From Fortune’s Tim Cook profile that we posted last night:

Representing their companies publicly is obligatory for CEOs, but Cook takes public stands on issues including stopping the transmission of AIDS, human rights, and immigration reform. He sees them as opportunities for leadership. “You want to be the pebble in the pond that creates the ripple for change,” he says, adding that Apple’s people have long cared about such issues even if they haven’t previously spoken so openly about them. To Cook, changing the world always has been higher on Apple’s agenda than making money.

Followed immediately by:

He plans to give away all his wealth, after providing for the college education of his 10-year-old nephew. There should be plenty left over to fund philanthropic projects. Cook’s net worth, based on his holdings of Apple stock, is currently about $120 million. He also holds restricted stock worth $665 million if it were to be fully vested. Cook says that he has already begun donating money quietly, but that he plans to take time to develop a systematic approach to philanthropy rather than simply writing checks.

There have been plenty of CEOs who have turned to philanthropy after they retired. But few have stood for change, taken public stands on controversial issues while they were still CEO. Tim Cook stands out, stands tall among CEOs.

Fortune:

Since replacing the legendary Steve Jobs, Cook has led the iBehemoth to even greater financial success. Along the way he’s changed the culture of the company—and found his public voice as a leader.

Another profile on Cook. I like reading these because he seems to be more open about things than Jobs was.

Jason Mark (no relation) talks about the process of winnowing a pool of almost 150 applicants to find that perfect new hire. This is not an anecdote about the hiring process. It is a list of things to watch out for, things to NOT do when you are trying to get hired, along with attractive traits that separate you from the field.

One of the iconic images from Apple’s marketing pitch for Apple Watch is a shot of the watch face with a series of concentric circles, showing you progress towards your fitness goals.

Rene Ritchie, writing for iMore, digs in to the Stand, Move, and Exercise rings, demystifying the personal trainer aspects of Apple Watch.

Bloomberg:

Apple Inc. plans to introduce a trade-in program for iPhones in China, people familiar with the effort said, after a similar program bolstered sales in the U.S.

Consumers will be able to take older iPhones to Apple stores in China for credit against the company’s products as soon as March 31, the people said, asking not to be identified as the details aren’t public.

And:

Under the China program, retail staff at Apple outlets will assess an iPhone’s condition before offering store credit for those originally bought in Greater China, the person said. Foxconn will buy the phone directly without Apple ever taking ownership, according to the person.

Foxconn will repair the devices if needed and then sell them through its e-commerce sites eFeihu and FLNet, and through Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.’s Taobao online store, one person said. Foxconn also is in talks to sell the iPhones through physical stores and may take the trade-in program online in the future, the person said.

The New York Times spent most of their review of Becoming Steve Jobs comparing it to Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs, the authorized biography.

The former is mostly praised by current management, the latter mostly scorned.

What I found fascinating about the non-review was this:

A battle has broken out between these two biographies. Mr. Isaacson’s book was the officially authorized version. But Apple’s top brass has noisily endorsed “Becoming Steve Jobs” as a corrective, and Apple history can’t get much more official than that. If the Isaacson book ruffled Apple feathers, its executives had better brace themselves for Alex Gibney’s documentary “Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine,” which just had its premiere at the South by Southwest festival. It’s one thing to read about someone’s behavior. It’s quite another to watch the extensive archival footage of the unguarded Mr. Jobs that shapes Mr. Gibney’s portrait.

Can you separate the man from his work? Is that appropriate? We all know Steve’s foibles, the way his ego ruled and, sometimes, ruined him. All that negative is the cost that Steve Jobs paid for his abilities, for all that he accomplished. But he would not have been Steve Jobs without those inner demons. And to me, that’s the key.

The thing I found most interesting about this story was the role of ecosystem in the purchase decision.

From ComputerWorld:

iPads were first introduced in Parliament as part of a pilot in 2012, with 209 currently in use by MPs, according to John Thurso MP in response to a written parliamentary question.

The decision to hand out iPads was taken after an “independent assessment” of alternative tablets and how much it would cost to re-work existing services, infrastructure and train members and staff, Thurso said.

And:

The requirement was “for a secure, SIM-enabled tablet with a good life expectancy and capable of supporting future upgrades”.

The iPad Air 2 met these requirements and the committee found it to be “competitively priced” compared to similar models

The committee reviewed tablets ranging from £100 to £600. A basic cellular iPad Air 2 costs about £500 when bought individually.

“iPads are integrated with current business processes…a move away from the Apple operating system (iOS) at this time would incur costs to change these processes,” he explained.

Boom. There it is. Ecosystem. That’s why it is not critical that Apple sell a specific number of Apple Watches. The key is to recognize the boundaries of the ecosystem and continue to do all that is necessary to keep it healthy, keep customers happy, keep customers spending. This is not a moral or ethical strategy, it is a business strategy.

Marco Arment:

No sensible developer should be worried about angering “Apple” by fairly expressing legitimate criticism.

Agreed.

There is no single “Apple” to anger, as the company comprises thousands of people across many different departments, all of whom can think for themselves. I’m sure some of them can’t take criticism well and may be vindictive — any large group of people will contain almost every personality type — but that’s not the attitude of any of the Apple people I’ve interacted with.

This has been my experience as well.

Dan returns to join Jim on this episode to talk in depth about the Apple Watch, guitars, and more.

Sponsored by Squarespace (Get started by using the code GUITARS for a free trial and 10% off your first website on Squarespace).

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg kicked off the company’s developer conference today by saying the event, called F8, would focus less on product announcements and more on serving the developer community. And then he dove in and detailed a number of the social network’s new features, products, and updates.

800+ filters, textures, vintage film recreations and visual effects. $0.99, everything is included. No in-app purchases. No gimmicks.

Download, download, download!

Macstories:

While the original Fantastical was a companion to the full Apple iCal experience, Fantastical 2 reinvents itself as a full-blown calendar client that retains the most important aspects of the app’s debut and adds a whole new calendar interface to the mix.

You can’t swing a dead cat today without hitting any number of (at least a dozen so far) reviews of Flexibits new version of their popular calendaring app but, at $50, you better be really serious about needing a calendar app.

Yosemite is a conference for Apple developers, designers, and enthusiasts. It will be held next Spring, in the heart of Yosemite National Park.

The conference is happening April 20-23 at the Yosemite Lodge at the Falls, in the heart of the Yosemite Valley. It’s almost sold out, but there are a few tickets left.

Abdel Ibrahim, writing for WatchAware:

Last night while I was out for a drive, I had an incredible realization about the possible benefits of Apple Watch. I was listening to the radio (yes, I do that from time to time), and I was jumping around between channels and changing the volume with my thumb. Just like I always do. But this time, I looked down at the steering wheel and then over to my dashboard, and a thought occurred to me. “Huh,” I said to myself, “that’s interesting. The controls are right down here and right over there.” And then I started to understand the value of having such controls within a few inches of my fingers, even when redundant controls are only a few inches farther away.

Yes! This clicked for me. It’s all about economy of motion, reducing interface friction. Think of the analogy as Apple Watch is to iPhone as little button on your steering wheel is to same control on your car radio.

To me, the steering wheel revelation offers an even more basic level of insight. And that insight has to do with friction. Friction, in nearly every context, is something we’re always trying to get rid of. Anything we can do to make things faster and more efficient is almost always welcomed, especially when it comes to consumer technology. Whether it’s 1-Click ordering at Amazon or self-checkout in Walmart, if there is a faster way to get something done, we’re generally all for it.

A few weeks ago, I posted about Henry Ford’s time/motion studies and their relation to the Apple Watch. Abdel is homing in on the same concept here. These may be small movements, but they turn out to be important when magnified by time.

Interesting post from Daring Fireball:

On the Mac, you can put an Apple logo in any text field by typing Shift-Option-K. This might date back all the way to System 1.0 in 1984. Some people use this to spell the name of products like Apple TV and Apple Watch. It’s super-common with Apple Watch, in fact, almost certainly because Apple uses the logo mark (that is to say, the Apple logo glyph followed by “WATCH” in all caps or, even fancier, small cap Unicode glyphs).

This is a bad idea for a few reasons. First, it is not a standard Unicode character and almost certainly never will be — because it is Apple’s copyrighted intellectual property.

So if you are on a Mac, this character –  – will appear as the Apple logo. If you are on a Windows machine, you’ll see nothing (or perhaps a square/missing character symbol) between the two hyphens.

Read the rest of Gruber’s post for thoughts on the down side of this approach.

I wonder how long this page will exist in its current form. As is, you can order an Apple Pay decal kit at no charge (not even a shipping fee). Here’s what you get:

• Glass decals in two sizes
• Register decals in two sizes
• Application tool

Odd. [via iHeartApple2]

9to5mac:

Apple is pushing for retail employees to initiate conversations that build trust, enabling the employee to serve as a valued fashion advisor during the purchase process, similarly to how traditional watches are sold. Apple Watch sales training programs will take place for Apple retail staff over the course of the next two weeks, teaching entirely new sales techniques to encourage iPhone upgrades, assist with gifting, and guide customers in watch and strap choices.

This seems logical. But Apple Watch is the first product I can think of that requires such a left-shift in thinking and, in approach, from Apple Store employees. The iPhone and Mac were there pretty much from the beginning. And when the iPad arrived, it was a close enough experience to the iPhone interface that people made the move all by themselves.

The Apple Watch is a different breed altogether. This is the first Apple product that might prompt you to ask, “Does this look good on me?”

We experience Canadian nice as soon as we reach customs. The US border guards are gruff and all business. The Canadians, by contrast, are unfailingly polite, even as they grill us about the number of wine bottles we’re bringing into the country. One year, we had failed to notice that our 9-year-old daughter’s passport had expired. They, nicely, let us enter anyway. The niceness continues for our entire trip, as we encounter nice waiters, nice hotel clerks, nice strangers.

We are generally nice people.

Many of the CSS animation links I post on the site come from Donovan and now he’s teaching a course. I signed up.

Today, Instagram announced an app called Layout from Instagram. It’s described as “a new app that lets you easily combine multiple photos into a single image.” In 2012, I released an Apple Editors’ Choice app called Layout that lets you combine multiple photos into a single image. It was even named an App Store Best of 2012 app. Is it just me, or does it seem insincere for Instagram to release a similar app with the exact same name only differentiated by the inclusion of their company name? Do you think they’d be okay with me releasing an app called “Instagram from Juicy Bits?” Neither do I.

This happens way too often, but I don’t think there is a way to stop it.

The Sweet Setup:

Being the new kid on the block can have its advantages, but only if you know how to leverage them properly. Our favorite — Alfred — is able to do just that when compared to LaunchBar, Quicksilver, and even Spotlight.

What Alfred does best is incorporate different features from its competitors and implement them in a distinctive, easy, and understandable way — all while offering more power for advanced users to take things further.

I’ve used Alfred for years and agree with this review. Even in its free version, it’s a great launcher but the Powerpack is well worth the price for power users.

Another anecdote from Becoming Steve Jobs. Read it. It’s short, but so good!

Ken Baumgartner – 6’1”, 205 pounds, with a penchant for doling out punishment – was not the kind of guy you wanted to see angry. Baumgartner was a left wing for the Toronto Maple Leafs. More specifically, he was their enforcer; a man paid literally to inflict pain on opponents. But in 1992, the target of his aggression was not another player; nor was it a coach or referee. It was a videogame producer at Electronic Arts named Michael Brook.

‘Hi, I’m Ken Baumgartner,’ he said flatly by way of introduction. As a lifelong hockey fan, Brook already knew who he was, and indicated as much with a tiny flinch of a smile. Despite the recognition, the thuggish enforcer felt compelled to further introduce himself:

‘I’m the guy you gave a zero rating to for Intelligence.’

Great story about the development of a game many of us Canadians, and not a few Americans, wasted many an hour playing. Thanks to Kottke for the link.

Today is the day. Becoming Steve Jobs is now available for purchase and download.

Steven Levy, author of a number of excellent books on technology and on Apple, got his hands on a preview copy and had some interesting things to say. His review is worth reading, but I found his take on the new book vs the Walter Isaacson book particularly interesting:

In my view, Cook’s dismissal of Isaacson’s book as just a sloppy rehash is somewhat over the top. I came to Isaacson’s book with a lot of knowledge about Steve Jobs, yet I learned many new details from over 40 interviews Jobs gave to Isaacson, as well from some interviews Isaacson won because Jobs prevailed on people to cooperate with the book. No matter what one thinks of Isaacson’s book, it is absolutely permeated, as is appropriate, with the voice of its subject. In addition, no one is claiming that Isaacson fabricated material.

Instead, the complaint is that Isaacson over-emphasized Jobs’s unattractive qualities and failed to present a rounded picture that corresponded with the reality of those closest to him. Schlender and Tetzeli attempt to remedy that in two ways. First, they give plenty of room for people on the wrong side of Jobs’s bad behavior to contextualize it. Second, they present a contrast between the young Jobs, whose misdeeds often arose from a self-indulgence or a flailing indecisiveness, and the mature Jobs, who not only channeled his energies more successfully, but was able to develop rewarding adult relationships.

This is a tricky balancing act for the authors, as even to the last, Jobs could be a tough person to deal with. Towards the end of the book they spend a full chapter, titled “Blind Spots, Grudges and Sharp Elbows,” trying to deal with some of Jobs’ unsavory actions even after his touted maturation. There’s no getting around the fact that Jobs held grudges, was gleeful in apparently violating the labor laws banning corporate collusion in not hiring each other’s employees, and sometimes would throw formerly valued employees under the bus.

One of my favorite Steven Levy books, and one of his earlier efforts, Insanely Great is the inside story about the creation of the Mac. If you are a fan of Apple’s history, I think you’ll enjoy Insanely Great. It really captures the spark of creation that was the birth of the Macintosh.

If you are a developer or have even the slightest interest in programming, you need to learn about Git, a free software version control system that is widely used by Mac and iOS developers to keep track of changes in their code and to allow teams of developers to work on the same chunk of code.

Git is useful for non-developers as well. Git will track just about any sort of file, and will let you share those files with other folks on your team.

If you are still with me, take a look at this Git tutorial from Code School. I found it extremely easy to follow and very well done. You’ll be typing commands in a mocked up terminal window, so you’ll be learning the commands at the heart of Git. There are plenty of tools out there that wrap these commands in buttons and menus, but this tutorial really gets you into the foundation of Git.

Git experts, please do weigh in in the comments.

1Password:

TD Canada Trust made quite a splash recently when it launched its redesigned iPhone app which disabled pasting in the password field. Users who embrace password managers for their online security were quick to point out their … well, ‘unhappiness’ with this decision. TD Canada’s original response to those users was unsettling.

I had something similar happen to me over the weekend. Canada Post limits passwords to “8 to 12 characters using only numbers and letters”. These institutions need to realize longer, more complicated passwords are better for security.

Now everyone can plug in their guitar, bass or other instrument and enjoy killer tone on their iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac or Android device — with the release of iRig 2, the world’s most popular guitar interface is now better than ever before. Revolutionize the way you make your music while on the go!

A digital rig with physical presence

With iRig 2, you’ll be able to enjoy IK’s full range of AmpliTube apps (the #1 app for guitar and bass players). It’s ready to go right out of the box. It comes with a powerful cross-platform suite of apps and software that includes free versions of AmpliTube for iOS, Android and Mac/PC. To use, just download your preferred version of AmpliTube for iOS from the App Store or for Android from the Google Play Store or from Samsung GALAXY Apps. Then plug your guitar or bass into iRig 2, plug your amplifier or headphones into your device and launch the app.

iRig 2 includes:

• 1/4” instrument input for use with guitar, bass and other line level instruments
• 1/4” amplifier output for use with an external amplifier without an adaptor
• 1/8” TRRS output for use with iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac and Android
• 1/8” headphone output
• Compact and lightweight design
• Selectable dual-mode switch: FX and THRU
• Input gain thumbwheel for easy signal control
• Comes with microphone stand Velcro strip
• Comes with AmpliTube FREE and a full suite of powerful IK applications and software

Jim’s Note: I am a longtime user of IK Multimedia’s hardware and software. In fact, I have iRig 2 and I’m a big fan.

Avid launched Pro Tools 12 with its new subscription model today.

“We are excited to announce that Zakk is entering the studio after this Unblackened Spring 2015 tour to record BOSII [Book of Shadows Volume II] which will be released early 2016, the 20th Anniversary of the original BOS, followed by a world tour to support that side of Zakk’s music,” Barbaranne said.

Book of Shadows is one of the best acoustic albums I’ve ever heard. I can’t wait for the follow-up.