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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.

You can now subscribe to the new podcast I do with Merlin Mann on iTunes.

Take 30 seconds and have a good laugh.

In a letter to be sent Tuesday and obtained by The Washington Post, a coalition of tech firms, security experts and others appeal to the White House to protect privacy rights as it considers how to address law enforcement’s need to access data that is increasingly encrypted.

Added support for the Apple Watch – now you can use PCalc without taking your phone out your pocket! Includes a full calculator app, a tip calculator, and a glance to see the result of your most recent calculations.

It’s great to see PCalc on the watch.

Samsung has just released a public beta of its new feature called Samsung Flow, which is essentially a ripoff of Apple’s Continuity – introduced last year. This new feature will allow users to start a task on one device, and be able to pick it up and continue from another.

Can this company can up with nothing original? I’m all for competition, but Jesus, this continuous copying is getting tiresome.

Elvis is just a badass.

British Pathé:

Follow us through the 20th Century and dive into the good and the bad times of the past. Feel free to explore more than 80,000 videos of filmed history and maybe you’ll find stuff no one else has ever seen.

Do not go to this site if you want to get any work done today. Thanks to my friend Antonio Rosario for the huge time suck.

Everyone has been focused on the new gadgets coming out of Cupertino, but Apple’s Mac team has been killing it lately. First the new MacBook, and now updated MacBook Pro and lower-priced iMac with a 5K display. […]

I had the good fortune to be around for the dawn of some of the most significant technological developments in human history: the arrival of personal computers, the emergence of the Internet and the World Wide Web, and the current dominance of social media and mobile devices. These and other technological advances continue to alter our world at an ever accelerating pace. One day Apple is on the verge of bankruptcy. The next day (or so it sometimes seems), it is the largest most profitable company on earth. Who’d have guessed?

There are a lot of people I wish would retire from writing about Apple – Ted Landau is not one of those people. Many of us owe a great debt of thanks to Ted for all of his many years of service to the Mac Community. For me personally, I was a fan of his writing at MacFixIt and he was always extraordinary helpful whenever I emailed him. As a podcaster, I interviewed him several times and, as a speaker at Macworld Expos, I was lucky enough to sit and chat with him on many occasions. Quiet, soft-spoken, gracious, kind, knowledgeable, Ted is all that and more. We wish him all the best in his retirement!

The Wall Street Journal:

Investor Carl Icahn said he expects Apple Inc. to introduce an ultra-high-definition television in 2016. But after nearly a decade of research, Apple quietly shelved plans to make such a set more than a year ago, according to people familiar with the matter.

Apple had searched for breakthrough features to justify building an Apple-branded television set, those people said. In addition to an ultra-high-definition display, Apple considered adding sensor-equipped cameras so viewers could make video calls through the set, they said.

Ultimately, though, Apple executives didn’t consider any of those features compelling enough to enter the highly competitive television market, led by Samsung Electronics Co.

It’s been an open secret for years that Apple has tested many variations of television sets but just couldn’t find a way to include features compelling enough to bring it to market. Regardless of what Icahn wants or believes, Apple will do what’s right for Apple. And, as many of us have argued for many years, an Apple-branded television set isn’t going to happen.

Jim Dalrymple and Merlin Man talk about firsts, staying healthy and active, and the virtues of consistent beer.

Download the MP3 of this episode.

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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.

Universal pictures has unveiled the “first look” clip from the upcoming movie about Steve Jobs. It’s just a teaser but it looks interesting. Fassbinder was an odd choice to portray jobs but he is a very good actor and the rest of the cast is equally accomplished.

One of the odd things about getting older is movies are being made about the times I’ve lived in and, in the case of parts of this movie, events and presentations I was at and tangentially involved in. It’s kind of a weird feeling and I don’t know how unbiased I’m going to be watching this film. But I am looking forward to seeing it.

Tim Cook was George Washington University’s Commencement Speaker for Spring 2015. He goofs around a bit, gives some of the usual graduate advice and talks about his early years at Apple.

The New York Times:

For many of the largest Silicon Valley technology companies, mapping software undergirds numerous software applications and features in their products. For Apple, it is little different. To that end, Apple confirmed in an email on Sunday that it had bought Coherent Navigation, a Bay Area navigation company, further bolstering Apple’s mapping technology and services.

This is obviously a move by Apple to continue to improve its Maps app. The Sunday confirmation from Apple is interesting too. Another sign of its softening of its former hard line position with regards to PR.