And if you're having trouble reading between the lines, Sony's device, the Xperia Z4 smartphone, doesn't qualify as the “best” in their minds. Jame Bond Only Uses the Best The basic story is that Sony offered Daniel Craig an endorsement fee of $5 million dollars, as well as $18 million in supporting marketing for the…
Bryan Chaffin
Bryan Chaffin is the cofounder of The Mac Observer and currently serves as Afternoon Editor. He has contributed to MacAddict and MacFormat magazines, and co-authored the last two updates of iPad and iPad Pro for Dummies with Bob “Dr. Mac” LeVitus and Ed Baig. You can find out more about Bryan at his personal site, GeekTells, or find his Twitter link below.
Articles by Bryan Chaffin
Natalie Kerris Leaves Apple PR
After 14 amazing years at Apple, it's time to move on and see what adventures life holds for me next! pic.twitter.com/9oFp3lGcMB — Natalie Kerris (@nataliekerris) April 22, 2015 Ms. Kerris was a fixture in Apple PR who came up under the reign of Katy Cotton. She was excellent at her job, especially when that job…
Angela Ahrendts Explains Apple Watch Rollout in Employee Video
Angela Ahrendts – “This is not just a new product for us.” In the video, the former Burberry CEO said that the decision to limit initial sales to its online store “was not an easy one,” and that it was done to better meet initial demand. She stressed that it was due to “unique” circumstances,…
Canadian Bankers Balk at 'Onerous' Apple Pay Terms
Canadian bankers are balking at initial negotiations with Apple to bring Apple Pay to Canada. According to The Wall Street Journal, the six banks that control 90 percent of the Canadian markets consider Apple's terms “onerous,” are concerned about security, and have formed a consortium to develop security protocols for Apple's system. Apple launched Apple…
Scott Forstall Advising Snapchat, Earning 0.11% of Company
Scott Forstall TechCrunch discovered the information in the leaked emails posted to Wikileaks. They were part of massive amount of emails and other information stolen by North Korean hackers in retaliation for the movie The Interview. The information about Snapchat came from Michael Lynton, CEO Sony Pictures, who also serves on the board of Snapchat.…
How to Pretend Apple Watch Is a Failure No Matter What
Apple Watch. Seems like Apple has a hit on its corporate hands. Or a preorder hit. The company sold a million Apple Watches in the first 24 hours—just in the U.S.—according to one piece of analysis. That would make it the most successful new product category launch in Apple's history—so what do you do if…
How to Schedule Your Apple Watch Try-On Appointment
There a link to Apple's concierge scheduling service on the Apple Watch page at the online Apple Store, as shown below: Schedule an Appointment That takes you to a page where you choose your state and your Apple Store: Choose Your State Even though you already chose your store, the next page lists that store…
Apple Buys Advanced Database Company FoundationDB
FoundationDB specialized in databases using NoSQL, a way of storing and crunching data without using a relational structure. The company also specialized in ACID-compliant transactions, making FoundationDB the kind of company that could improve Apple's iTunes, App Store, iBooks Store, Mac App Store, and other iCloud-related services. TechCrunch noted that FoundationDB previously touted: At current…
Steve Jobs's Inner Circle Defends Their Version of Jobs's Legacy
Steven Levy put it best in a piece over the weekend titled, “The War Over Who Steve Jobs Was.” It's a great read about Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli's biography Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader (Amazon, iBooks). More specifically, Mr. Levy, an excellent journalist who interviewed Steve…
New Biography Claims Tim Cook Offered Steve Jobs Liver Transplant
Becoming Steve Jobs Written by Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli, Becoming Steve Jobs was based in part by interviews with Steve Jobs conducted by Mr. Schelnder over a 25 year period. But the authors also were given interviews by Tim Cook, Sir Jony Ive, Eddy Cue, Pixar’s creative head honcho John Lasseter, Disney CEO Bob…
iTunes, App Store Offline While Apple Resolves Internal DNS Error - Back Online
Apple experienced a rare online services outage Wednesday, an outage that made iCloud, Mac App Store, App Store, iBooks, and iTunes Store inaccessible. The company said in a statement it was due to an internal DNS error, and apologized for the outage. “We apologize to our customers experiencing problems with iTunes and other services this…
Nissan-Renault CEO Says Apple Car Is 'Good News for Us'
“If Apple does it, obviously it's good news for us, Mr. Ghosn said, according to CNet. “The fact that a company outside of the auto industry wants to do electric cars is refreshing.” Mr. Ghosn also said that he was curious about Apple's project. This contrasts sharply with other auto execs who have expressed doubts…
Samsung Innovation: Samsung Pay and an iPhone 6 Lookalike
Samsung has also found that no one—and I mean no one—cares for its me-too services and solution-in-search-of-problem software addons to Android. What's a shameless IP thief to do? Well, if you're Samsung, you come out with an innovative service called Samsung Pay, a mobile payment solution that will launch with the Galaxy S6 sometime this…
TMO Quick Tip: Use Tab to Quick Search Apple.com
Load Up Apple's Home Page When Your Press Tab, the Search Box Opens (the image rotated during our screenshots) As noted above, this feature works with Safari and Omniweb in Yosemite. Our tests in Chrome for the Mac found it didn't work. Thanks to MacCast's Adam Christiansen for the heads up.
Tim Cook Reportedly Showers with Apple Watch, Suggesting It's Waterproof
Apple has not officially designated the Apple Watch as either water proof or water resistant. If Mr. Cook actually said he wears his in the shower, it could indicate that Apple will market the device as one or the other. The problem is the report is hearsay, and there could be some translation issues. It…
Samsung Buys 'Battery Pack Business' for Electric Cars
Some of TMO's readers were among the first to predict Samsung would try to develop its own electric car in response to Apple. Rumors about an Apple Car have exploded in the last 10 days, and Samsung has a storied track record of copying Apple. Cue our editorial image above. But—and that's a really big…
Lenovo Installs Backdoor Malware on Its PCs Usable by Anyone
Ignoring the disgusting bit where Lenovo is trying to push shopping/advertising onto their paying customers, this issue highlights the reality that any backdoor baked into any software is accessible by anyone, including malicious hackers. With the U.S. and UK governments both demanding backdoor access to our mobile devices and messaging services, Lenovo's behavior serves as…
Wall Street Journal: Apple's Car Is Codenamed 'Titan'
This is the second major mainstream report claiming Apple is developing a car this week. The Financial Times reported that Apple had hired a top Mercedes-Benz executive to work on the project Both reports follow BusinessInsider's reporting that an Apple employee told that publication Apple was working on something that will “give Tesla a run…
Search on Apple's Safari a Big Prize for Search Engines
At issue is Google's long-standing deal with Apple to be the default search engine on Safari. No one who's talking knows exactly when that deal will expire, but there has been increasing speculation that it's “soon.” Like, within-the-next-6-to-18-months soon. And that has companies jockeying for position and observers speculating on who will win that spot…
Steve Jobs Gave Senator Obama an iPhone Sneak Peek in 2007
Believer: My Forty Years in Politics Cover The book, Believer: My 40 Years in Politics, won't be released until February 10th, but The New York Daily Mail (via Gizmodo) got advance access to the book and published several excerpts. One of those excerpts concerned the iPhone and how the late Steve Jobs gave the presidential…
Peri Duo Case for iPhone Marries Speaker, Battery, and Wi-Fi Audio
Peri is heading into the last week of an Indiegogo campaign, where it's already raised US$110,000 and passed it goal. There are seven days left, however, to pick up a Duo Case for $99 through Indiegogo—it will MSRP for $139. The Duo Case will ship in the second quarter of 2015. Here are two working…
Wall Street Continues Apple Love Fest as $AAPL Closes at $118.90
$AAPL ended the day at $118.90 per share, a gain of $+3.59 (+3.11 percent), on heavy volume of 84.2 million shares trading hands. The stock hit an intra-day high of $119.19 just before the closing bell. $AAPL Chart for Year Ending January 29th, 2015 Source: Yahoo! Finance On Tuesday, Apple reported record high quarterly revenues…
Aaron Sorkin's Steve Jobs Movie Starts Filming with Michael Fassbender as Jobs
Micahel Fassbender, from a 2012 GQ Spread Seth Rogan (The Interview, and we'll leave it at that) is playing Steve Wozniak. Danny Boyle is directing, and the film is now officially named Steve Jobs. Seemingly on the fasttrack to get made in the first year or two after Steve Jobs died in 2011, this movie…
Apple Continues to Plunder Fashion Industry with Another Burberry Hire
Chester Chipperfield's LinkedIn Profile. Mr. Chipperfield also offered his goodbyes to native London on Twitter, as noted by 9to5Mac: Goodbye London. I have been lucky to call you home for 31 years, time to discover another city.. https://t.co/CRxTDxckQB — Chester Chipperfield (@chesterchip) December 28, 2014 Apple also raided Burberry for Musa Tariq, head of Burberry's…
