The LA Times:

L.A. schools Supt. John Deasy suspended future use of a contract with Apple on Monday that was to provide iPads to all students in the nation’s second-largest school system amid mounting scrutiny of the $1-billion-plus effort.

The suspension comes days after disclosures that the superintendent and his top deputy had especially close ties to executives of Apple, maker of the iPad, and Pearson, the company that is providing the curriculum on the devices. And an internal report that examined the technology effort showed major problems with the process and the implementation.

Here’s how this unfolded.

Last week, a draft report of a district technology committee, obtained by The Times, was strongly critical of the bidding process.

Among the findings was that the initial rules for winning the contract appeared to be tailored to the products of the eventual winners — Apple and Pearson — rather than to demonstrated district needs. The report found that key changes to the bidding rules were made after most of the competition had been eliminated under the original specifications.

In addition, the report said that past comments or associations with vendors, including Deasy, created an appearance of conflict even if no ethics rules were violated.

Here’s a link to the memo from the LA Unified school district superintendent, Dr. John Deasy, to the various members of the Board of Education. From the memo:

This Informative is to advise the Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education of our decision to implement a new Request for Proposals (RFP) solicitation for personal computing devices before bringing future phases of the Common Core Technology Project (CCTP) for consideration for approval. Moving forward, we will no longer utilize our current contract with Apple Inc.

Not only will this decision to take advantage of an ever-changing marketplace and technology advances, it will also give us time to take into account concerns raised surrounding the CCTP and receive new information from the California Department of Education regarding assessments. We will incorporate the lessons learned from the original procurement process, including the first two phases and the laptop pilot. Specifically, we will be revisiting the criteria on which original specifications were based, as well as review vendor responses and student feedback to the laptop pilot. We expect our current contractor and their subcontractor to participate in the upcoming RFP.

That last sentence is key. This is a re-do of the procurement to avoid the appearance of impropriety, not a slap at Apple, or so it seems to me.

A California bill requiring all smartphones sold in the state to have antitheft technology installed was today signed into law by California governor Jerry Brown. Introduced in February, the SB-962 Smartphones bill, which mandates a “kill switch” for cellular devices, was initially approved by the California State Assembly in early August and passed a final vote in the California Senate shortly after.

I’m in favor of this.

Sony said on its PlayStation blog that its PlayStation network had been taken down by a denial of service-style attack, which overwhelmed the system with traffic, but did not intrude onto the network or access any of its 53 million users’ information.

The cheap worthless prizes that come with burger meals sure have changed from when I was a kid.

Unfortunately, there are designers who continue to do free work on the vague promise of “exposure,” “paying work later on,” and the client’s “rich friends” who will see your designs and “pay big fees” for your work.

The truth is, when you do free work, you have set your value and that client and his/her rich friends will also ask for free design work because you “did it for so-and-so.”

Nobody should be expected to work for free.

This is why we love Gruber. Fascinating.

This past Friday, SpaceX launched an unmanned, reusable Falcon 9R rocket (the successor to the Grasshopper) in McGregor, Texas. The rocket self-destructed shortly into its ascent.

From a SpaceX Twitter post:

During the flight, an anomaly was detected in the vehicle and the flight termination system automatically terminated the mission.

Throughout the test and subsequent flight termination, the vehicle remained in the designated flight area. There were no injuries or near injuries. An FAA representative was present at all times.

With research and development projects, detecting vehicle anomalies during the testing is the purpose of the program. Today’s test was particularly complex, pushing the limits of the vehicle further than any previous test. As is our practice, the company will be reviewing the flight record details to learn more about the performance of the vehicle prior to our next test.

Here’s one video of the launch. Riveting. Can’t help but be thankful this was an unmanned rocket.

Jean-Louis Gassée puts on his devil’s advocate robes and shares his thoughts on the Apple, IBM alliance announced last month. Lots to digest here.

Apple is a focused company, its financial statements tell the story: Its money is made in hardware. All other activities, such as the important contributions from the App Store, make up an ecosystem that support the hardware volumes and margins. Everyone in the company knows this.

A look at IBM’s latest quarterly report tells a much more complicated story. In its simplest analysis, the company consists of three main segments, each with its own P&L (Profit & Loss) numbers and, one assumes, its own goals, rewards and punishments, and fight for resources. It is, counterintuitively as the shadow of its former grandeur remains, a smaller business than Apple’s: $24.4B last quarter (-2% year-to-year) vs. $37.4B (+6%).

I don’t see this as counterintuitive. Apple is still on top of a breaking wave, and IBM is on the decline, casting about for a new wave to ride.

On alliances:

Alliances generally don’t work because there’s no one really in charge, no one has the power to mete out reward and punishment, to say no, to change course. Often, the partners in an alliance are seen as a bunch of losers clinging to each other with the hope that there’s safety in numbers. It’s a crude but, unfortunately, not inaccurate caricature.

An important point, but IBM and Apple playing in such diverse business sectors gives a lot of motivation to make this work without the need for a carrot and stick.

For Apple’s part, the iPhone and the iPad have gained increasingly wider acceptance with large Enterprise customers: “98% of Fortune 500 companies have rdeployed iOS devices and more than 90% of tablet activations in enterprise environments are iPads.” Of course, a few BYOD devices don’t constitute wholesale adoption inside a company. Apple doesn’t have the manpower and culture to come in, engineer, deploy, and maintain company-wide applications and fleets of devices. That’s IBM forte.

And that’s the strength of this deal.

I love Tim Hortons. When I think of Canada, Timmies is one of the first things that come to mind. I drink my coffee from a Tim Hortons cup every morning. Burger King? What?

Turns out, it’s a tax thing. By merging with Tim Hortons, Burger King becomes, in effect, a Canadian citizen:

The proposed deal would be structured as a so-called tax inversion transaction to move Burger King’s domicile out of the United States, and could come as soon as in the next few days, according to sources familiar with the discussions.

Feh.

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Quartz:

No one is talking about selling kittens and puppies at the meat counter, but for the group of bunny-loving pet owners protesting near the Whole Foods in Union Square, they might as well be. Fifty or so women and men of all ages carry signs, pass out flyers and pamphlets, and try to spread their message to passing Manhattanites. “Boycott Whole Foods,” they say, “because they’re killing rabbits.”

This may seem like a trivial fight involving a disproportionate amount of vitriol, but at its core it’s a debate that sheds light on the sometimes arbitrary categories we construct to make sense of the world.

I always find it fascinating what foods, meat in particular, we will and won’t eat and how dependent on our cultural constructs those decisions are. Personally, I love rabbit meat and when I was a kid in Nova Scotia, it was a staple of our diet. My Mom’s Rabbit Stew was spectacular.

Calgary Herald:

For Calgary’s husband-and-wife thespians Chris Ippolito and Karen MacKenzie, the Emmy-winning Christmas commercial for Apple is a gift that keeps on giving.

First, there was the fact that Ippolito and MacKenzie booked the high-profile, Edmonton-shot gig to begin with. It also gave 23 of their family members, including two-year-old daughter Clara-Anne, a chance to create some new yuletide memories after both clans were cast alongside them. It became an international sensation on TV and online, garnering millions of viewers. Then came the news last Sunday that the emotional ad, titled Misunderstood, had won a Creative Arts Emmy Award in Los Angeles.

I knew Apple had shot the ad in Canada but hadn’t realized it was such a “family affair”.

Apple:

Apple has determined that a very small percentage of iPhone 5 devices may suddenly experience shorter battery life or need to be charged more frequently. The affected iPhone 5 devices were sold between September 2012 and January 2013 and fall within a limited serial number range.

If your iPhone 5 is experiencing these symptoms and meets the eligibility requirements noted below, Apple will replace your iPhone 5 battery, free of charge.

I checked mine. It “passed”. How about your iPhone 5?

Macworld:

…as more and more schools are using iPads and laptops as part of the curriculum, teachers want students to be able to hear lessons and work on projects without disturbing each other. Still, it’s telling that headphones are in, and binder paper is largely out.

But after volunteering in my kids’ classrooms over the past three years, I can tell you that when it comes to children, not all headphones are created equal. The best headphones for adults are rarely the best models for kids, for a number of reasons

Not having kids, this is something I’ve never given any thought to. Good to see an article about this focused on the needs of little ones.

You have to respect the amount that went into this by Harry Roberts.

It’s amazing how much better the story looks when wrapping the text using a circle instead of just a square block.

I figured I’d post another perspective, this one from Tyler Hayes at Fast Company. He, um, didn’t like it so much.

Knight thought for a bit, then asked when the Chernobyl nuclear-plant disaster occurred. He had long ago lost the habit of marking time in months or years; this was just a news event he happened to remember. The nuclear meltdown took place in 1986, the same year, Knight said, he went to live in the woods. He was 20 years old at the time, not long out of high school. He was now 47, a middle-aged man.

I doubt he is the last hermit roaming the woods of America.

This graph shows the challenge that faces Android developers; over 18,000 distinct devices can immediately use their app, making optimization a real challenge. Compared to last year, fragmentation has risen by around 60%, with 11,868 devices seen last year compared to 18,796 this year. Compared to our first report, in 2012, device fragmentation has more than quadrupled – with our first report showing that there were ‘only’ 3,997 distinct Android devices. Another way of looking at how fragmentation affects developers is to see what % of the market is occupied by the top 10 devices – as developers generally only own a few devices to test on. Last year having the 10 most popular devices in the market would represent 21% of the devices out there, this year that number has fallen to 15% – making testing on a few devices less representative.

Some very interesting numbers from OpenSignal.

John Martellaro recently published his review of Amazon’s new phone and seems to like it. I haven’t even seen one of these in person, so I don’t have much to add either way.

Samsung did the ALS ice bucket challenge today with its phone, pitting it against the competition. Stay classy Samsung.

Vox:

Each year, you probably get a fat new yellow pages phone book delivered to your doorstep. It’s possible you also get the white pages either as a separate volume or combined as one book.

And if you’re like 70 percent of Americans, you probably don’t even open the phone book before the next year’s batch arrives.

For many of us, these are a giant PITA and just one more unwanted thing we need to deal with. Mine go straight into the recycling bin.

ZDNet:

If 6.4 million MacBook Airs sounds unimpressive for a full year’s sales, put it in perspective: Gartner estimates that only 22 million premium ultramobiles were sold in all of 2013. That gives Apple nearly 30 percent of this fast-growing market, which Gartner forecasts to grow by roughly 50 percent this year and more than 70 percent in 2015.

It’s also a profitable segment, with average selling prices of $1000 or more.

I plan on buying a MacBook Air once it gets the Retina display.

The Apple TV is showing up as ‘Unavailable for pickup’ at Apple Stores across the U.S., with multiple NY Apple Stores we called saying that in-store stocks had been exhausted by demand created by the promotion offering $25 iTunes credit with every purchase, along with that generated by the upcoming London iTunes festival as well as the recent Lollapalooza livestream.

iTunes Festival is incredible in so many ways for Apple and its customers. It looks like they may have underestimated demand this year though.

What a great story. Not a bad player to choose for your favorite either.