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.
I was reading this article in the New York Times, and I was a bit torn. On one hand, the article was rife with swipes at Apple, things like:
Some bank executives acknowledged that they were were so scared of Apple that they didn’t speak up.
This makes it sound like Apple has a division of jackbooted thugs whose main job is to smash glass and rough up the bank executives who don’t toe the line.
That said, there were two points made that I think were right on the money.
The first point involves motivation. Banks were not so much interested in customer security as they were in being first into the Apple Pay wallet.
The banks, desperate to become their customers’ default card on Apple Pay — most add only one to their iPhones — did little to build their own defenses or to push Apple to provide more detailed information about its customers. Some bank executives acknowledged that they were were so scared of Apple that they didn’t speak up. The banks didn’t press the company for fear that they would not be included among the initial issuers on Apple Pay.
While that prose grinds my teeth (specifically, the maligning use of the words “desperate”, “scared” and “fear”, more appropriate for an op-ed piece like mine than for a post presented as news), it does speak to a bank’s motivation. The one fact here, “most add only one to their iPhones”, is tossed in without attribution, but I suspect there is a tendency to have one primary Apple Pay card and a race to be “that” card undermined the obligation to guard customer security, to ensure fraud prevention.
The second point involves a flaw in the process of dealing with red flags raised in the fraud prevention process.
It also appears that banks set up a flawed process to deal with the credit cards that it did flag. Affected users were directed to a customer care phone center, not a fraud prevention center. A customer care center’s mission is to help customers use their cards, leading more fraudulent cards to be approved for use on Apple Pay.
“Call centers are a poor approach for two reasons,” Mr. Abraham wrote. “One — fraudsters are better at social engineering than call center reps are at sniffing out fraud. In some cases, fraudsters are calling the call center themselves to ‘alert the bank about a trip out of town’ so that fraud rules looking for transaction anomalies (like a customer living in California and transacting in Miami) do not trip them up.”
The Mr. Abraham referred to in this post is Cherian Abraham, a controversial figure who the article says this about:
Some Apple supporters have sought to discredit Mr. Abraham based on his affiliation as an adviser to a company that is based on Apple’s main competitor, Android.
That aside, I see the two main culprits here as motivation and process. The banks did not put customers’ needs first and they made a strategic error in not putting their well trained fraud detection teams in the loop from the very beginning.
The good news is, though both the banks and Apple took a reputation hit here, it does sound like appropriate fixes are being wheeled into place and the long term prospects for Apple Pay look excellent.
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.
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?
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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.
