Bryan Chaffin:

the NCPPR representative asked Mr. Cook to commit right then and there to doing only those things that were profitable.

What ensued was the only time I can recall seeing Tim Cook angry, and he categorically rejected the worldview behind the NCPPR’s advocacy. He said that there are many things Apple does because they are right and just, and that a return on investment (ROI) was not the primary consideration on such issues.

“When we work on making our devices accessible by the blind,” he said, “I don’t consider the bloody ROI.” He said that the same thing about environmental issues, worker safety, and other areas where Apple is a leader.

Cheers Tim.

Forbes:

If you’re one of the 1.14 million followers of the @HistoryInPics Twitter account, which posts delightfully obscure pictures of historical subjects and events, you may have asked yourself, “Are they making any money off this?”

The answer is yes. Quite a bit of money.

Is this one of those ideas you think, “Wow! I wish I had thought of this!” or do you bemoan the “watering down” of Twitter?

Sports Illustrated:

The NFL locker room is the ultimate boys club. Yes, we talk about horrendously inappropriate things. Yes, we make fun of each other. And yes, we have a tendency to take pranks a bit too far. But at the end of the day, this is not a normal job.

Interesting point of view from a guy in the room. I only played high school football but there are still faint shadows of the locker room he describes.

clutter:

Allow me to summarize what it means when a company wants to handle all disputes in arbitration:

No matter what they do (delete your data, privacy breach, overcharging, whatever), you don’t get to sue. Instead, THEY get to choose the arbitrator according to whatever criteria they want, and thus any dispute is decided by someone they’re paying.

Also, you can’t join a class-action suit against them.

Like the writer, I love Dropbox but I’m also recommending you go do this right now.

Ars Technica:

If you’ve been thinking about buying an Apple TV, Apple is trying to sweeten the deal for the next few days. Between now and March 5, anyone who buys an Apple TV in one of Apple’s stores or on its online store will get a $25 iTunes gift card with their purchase.

Anyone think this is a clearing out of stock ahead of a product refresh?

“Stripped”: The comics documentary:

Stripped is a full-length documentary on the world’s best cartoonists, featuring the first-ever recorded interview with Bill Watterson. The film explores the art of the comics strip, the cartoonists behind your favorite strips, and where the art form goes as newspapers die.

The trailer for this film looks really interesting if only for the different viewpoints of the traditional newspaper cartoonists vs the online ones.

Today is Apple’s annual shareholder meeting.

One of the orders of business at this meeting is voting to approve or reject both proposals from Apple’s management and from shareholders. Bloomberg‘s Jon Erlichman reports that shareholders have rejected every proposal created by other shareholders while all proposals from Apple management have been approved.

The rejected shareholder proposals cover a Board Committee for Human Rights, Carl Icahn’s infamous (and recently withdrawn) share repurchase proposal, Proxy Access for Shareholders, and a report related to Company Membership and Involvement with Certain Trade Associations and Business Organizations.

Tim Cook reported that Apple made $1 billion in revenue from Apple TV hardware and content sales.

This number led Cook to say “it’s a little more difficult to call it a hobby these days.”

Presumably, that’s a reference to Steve Jobs’ famous 2010 comment about Apple TV being a hobby because there is no viable market.

Cook also said that 40 billion iMessages are sent each day and that 15 to 20 million FaceTime video calls are conducted each day.

Cook said research and development spending up 32% year-over-year, Apple is putting its money “where its mouth is.” Cook added that Apple bought 23 companies over the last 16 months and that Apple is not opposed to buying a bigger company if it is the “right fit.” Cook also talked about opportunities in new emerging markets. Cook also said that Apple would have an announcement regarding its share buyback program within 60 days.

NPR:

One 16-inch pizza has roughly the same area as 1.3 14-inch pizzas or 4 8-inch pizzas.

To get the same amount of pizza you get in a 16-inch pizza, you’d have to spend an extra $2.35 on 14-inch pizzas, or an extra $16.41 on 8-inch pizzas.

I always get the Large pizza if only because I’m a pig. Nice to know I’m getting better value to boot.

Digg:

You know that Meryl Streep is the queen of the Oscars, but do you know which fictional character has earned the most nominations? We’ll give you a hint, he was a king. We’ve put together this handy little guide because, let’s face it, even if you’re watching from home in sweatpants, spouting off weird trivia makes everyone feel like a winner.

I’m a huge Oscars fan (I’m tangentially related to an Oscar winner) and love these kinds of minutia stories that always pop up in the days ahead of the broadcast.

There are some great examples of using these new plugs with your Apollo.

I found this interesting. In the last few years, web sites started trending toward a single scrolling page, broken up into “page panes”. One continuous page, with stops along the way, usually with each logical page featuring a unique background or floating background image.

That concept has now evolved a bit further, with logical pages featuring scrolling animations that keep you on the page, walk your eyes through the page’s elements.

Here’s a link to a terrific example of both. Note that the scrolling will come to life only on a desktop, not on your phone. Not sure if this is intentional or a flaw, but worth taking a minute to view this in your desktop browser.

The rulings are a blow to Munich-based patent holding company IPCom which has sued mobile-device makers over technology it acquired from Robert Bosch GmbH in 2007. The “100” series patents, which also apply to methods helping to place emergency calls, are the central piece of its portfolio.

IPCom, which doesn’t make any products, is one of a group of firms that license its patents and file lawsuits to generate revenue, earning the moniker “patent trolls” from its targets. Apple was among 19 companies and associations that petitioned the European Union in a letter this week to weaken the ability of non-manufacturers to win injunctions in intellectual-property cases.

“IPCom’s story has come to an end” with the ruling, said Martin Chakraborty, HTC’s attorney.

I love the phrase “IPCom, which doesn’t make any products”. Goes to the heart of the definition of a patent troll.

Yesterday, Jim posted about some comments made by Google’s Android head Sundar Pichai. There has been a lot of discussion about those comments and what Pichai meant to say about the safeness of Android.

Whatever his intention, the linked article, to me, reflects a less biased point of view.

Kaspersky Lab’s report on the evolution of threats targeting smartphones, tablets, and other mobile devices in 2012 was published in February 2013. Our data shows that in 2012 Android became the number-one target among virus writers, and that the number of threats over the course of the year grew steadily. Has this upswing in the number of mobile threats continued in 2013 so far? Indeed it has.

Follow the link for the details, but this sentence sums things up quite well:

A total of 99.9% of new mobile threat detections target the Android platform.

I love the simplicity of this idea.

The team consulted emergency workers from the Haiti and Fukushima disasters and developed a “victim app” and a “seeker app”. “They wanted it simple, unencrypted and smart,” says Al-Akkad.That meant avoiding known problems like low-power, low-range Bluetooth radio links, which often fail to connect – or “pair” – with each other amid the clutter of metallic debris in broken buildings. So they stuck to the much more robust and receivable Wi-Fi radio.

With the victim app a trapped person can write a 27-character message such as “broken leg stuck in bank” or “need help fire on 4th floor” and a seeker app up to 100 metres away can pick it up. The app found two “trapped” people in a large-scale, simulated terrorist attack at a seaside chemical plant in Stavanger, Norway – an exercise organised by the Norway-based research organisation Sintef.

This is the kind of thing that should just ship on every phone.

Three South African investigators are racing against the clock to secure crucial information from Oscar Pistorius’ iPhone 5 before his trial starts on Monday.

The detectives have flown to Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, California to request help in unlocking the iPhone’s passcode, as prosecutors want to access its SMS and WhatsApp messages as evidence for the trial.

Sure seems like they waited ’til the last possible minute for this.

Oy.

CNN:

A lot of consideration goes into designing a font, but somehow we’re all able generally to accept the typefaces around us, ignoring their subtle design quirks as though they’re as ordinary as air. We read their content but don’t think too much about their form.

One of the people responsible for the popular use of Helvetica, Mike Parker, died Sunday at age 84.

Now would be a good time to watch the 2007 documentary “Helvetica.”

You are being watched.

Film School Rejects:

The “In Memoriam” segment (of the Oscar telecast) is always a must-watch portion of the show, even if its biggest draw isn’t always a desire to honor the deceased talents of Hollywood, it’s to see who leads off and ends the piece, who was left off, and who you totally forgot passed away this year.

But how does one actually land on the list? Not surprisingly, it involves a paper trail, voting, and plenty of hurt feelings.

As expected, the first requirement is “Be dead”.

code:deck:

code:deck is a standard playing card deck sporting a stylish modern design. Each individual card features a code excerpt describing it in one of many programming languages.

Ever heard someone described as a “card carrying geek”? Well now, you can be a card playing geek.

For my part, I have no clue how the code relates to the card it is on.

The Atlantic:

The time that ends up on your smartphone—and that synchronizes GPS, military operations, financial transactions, and internet communications—originates in a set of atomic clocks on the grounds of the U.S. Naval Observatory. Dr. Demetrios Matsakis, Chief Scientist for USNO’s Time Services, gives a video tour.

A little dry (and oddly shot/edited) but still an interesting overview of “the nation’s time keeping”.

This is a fair question. Why did Al Franken write this letter to Tim Cook, but not a peep from him to Samsung? Samsung has clearly bitten off a much larger piece of security exposure with their approach. I smell unfair treatment.

Good job by Yoni Heisler.

Wired.com:

We need to consider the consequences of this latest batch of apps and tools that remind us to contact significant others, boost our willpower, provide us with moral guidance, and encourage us to be civil. Taken together, we’re observing the emergence of tech that doesn’t just augment our intellect and lives — but is now beginning to automate and outsource our humanity.

Leaving aside the juvenile frat boy “bro” word, the app they talk about (which I’m really hoping is a parody app) is offensive because being in an adult relationship means committing to it – not outsourcing it to some app.

Nikon Rumors:

Nikon published a new technical service advisory where they announced a free cleaning and free shutter replacement for all D600 owners, even those with expired warranty. You can send your camera even if you do not have a problem.

If you have an affected D600, go to the Nikon site and schedule your free service. If your D600 isn’t exhibiting any of the (sadly common) dust/oil issues (mine isn’t), hold off on scheduling the service until the first mad rush is over but make sure you definitely do it some time in the next three to six months.