On September 23rd, Apple reported an adoption rate of 46% for iOS 8.

As of October 5th (this past Sunday), Apple’s official numbers show that, in the ensuing weeks, the adoption rate crept up to only 47%. Interestingly, the iOS 7 rate went down from 49% to 47% (as you might expect), but the pre-iOS 7 adoption number actually increased from 5% to 6%.

The stagnation might be due to the public issues surrounding the iOS 8 release, including bugs that kept the Health App from running, as well as concern that adoption of iOS 8 might cause problems with iCloud Drive data.

Apple’s self-reported numbers are reflected by the most recent data from MixPanel (via MacRumors).

csstyle is a modern approach for crafting beautifully maintainable stylesheets. The csstyle method is implemented using a set of SASS mixins that make your CSS readable and semantic, generate your selectors for you, and automatically handle things like specificity and nesting. csstyle makes your project’s styling refreshingly consistent.

Geohopper Beacons unite Apple’s iBeacon technology and proximity-based notifications in a single easy-to-use bundle. Using Geohopper 2.0 for iOS, a single tap configures the beacon which then sends notifications to your selected contacts when you enter or exit the beacon location. No additional setup or maintenance is required.

Very cool.

Magic Script Creator lets you experiment with creating custom AppleScripts by just answering a few questions. No prior knowledge of AppleScript is needed in order to use this application. Included in Magic Script Creator are 24 different examples that you can configure hundreds of different ways. Most examples contain UNIX command line tools, combining their power with AppleScript’s strengths.

Version 4.0 contains two new major features. First, you can choose to compile your scripts with line by line remarks. This will help you understand what each line of code is executing. Second, for those examples containing UNIX command tools, you can export the MAN (or manual) page in an easy to read PDF. No more trying to read these manuals in a tiny terminal window! To learn more about Magic Script Creator, watch an instructional video, purchase the application, or try a demo version, please visit our homepage.

The Verge:

What happens when you give an Android Wear smartwatch to a 16-year-old with a bit too much time on his hands? You get Windows 95 on your wrist. Now, we frankly have no idea why you’d load a desktop operating system from twenty years ago onto a Samsung Gear Live smartwatch with a 1.63-inch display, but, hey, why not? Thanks to emulator software available for Android, this technology mishmash is a reality.

I am mesmerized! Watch the video.

Bill Gates, in last week’s Bloomberg interview:

“Apple Pay is a great example of how a cell phone that identifies its user in a pretty strong way lets you make a transaction that should be very, very inexpensive,” he said.

He explained: “So the fact that in any application I can buy something, that’s fantastic. The fact I don’t need a physical card anymore, I just do that transaction and you’re going to be quite sure about who it is on the other end, that is a real contribution.”

Some wonder just how inconvenient credit cards are. Is it really such an imposition to take a card from a pocket or a wallet to pay? Is Apple Pay solving a problem that isn’t too much of a problem?

Gates, though, said that Apple’s true role was in creating the market: “All the platforms, whether it’s Apple’s or Google’s or Microsoft, you’ll see this payment capability get built in. That’s built on industry standard protocols, NFC. And these companies have all participated in getting those going. Apple will help make sure it gets to critical mass for all the devices.”

The value of Apple Pay is much more than saving you a reach for your credit card. Far more important is Apple Pay’s role in battling fraud, keeping your credit card number out of the top level of the transaction.

Cincinnati Enquirer:

Macy’s is expanding Cincinnati-tested technology that enables in-store shoppers to browse items not on shelves and even skip the checkout this holiday. It’s part of a broader push to woo Millennial customers and boost overall convenience and efficiency.

Customers looking for the hottest new Michael Kors purse that’s not stocked in their favorite color have been able hunt for their hue at point-of-purchase terminals at the Kenwood Towne Centre store as part of the Cincinnati-region testing.

The touchscreen point of purchase or “POP” machines confirm if an item is in the store – or at any store nearby or across the country. Also being expanded are local “look book” terminals – touchscreen catalogs that replace some mannequins and show the shopper how some clothes look paired with other garments or accessories.

So far, so good. Macy’s is exposing their inventory system to customers. Makes for more efficiency all the way around. But then the article digs in to the various tech in play. When it comes to explaining Apple Pay:

How it works: Customers with the new iPhone 6 and the Apple Watch will be able to pay at registers with a wave of their devices. Customers buy virtual encrypted “tokens” from Apple to be stored on their phones – so in the event they’re lost or stolen, no credit card info is on the device. More details will be released this month by Apple.

I still struggle to get my head around exactly how Apple Pay works, but I do know that customers won’t be buying “virtual encrypted tokens” from Apple. Hard to blame the Enquirer, though. This is a complex process. But taking a complex process and wrapping it in a dead simple service is Apple’s specialty.

And that’s the key. If Apple Pay works seamlessly and adds a layer of security/indirection to the credit card universe, it’s not so critical that the end user truly understands the inner mechanics.

NY Times:

The company, considered a foundational institution of Silicon Valley, said in a news release that it intended to divide itself into a company aimed at business technology, including computer servers and data storage equipment, software and services, and a company that sells personal computers and printers.

Both companies will be publicly traded. The business-oriented company will be called Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, while the PC company will be called HP Inc. and will retain the company’s current logo.

It’s tough when you build a business based on products, no matter how innovative, that get commoditized. Innovate or die.

This original iPhone 2G prototype was used for external (outside the company) testing and was not loaded with the official iOS interface. Instead, it ran the “skankphone” testing interface (see “skank is the new black” in small print on the picture in the auction listing).

If you look at the 6th picture, you’ll see the icon view, which features a Cheerios box as an icon for the serial number. Cereal for serial, get it? Heh.

I love looking at these old phones. Amazing how far the world has come since the original iPhone was introduced.

The Atlantic:

Turn on the Food Network any night of the week, and this is what you’ll probably see: “a larger-than-life host, a specifically defined challenge, bombastic music, a set time limit, a panel of judges, and a cast of contestants whose back-story and biographical detail serves to heighten the stakes and fan the [program’s] already heated dramatic flame.”

That’s according to a 2013 study of Food Network’s evolution from University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee associate professor Tasha Oren. The Food Network may have started as a channel focusing on the dishes themselves—think Emeril Lagasse and “Bam!” But in order to grow, the network has abandoned its food focus in favor of formulaic competition.

I don’t watch any of these shows but I see the commercials for them all the time. I don’t watch because I don’t get why cooking has to be a contest but the article might have a point. Maybe these shows are for those who don’t like sports but still like competition?

The Wirecutter:

After measuring the charging speed of 44 cables, then sending the top 11 to our electrical engineer for teardown analysis, the $14 Monoprice 3ft MFi Certified Lightning to USB Charge/Sync Cable is the one we’d buy. It may be a third-party cable, but the Monoprice stood out among competitors by being the only third-party cable that had as good, if not better, internal build-quality compared to Apple’s own cable. Plus, it’s cheaper than Apple’s by $5.

Always good to have an extra cable or two lying around and the price is right for this one.

Apple:

Over a million people from all over the world have shared their memories, thoughts, and feelings about Steve. One thing they all have in common — from personal friends to colleagues to owners of Apple products — is how they’ve been touched by his passion and creativity. You can view some of these messages below and share your own at [email protected].

Classy move, Apple.

Re/code:

Bose secured a league sponsorship deal that effectively allows it to elbow Beats — and any other rival headphone manufacturer — off the playing field.

Under terms of its agreement with the league, the NFL confirmed, Bose received a broad set of rights that entitle it to prevent players (or coaches) from wearing any other manufacturer’s headphones during televised interviews.

This ban extends to TV interviews conducted during pre-season training camps or practice sessions and on game day — starting before the opening kickoff through the final whistle to post-game interviews conducted in the locker room or on the podium. The restriction remains in place until 90 minutes after the play has ended.

Does Bose really think this will make any difference in their sales or market share? Do they think that potential buyers, seeing the headsets on a bunch of “old guys” on the sidelines will make their target audience think, “Oh! I like that look! Gotta get me some of those!”?

Very entertaining story.

Here’s what I knew about Megadeth: the lead singer, Dave Mustaine, was kicked out of Metallica, and then Megadeth went on to become the most respected heavy metal band of their time, second to Metallica.

During the meeting, the executives stressed the importance of this album release, so it seemed like the perfect opportunity to do something big and bold on the World Wide Web. Having never heard of the Internet, the record executives were like “yeah, whatever kid” and defaulted to the usual checklist: “Who will shoot the album cover? How many radio stations will play the single? How many posters should we print for the record stores?”

So even though no one had a clue what I was talking about, I wrote a proposal to create a “virtual cybertown in cyberspace.” It would be called Megadeth, Arizona—based on where the band lived and recorded their album.

My boss, Lou Mann, the Senior Vice President of the label, actually signed off on the proposal and gave me a whopping $30 grand.

He had no idea what it was for, and I can guarantee you… neither did I.

Back in 1994, the internet was still a wide open frontier. WebCrawler was the state of the art in search engines. It was able to index the complete text of every site on the web. Excite, the first real portal site, was just getting started. And the music industry had no concept of what was coming.

This is unconscionable.

Marriott International Inc. (MAR) was fined $600,000 by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission for blocking hotel customers from connecting to the Internet on personal Wi-Fi networks in order to force them to pay for the hotel’s network.

Marriott employees blocked mobile “hotspots” at the Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center in Nashville, Tennessee, while at the same time charging consumers, small businesses and exhibitors as much as $1,000 per device to access Marriott’s Wi-Fi network, the FCC said in a statement today.

Can you imagine staying in a hotel that blocked your cell phone or iPad from accessing the internet so you’d be forced to pay through the nose for the hotel’s exorbitantly priced WiFi package?

There’s a new strain of malware that specifically targets OS X.

Virus hunters have discovered a sophisticated botnet targeting Mac OS X computers and using a novel technique to operate. The malware has infected about 18,500 Macs, according to recent statistical analysis.

The Mac malware, called iWorm, uses a complex multi-purpose backdoor, through which criminals can issue commands that get the malicious program to carry out a wide range of instructions on the infected Macs.

According to researchers, the backdoor makes extensive use of encryption in its routes. It is capable of discovering what other software is installed on the infected machine and sending out information about it (operating system), opening a port on it, downloading additional files, relaying traffic, and sending a query to a web server to acquire the addresses of the C&C servers, essentially turning your Mac into a zombie.

To see if you are infected, go into the Finder and Select Go > Go to Folder…. When the Go to folder sheet appears, enter this folder name:

/Library/Application Support/JavaW

Now click the Go button. If the Finder tells you the folder can’t be found, you should be OK. If the folder is found, you are likely infected and should consider some anti-virus software or a trip to the Apple Store.

The linked article is definitely worth a read. [Hat Tip Stu Mark]

The GRAMMY Museum, based in Los Angeles, will be honoring Stevie Ray Vaughan’s birthday with FREE admission to its exhibits on October 3, 2014 from 11:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. PDT. In June, the museum unveiled Pride & Joy: The Texas Blues of Stevie Ray Vaughan, on display through July 2015. Jimmie Vaughan, Stevie’s brother, served as a guest curator.

Happy Birthday SRV. You were always one of my favorites.

I think Schmidt underestimates the intelligence of the general public. If you don’t buy a product, you are the product being sold.

The Guardian:

The Greater Tokyo Metropolitan Area, composed of four prefectures, became the world’s pre-eminent megalopolis – some 35 million people by 2010, or 27% of Japan’s total population. It isn’t unusual for commuters to spend two hours getting to work every day on trains that exceed 150% of capacity.

When I was in Tokyo, one of the things I wanted to see and take pictures of was the Shinkansen bullet train. It’s a shame we don’t have the population densities to make these trains possible here in North America.

Want China Times:

China’s “big three” telecom carriers — China Telecom, China Unicom, and China Mobile — recorded over 1 million preorders for the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus only six hours after they began accepting them for the new phone’s Oct. 10 debut.

Buyers have been able to place their preorders at operators’ online and brick-and-mortar stores as well as their subsidiaries. The total number of preorders could exceed 2 million if they included those sold through distributors such as Suning Appliance and D.Phone.

UPDATE: Benjamin Mayo at 9to5mac reports the number is now 4 million preorders.

Emergent is a real-time rumor tracker. The idea is to track rumors, like this one:

Claim: White House fence-jumper made it inside the main floor

Each claim is tagged as confirmed true, confirmed false, or unverified. An interesting experiment.

It’s part of a research project with the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University that focuses on how unverified information and rumor are reported in the media. It aims to develop and best practices for debunking misinformation.

You can read more about this research project here.

Yoni Heisler does an excellent job of demystifying Apple Pay. I wrote up a shorthand version of the post, made a bit of a hash of it, actually, but got some great feedback. This is an edited version of the original which, I hope is now correct. Thanks very much for the comments.

Here’s my [updated] take on how all this works.

In a nutshell, when you sign up for Apple Pay, your credit card info is encrypted and sent to the appropriate credit card network. The network verifies the card, then sends you back a token. The token is the key to the process. It is not generated mathematically, so there’s no way to reverse engineer it or decrypt it to get from the token back to the card number.

Imagine if you went into a restaurant and queued for a table. The attendant writes your name down, shuffles a deck of cards, and picks one at random. They write the card down next to your name and hand you the card. If you want to check on your table, you show the card to the attendant, they scan the list to find your card number, then tell you your place in line.

The Apple Pay token is sort of like that randomly generated playing card. It is unique and, though it is the same length as a card number and may share the last four digits, it is not derived from your card number. Once you have it, the token is stored in your device’s secure element. The secure element is part of the NFC system and has a level of hacking protection, becoming disabled after a predetermined number of invalid access attempts.

When you use Apple Pay, you must prove your identity to retrieve the token from the secure device. As far as I can tell, a PIN won’t cut it. You have to use Touch ID to verify a transaction. That’s key. If someone steals your phone, they won’t be able to use your credit card.

Once Apple Pay verifies your identity, NFC is used to send the token to the merchant, the merchant sends the token to merchant processor, on to the card processors (Visa, MC, Amex, etc.). They in turn match up the pseudo credit card token with your real credit card number and then send that off to your issuing bank for approval. The issuing bank looks you up in their list, processes the transaction with the credit card company and sends an OK back to the merchant. Take advantage of your credit card with the tips provided by https://creditrewardperks.com/las-vegas/.

If someone intercepts your token, they won’t be able to use it without cracking Touch ID. I suspect people will immediately get to work trying to do this. But even if they do, once the token is breached, Apple can send you a new one, invalidate the old one, and you don’t have to replace your credit card. Huge.

One more piece of the puzzle is the CVV and cryptogram that your Apple Pay device sends along with the token.

> But there’s a whole lot more to Apple Pay than Touch ID and the simple handing off of tokens. Providing an additional layer of security, an Apple Pay-equipped iPhone at the time of each transaction also sends a dynamically generated CVV up the chain along with a cryptogram. The CVV is the three-digit string located on the back of your credit card and, in the case of Apple Pay, is a algorithmically-generated dynamic string that’s tied directly to the token. The cryptogram itself “uniquely identifies the device” that created the token and, according to the EMV Payment Spec, is likely comprised of encrypted data sourced from the token, the device itself, and transaction data. Note, though, that the precise components of the Apple Pay cryptogram aren’t publicly known. > > The important thing to remember, though, is that the cryptogram is effectively a one-time use digital signature that verifies that the token in transit originated from the device being used. Additionally, the cryptogram includes pertinent transaction data such as the identity of the merchant and how much is being charged.

Thanks again to JEhrler for steering me right (or, at least, a little righter).

Washington Post:

When eight cans of nitrate film arrived at the Library of Congress in August, a staffer began a routine inspection to see what sort of physical condition the film was in. Without even watching the footage, she quickly noticed a headline screaming out from one of the newsreels: “SENATORS WIN WORLD SERIES,” it said. “40,000 frantic fans see American Leaguers take 12-inning deciding game, 4 to 3.”

And when archivists from the Library’s Packard Campus for Audio Visual Conservation watched the reel, they found nearly four minutes of footage from that 1924 World Series, footage that somehow had remained in nearly perfect condition for 90 years. Bucky Harris hitting a home run, Walter Johnson pitching four innings of scoreless relief, Muddy Ruel scoring the winning run, fans storming Griffith Stadium’s field: It was all there, and it was all glorious.

Fascinating to see how much, and how little, the game has changed since this was shot.

Macstories:

From a visual perspective, Tweetbot 3.5 looks and works the same, keeping the foundation that Tapbots introduced with Tweetbot 3 last year. The app hasn’t changed considerably – it has evolved in expected ways and within the limitations imposed by Twitter’s API for third-party apps.

Glad to see this update to my favourite iPhone Twitter client. Can’t wait for the updated iPad version, too.

The publication claims former PayPal president David Marcus was against the Samsung partnership as it would hinder future operations with Apple, but eBay CEO John Donahoe forced PayPal to accept. The dynamic just got more interesting with news today that PayPal will be spun off from eBay in 2015, possibly opening the door to policy changes and realigned alliances.

M O R O N S

Tom’s version doesn’t do much to change my mind.

In his first interview since joining Apple, industrial designer Marc Newson discusses his latest product – a domestic draft beer machine he says is the equivalent to a Nespresso coffee maker for beer lovers.

Sweet mother of God, I must have this!

After nearly six months of searching and deliberation, Apple appears to have settled on a successor to Katie Cotton, its former VP of worldwide corporate communications — and it’s not former White House Press Secretary Jay Carney. It’s Apple comms veteran Steve Dowling. Sources close to Apple tell Code/red that Dowling was tapped as interim head of public relations last week by CEO Tim Cook, who has been looking to put a friendlier, more approachable face on Apple’s public relations efforts.

Personally, I think this is the first step to Dowling getting the position full time.