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The Verge:

If I had to pick places I’d expect to see rocking chairs, front porches, living rooms, and pretty much anywhere else would rank far above cavernous and stark airport terminals, yet that’s probably where I’m most likely to see them. And while I could imagine an aggressively whimsical designer somewhere throwing a bunch of rocking chairs in a terminal, I had a hard time seeing how they’d sprung up in so many airports across the country. Why rocking chairs? Where did they come from?

I’ve only ever seen these at the Nashville International Airport. I thought they were just a quirky thing specific to the city.

Vox:

The metric system is far superior to the bizarre system of feet, miles, pounds, and gallons used in the United States. The whole rest of the world seems to get this. So why aren’t we doing it, too?

The reasons to go metric are stronger than ever, and it’s time to revive the effort. In our increasingly global economy, America’s bizarre measurement system puts the country at a disadvantage. Popular opinion on the matter seems to be quite positive, and there are some hints of change on the horizon.

I lived in the US for many years and grew up in Canada during the switch from Imperial to Metric so I get both systems. There’s no doubt metric is much easier to do calculations with but, even here in Canada, there is still a lot of confusion due to the mashup of the two systems.

Wired:

Jonathan Coulton loves cruise ships. He loves the weird artificial mall running down the middle, and he loves staring off the back of the ship into infinity. That’s not to say that David Foster Wallace’s famously dark assessment of shipboard vacationing (“There is something about a mass-market Luxury Cruise that’s unbearably sad”) is unfamiliar. The lanyard that holds a laser-cut wooden JoCo Cruise name tag around my neck came printed with the phrase “A supposedly fun thing I’ll never do again.” Inside jokes are the coin of the realm around here.

I’ve been on one cruise and, for various reasons, it was an awful experience.

Angela Ahrendts:

I’ve always tried to focus my comments on simple leadership lessons I’ve learned that might somehow, somewhere, someday help others. I’ll admit, I’ve been struggling recently to find one that’s relevant around the holidays.

On Wednesday, I was listening to the radio on my drive home and I heard an old song that took me back to my childhood. I hadn’t heard it for a while, and wow — in that moment, it really moved me.

I know this is probably just fluff, but I’d love to see more of these kinds of posts from more of Apple’s leadership.

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More cowbell!

National Geographic:

More than 9,200 entries were submitted from over 150 countries, with professional photographers and amateur photo enthusiasts across the globe participating.The Grand Prize Winner will receive $10,000 and a trip to National Geographic headquarters in Washington, D.C., to participate in the annual National Geographic Photography Seminar in January 2015.

Check out the winner and let us know what you think. It’s not the usual photo that comes to mind when you think of National Geographic.

Vice:

It is mind boggling to me, particularly when you compare it to real things that have actually happened. Someone killed 12 people and shot another 70 people at the opening night of Batman: The Dark Knight. They kept that movie in the theaters. You issue an anonymous cyber threat that you did not have the capability to carry out? We pulled a movie from 18,000 theaters.

There’s probably no worse way for Sony to have handled this. Incredible how messed up this has become.

Apple CEO, Tim Cook:

“I’m thrilled to announce that our total donation for this quarter will be more than $20 million — our biggest ever — bringing the total amount Apple has raised for (PRODUCT) RED to over $100 million,” Cook wrote. “The money we’ve raised is saving lives and bringing hope to people in need. It’s a cause we can all be proud to support.”

Much respect Apple people and everyone that purchased a product.

Some of these are really whacky.

There is just nothing like hearing from the guy that sits in the control room and is responsible for the recording. Some great tips in here too.

On this episode of Amplified, Jim and Shawn talk about lawsuits, packaging, Apple Watch and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame!

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I’ve had some people ask what microphone I use on Amplified and other podcasts. I use the Samson C01U Pro USB Studio Condenser and it’s on sale at Amazon.

Apple has posted a behind the scenes video of the making of their latest holiday ad, “The Song”.

A fascinating piece by Mat Honan on a business that had big plans for journalism, but we’ll never see it.

This course is for Hendrix fans who want to learn his unique style of blues playing. Taking cues from Red House and Voodoo Chile Blues, this course will not disappoint.

Anthony Stauffer just released new guitar lessons teaching you all about Jimi Hendrix, one of the greatest guitarists to ever pick up the instrument.

Bryan Chaffin does a very good job on this piece. I especially like page 2, but it’s all worth a read.

Everything affects your tone when playing the guitar.

Macworld:

The first true automator for iOS, Workflow takes full advantage of Apple’s looser restrictions on sharing to bring new levels of interactivity and multitasking to our handheld devices. More versatile than the situational IFTTT and more powerful than even Launch Center Pro’s slick system of shortcuts, Workflow’s endlessly customizable actions integrate seamlessly into the apps you already use to help you work smarter, faster, and just plain better.

I have yet to try this app (not really the target customer), but if my Twitter feed is any indication, many people find it incredibly useful.

Bloomberg:

Apple Inc. halted online sales of its products in Russia due to “extreme” ruble fluctuations, showing how the currency’s swings are rippling out to international businesses.

The iPhone and iPad maker stopped sales from its Web store as Russia’s currency lost as much as 19 percent today.

Not good news for Russian Christmas shoppers, among others.

The impactful, full-bodied qualities of Marsala make for an elegant, grounded statement color when used on its own or as a strong accent to many other colors.

It’s a pleasing color.

Like most people these days, I demand quality from the products I purchase. I want quality design, functionality, and I want them to be built from quality materials so they last. I demand it. […]

Delivering a unanimous verdict today, the group said Apple’s iTunes 7.0, released in the fall of 2006, was a “genuine product improvement,” meaning that new features (though importantly increased security) were good for consumers. Plaintiffs in the case unsuccessfully argued that those features not only thwarted competition, but also made Apple’s products less useful since customers could not as easily use purchased music or jukebox software from other companies with the iPod.

Good. These stupid lawsuits have to stop.

Someone at Apple has a sense of humor this holiday season. iTunes on Monday released three curated lists of movies, TV shows and books in the categories: Pop Culture Junkies, Millennials, and Gadget, Gizmos & Geeks. Good stuff Apple.

Mashable:

Your tree has a complicated backstory, one that includes daredevil helicopter pilots, 18-hour days battling Oregon sleet and, of course, the fickle hibernation habits of squirrels.

Here is how (and where) an American Christmas tree comes to life.

We posted a story with video last year about the use of helicopters on these Oregon Christmas Tree farms.

Gedeon Maheux:

The following list was generated by a manual App Store (iPhone) search on Nov 15th, 2014 for the term “Twitter”. The official app from Twitter is naturally the first result, but the next actual Twitter client (Hootsuite) doesn’t appear on the list until #20 and the next one after that comes in at #62. Even the mega-popular Tweetbot isn’t returned in the results until position #81 and even then, the older v2 of Tweetbot (for iOS 6) comes first.

Where’s Twitterrific? Although it contains the word “Twitter” in the app’s name, Twitterrific isn’t seen in the list until you scroll all the way down to #100.

I’ve seen this many times, in particular when searching for podcasts and dozens of completely unrelated ones intrude on your search. Makes for a frustrating waste of time.

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Doxie’s elegant Mac and iOS apps handle any workflow — save scans to your desktop, share with your favorite apps, or send to cloud services like Evernote and Dropbox. Doxie’s new open developer API lets you build Doxie support into your service, software, or personal paperless workflow.

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It’s beautiful. As someone who designs consumer electronics and watches, the more I looked at it the more impressed I was. It’s got Marc Newson’s fingerprints all over it.

It’s clearly something he designed rather than Jony Ive. It’s funny they announced he was working with them after the watch. But to me that was the Apple way of underhandedly giving him credit for the design without actually saying he designed it. But it seemed to me very Marc Newson.

A fascinating story.

Vox:

Some 60 years ago, during the era of McCarthyism, comic books became a threat. The panic culminated in a Senate hearing in 1954. This, of course, isn’t to say that McCarthyism and the comic book panic were comparable in their human toll. But they share the same symptoms of American fear and a harsh, reactive response to it.

What adults thought was best for children ended up censoring and dissolving away years of progress and artistry, as well as comics that challenged American views on gender and race. Consequently, that cemented the idea that this was a medium for kids — something that we’ve only recently started disbelieving.

Fascinating history of what comic books used to be and how we got to where we are now.

The helicopter shot makes it look insane. The GoPro shot had me tighten up every orifice in sympathy.