Apple is offering a free exchange for certain of its European USB power adapters:
Apple has determined that, in rare cases, the Apple 5W European USB power adapter may overheat and pose a safety risk. This adapter came with iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S models shipped from October 2009 to September 2012 in the countries listed below. It was also sold as a standalone accessory.
To learn more, visit Apple’s official adapter exchange page.
Fortune:
An entire decade passed before Fadell asked VCs for cash again. But what a decade it was. Fadell abandoned Fuse Systems and joined Apple to lead the team that created the iPod. That singular achievement–the iPod rejuvenated Apple and reordered the music industry–transformed him from a struggling startup guy to an accomplished executive who’d withstood the sound and fury of Steve Jobs. Fadell became known around Silicon Valley as the mercurial “godfather” of the iPod, and he added another dazzling line to his résumé by assisting in the development of the iPhone. When he stepped down from Apple’s management team in 2008, there was much speculation about his next move.
Terrific read.
My favorite line from this article:
For wearing headphones, he would get $11 million more than he makes per year for doing what he does best, playing basketball.
SeekingAlpha (free reg-wall):
Xiaomi, the world’s fastest growing phone vendor, has surpassed Apple (AAPL) in China. Canalys Report puts Xiaomi as the third biggest phone vendor in China in Q1 2014. Copycatting the iPhone has made Xiaomi, a four-year old company, the 6th largest global seller of smartphones.
The rapid rise of Xiaomi is due in part to Apple’s complacent attitude towards it. While Apple took Samsung to court for copying some of the features of the iPhone, Apple allowed Xiaomi to become a $10 billion company by selling iPhone clones using the Android OS. Xiaomi hired Google veteran Hugo Barra last year. Barra is spearheading Xiaomi’s expansion in 10 countries this year.
The linked article makes a pretty solid case comparing Samsung’s co-opting of the iPhone look-and-feel with Xiaomi’s approach. While Apple’s lawsuit against Samsung has made the headlines, there’s been nothing made about Xiaomi’s interface.
I just can’t see this succeeding in the mainstream consumer market. Sony’s brand just doesn’t have the same relevance, same strength as it used to have. I can see Sony getting some traction with console gamers, but they’ll still have to battle Apple, Google, and now Amazon for even that mindshare.
[VIDEO] This video was originally shown during the WWDC keynote. I love the incredible attention to detail. For the designer in me, this is like candy to watch.
Some might see this as a move of OS X towards iOS. I see it more as both OS X and iOS moving toward a more beautifully detailed common future.
[VIDEO] Fantastic! I’d love to see a “making of” video.
Couldn’t agree more.
Some of this is comparing Apples to oranges (sorry), since there are ecosystem advantages to building with iCloud, as opposed to, say, Box. Still, nice to see all this data on the same page.
People have long been talking about MAC address tracking, the technique malware and marketers use to build a picture of where your device goes and the networks you log into. That may all be about to change, due to a change Apple made in iOS 8.
Interesting case being made for the iPhone, and not iCloud, being the center of the coming universe.
With iOS 8, Apple encourages this trend by pushing nascent ecosystems to focus on mobile. Nearly every aspect of the “new” ecosystem Apple showed this week revolves around having the iPhone as the center of your digital experience
Before this morning’s opening bell, Apple was at a post-split price of $92.22. I wonder how long it will take for the stock to hit $100.
Fortune:
Having closed at $645.57 Friday, Apple is set to open Monday at $92 a share.The 7:1 split Apple AAPL -0.28% announced in April takes effect Monday for shareholders of record as of June 2.
The company’s FAQ doesn’t explain why it chose the 7:1 factor. The previous splits — in 1987, 2000 and 2005 — were all 2:1.
Long term, this will be very good for Apple shareholders and undoubtedly the company itself.
Interested in learning about Swift, but not ready to commit to the entire iBook yet? Read the linked article. Well written, detailed, but just focusing on the highlights. But when you’re done, RTFM.
This is simply incredible.
In 2012, Apple won the year’s biggest patent verdict—more than $1 billion against Samsung. The company also lost one of that year’s biggest cases when an East Texas jury ordered it to pay $368 million to a company named VirnetX for infringing patents related to FaceTime and VPN On Demand functions used in iPhones, iPads, and Macs. VirnetX is a company some call a “patent troll” because its only business is now patent enforcement. Then, in March, US District Judge Leonard Davis ordered (PDF) an ongoing royalty to be paid to VirnetX. The number was downright stunning: 0.98 percent of revenue from iPhones and iPads sold in the US.
Tetris was the killer app that brought Nintendo’s GameBoy into the mainstream.
Thirty years ago today, Russian computer programmer Alexey Leonidovich Pajitnov created Tetris. Unveiled behind the Iron Curtain, the deceptively simple, maddeningly addictive game soon left the Soviet Union. It lived on dozens of platforms, but its Lennon-McCartney (Lenin-McCartney?) partner was Nintendo’s Game Boy. And the duo defined modern mobile gaming as we know it.
The article is a nice read, but take a look at the comments. Hint: Search for “Woz”.
TechCrunch:
Spotsetter looked to combine friends’ recommendations, trusted reviews and other signals in order to reinvent maps as a more social experience.
Initially available as a web and mobile application, Spotsetter used a patent-pending algorithm to pull in users’ content from social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Foursquare, as well as venue content from over 30 review sites and lists from trusted sources like Yelp, Zagat, the New York Times, Michelin, and TripAdviser. As of last summer, the company said that it had processed 5 million user profiles, 40 million venues, and 1 million curated venue content items from around the world.
9to5mac:
When entering a credit card number into a form online to, for example, make a purchase, Safari already allowed users to quickly select credit cards stored in its Passwords & AutoFill settings. You can still do that, but in iOS 8 you’ll now also have the option to select “Scan Credit Card” and snap a picture of the card. Apple then uses optical character recognition of sorts to input the number into the text field in Safari.
That’s pretty cool!
Apple has an incredibly strong corporate culture. That culture remained fairly constant under the black-turtlenecked tutelage of Steve Jobs. Tim Cook eased the company into his own style of leadership, and the acquisition of Beats has the chance to expand that evolution in a very positive way.
Apple’s new Swift programming language is designed, over time, to replace Objective-C. Swift is much easier to grasp, though not nearly as easy as BASIC, since Swift is designed to support much more complex tasks. But Swift is much, much easier to grasp than Objective-C.
I am a big fan of escape rooms. The basic premise is, you are locked in a room and need to solve a series of puzzles to get out, perhaps to another escape room. There have long been virtual escape rooms. My favorite of these is The Room series on iOS.
The linked article explores some real life escape rooms. They range from pure puzzle sets to a more theatrical presentation. Personally, I’d love to see a video game that marries the best of both worlds: A multi-player implementation of an escape room that gives you a virtual presence in an escape room, a real social experience.
[VIDEO] The video in the original post does a great job of walking you through a nice chunk of the interface changes that come with iOS 8. Many of these were shown off in the keynote, but I thought this video made each feature easier to grasp. Definitely worth a watch.
Earlier this week, Samsung announced their first Tizen smartphone, sending a shot across Google’s bow, from the Android side. Apple then followed up with their announcement that Bing would be the default search engine in Spotlight searches. This change in Apple’s search defaults is much more subtle, but no less important.
Handoff is perhaps my favorite of all the new features announced at yesterday’s WWDC keynote.
From Apple’s web site:
When your Mac and iOS devices are near each other, they can automatically pass whatever you’re doing from one device to another. Say you start writing a report on your Mac, but you want to continue on your iPad as you head to your meeting. Handoff lets you switch over and pick up instantly where you left off. Or maybe you start writing an email on your iPhone, but you want to finish it on your Mac. You can do that, too. Handoff works with Mail, Safari, Pages, Numbers, Keynote, Maps, Messages, Reminders, Calendar, and Contacts. And app developers can easily build Handoff into their apps.
There have long been devices that allowed you to use your Mac as a speaker phone. In the long ago, you’d plug some device into a phone jack in your wall (assuming you even had such a thing), then plug another cable into your Mac. The results were spotty at best. Nowadays, you’ve got solutions like iChat and Skype, but they don’t connect to your iPhone.
With the combination of Yosemite and iOS 8, you’ll get a notification on your Mac when your iPhone rings, giving you the option of accepting the call, or ignoring it. You can answer the call from your iPhone, of course, but having the ability to minimize the interruption, keep your focus on your Mac, is a godsend to me.
Prior to Yosemite and iOS 8, SMS/MMS text messages were a second class citizen on your Mac. The Messages application only displayed iMessages, not SMS/MMS messages. A new day is dawning.
Let’s say you have a spouse and between zero and four children. If that’s you, iOS 8 has a fantastic new feature, called Family Sharing, that will make your life easier.
One of the charms (and curses) of WWDC is the massive line outside Moscone of folks trying to get into the main hall. Seeing the keynote from one of the overflow rooms is fine, but there’s a real feel of electricity in the main room that is hard to match.
The San Francisco Chronicle blogged some pictures and tweets from the line. It’s as if you were there in person!
Good summary of the new features announced yesterday.
Apple officially announced iOS 8 during the WWDC keynote. Follow the headline link to read the official press release.