Linked List: October 15, 2015

Thursday, 15 October 2015

Tim Cook Announces New ‘Restricted Stock Units’ Program for Apple Employees ★

Mark Gurman, 9to5Mac:

Apple today announced a significant new initiative internally for employees that “effectively [makes] everyone who works for Apple eligible for an RSU grant.” RSU grants, or Restricted Stock Units, have typically been reserved for top Apple management and product engineering roles as a way to retain employee talent for long periods of time. For example, Apple CEO Tim Cook was granted 1 million shares in 2011, following the succession of Steve Jobs, that will vest over time through 2021. According to an email from Cook to all employees today, a similar plan, with obviously much smaller amounts of shares, is now starting.

Apple’s biggest problem: retention of talent. This is clearly aimed at that problem.

The Wall Street Journal has the story as well, and credits “website 9to5mac.com” with the scoop. Why call them by URL rather than by name? Would anyone call the Journal “the website wsj.com”?

Adobe Confirms Major Flash Vulnerability, and the Only Fix Is to Uninstall Flash ★

Way ahead of you, Adobe. Way ahead of you.

Pixelmator 3.4 ★

Includes an extension for Photos for Mac:

Pixelmator Photos Extension features a collection of powerful Distort tools, so you can retouch photos, create artistic effects, or simply have fun with your images right inside your Photos app. Built from the ground up on Metal, Pixelmator Photos Extension lets you reshape images with stunning quality and incredible speed.

They’ve also added Force Touch support to adjust the strength of the tools you’re using.

Apple Updates iWork Mac and iOS Apps With Support for Latest Versions of OS X and iOS ★

Huge update to the iWork suite, for both iOS and OS X (and iWork.com is no longer labelled “beta”). My favorite:

Enhanced support for OpenType font features like small caps, contextual fractions, alternate glyphs, and more.

Pages for Mac is thus once again as OpenType-capable as Pages ’08 was. Or, you know, TextEdit.

Gary Allen, Writer of ifo Apple Store, Dies at 67 ★

Sad news from Michael S. Rosenwald, writing for The Washington Post:

In March, Allen announced his blog was ending, saying so many others were following the stores now. “Who am I to keep up with them?” he wrote. “So, I’m going to focus on my family and friends, drop the demands of writing and get back to what it was before — just fun.”

Apple bloggers marked the moment: “Well, this is a bummer,” Cult of Mac said. “Thank You, Gary Allen,” MacStories said.

The real reason he gave it up, his brother said, was the brain cancer diagnosis. He didn’t want people to worry or fuss over him. The site is down, likely for good. Allen leaves behind another brother, Bob Allen, his wife Nancy, son Devin, and an incredible free spirit.

It breaks my heart that his site is down. We shouldn’t have to depend on The Internet Archive to keep online writing available in perpetuity.

Rene Ritchie on the Siri ‘Distance Activation Hack’ ★

Editors are drawn to “Your iPhone is susceptible to a malicious new attack” stories like moths to a flame. This vector is certainly clever, but it sounds more like a way to prank someone than to do anything malicious.

Only 5 Percent of Mac Users at IBM Need Help Desk Support, Compared to 40 Percent of PC Users ★

Neil Hughes, writing for AppleInsider:

Speaking to more than a thousand Apple IT administrators was Fletcher Previn, vice president of Workplace-as-a-Service at IBM. Big Blue began offering employees the ability to use a Mac at work starting on June 1, and adoption has been a tremendous success.

Previn revealed that IBM is now deploying 1,900 Macs per week, and there are currently 130,000 iOS and Mac devices at use within the company. All of these devices are supported by just 24 help desk staff members.

Further, Previn revealed that just 5 percent of Mac users call IBM’s internal help desk for assistance, compared to 40 percent of PC users.

I felt a great disturbance in the Force. As if millions of voices suddenly cried out, “We’ve been telling you this for 30 years!”

Update: Some additional notes, taken by an attendee of the event.