Linked List: September 8, 2014

Monday, 8 September 2014

ABC News Teases Report of Inside Access to ‘Historic’ Apple Announcement ★

That sure as shit can’t be a reference to bigger iPhones, and it doesn’t sound like a watch that counts your steps and shows you notifications as they come in.

The Hidden Structure of the Apple Keynote ★

Loved this piece by Dan Frommer at Quartz:

One of Apple’s most successful products — which rarely gets recognized as such — is made not of aluminum and glass, but of words and pictures. The Apple keynote is the tool the company uses a few times a year to unveil its other products to millions of people.

To understand their hidden structure, Quartz reviewed more than a dozen Apple keynotes, logging and analyzing key elements. Here’s what we found.

iOS Simulator Shows Possibility of iPad-Like Landscape Apps on 5.5-Inch iPhone ★

Sounds exactly right to me. The thing is, Apple practically telegraphed this sort of thing in Session 216 at WWDC this year (“Building Adaptive Apps with UIKit”). The key to understanding it is that it’s not running an iPad app layout on an iPhone, but rather running an iPad-like layout. It’s not like with the iPad Air and Mini where you have the same layout at different scales. It’s an adaptive layout, where the scale remains the same as a regular iPhone, but the extra space on the big iPhone, in landscape, is used to show multiple columns.

Recode: ‘CVS and Walgreens Expected to Accept Apple iPhone Mobile Payments’ ★

I’d call them “Apple mobile payments”, not “Apple iPhone mobile payments”. Otherwise, this sounds, uh, right on target.

The Talk Show: ‘Very Few Outhouses Anymore’ ★

Speaking of podcasts, here’s one to occupy your time and mind while waiting for tomorrow’s much-anticipated Apple special event. Special guest Jason Snell joins me to discuss wearables, big-ass iPhones, what people tend to get wrong when expecting the next big thing, and more.

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Just The Tip ★

The second season of my favorite podcast, and the only one which has ever addressed the issue of yours truly’s taste in men’s swimwear, is in full swing. I recommend subscribing.

Amazon Cuts Price of Fire Phone to 99 Cents ★

If they were willing to go this low, why not start at this price six weeks ago, when people actually cared? My guess: this thing is such a dud that they’re just trying to dump inventory now.