The Verge:

If I had to pick places I’d expect to see rocking chairs, front porches, living rooms, and pretty much anywhere else would rank far above cavernous and stark airport terminals, yet that’s probably where I’m most likely to see them. And while I could imagine an aggressively whimsical designer somewhere throwing a bunch of rocking chairs in a terminal, I had a hard time seeing how they’d sprung up in so many airports across the country. Why rocking chairs? Where did they come from?

I’ve only ever seen these at the Nashville International Airport. I thought they were just a quirky thing specific to the city.

Vox:

The metric system is far superior to the bizarre system of feet, miles, pounds, and gallons used in the United States. The whole rest of the world seems to get this. So why aren’t we doing it, too?

The reasons to go metric are stronger than ever, and it’s time to revive the effort. In our increasingly global economy, America’s bizarre measurement system puts the country at a disadvantage. Popular opinion on the matter seems to be quite positive, and there are some hints of change on the horizon.

I lived in the US for many years and grew up in Canada during the switch from Imperial to Metric so I get both systems. There’s no doubt metric is much easier to do calculations with but, even here in Canada, there is still a lot of confusion due to the mashup of the two systems.

Wired:

Jonathan Coulton loves cruise ships. He loves the weird artificial mall running down the middle, and he loves staring off the back of the ship into infinity. That’s not to say that David Foster Wallace’s famously dark assessment of shipboard vacationing (“There is something about a mass-market Luxury Cruise that’s unbearably sad”) is unfamiliar. The lanyard that holds a laser-cut wooden JoCo Cruise name tag around my neck came printed with the phrase “A supposedly fun thing I’ll never do again.” Inside jokes are the coin of the realm around here.

I’ve been on one cruise and, for various reasons, it was an awful experience.

Angela Ahrendts:

I’ve always tried to focus my comments on simple leadership lessons I’ve learned that might somehow, somewhere, someday help others. I’ll admit, I’ve been struggling recently to find one that’s relevant around the holidays.

On Wednesday, I was listening to the radio on my drive home and I heard an old song that took me back to my childhood. I hadn’t heard it for a while, and wow — in that moment, it really moved me.

I know this is probably just fluff, but I’d love to see more of these kinds of posts from more of Apple’s leadership.

MY thanks to Doxie for sponsoring The Loop’s RSS feed this week. Doxie Go Wi-Fi is the tiny, rechargeable document and receipt scanner that scans anywhere — no computer required — then syncs wirelessly to your Mac, iPhone, and iPad.

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The Loop readers get free U.S. shipping and Guaranteed Christmas Delivery for all orders placed through December 21st. Order your Doxie today and give the gift of paperless.

Hall & Oates is one of those bands that are consistently underrated, even ridiculed. Jennifer Boeder makes her case for why Hall & Oates deserve their place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and our respect.

By the age of 17, Daryl Hall was already singing on Philly street corners with the likes of the Delphonics and the Stylistics. He and Oates ran with Smokey Robinson, the Temptations, and many other top soul singers and producers of the 60s (H&O inducted the Temptations into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1985). People don’t realize that Hall & Oates’s song “She’s Gone” made little headway on the charts until the legendary Lou Rawls and Tavares decided to cover it. Consider that, haters: maybe you don’t respect Hall & Oates, but the Temptations and Lou Rawls totally did.

A terrific read.

From the press release for luxury skincare brand Erno Laszlo:

“iPhone 6 Plus was instrumental in helping us achieve our creative vision for this project—and do it in a brilliantly fast and effective way,” said Kenan Aktulun, founder of Truth NYC. “It opened up possibilities by allowing us to explore the life and energy of the holiday season in New York, in a truly mobile way.”

Made In Space is a startup whose goal was to build the first 3D printer designed specifically for the rigors of space travel and for use in zero-G.

My colleagues and I just 3D-printed a ratcheting socket wrench on the International Space Station by typing some commands on our computer in California.

We had overheard ISS Commander Barry Wilmore (who goes by “Butch”) mention over the radio that he needed one, so we designed one in CAD and sent it up to him faster than a rocket ever could have. This is the first time we’ve ever “emailed” hardware to space.

The ability to print replacement parts will be critical for long space voyages (to Mars, for example). Not sure how useful a plastic socket wrench will be in the real world. I wonder if there is a plan to bridge that gap, to create a hardened wrench, for example, that will withstand real-world torque.

[hat tip to John Kordyback]

More cowbell!

The Mac firewall is designed to block incoming connections. This article digs into the process of working with a firewall and explains why the Mac firewall is not necessary for most users.

Folks out there with firewall experience, do you agree with this take?

ITG Research:

Apple Pay could pose a major threat to market leader PayPal’s current dominance of the Mobile Payment space, according to Steve Weinstein, Senior Internet Analyst at ITG Investment Research. Citing PayPal’s significant infrastructure barriers (a challenging relationship with payment counterparties and the lack of biometric capability) in comparison to Apple Pay’s compelling mobile payment solution, Weinstein believes that it will be difficult for PayPal to match the ease of use and consumer appeal of the Apple solution.

Key research findings:

• 60% of new Apple Pay customers used Apple Pay on multiple days through November, suggesting strong customer engagement. In comparison, New PayPal customers used the service on multiple days during the same time period just 20% of the time.
• Apple Pay customers used the service roughly 1.4 times per week and used Apple Pay at the same merchant for future transactions roughly 66% of the time.
• Upon adoption of Apple Pay, the average consumer uses the service for approximately 5.3% of all future card transactions and 2.3% of all future card dollars spent.

Apply Pay just keeps on chugging along. [via 9to5mac]

National Geographic:

More than 9,200 entries were submitted from over 150 countries, with professional photographers and amateur photo enthusiasts across the globe participating.The Grand Prize Winner will receive $10,000 and a trip to National Geographic headquarters in Washington, D.C., to participate in the annual National Geographic Photography Seminar in January 2015.

Check out the winner and let us know what you think. It’s not the usual photo that comes to mind when you think of National Geographic.

Jason Snell and Dan Moren of Six Colors put together a list of their favorite iOS games. The usual suspects are there, but there are plenty of games that were new to me. A nice little list.

The Telegraph:

The BBC’s Panorama programme sent undercover reporters to Pegatron factories on the outskirts of Shanghai, where it claims to have uncovered poor treatment of workers and a breach of standards on workers’ hours.

In an email to around 5,000 staff across the UK, Apple senior vice president of operations Jeff Williams said both himself and the chief executive were “deeply offended by the suggestion that Apple would break a promise to the workers in our supply chain or mislead our customers in any way”.

“Panorama’s report implied that Apple isn’t improving working conditions,” he continued. “Let me tell you, nothing could be further from the truth.”

A core part of the allegations center on Apple’s use of tin from Indonesia. Apple cannot control the sourcing of this tin at a fine enough level to guarantee that that part of the supply chain is completely clean.

“Apple has publicly stated that tin from Indonesia ends up in our products, and some of that tin likely comes from illegal mines,” Williams countered.

“Tens of thousands of artisanal miners are selling tin through many middlemen to the smelters who supply to component suppliers who sell to the world. The government is not addressing the issue, and there is widespread corruption in the undeveloped supply chain. Our team visited the same parts of Indonesia visited by the BBC, and of course we are appalled by what’s going on there.

“Apple has two choices: We could make sure all of our suppliers buy tin from smelters outside of Indonesia, which would probably be the easiest thing for us to do and would certainly shield us from criticism. But it would be the lazy and cowardly path, because it would do nothing to improve the situation for Indonesian workers or the environment since Apple consumes a tiny fraction of the tin mined there. We chose the second path, which is to stay engaged and try to drive a collective solution.”

Seems to me that the Panorama program was very selective in their reporting, that they were determined to paint Apple as a villain, rather than tell both sides of the story. Follow the headline link to read the full text of Jeff Williams’ letter.

Nothing earth-shattering in this interview, but interesting to get to know the decision maker behind Mario, Zelda, and Amiibo, the NFC-based technology that is emerging as a core part of Nintendo’s future.

Amiibo is a concept similar to Skylanders or Disney’s Infinity series, marrying proximity detection, wireless communication, and data storage with 3D figures.

Two teenagers built this. Heck of an idea.

The Apple TV interface is designed to move one object at a time. Press the right arrow key on your remote, move to the next movie in your list.

Radu Dutzan had an idea for a more direct interface (think mouse instead of arrow keys) and built this conceptual prototype using an iPhone and AirPlay. Some interesting ideas in here, definitely worth watching. As Radu mentions, the direct manipulation concept is not new, but he’s making the case that this approach is doable on Apple TV.

When I asked Radu about Apple’s Remote app, which allows much of this functionality, he said:

Remote tries to imitate this effect, but instead of allowing the user to directly manipulate controls on the screen, it’s translating swipes into discrete button clicks, since that’s the only thing the Apple TV understands today. You cannot precisely control the cursor using Remote, in fact, the behavior is quite unpredictable at times.

This is most evident on a complex button layout, such as the keyboard. I had actually never tried to use the TV keyboard by swiping on Remote, since I would just use the on-screen keyboard on the phone, but having used the prototype, there’s really a world of difference. You just can’t move the cursor freely, there’s no spatial correlation between the gesture and the movement of the cursor, and if you swipe diagonally, it actually starts to get cute: Remote will do its best, but you’ll probably just end up with the cursor two or three buttons away, on the same row or column.

Interesting experiment.

From Kottke.org:

Following in the footsteps of Too Many Cooks is Unedited Footage of a Bear. It aired for the first time on Adult Swim this week in their 4am infomercial slot. It starts off as a nature thing with a bear which is interrupted by a fake infomercial and then. Gets. WEIRD.

First things first, weird does not even begin to describe this experience. I found it riveting and, more importantly, disturbing. So don’t watch this if you are not in a safe place, personally, and I wouldn’t share this with kids. But if you feel up to it, dig in.

Know this, though. When I showed this to Jim, he said, “I will never be the same after watching that.”

I suspect you will agree. Proceed with caution.

Federico Viticci, writing for MacStories, put together his annual list of must have apps, starting with those for iPad. This is a surprisingly comprehensive list and well worth the read.

Business Insider posted this infographic showing the relative contributions to the bottom line from these sectors, in descending order: iPhone, iPad, Mac, iTunes & Software, Accessories, and iPod.

Total revenue in Fiscal Year 2014 was $220,211,000,000. They could have just said $220 billion, but written out that way, the number is just more impressive.

The Verge:

A California judge has denied a request from a trio of media outlets to make video deposition of late Apple CEO Steve Jobs available to the public. The request was filed by the Associated Press, Bloomberg, and CNN during this month’s trial over security measures Apple added to iTunes and iPods nearly a decade ago, where 27-minutes of the deposition was shown in court. The request prompted a heated three-way debate over whether making the video available outside the courtroom would run afoul with federal laws prohibiting the recording of courtroom proceedings.

As it should be. Glad that’s over.

The video could ultimately end up being brought out again as part of an appeal, which the plaintiffs in the case said they plan to file sometime within the next month.

Feh.

BBC News:

Blackberry has launched what it calls a “no-nonsense” smartphone, the Blackberry Classic.

The device has a full “Qwerty” keyboard, resembling the design which made Blackberry a market leader before it was overtaken by competitors.

Analysts said the firm was going “back to its roots” in order to appeal to business customers.

If I was a Blackberry fan, I would no doubt like this phone. It does a nice job of packaging the stuff I like (touch screen, QWERTY keyboard) in a phone that looks somewhat like an iPhone 4 or 5. This is full on retro.

The key part of the review:

“This is more about avoiding more people leaving than necessarily winning many over,” said Carolina Milanesi, an analyst for Kantar Worldpanel.

“I have a hard time thinking that people who grew up on touch[screens] will see this as an exciting ‘retro’ trend and embrace it.”

Ouch.

A sad day in the nation. Tonight is the very last episode of The Colbert Report. The Grim Reaper is the guest.

Mr. Colbert appeared in character not simply on his show, but in appearances elsewhere, including a memorable knockout performance at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in 2006. (He stirred Bush administration outrage with comments like: “I believe the government that governs best is the government that governs least, and by these standards, we have set up a fabulous government in Iraq.”) He even remained at his blowhard best when he testified before Congress in 2010. (Before a Congressional subcommittee on immigration issues and farm labor, Mr. Colbert’s character said things like, “Maybe the easier answer is just to have scientists develop vegetables that pick themselves.”)

It will be interesting to see what Stephen Colbert is like when he is not inhabiting his character. We’ll know next September, when he officially takes David Letterman’s place.

Vice:

It is mind boggling to me, particularly when you compare it to real things that have actually happened. Someone killed 12 people and shot another 70 people at the opening night of Batman: The Dark Knight. They kept that movie in the theaters. You issue an anonymous cyber threat that you did not have the capability to carry out? We pulled a movie from 18,000 theaters.

There’s probably no worse way for Sony to have handled this. Incredible how messed up this has become.

Apple CEO, Tim Cook:

“I’m thrilled to announce that our total donation for this quarter will be more than $20 million — our biggest ever — bringing the total amount Apple has raised for (PRODUCT) RED to over $100 million,” Cook wrote. “The money we’ve raised is saving lives and bringing hope to people in need. It’s a cause we can all be proud to support.”

Much respect Apple people and everyone that purchased a product.