Microsoft released new versions of Microsoft Office for the Mac, all based on the Windows code base. The familiar Mac versions of Microsoft’s apps vanished, replaced by programs that didn’t behave like Mac apps at all. They were very clearly members of the Office for Windows suite, ported over to the Mac.
This was a well-known phenomenon, other looks creeping onto the Mac, making an application’s interface feel like it just doesn’t belong.
Jason continues:
Open Google Docs for iOS and you’re whisked into a Material Design world. To create a new document, you must tap a large red circle at the bottom right corner of the screen. The options icon is three vertical dots, rather than the three horizontal dots favored by Apple. Menus display in Material Design style, white cards on a gray background.
And:
A common response to this complaint is that Google is after “consistency.” Material Design allows Google to offer the same interface everywhere, across the Web, Android, and iOS. You know who else defended their choices with that old saw? Yep: Microsoft. It was more important to Microsoft for people to get the same experience with Office when moving from Windows to Mac than it was for Mac users to move to Word from some other Mac app. It was a bad rationale then, and it’s still bad today.
I think Google’s mistake (and Microsoft’s before them) is in designing for themselves, rather then the community they are entering. Either that, or this is a genius move, a shrewd play at making it easier for folks to make the move from iOS to Android.
But if not the latter, design for the community, don’t make it jarring to move from one app to another. You’ll stick out like a sore thumb.
Two top Twitter executives — Jana Messerschmidt, the head of business development, and Nathan Hubbard, head of media and commerce — are planning to leave the company, according to multiple sources familiar with their plans.
A company that persuaded a Texas jury to award $625 million against Apple for patent infringement is asking for more. It asked a judge on Wednesday to order Apple to shut down its popular FaceTime and iMessage features while the case goes to appeal.
I hate patent trolls. Something has to be done with these organizations.
The jury unanimously upheld claims by Google that its use of Oracle’s Java development platform was protected under the fair-use provision of copyright law, bringing trial to a close without Oracle winning any of the $9 billion in damages it requested.
iTunes and services chief Eddy Cue proposed the idea of Apple bidding on media conglomerate Time Warner at the end of last year, according to the FT.
I’m not really surprised by this. Apple is looking for ways to enter a tight market, perhaps a purchase would be the right way to go. By the sound of the story, it was only a suggestion–Apple looks a lot of proposals, but they don’t pull the trigger on all of them.
The report also said:
The report adds that Apple plans to ramp up spending on original content to “several hundred million dollars a year” in order to better compete with rivals like Amazon and Netflix, both of which offer a growing number of exclusive TV series.
Messaging app Snapchat has raised $1.81 billion in funding, the company reported in a U.S. regulatory filing on Thursday, a sign that investor interest is strong despite concerns among some venture capitalists that the platform is struggling to attract advertisers.
Nothing can ruin a relaxing weekend or holiday like an email from the office. Even if there’s no need to take action until Monday, the unwanted intrusion of professional life can really suck the joy out of a Sunday afternoon bar-b-que. That’s why the country that’s famous for giving its employees 30 days off a year and 16 weeks of full-paid family leave, just made itself even cooler with its new “right to disconnect” law.
Now, in France, if you’re a company of 50 employees or more, you cannot email an employee after typical work hours. The amendment has come about because studies show that in the digital age it’s become increasingly difficult for people to distance themselves from the workplace during their off hours. This new law allows people to get the full advantage of their time off.
Interesting attitude. If I had a real job, I think I would appreciate this policy.
Lying in a hospital bed having found out he was paralysed Chris Palmer thought about how he never would be able to walk his daughter down the aisle on her wedding day. But on Saturday, almost four years later, Mr Palmer has done just that. With the help of a £90,000 robotic device, the 55-year-old father walked down the aisle, alongside his daughter Heather.
Someone please hand me a tissue. I think there’s something in my eye.
Passengers push buttons to call an elevator, and the elevators respond to these requests. But here it starts to get tricky. At any moment there could be any number of pickup and drop off requests from different parts of the building. With so many options for where to go next, what’s an elevator to do?
Try to picture the perfect elevator system. What makes that system so great? Does it serve the person who’s been waiting the longest? Or always go to the closest call? Where does it make the compromise between speedy service and keeping energy usage down?
Elevator engineers grapple with all these questions, and none of them are as simple as they seem.
For some reason, elevators have always fascinated me. On the surface, they are just a box going up and down but there is so much science, engineering, technology, and sociology that goes on with that box.
Aside from their musical skills, which I’ll place up there with any all-time-greatest rock group, the Tragically Hip helped teach me the difference between being from Canada and being Canadian.
The Tragically Hip make no secret about being Canadian but it comes out naturally, not by yelling about toques and poutine. They tell Canadian stories and make Canadian references because it works in their songs, not because it will get them media coverage from journalists writing about the Canadian angle.
The Hip are one of the greatest Canadian bands ever and the news that their lead singer, the charismatic Gord Downie, has terminal cancer, is a huge blow to Canadian music. I hope to be able to see The Hip on their last tour and show my appreciation for all the joy they’ve given me over the years.
There are a lot of Jazz albums that I really like—I’m a big Chet Baker fan, but I’m not a fan of the crazy, all over the place Jazz. This morning I got this new album of classic Rock songs done in Jazz–it’s amazing! Tony Miceli, Paul Jost, Kevin MacConnell, and Charlie Patierno do an incredible job with these songs.
The approach involved creating the icon twice: once as a textured 3D model, and again as a stack of Photoshop shape layers. This seemed nuts — doing twice the work for the same result. Yet there are benefits. The freedom to scale up an icon indefinitely without rerendering is among them. But, more importantly, the Russian “double-drawn” method affords a much higher degree of control.
Pixelmator updated its image editor on Thursday with a smart Quick Selection tool, a Magnetic Selection tool, and a full set of retouching tools, among other things. There are also a host of improvements and bug fixes in the new version. Pixelmator also put together some new resources for users including: Pixelmator Retouch Extension Page, Magnetic Selection Video, and a New Pixelmator Tutorial Page.
The US Government Accountability Office (GAO) just released this report on aging technology still in mainstream use. The report is filled with horrifying examples of ancient tech driving US infrastructure.
This one is about the Department of Defense and the Strategic Automated Command and Control System:
Coordinates the operational functions of the United States’ nuclear forces, such as intercontinental ballistic missiles, nuclear bombers, and tanker support aircrafts. This system runs on an IBM Series/1 Computer—a 1970s computing system— and uses 8-inch floppy disks.
And this one on the beleaguered Department of Veteran Affairs:
Automates time and attendance for employees, timekeepers, payroll, and supervisors. It is written in Common Business Oriented Language (COBOL)—a programming language developed in the 1950s and 1960s—and runs on IBM mainframes.
According to this Reuters article, Apple is talking with charging station companies:
> Apple is now asking charging station companies about their underlying technology, one person with knowledge of the matter said. The talks, which have not been reported, do not concern charging for electric cars of Apple employees, a service the company already provides. They indicate that Apple is focused on a car, the person added.
If Apple is building a car, of course they’re going to be involved in the rollout of charging stations.
> It is unclear whether Apple would want its own proprietary technology, such as Tesla Motors’ (TSLA.O) Supercharger network, or would design a system compatible with offerings from other market players.
This is where it gets interesting to me. Will Apple create a car-charging version of the lightning cable? Will it be more than a proprietary plug? Will the specific battery makeup require a custom charger, one that will only charge an Apple battery?
> Musk responded that he specifically wants to avoid the walled garden effect with Supercharger technology, and that the main barrier to universal adoption by other EVs is whether or not other vehicles can accept the power level that a Supercharger delivers. Musk also noted that other manufacturers that want to use the Supercharger network would have to adopt the same cost structure. Currently, Supercharger users don’t pay for a fill-up; Musk has stated that each adoptee would need to contribute capital costs “proportional to their fleet’s usage of the network.”
Not all cars are compatible with Tesla’s charging solution. For example, the Chevy Volt is not plug compatible and, more importantly, not electrically compatible with the Tesla Supercharger network.
As Google and Apple (presumably) enter the fray, the national and, eventually, international charging network will see explosive growth. It will be interesting to see if the walled garden emerges, where an Apple car can only use an Apple charger, purely due to competitive business instincts.
It would be in the public’s best interest to develop a small set of standard plugs (think the standardization of USB phone charging bricks), the absolute minimum required for each voltage/amp setup, then have all manufacturers agree to support this standard, along with a system so a user can pay for a charge-up.
While waiting for the infrastructure for electric cars to improve, you may buy one of these used cars in glendale on the meantime.
Tesla paid for the first wave of charging stations, true, but if they insist on maintaining ownership and sharing their stations only if other manufacturers play by their rules, they are contributing to the walled garden, not offering a way out.
Tim Culpan, writing for Bloomberg, homes in on India’s desire that Apple build all devices sold in India in India:
A different Indian government policy, separate from the retail regulations, is pushing Apple to manufacture iPhones locally. The company isn’t keen, and the prospects in the near term are unlikely. To do so would require suppliers such as Taiwan’s Foxconn to hire tens of thousands of workers in single locations. Foxconn executives have stated their desire to avoid having China-style mega-factories in India.
If Finance Minister Arun Jaitley decides to uphold the ban, Apple has one final option. By signing a franchise agreement with a local Indian retailer, the company could get its shop fronts without the foreign investment. The business model would look a lot like McDonald’s, with Apple providing training and support while dictating layout, procurement and sales procedures.
An interesting idea. A strong precedent, giving up control of their brand in a way that Apple historically has fought against. Is that loss of control worth the money they could make in India?
A billionaire Silicon Valley entrepreneur was outed as being gay by a media organization. His friends suffered at the hands of the same gossip site. Nearly a decade later, the entrepreneur secretly financed a lawsuit to try to put the media company out of business.
That is the back story to a legal case that had already grabbed headlines: The wrestler Hulk Hogan sued Gawker Media for invasion of privacy after it published a sex tape, and a Florida jury recently awarded the wrestler, whose real name is Terry Gene Bollea, $140 million. What the jury — and the public — did not know was that Mr. Bollea had a secret benefactor paying about $10 million for the lawsuit: Peter Thiel, a co-founder of PayPal and one of the earliest investors in Facebook.
Ben then follows with some thoughts of his own:
If ever there were a case with no one to cheer for, this is it: Gawker does do good work, but they do really terrible things as well, and their outing of Thiel despite his explicit request not to is indefensible. It disgusts me, and my disgust is only deepened by the moralizing and righteousness of the post in question, as if Gawker has the right to make the most personal of decisions for anyone.
It is also legal and protected speech.
And:
Thiel, meanwhile, is being a bully of the first order. He is attempting to run Gawker out of business — this lawsuit he is funding is one of many, and he has lawyers looking for more — in part because he can, and in part because he has styled himself as a twisted version of Batman: a vigilante who is not so much above the law (what he is doing is also perfectly legal), but rather one that uses the law to first and foremost avenge himself even as he spins a story about his defense of the vulnerable.
Bullying a bully, two wrongs making a mess. A hero? Read Thompson’s post.
Google has long lagged behind Apple in user adoption of the latest version of its OS. Apple controls their software and hardware and, more importantly, the mechanism used to push out updates to its users. Google controls their software, but their manufacturers control the hardware and the push of updates. While Apple takes great pains to support older models, easing them out of compatibility over time, Android phones tend to get abandoned by manufacturers, sometimes simply because those manufacturers change business models or cease operations altogether.
A Dutch consumer group sued Samsung Electronics Co., the largest Android phone maker, in January for neglecting to update many devices. In the U.S., the Federal Communications Commission sent a letter to carriers, manufacturers, Apple and Google asking how they can ensure faster updates.
There have recently been a growing number of vulnerabilities associated with mobile operating systems that threaten the security and integrity of a user’s device, including “Stagefright” in the Android operating system, which may affect almost 1 billion Android devices globally.
Consumers may be left unprotected, for long periods of time or even indefinitely, by any delays in patching vulnerabilities once they are discovered. To date, operating system providers, original equipment manufacturers, and mobile service providers have responded to address vulnerabilities as they arise. There are, however, significant delays in delivering patches to actual devices—and that older devices may never be patched.
To get a sense of the true extent of this “Android update lag” problem, check out this chart, which shows the current state of Google and iOS adoption rates.
Google’s latest, Marshmallow: 7.5%
iOS 9: 84%
Those are remarkable numbers. And a true stumbling block for Google.
Lightning comes and goes in a flash. With the naked eye, you can vaguely trace its path, following the brief moments as it branches through the sky. To really get into the details of a lightning strike, you need an assist from an advanced camera capable of recording at 7,000 frames per second. Professor Ningyu Liu at the Florida Institute of Technology has one and used it to document a lightning storm.
I miss the lightning storms we had on a regular basis in Nashville when I lived there. It’s rare to get them here in the Vancouver area. This video of lightning shot at 7K frames per second shows us what the naked eye misses.
SWANH.Net is an adaptation of Star Wars Episode IV in a style that was inspired by infographics. One story in one piece of 123 meters length. It was created with Adobe Illustrator CC in 2016.
Automakers now recognize they may turn ride-hailing services and car sharing companies into steady customers for all sorts of vehicles, particularly hybrid and electric cars, industry executives and analysts say.
You know, that is a good point. I’ve driven in many cars that I wouldn’t otherwise be in if it weren’t for ride-sharing.
Jim and Dan talk about the MacBook Pro rumors, WWDC, Dan’s iPhone SE, dual clutch barrel cavity antennas, the new Apple Store opening, Siri, and the Amazon Echo.
America’s films are among its greatest exports. Since Thomas Edison’s innovations in the medium in the 1890s, the United States has consistently been a powerhouse in the development of cinema – from the massively popular entertainments of Hollywood to independent and avant-garde film. In recognition of the astounding influence of the US on what remains the most popular art-form worldwide, BBC Culture has polled 62 international film critics to determine the 100 greatest American films of all time.
These are always fun lists. I’ve seen 47 of these films. It’s going to rain all weekend here so it looks like I’ll have plenty of great movies to watch.
If Brian May could capture one moment from his life so that others could step inside that moment and experience it, it would be the time he strode onto the roof of Buckingham Palace alone except for his guitar and played to 200 million people.
“I’d love people to know what that felt like,” said the Queen guitarist. “It was a whole life-changing experience for me.”
I can’t even imagine what that was like. Brian is one of the most humble, and talented, people I’ve ever met.
I imagine a college classroom in 300 years, in which a hip instructor is leading a tutorial filled with students. These students relate to rock music with no more fluency than they do the music of Mesopotamia: It’s a style they’ve learned to recognize, but just barely (and only because they’ve taken this specific class). Nobody in the room can name more than two rock songs, except the professor. He explains the sonic structure of rock, its origins, the way it served as cultural currency and how it shaped and defined three generations of a global superpower. He shows the class a photo, or perhaps a hologram, of an artist who has been intentionally selected to epitomize the entire concept. For these future students, that singular image defines what rock was.
So what’s the image?
This is a really interesting thought experiment. Who do you think will be the single most remembered “rock star” 300 years from now? Chuck Klosterman’s guess might surprise you.
I’ve been using iTunes since it first came out, and like a lot of people, I’ve spent countless hours rating my favorite songs over the years. However, with the release of Apple Music, Apple implemented a “Love” button for songs, so you can use star ratings and Love. I wanted a way to Love all of my old songs and I did it with a playlist.
One of Apple Music’s tabs is called “For You.” It works, in part, using the songs that you choose to Love in the service. The more songs you Love, the more accurate For You will be. The problem is that many of the songs you rated highly in years past aren’t automatically Loved.
I built a Smart Playlist in iTunes to show me all of the songs I rated above three stars. What I got was every song I rated with four or five stars from the time I started building my library.
You can check through your library to make sure you still highly rate all of the songs and then go to the next step.
As you can see, not all of my highly rated songs are loved. I selected all of the songs, right-clicked on the selection and then clicked “Love.”
All of my top-rated songs are instantly Loved in Apple Music, making my For You section deliver even better results.
To be sure you have all of your favorite songs—let’s face it, sometimes we don’t always rate the songs—you can build another playlist for your “Top Played” and make sure they are all loved as well.
This should really help the For You section of Apple Music recognize your individual musical taste.
India has said Apple Inc must meet a rule obliging foreign retailers to sell at least 30 percent locally-sourced goods if it wishes to open stores in the country, a senior government official told Reuters.
While I’ll miss the previous hosts, I’m very interested to see if the BBC manages to capture at least the spirit of the previous version or whether they will go in a completely new, different, better direction.
