Looking for a special gift for that mega Apple enthusiast in your life? How about the newest edition of an absolutely stunning coffee table book that features lush, beautiful photographs of Apple devices? ICONIC: A Photographic Tribute to Apple Innovation is Iconic uses vivid color and detail to document Apple’s journey in design, form and function—and looks back at over 35 years of Apple innovation. Four years in the making, the author captured over 150,000 photos of nearly every product Apple has made, including rare prototypes and even packaging. With a foreword from Steve Wozniak and The Loop’s own Jim Dalrymple and hundreds of amazing quotes from other Apple pundits—ICONIC is the ultimate coffee table book for every Apple fan, and the perfect gift for any Apple owner who ever wanted to explore and discover the true roots of their favorite iMac, iPod, iPad, or iPhone. With free global shipping, see the different editions and use the coupon code THELOOP on checkout for 10% discount.
Jim’s Note: In addition to writing the foreword for this book, I also own two and love them!
No matter your destination, you will, at some point in your research, visit TripAdvisor. The company, with the humble mantra “real hotel reviews you can trust,” has become—on a rising tide of 200 million user reviews and counting—a travel-industry Goliath, able to turn obscure hotels into sold-out hot spots, carry new flocks of visitors on digital word of mouth to quiet destinations, even rewrite the hospitality standards of entire nations. For travelers the impact has been equally profound.
For all the power of the service, it raises deep questions about travel itself, including, most pressingly, who do we want—who do we trust—to tell us where to go?
I travel a lot less than I used to (hope to do more soon!) but wherever I go, I check TripAdvisor first.
Want to be able to unlock your Mac using Touch ID? Now you can. What’s more, it’s free for the next two days.
Beginning March 16th, the MacID iOS app is free, but only for 48 hours. It’s normally $4. It’s an app for your Touch ID-based iOS device, and it works in conjunction with a second app that you install on your Mac. MacID lets you lock your Mac with a swipe of the finger on your Touch ID-equipped iPhone or iPad.
Doesn’t work with my 2011 Macbook Pro but should work on Macs that are capable of using Bluetooth LE.
If you ever have the need to take a screenshot on your Mac, bookmark this guide. It centers around using Grab, the free screenshot utility built into your copy of OS X.
Tech design agency Mutual Mobile put together this infographic laying out the process of designing for the Apple Watch.
Also interesting is this set of pro tips:
• There’s a setting to let the user select what is shown on wrist-raise: the watch face or the previously used app. Glances are only accessible from the watch face. If you do select previously used app for wrist raise, your glances will be much less accessible. You’ll have to hit the home button, select the clock app, and then swipe up. • Apple Watch has a notification center. Swipe down from the top of the screen to access any notifications you may have missed. • Double tapping the home button in an app will take you to the previously used app. Double tapping again will bring your forward to the app you were just in. Double tapping the home button on the home screen will take you to the clock app, regardless of which app you used previously. • Worried about your watch battery? There’s a complication you can add to the watch face, and there’s also a glance dedicated to battery. • Another new glance is similar to control center allows you to put the watch into Do Not Disturb, Mute any sounds, Activate Airplane Mode. Another handy feature will cause the paired phone to emit a distress signal, for the next time you’ve lost it in the couch. • You can only get notifications while you’re wearing the watch. Otherwise they only go to your phone.
This is Yahoo’s latest twist on two factor authentication. You log in to your Yahoo account and enable on-demand passwords (described in this Yahoo blog post). You get a verification code via text, enter it, and you are signed up – On-demand passwords are enabled and your device is verified.
Now, the next time you login, you’ll have the option of having a temporary password texted to your verified device.
On the plus side, this is definitely a convenience if you find yourself without your password. Perhaps you are traveling and want to log in on the hotel’s computer and you don’t want to enter your real password. A temporary password is an ideal solution here.
On the down side, I took this system for a test ride and I found the instructions to not match up with reality. As if the Yahoo blogger who wrote out the instructions never thought to try them out in real life. Once I figured out the signup process and worked out how to actually get to that elusive “send me my on-demand password” button, all worked as advertised.
I’m grateful to have witnessed changes like Title IX in my lifetime, but it’s not over yet. Today, we have many programs that support girls and women in technology fields, including my own project, App Camp For Girls. People recognize that discrimination in tech exists, and they’re taking action to level the playing field. As with Title IX, they offer support and encouragement specifically to girls and women so they can participate in this field to their fullest potential.
Discrimination still exists in this field, and likely will persist for some time. But I don’t get discouraged by the terrible stories circulating in the news on harassment and workplace discrimination. I don’t get frustrated with well-meaning but clueless commenters who think the status quo reflects innate gender differences. Instead, I’m spurred on to redouble my own efforts to make the future better, not just for myself but for everyone facing challenges at work, whether it’s related to gender, race, or proving age discrimination at work. By addressing these issues head-on, we can create a more inclusive and equitable workplace environment for all.
A good article by Jean MacDonald, formerly of the Mac developer Smile Software and the founder of App Camp for Girls.
Thanks to HelloTalk for sponsoring The Loop this week. Finally, learning and practicing a new language is easier and more intuitive than ever before. Introducing HelloTalk, the language app where your teachers are native language speakers from around the world. You just pick the language you want to learn—there are over 100 from which to select—and almost instantaneously you’ll be in touch with native speakers of that language … and you’ll start learning and practicing immediately.
HelloTalk isn’t a course you strictly follow; rather, you learn and practice at your pace and in the manner that best meets the way you learn. Practice foreign languages with people around the world. Simultaneously speak and type the language you’re learning. Record your voice before speaking to your HelloTalk friends and compare your recording to standard pronunciations. Change your friends’ audio messages to text for better understanding, and receive help to improve your grammar. Easily translate whenever you don’t understand, and so much more.
With HelloTalk, you’ll discover learning a new language is fun … and fast. Download your copy for iPhone or Android today.
Last year when I was in hospital for several months I relied on 3 devices that helped me through the days and nights. My iPad to watch Netflix, my iPhone for speaking/interacting with my family and friends as well as keeping up with what was happening in the world and surprisingly my Pebble. I’m surprised how important the Pebble was to me when I could hardly move and at times breathe while bedridden and almost immobile. The reason the Pebble was so useful to me was that my iPhone was often out of reach or at least difficult to reach without causing a lot of pain. Because for the most part my Pebble was always on my wrist I knew who was trying to contact me and if that notification looked important I could either try and summon the strength to reach out for my iPhone or ask a nurse to pass it to me when they came in.
This spoke volumes to me about one specific benefit of the smart watch: Efficiency/economy of movement. When Henry Ford was first figuring out how to implement his assembly line, he performed a series of time/motion studies, charting all of the individual motions a worker went through to perform a specific task, like mounting a tire or a door on the car. Ford reasoned that he could cut the labor cost by eliminating steps from the process, by finding ways to shave seconds off the amount of time it took to perform each task. Multiply one second saved by the number of parts in a car, and by the number of cars produced in a day, and you’ve accumulated some real cost savings.
This idea applies to the Apple Watch. If you can gain, essentially, the same information by tilting your wrist as you might by digging your phone out of your pocket, and avoid the cost of distraction that comes with pulling out your phone, that is a personal cost saving, and economy of movement.
I am now out of hospital and walking again and the Pebble still is a device I choose to wear. Yes I am a tech nerd, I have no fashion sense and in all honesty don’t care what people think of my appearance. For me function is for the most part more important than form. The Apple Watch is something I will be pre-ordering on April 10th not for style though I think all the models look gorgeous but because it offers more functionality and interaction than my trusted Pebble Watch with my iPhone.
It’s all about the ecosystem.
I’ll be sad to banish my Pebble in my drawer of old wires and adapters as it really has been a useful device for me. I will miss the long battery life but one annoyance I have about the Pebble is never knowing with any accuracy when it’s going to need charging.
That’s interesting. I wonder why Pebble does not put a battery monitor on screen. I don’t own one, so can’t address this, but I wonder if it is purely a hardware limitation. That’s a bit of a hamstring on Pebble’s one advantage, long battery life.
Update: Several Pebble owners pointed out that the Pebble does offer a battery indicator, just not necessarily on the watch face screen. No different than the Apple Watch. If you are interested, Rob added an update to his post clarifying his thoughts on this.
With the price drop to $69, I suspect more and more people are going to give Apple TV a twirl. If you are one of them, give this post a read.
Rene Ritchie, Editor-in-Chief of iMore, takes a walk through the Apple TV remote’s interface, lays out all the button combos that are, if not secret, certainly non-obvious.
If you are not a fan of having to click the next arrow to go from page to page, note the sidebar on the left. I found that made from much more efficient navigation. Even better, you can also click/tap the View All page icon at the top and get it all as one long list.
First things first, Happy Pi Day. Huzzah! Please do commence with the celebrating and the carousing.
So why is this Pi Day special? Well, here’s the first 9 digits of Pi (9 digits past the decimal):
3.141592653
In the US, this translates to March 14th, 2015 (3.141592653). At 9:26 and 53 seconds, which occurs both this morning and tonight, we’ll match all 10 digits. And that only happens once a century.
And just to embrace the math geekery further, adding more digits to the analysis only impacts the precision of the 53 seconds. Here are the first 50 digits of Pi:
Google leaked the complete hidden whois data attached to more than 282,000 domains registered through the company’s Google Apps for Work service, a breach that could bite good and bad guys alike.
Nobody should have as much information about us as Google. Who knows what’s next.
Serenity Caldwell pulls another rabbit out of her hat, listening and typing, sometimes typing and listening. All for our benefit.
A great call. Tim drawling, Cramer gushing. A love-fest, true, but extremely entertaining. My favorite bit:
Cramer: And I regard your company with the highest ideals and the greatest manufacturing. I know every day when you come to work I feel you must think that you have a stewardship you’ve got to fulfill because of Steve Jobs. I want you to know that we — that you have far exceeded what ever — anyone, I think, could have done, but you still walk in his footsteps. How do you feel about the legacy?
Cook: You know, there’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think about Steve, and he is still the core part of Apple, his DNA is deep in the company. His office is still next to mine with his name on the door. And the values that he placed in here, and sort of the spirit — that we are here to make the very best products in the world that enrich people’s lives — that is still the centerpiece of this company.
Thanks for the transcript, Serenity. Click here for the rest of it.
Mad Money host Jim Cramer receives a surprise phone call from Apple CEO Tim Cook, who talks about innovation, Bar San Miguel, the company’s paranoia, and what it’s like to follow Steve Jobs as CEO.
I don’t think it was a “surprise call” at all but a good video to watch nonetheless.
“This is the most personal device we have ever created.” – Apple CEO, Tim Cook.
That quote from Tim Cook speaks volumes to me, and I believe it to be true. Apple has never created a device that can be personalized like Apple Watch, but it goes much deeper than that. The intricacies of Apple Watch are more complex than switching out a Sport Band for a Milanese Loop, and it’s not about learning to use Apple Watch, but how you will use it.
One of the things that concerned me about Apple Watch is that it would only be a reactionary device. What I mean by that is you would only be responding to things that happened on your phone and getting feedback on your watch. That to me is a very expensive notification system, and perhaps not worth even the low-end price of $349. Those who would like to wear stylish watches without breaking the bank may look for luxury replica watches.
However, after attending the keynote on March 9, I realized that Apple built-in a way for Apple Watch to also initiate actions without using the iPhone. That brings things to an entirely different level of usefulness and sophistication. Now we’re talking about a completely different type of device, and that may change the answer to whether or not you should buy one.
There is no doubt Apple Watch is a beautiful piece of craftsmanship. There are very few people in this world that have even seen Apple Watch, let alone wear one, but I’ve had that opportunity twice. I can tell you, it’s stunning.
The decision on whether or not you should buy one is probably going to be one of the most personal device decisions you’ve made in some time. It’s personal, it’s fashionable and it’s functional—only you can determine the importance of those three things.
If I can offer one piece of advice—don’t listen to those people telling you that you need to buy one, and don’t listen to the naysayers who say it will be a flop. Judge for yourself and your lifestyle.
I have yet to use an Apple Watch for an extended period of time, but from what I’ve seen, it will fit into my life pretty well. The question is for how long—I won’t know the answer to that until I get to spend some time with it.
I thought this was just fantastic. Robert Downey Jr plays Tony Stark, delivering a bionic arm built by Limbitless founder Albert Manero to a kid in need.
My favorite moment is about 1:08 in, when Alex (the kid) is asked, “Do you know who this is?” My sense is that Downey was a little worried that the whole Iron Man thing would be lost on him, that it would be a flop. It was not.
I am looking forward to reading this book. From everything I’ve heard, it is supposed to be sensational. Here are two pages with excerpts, one from Cult of Mac, and one from Fast Company.
ResearchKit is an open source framework introduced by Apple that enables your iOS app to become a powerful tool for medical research. Easily create visual consent flows, real-time dynamic active tasks, and surveys using a variety of customizable modules that you can build upon and share with the community. And since ResearchKit works seamlessly with HealthKit, researchers can access even more relevant data for their studies — like daily step counts, calorie use, and heart rate.
And here’s the ResearchKit video, if you have not yet seen it.
Just a thought: Will there be some form of “Find my iPhone” for your Apple Watch?
Especially in the early going, the Apple Watch will be a coveted prize for a thief. Is there any way to personalize your Apple Watch, to lock it down once its been paired with an iPhone, render it inoperable once that bond is broken? That would certainly make it less attractive as a theft target.
If your iPhone is stolen, there’s the expense of replacing the phone itself, but there’s also all that personal info that’s stored on the phone. That latter bit is not an issue (at least not with this first release) with the Apple Watch since it acts as more of a satellite device, relaying info back and forth to the phone, where the long term storage lives. To me, the downside seems limited to replacement cost only.
This walkthrough is a detailed narration of what we see in Apple’s Watch Craftsmanship videos. Of course, we only get to see a mere fraction of the process; I’ve tried to provide plausible explanations for the likely steps taking place between the processes shown on film, but these are assumptions and are included only to provide a more satisfying and complete narration.
I decided to take a look on Amazon for Apple Watch and see what they had. I was shocked with all of the watches that were listed on the site. Although there were no Apple Watches, there are a few copies.
The Intercept’s piece was mostly a condemnation of government tactics, but failed to address what matters to Apple’s customers — whether Apple’s products remain secure and safe to use. Overall, the information is quite optimistic, but the article highlights the complexities of modern security, privacy, and intelligence gathering. We are still in the early days of what is likely to be a generational issue as society continues to adjust to the digital age.
As always, Mogull has a well thought out, well written, and well reasoned piece with none of the hysteria you see in other articles about this subject.
Stanford University researchers were stunned when they awoke Tuesday to find that 11,000 people had signed up for a cardiovascular study using Apple Inc.’s ResearchKit, less than 24 hours after the iPhone tool was introduced.
“To get 10,000 people enrolled in a medical study normally, it would take a year and 50 medical centers around the country,” said Alan Yeung, medical director of Stanford Cardiovascular Health. “That’s the power of the phone.”
As the article points out, there are some concerns regarding the people who would get involved but, overall, the research community seems very excited about the present and future possibilities.
March 9th keynote was literally “China-first.” The presentation began with a video showing the opening of the company’s new West Lake retail store in Hangzhou, China. Attendees and viewers of Apple’s stream saw the familiar sight of throngs of enthusiastic Apple retail employees and customers. But this time they were Chinese.
And:
China’s influence was felt not only in the gold color offering for the new Macbook, as well as the starting price of $10,000 for the Apple Watch Edition, but in the very concept of Apple Watch as a product originating from the fashion space and a product that expresses individuality and displays status and social signifiers, all things that the Chinese consumer class craves.
The demo of WeChat, not Facebook or any Westerner messaging app, for Apple Watch, was extremely significant. To many Chinese, Wechat is the entirety of their internet, according to my own contextual inquiry in China, not simply in Beijing and Shanghai but also in third-tier cities and the countryside. Many Chinese users literally do not know how to download or use any apps except Wechat. For many Chinese, an iPhone 6 or iPhone 6 Plus, though it gives access to the App Store universe, is in practice solely a Wechat device.
Good insight into the obvious value Apple sees in growing their Chinese presence. Very interesting.
