If you’ve ever considered making a living via the App Store, this is worth a read.

9to5mac:

Staples shared in an announcement today that it is now accepting Apple Pay transactions at its “over 1,200 stores” in the United States for iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus users. Apple Pay, of course, will also be available for iPhone 5, iPhone 5c, and iPhone 5s users starting next year when paired with the upcoming Apple Watch. Apple included Staples in its list of retail partners when announcing its secure mobile payment service, although Apple noted that support would be “coming later this year” from the retailer as it was [not] available in time for last month’s launch.

Having Apple Pay in Staples brick and mortar stores is a big step for the Apple Pay brand.

Molly Wood, writing for the New York Times, digs into the good and bad of Apple and Google maps.

Google has long dominated the smartphone map race. But Apple Maps, its primary competitor, at least in the United States, has made great strides in the last couple of years, recovering nicely from the disastrous introduction of Maps in 2012. Both now give accurate directions, for the most part, and keep adding features to beat the other.

Even in recent months, both Google Maps and Apple Maps have undergone significant changes. Apple’s service, for example, now comes with some new useful information about businesses, like operating hours and contact information.

Apple Maps is clearly gaining accuracy. It’s been a while since I’ve encountered flat out wrong information, like a one way street going the wrong way, a closed road, or a freeway entrance in the wrong place (all things I’ve encountered in the past). More and more, I’m finding what I’m looking for. The database is becoming much more complete.

That said, there are still holes in the database and holes in the interface. If I zoom all the way in on the map, I see every single structure in my neighborhood. The buildings are all the right shape and in the correct location. But, some of the businesses do not show up. And some businesses show up occasionally, depending where that location is on the screen. Some business names flash into view momentarily as I drag, but nothing I do seems to make those names stay on the screen.

Traffic reporting is another area that has improved tremendously, though it still has a ways to go. Traffic lane alignment seems much more precise (making it much easier to tell, at a glance, in which lane/direction the traffic lies). But Apple Maps has a single degree of reporting. Traffic is either red or nonexistent. The problem with this approach is that you have no way of knowing if there is no traffic on a particular road, or if the traffic data has not yet populated the map. If your cell reception is spotty, this is definitely an issue. Google Maps reports traffic as green, yellow, or red. This gives you a feeling of certainty when your cell service is spotty, and gives you a bit more granularity (yellow for congestion, red for bumper-to-bumper traffic).

UPDATE: As several readers pointed out, traffic is also marked as yellow. Mea culpa. That said, the issue of no UI difference between “no traffic” and “traffic data has not yet arrived” remains.

Overall, I use Apple Maps almost exclusively. It works, gets me where I need to go. And my favorite feature of all: I can press and hold the home button and tell Siri, “Take me home”. And she does.

Samsung is now reviewing its own products. I guess paying off bloggers and forum posters wasn’t direct enough for them.

Inc:

Imagine going to work for Steve Jobs as a recent college graduate. That’s what happened to Mark Tacchi, who dropped out of graduate school in 1993 to take a job at NeXT, the computer company Jobs founded after being forced out of Apple.

In time, Apple acquired NeXT in a deal that put Jobs back at Apple’s helm. Tacchi spent a total of four years at NeXT and Apple, and he learned a lot about how to run a business, and how not to.

Jobs had a (deserved) reputation as a tyrant but he also taught many in Silicon Valley how to serve the customer.

On October 10, 2014, Avid announced that new Pro Tools and Pro Tools | HD Software purchases, upgrades and crossgrades will include 12 months of upcoming features—such as future cloud collaboration capabilities—as well as a support plan. Even better, customers who buy/upgrade and activate to Pro Tools 11 by December 31, 2014 will receive extended coverage through March 2016.

The only thing that could throw a wrench into this is that audio pros tend to find a version of software that works and stick with it. Upgrading studio hardware and software can be a dangerous proposition when you have clients that want to record music. We’ll see.

I love Field Notes notebooks. I have two with me in my bag wherever I go.

Jim and Shawn talk about the Amazon Echo, how we communicate and left handed guitarists!

Sponsored by Squarespace (use code GUITARS for a free trial and 10% off) and Animoto (Visit the link and use the code AMPLIFIED for 10% off a new Pro Annual subscription).

The New York Times:

The Rosetta spacecraft’s Philae lander has touched down on the surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

Amazing pictures. Amazing achievement.

I don’t post about books very often, but I was listening to a CBC podcast called Writers and Company, where they interviewed the author, Martin Amis, and was very impressed. I’m going to buy this one.

Business Insider:

Google’s DoubleClick ad server for publishers (DFP) went down for over an hour today, potentially costing publishers across the world millions of dollars in missed advertising revenue as Google scrambled to solve the problem.

Brian O’Kelley, co-founder and CEO of AppNexus, the world’s largest independent ad tech company told Business Insider could have cost publishers, collectively, “$1 million per hour” in lost ad revenue.

This is the server that serves up ads for the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, BBC.com, The Guardian, lots of other big names. Big money at risk here, bad day for folks at DoubleClick.

The Pew Research Center did an extensive survey on public perceptions of privacy and security in the so called post-Snowden era. There are a lot of interesting takeaways in the report. Here are just a few:

Perhaps most striking is Americans’ lack of confidence that they have control over their personal information. That pervasive concern applies to everyday communications channels and to the collectors of their information—both in the government and in corporations.

And:

Across the board, there is a universal lack of confidence among adults in the security of everyday communications channels—particularly when it comes to the use of online tools. Across six different methods of mediated communication, there is not one mode through which a majority of the American public feels “very secure” when sharing private information with another trusted person or organization.

And:

Most say they want to do more to protect their privacy, but many believe it is not possible to be anonymous online.

And:

Social security numbers are universally considered to be the most sensitive piece of personal information, while media tastes and purchasing habits are among the least sensitive categories of data.

Lots to think about here.

iOS 8 adoption is now at 56%, iOS 7 at 40%.

Back on October 7th, we reported numbers of 47% for iOS 8 and 47% for iOS 7.

Bracket is a Kickstarter for a cable dock, specific to the MacBook Pro Retina. Here’s a picture:

As you can see, Bracket is a clamshell designed to receive the standard set of cables you’d plug into the side of your MacBook Pro Retina (power, two Thunderbolt, USB, headphones). If you go back and forth from one desk to another (I do this several times a day), this is a bit of a time saver. Rather than locate all the different ends and plug them in, then unplug them when it’s time to move on, Bracket wraps that process into a single plug-in.

The market for Bracket is certainly limited, at its upper end by those folks with a MacBook Pro Retina, and perhaps bounded further by people who care about such efficiencies and have the Danish krones (about $39) to spare. But count me in that latter group. You had me at aluminium.

Kirk McElhearn did an experiment, doing a clean install iOS 8 on a 16 GB iPad mini (first generation).

I did an experiment. I have an original iPad mini, and I hadn’t yet gotten around to updating it to iOS 8 (in part because the over-the-air updater told me it needed 4.9 GB in free space, and it’s only a 16 GB device, and I didn’t have enough free space). I loaded it with only iOS 8 and Apple’s apps. I installed all of Apple’s apps: the iWork apps, iMovie, Garage Band, Find My iPhone, Remote, etc.

After the install, Kirk was left with 8.27 gigs.

Go have a read, see what you think. I’m not troubled, as Kirk was, by the fact that the usable space is less than the advertised space. This has been the way of the world since the beginning of personal computing. Devices are advertised with RAM and hard drive/SSD numbers, showing capacity, not usable space. After all, as soon as you lay a volume directory on a device, you lose space.

That quibble aside, 8.27 gigs left on a 16 gig device is pretty low. You could argue that you don’t have to install the recommended but non-mandatory apps that Apple prompts you to install, but that move would only buy you a few gigs of space at most.

Apple should simply not sell 16 GB devices any more. If, after installing just the basics, there’s only have that space available (I know, I already lost 3 GB because of marketing), then users can’t put a lot of content on them. Many won’t care, but once you start downloading a few games, you get into a situation where there’s not enough room to apply updates, because they need so much free space.

Tricky logic, that. I would change the argument to this: People should simply not buy 16 GB devices any more. Also, to me, it’s photos and media storage that bring me to my device limit, much more so than games.

AppleInsider:

Mac and iOS users are protected from viruses and malware by default unless the user bypasses their security systems, by jailbreaking an iOS device; by disabling the protections of Mac OS X’s GateKeeper; or by choosing to “Trust” app installs that iOS identifies as being from an “Untrusted App Developer.” Here’s how those systems work, and how users can avoid being tricked into turning off their own security.

Short version? Don’t be stupid.

I never really thought about this, but advertisers must be wondering what to do when the watch comes out.

Vox:

President Barack Obama announced on Monday that he supports taking strong measures to protect network neutrality. The announcement was not terribly surprising — Obama has long been an avowed supporter of network neutrality. But this is the first time Obama has proposed a specific legal strategy for protecting network neutrality. And his comments will raise the profile of what was already the most contentious policy debate in the technology world.

If you’re just tuning in now, it can seem a little overwhelming. What is network neutrality? What’s “reclassification?” And why have people been arguing so angrily for so long? Here’s an explanation that starts from the very beginning.

This is an important issue but sadly one the vast majority of internet users don’t know or don’t care enough about.

Wall Street Journal:

Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook in a recent interview cautioned retailers about Apple Pay: You will only stay relevant if you adopt the technology that your customers want to use.

Mr. Cook was on stage for a Q&A at The WSJD Live global technology conference in October, and talked about Apple’s “skirmish” with CVS and Rite Aid over their refusal to use Apple Pay. He said his customers want to use Apple’s new payments service. In “the long arc of time, you are only relevant if customers love you,” he said.

The Who are celebrating 50 years in the guitar smashing business. 50 years! Is that possible?

Here’s a link to the iOS app. And, if you lean that way, a link to the Android version.

I think the Oculus Rift experiment is an interesting idea. While the iOS and Android apps are free, drawing from a user’s owned music or Spotify streams, the Oculus Rift experience will likely not be.

You strap on the Oculus Rift headset and a pair of headphones, then find yourself flying through a world based on familiar The Who images, from bullseyes and magic buses to a Soho doorway.

Lyrics from the songs flash up as you swoop through the environment, and at one point virtual instruments – bass, drums, guitar and keyboard – hover in the air ahead of you, with each turned up in the audio mix if you turn your head to look at it.

It’s pretty fun, although limited at this stage: there’s clearly scope for lots more content in the final app, including perhaps more gaming elements. Whizzing round a giant pinball table as the ball might be a recipe for motion sickness, but it’s among the elements under consideration by the developers.

This is one of the most sophisticated malware campaigns I’ve ever encountered. In a nutshell, the malware is fed into a hotel’s network, waiting for specific individuals to log in. Once the target’s machine is infected, Darkhotel goes dormant for six months, then checks in at the home command and control server.

The Darkhotel actor maintains an effective intrusion set on hotel networks, providing ample access over the years, even to systems that were believed to be private and secure. They wait until, after check-in, the victim connects to the hotel Wi-Fi network, submitting his room number and surname at the login. The attackers see him in the compromised network and trick him into downloading and installing a backdoor that pretends to be an update for legitimate software – Google Toolbar, Adobe Flash or Windows Messenger. The unsuspecting executive downloads this hotel “welcome package”, only to infect his machine with a backdoor, Darkhotel’s spying software.

Once on a system, the backdoor has been and may be used to further download more advanced stealing tools: a digitally-signed advanced keylogger, the Trojan ‘Karba’ and an information-stealing module. These tools collect data about the system and the anti-malware software installed on it, steal all keystrokes, and hunt for cached passwords in Firefox, Chrome and Internet Explorer; Gmail Notifier, Twitter, Facebook, Yahoo! and Google login credentials; and other private information. Victims lose sensitive information – likely the intellectual property of the business entities they represent. After the operation, the attackers carefully delete their tools from the hotel network and go back into hiding.

Not clear if the Mac is vulnerable to Darkhotel. Clearly Windows is. Regardless, one lesson learned here is, when you travel, if you must use an unfamiliar/public network, assume that any update and software you download is tainted.

Imagine waking up one day and seeing a lava flow inching towards your neighborhood. Inexorably creeping forward, the molten flow slowly consumes everything in its path, trees, concrete, cars, everything, absorbing all it encounters into the flow, spitting out great plumes of sulfuric acid and other poisonous gases.

The big island of Hawaii (the largest of the Hawaiian islands) is home to five separate volcanos, three of which are active, one of which, Kilauea, spits out lava continuously. Flow from a recent Kilauean eruption has made its crawl to a neighborhood once deemed safe.

All of this is happening incredibly slowly. In this particular case, the lava creeps forward at about 10 feet per hour. The destruction of a house shown in the video below took more than 24 hours.

If you are interested in exploring a lava flow on your own, take some time to read this warning page. Hiking out on the flows is one of the most exciting (and possible stupid) things I’ve ever done in my life. Rarely in life do you have the opportunity to witness the raw power of nature from such an intimate vantage point. Not sure who filmed this video, but whoever you are, be safe.

I agree with Graham on this. Far too often I come across mixes that are just packed with plug-ins, and that takes away from the sound you’re trying to achieve. The best way to get yourself out of the habit is to use one channel strip plug-in and shape the sound with it. After you’re comfortable doing that, you can add the odd plug-in to the mix to enhance the sound.

I loved reading this story by Kara Swisher profiling Travis Kalanick, the CEO of Uber. It takes guts and a lot of belief in your company to do what Kalanick did to get Uber off the ground.

This is an absolutely fascinating, and scary, story.

BFD Oblivion is an expansion for FXpansion’s BFD3, BFD Eco and BFD2 designed to provide ready-to-use heavy rock and metal drum sounds.

Sold! I like BFD.

io9:

A dropped penny won’t kill you, alcohol doesn’t keep you warm, and swallowed gum doesn’t take seven years to digest. These are just three of the more than fifty rumors debunked in this compendious collection of common myths and misconceptions.

We’ve all heard many of these. We might even believe some of them are not myths. But, according to these guys, they all are. I knew most of them weren’t true but got caught by the one about bananas.

A.V. Club:

H.R. Giger, the Swiss surrealist sculptor and painter who died earlier this year, is the subject of the new documentary Dark Star: H.R. Giger’s World. While the film is not available in the U.S. yet, a trailer is now online. The reclusive Giger was best known for his Academy Award-winning design contributions to the Alien franchise. This new documentary shares the last years of the artist’s life, and reveals how deeply he resided within his own dark artistic visions.

I’ve never enjoyed being creeped out more than when I see Giger’s wonderfully macabre art. I’d love to see this movie.