Yahoo announced Wednesday that it would spin off its core business into a separate, publicly traded company, a move that could make its popular but tired Web properties more attractive to suitors.

Members of Yahoo’s board said in a statement that they were abandoning a previous plan to spin off Yahoo’s massive and valuable stake in Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce company, amid concerns that the deal would incur steep taxes on Yahoo. Those shares are estimated to be worth $35 billion.

Instead, company officials said they were exploring a “reverse spin-off” of Yahoo’s substantial Web properties, which include search, email, media and advertising units. By creating a separate company, the value of those businesses would be more apparent to investors — and easier to sell.

“A separation from our Alibaba stake, via the reverse spin, will provide more transparency into the value of Yahoo’s business,” said chief executive Marissa Mayer.

Their stake in Alibaba has long been the most valuable part of the company. If they sell it to finance the rest of their businesses, Yahoo would be faced with crippling taxes on the capital gain. No choice, really.

Mashable:

Apple’s first ever battery iPhone case has generated a range of reactions and emotions. Some people simply can’t get over the hump.

I caught up with Apple CEO Tim Cook, who was in town to participate in an Hour of Code event, to take his temperature on the $99 iPhone 6 and 6s case, with the noticeable battery pack hump on its back. We asked Cook if he is excited about the hump.

“You know, I probably wouldn’t call it ‘the hump,’” said Cook, who added he was aware of the comments surrounding the Smart Battery Case.

I find the Sturm und Drang over this case to be fascinating. I have no opinion about the design until I’ve seen it for myself but the amount of electronic ink spilled over this on both sides speaks to many things, not the least of which is Apple is under intense focus no matter what they do.

9to5Mac:

Apple Watch is at the top of many holiday wish lists this year and luckily for gift shoppers it’s received numerous discounts since Black Friday. In fact, Target and B&H are both offering significant Apple Watch promotions right now.

This morning Best Buy jumped into the fray with the best straight up Apple Watch deal we’ve ever seen: $100 off any Apple Watch Sport or Apple Watch model. More than 20 different watch configurations are eligible for this discount.

This looks to be the sweet spot for Apple Watch pricing. It’s also interesting that these deals are coming from the stores and not Apple. Will the lower price encourage you to buy an Apple Watch this holiday season?

Federico Viticci walks through Apple’s list of the best apps for 2015. Some great apps there. Looking forward to diving in to the game of the year!

Jonny Evans, writing for Computerworld:

Apple is on the cusp of gaining the kind of market command it has not held in over 20-years, with 67 percent of enterprise IT professionals believing the Mac will “cut into PC share over the next three years,” according to a JAMF Software survey.

This IDC chart confirms that Mac market share has already regained the market position it last enjoyed in 1995, regaining 8 percent of the overall market on significantly higher unit sales. Meanwhile, as the PC market overall contracts Apple’s overall share continues to climb. Ironically, it appears enterprise sales will drive Cupertino forward even as alternative platforms fade into the background.

Doomed.

If you need to update one of your devices directly, performing the update from iTunes, most likely with your device tethered to your Mac, this list will come in handy.

Each link in the list points to an Apple hosted (so you know it is legitimate) iPSW file for a specific iOS device. iTunes can use an iPSW file to update a specified device.

Worth bookmarking.

The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) ranked Apple as the number one most innovative company in the world. You can view the rankings, read the details here.

Interestingly, Forbes ran an article, entitled Is Apple the World’s Most Innovative Company?, to specifically refute these results. Seems that Forbes had published their own Most Innovative Companies list, and guess what? Apple did not make the top 100.

Draw your own conclusions. But clearly, someone is wrong here.

Katie Benner, writing for the New York Times:

Angela Ahrendts, Apple’s senior vice president of retail, got a private demonstration of the fancy wireless speaker, the Phantom, and its sound quality seven weeks ago. On the spot, she said she wanted the space podlike device, which starts at $1,990, to be sold in Apple’s retail stores.

“She moved incredibly fast, from our first meeting to figuring out how the Phantom would be displayed,” Quentin Sannié, the co-founder of Devialet, the French audio company that makes the white and chrome speaker, said of Ms. Ahrendts.

This week, the Phantom will appear in 14 Apple stores in the United States, and the company is discussing how widely to roll out the product next year. The device will get the sort of prominent display treatment that is typically reserved in Apple stores for the company’s Beats audio accessories.

The move is an indication of how Ms. Ahrendts, who started at Apple last year, is changing the playbook at some of the iPhone maker’s stores this holiday season and the direction she’s going in: ultra luxe.

Interesting direction. Clearly, ultra luxe is in Angela Ahrendts’ DNA, given her previous experience running luxury brand Burberry. Apple Stores have always leaned toward the minimalist, with the focus squarely on Apple products. Over time, third party products have had less and less a role in impacting “main aisle” experience.

Apple has traditionally sold the most expensive accessories online only, like the $2,700 B&O BeoPlay A9 MKII speaker. “I asked Tim a very simple question: Why do we do it this way?” she said of her boss, Timothy D. Cook, Apple’s chief executive. Mr. Cook told her he didn’t know, she said.

Surprising that this tidbit would be revealed publicly. I wonder if there’s more context there. Regardless, it will be interesting to see if there is a shift coming to the Apple Store, a move to add a luxury vibe to the Apple Store shopping experience.

As Apple Watch enters the critical holiday shopping season, it looks likely to get a sales boost from happy customers, almost two-thirds of whom are planning to give one as a gift, a Reuters/Ipsos poll showed on Tuesday.

I’m not surprised. Apple Watch has changed my life and I’m sure other people are seeing the same thing.

Les Moonves, CEO of CBS, says that the company was in talks with Apple to be included in its still forthcoming cable-killing TV-subscription service — but that Apple has placed development of that service on hold.

I’m not sure what caused the company to put this hold. Perhaps they are making their services better before launching something so important. Whatever the reason, I’m really looking forward to it.

BGR:

One of the more interesting aspects of Apple’s legal battle with Samsung is that it gave us an unprecedented look behind the veil of secrecy that typically shrouds all aspects of Apple’s product development and day-to-day operations. Over the course of discovery, innumerable court filings, and a fascinating trial, the inner workings of Apple were brought to the forefront for the first time in history. From photographs of iPhone prototypes to how Apple conducts market research, Apple’s legal battles with Samsung provided tech enthusiasts with a treasure trove of previously top-secret information.

With Samsung now agreeing to pony up for damages, we thought it’d be a good time to take a step back, reminisce, and take a look at some of the more interesting nuggets of information the hard-fought patent dispute brought to light.

The downside to lawsuits is this kind of insider info can often be gleaned from court filings. Apple has to give up some of its secrets in order to go to court. I’ll be the first to admit I love this kind of stuff, especially about prototypes. To me, they are fascinating glimpses into “alternative Apple universes” and things that might have been.

Medium:

This fall’s release of the new Anki Overdrive set feels a bit like the moment when James Bond’s quartermaster Q rolls out a go-go-gadget Aston Martin DB5 and says, with smug understatement, “I’ve added one or two rather special accessories…” The upgraded set, with reconfigurable tracks, might not look so different from the previous Anki Drive, or, for that matter, the Christmas present Elvis unwrapped in 1965. Inside the box, it’s still a set of little toy cars.

The innovation isn’t immediately obvious. Though the bluetooth relays that control the cars and the sophisticated infrared sensors that keep them on track are ingenious, the real action isn’t under the cars’ hoods, either: The genius is in the code. Like Tesla and Google’s self-driving car, Anki’s real leap forward is its software.

I was an early adopter of the original Anki Overdrive and really enjoyed it but ultimately returned it. But I still think it’s a very cool race car set if you have kids who are into them.

Like James Dempsey and the Breakpoints, Airplane Mode is an indie band with iOS developers at its heart.

From the Airplane Mode blog:

Our friend Rene Ritchie posted a video of him sketching Marvel’s Jessica Jones with an Apple Pencil on his new iPad Pro, using an amazing app called Procreate, which automatically records every stroke and gives the option of exporting those strokes as a video.

Ohhhhhhhhhh.

Watch the video (below), read the blog post. I absolutely love this. Great job.

Jonathan Roberts, writing for Fantastic Maps:

I would have settled for the iPad Pro being a really nice sketching tool – but what I’ve discovered is that the iPad Pro, the Pencil, and Procreate, get me 95% to a final illustration, and quicker than I would get there on my desktop.

In many respects, this is better than working in Photoshop on my Mac. I never expected to say that. The last 5% is due to the pieces that Procreate doesn’t do, that Photoshop does – text, labels, some of the more advanced features. So that’s software, not hardware – and I expect the app store will get a lot more firepower very quickly once developers really get to grips with the Pro.

This is a serious piece of kit that will find a central place in an illustrators workflow – but it will not replace a desktop.

And:

My bugbears with styluses are:

• lag
• jittery pressure sensitivity, so that you can see the linewidth change as you press harder, rather than having a smooth response to pressure
• offset between the line and the tip

Apple has created a stylus with none of these problems, which places it squarely at the top of my list. This is as good as my Intuous in terms of responsiveness – and better than the Wacom Cintiq I tried. I’ve been told that you can calibrate the Cintiq to get past those issues, but here I don’t have to calibrate anything. It just works. I can’t find published specs on levels of pressure sensitivity of the Apple Pencil – but given the smoothness of the response I’d bet money on at least 1028.

The lack of lag is a minor miracle. Previous styluses using bluetooth connections have been plagued with visible lag between large sweeping line movements, and the screen response. Here Apple has weighted the deck in their own favour. When it’s taking data from the Pencil, the iPad samples at 240 times a second. This is compared to 60 times a second for finger input on previous iPads. The result is a seamless drawing experience.

This is a great review, shoots straight, pros and cons (the biggest con being price), well worth reading.

Nick Jesdanun, writing for the Associated Press:

Apple Maps quickly became the butt of jokes when it debuted in 2012. It overlooked many towns and businesses and misplaced famous landmarks. It marked New York’s Madison Square Garden arena as park space because of the word “Garden.” The service was a rare blunder for a company known for simple, easy-to-use products.

It’s a different story three years later.

Apple fixed errors as users submitted them. It quietly bought several mapping companies, mostly for their engineers and other talent. This fall, it added transit directions for several major cities, narrowing a major gap with Google. Apple Maps is now used more widely than Google Maps on iPhones.

Great success story for the Apple Maps team. Kudos.

This is an interesting list, one that explores the history of the iOS App Store, presenting 100 apps that moved the needle at various times. Looks like a lot of work went in to pulling this list together.

As with any list, there are quibbles (Plants vs. Zombies seems an obvious oversight to me), but I did enjoy the read.

Ocarina! I remember what a big deal that was when it came out. Great to see that on the list.

That is one funky looking case. Did Sir Jony have anything to do with that?

Micah Singleton, writing for The Verge:

As of October, Apple Music has 6.5 million paid users, which is a great number for paying subscribers for such a young service. But Apple Music’s biggest problem is and will continue to be that millions and millions of people stream music for free from other services, and have little incentive to switch to a paid music service.

And:

67 percent of Americans streamed music every week before Apple Music existed. With no free tier, Apple has the cumbersome job of convincing the public, the majority of whom have chosen free services, to switch from something they know and pay for the same music without commercials.

And:

Apple Music also needs a standalone desktop app far, far removed iTunes, one of the least beloved pieces of software Apple has created. Earlier this year, Apple replaced iPhoto and Aperture with Photos for OS X, which has been a step up for most users. It should do the same for iTunes and build a new Music app for the desktop from the ground up.

Hard to argue with this logic. Apple Music is an odd duck, a part of the Apple ecosystem that doesn’t crush the competition with some combination of superior design, improved performance, or unmatchable convenience.

Apple Music doesn’t take advantage of its position inside the fence. Apple Music is tethered to the iCloud/iTunes music model, a hybrid created by the requirement that Apple Music play nice with my owned music. Lots of well publicized issues with this model.

Personally, I find the idea of a pure Apple Music app appealing, an app focused on discovery and music sharing, one with a social component that let me share my loved playlists with friends I follow, and let approved friends make their own additions to those playlists. I’d love the ability to “like” tracks, including tracks on Beats 1 and any radio station, and have those tracks automatically be added to a playlist for later recall.

Apple Music has a lot going for it. But I think it needs a reimagined interface, one with no strings.

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Dropbox:

We’re committed to making the transitions from these products as painless as possible. We’ve posted more information on the Carousel blog and the Mailbox blog, and we’ll be communicating details directly to users of both apps in the coming days. Mailbox will be shut down on February 26th, 2016, and Carousel will be shut down on March 31st, 2016.

To our Carousel and Mailbox users, thank you for embracing these products—and we’re sorry. It’s not easy to say goodbye to products we all love. But ultimately, we think this increased focus will help us create even better experiences for you in the months and years to come.

I never used either product in part because of this. I’ve been around long enough to see dozens, if not hundreds, of services come and go. I rarely rely on new services (but I often test them out) simply because, to paraphrase Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, “Products come and go so quickly around here.” I may be too old and jaded but I think my time is too valuable to constantly be flitting from one new service to another, only to have the owner shut it down, sometimes with very little advance notice.

Calgary Sun:

Jordy Stallard brought down the bears.

Calgary Hitmen fans had to be patient, holding their bears until the 2:41 mark of the second period when Stallard triggered the avalanche of stuffed animals at the 21st annual Petro-Canada Teddy Bear Toss on Sunday afternoon at the Saddledome.

I think I write about this story every year. I do it because it seems like fun event for a good cause and the video is always wonderful.

From OSXDaily:

Whether you’re looking at an important email, reading a web page, or doing just about anything else on your iPhone or iPad, perhaps you’d like to be reminded about it again at a later time or date. While Siri has long been able to create reminders for events and based on locations, a new feature available for the latest versions of iOS is the ability for Siri to remind you about what you’re currently looking at on an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch.

In a nutshell, make your way to an article, email, etc., something you want to be reminded about later. Bring up Siri and say:

Remind me about this tomorrow

Substitute your own timing or location specification. The key is the word “this”.

When the reminder fires off, it will include a link to the page in question. This is handy.