Columbia Journalism Review’s Chris Ip interviews John Siracusa, one of the industries most respected writers. John’s OS reviews are simply epic in length and detail, but it’s also nice to see what motivates Siracusa in his reviews.

Wired:

Using clever algorithm processing, Hyperlapse makes it easy to use your phone to create tracking shots and fast, time-lapse videos that look as if they’re shot by Scorsese or Michael Mann. What was once only possible with a Steadicam or a $15,000 tracking rig is now possible on your iPhone, for free. And that’s all thanks to some clever engineering and an elegantly pared-down interaction design.

I don’t know if Hyperlapse will encourage me to shoot more video but anything that can help the queasy-inducing shake of most handheld iPhone video is a good thing.

Trend Micro:

A survey of the top 50 free apps available for download in Google Play revealed that almost 80% of the samples had fake versions. These apps span a wide range of categories in Google Play, including Business, Media & Video, and Games.

Of roughly the top 10 apps in each category in Google Play, fake versions of the following were available:
• 100% of the apps categorized under Widgets, Media & Video, and Finance
• 90% of the apps categorized under Business, Music & Audio, and Weather
• Approximately 70% of the apps categorized under Games, Books and Reference, and Live Wallpapers

Typically, a fake version of an app is created by copying the .apk file and inserting code, with the possible goal of creating malware. While there are certainly knock-offs that have made their way onto Apple’s app store, there’s a review process to prevent this sort of malware factory.

Re/code:

The tablet is doomed. It was a fad. Who needs one, anyway?

At least that’s the conventional wisdom forming around the iPad and other tablets in the wake of some recent negative sales news. Apple’s iPad sales have been down in the last couple of quarters. Samsung says demand for its tablets has grown “sluggish.” Microsoft’s Surface tablet line has failed to take off.

Many commentators…argue that the tablet boom is over, and that their makers are out of ideas. Others say the tablet was supposed to replace the PC, but has failed to do so.

Maybe so. The recent sales troubles for big-name tablets are undeniable. But I think the conclusions that are being drawn from them are wrong.

I think the tablet is a terrific device.

I agree with Mossberg. I use my iPad dozens of times a day, even with a Macbook Pro within reach. And, when it comes to traveling, whether on public transit or a plane, I’m more likely to pull out the iPad than the MBP or even my iPhone.

Seattle Met:

Since the pumpkin spice latte’s inception 11 years ago, customers have ordered more than 200 million, each topped with whipped cream and a parting shake of spices. It arrives while the summer sun still beats down hot over most of the country, but a combination of masterful marketing and a fan base with the kind of obsession usually reserved for pop stars has transformed this drink into a national harbinger of fall.

Like the Mcdonald’s McRib, this is another one of those things that mystify me about the foods we eat and crave. Granted, I’ve never had a Pumpkin Spice Latte. I prefer my coffee to simply be coffee flavoured. But the excitement of so many for this drink’s arrival is fascinating. Is it marketing generated though?

Beloit College:

Students heading into their first year of college this year were generally born in 1996.

Among those who have never been alive in their lifetime are Tupac Shakur, JonBenet Ramsey, Carl Sagan, and Tiny Tim.

Do not read this story unless you want to feel old.

Marco Arment:

My criteria for this review is what someone seeking good headphones today probably wants:

Semi-portable, over-ear headphones — not pocketable, but should fit comfortably in a small bag; suitable for listening at your desk and bringing on an airplane, or maybe wearing outside

Closed-back design with at least moderate isolation

A straight, short cable with a 3-button clicker

The hard price cap is $400, but ideally, these should be under $300.

I’ve been thinking about new studio headphones so Marco’s review was of interest for the variety he tested if nothing else.

The Sound Blaster Roar is the epitome of audio quality, features and great looks combined into one device.

Musicality, accurate timbre, tonality, with deep, tight bass within a portable Bluetooth wireless speaker shouldn’t be a pipe dream. Creative Labs boasts of defying these laws of acoustic engineering with their Sound Blaster Roar.

Through their innovative acoustic chamber design with an impressive 5-driver speaker setup consisting of 2 amplifiers and 1 built-in subwoofer, the Roar proves that it is possible to have powerful, balanced, and well-defined sound with heart-thumping bass from a device no larger than a booklet. All this, without sacrificing battery performance.

Not just a wireless speaker, the Roar also comes integrated with a whole host of useful features:

• NFC-compatible
• Supports aptX and AAC high definition codec
• microSD MP3 Player
• Voice Recorder
• Speakerphone
• Bedtime Listening Mode
• 6000 mAh Li-ion battery with 8 hour battery life also doubles as a portable battery bank

The #1 Amazon bestselling Sound Blaster Roar has received consistent 5-star reviews on Amazon since its launch. Now available, at an attractive price of $149.99 via Creative.com and Amazon.com.

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.