Lots of new features in the latest version for iPhone and iPad.

They did a pretty incredible job putting this together.

I loved listening to this one.

Eugene Wei worked for Amazon from 1997-2004. The linked blog post explores Amazon’s push for revenue growth while forsaking profits, at least for the short term.

Does Amazon lose money on sales of some individual items? For sure. The first Kindle ebooks that were priced at $9.99 when Amazon had to pay more than that per copy to publisher were one example. Giant, heavy electronics items that Amazon sometimes ships for free when the shipping cost is clearly non-trivial and cost more than the usual thin margins on such goods are another.

But those represent a tiny fraction of the whole:

The vast vast majority of products Amazon sells it makes a profit on. Over time, more of these products that inadvertently sell at a loss will be corrected so that no longer happens, and what remains will be products Amazon intentionally uses as loss leaders.

And then there’s Marketplace sales:

The platform of Amazon is profitable, too. When other people sell products on Amazon Marketplace the gross margin is huge. I sell a used book on Amazon, it takes a cut of the transaction, I am the one packing and shipping that item to the buyer. You don’t have to be a financial whiz to understand the cost of that transaction to Amazon is minimal.

If Amazon tends to make money on the vast majority of its transactions, why doesn’t it generate boundless profits?

Because Amazon has boundless ambition. It wants to eat global retail.

Given that giant mission, Amazon has decided to continue to invest to arm itself for a much larger scale of business. If it were purely a software business, its fixed cost investments for this journey would be lower, but the amount of capital required to grow a business that has to ship millions of packages to customers all over the world quickly is something only a handful of companies in the world could even afford.

Fascinating read.

Yes please!

If Apple is going to make inroads into the console gaming space, this is an experience they will have to exceed. The Kinect voice recognition has gotten better than on the 360 (as you’d expect), and more solidly integrates with the OS.

Voice controls are now a system-level process that runs in the background while you’re using an app or game. You can call out, “Xbox, snap friends” while playing a game to bring up your friends list on the side of the screen, without even pausing. Then there are the handy app-specific shortcuts activated by voice commands. “Xbox, watch Comedy Central” let me jump straight to watching the channel even from another app, for instance.

This is certainly a step towards the magical computer/living room holy grail of integration. Just a step, since this is not a desktop experience. You won’t be editing documents or creating emails on your Xbox One. But definitely a solid step forward.

Aside from voice, the most significant system-level feature enabled by the Kinect is the ability of the Xbox One to log a user in automatically based only on their visuals. The first time you set up the system, it takes you through a 30-second process where you log in to your Microsoft account. Kinect then builds a personal profile it will associate with that account based on facial recognition but also the camera’s basic skeletal model of your body. This process forms a unique biometric ID that the Kinect uses to automatically identify a user, logging them in to Xbox Live and bringing up a personalized menu that includes their recent apps and favorite items.

Another step forward. Touch ID works well on a phone and is a solid security solution. But it is still an active solution (meaning you need to take an action to achieve your goal). The ability to walk up to your Xbox One and have it automatically log you in is a passive solution. Remains to be seen how secure this form of biometric profiling is, but not so sure security is as big a requirement in the living room, where you have more control over physical access than you do with your laptop or phone.

The process of unlocking your device based on some form of biometric has lots of room for improvement and is a real opportunity for the company that gets it right. There are keyless deadbolts for your front door that allow you to unlock your front door remotely via a Bluetooth signal from your phone. There’s an app that lets you knock on your phone to unlock your computer, also accomplished via Bluetooth (read the comments before you buy).

Point is, this is a wide-open, wildly innovative field. Apple has a real opportunity here. The living room is like the Wild West. Still untamed, still full of possibility.

In Issue 14 of The Loop Magazine:

Jim Dalrymple reviews the new iPad Air and and then looks at which iPad—the Air or the iPad mini—is right for you; Victor Agreda, Jr. discusses “Magic and Creativity”; Alex Vollmer explains everything about using Audiobus in “Get on the Audiobus”; and Roy J. Moss reveals “What They Don’t Tell You About Being A Sysadmin”.

All logos should have a death metal version.

I use these cabinets all the time. If you play guitar and record, you have to try these.

Federico Viticci:

With iOS 7, Apple has introduced the possibility for third-party developers to support custom shortcuts with external (Bluetooth) keyboards in their apps. Keyboard shortcuts, longtime favorites of OS X power users, can now be enabled in iOS apps.

Love lists. Always fascinating to see what other people think of as scary. To me, the scariest books are the early works of Clive Barker and almost anything by H. P. Lovecraft.

Designed by an MIT research team, the so-called “seat-e” is a public bench that provides a range of services:

Installed recently at the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway, each of these two sleek, backless benches has a solar panel on one side to provide power to recharge cellphones, a connection to the Internet, and for night lighting. Soon they also will have sensors to detect for air pollution — even telling whether someone nearby is smoking.

Love this.

Traditionally, if you brought your damaged iPhone in to an Apple Store for repair, they would have to give you a brand new (to you, at least) phone, then send your damaged phone out for repair or recycling.

According to 9to5 Mac (see the headline link), that process has changed for the iPhone 5c and 5s.

> Apple is gearing up to soon begin hardware repairs for the iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c in its chain of retail stores, according to sources with knowledge of the upcoming initiative. These sources say that Apple Stores will be able to replace several parts of the iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c on-site, meaning that Apple will no-longer need to fully replace iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c units with damage or other problems… > > The sources say that Apple will be providing its stores with special machinery, which you can learn more here on how to get it fixed when necessary, to replace the touchscreens on both the iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c. These machines will be used specifically to calibrate the displays. The screen replacements cost $149 for each device, and this price point is significantly more affordable than the several-hundred dollars required to completely replace a device with a damaged/cracked screen. > > In addition to displays, Apple will have the capability to replace the volume buttons, vibrating motor, rear-camera, and speaker system on the iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c. Apple Stores will be able to replace the conventional Home button on the iPhone 5c, but it does not appear that Apple will be able to conduct swaps for the Touch ID-based button on the iPhone 5s

This is good news all around. Better for the environment, and a potentially cheaper and faster path for an out of warranty problem with your phone.

This is the group that runs the Wayback Machine. As you’d expect, their data is all online, so the data loss was limited to documents that were in the scanning center. But they are a non-profit and the fire damage is substantial.

An early estimate shows we may have lost about $600,000 worth of high end digitization equipment, and we will need to repair or rebuild the scanning building. It is in difficult times like these that we turn to our community.

Here’s a link to the blog post describing the fire. Consider making a donation.

Some great tips here from Rich Tozzoli.

A pair of Google Inc employees involved with the internet company’s security systems have publicly lashed out at the National Security Agency, with one of the employees accusing the organization of subverting the law by intercepting communications on cables linking Google’s various data centers.

Many people have been concerned about the features removed from the latest version of iWork. Apple posted a support note detailing the features that will return in the next six months.

As Jim (and many others) reported yesterday, Apple has published a transparency document, detailing governmental requests seeking information about individual users or devices.

At the very end of the main body of the report are these two sentences:

Apple has never received an order under Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act. We would expect to challenge such an order if served on us.

As stated in the linked article, if Apple is ever served with a Section 215 order, they will not (unless they are granted some relief) be able to publicly discuss that fact. But, if Apple continues to publish transparency reports, the sentences quoted above will obviously be left out. A bit of a canary in a coal mine. Good move, Apple.

I will definitely get some use from this.

Dr. Karl Ulrich, Vice Dean of Innovation at the Wharton School, is an ice cream scoop collector. He turned his attention to designing the perfect scoop, and I think he got it right.

Twitter is about to go public. This is an easily digestible walkthrough of the IPO process.

Thoughtful analysis on the nature of Samsung’s smartphone sales.

In a meeting with its concerned investors on Wednesday, the head of Samsung Mobile revealed numbers illustrating that the company sold fewer high end smartphones than Apple this year, and that only about a third of the company’s total “smartphone” shipments are of a class really comparable to the iPhone.

This is a problem for Samsung. They are seeing the beginning of market saturation for their high-end smartphones, are relying on older/lesser model sales to bolster revenues. With minimal exceptions, all of Apple’s phone sales are high-end smartphones. And that’s where the margins are. Hard for Samsung to keep this going, especially without making inroads on battery life and processing power (still no 64-bit devices).

Lots to absorb, worth a read.

Wired:

Thor’s hammer Mjölnir would be the most badass weapon in comicdom even if its name didn’t sound like a Norwegian black metal band. But Marvel would have us believe that the hammer is also the god of thunder’s primary mode of transportation, and that is an unforgivable crime against the laws of physics. So we’re supposed to believe that he spins it, hurls it, and then hitches a ride on it? It’s like these people have never heard of the law of conservation of momentum!

By all means, watch the video but, and I’ve never said this before, make sure you read the comments section for the absolute nerd-gasm that is going on.

We believe that our customers have a right to understand how their personal information is handled, and we consider it our responsibility to provide them with the best privacy protections available. Apple has prepared this report on the requests we receive from governments seeking information about individual users or devices in the interest of transparency for our customers around the world.