Macworld:

With the death of the iPod classic, we witness the last of the original 5GB white iPod’s line. No more hard drive. No more squarish screen. No more wheel control.

And, no surprise.

True but there’s still nostalgia for the little thing.

The Verge:

The Apple Watch is amazing and boring at the same time.

After nearly two years of rumors, the Apple Watch has finally been unveiled.

Ignore the stupid words associated with this article but go look at the real world pics they have of the various watch faces and bands.

Apple has posted a page with a good overview of the four iPhone models and their specs. The pics are interesting and the iPhone 6 Plus seems huge.

Microsoft may be understandably peeved about this after committing to spend $400 million on an exclusive advertising and equipment deal with the NFL, but then the networks that cover the games aren’t under the league’s control. Educating their commentators may be as important to Microsoft as enlightening the rest of the world to the Surface’s advantages.

I disagree. These announcers are well educated. Watch the video below. They know an iPad-like device when they see one.

Pavan Rajam, writing about a potential iWatch and its place in your device ecosystem:

The smartphone is easily the most personal device we own today. It is our life in our pockets. It is our connection to the rest of the world. We take them with us and use them where ever we can.

Yet there is still a gap, there is still some friction. There are moments when we are without our phones. We can lose them. They can be stolen. On the less sinister side, we give them to other people to look at something, or to hold for us.

There is simply no guarantee that the person using a smartphone is the person to whom it belongs. That’s problematic when you look at use cases which benefit from stronger ties between a user’s identity and presence in the physical world. Use cases like health tracking, home automation, payments, and transitioning between devices. These use cases benefit from something better, something more omnipresent to the user than a smartphone.

This is an excellent point. A wearable is personal. While someone else might use your phone, there are far fewer cases where someone would use your wearable, which makes it the perfect sensor for gathering truly personal data (e.g., pulse, stride, glucose/insulin levels).

While a watch is a wearable, it is not the perfect wearable for all use cases. By its very nature, a watch’s shape is constrained to be of a shape, size, and weight to fit unobtrusively on your wrist. Google Glass is a wearable that serve a very different function, so its place is on your face.

One advantage of a watch as a wearable is that it occupies some very special real estate on your body. If you want to communicate, your wrist can quickly be extended as needed. For example, if your watch was part of a payment system, you can extend your wrist to bring it into contact with a payment terminal, much more easily than digging out your phone or glasses.

Quartz:

One of Apple’s most successful products—which rarely gets recognized as such—is made not of aluminum and glass, but of words and pictures. The Apple keynote is the tool the company uses a few times a year to unveil its other products to millions of people.

To understand their hidden structure, Quartz reviewed more than a dozen Apple keynotes, logging and analyzing key elements. Here’s what we found.

Those of us who have attended these events in person have often remarked on the similarities in structure and tone from one to the next.

Macworld:

When Star Walk launched it was one of those “only on the iPad” kind of apps. Since then many have used it as their digital window to space.

Vito Technologies, which built the original, is back with Star Walk 2. While it may not seem like there is much to improve on, the developers have taken the time to find enough enhancements and new features to justify an entirely new app.

Not only has Star Walk been my go to astronomy app, it was the app I always used to “show off” how cool the iPad was. I’ll be buying this version, too.

PDFpen Scan+ offers scanning and OCR from your iPhone and iPad. Scan directly from your iPhone or iPad camera. Batch scanning is quick with post-process image editing. Scan cropping is fast and precise. With the new PDFpen Scan+ 1.4, you can automatically upload scans to Dropbox or PDFpen’s iCloud storage. After OCR, preview the results, then copy the text for use elsewhere. Share your scanned PDF, with embedded OCR text, by email or to your favorite cloud service. PDFpen Scan+ works on both your iPhone and your iPad, and it’s available on the App Store.

Using cutting-edge techniques, Dr Louhelainen was able to extract 126-year-old DNA from the material and compare it to DNA from descendants of Eddowes and the suspect, with both proving a perfect match.

It’s hard to argue with DNA, but I’m sure there will be lots of explanations coming.

TiVo, arguably the Cadillac of DVRs with support for streaming media services, is getting ready to roll out a big rig. The TiVo Mega, slated to ship early next year, will pack 24TB of hard disk space—eight times the storage on the TiVo Roamio Pro, the current top-of-the-line model. Put another way, that’s enough to stash more than three year’s worth of standard-definition television on one DVR.

The price is around $5,000.

For our latest shoot-out we thought we would have some fun and put the Universal Audio 1176LN limiter versus the UAD 1176LN plug-in to see which one you prefer, or maybe if you can’t tell the difference.

I find this stuff fascinating, especially with a company like Universal Audio. They have made some of the best hardware for years, but they also take great pains in making the software indistinguishable from the hardware.

Today we are beginning to test a new way for you to discover and buy products on Twitter. For a small percentage of U.S. users (that will grow over time), some Tweets from our test partners will feature a “Buy” button, letting you buy directly from the Tweet.

I don’t have a problem with this. We want to cut down the amount of clicks we have to go through to purchase things, so if I can buy directly within the app, why not.

Amazon launched the phone July 25, and it was widely seen as a bit of a flop with slow usage growth, according to market research (Amazon hasn’t released any sales numbers).

Apparently his iPhone has escaped the ‘ceremonial burning’

Indeed.

Jean-Louis Gassée weighs in on the potential for Apple to introduce an iPhone 6 with some form of payment system tomorrow. At the heart of his essay is this:

Apple doesn’t want to displace the key players — the banks and credit card companies — any more now than they did a decade ago. Credit card companies, for example, play a hard-to-replace role in policing transactions. It’s not always pretty or convenient when one has to call a US number from Europe because the system “tripped” over an unusual transaction, but it works.

One can’t imagine Apple even thinking of storing and lending money, of trying to “capture a fraction of the flow”. If the company does introduce a near field payment system, it won’t be as an attempt to make money in itself, it will simply be another extension of the Apple ecosystem, another way to make iDevices more attractive.

The question at large: If Apple does introduce the ability to use a near field communication enabled iPhone 6 as part of a larger payment system, will a transaction fee be part of the model, or will the added value to the ecosystem be enough?

In other words, does Apple have to make money on each transaction, or is the selling point (and ecosystem lock-in) of the convenience of using your iPhone to pay at the checkout enough of a win?

Priceonomics:

Rock Paper Scissors has serious players, organizing leagues, and sponsored tournaments that draw hundreds to compete for cash prizes. In 2006, Bud Light sponsored a tournament and offered a $50,000 cash prize.

While RPS advocates are eager to validate it as a serious pursuit, they also intend to have a good time. That said, if during a tournament you try to throw some sort of fourth move like dynamite that beats rock, paper, and scissors, you’ll be asked to leave.

Leave it to Canadians to come up with competitive “Rock, Paper, Scissors” and tie it into drinking beer.

Stratechery:

Conspicuous consumption and status-seeking are major drivers of the Asian market in particular, and are why Asians make up over 50% of the luxury market by nationality. In the case of handbags, you absolutely are saying something with your selection: a Louis Vuitton bag is many people’s first luxury purchase, and shows you have some means; a Chanel bag, on the other hand, signifies you are at least upper middle class, maybe even rich.

At the top of the heap, though, is Hermès: sport a Birkin bag and there is no question as to your status.

While I don’t agree with all of his points, it’s a very instructive way to look at Apple and perhaps how and where they see their place in the market.

Writing for the LA Times, Chris O’Brien poses the question, are we as consumers ready for the iWatch?

Are we ready? I’m not entirely convinced that the answer is yes. I’ve tried many smartwatches and never found anything particularly compelling about them. I’ve played with a few mobile payment services and never felt like they offered a greater convenience than just whipping out a credit card. And I’ve never taken the plunge to use any of the various health monitor gadgets.

And that’s Apple’s strong suit. They are uncanny at judging our appetites as consumers, a craving that frequently can’t be explained by simple logic. Apple has a savant-like savviness at predicting just what we’ll respond to, and at what price point.

Then again, when I first saw the iPad back in January 2010, I didn’t feel particularly moved by it. It was only when I eventually bought one that I suddenly couldn’t remember how I’d managed without it. Just like I did with my first iPhone and iPod.

Exactly.

Reuters:

Apple has invited top fashion editors and bloggers in unprecedented numbers to its Tuesday launch gala, further evidence that the iPhone maker is preparing to take the wraps off a smartwatch.

“It confirms that they have a play in wearables and that they want to appeal to the fashion world, and not just technology consumers,” said Lauren Indvik, editor in chief for Fashionista and another first-time invitee.

The event next week gets more and more interesting every day.

Terminal is the Mac OS X command line tool that gives you access to unbridled destructive power (i.e., step carefully). You’ll find it in Applications / Utilities. If you are brand new to Terminal, here’s a very gentle intro.

If you use Terminal on a regular basis, take some time to dig into Craig Hockenberry’s fantastic Terminal tricks blog post. Some of these you’ll know, but some will likely be new to you. It’s deep, it’s long, and so well written. Pass this one along to your tech friends. [via iOS Dev Weekly]

This just makes it all so much more real.

Vanity Fair:

Designer Marc Newson is joining Apple as part of senior vice president of design Jonathan Ive’s team, the company told VF Daily on Friday.

Newson, who will continue to be based in the United Kingdom, will be an employee of Apple, and will be frequently traveling to the company’s Cupertino, California, headquarters. The industrial designer has had his work archived by MoMA, and has been commissioned by Ford, Nike, and Qantas Airways, among others.

Jonathan Ive you know. One of his best friends, Marc Newson, might not be quite as familiar a name to you but he is also a world-class designer.

Inc:

During my time in Australia, the relaxed lifestyle of the Aussies, Kiwis, and Europeans we met contrasted sharply with the “live to work” mentality so ingrained in American culture. To them, it isn’t about your place in life or how you make a living; it’s simply about living well.

Contrary to what many people think, this philosophy doesn’t have to clash with being ambitious. It just means making a fun, fulfilling life your first priority.

Living in Vancouver, I’ve met and known a lot of Australians and am always amazed at their wanderlust. There’s a lot of good advice in this column, particularly for those in college. Travel while you can.

In the case of Apple, the shareholders claim that Cook and others, including directors Al Gore and Bill Campbell, breached their fiduciary duty to the company and engaged in “waste of corporate assets.” They want the court to order Apple’s board to implement better governance measures, and for Cook and the other defendants to pay restitution to shareholders and to pay the shareholders’ legal bills.