Apple and China Mobile today announced they have entered into a multi-year agreement to bring iPhone to the world’s largest mobile network. As part of the agreement, iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c will be available from China Mobile’s expansive network of retail stores as well as Apple retail stores across mainland China beginning on Friday, January 17, 2014. iPhone 5s, the most forward-thinking smartphone in the world and iPhone 5c, the most colorful iPhone yet, will be available for pre-registration from China Mobile’s official website (www.10086.cn) and customer service hotline “10086” beginning on Wednesday, December 25, 2013.

China Mobile now has over 1.2 million 2G/GSM, 3G/TD-SCDMA, 4G/TD-LTE base stations and over 4.2 million Wi-Fi access points, providing broad coverage to quality networks for iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c customers. China Mobile is rolling out the world’s largest 4G network. By the end of 2013, China Mobile’s 4G services will be available in 16 cities including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen. By the end of 2014, China Mobile plans to complete the rollout of more than 500,000 4G base stations, which will cover more than 340 cities with 4G service. The collaboration between Apple and China Mobile will give a big boost to the development of China’s homegrown 4G/TD-LTE technology. iPhone on China Mobile supports major cellular network standards, making a global phone a reality for China Mobile customers.

This is a huge deal for Apple—this is the one people have been watching.

NBC World News:

Elf advocates have joined forces with environmentalists to urge the Icelandic Road and Coastal Commission and local authorities to abandon a highway project building a direct route from the Alftanes peninsula, where the president has a home, to the Reykjavik suburb of Gardabaer. They fear disturbing elf habitat and claim the area is particularly important because it contains an elf church.

It’s easy for some of us to dismiss this as silly but the story has a great quote in it from an Icelander. He says, “I got married in a church with a god just as invisible as the elves, so what might seem irrational is actually quite common.” So who are we to say Icelandic Elves don’t deserve protections?

Nasa:

In December of 1968, the crew of Apollo 8 became the first people to leave our home planet and travel to another body in space. But as crew members Frank Borman, James Lovell, and William Anders all later recalled, the most important thing they discovered was Earth.

It can be argued the picture, “Earthrise”, was the one photo that changed the earth the most. It expanded our understanding and concern for the planet we live on.

Simply incredible.

A week ago, Cuban-American artist Jorge Rodriguez-Gerada unveiled his latest public land-art project, “Wish,” as part of the Belfast Festival. “Wish” depicts a portrait of an anonymous girl spanning 11 acres of land that can only be seen from the highest points in Belfast or, for the best view, from an airplane. The face is formed from organic materials like sand, grass and soil, all of which were donated by local businesses.

This project took several years for Gerada to finish. He used satellite technology and manually placed 30,000 wooden pegs on the field, finally “drawing” the face with nearly 8 million pounds of soil, sand and rock.

Fascinating article on how your stolen credit or debit card info makes its way through the digital underground.

If you’ve used your debit or credit card at Target between November 27 and December 15, read this article. The most important takeaway:

Debit card holders: call your bank immediately. Debit card users should be especially vigilant. Credit card users won’t be out of pocket if they suffer fraud and contest the charges, but the opposite is true for debit card holders since fraudulent transactions may take their bank balance to zero.

Accordingly, Velasquez recommended that any debit card users who might have been Target breach victims immediately contact their card issuers and ask for advice. “Tell them you’re a victim of the Target breach,” she said. To help combat fraud, different institutions offer different options, such as putting passwords on accounts or changing PIN codes. “But alerting your specific financial institution is really the way to go, because they all have different rules,” she said.

The gaming world is a cesspit of maladjusted, comically aggressive, emotionally (and maybe actually) adolescent males who have a deep fear and distrust of women. The problematic gamers are, naturally, almost exclusively male – and no doubt skew towards the young side. No-one’s surprised by that. I’m not surprised.

I’m with Matt.

Interesting side effect when Apple shuts down iTunes Connect for the holidays: Apps that are discounted as of today (December 21) stay that same price until iTunes Connect reopens on December 28th. Follow the headline link for a good list of discounted apps. Head over to AppShopper.com for more. Be sure to click the “Price Drops” tab.

Happy Birthday CSS.

The Mac Pro is quite incredible. Watch the movie at the end of the article to see just how much power this machine has.

Yamaha Corporation and Line 6, Inc. today announced a definitive agreement for Yamaha to acquire Line 6, a leading manufacturer of innovative solutions for musicians. The acquisition expands Yamaha’s portfolio of modeling guitar processing products as well as pro-audio equipment, and offers new and exciting opportunities for accelerated growth for both companies.

Holy shit, that’s big news.

Great idea for a magazine on the iPhone. We are all photographers in some ways these days.

Nice little collection of apps at a discount.

Another fun marketing stunt and some pretty great friends.

Nice little Mac tip. In a nutshell, copy the URL to the clipboard, then click the downloads icon in the upper-right corner of any Safari window. When the download popup window appears, type command-V (or select Edit > Paste). The file to which the URL points will appear in the downloads list and start its merry way to your computer.

Nice. If this seems a bit confusing (or if you don’t see the download icon in your Safari window), follow the headline link for more step-by-step instructions.

David Pierce gives a nice little tour of Apple’s newest superstar.

It cuts a striking figure, despite its relatively small stature. It’s also incredibly dense, far heavier than I expected. Ten inches tall, 6 inches around, and about weighing in at around 11 pounds, it’s definitely meant to be held by its bottom instead of its top lip.

It’s astonishingly reflective — I can see the screen clearly, and anyone who walks by is immediately recognizable — and it picks up fingerprints really easily. But it’s beautiful, understated, and looks great on a desk next to the 4K Sharp monitor we’ve paired it with. It’s particularly good-looking with its case off, exposing the Mac Pro’s machinery, but the case is required to dissipate heat. You can’t even use the Mac Pro with it off.

With pictures and a video.

Universal Audio posted which of its products are compatible with the new Mac Pro. Sadly my UAD-2 Quad will not work even in a chassis.

Well, there’s no typical day, however there is a grab bag of techniques that many UX Designers rely on at various stages of a project.

Like many professionals these days, there are a lot of different things involved.

Lessonator is a tool for creating beautiful music slideshow presentations on your Mac. It’s like a mashup between Apple’s Keynote and Garageband, where each slide is an animated music score. Lessonator creates and plays interactive slideshows containing 3d instruments, audio, video, notation (standard & tabs), images, diagrams and text. These slideshows are interactive because they can animate, ask questions, receive answers and track your musical progress.

Very cool looking app and a great idea.

Charles Arthur talking about how people and businesses are replacing computers with iPads. And then there’s this little nugget:

For instance, the 2012 Greek bailout – the biggest in history, requiring the renegotiation of €146bn of bonds among 135 principal bond owners in just 30 days – was completed using iPads. A specialised visualisation app (written by a British company, Bondholder Communications Group) ran on the encrypted, 3G-connected tablets that banks were happy to allow on their premises – something they’d never have agreed to for Windows laptops, because of security fears about viruses. Because the iPads could be updated in real time, used while on the move, didn’t constantly need charging and the progress could be shown visually, the deal was done.

I wonder how the critics find bad news in that one.