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Macworld:

Before you go blowing your entire paycheck on everything from big handbags to Big Macs, there are a few things to keep in mind about the platform. Read on to learn more about how Apple Pay works, how to get your iPhone ready for it, and most importantly, where you can go test it out yourself.

If you are lucky enough to have an new iPhone and live in the US, you can now buy stuff as if you lived in the future.

The text of this video has been available for a while but it’s still interesting to watch the video.

Yahoo:

Apple today announced financial results for its fiscal 2014 fourth quarter ended September 27, 2014. The Company posted quarterly revenue of $42.1 billion and quarterly net profit of $8.5 billion, or $1.42 per diluted share. These results compare to revenue of $37.5 billion and net profit of $7.5 billion, or $1.18 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 38 percent compared to 37 percent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 60 percent of the quarter’s revenue.

More profit, more revenue, more sales. So – DOOMED!

You can go to Settings > General > Software Update on your iOS device to download it now.

I laughed my balls off watching this.

For Apple Pay, Apple has worked with the payment processing networks to create end-to-end security for the user leveraging the EMVCo specification, completely removing the actual credit card number from any part of the payment process and instead generating one time payment tokens that are useless after they are processed. Simply put, the Target and Home Depot breaches would not have even been possible with Apple Pay. Tom Noyes, a former credit card executive, goes so far as saying that Apple Pay is “… the most secure payments scheme on the planet.” Now that’s secure.

Apple will deliver convenience and security—the best of both worlds.

Ars Technica:

There are still good reasons to want an old, reliable USB stick. For instance, if you find yourself doing multiple installs, a USB drive may be faster than multiple downloads (especially if you use a USB 3.0 drive). Or maybe you need a recovery disk for older Macs that don’t support the Internet Recovery feature. Whatever the reason, you’re in luck, because it’s not hard to make one.

I always prefer to have at least one “offline” copy of the latest OS X version.

John’s OS X reviews are legendary and for good reason—this one is 25 pages.

Federico Viticci always does a great job with these articles.

Tech Republic:

A mere 35 years ago, Shenzhen was little more than a fishing village clinging to the coast, peering enviously at wealthy Hong Kong across the water. But then it was chosen to become the first of China’s special economic zones under Deng Xiaoping — an area where foreign investment and entrepreneurialism was encouraged.

Since then it has rapidly grown into a massive metropolis — one of the largest cities on the planet — and along the way it has also become the manufacturing heart of the global tech industry. If Silicon Valley is the world’s software epicentre, then Shenzhen is home of hardware.

I’ve got friends who regularly go to Shenzhen for business and they marvel at the scale and speed the city operates on.

Wired:

Apple’s new encryption has prompted a breathtaking and erroneous scare campaign led by Federal Bureau of Investigation director James Comey. In a speech at the Brookings Institute this week, Comey went so far as to claim that Apple’s new system risks creating an environment in which the United States is “no longer a country governed by the rule of law.”

This is absurd. The only actions that have undermined the rule of law are the government’s deceptive and secret mass surveillance programs.

The FBI has been beating this drum for quite a while now. Good to see so much pushback on it. The bottom line is, if we trusted our governments to do what was right, legal and in our best interests, we’d have less of a problem. But various governments have proven they are, at the very least, “unreliable” when it comes to our personal data.

Rolling Stone:

Though it’s been off the air for more than 20 years, The Wonder Years is one of those shows whose legacy has remained untarnished; you don’t hear many people looking back and saying it doesn’t hold up.

Set against the backdrop of the tumultuous late Sixties, the ABC show focused on a suburban family — in particular, the growing pains of youngest son Kevin, played by Fred Savage. It may be the story’s universality that’s accounted for its ability to stand the test of time, or simply that, because the show only ran for six seasons and faded away before it burned out, the series retained a level of consistent quality throughout.

I haven’t watched it since it was originally on but I remember it with great fondness.

I had the opportunity to spend some time with the new products after the event concluded on Apple’s campus this morning and I was impressed with what I saw. […]

Quartz:

Perhaps the most interesting news about Apple’s new iPad Air 2 tablet is buried at the bottom of one of its marketing pages: It will come pre-installed with a new “Apple SIM” card instead of one from a specific mobile operator.

It’s early, but it’s easy to see how this concept could significantly disrupt the mobile industry if Apple brings it to the iPhone.

That small announcement could be the shot heard round the telecom world.

“People love Mac mini. It’s a great first Mac or addition to your home network, and the new Mac mini is a nice upgrade packed into an incredibly compact design,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing.

I think Phil summed it up perfectly—People love the Mac mini. Even though this wasn’t a staggering update, consumers are going to love it.

iMac with Retina 5K display delivers an amazingly immersive user experience. With a resolution of 5120 x 2880, iMac with Retina 5K display has four times more pixels than the standard 27-inch iMac and 67 percent more pixels than a 4K display. Text looks as sharp as it does on a printed page, and you can see more of your high-resolution photos with pixel-for-pixel detail.

I just saw the new iMac in the hands-on area after the event and it is incredible.

Apple today announced that OS X Yosemite, the latest major release of the world’s most advanced desktop operating system, is available as a free upgrade for Mac users from the Mac App Store.

I’ve been using Yosemite for a while now and I really like all of the changes, especially the redesigned interface.

Apple today announced that customers can start making payments with the touch of a finger on Monday, October 20, when Apple Pay becomes available in the US.

This could very well be one of Apple’s most significant announcements in years.

Apple today introduced iPad Air 2, the thinnest and most powerful iPad ever. Now just 6.1 mm thin and weighing less than a pound, iPad Air 2 features an improved Retina display for enhanced contrast and richer, more vibrant colors, and better cameras for taking stunning photos and videos. Available in gold, silver and space gray, the new iPad Air 2 and iPad mini 3 offer Touch ID so users can unlock their iPad with just the touch of a finger and make purchases easily and securely within apps using Apple Pay.

Great looking devices.

It’s kind of sad that Apple is the source of the leak.

Lots of changes in the latest update:

• Support for OS X Yosemite, including a Notification Center widget for quick calculations simply click on the display to switch to the main app, even mid-calculation.

• Handoff support, between PCalc running on iOS 8 and Yosemite – continue your calculation on any device. The full state of the calculator, including the tape, is sent over.

• Support for custom button layouts created with the iOS version. Full editing on the Mac will come in the next release.

• Visual improvements, to match the new look of Yosemite, and unify with the iOS release.

• A new dark calculator theme, “Backlight”.

• All the core calculation code improvements from PCalc 3.3.2 on iOS, including better operator precedence support.

8 Elite Mac Apps + 25 Comprehensive OS X & Web Development Courses

There are some nice apps here for $30.

TidBITS:

Hundreds of millions of customers use Apple products. I don’t know what the iCloud numbers are, but we are talking about a company that just sold 10 million iPhones in a weekend. Security complexity increases exponentially as fringe situations encompass millions of users. With Apple operating on that scale, the rules change.

Apple thus faces one of the most complex security challenges in society, and faces it at a scale only a handful of companies need to consider.

Users want security but few are willing to be inconvenienced by it. That puts Apple and other companies between the proverbial rock and a hard place.

The all new Apogee Ensemble is the first Thunderbolt 2 audio interface to offer superior sound quality, the lowest latency performance and the most comprehensive studio functionality all in one box. Ensemble includes 8 Advanced Stepped Gain™ mic preamps, monitor controller functionality including talkback, front panel Guitar I/O, two headphone outputs and digital connectivity for a total of 30 x 34 I/O. Blending acclaimed innovations, groundbreaking new features and an effortless user interface, Ensemble empowers you to capture inspiration when creative lightning strikes.

What a great looking interface. This thing is a beast.

Much respect.

Very sad news today for the Mac community:

“We are announcing today that Macworld/iWorld is going on hiatus, and will not be taking place as planned in 2015. Our MacIT event, the world’s premiere event for deploying Apple in the enterprise, will continue next year with details to be announced in the coming weeks.

I remember back in 1994 as one of the original members of MacCentral that one of our main goals was to attend a Macworld Expo. I grew up in my profession writing about all the great products released at the expos over the years. This is a sad day.

Since 1985, Macworld events have brought together a community to celebrate the incredible innovations that Apple has brought into the world, shining a spotlight on the developers who add value to the user’s experience in infinite ways. As Apple products and the related ecosystem have changed, so has the marketplace, and we are proud to have played a part in that evolution. Literally thousands of companies and hundreds of products have come to market at Macworld, and countless professional relationships have been forged. We’d like to take this opportunity to thank the Apple community for allowing us to host these events and be a part of the incredible story that is the Apple market.

We are committed via our MacIT event to bringing together the product developers innovating with enterprise iOS and OS X based solutions, and the growing legion of professionals empowering their organizations through these tools. We are exploring exciting new partnerships, venues and delivery opportunities through which MacIT can continue to serve this market, and we look forward to announcing our plans for this event within the next few months.”

Much respect to Paul Kent for keeping the doors open as long as he did.

I got a copy of Rick Smolan’s smartphone-enhanced book late last week and had a chance to try it out. As you would expect from a photographer of Rick’s experience, the photos are simply amazing. The story also pulls you in, certainly more than what I expected.

What was really cool is that after downloading the app, I was able to just point my iPhone at a picture and a movie explaining that photo would show up on my iPhone. It added so much to the experience.

I love the book. You can help fund the project and read the background story at National Geographic.

It’s amazing to think that CSS has been around so long.

Voted BEST in Show at the Audio Engineering Convention in Los Angeles last week!

With a compact footprint and outstanding acoustic performance, the 8351 Acoustically Coaxial SAM System marks a bold step forward in active monitoring featuring major advances in audio driver technology integrated into a sophisticated enclosure design

Genelec, the leader in active monitoring technology for over 35 years, offers the revolutionary new 8351 three-way Smart Active Monitor (SAM), developed in response to the need for increasing audio perfection for near-field recording and mix environments. Offering unique size and technological innovations, the 8351 breaks new ground in electro-acoustic engineering, as the mechanical, acoustical and signal-processing designs are linked closely together. The result is a system that is completely unique in the professional monitoring industry and represents a bold step forward for the active monitoring pioneer.

The 8351 borrows its size attribute from Genelec’s acclaimed 8050, the 8351 has a particularly compact footprint for a three-way monitor. The center of the 8351’s enclosure features the Minimum Diffraction Co-axial midrange/tweeter driver. This breakthrough in coaxial driver design provides extremely accurate imaging and improved sound quality, with crystal clear accuracy, both on and off-axis, vertically as well as horizontally. Aesthetically striking is the absence of any visible woofers, which are concealed beneath the Directivity Control Waveguide (DCW). The areas on the perimeter of the DCW are the acoustic openings for the proprietary Genelec-designed Acoustically Concealed Woofers (ACW™).

It’s this arrangement, the Co-axial midrange / tweeter in combination with the innovative bass drivers, together form a three-way co-axial enclosure with large continuous Directivity Control Waveguide (DCW) across the entire front. The extremely smooth frequency response and dispersion pattern lead to outstanding clarity and definition of the audio signal.

Genelec knows that smaller environments can cause significant problems with regards to the room performance, but SAM (Smart Active Monitoring) technology takes all that can be good about a monitor by itself and integrates it further into the listening environment. SAM technology creates a computer controlled, flexible network of monitors and makes them as a fully aligned system with regards to level, timing and room response equalization – all done automatically – as well being configurable by the end user. Like all active monitors in the Genelec SAM range, the 8351 is capable of automatically adapting to acoustical environments to offer an indispensable tool for sound professionals in broadcasting, post production, music studios and remote recording environments.

The 8351 is a remarkable achievement in electro-acoustic design by a group of engineers who remain committed day after day to delivering performance-based solutions for the professional audio market.

For more information, please visit Genelec.

Horace Dediu

Samsung’s operating model seems to be to invest as a ‘fast follower’ filling in the market after it’s established while leveraging capital intensive components synergies… If the modus operandi does not change then their turnaround will depend on the creation of new opportunities/categories.

I honestly don’t see an opportunity for Samsung to create new product categories. I think they’ve proven that’s not its strength.