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The Long Oral History of Apple's Infinite Loop

Bryan Chaffin ·

Just in case you missed it in iOS 12 Release Mania, Wired has a great piece on Apple’s Infinite Loop campus. That’s the first Apple campus, the one before Steve Jobs’s and Jony Ives’s stunning Apple Park. It’s a great piece stitched together from Apple employees who worked at Infinite Loop over the decades. It’s long, but I think it’s a very good read. From the introduction:

For more than a year I’ve been interviewing Apple employees, past and present, about their recollections of Infinite Loop. In their own words, edited for clarity and concision, here is the story of a plot of land in Cupertino, California, that brought us the Mac revival, the iPod, iTunes, the iPhone, and the Steve Jobs legacy.

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How Edward Snowden Protects Activists Against Surveillance

Andrew Orr ·

Wired has another good article today, written by Edward Snowden. He writes how government surveillance isn’t new.

Born to a mother who was a member of the Black Panther Party and raised in Brooklyn in an environment of political ferment and police scrutiny, Malkia was fighting against the surveillance of activists and people of color before anyone knew my name.

Us white people might not be so used to surveillance, but Mr. Snowden reminds us how African Americans and Muslim Americans have long been targeted by the government.

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Good Morning America has a new Tim Cook Interview

Andrew Orr ·

Good Morning America has a new Tim Cook Interview. Robin Roberts interviews him and talks about the trade war with China, the price of the new iPhones, the iPhone’s camera, and Memojis.

The iPhone is assembled in China, but the parts come from everywhere. Including the United States, you know, the glass comes from Kentucky, there are chips that come from the U.S., and of course the research and development is all done in the United States.

So, I don’t want to speak for them, but I think they looked at this and said that it’s not really great for the United States to put a tariff on those type of products.

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Here's How to Avoid Becoming the United State

Andrew Orr ·

If we don’t want to become the United State, we have to figure out how to stop smart cities from becoming surveillance cities.

Since the growth of «surveillance cities» is no longer a hypothetical, we should all be ready to do what it takes to create responsible safeguards and prevent the unnecessary risks and harms this technology can create. Both elected officials and the public should be provided notice of the potential deployment of these technologies, the potential privacy and civil liberties risks they present, and the real impact of their use.

An interesting piece from the ACLU discusses how smart cities can become tools of surveillance. We have a modern example of this in Xinjiang, China.

TMO Deals

Force Flyers DIY Building Block Drone: $42.99

Bryan Chaffin ·

Check out this Force Flyers DIY Building Block Drone, a drone you can build yourself. It’s «building block compatible,» by which you can read LEGO and the other block systems that work with LEGO. The kit includes a 6-axis gyro and auto-stabilization, and because it’s customizable, it will teach you things like the importance of aerodynamics and weight distribution. It’s $42.99 through our deal.

1Password Adds iOS 12 Password AutoFill Support
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1Password Adds iOS 12 Password AutoFill Support

Jeff Gamet ·

AgileBits has a 1Password update out that adds support for iOS 12’s password AutoFill feature. Now you can use 1Password on your iPhone or iPad to automatically fill in user names and passwords, just like Apple’s own Keychain. If you need to login to a website, for example, iOS 12 can automatically fill the fields with the information from your 1Password database. Once the 1Password update is installed you’ll need to enable AutoFill in iOS 12’s Password & Accounts settings. You can find the update in the Updates section in the App Store app.

Podcast

TMO Background Mode Interview with Early Apple Podcaster Victor Cajiao

John Martellaro · · Add Comment

Victor Cajiao was born in Havana, Cuba, grew up in the U.S. and became well known in the Apple world for several different podcasts. He’s an Apple tech geek as well as a musician (saxophone) and hobby photographer. Victor told me the story about how he came to the U.S. via a special initiative started by President Kennedy. The fascinating story continues as he eventually worked his way into a job with AT&T rising to the level of IT Technical Director. He also told me the story about how he fell in love with the Mac and then launched his podcast, The Typical Mac User. Victor recently retired from AT&T after 26 years and now travels the U.S. in his Airstream trailer. Recently, he’s been sighted at Macstock, doing terrific demos of Mac technologies.

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Instagram Models Will Be Irrelevant Some Day

Andrew Orr ·

Warning: in a society that values the beautiful people, if you rely on making money based solely on your good looks, like Instagram models, you’ll some day become irrelevant as you turn old and wrinkled, especially if you have no other life skills.

But, for a growing number of users – and mental health experts – the very positivity of Instagram is precisely the problem. The site encourages its users to present an upbeat, attractive image that others may find at best misleading and at worse harmful. If Facebook demonstrates that everyone is boring and Twitter proves that everyone is awful, Instagram makes you worry that everyone is perfect – except you.