February 10, 2015

Monday Note:

I have no trouble with the Law of Large Numbers, it only underlines Apple’s truly stupendous growth and, in the end, it always wins. No business can grow by 20%, or even 10% for ever.

But, for the other three, Market Share, Commoditization, and Modularity, how can we ignore the sea of contradicting facts?

Part of the reason why it seems Wall St doesn’t understand Apple is because the company’s operations don’t conform to so many commonly held beliefs about economics and business.

USA Today:

Starting next week, passengers on select JetBlue Airways flights can use Apple Pay on their iPhone 6 and 6 Plus handsets to buy food, drinks and certain onboard amenities when the plane reaches cruising altitude. You’ll be able to upgrade to available premium seats, too.

JetBlue is the first airline to accept Apple Pay at 35,000 feet. It almost certainly won’t be the last.

One more Apple Pay domino falling.

Huffington Post:

Canadians have a reputation for being some of the world’s kindest people. This video proves that to be true.

In order to test how Canadians would react, a blindfolded Muslim man stood at Dundas Square in downtown Toronto, with signs that read “I am a Muslim. I am labelled as a terrorist,” and “I trust you. Do you trust me? Give me a hug.”

To be fair, it doesn’t prove that – Canadians can be as racist as anyone else – but the video does make me very proud of my fellow country men and women.

Austin Mann is a professional photographer and videographer who has put all the recent iPhone cameras through their paces. His most recent post is about Instagram’s Hyperlapse app.

If you aren’t familiar, this app is designed to create extremely stable handheld time-lapses. The stabilization technology is really fascinating (it uses the gyroscope in your iPhone to stabilize any shaky video).

Austin’s page shows off his favorite Hyperlapse video and he offers some tips and tricks to help you get the most out of the app.

You can read about the technology behind Hyperlapse here.

The history of Apple in under 3 minutes

A nice ride through history from Fast Company.

Getting Apple to call you

Over the past few weeks, I’ve run into a problem with the trackpad on my MacBook Pro. Seems like, over time, it took more and more pressure before a mouse click was recognized. I did some research, tried all the suggestions I could find short of opening my computer (I’m still under warranty). This morning, I reached the tipping point. I accepted the fact that I’d have to make the trek over to my nearest Apple Store.

The first step was to make an appointment at the Genius Bar. I followed this link.

It’s been a while since I’ve made a Genius Bar appointment, but something seemed different to me. The last time I went through this process, I went through a process of selecting my nearest store, then homed in on my product, made an actual appointment. I added a few notes, then I was done. I might have the order of things wrong, but the process seemed pretty linear. All roads led to an appointment at the Genius Bar.

This time was different.

This time around (as you can see if you click on the link above), I was funneled to this page, which led off with this text:

A Genius Bar reservation is an easy way to get hardware repairs, but we can solve many issues over the phone or by chat. Tell us a little about what’s going on and we’ll suggest the right support option.

I clicked my way to Mac, then Mac Notebooks, then through some clicks to diagnose my problem. Ultimately, I ended up at a page that offered me an immediate callback from Apple tech support, along with a range of other options (schedule a callback or a follow-on call, start a chat session, set up a visit to the Apple Store to drop off my machine, or schedule a Genius Bar visit). I chose the immediate callback. My phone rang within a minute.

Two things here. First, if you have a Mac with a wonky trackpad switch, this fix worked for me. I pressed down hard on the four corners of my trackpad with four fingers at once. Then I pressed down hard in the middle of the trackpad, again with four fingers. Like magic, the trackpad seems back to its old reliable self. If you are under warranty, I would bring it in to the Apple Store, if possible, just to get it on the record in case the fix proves temporary.

Second, I love the immediacy of this service path. I did not have to leave the comfort of my couch (one step closer to WALL•E, right?) to get help. I asked the Apple support rep when this happened, he told me the process changed towards the end of last year. He wasn’t sure of the exact date, but thought it was sometime in November.

Not sure how widely known this is (it was new to me), thought it was worth a mention.

February 9, 2015

The Hill:

Apple CEO Tim Cook will speak at the White House cybersecurity summit Friday at Stanford University, according to an event invitation.

The White House is expected to reveal its next executive action on cybersecurity at the summit, which will bring together tech executives, leading academics and government officials to discuss ways in which the government can better collaborate with the private sector on cybersecurity initiatives.

Cook’s remarks will come amid a debate between tech companies and law enforcement officials over encryption.

Encryption and security is becoming more and more important to everyone on the internet – business, consumers, and governments. It will be interesting to see if anything concrete comes out of this summit.

Good luck to Steve, Dave, and Kelly.

Muppet’s Animal vs. Buddy Rich drum battle

Animal wins for the screams.

We all snap pictures like crazy these days and post them to a number of sharing sites. But there was a time when you would be so excited to get your roll of film back to see what pics you shot. Mari and Linda Johannessen are bringing that experience back with a new app for iPhone. You can take 24 pics, but you can’t review them. When the “film roll” is full, you send it away and get back 24 developed prints, delivered to your physical mailbox, within a week.

Personally, I love the idea.

Slashing prices on tablets all over the place. I thought they were selling so good.

Buy a phone, get a tablet for $0.99. And they still can’t beat the iPad. It makes you wonder why people are so worried about iPad sales.

The Consumerist:

The floral wire services, FTD and Teleflora, were very relevant in 1910 and 1934 when they began, respectively. These companies, along with 1980s upstart 1-800-Flowers, now dominate the industry by advertising their national brand and squeezing local florists. While these companies, and mail-order services like Proflowers, blanket the airwaves and Web pages with ads showing off their great deals before major flower-giving holidays, they are not the best choice to get the best bloom for your buck.We have long recommended that flower-givers follow this basic process

Definitely buy your significant other, male or female, a flower arrangement. But do your best to support your local flower merchant. And for those enjoying single life, citas para follar can be a fun way to share spontaneous moments that don’t need a special occasion to feel meaningful.

Local florists often offer fresher, more personalized arrangements that truly reflect the spirit of the occasion. When purchasing directly from a neighborhood shop, you not only help sustain small businesses but also enjoy unique designs that aren’t mass-produced or standardized. Many local florists even grow or source their flowers nearby, ensuring each bouquet has a personal touch that large corporate services simply can’t match.

Additionally, working with a local florist allows you to communicate directly with the designer—sharing details about the recipient’s favorite colors, flowers, or styles. This personal interaction often results in an arrangement that carries more emotional weight and meaning. The money you spend stays within your community, supporting local jobs and small-scale growers rather than large corporations.

So while national services may seem convenient, the charm, quality, and authenticity of buying local continue to make it the most rewarding choice for both giver and receiver.

New York Times:

Apple’s record-breaking holiday quarter, which brought in $18 billion in earnings, allowed the company to capture 93 percent of the profit in the handset industry, according to a new report from Canaccord Genuity, an investment firm.

Samsung took the rest, but its share is shrinking, the report said.

Apple is doomed.

I think this will be pretty popular.

A hidden treasure trove of gear flown on the Apollo 11 mission to the moon sees the light of day after Neil Armstrong’s widow shares the find with the Smithsonian.

Wow.

Alphonse Swinehart:

In our terrestrial view of things, the speed of light seems incredibly fast. But as soon as you view it against the vast distances of the universe, it’s unfortunately very slow. This animation illustrates, in realtime, the journey of a photon of light emitted from the surface of the sun and traveling across a portion of the solar system, from a human perspective.

This visualization of the speed of light and the realization that, on a galactic scale, it’s actually really slow, is all kinds of mind boggling.

Petapixel:

Unlike other affordable photo-editing apps out there, which are usually dumbed down offerings with only a subset of Photoshop’s usefulness, Affinity Photo is trying to set itself apart by offering the power of Photoshop in a program that’s blazing fast and ridiculously affordable.

Looks very interesting and for free, there’s no harm in giving it a try.

Rolling Stone:

After three and a half hours of the Grammy telecast, you may feel like you saw everything that could possible be imagined – even Kanye West hilariously rushing the stage in defense of Beyoncé, yet again. But although the show was tailored for the home audience, those actually in attendance at Los Angeles’ Staples Center were privy to a few jokes, celebrations and candid moments that didn’t make the CBS broadcast. These were our favorites.

There were some great moments on TV but, as always, the best often happen away from the cameras.

Once a week, inside the 142-square-foot apartment he shares with his parents and two siblings in a rural California farming town, a two-year-old has a standing appointment with an iPad.

Born deaf, the toddler received cochlear implants seven months ago. He and his mother use FaceTime video chat to have hour-long sessions in Spanish with a speech therapist who is helping the boy learn how to listen and understand the new sounds.

What a truly great story.

Samsung is warning customers about discussing personal information in front of their smart television set.

The warning applies to TV viewers who control their Samsung Smart TV using its voice activation feature.

Such TV sets “listen” to some of what is said in front of them and may share details they hear with Samsung or third parties, it said.

Fuck. You.

AC/DC kills it at the Grammy’s

I just can’t get over how good they are after all these years. Interesting to note that drummer Phil Rudd wasn’t with the band—try to hire one hitman and you lose your job.

Very impressive.

About The Loop Magazine

Many of you have noticed that The Loop Magazine hasn’t published as often since mid to late last year. I tried to make up for missing issues by publishing double issues once a month, but the schedule was still erratic. Clearly, this isn’t fair to the subscribers of the magazine.

I have been going through a personal crisis that has affected my ability and commitment to publish the magazine. I have kept the details private, but my problems are no excuse for letting a fine publication falter. I want to apologize to all those that put their faith in me to put out a quality product—I failed.

That said, I believe in The Loop Magazine. I believe the magazine app developed by Chris Harris and Mateusz Stawecki is second to none in the App Store. I believe the content we publish is engaging and different from everything else put out on Newsstand. I believe The Loop Magazine can work.

I am moving the magazine to a monthly publication that will contain double the amount of stories that the bi-weekly edition published—that’s 8-10 stories per month. I’m currently finishing up the latest issue and it should be published this week. This will be the start of a new chapter for The Loop Magazine, and I’m sure it will be a successful one.

Although I have no right to ask for it, I need your support to make the magazine successful. If you haven’t subscribed, take a look at the magazine and the content and see what you think—if you like it, subscribe. If you tried it before and were disappointed in me, try again. It’s available for both iPhone and iPad.

I have a lot to prove to you, the readers, but I believe this will work.

Thanks for your support.

Jim

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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.

Cheap Trick’s Rick Nielsen opens his guitar vault

I almost choked when he said this whole wall is full of Les Pauls.

Netflix is taking a pretty big gamble, albeit with other people’s money. They’ve floated two senior notes totaling $1.5 billion in debt. The goal is to ramp up their content production. At the center of all this is a live action “Legend of Zelda” series.

So far, Netflix has kept the bar raised pretty high, with series like House of Cards and Orange is the New Black. The question is, can they find a way to bring Zelda to the small (but growing) screen without dissing legions of Zelda fans.

Netflix is said to be working closely with Nintendo, the Japanese game developer that has made about 20 “The Legend of Zelda” games since the original, which was released in the U.S. in 1987.

Nintendo is very protective of its intellectual property and has allowed few adaptations over the years. An animated “Legend of Zelda” series ran for just one season in 1989. A 1993 movie based on Nintendo’s “Super Mario Bros.” was an infamous bomb.

Netflix has shown they have a solid sense of pitch when it comes to original content, earning them a big benefit-of-the-doubt here. Here’s hoping this follows the House of Cards path and doesn’t end up on this list.

New York Times:

A little over 30 years ago, the Japanese photographer Kishin Shinoyama walked through Central Park with one of the most famous couples in the world. It was sunset, autumn; they sat on a bench just in front of the pond, bordered by trees, a sliver of New York skyline visible in the distance, including the building where they lived. He asked them to kiss, and he clicked the shutter. Three months later, on Dec. 8, 1980, John Lennon was fatally shot at the entrance to the Dakota, home to him and his wife, Yoko Ono. Just three weeks prior to Lennon’s death, Shinoyama’s photograph of John and Yoko’s kiss at Central Park Pond had appeared on the cover of what would be their final studio album, “Double Fantasy.” Shinoyama made other photographs that day, of course — 800 in all, in fact — but many of them have never been shown until now, on the occasion of Taschen’s forthcoming publication of “Kishin Shinoyama. John Lennon & Yoko Ono. Double Fantasy” ($700), out this month.

I find this appalling. Who would buy such a book? Someone with strong emotional ties to John Lennon (and, of course, with $700 to burn). This feels like emotional blackmail. I have rare photos of your hero. You will only see them (and copies of them, not original prints you might hang in your home) if you pay out $700.

Amazing to me that the review makes no mention of the price.

This is not necessarily my cup of tea as an iPad stand (the angle is not adjustable), but I find the technology behind the stickum fascinating.

Slope is an elegant, minimal tabletop stand that gets your tablet upright and out in front of you with an easy in/out attachment. It works by way of a unique suction technology, mimicking the specialized toe pads common to the Gecko lizard. The foam of the two pads grip the flat surfaces of both table and tablet with microscopic suction to give a firm mounting experience and solid feel. The pads are extremely durable and replaceable.

Dust and dirt have got to be the big bugaboos here. Interesting idea.

[Hat tip to Mike Russell]

Geoffrey Goetz, writing for GigaOM, digs into the concept of code signing:

One of the benefits that curators like Apple and Google can gain from code signing apps is that it provides a means of stopping malware from spreading, especially when the platform only allows code signed apps to be installed. Just this past week Google took measures to suspend a particularly malicious group of apps labeled as malware from being distributed in Google Play. With 99 percent of all mobile malware targeting the Android platform, preventing such threats from spreading is something that any app store operator like Google would want to ensure its customers it has the situation under control.

If Apple and Google both use code signing, why does “99 percent of all mobile malware” target Android?

On the one hand, Apple enforces code signing and they completely control the code signing process. Apple is the only code signing authority. Short of jail-breaking your phone, if you are running an iOS app, Apple has vetted that app.

Android, on the other hand, offers code signing as a suggestion:

While it is true that Android developers can sign apps before deploying them to device, they don’t really have to. There are plenty of ways that developers can deploy apps to Android devices that do not require any level of code signing at all. Side-loading apps by tethering the device with a USB cable, downloads apps from web sites or even install apps from an attachment in an email message are some examples. While Google may have some control over Google Play, it does not control the Android platform as a whole.

Apple’s insistence on total control is an inconvenience for developers, certainly, but it is a boon to users and the ecosystem as a whole. If you care about security, the best existing solution requires this level of control.

The article makes the case that the process of getting your app on the App Store is a difficult, arcane process:

The goal of most developers is getting their app into the App Store. This requires one to work through the intricacies of creating an AppID, TeamID, Distribution Certificate, and Provisioning Profile from within an Apple Developer account. Once this is completed, developers soon realize that the battle is only half over, as they then need to create an iTunes Connect account and register for an available App Record which is necessary to upload and submit your app for review. It never goes quite as planned the first time around and you end up spending a fair amount of time troubleshooting what step you missed. When all is said and done, you realize that you could actually make a career out of helping developers shepherd their apps through this process.

All I can say to this is, when the App Store launched (along with iPhone OS 2.0) back in 2008, the process of getting an app on the app store truly was an incredibly arcane, confusing process. The current process does feature hoops to jump through, but in my opinion, it is head and shoulders better than the way it used to be.