Fast Company:

In January of 1984, Apple announced the Macintosh. Among the many things which made the launch memorable was the fact that the brand-new computer was accompanied by a brand-new magazine, IDG’s Macworld. Thanks to a deal hashed out by IDG’s David Bunnell and Apple’s Steve Jobs, the first issue debuted the same day that the Mac did, which means that there’s never been such a thing as a Mac market that wasn’t covered by Macworld.

Sadly, that long run is about to end.

The 800lb gorilla of Mac publishing just became a 4lb chihuahua. Sad day.

For those of you who want a copy of your own, Apple has posted the video of yesterday’s event on their Apple Keynotes podcast page.

HODINKEE:

I do not believe it poses any threat to haute horology manufactures, I do think the Apple Watch will be a big problem for low-priced quartz watches, and even some entry-level mechanical watches. In years to come, it could pose a larger threat to higher end brands, too. The reason? Apple got more details right on their watch than the vast majority of Swiss and Asian brands do with similarly priced watches, and those details add up to a really impressive piece of design. It offers so much more functionality than other digitals it’s almost embarrassing. But it’s not perfect, by any means. Read on to hear my thoughts on the Apple Watch, from the perspective of a watch guy.

Great perspective from “the other side of the fence” – how does the Apple Watch fit into the watch market? Thanks to Jared Earle for the link.

Bloomberg:

Apple Inc. will reap fees from banks when consumers use an iPhone in place of credit and debit cards for purchases, a deal that gives the handset maker a cut of the growing market for mobile payments, according to three people with knowledge of the arrangement.

Under deals reached with banks individually, Cupertino, California-based Apple will collect a fee for each transaction, said one of the people, who requested anonymity because terms aren’t public. While that gives the tech company a share of the more than $40 billion that banks generate annually from so-called swipe fees, lenders expect to benefit as consumers spend more of their money via mobile phones and other digital devices, the person said.

“The timing is right with customer behavior, the customer experience is right, and elements have come together around how the ecosystem is evolving for this to be a game changer,” Gavin Michael, JPMorgan’s digital chief, said in an interview. “We’ve seen — certainly in our customer base — a drive to the mobile channel.”

Game changer, indeed.

Sprint is certainly aggressive.

Streaming Media:

Apple’s live stream of the unveiling of the iPhone 6 and Watch was a disaster today right from the start, with many users like myself having problems trying to watch the event. While at first I assumed it must be a capacity issue pertaining to Akamai, a deeper look at the code on Apple’s page and some other elements from the event shows that decisions made by Apple pertaining to their website, and problems with how they setup storage on Amazon’s S3 service, contributed the biggest problems to the event.

Interesting take on the utter disaster that was the streaming video of this morning’s event.

Ars Technica:

Apple has officially announced a release date for iOS 8, the latest version of the operating system that powers iPhones, iPads, and iPod touches. The new software launches on September 17, and as we’ve written before it will be available on the iPhone 4S, 5, 5C, and 5S; the iPad 2, both Retina iPads, the iPad Air, and both iPad minis; the fifth-generation iPod touch; and all revisions of the third-generation Apple TV.

This was almost lost among the news of all the other cool things Apple announced today.

TidBITS:

With Apple Pay, Apple’s self-described mission is to replace your wallet, enabling you to pay a bill by holding an iPhone 6 or 6 Plus, or the forthcoming Apple Watch, up to a payment sensor. No more fumbling with credit cards and signing receipts, or worrying about having enough cash. In theory, at least, Apple Pay both improves the payment experience and brings new levels of security and privacy to credit card payments.

Adam makes a very good point about wallets, too. This won’t replace it for most of us because we need to carry around other cards as well. But it’s a step towards an interesting future.

My question has always been, is using a credit card really all that difficult for most people that they need and want this kind of replacement?

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?