“What was a complex environment with hundreds of phone types now has two: (Google) Android and Apple,” notes Thomas Noyes, former head of sales channels at Citigroup’s Global Consumer banking business who now heads Silicon Valley data-sharing firm Commerce Signals.
It’s the “complex environment” that Apple is so good at fixing. They’ve done it over and over again with products released in the past 15 years or so.
Today I Found Out:
Given that most have still heard of the Pony Express today, unlike so many other messaging companies long gone, you may think that the Pony Express was once an integral part of communication between the East and West in the United States. It turns out, this was never the case and the Pony Express was around only for an extremely short amount of time.
I love these stories of how things were done “in the old days”. One of my favourite non-fiction books is “American Road: The Story of an Epic Transcontinental Journey at the Dawn of the Motor Age” about the first US government sponsored cross country trip. Future President Eisenhower was a member of the group.
Today, Apple released an update to iCloud which gives Windows users early access to iCloud Drive. Ironically, Apple’s new cloud storage solution is not yet available on the public build of Mac OS X.
GODDAMNIT!
This is just great. Tim stops and chats with people, takes selfies and then opens the store.
I love the Scottish accent.
Apple:
Get started with these great free books.
Ten ebooks from Apple, ranging from crime fiction to comic books to Young Adult to classics. Thanks to Rob Griffiths for the link.
CARROT is a sadistic AI construct with one simple goal: to transform your flabby carcass into a Grade A specimen of the human race. She will do whatever it takes – including threatening, inspiring, ridiculing, and bribing you – to make this happen.
This really is a great app.
I always enjoy reading Shawn’s thoughts and reviews. I never really got the Kindle and still don’t.
Some have pointed out that password fields are excluded from using an alternative keyboard. This tells me that even Apple is a bit concerned about the consequences of logging key strokes. I’m not sure about everyone else, but I generally use a password to protect all of the other things I write with my keyboard. If every other keystroke is logged and transmitted to a server, my password becomes far less relevant.
This is worrisome.
Amazing that this still happens after all these years.
At Apple’s store on Fifth Avenue in New York, police officers put up barricades as the line stretched more than 10 blocks and the crowd cheered continuously for the 15 minutes before the phones officially went on sale.
Product Loyalty? Brilliant marketing? Whatever the cause, this is something that Microsoft and Samsung can only dream of.
This is a nice little collection of tidbits highlighting new functionality that comes with iOS 8.
One of my favorite additions that came with iOS 8 is Siri’s ability to pick out a tune. This is, presumably, a direct result of Apple’s new deal with Shazam.
To try it, press and hold the home button and say “Name that tune”. Siri will listen and will attempt to name the song you have playing. If the song is available in the iTunes Store, Siri will name the song and put up a “buy” button.
iOS 8 added a new feature called “Hey Siri”. If you are connected to power and have this feature turned on (Settings > General > Siri), your phone will go into a constant listening mode (which drains the battery, thus the requirement for power). If you say the magic words, “Hey Siri”, Siri will come to the foreground, ready for your command.
I played name that tune with Siri many, many times. If the song was carried in the iTunes Store, Siri got it right, 100% of the time. If the song was not available (very hard to find those, amazing how complete Apple’s catalog has gotten), Siri did not recognize it. Could be coincidence, not certain.
Joshua Brustein wrote an inflammatory piece for Businessweek, called Hey, Android Users, Don’t Buy the New iPhones. In a nutshell, the basic premise is this: Although the new iPhones are the best phones on the market and superior to the larger screen Android devices they are replacing, it’s just too hard to switch ecosystems, so stick with Android.
I struggled with a reply to this. And then I read John Gruber’s response on Daring Fireball. Spot on. Go read it.
Professional photographer Austin Mann teamed up with The Verge to field test the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus cameras in the Icelandic countryside. They took along an iPhone 5s for a side-by-side comparison. Brilliant work.
There’s a lot to enjoy here. For starters, Mann really pushes the cameras to the limit with some extreme low-light shooting. Good to know the iPhone 6 series cameras can handle such low light, and it does help showcase the difference between the 5s and 6 series cameras.
My favorite shot was the Focus Pixels test, towards the bottom of the page.
Focus Pixels are all about autofocus. They enable phase-detect focusing on the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, which makes switching subjects in your frame both smooth and fast. It works well in stills, helping you always keep your subjects in focus, but it’s most useful when you’re shooting video.
Words don’t do this justice. Watch the video. [via Matt Abras]
There are some great tips here. No. 1 is my favorite, mostly because I learned that one the hard way. You don’t have to—and shouldn’t—make everything louder in a mix.
Truly the end of an era. Wonder what Ellison will turn his attention to now.
A nice set of images from Abdel Ibahim—it’s hard to argue with the logic.
Tim Higgins for Bloomberg:
Apple Inc. (AAPL)’s newest iPhones are fueling a surge in trade-ins of Android-based smartphones, threatening to loosen Samsung Electronics Co. (005930)’s grip on the large-screen smartphone segment as users switch allegiances.
When Apple’s main product, featuring bigger displays and faster chips, goes on sale starting in Australia, they may be best remembered as the generation of iPhones that won over consumers from rival smartphones. Trade-ins of Samsung phones with smartphone reseller Gazelle Inc. tripled last week and about a quarter of potential iPhone 6 buyers are new to Apple’s ecosystem, according to RBC.
It should be interesting to see Samsung’s next quarterly results.
I absolutely love 1Password and have beta tested the new version for quite a while. The new extensions work great—it’s a must have app.
Microsoft gave notice to 2,100 employees on Thursday, 747 of those in the Seattle area, a company spokesman said. That is in addition to 13,000 laid off in July, which means a further 2,900 are set to be laid off over the next nine months or so.
I hate seeing people lose their jobs, especially when it’s caused by executive mismanagement.
Storehouse is a visual storytelling app that was previously only available for iPad, but now an iPhone version has been released. I love this app.
Apple statement:
We discovered a bug that prevents us from making HealthKit apps available on iOS 8 today. We’re working quickly to have the bug fixed in a software update and have HealthKit apps available by the end of the month.
I’m sympathetic, but Apple should never have allowed this to happen. This isn’t good.
All the ingredients are there. One person with an iPhone on the train to record the runner leaving and await his return, and a GoPro camera on the runner’s head to record the actual run. Loved this.
If you haven’t already, take a few minutes to step through Apple’s iOS 8 what’s new web site. Once you make your way through that main page, click on the icons at the top of the page to explore changes that came with Messages, Photos, etc., and topics like Continuity, Family Sharing, and QuickType.
iOS 8 is an incredibly rich upgrade. Stepping through these pages will give you a sense of the major new capabilities so you can take advantage of them.
When you upgrade to iOS 8, most of the options are ones you’ve seen with past upgrades. But one option, asking if you’d like to upgrade to iCloud Drive, is new, and the choice you make here matters.
When you upgrade to iOS 8, you need to ensure that you choose the right iCloud Drive option to ensure that Clear for iOS continues to sync with Clear for Mac (and any older devices that may use iCloud Documents and Data). If you upgrade to iCloud Drive, you will only be able to sync with devices running iOS 8 or OS X Yosemite. As OS X Yosemite is still pre-release (and not yet available) upgrading to iCloud Drive will prevent you from syncing with Clear for Mac until both OS X Yosemite is released and you upgrade to OS X Yosemite.
Bottom line, consider holding off on the upgrade if you store documents in iCloud, or use apps that do.
This is a beast of a review, lots to digest. To start things off:
“Huge for developers. Massive for everyone else.”
That was Apple’s tagline for iOS 8 when the software was announced at the company’s Worldwide Developers Conference back in June. Overuse of hyperbole is a pet peeve of mine, but after using iOS 8 for a couple of months, I have to say that they’re warranted in this case. iOS 7 was a comprehensive makeover for an operating system that needed to reclaim visual focus and consistency. iOS 7.1 improved stability and speed while addressing the new design’s worst shortcomings and most egregious excesses. And iOS 8 is the update that turns its attention from the way everything looks to the way it works.
What’s huge for developers is the fact that Apple has opened up much of the OS for customization.
Apple still holds the keys to many aspects of the iPhone and iPad user experience, but compared to past versions of the software iOS 8 represents an opening of floodgates. Don’t like Apple’s software keyboard? Replace it. Want sports scores and updates on your eBay auctions in your Notification Center? Here’s a widget, throw ’em in there. Want to use a social network or a cloud storage service that Apple hasn’t explicitly blessed and baked into the OS? Cool. Here are some APIs for that.
As you make your way through the various reviews, keep in mind that the best of iOS 8 is yet to come. As developers wrap their heads around what’s possible, clever bits of code that leverage your iOS experience will start to emerge. That’s when the true value of iOS 8 will become apparent.
In a nutshell, you now have the ability to restrict an app from accessing your location data while running in the background.
Apple:
I want to be absolutely clear that we have never worked with any government agency from any country to create a backdoor in any of our products or services. We have also never allowed access to our servers. And we never will.Our commitment to protecting your privacy comes from a deep respect for our customers. We know that your trust doesn’t come easy. That’s why we have and always will work as hard as we can to earn and keep it.
I await similar letters from every other company we trust with our data.
Last year Apple stripped iOS bare in order to redefine how we do things. This year they build atop everything that came before in order to redefine what we can do.
I always love reading Rene’s reviews.
I really like the new interface myself. You can update directly from your Apple TV by going to Settings. This is what it looks like now.
