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.

I think it’s good that Google has an app review process—at least it can slow down the wild west of apps on its store. Ratings are always a plus too.

I’ve only tried the Zagg and a Logitech, but there are a few other interesting ones on the list.

In each of these polls, more than 40 percent of the voters said they were not getting an iPad. Five years on, and Apple has sold more than 200 million of them. A simple majority might not be shockingly impressive, but it is absolutely overwhelming when scaled to the global population. Keep that in mind as you check out the next set of polls, which asks readers to chime in on whether or not they’ll be purchasing Apple Watch when it launches at the end of next month.

Abdel Ibrahim nailed this one.

Twitter is cutting off Meerkat’s ability to port people’s social networks over from Twitter to its own service — the so-called social graph. That means when new users come on board, they will no longer be automatically connected to the other people they are already following on Twitter. This comes not long after Twitter purchased a competing live-streaming service, Periscope, and just as the South by Southwest festival is getting underway in Austin.

No surprise.

From Apple’s Apple Watch Apps page, under the tag line “All-new ways to do all kinds of things”:

The more you wear Apple Watch, the more you’ll realize just how personal a device it is. Because with so many different apps available, you can choose the ones that are most relevant to you, and create a customized experience. There are already apps for airlines, department stores, social networks, and more that take advantage of the unique opportunities the wrist brings. And with new apps being built for Apple Watch every day, this is just the beginning.

So far, the page features apps from Target, Starwood Hotels, American Airlines, Nike, Instagram, Major League Baseball, and about 38 more.

This list reminds me of the early days of the App Store, when just building an app got you a mention. Exciting times.

Update: Sorry about that. This page was rolled out with the announcement, I just stumbled on it now. My bad.

CBC News:

Vancouver is the best place to live in North America, according to Mercer’s latest Quality of Living Rankings.

The top ranking for 2015 went to Vienna, followed by Zurich, Auckland and Munich.

Vancouver was followed by Toronto at 15, and Ottawa at 16. The highest ranking U.S. cities trail behind with San Francisco at 27, Boston at 34 and Honolulu coming in at 36.

Vancouver, like most “world class” cities, is insanely expensive to live in, has its own host of big city problems and has difficulties resolving “what it wants to be” but there’s no doubt it deserves inclusion on lists like these. What I found interesting, when you look at the entire list, is how high many European cities rank and how low many other world class cities, like New York and Tokyo are – they didn’t make the top 35.

The New York Times:

On cliffs where even elite climbers employ complicated rope systems, the free-soloist wears only shorts, a T-shirt, a pair of climbing shoes and a bag of gymnast’s chalk to keep the hands dry.

Honnold has free-soloed the longest, most challenging climbs ever, including the 2,500-foot northwest face of Half Dome in Yosemite Valley, where some of the handholds are so small that no average climber could cling for an instant, roped or otherwise. Most peculiar of all, even to elite rock climbers, Honnold does this without apparent fear, as if falling were not possible.

I’ve read a bunch of stories about this guy and watched dozens of videos. He absolutely fascinates me and every time I watch a video, I literally get queasy watching him free solo these mountain faces. He’s truly amazing.

This comment was posted on ParisLemon, way back in 2013:

Your naivety over Nintendo is astounding. They simply will never give up their properties to iOS or any other mobile platform. Sure, the Wii U is failing (and rightly so, it’s a sub par, last gen, slow system), but their DS and 3DS business is doing just fine. I do foresee a future where they focus on portable gaming only, but it’ll be with their own hardware.

That was directed at ParisLemon proprietor M.G. Siegler, who responded:

I’m not saying that Nintendo is going to go out of business anytime soon, I’m saying that they will face some very tough choices sooner than you seem to imagine. At that point, someone — be it new leadership or a buyer — will come in and see the untapped value just sitting on the table with Nintendo’s game IP. I’m not saying that’s necessarily the right thing to do. I’m just saying it will happen. The wheels are already in motion.

I just want to add, damn you John Gruber for so totally nailing the term Claim Chowder. I just cannot come up with a term of my own I like better.

9to5mac:

According to sources, Apple will soon introduce a new recycling and trade-in program that will accept non-Apple smartphones, notably including Android and BlackBerry devices, in exchange for gift cards to be used toward the purchase of new iPhones. In continuing to court Android switchers, Apple will use a similar system to the one it uses to repurchase iPhones, whereby Apple Retail Store employees determine trade-in values for devices by considering their cosmetic and functional condition.

The new program will begin in the coming weeks, following extensive training programs for retail store employees that will begin later this week. Apple employees will be able to transfer address book contacts from the rival smartphones to the iPhones, but other data will have to be moved by customers.

If true, this strikes me as a genius move on Apple’s part. It’s a terrific incentive to reach BlackBerry and Android users on the fence about their next device. But it also throws a little mud on the BlackBerry and Android brands, painting them as second tier devices of the trade-in variety.

Update: I originally encountered this post on the Bloomberg site, but 9to5mac was the first to break it. No surprise there.

Wall Street Journal:

Nintendo Co. dropped its long-standing aversion to mobile gaming, saying Tuesday that it would begin developing games for smartphones based on characters such as Mario the plumber.

The surprising about-face by Nintendo includes a partnership with DeNA Co., a Japanese mobile game provider, under which the companies will exchange ownership stakes and jointly develop “gaming applications” for smartphones and other devices.

And:

Nintendo said it was buying a 10% stake in DeNA for ¥22 billion ($182 million), while DeNA is acquiring a 1.24% stake in Nintendo for the same amount.

And:

The companies said they would develop a new “multi-device membership service for the global market,” to be introduced this autumn. It will be compatible with a variety of devices, including PC’s, smartphones and tablets, as well as Nintendo’s game consoles.

This is pure speculation, but this last bit makes me feel like Nintendo is considering a multi-user service, like Microsoft’s Xbox Live or Sony’s Playstation Network and, perhaps, a massively multiplayer Zelda universe. Conjecture, or merely wishful thinking?

Fast Company published excerpts adapted from the upcoming book (and number one bestseller) Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart Into a Revolutionary Leader. These did nothing but whet my appetite for the book’s release on March 24th, one week from today.

One paragraph in particular really touched me:

Eight weeks after Steve told Cook he was making him CEO, things took a sudden turn for the worse. “I watched a movie with him the Friday before he passed away,” Cook remembers. “We watched Remember the Titans [a sentimental football story about an underdog]. I was so surprised he wanted to watch that movie. I was like, ‘Are you sure?’ Steve was not interested in sports at all. And we watched and we talked about a number of things and I left thinking that he was pretty happy. And then all of a sudden things went to hell that weekend.”

I think this is going to be a hell of a read.

Wall St Journal:

Apple Inc.’s lofty plans to build an online television service are coming into sharper focus.

The technology giant is in talks with programmers to offer a slimmed-down bundle of TV networks this fall, according to people familiar with the matter. The service would have about 25 channels, anchored by broadcasters such as ABC, CBS and Fox, and would be available on Apple devices such as the Apple TV, they said.

For now, the talks don’t involve NBCUniversal, owner of the NBC broadcast network and cable channels like USA and Bravo, because of a falling-out between Apple and NBCUniversal parent company Comcast Corp., the people familiar with the matter said.

Take this news with a lot of salt. The only details come from the always suspicious “people familiar with the matter” and one of the story’s writers is Daisuke Wakabayashi – not exactly an unimpeachable source of accurate Apple news.

As I sat and watched through the keynote video, one thing which became pretty obvious — Apple’s number one focus going forward is China.

China is a huge market for Apple.

Under the new Apple Global Volunteer Program, Apple is offering employees a way to receive training and tools to help them create and publicize local volunteer events to better their communities. The program, currently available in the United States, Sydney, and Cork, also aims to help employees find activities to volunteer for.

It’s nice to see Apple giving back, and helping its employees give back to their communities.

The SecuTABLET, based on Samsung’s Galaxy Tab S 10.5 and being presented by BlackBerry unit Secusmart at tech fair CeBIT 2015 in Germany

< Crickets >

I find this stuff fascinating.

Tim Bajarin:

When Apple introduced the Apple Watch last fall, I talked to people in the high-end watch market to get a sense of whether they viewed it as a threat in any way. What I heard was a bit surprising. They said Apple has created a completely new paradigm in watches, which will define what a “watch” will be and can do in the future. Most importantly, these sources told me that even the ultra high-end watchmakers are taking note. But they are struggling with how to respond given that the Apple Watch is not as much a watch as it is a wrist computer that could shift the role a timepiece plays in people’s lives.

Even though the watch may not sell as well as the iPhone, Apple did the same thing in that industry—it made the incumbents nervous because they were offering something completely new and different.