Jawbone sued Fitbit in California State Court here on Wednesday, accusing its rival of “systematically plundering” confidential information by poaching employees who improperly downloaded sensitive materials shortly before leaving.
This one is going to get messy.
Techcrunch:
Jeff Williams, Apple’s senior vice president of operations, said that there are over 4,000 apps now available for Apple Watch, a number we’ve previously heard. Williams also discussed the upcoming native SDK for the Apple Watch. Williams spoke in an interview today at the Code conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif.“A week from Monday at our developer conference we’ll release a preview so that developers will be able to write code natively and have access to sensors, and we’re really excited about that.”
When asked by TechCrunch about the possibility of future Apple Watches giving more transparency to overall health, Williams declined to say anything specific but did acknowledge that Apple was considering adding more sensors.
In three to six months, things are going to start getting even more interesting with the Apple Watch.
Apple:
Make the most of the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference with the WWDC app. Even if you can’t join us in San Francisco, you can still follow along each day — session videos are just a tap away. And because the WWDC app experience now extends to Apple Watch, conference information is available right from your wrist.
Along with the media invites Apple sent out this morning, they have updated the official WWDC app to include the keynote session, likely emceed by CEO Tim Cook and including the usual cast of characters and announcements.
Atlas Obscura:
The hunt for treasure on Oak Island has been going on for over two hundred years.Without a single return, and conflicting theories of what hunters are actually looking for, the so-called Money Pit in Nova Scotia is one of the most incredible self-perpetuating goose chases in the world. Errol Flynn, John Wayne, and Franklin Roosevelt were at one point each involved in the hunt and held their own theories as to the pit’s contents.
Some believed pirate treasure lay just below the next layer of soil. Others believed Marie Antoinette’s lost jewels were surely buried there right after the French Revolution. Another theory even posited that Francis Bacon had stored documents in the pit proving himself as the author of Shakespeare’s plays. There are many other theories one big one is that “The Arc Of the Covenant” lies at the bottom.
Having grown up in the area, we were regaled with ghost stories about the island as kids. It’s a fascinating story, not of treasure found, but of man’s desire to find it. The best legend of the treasure is that seven men must die before it will be found. Six already have while searching for whatever is in that pit.
Re/code:
We are thrilled to announce that Re/code’s parent company, Revere Digital, is being wholly acquired by the highly respected digital-native media company Vox Media. This is the next big step in our mission to bring you quality tech journalism, because our work will now be amplified and enhanced by Vox Media’s deep and broad skill set.
This doesn’t feel like a good thing. It certainly won’t be the last merger or acquisition in the “new media journalism” space, either.
FuzzMeasure is an audio and acoustic measurement tool to produce, analyze, and publish beautiful graphs. It delivers a comprehensive suite of features for professionals in research, acoustics, live sound, room design, and pro audio. By combining sophisticated technology with an elegant user interface, FuzzMeasure offers an unparalleled experience.
I’ve talked to the developer about FuzzMeasure quite a bit over the years. Great to see this update.
There was nothing unique about these items—they were puny in size and yet they arrived in a giant box bursting with air-filled packaging material. And I looked at that box with absolute and complete disgust, wondering, Is Amazon Prime actually an EcoCrime? Others on Twitter agreed with that take, which only reaffirmed my guilt for using Prime—for being an unwitting enabler of waste.
I’m not a member of Amazon Prime, but I know a lot of people, like Om, that are. I can’t wait to hear the explanation for the oversized packaging from Amazon.
Merlin and Jim have some fun with reader questions, talk about Apple’s MacBook lineup, look at the benefits of sleep tracking, and give some advice on guitar software for beginners.
Send questions and comments via #heytdr
Download the MP3 of this episode.
Sponsored by:
Hover — Simple, beautiful online time-tracking software. Use code FRETNOISE for 50% off your first month.
Dash — Quickly create real-time dashboards.
Automatic — Your smart driving assistant. Get $20 off with this link.
Until now, Ive’s job title has been Senior Vice President of Design. But I can reveal that he has just been promoted and is now Apple’s Chief Design Officer. It is therefore an especially exciting time for him.
Inside the fabled design studio (cloths over the long tables hiding the exciting new prototypes from prying eyes like mine) Jony has two people with him. They too have been promoted as part of Ive’s new role.
One is Richard Howarth, English as Vimto. “Richard is going to be our new head of Industrial Design,” says Jony. “And this is Alan Dye, the new head of User Interface.” Dye is a tall, amiable American.
Mapbox lets iOS developers add beautiful maps to their applications. Our building blocks make it easy to swap out Apple maps with our open source SDK. Choose the map design that fits your app and feels good in your hand.
Wired:
The Indianapolis Motor Speedway, founded in 1909, is the world’s oldest permanent motorsport facility. It’s changed a lot since the early days—pavement instead of bricks for a racing surface, new stands and administration buildings—but the track is essentially the same. It still has corners banked at 9 degrees, 12 minutes, and those corners are the same radius they were a century ago.More than that, the track is still a magical, ghostly place, eerily alive with death and life. Stand on the front straight and stare into Turn 1—it looks like a tunnel, or maybe a wall of asphalt—and you feel the echo of death and time in your bones.
I’ve watched this race every year since I was eight years old and I was lucky enough to drive my motorcycle on it for a charity event. It really is a amazing place.
MY thanks to WALTR for sponsoring The Loop this week. WALTR is the first Mac app in the world to allow users transfer and playback unsupported formats such as MKV, AVI, FLAC & more – directly from the native Videos/Music app.
iTunes is the only option Apple gives us for loading media onto our iPhone, iPad or iPod touch from our Macs, and it limits the audio and video file formats we can upload. That’s a thing of the past thanks to WALTR from Softorino. This awesome Mac app lets you upload a long list of file formats — such as MKV, AVI, MP4, CUE, FLAC, APE, ALAC, OGG, AAC, AIFF and WAV — to your iOS device without ever touching iTunes. Just fire up WALTR, connect your iPhone or iPad to your Mac via USB, and drag files to convert and upload them so you can watch or listen on the go. It really is drag-and-drop simple, and file transfers are surprisingly fast. No iTunes required; No jailbreak required; No need to worry about 3rd party converters;
the awesomely cool app name is inspired by Walter White from Breaking Bad.
this is the same app that discovered 4K video playback on iPhone 6
You can try out WALTR for free and a license costs US$29.95 but you can use the Loop exclusive coupon ‘HEINEKENSPECIAL’ for a 33% discount.
Weaknesses in the factory reset function within Google’s Android mobile operating system mean data from more than 500 million phones can be discovered despite being wiped, researchers have found.
And
Recovering data was even possible with full-disk encryption switched on, the researchers discovered.
Good luck Android people. Here is a sure way to fix the security issues you’re having.
In the month since the phone’s launch, however, the response has been lacklustre. The Korean news outlet Yonhap News Agency reports that the device has seen 10 million shipments so far. For comparison, Samsung’s previous model, the S5, shipped 11 million units in the same time frame a year ago — the year in which Samsung’s sales collapsed. These are shipments, not sales, so the number of devices sold could be even lower.
I guess you can’t copy and be successful forever.
I need one of these.
Mashable:
There’s a building in China that looks almost exactly like the USS Enterprise from Star Trek. Drone footage shows how a relatively conventional-looking building from the ground dramatically transforms into a regal starship when viewed from the air.Lest you think this is visual trickery done via Holodeck or CGI, the starship/building is clearly visible on Google Maps.
Don’t lie – a bunch of you saw that video and thought to yourself how much you’d like to work there, didn’t you? It looks like Nerd Valhalla.
CNET:
There’s no doubt that the Apple Watch can do a lot of things. It can be used to communicate with others, view notifications from an iPhone and even pay for items with Apple Pay. It’s also a dedicated activity tracker that can measure active calories burned, active minutes, the number of times you stand throughout the day, your daily step count and distance traveled.We’ve been testing the Apple Watch over the past few weeks, and focused on those final two metrics — steps taken and distance traveled — to see how it stacks up against the competition.
This is an important question for those who want or need to have accurate tracking. Good to see the Apple Watch scored so highly and that Apple has done a good job in making sure the Watch works as advertised.
Accessibility is not just an additional feature, but a best-practice.
Another great article on app accessibility.
Ideally, people with a variety of abilities should be able to access the same mainstream technology wherever possible. Companies such as Apple work hard to make their devices and software accessible irrespective of whether the user may have hearing difficulties, vision problems, fine-motor challenges, or, for that matter, small or large hands, thick or thin fingers, or whether they are left or right handed, young or old. They want their products to be usable by the widest possible range of people. They don’t design a special iPad for children with autism, or a different watch for left handed people. Yet, they invest a lot of effort in making sure that Apple Watch works well for left and right handed people and that iPads have features that work well for kids with autism without sacrificing their utility for, for example, blind users. They aim for universal design. Ease of use, simplicity, and refinement all contribute to making the products better for everyone.
This sums up my feelings about Apple’s accessibility efforts perfectly. They invest the time and resources to make one product work for everyone.
We should all be aware of accessibility when making our apps. Apple has posted a few on its “Accessibility Awareness” page on the App Store.
There are a lot of changes in the new version. Two that really stood out to me are the fact AmpliTube for iOS now uses the same amp DSP as AmpliTube 3 Custom Shop for OS X, and the “Cab Room” that allows 3D miking of cabinets with up to two mics. I just downloaded it.
In 2011 and 2012, the NSA and the communications intelligence agencies of its “Five Eyes” allies developed and tested a set of add-ons to their shared Internet surveillance capability that could identify and target communications between mobile devices and popular mobile app stores—including those of Google and Samsung.
Notice two words not mentioned anywhere in this story? “Apple” and “iOS.”
I tested this app and love it. It’s so easy to use on the Apple Watch.
Just speak:
“Five point ninety-nine” gets you 5.99 “One hundred US dollars to euro” gets you 100 USD converted to EUR
Works great for me.
The Wall Street Journal:
Phone cameras have made photography everyone’s hobby. But even owners of the fanciest smartphones would recognize the many genres of disappointing phone-ography: The blurry runaway toddler. The lifeless landscape. The grainy candlelit dinner. The ghoulish flash portrait.We need to save personal tech’s most endangered species, the stand-alone camera.
There’s no doubt that camera phones in general and the iPhone in particular are really good cameras – for phones. And while we’ve all seen or taken great shots with our iPhones, it’s definitely a “jack of all trades, master of none”.
A good camera provides a wider range of possibilities – from zoom to control over depth of field to capturing low light and a higher dynamic range. If you’re not satisfied with the shots coming out of your iPhone, I’d encourage you to learn more about photography in general by taking a class or reading books and web sites on it but don’t neglect the thing that actually takes the shot – the camera itself.
As an example, over the weekend, I went to a local track to take pics of one of my favourite subjects – motorcycles. Of the 15 shots, only two would have been possible with the iPhone.
Smartwatch maker Pebble seems to be in some trouble. According to sources close to the company, the company is having trouble maintaining its growth and has turned to a Silicon Valley bank for a $5 million loan and $5 million line of credit. Valley VCs have been turning down the company’s requests for new capital.
You can see why VCs would not want to take on Apple.
Wired:
As it turns 40 this year, ILM can claim to have played a defining role making effects for 317 movies. But that’s only part of the story: Pixar began, essentially, as an ILM internal investigation. Photoshop was invented, in part, by an ILM employee tinkering with programming in his time away from work. Billions of lines of code have been formulated there. Along the way ILM has put tentacles into pirate beards, turned a man into mercury, and dominated box office charts with computer-generated dinosaurs and superheroes.What defines ILM, however, isn’t a signature look, feel, or tone—those change project by project. Rather, it’s the indefatigable spirit of innovation that each of the 43 subjects interviewed for this oral history mentioned time and again. It is the Force that sustains the place.
I can’t think of another person, organization, studio or company that has had a hand in as many of the movies I love as ILM. They have been an integral part of my movie enjoying experience.
Like a good scam story? How about one about scamming a quiz show? This one is a few years old, but I just ran into it today, thought it was good enough to share. Enjoy.
Pretty amazing.
This addresses a few of the things I’ve had trouble with.
Great article, written by EVH.