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Ars Technica:

Apple has officially announced a release date for iOS 8, the latest version of the operating system that powers iPhones, iPads, and iPod touches. The new software launches on September 17, and as we’ve written before it will be available on the iPhone 4S, 5, 5C, and 5S; the iPad 2, both Retina iPads, the iPad Air, and both iPad minis; the fifth-generation iPod touch; and all revisions of the third-generation Apple TV.

This was almost lost among the news of all the other cool things Apple announced today.

TidBITS:

With Apple Pay, Apple’s self-described mission is to replace your wallet, enabling you to pay a bill by holding an iPhone 6 or 6 Plus, or the forthcoming Apple Watch, up to a payment sensor. No more fumbling with credit cards and signing receipts, or worrying about having enough cash. In theory, at least, Apple Pay both improves the payment experience and brings new levels of security and privacy to credit card payments.

Adam makes a very good point about wallets, too. This won’t replace it for most of us because we need to carry around other cards as well. But it’s a step towards an interesting future.

My question has always been, is using a credit card really all that difficult for most people that they need and want this kind of replacement?

Macworld:

With the death of the iPod classic, we witness the last of the original 5GB white iPod’s line. No more hard drive. No more squarish screen. No more wheel control.

And, no surprise.

True but there’s still nostalgia for the little thing.

The Verge:

The Apple Watch is amazing and boring at the same time.

After nearly two years of rumors, the Apple Watch has finally been unveiled.

Ignore the stupid words associated with this article but go look at the real world pics they have of the various watch faces and bands.

Apple has posted a page with a good overview of the four iPhone models and their specs. The pics are interesting and the iPhone 6 Plus seems huge.

Quartz:

One of Apple’s most successful products—which rarely gets recognized as such—is made not of aluminum and glass, but of words and pictures. The Apple keynote is the tool the company uses a few times a year to unveil its other products to millions of people.

To understand their hidden structure, Quartz reviewed more than a dozen Apple keynotes, logging and analyzing key elements. Here’s what we found.

Those of us who have attended these events in person have often remarked on the similarities in structure and tone from one to the next.

Macworld:

When Star Walk launched it was one of those “only on the iPad” kind of apps. Since then many have used it as their digital window to space.

Vito Technologies, which built the original, is back with Star Walk 2. While it may not seem like there is much to improve on, the developers have taken the time to find enough enhancements and new features to justify an entirely new app.

Not only has Star Walk been my go to astronomy app, it was the app I always used to “show off” how cool the iPad was. I’ll be buying this version, too.

PDFpen Scan+ offers scanning and OCR from your iPhone and iPad. Scan directly from your iPhone or iPad camera. Batch scanning is quick with post-process image editing. Scan cropping is fast and precise. With the new PDFpen Scan+ 1.4, you can automatically upload scans to Dropbox or PDFpen’s iCloud storage. After OCR, preview the results, then copy the text for use elsewhere. Share your scanned PDF, with embedded OCR text, by email or to your favorite cloud service. PDFpen Scan+ works on both your iPhone and your iPad, and it’s available on the App Store.

Using cutting-edge techniques, Dr Louhelainen was able to extract 126-year-old DNA from the material and compare it to DNA from descendants of Eddowes and the suspect, with both proving a perfect match.

It’s hard to argue with DNA, but I’m sure there will be lots of explanations coming.

TiVo, arguably the Cadillac of DVRs with support for streaming media services, is getting ready to roll out a big rig. The TiVo Mega, slated to ship early next year, will pack 24TB of hard disk space—eight times the storage on the TiVo Roamio Pro, the current top-of-the-line model. Put another way, that’s enough to stash more than three year’s worth of standard-definition television on one DVR.

The price is around $5,000.

For our latest shoot-out we thought we would have some fun and put the Universal Audio 1176LN limiter versus the UAD 1176LN plug-in to see which one you prefer, or maybe if you can’t tell the difference.

I find this stuff fascinating, especially with a company like Universal Audio. They have made some of the best hardware for years, but they also take great pains in making the software indistinguishable from the hardware.

Today we are beginning to test a new way for you to discover and buy products on Twitter. For a small percentage of U.S. users (that will grow over time), some Tweets from our test partners will feature a “Buy” button, letting you buy directly from the Tweet.

I don’t have a problem with this. We want to cut down the amount of clicks we have to go through to purchase things, so if I can buy directly within the app, why not.

Amazon launched the phone July 25, and it was widely seen as a bit of a flop with slow usage growth, according to market research (Amazon hasn’t released any sales numbers).

Apparently his iPhone has escaped the ‘ceremonial burning’

Indeed.

Priceonomics:

Rock Paper Scissors has serious players, organizing leagues, and sponsored tournaments that draw hundreds to compete for cash prizes. In 2006, Bud Light sponsored a tournament and offered a $50,000 cash prize.

While RPS advocates are eager to validate it as a serious pursuit, they also intend to have a good time. That said, if during a tournament you try to throw some sort of fourth move like dynamite that beats rock, paper, and scissors, you’ll be asked to leave.

Leave it to Canadians to come up with competitive “Rock, Paper, Scissors” and tie it into drinking beer.

Stratechery:

Conspicuous consumption and status-seeking are major drivers of the Asian market in particular, and are why Asians make up over 50% of the luxury market by nationality. In the case of handbags, you absolutely are saying something with your selection: a Louis Vuitton bag is many people’s first luxury purchase, and shows you have some means; a Chanel bag, on the other hand, signifies you are at least upper middle class, maybe even rich.

At the top of the heap, though, is Hermès: sport a Birkin bag and there is no question as to your status.

While I don’t agree with all of his points, it’s a very instructive way to look at Apple and perhaps how and where they see their place in the market.

Even if you don’t know a thing about Rugby, Charles Dance (Tywin Lannister in HBO’s Game of Thrones) might just get you to watch it.

Reuters:

Apple has invited top fashion editors and bloggers in unprecedented numbers to its Tuesday launch gala, further evidence that the iPhone maker is preparing to take the wraps off a smartwatch.

“It confirms that they have a play in wearables and that they want to appeal to the fashion world, and not just technology consumers,” said Lauren Indvik, editor in chief for Fashionista and another first-time invitee.

The event next week gets more and more interesting every day.

Vanity Fair:

Designer Marc Newson is joining Apple as part of senior vice president of design Jonathan Ive’s team, the company told VF Daily on Friday.

Newson, who will continue to be based in the United Kingdom, will be an employee of Apple, and will be frequently traveling to the company’s Cupertino, California, headquarters. The industrial designer has had his work archived by MoMA, and has been commissioned by Ford, Nike, and Qantas Airways, among others.

Jonathan Ive you know. One of his best friends, Marc Newson, might not be quite as familiar a name to you but he is also a world-class designer.

Inc:

During my time in Australia, the relaxed lifestyle of the Aussies, Kiwis, and Europeans we met contrasted sharply with the “live to work” mentality so ingrained in American culture. To them, it isn’t about your place in life or how you make a living; it’s simply about living well.

Contrary to what many people think, this philosophy doesn’t have to clash with being ambitious. It just means making a fun, fulfilling life your first priority.

Living in Vancouver, I’ve met and known a lot of Australians and am always amazed at their wanderlust. There’s a lot of good advice in this column, particularly for those in college. Travel while you can.

In the case of Apple, the shareholders claim that Cook and others, including directors Al Gore and Bill Campbell, breached their fiduciary duty to the company and engaged in “waste of corporate assets.” They want the court to order Apple’s board to implement better governance measures, and for Cook and the other defendants to pay restitution to shareholders and to pay the shareholders’ legal bills.

comScore:

173 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones (71.8 percent mobile market penetration) during the three months ending in July, up 3 percent since April. Apple ranked as the top OEM with 42.4 percent of U.S. smartphone subscribers (up 1 percentage point from April). Samsung ranked second with 28.4 percent market share (up 0.7 percentage points), followed by LG with 6.4 percent, Motorola with 5.7 percent and HTC with 4.7 percent.

That’s a pretty significant lead for Apple and they are outpacing Samsung in terms of growth.

Jan Dawson on iCloud:

Lastly, we as the end users are always the weak point in security. That’s not to absolve tech companies of blame: in fact, it’s a key challenge they should all be working to overcome, while managing the balance between removing the barriers to good security and maintaining strong protections for users.

I think this sums up the whole iCloud situation for me.

A good article highlighting some of the improvements you can expect to see if you upgrade to the latest version of Wordpress.

Executives at Europe’s big consumer electronics trade fair this week in Berlin readily admit to hoping that Apple can crack the missing code for everyone. Where the U.S. innovator leads, its rivals plan to follow by bringing their own improvements or by seeking out profitable niche markets that Apple ignores.

“This is what we wanted,” Sunny Lee, CEO of Samsung Electronics’ European business told Reuters when asked about Apple’s likely debut.

I bet that’s exactly what Samsung wanted. Not that they’ll copy everything that Apple does, no, not Samsung.

The Wall Street Journal:

Apple said it plans additional steps to keep hackers out of user accounts, but denied that a lax attitude toward security had allowed intruders to post nude photos of celebrities on the Internet.

To make such leaks less likely, Mr. Cook said Apple will alert users via email and push notifications when someone tries to change an account password, restore iCloud data to a new device, or when a device logs into an account for the first time.

This is just one of many steps Apple will take to protect themselves and users.

BBC:

Laser “tattoos” could remove the need for sticky labels during the sale of fruit, developers say.

The technology removes pigment from the fruit’s surface to show information such as the item’s sell-by date and price.

The process does not affect the taste or the lifespan of the fruit.

I’d never thought about how much those paper labels cost. This is a fascinating idea.

The “Bing Image Widget,” released on Aug. 22, gives publishers the ability to create a panel on their websites that displays digital images supplied by Microsoft’s Bing search engine, according to the lawsuit.

Rather than draw from a pool of licensed images, the lawsuit claimed, the product grants access to the billions of images that can be found online, without regard to whether the photos are copyrighted.

According to some recent comments from chief financial officer Anthony Noto, however, the company is doing a lot more than not ruling it out — it sounds like a done deal.

Sigh.

Daily Dot:

Basically, “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” was too good to mock. And as it turns out, there’s a reason for that. The film’s directors are fans of Honest Trailers, and they purposefully engineered the film so it would be harder to parody.

In a recent interview with Collider, Winter Soldier directors Joe and Anthony Russo were asked how they felt about achieving a positive Honest Trailers review.

I’m a huge fan of Honest Trailers and love the fact they had a positive influence on a summer blockbuster.