Ken Segall:

We all know that things are different in the post-Steve Apple.However, there’s something about the current move to build an in-house marketing agency that’s really, really different. Unlike previous changes, this one isn’t driven by Tim Cook.

It comes from a new place, deeper inside the company — from those who long played a part in Steve Jobs’ marketing machine.

The industry and the press seem to be surprised by this development. To many others, it’s a wonder it didn’t happen sooner.

Some fascinating insights into what may be going on behind the scenes at Apple Marketing. Whether this works out for Apple in the long run will be very interesting to see.

Ifo Apple Store:

Employees of Apple’s retail stores in Australia have reached agreement with the company on a four-year contract that covers pay, benefits and working conditions, but retail observers say Apple’s offer was barely over the retail industry’s current averages, and includes just two percent annual raises.

When the agreement becomes effective this November 1st, starting pay for full-time Level 1 employees will be $20.95 per hour (all rates in U.S. dollars), and Level 2 will start at $25.26. Casual employees will receive 25 percent more per hour to offset fewer benefits. Level 3 employees are management, and will receive a base annual pay of $72,779.

It’s impossible to compare the new Australia pay rates to other regions or countries.

While that’s true and standards of living are different in different countries and cities, it certainly seems, on the face of it at least, that store employees in Australia can make a decent living.

iMore:

There are a lot of cool features coming to iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite this fall. One of the most hotly anticipated is Handoff, which enables you to pick up where you left off in an email, a document and other work between iOS and OS X devices. Handoff is elegantly choreographed dance between devices, operating systems and protocols. It’s partly dependent on Bluetooth 4.0, the most recent widespread deployment of the popular short-distance wireless communication protocol, which includes Bluetooth Low Energy (BT LE). So, how can you tell if your Mac is properly equipped to take advantage of it?

You can check for yourself if you’re not exactly sure which Mac model you have. It’s a little convoluted, so bear with me and follow these instructions to find out.

Sadly, mine isn’t “Handoff-compatible”.

The Globe and Mail:

In an unprecedented ruling, a B.C. court has ordered Google Inc. to block a group of websites from its worldwide search engine – a decision raising questions over how far one country’s courts can exert their power over the borderless Internet.

On the surface, it sounds utterly ridiculous but reading the judge’s reasoning, it makes a little bit of sense. It still likely will get overturned on appeal and might even be unenforceable.

Washington Post:

The United States Patent and Trademark Office has canceled the Washington Redskins trademark registration, calling the football team’s name “disparaging to Native Americans.”

The landmark case, which appeared before the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, was filed on behalf of five Native Americans. It was the second time such a case was filed.

Obviously, this case could have huge implications. It is expected that owner Dan Snyder will appeal the decision.

The ruling does not mean that the Redskins have to change the name of the team. It does affect whether the team and the NFL can make money from merchandising because it limits the team’s legal options when others use the logos and the name on T shirts, sweatshirts, beer glasses and license plate holders.

In addition, Native Americans have won at this stage before, in 1999. But the team and the NFL won an appeal to U.S. District Court in 2009. The court did not rule on the merits of the case, however, but threw it out, saying that the plaintiffs didn’t have standing to file it. The team is likely to make the same appeal this time. Team officials are expected to make a statement this morning.

From the team:

Bruce Allen, the team’s president and general manager, said as he walked off the practice field Wednesday: “When the statement comes out, you’ll get it.”

Asked whether the Redskins believe they can continue to use their team name under the circumstances, Allen said: “Did you read it?… We’re fine. We’re fine.”

New for 2014, Jackson commemorates 30 years of sonic mayhem with the 30th Anniversary Soloist. This master-built limited-run homage to the godfather of high-performance guitars is the perfect combination of past and present, with features that evoke the Soloist’s debut year of 1984 and contemporary Jackson design elements.

Hell yes!

“Apple is subject to the same tax laws as scores of other international companies doing business in Ireland,” the company said in a statement. “Apple pays every euro of every tax that we owe. Since the iPhone launched in 2007, our taxes in Ireland have increased tenfold. Apple is proud to have been doing business in Cork, Ireland, since 1980.”

Every country, state, province, and county in the world offers tax breaks to big companies in hopes they will open businesses in their area. All of the people complaining about Ireland would line up to offer Apple incentives to relocate to their towns. This is just silly.

There’s some great advice here.

Toontrack’s drum products are among my favorites.

I thought this was interesting, in part because of the politics of the Beats deal and the obvious connections with Samsung and Apple.

But I also find it interesting that Samsung finds it necessary to buy the likes of Jay-Z and Lebron James to build a connection to opinion makers. I can’t think of an instance where Apple has paid an opinion-maker to show themselves with an iPhone or iPad. Perhaps there are exceptions to this, but none spring to mind.

An agency sent Michael Arrington an email praising his “aesthetic and blogging style” and offering him the chance to spread the word on the new Internet Explore in a “cool visual way” with compensation clearly implied.

First off, really? You sent that to the founder of Tech Crunch?

Second, this happened already. You’d think they’d be better at stealthing this effort.

TripAdvisor:

For the second year in a row, Vancouver’s Stanley Park was named the World’s Best Park in the TripAdvisor Travelers’ Choice poll. It’s North America’s third-largest park and gets eight million visitors per year.

Similar to Central Park in the sense that it is an oasis (big enough to get lost in) in the middle of a major city, Stanley Park offers much more and in a wider variety than any city park I’ve ever been in.

I have two Slingbox devices that I use everyday. I wouldn’t trade them for anything.

When I first started reading this article, I though it was about using large type in the body of a website. As I read more, I realized it was about grabbing attention by using expressive type in different ways to direct users where you want them to go. A bit less interesting, but still a fascinating topic. As I looked at the examples, I realized that I don’t like the use of expressive type like this. Somehow I feel like it’s overkill and that the content should speak for itself. Obviously, it works and not all websites can be the same, but there’s something about the examples that rub me the wrong way.

Toronto Star:

The ocean’s apex predator does kill people, but we are much more devastating to sharks than they are to us. And now, conservation-minded scientists are learning more about what makes sharks tick.

I’ve swum with sharks in the Caribbean. An amazing experience.

American Journalism Review:

Brian Krebs, 41, of KrebsOnSecurity.com, sits at his Northern Virginia home office, showing me his daily routine. A shotgun in a case leans against the corner of the room. On his desk sit four busy computer monitors and two laptops. One of the monitors has video feeds from security cameras around his house; the others show a range of underground forums and websites that sell stolen personal information and credit cards.

It’s the home of a man who understands that a malicious intruder could come from anywhere.

Except for war zone journalists, Krebs may be the bravest journalist working today.

Ars Technica:

How long, exactly, do SSDs last?

It’s a difficult question to answer because estimating an SSD’s life requires taking a whole lot of factors into consideration—type and amount of NAND used in the drive, overall write amplification, read/write cycle, and more. TechReport…has been subjecting six drives to a long-term torture test to actually measure, rather than estimate, the drives’ service life.

The results are impressive: the consumer-grade SSDs tested all made it to at least 700TB of writes before failing.

The long term viability of SSDs has always been a concern so it’s good to see reports like this coming out that may put some of those to rest. The speed improvements of SSDs are definitely worth it.

Independent artists could disappear from YouTube “in a matter of days” after the Google video service confirmed it was dropping content from independent labels that have not signed up for its upcoming subscription music service.

Holy sweet shit.

Wired:

One year after the first revelations of Edward Snowden, cryptography has shifted from an obscure branch of computer science to an almost mainstream notion: It’s possible, user privacy groups and a growing industry of crypto-focused companies tell us, to encrypt everything from emails to IMs to a gif of a motorcycle jumping over a plane.

But it’s also possible to go a step closer toward true privacy online. Mere encryption hides the content of messages, but not who’s communicating. Use cryptographic anonymity tools to hide your identity, on the other hand, and network eavesdroppers may not even know where to find your communications, let alone snoop on them. “Hide in the network,” security guru Bruce Schneier made his first tip for evading the NSA. “The less obvious you are, the safer you are.”

I’m not nearly paranoid or worried enough to go through a lot of this effort but it’s still an interesting idea – what if you needed to be completely anonymous?

Another great article from Ben Thompson.

If it’s good, Facebook could take a significant share of this market. Many consumers will use this type of service simply because they use Facebook all the time, making it the default service.

This particular part of the bill would give the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration the ability to enforce a set of rules for navigation apps on smartphones, which many drivers find more convenient and less expensive than built-in navigation systems. These rules would be subject to change, and apps would have to comply as regulators see fit.

I’m not opposed to regulation and safety, but I’d really like to see something done about people texting while driving, instead of listening to turn-by-turn directions from a smartphone.

Farhad Manjoo:

For the better part of a month, I’ve been trying to replace the laptop that I use for my daily work, an Apple MacBook Pro, with Microsoft’s new tablet computer, the Surface Pro 3. I say “trying” because that’s what it has felt like; this is a machine that I’ve had to put a lot of work into adjusting to, in the hope that, at some point, I’d get used to it and see some kind of payoff.

Microsoft had an interesting idea with the Surface tablet, but I believe they failed to adequately build the infrastructure necessary to make the tablet successful. I have maintained from the beginning that desktop apps are not a good fit for a touchscreen device. I still believe that to be true.

Ever wondered how Amazon really works? The linked article gives you an insider’s look at all the moving pieces that work together to let you buy practically anything you’d ever want.

Shoppers take for granted that Amazon will have what they want. The only time they notice is when Amazon doesn’t. “The biggest failure you can have is not to have what they’re looking for,” says Scot Wingo, CEO of ChannelAdvisor, which makes cloud-based software for third-party sellers to analyze their sales and marketing campaigns on Amazon, eBay, Google, and elsewhere.

Starting in 2006, the rate of Amazon’s sales growth took off, an upswing Wingo credits to the launch of unlimited 2-day shipping through Amazon Prime the previous year alongside the rise of the company’s third-party marketplaces. The arrival of third-party sellers fueled an “explosion in selection,” Wingo says, that also gave Amazon a powerful way to hedge the risk of stocking products too far out along the long tail of marginal popularity. Instead of sinking its own money into inventory that might sit for 60 days, Amazon could let someone else fill in that gap.

Lest you think this is merely a puff piece:

Such power and speed can come at a grave price. Amazon is facing a federal investigation into the death of a worker at a Pennsylvania fulfillment center who was reportedly struck and pinned by a pallet jack she was operating. Much has also been written about how the unrelenting nature of Amazon’s fulfillment system can foster exploitive, sometimes hazardous working conditions that have become the target of at least one set of class-action lawsuits.

On the heels of Sunday’s passive aggressive Tim Cook profile (my take here, Jim’s take here), The Times posted a brief interview they did with Jony Ive that served as background material.

Jony Ive has the heart of a sculptor. He works with a variety of material, immersing himself, learning the various properties, then brings out the design hidden in the material.

Deep in the culture of Apple is this sense and understanding of design, developing and making. Form and the material and process – they are beautifully intertwined – completely connected. Unless we understand a certain material — metal or resin and plastic — understanding the processes that turn it from ore, for example – we can never develop and define form that’s appropriate.

There’s a strong sense of legacy, of values deeply entrenched in the Apple culture.

Steve established a set of values, and he established preoccupations and tones that are completely enduring – and he established those principles with a small team of people. I’ve been ridiculously lucky to be part of it. But Tim was very much part of that team – for that last 15 or 20 years.

Steve Jobs was the driving force that created this culture, but Tim and Jony, Craig and Phil, and the myriad talented folks who work with them, they carry this culture in their DNA, they bring these products to life, carry that legacy forward.

I find it terrifically interesting that the same player can kick two different balls in exactly the same way and have the two balls curve in different directions.

“The details of the flow of air around the ball are complicated, and in particular they depend on how rough the ball is,” says John Bush, a professor of applied mathematics at MIT and the author of a recently published article about the aerodynamics of soccer balls. “If the ball is perfectly smooth, it bends the wrong way.”

By the “wrong way,” Bush means that two otherwise similar balls struck precisely the same way, by the same player, can actually curve in opposite directions, depending on the surface of those balls. Sound surprising?

It’s all about the Magnus Effect.

This phenomenon was first described by Isaac Newton, who noticed that in tennis, topspin causes a ball to dip, while backspin flattens out its trajectory. A curveball in baseball is another example from sports: A pitcher throws the ball with especially tight topspin, or sidespin rotation, and the ball curves in the direction of the spin.

But it gets more complicated than that.

“The fact is that the Magnus Effect can change sign,” Bush says. “People don’t generally appreciate that fact.” Given an absolutely smooth ball, the direction of the curve may reverse: The same kicking motion will not produce a shot or pass curving in a right-to-left direction, but in a left-to-right direction.

Fascinating article.