Samsung is setting up Galaxy Note 7 exchange booths in airports around the world, hoping to stop customers taking the dangerous device onto flights at the last minute. The first of these new “customer service points” appear to have been introduced in South Korean airports, but Samsung has confirmed the booths are opening in airports across Australia, with reports of the desks appearing in the US as well.
The booths are located in “high-traffic terminals” before security screening, says Samsung, and allow Note 7 owners to swap their phone for an unspecified exchange device. According to a report from ABC7News in San Francisco — where a Samsung exchange desk has appeared at the city’s international airport — employees for the tech company are on hand to help customers transfer their data onto a new phone.
Crazy that this is necessary. I wonder what devices Samsung is offering in trade. If it’s an older Samsung device, there’s still the possibility the phone will be confiscated anyway, as there seems to be some confusion at airports on the name of the actual banned device.
And I somehow doubt Samsung is handing out iPhones, though that would be a great story.
The comedian Dave Chappelle used to hate when fans would pull out smartphones during his act, record the performance and then post it on YouTube and social media before the show had even ended. To him, the fans seemed more interested in getting the perfect shot than in appreciating his stand-up routine.
But in late 2015, Mr. Chappelle discovered a technology called Yondr. Fans are required to place their cellphones into Yondr’s form-fitting lockable pouch when entering the show, and a disk mechanism unlocks it on the way out. Fans keep the pouch with them, but it is impossible for them to snap pictures, shoot videos or send text messages during the performance while the pouch is locked.
Read the article. A phone-free show is old school, in the best possible way.
Apple’s product launches are notoriously secretive, but the Cupertino, California tech giant is sure to do one thing ahead of a big reveal: file trademark paperwork in Jamaica.
It did this for Siri, the Apple Watch, macOS, and dozens of its major products months before the equivalent paperwork was lodged in the United States. Likewise, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft routinely file trademarks for their most important products in locales far flung from Silicon Valley and Seattle.
And:
The tech giants are exploiting a US trademark-law provision that lets them effectively claim a trademark in secret. Under this provision, once a mark is lodged with an intellectual property office outside the US, the firm has six months to file it with the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). When the firm does file in the US, it can point to its original application made abroad to show that it has a priority claim on the mark.
Ahrendts views the company’s newly redesigned retail outlets not just as stores, but as the company’s next big products…she and Apple view their stores as potential town squares within each of the cities they reside.
“The store is now the biggest product we produce and we have five new features [for iPhones and iPads]. Accessories are avenues, and the huge digital screen in each store is the forum,” Ahrendts said.
By the end of this year, 95 stores will be fully redesigned with this vision, the first of which were the San Francisco Union Square location and the London Regent Street outpost. The community aspect to each store is key, Ahrendts said, with these town squares serving as educational centers.
An interesting metaphor. It’ll be interesting to see how this is implemented.
Also interesting:
There are nearly 500 Apple stores worldwide, and retail sales are responsible for some 18% of the company’s $233.7 billion in sales, amounting to $42 billion in yearly revenue.
That 18% number is impressive, given the relatively small number of stores per consumer in the world.
Some people take pride in the fact that they never seem to get sick, or count their blessings for making it through virus season without so much as a runny nose. Good for them.
Most adults will probably get sick with the common cold two or three times in a year. One American Medial Association study estimated that each year the United States suffers from 500 million cases of the cold.
The only way you get ill with the cold is through viral infection — getting chilly or wet doesn’t make you more susceptible. You’re an adult, you know there’s no silver bullet cure for a cold — what can you do to at least make it suck less? Cue up the montage music, because it’s virus fighting time.
I’m just getting over a cold that had me laid out on my couch for a week, sniffling and whining like the giant baby I am.
There’s lots of video of the late Steve Jobs, primarily from his famous introductions of Apple products over the years, and his oft-quoted Stanford commencement address. But, by far, the largest trove of video of the legendary innovator candidly answering unrehearsed questions and explaining his views on technology and business comes from his six lengthy appearances at our D: All Things Digital Conference, from 2003 to 2010.
As a memorial to a great man, and, in the spirit of sharing a priceless piece of history, we are making all six of these appearances available free, in high quality. We thank Apple for its cooperation in making these videos available for all.
Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher loved having Jobs at their conference. Not only did it goose attendance but Jobs was always a good, challenging interview for them. Great to see these interviews now available more widely.
Apple has hired a Carnegie Mellon University professor to head up a team working on artificial intelligence as tech giants increasingly place big bets on machine learning as a key part of their future.
Apple seems to be all-in with AI, which is a good sign for the future.
BFD Black Album Drums is an expansion pack for BFD3 inspired by the drum sound featured on the 1991 “Black Album” by Metallica. Produced and recorded by Chocolate Audio (the team behind Imperial and Modern Retro) and featuring the exact same 1980 Gretsch kit that was played on the album along with Zildjian cymbals, a Tama Bell Brass snare and a Ludwig snare.
I love these types of expansion kits. You can get the perfect drum sound that you’re looking for without much hassle.
A source tells us that the current special OS images on demo devices include a software ‘kill switch’ which disables them when they go out of range of the store Wi-Fi. This means that Apple no longer has to use Find My iPhone to disable them manually.
Apple Inc. has drastically scaled back its automotive ambitions, leading to hundreds of job cuts and a new direction that, for now, no longer includes building its own car, according to people familiar with the project.
Hundreds of members of the car team, which comprises about 1,000 people, have been reassigned, let go, or have left of their own volition in recent months, the people said, asking not to be identified because the moves aren’t public.
New leadership of the initiative, known internally as Project Titan, has re-focused on developing an autonomous driving system that gives Apple flexibility to either partner with existing carmakers, or return to designing its own vehicle in the future, the people also said. Apple has kept staff numbers in the team steady by hiring people to help with the new focus, according to another person.
The article is a fascinating behind-the-scenes on how this project slowly shifted direction to its current focus.
The Economist, on Apple opening an App Academy in a tough, but emerging, Naples neighborhood:
“We go to places nobody thought were possible”, explained Lisa Jackson, vice president of environment, policy and social initiatives at Apple, at the inaugural event. Naples lags far behind northern Italy for transport and digital infrastructure, and criminality is rife. The Camorra, a mafia gang, runs one of the biggest drug-trafficking enterprises in the world from the city. The neighbourhood in which Apple has opened the academy (it is located inside a new campus of Federico II University) used to be more dangerous. “We used to see our friends die on the ground,” recalls Davide Varlese, a cousin of Mr Ciarravolo. But things have improved over the past decade as authorities have clamped down. At least the Camorra doesn’t come asking for money in bars any more, locals say.
The draw for Apple is the engineering program at the university.
I noticed this on my last Apple Store visit. It was nice to be able to pick up an iPhone and walk around with it, even stick it in my pocket to get a sense of the size difference between the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus.
I never felt watched, never got a sense of extra security around the iPhone table, though I can’t imagine there’s not some security measures in place to prevent wholesale shoplifting.
No matter, this was definitely an improved customer experience.
Cook, who was visiting Japan for the first time as CEO, said Apple will open a research and development base in Yokohama, near Tokyo, later this year. The facility — the first of its kind outside the U.S. — will develop AI and other technologies. Cook described it as a center for “deep engineering” and said it will be “very different” from the R&D base Apple plans to build in China.
And:
Some analysts say a sales slowdown in China has prompted Apple to shift back toward Japan, where the iPhone commands a large market share. Cook said Apple sees “kindred spirits” in Japan, since it has “a lot of partners, supplier partners, and the developer community here is so vibrant.”
Not particularly revealing, but interesting. One quote towards the end struck me:
On filling Jobs’ role, Cook said, “I never tried to replace him. I’ve just tried to be myself and do the best thing that I can do. … I think if he were here, I would have loved it, because I would have loved going through many of these things with him. But it unfortunately wasn’t to be.”
Imagine if Steve was still around, with Tim Cook running the company and Steve visioning new products to life. What kind of partnership would they have? What kind of person would Steve have become? Just a thought.
That post sells the idea that the iPhone 8 will be made primarily from ZrO2 – Zirconian Ceramics, made famous by the Space Shuttle as a thermal barrier and an option on the newest Apple Watch.
The linked post, from Atomic Delights, is a strong rebuttal to that Quora post and a bit of a love letter to aluminum.
Samsung Electronics Co Ltd on Friday said it expected to take a hit to its operating profit of about $3 billion over the next two quarters due to the discontinuation of its fire-prone Galaxy Note 7 smartphone.
The outlook brings to about $5.3 billion the total losses the global smartphone leader has forecast as a result of the overheating issues, after it said on Wednesday it would suffer a $2.3 billion hit to third-quarter profit.
That’s just the hit you can see. There is no telling how much this will affect the sales of other products—if consumer confidence fades, this could get worse.
Using advanced facial recognition A.I., FabFocus detects people in the foreground and automatically blurs what it distinguishes as the background. It’s that easy to take an amazing portrait with a professional depth of field effect.
The app will be released next week. This is going to be very popular.
There’s competence porn. There’s calligraphy/typography porn. And there’s this video of a professional calligrapher Paul Antonio Attong gracing the windows of The Table Café in London with his work.
This is amazing. Most of us have handwriting that is barely legible yet this guy is doing beautiful calligraphy, handheld, on a large scale.
Thanks to Marketcircle, makers of Billings Pro for sponsoring The Loop this week.
Tired of manually creating invoices and keeping track of your time slips with spreadsheets? Billings Pro is a simple time-tracking and invoicing app for the Mac, iPad, iPhone & Apple Watch. It’s used by lawyers, consultants, photographers, graphic designers & more all over the world.
Track time from any Apple device – whether you’re at the office, working at a coffee shop, or tracking time for an on-site client meeting. Whip up invoices lightening fast from your Mac, iPhone, or iPad. Choose from over 30 professional templates on the Mac or customize your own. Keep track of overdue invoices, set recurring invoices, and add client payments no matter where you are.
New in Billings Pro is the Mini Timer on the iPhone. Now you can start, pause, or resume a timer from anywhere in the app just by tapping or swiping up.
Once upon a time, keen photographers bought a DSLR – it was the established order of things. But the mirror mechanism of a DSLR is complex and noisy and adds to the weight of the camera, and that’s where the mirrorless camera, or compact system camera comes in. They keep the big sensors and interchangeable lenses of DSLR cameras but ditch the mirror to produce a smaller, lighter and simpler camera.
No two photographers are exactly the same – we’re all looking for slightly different things, so we’ve ranked the 10 best compact system cameras you can buy right now based not just on specs, handling and performance, but size, simplicity and value for money too.
While I love my Nikon D600, I also enjoy using my mirrorless Olympus M1. Mirrorless cameras have their own pros and cons but they are getting better and better and many create images to rival their similarly priced “full sized” rigs.
Jason Kottke, from an appreciation piece about the excellent show Halt and Catch Fire (there are spoilers in Jason’s post, none in my excerpt):
When I tell people about the first time I saw the Web, I would sheepishly describe it as love at first sight. Logging on that first time, using an early version of NCSA Mosaic with a network login borrowed from my physics advisor, was the only time in my life I have ever seen something so clearly, been sure of anything so completely. It was a like a thunderclap — “the amazing possibility to be able to go anywhere within something that is magnificent and never-ending” — and I just knew this was for me and that it was going to be huge and important. I know how ridiculous this sounds, but the Web is the true love of my life and ever since I’ve been trying to live inside the feeling I had when I first saw it.
This whole post is worth reading, a beautiful, passionate piece of writing.
AUTOPLAY, AUTOPLAY, AUTOPLAY!!! Have I mentioned how much I hate autoplay?
That said, this post was worth it, at least to me.
Glen Fleishman, writing for MacWorld, weighs in with an answer to this question:
I’m confused about what would happen if I turn off iCloud Photo Library on my phone, and not use it on the Cloud. Will my Photos app on the computer still retain all 12,000 of my photos? Do these photos live locally on my hard drive?
I find the various iCloud settings confusing, none more so than those for iCloud Photo Library. This is a good explainer, worth bookmarking, passing along.
Now that the iPhone 7 starts at 32 GB of storage, the constant juggling needed to avoid a full device has been left behind by more users than ever before.
So let’s talk about iCloud storage.
And:
5 GB often isn’t enough to back up an iPhone and an iPad, let alone store years worth of family photos.
Unlike One Drive or even Dropbox, iCloud storage is key to extending and improving the experience of using a Mac or iPhone. Dropbox may be a semi-magical folder that syncs data to other devices, but iCloud is the glue between Apple’s various platforms.
There’s Apple, at number one. No big surprise. Google, Coca Cola follow at number 2 and 3. And there’s Samsung at number 7. Wondering what impact, if any, the Galaxy Note 7 debacle will have on the Samsung brand value.
To access Emergency SOS, all you need to do is press and hold the side button on your Apple Watch, and you’ll see a new red “SOS” slider at the bottom of the slider list. Sliding this slider initiates a 911 call and fires off text messages to your emergency contacts within seconds.
But there’s more to it than that. Read the article and learn about auto-call and how to set up your emergency contacts.
I can only imagine how cool this must have been for both sides. If you are unfamiliar with Shigeru Miyamoto, here’s a bit from his Wikipedia Page:
Miyamoto originally joined Nintendo in 1977, when the company was beginning its foray into video games, and starting to abandon the playing cards it had made since 1889. His games have been seen on every Nintendo video game console, with his earliest work appearing on arcade machines in the late 70s. Franchises Miyamoto has helped create include the Mario, Donkey Kong, The Legend of Zelda, Star Fox, F-Zero, Pikmin, and Wii series. Noteworthy games within these include Super Mario Bros., one of the most well known video games; Super Mario 64; and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, one of the most critically acclaimed video games of all time.
I love that Nintendo changed their mind, allowing one of their biggest franchise characters to migrate to an iOS game. Looking forward to taking Super Mario Run for a spin. And hope that Link and Zelda follow soon after.
