Remembering Charles W. Moore

· · TMO Deals

I am not so pleased to report that a venerable, distinguished member of the technical journalist community has left us: Charles W. Moore. The link below has the story of his work, achievements and battle with illness. I am, however, pleased to say that I had the honor of working with him at Applelinks as well as MacOpinion [both now defunct] in the late 1990s. I remember Charles as an exceptionally hard worker and an incredible champion of all things Apple. He always amazed me. And he continued to do amazing work after that. He will be missed. [Photo credit: Elizabeth Sheppard.]

Apple Watch Series 4 'Better You' Commercial Is Great

· · Cool Stuff Found

Check out Apple’s new spot called Better You for Apple Watch Series 4. It’s a fun spot pushing the idea that we can always improve ourselves, and that Apple Watch Series 4 will help you do that. Couch potato? Get up. Hanging around? Get out and go for a walk. Listen to music while you’re out, too. Take a phone call. In fact, make that walk a jog. No, wait. If you’re going to jog, step it up and make it a run. Or hey, better yet, sprint and then finish that sprint off with a swim in the ocean. I love this spot. It’s compelling, and it tells an easy-to-understand story. The product shots of Apple Watch Series 4 are good, too.

Apple Watch Series 4 Unboxing

· · Cool Stuff Found

Apple Watch Series 4 is available now with bigger displays and new ECG heart monitoring sensors. The Mac Observer’s Jeff Gamet checks out the new smartwatch in this unboxing video.

The iPhone XS Giveaway

· · TMO Deals

The iPhone XS Giveaway

Our friends at Stack Commerce have put together a giveaway for an iPhone XS! To enter, all you have to do is sign up for our deal newsletter, which you should do anyway. If you’re already signed up, you can simply click the “Enter to Win” button. You can get extra entries by sharing the giveaway on social media, too. This is a 512GB Space Gray model, so get on it!

Google Engineers Brainstorm About Political Search Tweaks

· · Link

An email thread obtained by the Wall Street Journal shows Google engineers talking about political search tweaks related to President Trump’s 2017 travel ban. They specifically discussed using Google search to highlight pro-immigration organizations.

“To the extent of my knowledge, we’d be breaching precedent if we only gave Highlights access to organizations that support a certain view of the world in a time of political conflict,” one email said, according to WSJ.

Google said they were just brainstorming. This seems likely to me. Google might favor its own products in search results, but going so far as to interfere with political issues? I’m not so sure. But it made me wonder how easily a roque engineer could secretly alter the search algorithms.

How It's Made: Apple Watch Series 4 Faces

· · Cool Stuff Found

While not part of the official How It’s Made franchise, there is a short, one minute video that shows how the Apple Watch 4 faces were made. These are the Earth Water, Wind, and Fire faces and they are absolutely gorgeous. I don’t think I’ve ever seen videos before showing the process behind Apple’s wallpapers. There’s also one for the iPhone XS as well, with the bubble wallpaper. Alan Dye, VP of User Interface Design, said:

We probably could have done this digitally, but we actually shot all of this practically in a studio. What I love about the fact that we did this is that it’s just so indicative of how the design team works. It was really about bringing together some of our various talents to create these faces. There are of course art directors, and color experts, and graphic designers, but also model makers who helped build these structures that we would eventually, you know, set on fire.

Inside the iPhone XS Camera Technology

· · Link

Lance Ulanoff has a great piece on Medium where he writes about the iPhone XS camera technology. He talked with photographer Pete Souza about the new iPhones, as well as Phil Schiller, Graham TownsendApple’s senior director of camera hardware, and Sebastien Marineau-Mes, Apple’s vice president of software.

One of the really big things we aim for is the first phone, the 1 millionth phone, and the 10 millionth phone we want that experience to be as close as we can humanly manage, and we put a lot of effort, and it’s not something we talk a lot about… but it’s really important to us that there’s no big variation in performance between any phone anywhere the world,” Townsend said.

Want to Play with a 3D iPhone XS on your iPhone? Apple Has a Site for That

· · Cool Stuff Found

Apple has a cool mini website to show off the iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max. Just load it up in Safari or Chrome on your mobile phone and you can spin the new iPhone models around by tilting your display. Phone specs pop up as the iPhones twirl around so you can learn more about them, plus you can choose which model you’re looking at, and the phone color, too. It’s a pretty cool was to explore the iPhone XS and XS Max.

Want to Play with a 3D iPhone XS on your iPhone? Apple Has a Site for That