Linked List: September 16, 2013

Monday, 16 September 2013

Great iOS 7 update to one of my all-time favorite apps. PCalc is on my iPhone’s first home screen.

Ralph Baer, ‘Father of Home Video Game Consoles’ ★

Great short film profile by David Friedman. Baer turns 90 in March, and he’s still working.

First commercial for the iPhone 5C.

Fascinating piece on Quora by Brian Roemmele on the new “secure enclave” in the A7 SOC of the iPhone 5S. (That’s where the encrypted fingerprint biometric ID is stored.)

Imagine what Apple could have come up with if they were still capable of innovation.

If It Looks New, It Is New ★

Jenna Wortham, writing for the NYT Bits blog, on the allure of the iPhone 5C:

I told her that I’d been eyeing the gold one myself, even though I already had a perfectly good phone right now. She said the gold and silver ones looked nice, but that they weren’t flashy enough for her. Most people wouldn’t be able to immediately tell it was a gold iPhone simply by looking at it, she said.

“I want people to know that this is a new phone,” she said.

The interaction made me wonder if my knee-jerk reaction to the C-series phones was too hasty.

Like I wrote last week, in marketing, what looks new is new. If you don’t think the iPhone 5C is going to be a huge hit, call me up and let’s wager some money.

Rebel Fighters in Syria Use iPad Accelerometer to Aim Homemade Mortar ★

Talk about unexpected applications.

Burberry Using iPhone 5S to Shoot London Fashion Show ★

Interesting promotion, both in terms of showing off the 5S camera and in terms of branding. Check out Burberry’s Instagram feed for examples.

Six New Shows on Mule Radio ★

Big day for Mule Radio, the network that hosts The Talk Show. They just added six new shows, including Jeffrey Zeldman’s Big Web Show, and Issues, a brand-new comic book podcast co-hosted by Ed Casey and Mike Essl.