Nintendo’s widely anticipated first smartphone app has gone live. This is a first step for Nintendo, walking you through the process of creating a personal avatar, similar to the process you may have gone through on your Wii or Wii U. Your Mii avatar represents you on the Miitomo social network.

During the setup, if you answer questions, you’ll gain Miitomo coins, which you can use to buy in-app merch, as well as play some built-in games. To me, this feels (and sounds) like a genuine Nintendo DS experience, on a much better screen, but without the built-in control pad.

So far, so good. Looking forward to more. Here’s a link to the US version.

BuzzFeed News:

Apple has announced a milestone in its five-year-long effort to ensure that the minerals used in its products are sourced responsibly and “do not finance armed conflict.” These “conflict minerals” are so called because the proceeds from their mining have at times been used to fund armed groups associated with murder, rape, and other human rights violations in the Democratic Republic of Congo and neighboring countries where they are mined.

As of today, all of the smelters and refiners that supply the tech company with conflict minerals are enrolled in a third-party auditing program, a process Apple COO Jeff Williams calls “a journey.”

From Apple’s previous conflict minerals report (covering calendar year 2014):

Apple’s strategy of continuous engagement and accountability has driven real change. The number of conflict-free smelters and refiners in Apple’s supply chain has more than doubled in the past year, so that a majority of the identified and reported smelters and refiners as of December 31, 2014 have been verified as conflict-free. More than 88% of the identified smelters and refiners have either successfully completed conflict-free audits or have begun the audit process, and Apple is working with its suppliers to verify the rest or remove them from its supply chain.

Looks like they’ve pushed that number from 88% to 100%.

Claudia Lauer, writing for the Associated Press:

The FBI agreed Wednesday to help an Arkansas prosecutor unlock an iPhone and iPod belonging to two teenagers accused of killing a couple, just days after the federal agency announced it had gained access to an iPhone linked to the gunman in a mass shooting in California.

Faulkner County Prosecuting Attorney Cody Hiland said the FBI agreed to the request from his office and the Conway Police Department Wednesday afternoon. A judge on Tuesday agreed to postpone the trial of 18-year-old Hunter Drexler so prosecutors could ask the FBI for help. Drexler’s trial was moved from next week to June 27.

Not clear which iPhone / iPod models are involved in this case, or which version of iOS is running on each. It’ll be interesting to see if a case arises where the FBI unlocks an iPhone 6 or newer, running iOS 9.

Walt Mossberg:

Last week, Apple introduced both a new iPhone and a new iPad. Normally, such a dual unveiling would be blockbuster news in the tech and business worlds. But, this time, it wasn’t. That’s because both announcements were tactical business moves, products which lack breakthrough technology but aim to appeal to owners of older Apple models.

The company acted accordingly. It held the event in a smallish venue on its campus, rather than a big one in San Francisco. And it waited until halfway into an hour-long presentation before even mentioning the new products.

But that doesn’t mean the new iPhone and iPad are bad. In fact, I like them both. They’re just iterative: Smaller, familiar vessels for Apple’s latest technology. I’ve been testing them, and I believe they’ll appeal to a significant minority of users when they become available tomorrow.

Here’s my short and sweet review.

Bottom line, Walt offers a strong recommend for both, depending on your situation.

If you haven’t read them yet, here are links to Jim’s iPhone SE review, and Jim’s 9.7-inch iPad Pro review.

Open Culture:

Three years ago, Plymouth University kicked off Moby Dick The Big Read, promising a full audio book of Herman Melville’s influential novel, with famous (and not so famous) voices taking on a chapter each

We’re glad to say the project, created out of a 2011 conference by artist Angela Cockayne and writer Philip Hoare, has reached its successful conclusion. And they’ve certainly called on an impressive roster of celebrity readers: Stephen Fry, Neil Tennant, Fiona Shaw, Will Self, Benedict Cumberbatch, China Miéville, Tony Kushner, John Waters, Simon Callow, Sir David Attenborough, even Prime Minister David Cameron. Pulitzer Prize winning poet Mary Oliver finishes off the whole project, reading the Epilogue.

All 135 chapters are available to be listened to in your browser, downloaded on iTunes, streamed on SoundCloud, or even heard as a podcast. However, do check them out online, as each chapter comes with a work of art each created by 135 contemporary artists such as Matthew Barney, Oliver Clegg, and Matthew Benedict. The project is a mammoth undertaking befitting such a monumental book, and if you’ve never read it this just might be the way to go.

I’m not a huge fan of audio books but I’m definitely going to download and listen to this. Thanks very much to my friend Moeskido for the link.

Asymco:

In Apple’s first 40 years it shipped 1,591,092,250 computers. This shipment total is higher than any other computer company in its first 40 years. Actually there are no other PC makers that are 40 years old.

After having a 40 year run and after selling more computers than all American and Japanese computer companies put together, how should we think about the next 40 years?

Really interesting analysis of Apple. One of the key points is Apple is neither a software or hardware company. Dediu says, “My simple proposal is to think of Apple (and actually any company) as a customer creator.”

Macworld:

AnyList is a free, universal grocery shopping app offering a built-in database of items for creating multiple lists. Start typing the name of an item, and the app autocompletes each entry to speed up the process. You can even add items by voice with Siri, thanks to a clever feature that checks Reminders for new items at launch, then removes them once imported.

AnyList also stores entire recipes, either manually entered or copied and pasted from websites or email. With a single tap, all required ingredients are added to a shopping list, or the complete recipe can be printed or shared via email.

I’m a huge fan of AnyList, having used it for over a year. It’s great for keeping track of groceries and its recipe integration works really well as does the ability to share shopping lists with others in the family.

Atlas Obscura:

Over the past few weeks, internet viewers have been thrilled by a Washington, D.C.-based eagle cam, showing the birth of two eaglets. But #dceagle cam is one of dozens, probably hundreds of places where you can get your animal fix while futzing around at work.

For your viewing pleasure, Atlas Obscura has compiled a list of the upcoming spring hatches and births set to appear on animal cams around the web, and as a massive bonus, we’ve thrown in some cams that are simply always showing animal babies. Also: every other animal cam we could find.

Spring is sprung and with it comes new life and cute little baby animals. If you have kids, you may not want to show them this. They are liable to be glued to the screen. I know I’m constantly watching the Penguin Cam.

VentureBeat:

Steve Jobs hated the historic Jackling House that he bought in 1984 so much that he spent a tremendous amount of time and energy in his final years trying to have the Woodside mansion torn down.

After a decade of controversy and legal fights with local preservation groups, Jobs won, and the 17,250-square-foot building was demolished in February 2011 to make way for a new home.

Jobs’ determination to raze the house was particularly notable because he died from pancreatic cancer just eight months after the demolition. While the extent of his health problems were not well known when the Jackling House was being bulldozed, in retrospect, Jobs must have realized it was unlikely he would live to see anything else built on that land.

So the demolition of the house was one of the last victories of Jobs’ life. In the coming years it will be replaced by a new 15,000 square foot estate proposed by his wife, Laurene Powell Jobs, and moving toward approval by the Town of Woodside.

But it wasn’t quite the end of the story for the Jackling House.

Fascinating story, though I could have done without this bit:

a power struggle caused by the failure of the Mac. He then started NeXT, another computer company that largely failed

It’s all perception.

Is your iPhone set up with one well-arranged home screen, maybe two, followed by a random mish-mosh of the rest of your apps? If so, this tip might be for you.

In a nutshell, you’ll reset your apps to a new state, with the Apple apps on the home screen, and iOS will lay down the rest of your apps in alphabetical order. All you need to do is pull your most used apps to the home screen and the rest of your apps will be ordered somewhat alphabetically.

If you are going to do this, you might want to take a screen shot of your existing home screen to make it easier to remember what you had there before order was restored.

I wish Apple would give iOS more ways to bring order to your app icons. Why not a “View by Name” option?

And when I do an iPhone search, it’d be nice if there was another option beyond, launch the app I just found. At the very least, I’d love the option to jump to the page where the option lives, so I can find it in my morass of messy app icon pages. If not that, how about listing a page number next to the found app icon. That’d be enough of a clue for me.

From Slice Intelligence:

The number of iPhone SEs bought the first weekend of availability was 94 percent smaller than the iPhone 6S launch, which was 46 percent the number of iPhone 6 devices sold when it was released.

But:

Early data from Slice Intelligence indicates that the SE may help Apple grow its maturing iPhone consumer base. Only 35 percent of iPhone SE buyers purchased an iPhone online in the past two years, and 16 percent of them were previously Android users. By comparison, 49 percent of iPhone 6S buyers upgraded from a previous iPhone, and 10 percent replaced an Android device they bought online within the past two years.

Interesting numbers. Looks like the iPhone SE is doing its job, filling in a hole in the product line and bringing outside customers into the ecosystem.

[Via 9to5Mac]

Fast Company, from an article back in February:

Instead of endless product shelves, the space, which is named for its address, 837, features a three-story digital screen composed of 96 of Samsung’s 55-inch visual displays; a 90-seat theater; a portable demo kitchen; an art gallery; a multimedia studio; and a café. In it, Samsung will host events like film screenings, book launches, DJ sets, and, already on the schedule, an Oscars viewing party for Galaxy owners. “We didn’t want it to be a store,” Overton says. “We didn’t want it to be about pushing products in people’s faces.” Instead, he calls the building an “immersive cultural center.”

Given the location (across from the High Line and a block away from the Whitney Museum), they are surely paying a pretty penny for this massive space and all that foot traffic.

What I struggle with is their business model here. Seems like such vague plans for such premium space. And, as Loop reader Robert Davey notes, it’s certainly interesting that back in September, Apple showed off a prototype store with a giant screen and then Samsung rolls out their own version of the same, though Samsung’s version is codged together with 96 smaller screens.

Will this turn into a huge win for Samsung? Will it be shuttered by this time next year? Place your bets!

The LA Times:

A source who is unauthorized to discuss the case told The Times the FBI was provided with the ability to incorrectly guess more than 10 passwords without permanently rendering the phone’s data inaccessible. That allowed the agency to use software to run through potential pass codes until it landed on the correct one.

Given alternatives, like bypassing the password process entirely, or breaking the encryption, this seems the most obvious path.

Also from the article:

Last year, an Italian company that bought and sold bugs saw its entire database leaked onto the Internet. The security issue could explain why the FBI and the outside party are being so secretive about the process.

And:

Apple generally doesn’t reward bug-finders with cash. But given the publicity in this instance, experts said Apple could turn to the black market too.

If the FBI keeps this process secret from Apple they will, ultimately, be sharing it with the black market.

Of course, there’s always the possibility that the approach used no longer works on more modern phones, more recent releases of iOS. If that’s the case, Apple will certainly be seeing more All Writs motions from the FBI.

Microsoft created a Twitter-bot, tied it to the account name @TayandYou, turned it loose to tweet with people. Trolls being trolls, the artificial intelligence known as Tay was quickly subverted, started spewing some pretty vile stuff.

So Microsoft shut it down.

Last night, around midnight PT, Tay suddenly came back to life:

The @Tayandyou Twitter chatbot has been silent since last Thursday when Microsoft shut it down. Shortly after midnight today, Pacific time, the @Tayandyou Twitter account woke up and started blasting tweets at very high volume. All of these tweets included other Twitter handles in them, maybe from previous tweets, maybe from followers.

But it became immediately apparent that something was different and wrong. These tweets didn’t look anything like the ones before, in style, structure, or sentience. From the tweet conversations and from the sequence of events, I believe that the @Tayandyou account was hacked today (March 30), and was active for 15 minutes, sending over 4,200 tweets.

The theory is that someone hacked the account. No matter the cause, after about 15 minutes, the account was flagged as hacked and locked.

I love the idea of this experiment and hope @TayandYou comes back to life soon, albeit in a more intelligent form.

The Verge:

Apple and Major League Baseball have signed a multi-year deal that will see every team receive iPad Pro tablets for use in the dugout, reports The Wall Street Journal. The 12.9-inch tablets will be used with rugged, MLB-branded cases based on the one from STM pictured below, and a custom app called MLB Dugout will help managers see performance statistics, check videos from earlier games, and analyze how pitchers and hitters are likely to perform against each other.

The deal is reminiscent of the one Microsoft struck with the NFL to have Surface tablets on the sideline of each game, with one difference — iPad use is optional for MLB teams, whereas Surfaces are mandatory in the NFL.

Their use may be optional but there’s no doubt every manager in the game will eventually be seen with one of these iPads within arm’s reach in every major league dugout. Major League Baseball may be old school in a lot of ways but the increasing use of sabermetrics has changed the game.

Moments after successfully unlocking the San Bernardino iPhone, the F.B.I. rendered the phone permanently useless by spilling a glass of water on it, an F.B.I. spokesman confirmed on Tuesday.

I nearly choked because I was laughing so hard.

I love the quality of the company’s products. I have several bags from them for my MacBook and other devices.

The U.S. Department of Justice will disclose over the next two weeks whether it will continue with its bid to compel Apple Inc to help access an iPhone in a Brooklyn drug case, according to a court filing on Tuesday.

I suspect they’ll try the same method they used with the San Bernardino and go from there. As others have said, this battle is far from over.

Whether it’s calling mom or ordering take-out, we rely on our phones to help reach the people and things that matter. And while mobile phones have pushed us toward the future, home phone service is still important to many families. Landlines can be familiar, reliable and provide high-quality service, but the technology hasn’t always kept up. That’s why today, we’re introducing Fiber Phone as a new option to help you stay connected wherever you are.

This isn’t something that appeals to me, but I can see how it’s still important to a lot of people.

The New York Times Style Magazine:

Recently revealed plans for the new campuses of Google, in Mountain View, Calif., designed by Bjarke Ingels and Thomas Heatherwick, and Apple, in Cupertino, from Sir Norman Foster, are so striking: They, like the companies they will house, point to the future — the future, that is, as it looked in the 1960s. Images of the projected Apple campus — a four-tiered ringlike structure nestled in a thickly wooded landscape — evoke the landing of an alien spaceship. The central structure in Ingels’s and Heatherwick’s design is canopied by a sinuous glass membrane, a protective bubble or amniotic sac, shielding an entire section of the campus — not just buildings but bike paths and desks — while letting the abundant Northern California light stream in. In aerial renderings it looks like larvae, incubating a new and possibly terrifying future.

Like the rest of Silicon Valley, however, this future is in fact rooted in the past. It comes, transfigured, from the wrecked dreams of communal living, of back-to-the-land utopias, of expanding plastic spheres and geodesic domes that populated the landscape of Northern California around the time (and around the same place) that the first semiconductors were being perfected.

Interesting look at the connection between the utopian movements of the ’60s and the tech industry.

From the Nintendo press release:

Don’t miss out on being a part of a Nintendo first! On March 31, Miitomo, the company’s first-ever smart device application, is launching in the United States and several other countries. Miitomo is a free-to-start social experience that lets users spark one-of-a-kind conversations with friends in a whole new way using Mii characters. The app recently launched in Japan and was downloaded more than 1 million times in its first three days of availability, while achieving the #1 most downloaded free app status in both the App Store and Google Play storefronts.

And:

After downloading the application for free on the App Store for iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad, along with Android devices, users create a Mii character and customize facial features like eyes and hair, as well as voice and personality. Users can also use the camera on their smart devices to snap a photo of themselves, which can be used to create a Mii, or they can simply import their Mii from their Wii U or Nintendo 3DS systems using a QR Code.

Once their Mii is ready, users can add friends who already have the app in person, or by linking the app with their existing Facebook or Twitter accounts. After that step is complete, it’s time to answer some questions! Miitomo creates conversations and turns discussions into a form of play by prompting users to answer all kinds of fun questions. How would you define your fashion style? What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever eaten? If you were given ten grand to spend in one day, what would you do? The answers get shared among friends, sparking interesting conversations – part of the fun is discovering unexpected facts about your friends. When users hear how their friends responded to questions, they can give answers a “heart” or a written or picture comment.

To me, this is a foundational app to build a social network for future Nintendo app releases, moving the Mii characters into the smartphone universe.

I can’t test this, since I don’t have a device that suffers from the “dead links” issue. But if you do have such a device, and can’t wait for Apple to roll out a fix, give this a try.

It’s a pretty interesting read. Clearly, the author implies that the problem is with the Bookings.com app, but it could be some other app as well.

From this post by Benjamin Mayo on 9to5Mac:

Previously, we pinpointed Bookings.com as a cause of the bug, although noting it affects other apps as well. On Twitter, it was found that their website association file, used by the system for the universal links feature introduced with iOS 9, was many megabytes, grossly oversized. This would essentially overload the daemon that had to parse these files, causing the crashing. The Booking.com app has since corrected its payload file to be a far more reasonable 4 kilobytes. Users of Booking.com should delete and reinstall the app, to refresh the system caches for the URL association file.

However, Booking.com is not the only case of a developer misusing the API, so people who continue to experience bugs will also find that they have other apps installed on the system which are also registering thousands of URLs. Unfortunately, it is practically impossible to find out which apps are the misdemeanours. In terms of high-profile cases, we have heard that Wikipedia and Eat 24 are among the apps registering too many domains in their universal link directory.

Sounds like no one ever tested iOS 9 with a massive list of universal links.

From the Universal Links page in Apple’s iOS Developer Library:

When you support universal links, iOS 9 users can tap a link to your website and get seamlessly redirected to your installed app without going through Safari. If your app isn’t installed, tapping a link to your website opens your website in Safari.

Mikey Campbell, writing for AppleInsider:

Apple this past weekend opened the doors to one of the first “next-generation” Apple Stores to land stateside, and AppleInsider has exclusive photos of the logo-less facade, custom wooden wall installations and massive 37-foot TV display — rumored to cost $1.5 million — that ties everything together.

Check out the picture of that 37 foot display. I can only imagine that it looks even more impressive in person.

As seen in photos provided by AppleInsider reader Wade, Apple’s latest U.S. outlet benefits from the overhauled brick-and-mortar design language dreamed up by retail chief Angela Ahrendts and CDO Jony Ive. The final product matches up with renderings revealed last September.

This Apple Store is located in Germantown, just outside Memphis, Tennessee.

Apple has scheduled the call to discuss their second quarter results (2Q2016) on April 25th at 2p PT (5p ET).

Publishing, especially print publishing, is a tough, tough business. Sad to see them go.