Linked List: May 18, 2015

Monday, 18 May 2015

Barack Obama Joins Twitter 

“Via Twitter for iPhone”. Bill Clinton is an iPhone user as well (although he used the Twitter web client to send this amusing reply to Obama).

Why John Biggs Is Still Wearing His Apple Watch 

John Biggs, an avid watch collector, writing for TechCrunch:

There is something magical about the purely mechanical, an object so complex that it takes an expert a lifetime to master the steps needed to build it. In an era of commodity hardware and easy interactivity, that means something.

But even Gibson, that cybernetic seer, couldn’t foresee the rise of another, far more enticing Tamagotchi. The Apple Watch doesn’t quite respond to love in the same way — it is cold and calculated — but instead engenders love through a weird melding of design and desire, of technology and fashion, of unity and connectedness. And those meldings are exactly why Switzerland needs to watch out.

Over the weekend, I went back to a mechanical watch for the first time since March 30. I caught myself swiping it a few times, but the main thing is that I kept glancing at it to see the temperature outside. Also, I felt a vague nagging guilt about the inevitable gap in my fitness/activity history.

Mark Gurman: Third-Party Watch Complications Coming 

Mark Gurman, writing at 9to5Mac:

Besides working on allowing developers to build native, full-speed apps for the Apple Watch, Apple is working on allowing third-party watch face “Complications,” according to our source. Complications are the small widgets indicating activity levels, battery life, alarm clocks, upcoming calendar events, and the current temperature on many of Apple’s included Apple Watch clock faces. Our source says that Apple is currently testing a new version of Watch OS that notably includes a set of Twitter Complications. For example, a small Complication could display a count of unread Twitter mentions, while a larger view could show the text of a recent Twitter mention.

Just based on my own gut feeling, third-party complications feel a lot more likely than third-party watch faces.