Behaviourism, the psychology theory that the behaviour of human beings is best understood as responding incentives and rewards, has been around since the 1930s. It was overtaken in scholarly thought in the 1950s, but it’s a big deal in Silicon Valley today. Behaviourism helps us understand why games are so addictive. Why Apple is obsessed with making the unboxing experience as pleasurable as possible. A fascinating feature in 1843 Magazine gives an in-depth explanation of how it all works and who the scientists are that make it all happen.

The more immediate and intense a rush of emotion a person feels the first time they use something, the more likely they are to make it an automatic choice. It’s why airlines bring you a glass of champagne the moment you sink into a business-class seat, and why Apple takes enormous care to ensure that a customer’s first encounter with a new phone feels magical.

Apple has received an A+ rating by the Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families organization for its efforts to reduce its use of toxic chemicals. AppleInsider reported that despite being found to have some room for improvement, Apple was the only firm given the top rating this year. It builds on last year when it received an A rating from the same organization.  Retailer Target was the only firm to receive an A rating this year. Best Buy and Amazon were only awarded a C rating.

Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families is a body comprised of 450 businesses which has been issuing annual report cards called Mind the Store for three years. Each report awards a point score as well as an overall grade and this year Apple earned 106.25 out of a possible 135 points. Part of that point score was 15 out of 15 for what Mind the Store calls continuous improvement in a steadily expanding safer chemicals policy. It also scored 9 out of 15 for public disclosure and transparency. Other scores included 7.5/7.5 for establishing management responsibilities and 10/10 for supply chain accountability.

LastPass has revealed it’s Christmas naughty and nice list, with Apple top of the pile.  They took the top retail sites and saw who was best at protecting personal information…and who was not. In particular, they looked at “key password requirements and other account security features to develop a ranking of the five most and least secure retail sites, based on whether and how well they met a set of criteria”. Apple was deemed the most secure e-retailer, followed by Best Buy and Home Depot. Wayfair was left propping up the naughty list.

Apple is “aggressively” recruiting engineers to develop chip components in San Diego, according to Bloomberg. The move indicates that Apple may be adding San Diego to the locations in which it designs chips. A number of job listings have appeared for the city, which just happens to be the home of chipmaker Qualcomm. Here’s a snippet:

This month, Apple published 10 job listings on its website for chip design-related positions located in the city, marking the first time the Cupertino, California-based technology giant has publicly recruited for such roles in the Southern California hotbed for chip design. Apple is advertising for engineers to work on multiple types of chip components, including engineers to work on the company’s Neural Engine artificial intelligence processor and wireless chips.

Teaching children how the value of money and budgets is hard. It is arguably getting even more difficult in our nearly cashless world. It can also be difficult for parents when their kids want some pocket money, but they do not have any cash on them. The AP had a good feature on this issue on Monday. It listed a variety of pre-paid debit cars and apps that can be downloaded and used as a virtual piggy bank.  They include apps such as gohenry, Nimbl and Osper in the UK, and Famzoo and Greenlight, which also works with Apple Pay, in the US. The aim is to offer both flexibility to kids and control for parents.

Wired has a nifty article about Blue Origin, the Jeff Bezos company that will soon take tourists into space. The rocket is called New Shepard. “Starting next year, Bezos plans to use New Shepard to send passengers on jaunts into space. Clad in cool Star Trek–style jumpsuits, customers will settle into a comfy capsule and shoot up over the atmosphere for a quick peek at their home planet through panoramic windows and a few moments of weightless ecstasy. Though Blue Origin hasn’t announced the fee, it’s been reported to be a couple hundred thousand dollars per head, and Bezos anticipates ramping up quickly to a few flights a week.” 

On Tuesday, Amazon announced that Crystal City in Virginia and New York City will house its second headquarters. You might imagine that the people in those areas would be excited by the prospect of new jobs and investment, not least the political leaders. Some, such as New York Governor Andrew Cuomo are. However, some serious concerns have been raised, not least Queens, where the New York City set up will be. The Financial Times took a look at what is causing this rather cold welcome for Amazon.

Yet while Andrew Cuomo, New York governor, and Mayor Bill de Blasio were toasting their success on Tuesday at luring the online retailer to the Long Island City section of Queens, Mr Gianaris could hardly have been less pleased. Along with a local member of the City Council, he issued a blistering statement accusing Amazon of “running a cynical game” in which it “duped” New York into offering $3bn in tax incentives and subsidies to woo one of the wealthiest companies on earth.

CNBC’s Jim Cramer is a well known Apple bull. Indeed, his charitable trust owns shares of Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Google’s parent company Alphabet. Last night he pursued this line – even encouraging investors to buy shares despite the difficulties faced by Apple stock in particular. A news report on the CNBC website focuses on the Mad Money presenter’s criticism of analysts who have been downgrading Apple since its earnings call on 1 November. He believes that they are overlooking the possibility that Apple may actually have anticipated some weakness in sales prior to the earnings. Cramer’s comments on what on what he refers to as the FANG stongs – Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google (Alphabet), might also be worth a read for anyone trying to work out what is going on with big tech stocks right now. Here’s some of what he had to say:

“What do you think of the possibility that Apple knew all about the weaknesses in unit sales that are now so revelatory?” he asked, pointing to reports that Apple may have tapered its orders from a key supplier. “CFO Luca Maestri even alluded to that weakness when he told us the guidance accounts for ‘uncertainty around the supply and demand balance’ of recently launched products.”

A normal display for a Mac or PC nowadays has an aspect ratio of 16:9 or 16:10. But an ultrawide display has an aspect ratio of 21:9 and sizes can be substantial. And, unlike the failed technology of curved 4K/UHD TV displays, a curved computer monitor is actually useful. And beautiful. Digital Trends has put together an analysis of the five best. The “best ultrawide monitor overall” went to the Samsung CF791 (shown), but there were other categories.

Be careful though, ultrawides are dangerous — once you try one, you’ll be spoiled for all other monitors. Even the sharpest, clearest 16:9 monitor will seem insubstantial and inadequate by comparison.

LONDON – UK telecoms provider EE announced that it is bringing super-fast 5G mobile connectivity to 16 UK cities in 2019. The launch will initially take place in London, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Belfast, Birmingham and Manchester. It will then be rolled out to Bristol, Coventry, Glasgow, Hull, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Nottingham and Sheffield. While this is undoubtedly good news for UK consumers, ZDNet explains that we should not get too excited yet: “The first 1,500 sites that EE is upgrading to 5G amount to around 7% of its total sites, and cover 15% of the UK population. However, these sites use 25% of all data across the whole network.” Here are some more details on the rollout:

Coverage won’t be total: 5G will be offered in the busiest parts of the six launch cites — including Hyde Park in London, Manchester Arena, Belfast City Airport, the Welsh Assembly, Edinburgh Waverley train station and Birmingham’s Bullring. EE said it will also be offering some 5G services in the busiest parts of ten other UK cities — Glasgow, Newcastle, Liverpool, Leeds, Hull, Sheffield, Nottingham, Leicester, Coventry and Bristol.