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A few days later, we got an email from Apple informing us that we violated their terms and conditions—and the offending developer account had been banned. Unfortunately, iFixit’s app was tied to that same account, so Apple pulled the app as well. Their justification was that we had taken “actions that may hinder the performance or intended use of the App Store, B2B Program, or the Program.”

Live and learn.

Well yeah, it’s an unreleased product that’s meant for developers to make apps and test on. Nobody is allowed to post information about it. I have a hard time believing they didn’t see this coming.

Jim and Dan talk about today’s release of Mac OS X 10.11 (El Capitan!), iOS 9.0.2, Dan’s new iPhone 6s, 3D Touch, the awesomeness of Siri, and a new age of computing.

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You can download the update by going to General > Settings > Software Update.

Built on a new, modernized foundation and compatible with Mac OS X 10.11 ‘El Capitan,’ TextWrangler 5.0 introduces newly overhauled systems for Find Differences and syntax coloring. In addition, TextWrangler 5.0 introduces new built-in support for EditorConfig and adds dozens of other enhancements and new features.

I love Bare Bones Software. I’ve been using their products for 20 years.

iFixIt:

Over the weekend some brave Apple fans introduced their new iPhones to a life aquatic. The phones didn’t always emerge unscathed, but the overall trend is clear: the 6s and 6s Plus are dramatically less prone to liquid damage than their predecessors.

So, what changed? After disassembling a couple of new iPhones in the name of science, here’s what we found.

Remember, “dramatically less prone to liquid damage” does not mean “waterproof”. You still need to be very careful about getting your expensive electronics wet but it’s good to see Apple is taking baby steps towards helping the clumsy among us not damage our phones.

I love these guys—just straight ahead Rock.

This is pretty cool. I just downloaded it on my Mac and setup was very easy—using the iPhone as a client was simply entering my email address into the app. I wonder if they’ll have an app for the new Apple TV.

Techcrunch:

Privacy is something everyone should care about. But studies continue to indicate that people either aren’t aware of what they’re giving up, or they don’t understand the implications.

Apple is blowing that up a bit today by expanding on its privacy page and presenting its policies in clear language, with extensive supporting data. Whether it’s government information requests (94% of that is trying to find stolen iPhones, and only 6% is law enforcement seeking personal information) or how consumer-facing features like iMessage, Apple Pay, Health and HomeKit are set up to protect user information; the sense is one of confidence in its stance.

This has been a long time coming and no surprise that it’s coming from Apple. I expect Samsung (and other companies) to copy this new stance shortly.

LA Times:

The Los Angeles Unified School District has reached a tentative $6.4-million settlement over curriculum from education software giant Pearson that the school system said its teachers barely used.

The pact is the latest fallout from an aborted $1.3-billion plan to provide an iPad to every student, teacher and campus administrator in the nation’s second-largest school district.

The Board of Education is expected to vote on the settlement in October. The bidding process that led to the original contract is the subject of an FBI investigation.

This has been a long, drawn out embarrassment for Apple, a company that prides itself on its work with schools. While the case isn’t entirely over, this settlement at least paves the way for all parties to move on.

Ars Technica:

The only thing that most people will need to know about Apple’s A9 is that it’s a whole lot faster than last year’s A8. But for those of you who are more interested in chip design, Chipworks has unearthed an interesting tidbit: there are two different versions of the A9 chip, one manufactured by Samsung and another by Taiwan Semiconductor (TSMC). Most interestingly, Samsung’s version (the APL0898) has a slightly smaller footprint than the TSMC version (APL1022).

There have long been rumors that Apple was dual-sourcing the A8 from Samsung and TSMC, but this is the first visual proof that we’ve seen of the practice. iPhone and iPad processors up to and including the A7 were all made by Samsung.

This is really “inside baseball” for a lot of folks but it does beg the question of why is Apple doing this? To keep Samsung “honest”? Or are they prepping TSMC to take over chip design?

Nature Geoscience:

Determining whether liquid water exists on the Martian surface is central to understanding the hydrologic cycle and potential for extant life on Mars. Recurring slope lineae, narrow streaks of low reflectance compared to the surrounding terrain, appear and grow incrementally in the downslope direction during warm seasons.

Our findings strongly support the hypothesis that recurring slope lineae form as a result of contemporary water activity on Mars.

I link directly to the research study because I love the language they use. Bottom line? There is not only water on Mars (we knew that already. It’s in the form of ice) but that it actually flows – “liquid water” – in Mars’ summer months.

M.G. Siegler:

Anyone who thinks Apple’s new ‘Live Photos’ element of the iPhone 6s (and 6s Plus) is a gimmick is a fool that doesn’t understand Apple — and may not understand human nature and emotions. I actually think this is one of the more brilliant features Apple has released in a while.

It’s no accident that people with children immediately realize the value in this feature.

I haven’t seen Live Photos in action but it’s been interesting talking to people who have. No one has dismissed it as “just a gimmick” and those with young children echo Siegler – they think it is a brilliant idea.

Petapixel:

GoPro just further expanded its action camera lineup after announcing the HERO+ LCD back in June. The new HERO+ is an even more affordable camera that drops the LCD screen while retaining 1080p60 recording and Wi-Fi connectivity.

The HERO+ can also capture 720p60 video, 8-megapixel photos, time-lapses, and burst mode photos. Other features and specs of the camera include an durable (integrated) housing that’s waterproof down to 131 feet (40m), Bluetooth connectivity, GoPro’s new built-in trimming and sharing, QuikCapture (powering up and starting video recording with one button), and HiLight Tag for selecting key moments while filming.

If you’re looking for a very good and very inexpensive action camera, GoPro is your best bet. This would be a great Christmas gift for a kid who was into BMX or other high motion activities. I’ve been thinking of getting one for my motorcycle until I realized, the video wouldn’t really be all that exciting.

Lisa Bettany:

In the past eight years, each new advancement in iPhone camera technology has made dramatic improvements to image quality. The new 12-megapixel iPhone 6s iSight camera is no exception. With 50% more megapixels than the last four iPhone 8-megapixel models, the iPhone 6s boasts a number of key improvements including: improved auto-focus, local tone-mapping, noise reduction, and colour separation, with that fancy “deep trench isolation” technology Apple is raving about.

In this follow-up post to my previous iPhone comparisons, I present a 9 iPhone comparison from all iPhone versions taken with Camera+ including: the original iPhone, iPhone 3G, iPhone 3Gs, iPhone 4, iPhone 4s, iPhone 5, iPhone 5s, iPhone 6, and the new iPhone 6s, in a variety of real-life situations to test each iPhone camera’s capabilities.

The results are predictable (after all, it’s expected the camera would get better with each generation) but seeing them on the page is very interesting especially considering how “great” many of us thought the original iPhone was at taking pictures.

Thanks to Twocanoes Software for sponsoring The Loop this week. Makers of Winclone, the best Mac app for migrating, cloning and backing up your Boot Camp partition. This week Loop readers can use the code “theloop” to get 10% off Winclone 5, just in time to backup Boot Camp before upgrading to El Capitan. If you run Boot Camp in labs or classrooms, Boot Runner 2 from Twocanoes is a time saver for remote scheduling of maintenance reboots and an easy to use OS picker for your users. Check out the video or get the 14-day trial and see how easy Boot Runner makes managing dual boot Macs.

TechInsider:

Tonight — Sunday, Sept. 27 — you can see the first “supermoon” total lunar eclipse in 30 years. The moon will turn red, which is normal for a lunar eclipse, but this rare event will be bigger and brighter than those of the past few decades. That’s because the eclipse will coincide with a supermoon — a “very rare” alignment that won’t happen again until 2033.

Check this map to see if you live where the eclipse will be visible. If you don’t live in a visible region, or a big city with too many tall obstructions or a lot of light pollution, bookmark this page.

We won’t see the full effect here on the West Coast but if you’re lucky enough to be able to get outside and see it clearly, don’t miss it. Otherwise, like so many other things nowadays, you can watch online.

Moon Connection:

Now you can have accurate, attractive Moon and Sun details at your fingertips. View a beautiful real-time image of the current Moon phase, complete with technical data. Quickly see if the Moon is above the horizon on the Lunar Position screen, along with Moon rise and set times and precise Moon position in the sky. If you also want to know Sun rise and set times, look at the Solar Position screen.

Tonight’s total eclipse of the Super Harvest Moon could be spectacular, depending on the weather in your area. Use this free app to figure its position in your night sky.

I’ll be posting more about this camera, but I’ve been using it and it’s so great.

Walk along the bedraggled queue of people, and pillows and discarded bottles of water bore the same bright blue color and were emblazoned with the hashtag #NextIsNew.

“They were given to us by Apple,” a person in queue told International Business Times. A friend of his, however, was a little more savvy, quietly informing him: “No man, it was Samsung, I did a little research.”

What the fuck is wrong with this company? Instead of these types of stunts, why not try to build a better product—that philosophy is the one thing they haven’t copied from Apple.

Ryot:

The film tells the story of one citizen from Jalouzi, one of the largest slums in Haiti, who is determined to bring color to the impoverished area by helping paint the entire town, literally.

Believing that color has the power to transform his community, he’s helping to paint everywhere – on houses, on buses, and the entire hillside. Armed with brushes of bright blues, pastel pinks, and sunshine yellows, he’s helping to mobilize citizens of all ages, determined to turn the grey town into a rainbow full of color to lead the way to a brighter Haiti.

I don’t care much that it was shot on any particular device. But it is a wonderful film full of hope for the future of one of the most impoverished places in the world.

The Wall Street Journal:

Eyeo GmbH, the company behind popular desktop ad-blocking tool Adblock Plus, now accepts payment from around 70 companies in exchange for letting their ads through its filter. Eyeo stipulates that they must comply with its “acceptable ads” policy, meaning their ads aren’t too disruptive or intrusive to users. In total, ads from some 700 companies meet the acceptable ads policy, an Eyeo spokesman said.

Eyeo is now reaching out to developers of other ad-blocking tools to cut deals that allow certain ads to pass ads through their filters, too, in exchange for payment.

(Dean) Murphy (who created Crystal, an application to help users block ads on Apple Inc.’s mobile devices) said he has taken Eyeo up on its offer, and plans to implement an option within his app whereby “acceptable” ads will be displayed to users. The feature will be switched on by default, Mr. Murphy said, and he will receive a flat monthly fee from Eyeo in return.

This is a predictable situation and it will only get worse or better depending on your point of view.

Pixelmator for iOS 2.1 update includes support for iOS 9, multitasking on iPad via Split View and Slide Over, 8K resolution support, Open in Place and Save to Photos features, and more.

I love and use Pixelmator on iOS and Mac, and have for years. These guys make great apps.

Flo Gehring made some great wallpapers available for users to download free. I really like the water droplets.

Pew Research:

Test your knowledge of science facts and applications of scientific principles by taking our short 12-question quiz. Then see how you did in comparison with a nationally representative group of 3,278 randomly selected U.S. adults surveyed online and by mail between Aug. 11 and Sept. 3, 2014 as members of the Pew Research Center’s American Trends Panel.When you finish, you will be able to compare your scores with the average American and compare responses across demographic groups.

I got 11 out of 12. I should have aced it if I had only thought a little longer about one of the questions. According to Mental Floss, only 6 percent of Americans aced this basic science survey. How did you do?

CBC:

Mounties from the southern Saskatchewan detachment became a viral hit when they got wind of a weekend party involving local youth and posted about it on Facebook.

They warned the students they could face hefty fines if there were any laws broken, such as underage drinking or littering.

They also said officers from the detachment would show up with chips and salsa.

It turns out they weren’t kidding.

Another in a long line of reasons why I love my country.

I’ve been gone a long time. Is this really the way things are now?

On a bustling street in China’s southern boomtown of Shenzhen, more than 30 stores carrying Apple Inc’s iconic white logos peddle pre-orders for the new iPhone, a gadget that has become a status symbol among many better-off Chinese.

Many of the stores look just like Apple’s signature outlets, right down to the sales staff kitted out in blue T-shirts bearing the company’s white logo and the sample iPads and iWatches displayed on sleek wooden tables.

First, what the fuck is an iWatch? Second, I wonder if there’s anything Apple can, or would, do about this. According to the story, the stores are selling “genuine Apple products.” Interesting problem.

Jim and Dan talk about Dan’s newfound Apple love, the iPhone 6s, Watch OS 2, apps as the future of TV (and the fundamentally changing way we view TV as a medium), the iPad Pro, the Pencil, and ad blocking from the standpoint of an independent content creator.

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Samantha Bielefeld talking about The Verge:

What I would like to see is the author not afraid to bite the hand that feeds, to confront the real issue here…the problem isn’t with there being advertising on the web driven by page impressions. The issue is how awful they look, how invasive they can be (auto-play audio/video, yuck!), their attempts at deceiving your website’s audience, and tracking your every mouse click or tap around the web in order to serve their own needs while sacrificing the privacy of the customers they are seeking to gain.

Great read.

I’ve been asked about ad tracking on The Loop quite a bit since iOS 9 and its content blockers were released. I use The Deck to serve ads on the site, and have for the last few years. Jim Coudal, the owner of The Deck, and I share a philosophy that ads should be unobtrusive and respectful to the reader.

Here is The Deck’s official stance on ad tracking (spoiler: there is none):

Short version. We don’t track our readers in any way or allow any other behind-the-scenes shenanigans. We just serve useful, relevant ads in a simple, unobtrusive way to support independent publishers. Please white-list The Deck when using ad blocking software. Thanks.

We will never share your personal information obtained by tracking, either individually or in aggregate, with advertisers or any one else for one very good reason: we don’t have any.

I understand people are upset with being tracked and having ads all over the sites they want to visit, but that’s not what The Deck or The Loop is about. When you block the sites that do make you angry, remember to white-list the ones that treat you with respect.

Coudal also recently spoke with Fast Company about ad blocking.