October 29, 2014
Written by Dave Mark
Karen Webster, writing for Pymnts.com:
Something CurrentC also doesn’t blab about, but is a well-known fact throughout payments-land, is that its contracts strictly prohibit its member merchants from accepting any other form of in store mobile payments scheme outside of its own. I would imagine that over the last two years, that’s probably led to more than one scary conversation between the “just-keep-my-cost-of-acceptance-low” Corporate Treasury folks and the “I-want-to-just-sell-more-stuff-in-my-stores-and-accommodate-my-customer’s-payments-preferences” marketing and merchandising folks when presented with compelling mobile payments schemes. Until Apple Pay, which has generated all sorts of hype and media attention, its member merchants probably felt that they weren’t too missing out on much since it wasn’t like its customers were walking into those stores asking to use a mobile payments scheme and were denied the opportunity.
Until last week.
And:
You don’t have to be a Rhodes Scholar to figure out that the abrupt about face at Rite Aid and CVS, CurrentC merchants, was the result of some sort of disconnect between the marketing peeps wanting to offer Apple Pay and the finance/treasury folks that signed the contracts a few years ago that said they couldn’t.
And, seriously folks, say what you will about Apple Pay and its long term prospects as a viable mobile payments scheme, but the spin about security concerns and data privacy concerns is not only spin, it’s not even believable spin given all that we know about Apple Pay and its security and privacy protocols.
And this, from the New York Times:
The problem is that under the terms of their MCX contractual agreement, they are not supposed to accept competing mobile payments products like Apple Pay, according to multiple retailers involved with MCX, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. If these retailers break their contracts, they will face steep fines for doing so, these people said.
If true (and it sure seems to be), this behavior is unconscionable. When the FTC has a moment free from their pursuit of AT&T, perhaps they’ll look into this. Feels like unfair trade practices to me.
[Hat tip to Stephen Tallent]
UPDATE: Upon reflection, and a lot of discussion, there certainly is plenty of precedent for MCX prohibiting Apple Pay. I think what rankles me here is the apparent lack of transparency. But even that might be constrained by an NDA. Hard to fault CVS, RiteAid, et al, for not being up front about a clause in their contract if the contract itself contains a non-disclosure provision. I can only imagine that this is the case, given the lack of publicly available information on MCX terms and conditions.
That said, any company that signs a deal like this, especially for a pig-in-a-poke restrictive system that does not yet exist, deserves what they get. My 2 cents.
October 28, 2014
Written by Shawn King
iMore:
Just as quickly as CurrentC popped into the limelight, questions arose around the companies intentions. Even though I don’t have an invite for CurrentC’s invite-only mobile payments and loyalty rewards system, I decided to take a look. I posted some initial findings on Twitter and a brief summary on iMore, but wanted to do a more in-depth technical post for anybody who was curious.
Hard to believe this is going to actually go anywhere even if it does get released as expected next year.
This is one of my all-time favorite songs. I had no idea this is what it was about though.
Written by Jim Dalrymple
This app allows you to change the pitch of a song, get the chords, slow down a song and much more. I’ve been using it for a while and really like it.
Written by Jim Dalrymple
New in this version:
- View your calendar and event list in Notification Center with Fantastical’s Today widget
- Quickly create events or reminders from selected text in extension-enabled apps with Fantastical’s app extension
- Interactive notifications let you quickly snooze an alert or complete a reminder
- Enhanced landscape view shows your event list when using iPhone 6 Plus
I love Fantastical—I have it on all of my devices.
Written by Jim Dalrymple
This is a very interesting update from Rogue Amoeba if you’re using iOS 8.1 and Yosemite.
Written by Dave Mark
Terrific review of the Retina 5K iMac, both in text and in a well crafted video. Trying hard to resist the urge to order one right this second.
Written by Dave Mark
Yesterday’s opening day of the Wall Street Journal’s WSJDLive conference featured separate interviews of Alibaba Chairman Jack Ma and Apple CEO Tim Cook. Alibaba operates a series of consumer-to-consumer, business-to-consumer and business-to-business web portals, generating $120 billion+ in annual revenue. Clearly a terrific opportunity for Apple Pay.
During Jack Ma’s interview, he was asked about Apple Pay:
“I’m very interested in that,” Ma, founder of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. (BABA:US), said when asked if it made sense for his company’s Alipay Wallet mobile system to team with Apple Pay. “As always, a good marriage needs both sides hard working. I respect Apple and respect Tim very, very much.”
And during Tim Cook’s interview:
“We’re going to talk about getting married later this week,” said Cook, chief executive officer of Apple Inc. “I love what he’s done, I think he’s a brilliant guy. I think he has brilliant people at the company so if we can find some areas of common space, I love it. I love partnering with people like that.”
Long way from a deal, but still, interesting.
Written by Dave Mark
Back in October of 1994, the two founders of Wired magazine, Louis Rossetto and Jane Metcalfe, found themselves in a unique situation. One of their biggest advertisers, AT&T, was interested in expanding their presence from print to the web. Now all Louis and Jane had to do was figure out how to make that happen.
Terrific read.
Written by Dave Mark
Business Insider asked a Walmart PR representative why Walmart does not support Apple Pay. Here’s the response:
There are certainly a lot of compelling technologies being developed, which is great for the mobile-commerce industry as a whole. Ultimately, what matters is that consumers have a payment option that is widely accepted, secure, and developed with their best interests in mind. MCX member merchants already collectively serve a majority of Americans every day. MCX’s members believe merchants are in the best position to provide a mobile solution because of their deep insights into their customers’ shopping and buying experiences.
Deep insights? Yeesh. If you care so much about consumers, give them every possible payment option. Instead, the MCX approach is simply a bald-faced attempt to eliminate credit card fees. This response simply makes me angry.
I’m truly surprised to see CVS and Rite-Aid side with Walmart and Hobby Lobby on this one. A black eye for both chains, as far as I’m concerned.
October 27, 2014
Written by Shawn King
Vimeo:
Paris & NY, like many large cities, have a lot in common ; transport, infrastructure, national monuments. I wanted to explore not only these comparisons but also the differences, in order to expose the beauty and individuality of each. What you cannot deny is the vibrancy and explosion of character each city has and I thought split-screen with timelapse would be a good way to help convey this.
Turns out, it’s an ad for British Airways but it’s still a fun thing to watch especially when you consider the effort that had to go into pre- and post-production.
But does he cheat a little bit at the end with the “LOVE” sculpture? Isn’t that in Philadelphia?
Written by Jim Dalrymple
On this week’s Amplified, Jim and Shawn talk about the new iPad Air 2, the iPad mini 3 and does Apple offer too many iPads for sale?
Sponsored by lynda.com (Start learning something new by visiting lynda.com/thebeard and get a FREE 7-day trial where you can access all of their 2,400+ courses).
Written by Jim Dalrymple
Pixelmator for iPad is a powerful image editor that gives you everything you need to create, edit, and enhance your images. It lets you work seamlessly between Mac and iPad and even work effortlessly with Photoshop images. Packed with powerful creative tools and engineered to harness the full iOS and 64-bit architecture power, Pixelmator for iPad is a real image editor right at your fingertips.
There’s a major battle brewing in the payments industry. On one side, Apple Pay sits on top of the existing credit card model, adding a layer of anonymizing security and ease of use.
On the other side is CurrentC, the brainchild of a consortium called the Merchant Customer Exchange, or MCX. CurrentC seeks to eliminate the credit card companies, and their fees, from the system. CurrentC is an alternative to credit cards, not an add-on.
There are several core issues here.
First, there’s the mechanics of the system. With Apple Pay, you place your phone near an NFC sensor, then touch TouchID to validate the purchase. With CurrentC, you first have to unlock your phone, launch the CurrentC app, wait for it to generate a QR code which you place in front of the scanner. You then enter a pin code to complete the process.
In stores, Apple Pay requires an iPhone 6 or 6 Plus and a merchant with an NFC terminal. CurrentC won’t be available before next year, but will work with existing merchant equipment, whereas Apple Pay will require merchants that don’t have the proper terminals to upgrade.
Both Apple Pay and CurrentC are backed by powerful market forces. Apple Pay is backed by Apple, of course, as well as most banks and credit card companies and a long list of merchants. CurrentC is opposed by the credit card companies, since the goal of the Merchant Customer Exchange is to completely eliminate credit card swiping fees from the equation. According the New York Times, the Merchant Customer Exchange represents more than a trillion dollars in sales which, if my math is right, would eliminate more than $20 billion in credit card fees.
Those savings are certainly a big motivation. Another is the loss of customer data. Apple Pay is, in some respects, anonymous. From Bloomberg:
Here’s what Panera ultimately wants from its participation in any mobile-payments system: a speedier link to the MyPanera Rewards loyalty program, which is used in half of all purchases. When a customer pays now, she either hands over her loyalty card or tells the cashier her phone number. Mobile payments should be able remove that step.
Apple Pay, with its built-in anonymity, won’t eliminate the need to swipe a loyalty card or give the cashier a phone number. ”Obviously, that’s not where we want to be,” says Blaine Hurst, Panera’s executive vice president for technology and transformation. “Why can’t I just walk up to a cashier with my phone and all that information magically appears?”
Harvesting customer data is a two edged sword, with privacy concerns on one side, and loyalty benefits, more focused service on the other. Apple Pay does not prevent the use of loyalty cards and the like, but it does not build that data in. If Apple can find a way to allow the customer to fold that information in to the Apple Pay stream if they choose to, that will eliminate that issue.
I broke my wrist. Makes typing a bit of a challenge. Slow going for the next week or so. Just saying.
October 26, 2014
Written by Shawn King
This is Colossal:
Hikers exploring England’s Derbyshire Peak District earlier this week stumbled onto a rare phenomenon caused by extreme winds.
Really wild looking video but, if it’s that windy, maybe you should be careful about walking on the slippery rocks.
Written by Shawn King
Ars Technica:
Sometimes the end of funding is the beginning of a slide into radio silence, which ultimately turns into few or no backer orders fulfilled, and no satisfactory explanation for why the project didn’t pan out according to the orderly delivery schedule the creators promised. A project can go off the rails and fail even after its funding succeeds for a number of reasons. There can be unforeseen costs, or design problems, or a team member quits or fails to deliver their part of the project. Often, when a project skids to a halt, the final updates are obscured from the public and sent only to backers, which may be part of the reason failures are often not well-publicized. Occasionally, backers who receive them pass them on or post them publicly on forums, which is as good as it gets in terms of letting the outside world know a project did not ultimately pan out.
I’ve been burned by a few Kickstarter-type campaigns. Rule of thumb is to assume the money you are handing over is a donation – if you get something in return, great but don’t hold out a lot of hope. Granted, the majority of Kickstarters complete successfully but there are still plenty that don’t. Caveat Emptor.
Written by Shawn King
Mosaic Science:
Meet the donors, patients, doctors and scientists involved in the complex global network of rare – and very rare – blood. In 50 years, researchers have turned up only 40 or so other people on the planet with the same precious, life-saving blood in their veins.
Fascinating story of how rare blood develops and the issues involved in having such an incredibly rare blood type.
October 25, 2014
Written by Shawn King
The Verge:
a significant number of merchants, including heavyweights like Walmart, Kmart, 7-Eleven, and Best Buy, are in outright competition with Apple Pay. The retailers, through a joint venture formed in 2012, are building their own mobile payment app, called CurrentC. It’s expected to launch next year. In the meantime, these retailers have no intention to support Apple Pay.
There may be a lot of good reasons to not support Apple Pay and there may be good alternatives available now and in the future but CurrentC – which needs access to your checking account – and QR codes is not either of those things.
Written by Shawn King
PetaPixel:
Normally Camera+ would set you back $3 in the app store, but right now there’s a lesser-known promotional offering from Apple that lets you download a copy for free. You just need to know where to look.
Well worth jumping through some hoops to get it.
October 24, 2014
Written by Shawn King
Huffington Post:
Manganese black. Yellow ocher. Vermilion. Ultramarine. These pigments sound delicious. Their names are so sharp and elegant, it’s as if the terms emote more meaning than just color. We can smell logwood, taste cochineal, touch mummy brown. There is just something (quite scientifically) alluring about a perfectly saturated glob of paint or an electric mound of powdered hues, especially when its name is so tantalizing. The uniqueness of the names undoubtedly prompts those amongst us, who obsess over the various pink, purples and blues, to wonder where the terms come from. We learn the origin stories of famous paintings in art history course after art history course, but it’s rare to read about the birth of Madder red or mauve. How did the colors in Vincent van Gogh’s “Irises” or J.M.W. Turner’s “Modern Rome” come to be?
I never really thought about it but of course it’s true; these artists had to make their own paint and would of course create their own colors too.
Written by Dave Mark
Glenn Fleishman talks through the changes Yosemite brings to Wi-Fi. To start off, hold down the option key and click on the Wi-Fi icon in the menu bar. More detail, right? Some of that is pre-Yosemite, some new to Yosemite. Now hover over a network name and check out the tooltip that appears.
Lots of great detail here.
Written by Dave Mark
If you have a need for vector artwork of all shipping iOS devices, this free collection from Robbie Pearce might be your answer. The files are done in Sketch and come in every color you can buy.
Written by Dave Mark
Re/code put together a review team of four people, two on the east coast, two on the west coast, to put Apple Pay through its paces.
Our overall conclusion: Apple Pay worked smoothly and quickly in all but a very few instances. But the number of physical and online stores that accept it at launch is still very small. Plus, some common things slow it down, like the need for signatures and debit-card PINs in some stores, its lack of support for loyalty cards, and cashier confusion. So it’s far from a complete replacement for your wallet and credit card, at least not yet.
This simplistic conclusion is only skin deep. The real value of the review is watching Apple Pay at work, with a separate video for each team member. To get you started, here’s Katie Boehret from Washington, D.C.
October 23, 2014
Air New Zealand:
As the official airline of Middle-earth, Air New Zealand has gone all out to celebrate the third and final film in The Hobbit Trilogy – The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies
It very well may be the most expensive aircraft safety video ever made. And interesting to see some of the difference between the demonstrations we see on North American Airlines. But I’m sorry – I don’t believe for a second that Elijah Wood flies Coach.
Written by Jim Dalrymple
Pixelmator for iPad is a powerful image editor that gives you everything you need to create, edit, and enhance your images. It lets you work seamlessly between Mac and iPad and even work effortlessly with Photoshop images. Packed with powerful creative tools and engineered to harness the full iOS and 64-bit architecture power, Pixelmator for iPad is a real image editor right at your fingertips.
Written by Dave Mark
That’s a lot of money for a few bits of wood, plastic and metal but it is fair to say that while $905,000 (£563,904) is a lot of money, the Apple 1’s place in the pantheon of IT history, alongside that of its designer Steve Wozniak, should be somewhere very close to the front.
According to the auctioneers the Apple 1 was expected to sell for between $300,000 and $500,000 before the Henry Ford Museum of Dearborn, Michigan, stepped in to buy it.
Fascinating to watch the Apple I become such a collectors item.
MasterCard expanded its Priceless Surprises advertising series with two news ads. This first one debuted during Game 1 of the World Series:
That baseball legend is George Brett, an all time great and one loyal guy. He’s been working for the Kansas City Royals all of his adult life (since 1971).
The second spot debuted last night, during Game 2, and features Mariano Rivera, a legend in his own right:
Interesting that MasterCard included Tommy Lasorda in the ad’s title (thanks to Kip Beatty for pointing that out in comments). I wonder if he was originally slated to be in this spot or, perhaps, if we’ll see Tommy (who just turned 87!!!) in a Game 3 ad.
Written by Dave Mark
When I first read this Uber blog post, I thought it was a joke. Imagine calling a taxi, then having the driver offer to give you a flu shot, sort of a two-for-one deal.
But Uber is serious about this. They’ve teamed up with Vaccine Finder and will either bring a registered nurse to you or bring you to a clinic for a flu shot, all for free. This effort is today only and limited to Boston, New York and DC.
Here’s the details:
• Every component of UberHEALTH is offered at no cost
• All vaccinations (appropriate for ages 4 and up) will be administered by a registered nurse through Passport Health & Pager.
• All consent information and paperwork stays between the recipient and them.
• If you or your friends choose to be vaccinated, please arrange for a suitable indoor environment before your nurse arrive
• Maximum of 1 flu prevention pack & 10 flu shots per request
• We expect demand for UberHEALTH to be high, so your patience is appreciated
I love the idea, hope it works well.
Written by Dave Mark
Benjamin Mayo digs in to the Pixelmator image editor, which was shown off by Apple when they rolled out the new iPads. If you are even a little curious about Pixelmator, take a few minutes to read the review. Benjamin does a good job exploring the interface and walking through the image adjustment workflow.
