Winclone 5 is the most complete solution for protecting your Boot Camp Windows system against data loss. Winclone is the most reliable cloning solution when migrating Boot Camp to a new Mac. The all new Winclone Backup feature provides scheduled, incremental snapshots of your files so you can retrieve earlier versions or accidentally deleted data.

Looks like a great utility if you have a Boot Camp partition.

Casey Liss lays out the reasons he chooses to use DuckDuckGo as his search engine.

Smile, the developer of productivity applications for Mac, iPad and iPhone, has released PDFpen Scan+ 2.0, a new version of their mobile scanning and OCR app for iPhone and iPad. This new version has a redesigned camera screen with auto-scan mode, which will take the scan, automatically crop, and assign editing presets—all without a tap.

I love Smile’s software.

The Atlantic:

Houshi Ryokan was founded in 718. It is one of the oldest family businesses in the world; 46 generations have managed the ryokan in its 1,300 years. Filmmaker Fritz Schumann profiles the current caretakers, Zengoro and Chizuko Houshi, as they struggle to determine the ryokan’s future after the death of their only son.

Such a sad story about a family seemingly trapped by the weight of their own history and traditions.

You had me at “Daddy Likey?”

The wheel is slowly, but inevitably, turning. Things started off with YouTube, then Netflix and House of Cards. Amazon rolled out Prime Video with original content like Transparent. More recently, we’ve seen the FCC move on net neutrality, rumors about a bundling service from Apple, HBO Now, and now Vue from Sony. Cord cutting is becoming easier and, I suspect, inevitable.

Sony Vue is limited to PlayStation 3 and 4, and is currently only available in Chicago, New York and Philadelphia. More interestingly, check this out:

For $50 a month, you’ll get 53 channels, including CBS, Fox, NBC, Bravo, CNN, Comedy Central, the Food Network, MTV, Nickelodeon and TNT. At $60 a month, you get access to a small handful of local sports networks, including New York’s YES and the Big Ten Network. And for $70 a month, you’ll be able to stream 26 more channels, such as FXM, Logo and Sprout.

Notably, Disney (DIS)-owned channels, including ABC and ESPN, are not currently available on the PlayStation.

That’s right, ABC and ESPN are not part of the package. As I argued in yesterday’s Amplified podcast, the days of network television ruling the roost are over.

We’re starting to see signs of splintering, with NBC said to be not yet part of Apple’s projected offering and now ABC being left out of Sony’s offering. To me, this fragmentation is the beginning of the end. A network without its constituent parts cannot stand.

One of the last unanswered questions about the Apple Watch is the question of upgradeability. Andy Faust, writing for WatchAware, argues that upgradeability is both not coming and not necessary.

The battery angle is credible and has some precedent. But the rest of this nonsense — and it is utter nonsense — has been making the rounds ever since the consumer tech world took it upon itself to justify or rationalize the cost of Apple Watch Edition in terms of a market segment that can’t afford it (and for whom the thing isn’t even designed). I can’t think of a single luxury brand that will offer to inexpensively and meaningfully upgrade part of something it sold you just because a new, better version of that something came out. That’s antithetical to how the luxury world operates. Luxury is disposable, and it is funded with disposable income. That is the entire point.

I understand this logic, but it does make me bristle. As if reuse was a quaint and foolish notion.

As for the more affordable versions of Apple Watch, the above reality is largely the same. Why would Apple change its well-established habits — never mind its fundamental guiding principles — to purposefully limit its capacity to generate huge manufactory profit margins? Apple Watch is already extremely complex to assemble, its much-hyped modularity notwithstanding. Does anyone actually believe it would make sound financial sense for Apple to add disassembly and selective component replacement to the equation? Also, why do people have the totally unfounded idea that Apple Watch’s design is finalized for the long term? How long has iPhone ever kept the same form factor? Or iPad? I’ll tell you how long: one upgrade cycle. Two years. That’s it.

I have no inside knowledge here, so Andy might be right about all this. But.

If Apple is going to offer battery replacement for the Apple Watch, might they not offer a way to upgrade the watch module inside to extend the life span of the watch? They could charge a pretty penny for the new module, make enough of a profit to justify the process. At the same time, Apple would deepen customer commitment to the ecosystem, maintain customer loyalty.

Or maybe it’s simply these new rose colored glasses I’m wearing.

9to5mac:

Apple will introduce several major initiatives to ready its retail stores for the Apple Watch’s launch in April, according to sources briefed on the upcoming changes. Starting on April 10th, Apple will allocate 15 minutes per customer for in-store try-on appointments, using 10 or more try-on stations to manage what’s expected to be a steady flow of customers interested in having hands-on time with the Watch. While customers will not necessarily be required to have an appointment, they will be time-limited and guided during the hands-on experience. Additionally, they will be given the opportunity to place a reservation at the time of try-on for a particular model, and make a follow-up appointment to pick the watch up during the April 24th launch date. Stores will also have launch day stock for walk-in appointments.

Apple is one of the few companies in the world with this sort of experience managing customer demand.

If you spend any amount of time setting up affiliate links for the iTunes store, take a look at Blink.

If you are new to affiliate links or want to learn how Blink works before you spend your hard earned cash, Graham Spencer, over at MacStories, does an excellent job laying out all the details.

Perhaps my favorite part of all this is the voiceover on the first of the two videos at the bottom of the Blink page. That’s Myke Hurley, the voice of the excellent Inquisitive podcast.

Just like its predecessor, the new iRig 2 plugs directly into the mini jack input of a mobile device. It lets musicians send an instrument signal to apps, such as IK’s AmpliTube, while also providing on-board output for real-time monitoring.

iRig 2 now comes with gain control, which lets users precisely adjust the input gain of their instrument to match their mobile device. This means that it can be customized to always provide the best sound, no matter what type of guitar, bass or line-level instrument or device is used.

Its new 1/4″ amplifier output, in addition to its traditional 1/8″ headphone output, allows iRig 2 to be plugged directly into a guitar amplifier or powered speakers without an adaptor. This helps to keep all cable connections tidy and organized.

A new FX/THRU switch allows iRig 2 to send either a wet or dry signal through the device. This means that guitarists can play live with an amplifier and use their mobile device with a tuner app, such as IK’s UltraTuner, or a recording app, such as IK’s iRig Recorder, to record a dry signal for further processing.

I’ve been an IK Multimedia user for many years. From the Mac to my iOS devices, the company’s software and hardware has always been close to my guitars and ready to go. I’ve been playing around with the iRig 2 and like what I’ve seen so far, especially with the option to adjust the input gain and go out to an amp or speaker. I’ll have a more full-featured review in the coming weeks.

Website advertisement companies have found a way to circumvent the protections introduced in iOS 8 to stop users from being kicked to the App Store because of certain cleverly-coded JavaScript advertisements.

Ugh, watch the video. This would drive me crazy.

Cameron Moll:

I don’t know what to expect of Meerkat’s viability, permanence, or lasting utility. But if the hype is any indication, they’re ripe for acquisition. They’re also ripe for lawsuits and traditional media backlash, e.g. live-broadcasting televised events.

I feel like we are all in the same boat as Cameron with respect to Meerkat. We’re all fascinated, but we don’t know where it’s going yet.

Neil Hughes, reporting for AppleInsider, quoted an analyst saying the price would be $30 and $40 per month.

A key factor in pricing, of course, is exactly what channels Apple’s service would offer. Reports have suggested that Apple is in talks with broadcast networks ABC, CBS and Fox, as well as other cable networks owned by Viacom and Discovery, though apparently talks have stalled with Comcast-owned NBC.

Of course, the stations are an important factor, but just as important are the hoops—or lack thereof—that I have to jump through. I don’t want commercials, I want to be able to fast forward and rewind, I want it all in HD, and I want to be able to watch an entire series anytime my little heart desires, on any device I desire. I understand that a new, ongoing series will come out on a weekly basis, and I’m okay with that.

If I can get something usable, I’d subscribe in a heartbeat.

This sounds pretty handy if you have to test your new design.

Jim, Shawn and Dave talk about fitness, Steve Jobs, Apple rumors and riffing on the guitar!

Sponsored by lynda.com. (Start learning something new in 2015 by visiting the link to get a 10-day free trial and access their 2400+ courses)

One major corporate user has banned Android devices on its network. “We simply cannot cope with managing the plethora of Android devices and apps on our network. We are happy to support iOS 8.x and Windows Phone 8.x – and apps from their stores but that is it!” This company uses a Symantec mobile management suite to control personally owned devices as well as access to company data and email.

There is no word on who the corporate user is, but we do know that fragmentation has been a problem in the past. The fact that older versions of Android are not updated, and older devices can’t update to the newest version of the OS, causes some concern.

Apple has removed the award-winning healthy eating app The Whole Pantry from the App Store and its featured Apple Watch apps page amid allegations that its creator Belle Gibson committed fraud, according to The Sydney Morning Herald. The report states that Gibson is accused of making false claims about her cancer diagnosis and failing to donate thousands of dollars collected during fundraisers to charities.

This is just awful in every possible way.

Under the final judgement, Comcast must treat online video services as essentially equal to cable companies. Comcast is required to give those services access to the same NBCUniversal content that it sells to cable providers, under the same terms and conditions.

Additionally, if an online video service strikes a deal with one of NBC’s peers — such as CBS — Comcast is obligated to license “comparable” content at “economically comparable” rates. For example, if Apple’s new service were to carry first-run CBS programming, Comcast must makes its own first-run programming available at roughly the same rates as those negotiated between Apple and CBS.

It looks like there is some leeway there, but I didn’t realize the details of Comcast’s deal to buy NBC. That will piss them off.

I will be getting this book.

CBC:

Liam English lost some moose meat, and quite a bit of it.

English, who was home in St. John’s last week for a family funeral, decided to stock up on about 11 kilograms of moose meat to bring back to Ottawa.

Before heading to the airport on Sunday, English put the meat in a hard shell suitcase, along with a brand-new suit and other personal belongings. However, when he arrived at the airport in Toronto, where he had a four-hour layover before a connecting flight to Ottawa, his luggage was nowhere to be seen.

“I had four moose roasts, four moose steaks, three packs of ground moose and four packs of moose sausages,” he told CBC Radio’s St. John’s Morning Show on Wednesday.

You’ve heard of “First World Problems”? This is definitely a Newfie Problem.

You can read the release notes here.

From the support page:

Impact: Visiting a maliciously crafted website may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution

Description: Multiple memory corruption issues existed in WebKit. These issues were addressed through improved memory handling.

And:

Impact: Inconsistent user interface may prevent users from discerning a phishing attack

Description: A user interface inconsistency existed in Safari that allowed an attacker to misrepresent the URL. This issue was addressed through improved user interface consistency checks.

This pocket-sized charger has a connection for your Apple Watch, as well as two USB ports (one Type A and one Type C) so you can also charge your other devices, through the rechargeable 1800 mAh battery. That’s said to be enough juice to charge the Apple Watch about 4 times over.

I love the idea of a single charger serving both the Apple Watch and iPhone. Smart idea. I expect we’ll see a flood of these sort of devices over time, but this one got there first.

Rick Tetzeli, Executive Editor of Fast Company and coauthor of Becoming Steve Jobs, had the chance to sit down with Tim Cook for a reasonably long Q&A. Presumably, this interview was done as background for the book.

The whole interview was fascinating reading, but here are a few tidbits:

Steve felt that most people live in a small box. They think they can’t influence or change things a lot. I think he would probably call that a limited life. And more than anybody I’ve ever met, Steve never accepted that.

He got each of us [his top executives] to reject that philosophy. If you can do that, then you can change things. If you embrace that the things that you can do are limitless, you can put your ding in the universe. You can change the world.

That was the huge arc of his life, the common thread. That’s what drove him to have big ideas. Through his actions, way more than any preaching, he embedded this nonacceptance of the status quo into the company.

And:

You look at the watch, and the primary technologies are software and the UI [user interface]. You’re working with a small screen, so you have to invent new ways for input. The inputs that work for a phone, a tablet, or a Mac don’t work as well on a smaller screen. Most of the companies who have done smartwatches haven’t thought that through, so they’re still using pinch-to-zoom and other gestures that we created for the iPhone.

Try to do those on a watch and you quickly find out they don’t work. So out of that thinking come new ideas, like force touch. [On a small screen] you need another dimension of a user interface. So just press a little harder and you bring up another UI that has been hidden. This makes the screen seem larger, in some ways, than it really is.

And:

The magic of Apple, from a product point of view, happens at this intersection of hardware, software, and services. It’s that intersection. Without collaboration, you get a Windows product. There’s a company that pumps out an operating system, another that does some hardware, and yet another that does something else. That’s what’s now happening in Android land. Put it all together and it doesn’t score high on the user experience.

And:

It’s more complex to do things like continuity. Now the customer wants to start an email on their iPhone and complete it on their iPad or Mac. They want a seamless experience across all of the products. When you’re only doing a Mac, that seamless experience is a party of one. Now you’ve got a three-dimensional thing, and the cloud. So it is more complex. There’s no doubt.

What we try to do is hide all of that complexity from the user. We hide the fact that doing this is really tough, hard engineering so that the user can go about their day and use our tools the way they would want and not have to worry about it. Sometimes we’re not perfect with that. That’s the crack that you’re talking about. Sometimes we’re not. But that, too, we will fix.

In my mind, there is nothing that’s incorrect about our model. It’s not that it’s not doable, it’s that we’re human sometimes, and we make an error. I don’t have a goal of becoming inhuman, but I do have a goal of not having any errors. We’ve made errors in the past, and we’ll never be perfect. Fortunately, we have the courage to admit it and correct it.

There is so much more to this interview. Take the time to read the whole thing. Well worth it.

Mike Ramsey for The Wall Street Journal:

Mr. Musk has said Tesla plans to be the first company to offer customers an autopilot feature. “I think we will be the leader in autonomous cars that you can actually buy,” he said.

I still don’t know how I feel about this, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see Musk be the first to market.

It looks really easy and you can even use it on iOS with Touch ID.

As a response, Meerkat plans to introduce new tools for discovering people, Rubin said.

Twitter “escalated our decision-making a little bit forward,” the CEO said. “We need to provide users a way to discover more people and search more people.”

This is going to get really interesting. I’ve never seen so many people as excited about a new tech, in such a short time, as I’ve seen with Meerkat.

Google was wrong to let expectations about its Glass wearable gadget get overheated, the head of the Google X research lab said on Tuesday.

Google made a lot of mistakes with Glass. However, don’t forget that Tony Fadell, the man who made the iPod and founded Nest after leaving Apple, is now in charge of Google Glass.

The jury deliberated for about five hours before delivering its verdict on Monday night. The company, whose patents were originally held by Nokia Corp, was seeking $100 million in damages at trial. It said it was entitled to a portion of Apple’s device sales, and of similar, future devices. Apple pegged damages, if any, at less than $1 million.

The jury also rejected Apple’s claim that Core Wireless breached its obligation to license its patents, which are considered essential in the industry, on fair and non-discriminatory terms.

So what happens to these patents now? Apple basically said it would be happy paying under $1 million, but the jury said they had to pay nothing. Are the patents worthless? Oh the patent system is so confusing.