. Though it’s clearly not a replacement for the iPhone, if you have regular WiFi access, this is a pretty nice alternative, one that doesn’t come with a monthly contract.
You’ll need to activate the phone in-store.
Quartz:
Most promising app startups with venture capital investments that we analyzed are either building apps for iOS and Android simultaneously or are still iOS-only. Looking at 119 recent Y Combinator incubator participants and Google Ventures seed investments, of those offering apps, more than 90% had iOS apps, about half had both iOS and Android apps, and fewer than 10% only had Android apps. Among those with both, their iOS app typically launched several months ahead of their Android app.
Why is this true? Read on.
Seems like the deal will be approved. That it is a question of tinkering if the Commission sees any competition issues.
9to5mac:
A court has fined lawyers Quinn Emanuel and Samsung a total of $2M for misusing confidential details of a patent deal struck between Apple and Nokia.
The documents were supplied by Apple to Samsung’s lawyers purely so that it could see that Apple was telling the truth about its patent deals with other companies. The documents were marked “for attorney’s eyes only” and were not to be revealed to Samsung executives.
Typical.
Last September, Nest announced their Nest Developer Program. In preparation for tomorrow’s Google I/O conference, the Nest Developer Program is now active. If you watch the video embedded below, you’ll get a sense of Nest’s vision for the home. Clearly, … Continued
[VIDEO] First things first, have you seen Apple’s “Strength” commercial? The catchy song is called “Chicken Fat”. The singer is Robert Preston, perhaps best known as the star of the movie The Music Man.
Turns out, the original Chicken Fat song was created as exercise background music for school kids. Go to the original post for Apple’s commercial and the original song.
Apple loves to disrupt things. The iPod and iTunes disrupted the music industry. The iPhone disrupted the telecommunications industry. And so on.
Next up? The electronic medical records model, something that effects everyone who has any sort of health care.
[VIDEO] Susan Kare revolutionized iconography. She created many of the icons (and fonts) that defined the Mac.
If the thought of the early days of the Mac fill you with nostalgia, I suspect you will love this video as much as I did. You might also enjoy this post, from a few months ago, sharing Kare’s notebook.
Yahoo currently provides the data that powers the built-in iOS weather app. That is about to change.
The situation Yahoo finds itself in is due to a very crafty deal engineered by former Yahoo board member and Weather Channel CEO David Kenny, who has essentially shoved Yahoo off the key smartphone to be replaced by a new offering that he has been developing since he took over the weather news and information service last year.
There’s been a lot of talk over the past few days about Amazon trying to buy developers by giving them $5,000 to build an app for the Fire Phone, up to a max of $15,000 for three apps. When I first heard this story, I thought Amazon’s plan was misguided, that they’d lay out a ton of money to buy their way into undisciplined relevancy, with an indiscriminate copy of apps that are available on Google Play and other Android app stores. Sort of a “me too” strategy.
But that’s not quite right.
Traditional television is static. Here’s your list of channels, watch what you like. If you have a DVR, you can time shift your shows, record them to watch later. On-demand offers another level of time shifting and access to a library of content, some of which you have to pay for. DVR and On-demand extend the traditional TV model, making it a bit more dynamic.
Apple TV and its WatchESPN app take this one step further.
I thought this was interesting, in part because of the politics of the Beats deal and the obvious connections with Samsung and Apple.
Reuters:
Apple Inc reached an out-of-court settlement with U.S. states and other complainants in an e-book price-fixing class action lawsuit on Monday, effectively avoiding a trial in which the iPad maker faced more than $800 million in claims.
Apple is currently awaiting the results of its appeal of last July’s finding that Apple was liable for colluding with publishers. Yesterday’s settlement proposal has to be approved by the judge and is contingent on the outcome of the appeal.
One announcement from WWDC that didn’t get much fanfare was a rule change concerning virtual currencies.
Apps may facilitate transmission of approved virtual currencies provided that they do so in compliance with all state and federal laws for the territories in which the app functions
This allowed the Coin Pocket app in to the App Store.
I found this profile frustrating, vexing. The tone is objective, but the prose manages to be damning at the same time, working in all the standard, shopworn stereotypes the Apple community has gotten used to having thrown their way.
Read the Only Apple piece by John Gruber instead. Spot on.
The kicker:
More than three years after Google first got serious about tablets with Android 3.0 Honeycomb, it’s not even the league next door to the league inhabited by the iPad, which now has more than a half-million apps designed especially for it.