The GRAMMY Museum, based in Los Angeles, will be honoring Stevie Ray Vaughan’s birthday with FREE admission to its exhibits on October 3, 2014 from 11:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. PDT. In June, the museum unveiled Pride & Joy: The Texas Blues of Stevie Ray Vaughan, on display through July 2015. Jimmie Vaughan, Stevie’s brother, served as a guest curator.
Happy Birthday SRV. You were always one of my favorites.
I think Schmidt underestimates the intelligence of the general public. If you don’t buy a product, you are the product being sold.
The Guardian:
The Greater Tokyo Metropolitan Area, composed of four prefectures, became the world’s pre-eminent megalopolis – some 35 million people by 2010, or 27% of Japan’s total population. It isn’t unusual for commuters to spend two hours getting to work every day on trains that exceed 150% of capacity.
When I was in Tokyo, one of the things I wanted to see and take pictures of was the Shinkansen bullet train. It’s a shame we don’t have the population densities to make these trains possible here in North America.
Washington Post:
When eight cans of nitrate film arrived at the Library of Congress in August, a staffer began a routine inspection to see what sort of physical condition the film was in. Without even watching the footage, she quickly noticed a headline screaming out from one of the newsreels: “SENATORS WIN WORLD SERIES,” it said. “40,000 frantic fans see American Leaguers take 12-inning deciding game, 4 to 3.”And when archivists from the Library’s Packard Campus for Audio Visual Conservation watched the reel, they found nearly four minutes of footage from that 1924 World Series, footage that somehow had remained in nearly perfect condition for 90 years. Bucky Harris hitting a home run, Walter Johnson pitching four innings of scoreless relief, Muddy Ruel scoring the winning run, fans storming Griffith Stadium’s field: It was all there, and it was all glorious.
Fascinating to see how much, and how little, the game has changed since this was shot.
Macstories:
From a visual perspective, Tweetbot 3.5 looks and works the same, keeping the foundation that Tapbots introduced with Tweetbot 3 last year. The app hasn’t changed considerably – it has evolved in expected ways and within the limitations imposed by Twitter’s API for third-party apps.
Glad to see this update to my favourite iPhone Twitter client. Can’t wait for the updated iPad version, too.
The publication claims former PayPal president David Marcus was against the Samsung partnership as it would hinder future operations with Apple, but eBay CEO John Donahoe forced PayPal to accept. The dynamic just got more interesting with news today that PayPal will be spun off from eBay in 2015, possibly opening the door to policy changes and realigned alliances.
M O R O N S
Tom’s version doesn’t do much to change my mind.
In his first interview since joining Apple, industrial designer Marc Newson discusses his latest product – a domestic draft beer machine he says is the equivalent to a Nespresso coffee maker for beer lovers.
Sweet mother of God, I must have this!
After nearly six months of searching and deliberation, Apple appears to have settled on a successor to Katie Cotton, its former VP of worldwide corporate communications — and it’s not former White House Press Secretary Jay Carney. It’s Apple comms veteran Steve Dowling. Sources close to Apple tell Code/red that Dowling was tapped as interim head of public relations last week by CEO Tim Cook, who has been looking to put a friendlier, more approachable face on Apple’s public relations efforts.
Personally, I think this is the first step to Dowling getting the position full time.
TidBITS:
One of the most intriguing features of iOS 8 is how Apple opened it up to third-party keyboards. Google’s Android mobile operating system has allowed developers to create custom system keyboards for years, which has led to interesting experiments, like Swype, which lets you draw on the keyboard to spell out words.Now, keyboards like Swype are available for iOS 8, but how you enable and use them isn’t always obvious. Also of concern is how these third-party keyboards, some of which connect to the Internet, impact your privacy.
I have little to no interest in third party keyboards but I know a lot of you do. TidBITS does their usual good job of how to set up and use them and what to watch out for.
My name is Rick Smolan and I’m a former Time, Life, and National Geographic photojournalist. When I was twenty-eight, National Geographic Magazine sent me on the assignment of a lifetime: to document the 1,700 mile journey of a mysterious twenty-seven-year-old woman named Robyn Davidson, who was trekking across the Australian outback alone with four camels and her dog, Diggity. During Robyn’s nine-month journey I tracked her down five times, spending about three months traveling with her and shooting tens of thousands of photographs.
What an amazing book this will be.
Yosemite is a conference for Apple developers, designers, and enthusiasts. It will be held next Spring, in the heart of Yosemite National Park.
Dave Klein and the folks at CocoaConf are putting on a great conference in 2015 in Yosemite. I will be speaking at the conference, along with many very talented people in the Mac and iOS communities.
The Atlantic:
Free samples help consumers learn more about products, and they make retail environments more appealing. But samples are operating on a more subconscious level as well.“Reciprocity is a very, very strong instinct,” says Dan Ariely, a behavioral economist at Duke University. “If somebody does something for you”—such as giving you a quarter of a ravioli on a piece of wax paper—“you really feel a rather surprisingly strong obligation to do something back for them.”
Am I weird because I’ve never taken a free food sample in a grocery store? I just find the whole idea strange. For those of you outside the USA or Canada, is this “free samples in grocery stores” a thing in other countries, too?
Vogue: The secret weapon of the most sought-after personal-electronics company in the world is a very nice guy from Northeast London who has a soft spot for woodworking and the sense that designers ought to keep their design talents backstage … Continued
The Guardian: The US government and police officials are in the midst of a misleading PR offensive to try to scare Americans into believing encrypted cellphones are somehow a bad thing, rather than a huge victory for everyone’s privacy and … Continued
Big thanks to long time Loop reader Patrick Crowley for pulling together this fantastic collection of images from yesterday’s Apple Watch event at the Colette boutique on Rue Saint Honoré as part of Fashion Week.
The images were all taken with Patrick’s brand new iPhone 6. Thanks, Patrick. Great job.
Yesterday we reported that Samsung’s earlier-than-planned September 26th launch of its new Galaxy Note 4 had been met with complaints from customers regarding a ‘screen gap’ manufacturing issue. Today, a reference in Samsung’s Note 4 manual has been discovered confirm that the gap is actually a feature, not a flaw.
This issue doesn’t take anyone sneaking into a store and forcibly bending a phone, it’s an actual manufacturing flaw, but yet the mainstream press let’s them get away with it.
This is what Samsung says about the gap:
A small gap appears around the outside of the device case… This gap is a necessary manufacturing feature and some minor rocking or vibration of parts may occur… Over time, friction between parts may cause this gap to expand slightly.
What the holy fuck! Seriously?
In the wake of the uproar that followed last week’s purported iPhone 6 Plus pliability problem, some people have apparently taken it upon themselves to go into Apple Stores and bend iPhones. And while it pains us that this even needs to be said, guys, please: Breaking private property doesn’t prove anything. Except that you’re an asshole.
That sums it up for me.
New York Magazine: Though it has been open for less than a decade, the Apple store under the glass cube at the base GM building is already one of the best-known and most successful retail sites in the world. But … Continued
TidBITS:
The disclosure this week of a major bug in a common Unix tool set of an earthquake in the security community. Not only was nearly every version of Unix vulnerable, including Linux and OS X, but most of the initial patches are not completely effective at blocking the hole. It’s a near-worst-case scenario where we have a piece of software on nearly every non-Windows server on the Internet — and plenty of personal computers (thanks to Apple’s market growth) — that is vulnerable to multiple kinds of remote attacks, all capable of completely taking over the system, with no way to completely stop it.Despite the severity, a combination of Apple’s design decisions and how we use Macs dramatically reduces the risk, but you still need to be careful and ready to patch.
While we got a statement from Apple earlier today, I always feel better when Rich Mogull weighs in on any matters Mac security related.
Apple provided me with the following statement today:
“The vast majority of OS X users are not at risk to recently reported bash vulnerabilities. Bash, a UNIX command shell and language included in OS X, has a weakness that could allow unauthorized users to remotely gain control of vulnerable systems. With OS X, systems are safe by default and not exposed to remote exploits of bash unless users configure advanced UNIX services. We are working to quickly provide a software update for our advanced UNIX users.”
Clearly, most users do not use the advanced UNIX services.
The Verge:
A few blocks away from Apple’s bustling campus in Cupertino is a rather nondescript building. Inside is absolutely the last place on earth you’d want to be if you were an iPhone. It’s here where Apple subjects its newest models to the kinds of things they might run into in the real world: drops, pressure, twisting, tapping. Basically all the things that could turn your shiny gadget into a small pile of metal and glass.
I got a tour of this part of Apple’s operation many years ago and was very surprised to see just how much stress testing Apple did in-house on everything.
Here is a statement Apple provided to me today about the iPhone bending:
“Our iPhones are designed, engineered and manufactured to be both beautiful and sturdy. iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus feature a precision engineered unibody enclosure constructed from machining a custom grade of 6000 series anodized aluminum, which is tempered for extra strength. They also feature stainless steel and titanium inserts to reinforce high stress locations and use the strongest glass in the smartphone industry. We chose these high-quality materials and construction very carefully for their strength and durability. We also perform rigorous tests throughout the entire development cycle including 3-point bending, pressure point cycling, sit, torsion, and user studies. iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus meet or exceed all of our high quality standards to endure everyday, real life use.
With normal use a bend in iPhone is extremely rare and through our first six days of sale, a total of nine customers have contacted Apple with a bent iPhone 6 Plus. As with any Apple product, if you have questions please contact Apple.”
If you purposely bend your phone, any phone, you’re a fucking moron.
Apple sent the following statement to me tonight regarding iOS 8.0.1:
We have received reports of an issue with the iOS 8.0.1 update. We are actively investigating these reports and will provide information as quickly as we can. In the meantime we have pulled back the iOS 8.0.1 update.
I haven’t updated yet, so I have no experience with any issues.
Lisa Bettany:
I present an eight iPhone comparison (with) all iPhone versions taken with Camera+ including the original iPhone, iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, iPhone 5S, and the new iPhone 6 in a variety of situations to test the camera’s capabilities.
I taught a beginner digital photography seminar this past weekend and got lots of questions from students about how good the camera was in the new iPhone 6. This articles shows that, in many cases, the increase in quality is very noticeable.
Vanity Fair:
Airline pilots were once the heroes of the skies. Today, in the quest for safety, airplanes are meant to largely fly themselves. Which is why the 2009 crash of Air France Flight 447, which killed 228 people, remains so perplexing and significant. William Langewiesche explores how a series of small errors turned a state-of-the-art cockpit into a death trap.
I waited to post this article until after The Publisher had arrived safely in London, England.
Now that Fall has officially begun here in the Northern hemisphere, many of us are seeing or have seen the leaves changing to their beautiful Fall colours. This video explains why it happens. Share it with your kids!
Steven Levy:
How can an app displace 135 years of telephony?The first step is by being an app and not a facsimile of a desk phone. Unlike the “dialer” on your mobile, or even the call button on your contact list, Talko presents the opportunity to begin a conversation by simply touching on the image of the person or team you want to talk to, whether they are ready to join right now or sometime in the future.
Going to be very interesting to see if this takes off in any appreciable way.
Steven Soderbergh:
I’ve removed all sound and color from the film, apart from a score designed to aid you in your quest to just study the visual staging aspect.
I am usually vehemently against “messing with” someone else’s movie but Soderbergh’s experiment really enhances (but doesn’t replace) the classic “Raiders of the Lost Ark”.
One of the huge advantages DSLRs and many point and shoots have over the iPhone or other smartphones is the ability to adjust, manipulate and control Shutter, ISO, White Balance, Focus and Exposure Bracketing.
Manual from Little Pixels is just such an app. It has the advantage of having a funny video to go along with it.