Unapologetic

iOS 8.1.1 is out for the public. I've been using it since it entered beta and it's really solid. If you've been experiencing the nasty iCloud bug that causes some apps to crash on launch, this fixes that. Share menus will also now remember when you move extension icons around, so you can reorder them and they won't change back when you exit the menu.

The only issue I've seen is that my iPad has experienced a few crashes when I enter multitasking. The kind of crashes that were rampant in iOS 7 and which I have not seen at all since iOS 8. Hopefully they'll get that taken care of in the next update, but regardless, it's only occurred a few times for me.

Marco Arment:

Did you hear? Podcasts were dead, and now they’re back!

This story is suddenly everywhere. It’s not extremely accurate, but I’ll take it.

Last week, Ustwo, the developers behind Monument Valley, came out with an update that included new levels, but the levels were only available after a $2 in-app purchase. In response, lots of angry people bombarded Monument Valley with 1-star reviews on the App Store, complaining that the new levels weren't free.

I agree with the counter-outrage against these people. The idea that such a great game which takes so much work to make levels for can't then charge money for new levels is ridiculous. That said, Jason Snell has a good take on the subject, with a different perspective:

I think one can believe that people writing punitive one-star reviews of Monument Valley are acting like entitled babies while also pondering whether this entire situation could have been handled differently.

The new levels, by the way, are fantastic. If you don't already own Monument Valley, you should purchase it immediately. If you do, the Forgotten Shores expansion is well worth $2 more.

Kurt Wagner, writing for Recode:

Facebook is cracking down on brands trying to share ad-style content with their followers, unless, of course, they pay for it.

Facebook says the move is intended to create a better News Feed experience for users who don’t want to see ad-like posts from brands on top of the ads Facebook already shows you. But it’s likely going to anger brands in the process, many of whom spent years building up a following for this very purpose. Why would Coca-Cola pay Facebook to promote one of its posts when it already has 90 million users following its updates?

[...]

Facebook is essentially changing the game for advertisers, who were originally encouraged to build up their “Like” totals on brand Pages so they could share content without needing to pay for reach. Many brands actually paid Facebook for “Page Like” ads over the years, which exist specifically to build up these very audiences.

Now, Facebook is saying that building up an audience — whether you paid for it or not — doesn’t mean you can share ad-style content for free.

Normally I would be happy about anything that's going to decrease ads on my timeline, but in this case I'm on the other side of the fence. The ads Facebook is now disallowing are the only ads which users have actually opted into. By liking a brand's page on Facebook, users are expressly saying that they want to see the content, including ads, from those brands. That's an extremely valuable opportunity for brands with large followings, which is exactly why Facebook is moving to shut it down.

If Coca-Cola, to continue using Wagner's example, wants to advertise on Facebook, their ads are far more likely to result in purchases if they are sent to people who have already expressed some amount of interest in the company. Of course it is also useful for Coca-Cola to pay for ads so they can reach people who have not already made it clear that they buy Coke products, but if paying were the only way they could advertise I bet they would pay a lot more.

Looking beyond giant companies like Coke though, what about the small businesses that cannot afford to pay huge sums for Facebook ads? Until now they could get at least some advertising for free by sending it out to people who have liked their page, but now Facebook has the power to block these posts if they seem too much like real advertisements. (On that note, how does Facebook decide what is an ad and what isn't? Seems like most things companies post could be construed as ads.)

This move just seems like another money grab from Facebook. They don't care about users, they don't care about companies. They might be disguising this as trying to look out for users by inserting less ads in their timelines, but really they're just taking away the last bit of choice that users have in what ads are thrown in their faces.

Seth Fiegerman, writing for Mashable:

During the company's first Analyst Day event in San Francisco, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo revealed plans to reduce the friction of onboarding new users by introducing an “instant timeline” feature that would make it easier for users to discover content on the social network right away, without having to go through the trouble of finding accounts to follow.

“We believe that anyone should be able to come to Twitter and immediately feel deeply immersed in that world,” Costolo said during his remarks at the event.

Costolo also announced plans to roll out “significant functionality” to private messages — or direct messages (DMs) — later this quarter. The move is presumably an effort to help Twitter catch up to and take advantage of the tremendous growth in messaging applications worldwide.

Beyond that, Costolo noted that Twitter does intend to introduce more standalone mobile applications in addition to Twitter and Vine.

I think all of these are great ideas. My favorite thing about Twitter is the ability to craft my timeline in exactly the way that I want, but when I first started out it was definitely difficult for me to find people I was interested in to follow. I think this is a huge barrier to entry for Twitter, and if they can implement this “instant timeline” effectively then it would open the door to millions more people to jump right into the service. I imagine they would do it by having new users select some subjects they are interested in during the signup process, then building a timeline around those interests.

To Costolo's second point, DMs could definitely use some added functionality. They've been barebones for too long, I would love to see the sending of links reenabled, as well as the character limit increased. There's really no reason to restrict private messages to 140 characters.

As for new standalone applications, I'm optimistic, but weary. Vine was fantastic, but #Music was junk. Hopefully whatever new apps they're working on will be as innovative and well implemented as the former.

The New York Times:

The Rosetta spacecraft’s Philae lander has touched down on the surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

Bravo. This is the kind of event that the entire human race can be proud of. Amazing to be a part of that.

NPR:

At the heart of this new clock is the element strontium. Inside a small chamber, the strontium atoms are suspended in a lattice of crisscrossing laser beams. Researchers then give them a little ping, like ringing a bell. The strontium vibrates at an incredibly fast frequency. It's a natural atomic metronome ticking out teeny, teeny fractions of a second.

[...]

But this new clock has run into a big problem: This thing we call time doesn't tick at the same rate everywhere in the universe. Or even on our planet.

Right now, on the top of Mount Everest, time is passing just a little bit faster than it is in Death Valley. That's because speed at which time passes depends on the strength of gravity.

Well my mind is blown.

The Verge:

Apple has quietly released a new tool to make switching between iOS and other smartphones a bit easier. The new web tool lets you instantly deregister your phone number from Apple's iMessage system. The site, first spotted by a poster on Reddit, should solve the problem of disappearing text messages.

Finally Apple has a concrete solution for the “iMessage Purgatory” bug. This has taken far too long, but better late than never.

_David Smith:

So this morning I’ve been re-reading all the official, published information I can find about Apple Watch. While reading through it I noticed that Apple had actually been pretty clear about what developers can expect with the rollout of WatchKit. This has helped temper my expectations and make me more realistic about what will be possible to build at launch.

Apple has said we can expect for there to be a two-phase rollout of the WatchKit APIs. The most concrete exposition of this is the Press Release announcing the Apple Watch (emphasis mine).

Apple introduces WatchKit, providing new tools and APIs for developers to create unique experiences designed for the wrist. With Apple Watch, developers can create WatchKit apps with actionable notifications and Glances that provide timely information. Starting later next year, developers will be able to create fully native apps for Apple Watch.

So to start with we will be given the ability to implement actionable notifications and Glances. This is what I believe we are getting with the SDK release this month.

It will only be later next year that full apps will be possible. It is not a stretch to think that later next year is code for WWDC next June. Likely along with WatchOS (or whatever they call it) version 2.0.

I'm happy about this. I was concerned as to how developers were going to be able to build quality apps for the Watch when they had yet to get a chance to actually wear it on their wrists for a while. It takes experience with a device to be able to know what kind of apps and capabilities are needed, and those that are not.

Bloomberg:

Aereo Inc. says it’s firing employees in Boston and New York to help preserve resources, four months after the online TV-streaming service was dealt what may be a fatal blow by the U.S. Supreme Court.

I was hoping Aereo would pull through somehow, particularly with the FCC on the verge of evening the playing field between internet, cable, and satellite TV. Maybe these layoffs are needed to keep the company afloat while it awaits that ruling, but either way, things aren't looking too bright. Even if the rule change does go through, and does give Aereo a new opportunity, they'll now have a lot to rebuild before moving forward.

Microsoft just can't catch a break with these surface campaigns.

Finally got around to making a few updates to Unapologetic that I've been procrastinating for months.

First, updated the About page which has been very out of date for quite some time. The old About page was extremely long and detailed, which I decided that was unnecessary. Now it's short and sweet and just gives some details on myself, the site's design, and a rundown of the tools I use to work on it.

Secondly, and likely most importantly, I finally got around to looking into why my RSS feed has never worked on a few feed aggregation services (most prominently: Feedly). I believe I found the root of my problem and fixed it, so if anyone has been unable to subscribe over RSS, I'd appreciate it if you gave it another try to see if I've fixed the issue.

If you hadn't noticed, I also created an Archive page a few weeks ago, so the site should be loading a bit faster since the home index.html is a significantly smaller file now.

With those big tasks off my list, the next thing I'll eventually get around to is making the RSS feed a full content feed and setting things up to move files to the Archive automatically (right now I'm just moving them over manually whenever I decide there's too many). I also want to do some more work on the Archive page, because its current implementation was thrown together in about 20 minutes. Finally, I am eventually planning on adding search to the site, and that one is by far the most daunting.

I'm not giving a release date for those features because I barely have time to even write on the site at the moment (▼)(▲)College is extremely time consuming this semester (my physics and discrete sctructures classes are terrible and take nearly all my free time each week). I'm hoping for a respite and more time for Unapologetic and other projects during the spring semester, where I've tried to put together an easier schedule., but they'll come eventually.

Great article by Casey Newton on Tim Cook's coming out earlier this week:

There was a time when I struggled to come to terms with myself; when I felt alone; when I scanned the horizon looking for someone to point the way forward for me. There was a time when the only other gay men I knew were the ones I saw in TV and movies, and they seemed nothing like me. It feels embarrassing to say now that what I wanted back then was a role model — someone confident in himself, powerful, a real leader — to give me permission to be myself. But I very much did.

And many still do, particularly younger people, and particularly younger people growing up in the more rural and religious parts of America. Someday, maybe someday soon, we’ll hear about how Cook’s essay today helped someone there through a difficult time. And then we’ll hear it again, and again, and again.

And another, from Kara Swisher at Recode:

With his CEO status now as firm as it has ever been, and the company pretty unassailable, Cook seemed completely ready, criticizing his home state of Alabama in a speech there about its failures in the civil rights arena. “As a state, we took too long to step toward equality,” he said. “We were too slow on equality for African-Americans. We were too slow on interracial marriage, and we are still too slow for the equality for the LGBT community.”

That was this past Monday. At a dinner I attended earlier this week, what he said came up in conversation, and someone wondered what he was up to. With no idea about what he was about to do, I had only one response: “I think we are finally about to meet the real Tim Cook.”

And, while we might have known it all along about him, it’s nice to finally be able to say hello to the entire man.

MacRumors:

Both Verizon and AT&T appear to be engaging in some unsavory customer tracking techniques, using unique identifying numbers to deliver targeted advertisements to customers in what's called “Relevant Advertising.” As outlined by Wired, Verizon is altering the web traffic of its customers by inserting a Unique Identifier Header or UIDH, a temporary serial number that lets advertisers identify Verizon users on the web.

According to Jacob Hoffman-Andrews of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the UIDH serves as a “perma-cookie” that can be read by any web server to “build a profile” of internet habits. Verizon users cannot turn off the UIDH, but opting out of the Relevant Mobile Advertising Program prevents the information from being used to create targeted ads.

Despicable.

If you're a Verizon customer you're stuck, but if you're on AT&T, you can opt out of this fairly easily. Turn off wifi on your device so that you are connected only through AT&T's network, then go to http://205.234.28.93/mobileoptout/ and opt out.

The Daily Dot:

The most-valuable, second-richest telecommunications company in the world is bankrolling a technology news site called SugarString.com. The publication, which is now hiring its first full-time editors and reporters, is meant to rival major tech websites like Wired and the Verge while bringing in a potentially giant mainstream audience to beat those competitors at their own game.

There’s just one catch: In exchange for the major corporate backing, tech reporters at SugarString are expressly forbidden from writing about American spying or net neutrality around the world, two of the biggest issues in tech and politics today.

Unsurprisingly, Verizon is deeply tangled up in both controversies.

I guess Verizon is tired of all the negative attention. Obviously the solution to that is to start a news site that only gives them positive attention, not to change their practices so that they deserve it.

Mashable:

The Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX), a consortium of more than 50 U.S. retailers working on an alternative to Apple Pay, announced Wednesday that its service, called CurrentC, has experienced a security breach.

CurrentC has had a bad week. MCX threw an emergency press conference this afternoon to try to do some damage control:

Dekkers Davidson, CEO of MCX, stressed that it was the company's e-mail provider which got hacked, not the CurrentC application. Davidson declined to provide details about the e-mail provider or the extent of the hack and insisted that it would not impact MCX's plans to launch CurrentC.

So it was only customer's emails that were leaked. This time.

Maybe the security in the CurrentC application is sufficient to hold off attacks by hackers, but if there's already been a breach somewhere along their security chain, how can we be expected to trust the rest of it? Remember, CurrentC is only out for a select testing group right now. I imagine it will become a much bigger target for hackers when it is public and has the bank account information of many more people. Let's hope people realize this and no one gives their information.

The Washington Post:

Federal officials on Tuesday sued AT&T, the nation’s second-largest cellular carrier, for allegedly deceiving millions of customers by selling them “unlimited” data plans that the company later aggressively controlled by slowing Internet speeds when customers surfed the Web too much.

Two federal commissions doing their jobs today. AT&T should not have gotten away with this as long as they have, but better late than never. I hope the FTC makes them pay big for it.

The Verge:

The US Federal Communications Commission is beginning to consider a rule change that would put internet TV providers on the same playing field as cable companies when it comes to regulation. Critically, it means that broadcasters wouldn't be able to refuse to let an internet TV provider carry their content.

Instead, internet TV providers would be able to negotiate to carry TV stations with the same ability that cable companies and satellite companies can.

Great news for internet TV. It’s good to see the FCC is listening after the net neutrality debacle earlier this year. As noted in the linked article, this could also be another chance for Aereo to rise out of the ashes.

Perhaps Tom Wheeler is going to be a better FCC commissioner than expected.

Dave Mark, writing for The Loop:

There’s a major battle brewing in the payments industry. On one side, Apple Pay sits on top of the existing credit card model, adding a layer of anonymizing security and ease of use.

On the other side is CurrentC, the brainchild of a consortium called the Merchant Customer Exchange, or MCX. CurrentC seeks to eliminate the credit card companies, and their fees, from the system. CurrentC is an alternative to credit cards, not an add-on.

CurrentC is a complete 180 from the direction Apple is going with Apple Pay. Rather than simplifying the experience of shopping around an already wildly popular payment medium (credit cards), CurrentC seeks to subvert the credit card by connecting directly to bank accounts. This requires customers to submit their bank account numbers as well as social security numbers and drivers licenses to verify their identities and connect their accounts before they can begin using CurrentC. Once this information has been submitted, it is stored in the cloud.

That's a stark contrast to Apple Pay, which only requires customers to enter information from a credit card, and if they want to use the same credit card that they likely already have tied to their iTunes account, it is retrieved automatically and they need only enter the CVV code to be up and running. Once their credit card is activated, the information is stored only in their iOS device's secure element and never uploaded to any cloud database.

The reasoning behind CurrentC is that it will allow retailers to avoid the small percentage fees that credit card companies place on each transaction. It will also allow them to more easily grant coupons and other deals to CurrentC customers by integrating them with the payment experience.

In terms of the experience of using each service, Apple Pay wins again:

With Apple Pay, you place your phone near an NFC sensor, then touch TouchID to validate the purchase. With CurrentC, you first have to unlock your phone, launch the CurrentC app, wait for it to generate a QR code which you place in front of the scanner. You then enter a pin code to complete the process.

The one advantage I can see that CurrentC could have is that it will work with existing systems while Apple Pay requires new technology to be added to stores, but CurrentC doesn't come out until 2015 anyway so as of now you can't use it anywhere.

The retailers in the MCE consortium include big names like CVS, Rite Aid, Walmart, Best Buy, and Target. (▼)(▲)CVS and Rite Aid made headlines last week when they began shutting off NFC terminals so that Apple Pay can't be used in their stores. MCE is fighting a ridiculous, losing battle, which harms no one more than consumers. As the rest of the industry moves toward more privacy, security, and ease of use, MCE is pulling in the opposite direction, and purely for their own benefit.

Adnan Farooqui:

A carrier in China is offering customers who purchase the iPhone 6 Plus a pocket enlargement service. The idea is pretty simple. Customers can get the pockets on their pants enlarged so that they’re big enough to comfortably accommodate the iPhone 6 Plus, which has already been accused of bending when being carried around in tight pockets.

“I'll take one iPhone 6 Plus please.” Said the customer as they removed their pants.

Federico Viticci:

…I’m baffled by Apple's choices. This used to be simple: there was a sidebar with a Store button and you clicked the button and then you changed sections in the Store. Now, you have to account for “stickiness”.

I look at the screenshots of the new iTunes, I try to use the app, and I don't know what's going on. Maybe I'm the problem because I'm not “committed” to learning iTunes enough – but that's not supposed to happen with good interface design.

I’m with Federico here. The old sidebar interface may have been ugly, but it was functional. The new interface is like 5 other apps with different interfaces fused together, there is a complete lack of unity and direction. The My Music tab is a list with no sidebar, the Playlists tab is a list with a sidebar, iTunes Radio is a grid of boxes. Then there’s the iTunes Store, which has a large side scrolling banner at the top, a grid of boxes beneath, and a sidebar on the opposite side of the sidebar in the Playlists tab. All that is just in the Music tab. (▼)(▲)Yes, there is a Music tab which is not the same thing as the My Music tab, although they are located on the same horizontal bar at the top.

iTunes 12 is a mess. Apple either needs to break the app out into smaller, separate apps, or get its act together and unify the interfaces into something that makes sense and is easier to navigate. Hopefully they go with the former, as they’ve been trying the latter for years and are clearly unable to execute on the idea.

Drafts 4 is out on the App Store. It's a great update to one of my favorite iOS apps, and I have an in-depth review of it over on MacStories.

Jonathan Mann does it again with a hilarious and catchy song whose lyrics were written solely by tapping on the predictive text buttons in the iOS Notes app. Great idea, great song. Give it a listen below.

Brian Schmidt (although the linked article is by Clara Moskowitz):

“They’re like, ‘Sir, there’s something in your bag.’

I said, ‘Yes, I think it’s this box.’

They said, ‘What’s in the box?’

I said, ‘a large gold medal,’ as one does.

So they opened it up and they said, ‘What’s it made out of?’

I said, ‘gold.’

And they’re like, ‘Uhhhh. Who gave this to you?’

‘The King of Sweden.’

Great story. Not something you'd expect to have to worry about after winning a Nobel Prize.

This morning Apple sent out invitations for a special event at it's Cupertino campus on October 16.

We're expecting iPads, Macs, and Yosemite.

Some quick guesses (just for fun) after overanalyzing the invitation's sentence “It's been way too long”: iMacs have missed retina displays for way too long? Way too long since new Mac Minis were released? iPads have had only one gig of RAM for way too long?

Or maybe they're just making a joke since it's only been a month since the last event.

Regardless, we'll find out next week.