iMore:

Tim Cook recently said that 60 percent of customers on an iPhone 5s or earlier have not yet upgraded to an iPhone 6 or later. When we polled our readership late last year, a majority of our readers told us they were happy with the current sizes — almost 58%.

Whether Apple does this in the spring or not, it certainly makes sense for the company to serve the end of the market that doesn’t need or want one of the ginormous iPhone 6 variations.

Bloomberg:

It’s a way of creating a connection, even if it’s superficial. If users click like on a post about the Red Cross’s disaster relief efforts, they feel as if they’ve done something to help. (In January, Sandberg went so far as to suggest that likes could help defeat Islamic State: By posting positive messages on the terror group’s Facebook pages, users could somehow drown out the hate.) Liking someone’s photo is an awkwardness-free way to make contact with someone you haven’t seen in years. Alternatives to like will let Facebook users be a little more thoughtful, or at least seem to be, without having to try very hard.

I think that “without trying too hard” is the sad key to the Like button. Regardless, the article is an interesting look behind the scenes at Facebook and the massive amount of discussion and thought that goes into something seemingly so simple and obvious.

No matter your musical tastes, this is just damn fun. Throw on some headphones before you click the link, but it’s worth it.

Stephen Hackett, writing for 512 Pixels:

With iOS 5, Apple introduced Notification Center, the pull-down shade that houses missed notifications and messages all in one place.

With iOS 7, Apple added Today, a section of Notification Center that users can fill with first- and third-party widgets, as well as Control Center, a quick way to get at commonly-used utilities with a flick up from the bottom of the display.

I don’t think this has aged very well, unfortunately, and it’s mostly Control Center’s fault. In addition to it being confusing to have a hidden panel at the top of the screen, having one at the bottom too is a lot to handle for some users. But there’s a bigger problem in my mind: Control Center just does way too many things.

Read the article for specifics, but I agree 100%. Apple could solve this by giving users the ability to either turn on/off Control Center items or, better yet, completely customize it by dragging items on and off.

Not to be confused with existing wireless charging solutions that depend on contact between a surface of the device and a specialized charging mat, at-a-distance charging means your phone can charge while it is still in your pocket.

According to Bloomberg’s Tim Culpan (video embed in the article), we might see this technology in a product sometime next year. If so, that would be a bit of a game changer.

Never heard of Parse? Not surprising. But no doubt you use it. Parse offers massive database services, making it easy for app developers to collect data while managing many of the details.

As an example, Parse offers tools that handle login registration as well as login verification. You hand your visitors over to Parse code, they login, then Parse gives them back to you, all logged in. You don’t have to store the data locally and you don’t have to reinvent the validation code. Parse handles it all.

But all that is about to end. And all those developers need to find another solution or shut down their apps.

From the Parse blog:

We have a difficult announcement to make. Beginning today we’re winding down the Parse service, and Parse will be fully retired after a year-long period ending on January 28, 2017. We’re proud that we’ve been able to help so many of you build great mobile apps, but we need to focus our resources elsewhere.

Facebook acquired Parse in 2013 and started using it internally. It’s not clear if Facebook will continue to use Parse for its own needs and is purely turning off support for 3rd parties, or if it is abandoning Parse entirely. Given how widely used Parse is, I can’t imagine Facebook wouldn’t sell it if it had no plans of its own. After all, it supposedly paid $85 million for the purchase.

Robin Harris, writing for ZDNet:

With Mac OS 10.3 – El Capitan – Apple has removed the Secure Empty Trash function. Why? Because with solid state drives – SSDs – Apple couldn’t guarantee that a secure erase would actually erase the data.

Thus when you sell a Mac – almost all of which have had SSDs for the last 4 years – using Secure Empty Trash with an older version of OS X, or trusting Empty Trash to nuke your data is asking for trouble. Follow these instructions and your data will be well and truly vaporized.

The article walks you through the process. Tuck this one away, pass it along.

As part of Fast Company’s Innovation Festival, Rick Tetzeli spoke with Angela Ahrendts.

We just ended the year with the highest retention rates we’ve ever had: 81%. And the feedback [from Apple Store employees is that it’s] because they feel connected. They feel like one Apple. They don’t feel like they’re just somebody over here working with customers. I don’t see them as retail employees. I see them as executives in the company who are touching the customers with the products that Jony [Ive] and the team took years to build. Somebody has to deliver it to the customer in a wonderful way.

Short, worth reading.

Agam Shah, writing for Computerworld:

One indicator of healthy mobile device or PC sales is the amount of money a company spends on chips that go into those devices.

So it should come as no surprise that Apple was the world’s second-largest chip buyer last year, spending more than $29 billion, up by 7.1 percent compared to 2014, according to a study released by Gartner on Wednesday.

Apple is now in a position to reclaim its position as the top chip buyer from Samsung, which spent $29.87 billion last year, a 3.6 percent decline.

Doomed.

Popular Mechanics:

It was supposed to be one of the greatest achievements in the history of the United States space program.

A civilian—a schoolteacher, an emissary of the hope for tomorrow—was going to space. Christa McAuliffe, a thirty-seven-year-old mother of two from Concord, New Hampshire, had been selected from eleven thousand entrants to NASA’s Teacher in Space contest. She became a symbol of optimism and progress amid Cold War tension. And the rest of the shuttle crew was itself a representation of the strength of American society: Gregory Jarvis, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Judith Resnik, Michael Smith, and Commander Dick Scobee. Two women, one of them Jewish. An African- American. An Asian-American. They were the most diverse group of astronauts NASA ever assembled.

On the morning of January 28, 1986, despite concerns within NASA and among others working on the launch that the weather was too cold, the shuttle Challenger blasted off. Seventy-three seconds later, it broke apart in long, grotesque fingers of white smoke in the sky above Cape Canaveral, Florida.

While it was thirty years ago today, I still remember it vividly. I had turned the TV on specifically to watch the launch. I never missed one. I loved watching any kind of NASA launch and had since I was a kid. After Challenger, I never watched another one.

The Atlantic:

“It’s really strange that only humans have chins,” says James Pampush from Duke University. “When we’re looking at things that are uniquely human, we can’t look to big brains or bipedalism because our extinct relatives had those. But they didn’t have chins. That makes this immediately relevant to everyone.”

Indeed, except in rare cases involving birth defects, everyone has chins. Sure, some people have less pronounced ones than others, perhaps because their lower jaws are small or they have more flesh around the area. But if you peeled back that flesh and exposed their jawbones—and maybe don’t do that—you’d still see a chin.

So, why do chins exist?

In the category of “things I wasn’t expecting to think about today”, I would put high on the list, “Why do human beings have chins?” It’s actually a very interesting article and, spoiler alert, scientists really don’t know why.

CNBC:

Cramer thinks the brand loyalty for Apple is so great customers won’t switch to another company. So maybe Apple doesn’t need to worry about peaking phone sales. Maybe it just needs to keep selling more devices, and let the service stream do the talking.

“By this time next year, it wouldn’t shock me if that service revenue number becomes the key metric, especially with the iPhone 7 right around the corner,” Cramer said.

I find Cramer physically hard to listen to (his voice is like finger nails on a blackboard to me) and I’m not going to give him a pass on his late realization of the importance of brand loyalty when it comes to Apple, but the piece and the video have some interesting thoughts as to why analysts can’t seem to get their heads around Apple and why they seemingly treat Apple so harshly. I don’t know if his conclusion that service revenue will be a key metric in the future is correct but it’s something to keep an eye on.

Talon Torres:

…(it) had been launched at six times Earth’s escape velocity. That’s one hundred fifty thousand miles per hour. Forty-five miles per second. Nine times faster than the Space Shuttle, six times faster than the fastest moon rockets. Faster than the Voyager spacecraft, which, having reached over 35000 miles per hour, are now leaving the solar system and have for years been claimed to be the fastest man-made objects ever. To which I now say: Pshaw and poppycock…

So somewhere in the New Mexico desert, unknown and unmourned, lies an American relic, a piece of history like no other: the fastest man-made object ever.

I have no idea who the writer is but it’s a great story and the answer will surprise you. The amount of energy required is mindboggling. Thanks to John Molloy for the link.

This is a set of 43 photos from The Last Waltz, a farewell concert for The Band from 1976.

From the Last Waltz Wikipedia page:

The Last Waltz was a concert by the Canadian-American rock group the Band, held on American Thanksgiving Day, November 25, 1976, at Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco. The Last Waltz was advertised as the Band’s “farewell concert appearance,” and the concert saw the Band joined by more than a dozen special guests, including Bob Dylan, Paul Butterfield, Neil Young, Emmylou Harris, Ringo Starr, Ronnie Hawkins, Dr. John, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, Muddy Waters, Ronnie Wood, Neil Diamond, Bobby Charles, The Staple Singers, and Eric Clapton. The musical director for the concert was the Band’s original record producer, John Simon.

This was a big deal back in the day. Martin Scorsese made a great documentary (also called The Last Waltz) that’s worth watching if you can find it.

These photos are an historic find.

Om Malik:

Let’s recap 2015 from an iPhone perspective. The company sold 232 million iPhones during calendar year 2015 versus 193 million in 2014 and 154 million units in 2013.

And:

Apple made more than $54 billion in profits during calendar year 2015: which is actually twice the amount of sales Apple had during the (fiscal, not calendar) year the iPhone launched: 2007.

Doomed.

Macworld’s Christopher Phin walks you through the options. If nothing else, click through to the article and read each section headline, just to get a sense of all the options covered.

Good stuff.

Cabel Sasser, writing for the Panic blog, on the challenge of making money building (top notch) iOS apps:

I brought this up last year and we still haven’t licked it. We had a change of heart — well, an experimental change of heart — and reduced the price of our iOS apps in 2015 to normalize them at $9.99 or less, thinking that was the upper limit and/or sweet spot for iOS app pricing. But it didn’t have a meaningful impact on sales.

More and more I’m beginning to think we simply made the wrong type of apps for iOS — we made professional tools that aren’t really “in demand” on that platform — and that price isn’t our problem, but interest is.

So, once again, we will investigate raising our iOS app prices in 2016, with two hopes: that the awesome customers that love and need these apps understand the incredible amount of work that goes into them and that these people are also willing to pay more for a quality professional app (whereas, say, the casual gamer would not).

It’s a tough nut to crack. Tough to know the right apps to develop and tough to find the right pricing sweet spot at which to sell them.

Walt Mossberg wrote this Verge article about Twitter becoming too complicated for users, comparing it unfavorably to Facebook.

John Gruber’s response sums this up perfectly:

The fundamental problem is that Twitter is compared to Facebook, and it shouldn’t be. Facebook appeals to billions of people. “Most people”, it’s fair to say. Twitter appeals to hundreds of millions of people. That’s amazing, and there’s tremendous value in that — but it’s no Facebook. Cramming extra features into Twitter will never make it as popular as Facebook — it will only dilute what it is that makes Twitter as popular and useful as it is.

Exactly.

Ben Lovejoy, writing for 9to5Mac:

The iPad Pro quietly gained a new capability in iOS 9.3 beta 2: German developer Stefan Wolfrum tweeted that the device can now update the firmware in devices attached to the Smart Connector. He was offered, and able to complete, a firmware update to his Logitech Create keyboard.

Firmware updates of accessories usually need you to connect them to a Mac, but as the Smart Connector is unique to the iPad Pro, it’s likely this fact that prompted the new capability.

The move also helps support Tim Cook’s contention that, for many people, an iPad Pro could be a complete replacement for a PC.

When you think about an iPad as a full-time device, you usually think about software, about the ability to consume and (more importantly) produce all of your content without relying on a laptop or desktop machine.

But the ability to fully support your satellite devices (like updating the Logitech keyboard’s firmware) is just as critical. Interesting development.

Joe Mullin, writing for Ars Technica:

A patent-holding company called Minero Digital seeks to exact royalty payments on a wide range of USB hubs, suing more than two dozen retailers and manufacturers last year. But the “non-practicing entity” dropped its East Texas lawsuit against Newegg subsidiary Rosewill within days of getting a call from the company’s lawyer. It’s not going to be easy for Minero and its president, Texas lawyer Daniel Perez, to walk away, though. Yesterday, Newegg filed its own lawsuit (PDF) against Minero in Los Angeles federal court, asking a judge to rule that Rosewill products do not infringe Minero’s patent.

And:

Beyond the possibility of being sued again, Cheng noted that Minero continues to litigate against other retailers that sell Rosewill-branded products and that Newegg may have defense obligations to those other companies. Minero continues to press its case against more than 20 companies, with the defendants including Office Depot, Walmart, and Amazon—three big retailers that sell Rosewill products.

Newegg’s lawsuit asks only for a judicial ruling of non-infringement, not money damages

Not only does Newegg sell a nice line of tech products and provide excellent customer service, they also stick up for themselves. It would have been easy for them to pay Minero to go away. But not only did they stand up to the bully, they are now countersuing to prevent Minero from collecting from anyone else on this patent claim.

The Register:

VMware has fired the US-based development teams that worked on its Fusion and Workstation desktop hypervisors, the products that gave the company its start.

And, from our friends at Crediful.com:

The Register asked VMware to confirm the layoffs and to explain the future of the products and were told: “We can confirm that the restructuring activities will not impact the existence of any current product lines.”

From VMware:

In some cases, roles and responsibilities associated with particular businesses will be moved to other regions and office locations. VMware continues to invest in all of its offerings across the portfolio, with emphasis on our growth products.

From former VMware team member Christian Hammond’s blog:

Yesterday morning, the Hosted UI team, responsible for VMware’s Workstation and Fusion products, woke up to find themselves out of a job. These products, despite being award-winning and profitable, are probably not long for this world.

I was not directly affected, in this way at least, as I had already left VMware in 2013 to work on Review Board full-time. However, many of my closest friends were, and a product I spent 9 years of my life on may have seen its last feature.

I could talk all day about how I think we got here, losing this amazing team and these fantastic products. I could point fingers and lash out at those I blame. I could talk about how furious this all makes me.

Instead, I’m going to talk about the team and what we built — and I don’t just mean our products.

I get outsourcing. When you are trying to keep a company as lean as possible, or simply afloat, outsourcing to reduce labor costs is hard to resist. But abruptly laying off your flagship product’s dev team is hard to swallow. It’s demeaning to all involved and, I suspect, will turn into terrible PR for VMware.

Kerris is well known in Silicon Valley for her job as one of the top public relations and communications staffers at Apple. She was in the running for the top job at the tech giant, which went to Steve Dowling, after the departure of Katie Cotton.

Kerris retired from Apple, but she would be a great addition to Twitter if they can get her.

The New York Times:

Let’s get this out of the way first: Despite what you may have heard, the iPhone is not dying. Neither, by extension, is Apple.

It’s true that in an earnings report on Tuesday, after weeks of speculation by Wall Street that iPhone sales would finally hit a peak, Apple confirmed the news: IPhone sales grew at their lowest-ever rate in the last quarter. And the company projected total sales of as much as $53 billion in the current quarter that ends in March, which would be a decline of 8.6 percent from last year and Apple’s first revenue drop in more than a decade.

But if Apple is now hitting a plateau, it’s important to remember that it’s one of the loftiest plateaus in the history of business. The $18.4 billion profit that Apple reported on Tuesday is the most ever earned by any company in a single quarter.

It’s necessary to start with these caveats because people have a tendency to react strongly, almost apoplectically, to any suggestion of weakness on Apple’s part.

Yesterday’s earnings report followed the usual script – Apple announces amazing numbers and everyone says, “Yeah, but what’s next!?” I think Apple Executives and The Board of Directors look past the stock price at a much longer time frame. This allows them to, if not ignore the rending of garments, at least keep it in perspective. Apple is still, and will continue to be for the foreseeable future, a very succesful company.

Margaret Kelsey, Content and Community Manager at InVision:

Nothing stirs up a more impassioned debate with designers than asking them to choose their favorite typeface. So this week, we forced a handful of creatives in the InVision community to make that tough decision.

And no lorem ipsum here! They’ve written their favorite word — which, for many, is a breakfast food — using their chosen typeface.

Nice to scroll through these one word treatments. See if any of these typefaces grab you.

Davey Alba, writing for Wired:

Rejected gifts and returned goods don’t go back on the shelves from which they came. They follow an entirely different logistical path, a weird mirror image of the supply chain that brings the goods we actually want to our doors.

This parallel process exists because the cost of restocking and reselling returned items often exceeds the value of those items. To cut their losses, online retailers often turn to folks like Ringelsten.

And:

With retailers investing more in returns, they must also find a way to ensure they don’t hemorrhage money in the process. That’s where re-commerce comes in. Major retailers can’t resell returned items, even if they’re still brand new, says Shorewood’s Ringelsten. “You don’t know where the product went after it left your store, so you can’t put it back on your shelf.”

Fascinating article.

Fix this!

The Wirecutter:

Rechargeable batteries are better and cheaper than you remember, holding a charge for years and costing less than a nickel per charge over their life cycle. In fact, after more than a dozen hours of research, a dozen hours of real-world tests, and over 70 hours of controlled testing with a pair of battery analyzers—including another 12 hours of real-world testing with flashlights and a camera flash—we found that the Energizer Recharge Power Plus are the best rechargeable AAs for most people most of the time. But we also found that almost all the brands we tested are good enough for most uses if you can find them at a discount.

And:

The Energizers handily beat the popular eneloops in both tests, offering about 16 percent more capacity and 7 percent longer flashlight burn time, despite having the same average price per battery.

Eneloops are one of the better sellers on Amazon, so this (to me) is a significant difference.

Joe Belfiore is Microsoft’s Corporate Vice President, Operating Systems Group. He’s in charge of the Windows Phone software.

On vacation in Japan, Joe tweeted a pic from his iPhone, which started a bit of a kerfuffle. To me, this would be like Craig Federighi tweeting from an Android phone. Odd choice, but a solid endorsement.