Hilarious: Man makes a GoPro ‘Be A Hero’ video of his insanely boring office job

Let's face it: Most people who buy GoPro cameras probably aren't leading the exciting lives that we see in GoPro's promotional videos. YouTube user Braziliandanny recently wore his GoPro all day while doing his incredibly boring office job and made a hilarious compilation video that shows just how boring day-to-day existence can really be.

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Posted in 2015 at 06:35PM, April 21

Esteemed Apple blogger: Third-party Apple Watch apps ‘suck’ and are ‘really slow’

During this week's episode of John Gruber's podcast, The Talk Show, Gruber sat down with Joanna Stern of the Wall Street Journal to talk all things Apple Watch.

About two hours and 9 minutes into the podcast, both Gruber and Stern began lamenting the poor performance they saw with third-party Apple Watch apps. "It makes me question whether there should be third party apps for it at all yet," Gruber noted.

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Posted in 2015 at 06:35PM, April 17

Apple CEO Tim Cook Speaks Out Against Indiana's 'Religious Freedom' Law

Apple CEO Tim Cook today sent out a series of Tweets condemning Indiana Governor Mike Pence's decision to sign a controversial "religious freedom" bill into law, saying Apple is "deeply disappointed" in the move and "open for everyone."

Apple is open for everyone. We are deeply disappointed in Indiana's new law and calling on Arkansas Gov. to veto the similar #HB1228.

— Tim Cook (@tim_cook) March 27, 2015

The religious freedom legislation that was approved by Pence on Thursday could let businesses turn away gay and lesbian customers by citing "religious freedom." The approval of the bill has earned Indiana national attention, and much of it has been negative, with organizations and companies throughout the United States vowing to stop supporting the state.

Senate Bill 101 prohibits state or local governments from substantially burdening a person's ability to exercise their religion -- unless the government can show that it has a compelling interest and that the action is the least-restrictive means of achieving it. It takes effect July 1.

Along with Apple's condemnation, the NCAA has questioned the impact the legislation will have on future sporting events, Salesforce has vowed to halt expansion plans in the state, several conventions typically held in Indiana have said they will find other venues, and San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee spoke out against the decision and barred all non-essential publicly funded City employee travel to the state.



In his tweets, Cook also called for Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson to veto H.B.1228, a similar bill in that was recently passed by the Arkansas state senate, and he reiterated Apple's own commitment to equality and its efforts to treat every customer the same, regardless of "how they worship or who they love."

Around the world, we strive to treat every customer the same — regardless of where they come from, how they worship or who they love.

— Tim Cook (@tim_cook) March 27, 2015

Cook came out as gay last October, but even before then, he's had a long history of supporting equality and speaking out against discrimination. In 2013, he lectured on equality at his alma mater Auburn University, and during that same year, both he and Apple publicly supported the Employment Nondiscrimination Act.



Under his direction, Apple released a statement in support of Supreme Court gay marriage rulings, and Cook also led Apple to march in support of the LGBT community during the 44th annual Pride parade in San Francisco.



Note: Due to the political nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Politics, Religion, Social Issues forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.

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Posted in 2015 at 06:35PM, March 27

'Becoming Steve Jobs': Rare Insights into Steve Jobs' Evolution and Personality

After an initial teaser post from John Gruber earlier this month and several leaks and excerpts, the new Steve Jobs biography Becoming Steve Jobs debuted yesterday, and we've had a chance to read through the book that offers a new look into the life of the Apple co-founder. While Walter Isaacson's best-selling 2011 biography of Jobs was undertaken with Jobs' authorization and participation, many close to him felt it didn't offer an accurate reflection of his personality.



In the wake of that book's debut, former Fortune and Wall Street Journal reporter Brent Schlender, who interviewed Jobs numerous times over the final 25 years of Jobs' life, teamed up with former Fortune colleague and current Fast Company executive editor Rick Tetzeli for an alternative take on Jobs' life. Notably, Schlender and Tetzeli were eventually able to obtain the cooperation of a number of key figures, including Tim Cook, Eddy Cue, Jony Ive, and Laurene Powell Jobs, to share their perspectives on Jobs.



The new book takes a mostly linear approach to telling the story of Jobs' life, beginning with Apple's early days. Much of that early content has been shared in previously published books and articles, but the story becomes more interesting once it reaches 1986, the year Schlender and Jobs first met for an interview when Jobs was in the early stages of building NeXT after having been ousted from Apple the year before.



Schlender's many interviews and discussions with Jobs over the years give him a fairly rare perspective, and Schlender uses that perspective to argue the Jobs of his later years was a very different and more mature person than the perception developed in his brash younger years.

I can't think of a businessman who grew and changed and matured more than Steve. Personal change is, of course, incremental. As all "grown-ups" come to understand, we wrestle with and learn how to manage our gifts and flaws over a lifetime. It's an endless growth process. And yet it's not as if we become wholly different people. Steve is a great object lesson in someone who masterfully improved his ability to make better use of his strengths and to effectively mitigate those aspects of his personality that got in the way of those strengths. His negative qualities didn't go away, nor were they replaced by new good traits. But he learned how to manage himself, his own personal miasma of talents and rough edges. Most of them, anyway.

Tim Cook is one of the most high-profile figures to be interviewed for the book, and beyond the already revealed tidbit about Cook having offered Jobs a portion of his liver, Cook addressed the ways in which he saw Jobs change even since 1998 when Cook joined Apple.

"The Steve I met in early '98 was brash and confident and passionate and all of those things. But there was a soft side of him as well, and that soft side became a larger portion of him over the next thirteen years. You'd see that show up in different ways. There were different employees and spouses here that had health issues, and he would go out of his way to turn heaven and earth to make sure they had proper medical attention. He did that in a major way, not in a minor 'Call me and get back to me if you need my help' kind of way." [...]



"One day he calls my mom–he doesn't event know my mom, she lives in Alabama. He said he was looking for me, but he knows how to find me! And he talked to her about me. There are lots of these things where you saw the very soft or caring or feeling or whatever you want to call it side of him. He had that gene. Someone who's viewing life only as a transactional relationship with people...doesn't do that."

While most biographies and feature articles on Jobs have focused on his work at Apple, Becoming Steve Jobs also dedicates several chapters each to his time at NeXT and his work with Pixar, with Schlender's discussions with Jobs and more recent interviews with a number of key people at those firms offering some interesting details about those aspects of Jobs' professional life. In particular, Bob Iger shared background on how he was able to win Jobs over after being named Disney CEO in 2005 and ultimately negotiate Disney's acquisition of Pixar the following year.



In his interview, Iger related how just minutes before the Disney-Pixar acquisition was to be made official and announced to the public, Jobs confided in Iger that his cancer had returned, giving Iger an opportunity to back out of the deal. Despite Jobs' admission, the deal went through, and his cancer recurrence remained a secret from the public for three years until his second medical leave of absence in 2009 for his liver transplant.



Overall, Becoming Steve Jobs definitely has a feeling of those close to Steve Jobs trying to alter the public perception of him as a person, sharing some of the details of their relationships while the book in some respects glosses over his shortcomings. Those shortcomings are not, however, ignored entirely, with the penultimate chapter entitled "Blind Spots, Grudges, and Sharp Elbows" laying out a number of instances even late in his life where he engaged in controversial behavior.



Steve Jobs certainly remains a polarizing figure, but regardless of how you view the light in which Jobs is cast in this book, it includes a number of interesting anecdotes and perspectives from those who have rarely spoken of their relationships with Jobs over the decades, all tied together by one of the few reporters to have had access to Jobs on a regular basis throughout that time.



Becoming Steve Jobs is available now from a variety of outlets including Amazon and the iBooks Store. The authors will be appearing tomorrow evening at the SoHo Apple retail store in New York City to discuss the book and take questions. They will also be appearing at a Computer History Museum event in Mountain View, California on April 7.

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Posted in 2015 at 06:35PM, March 25

NO WAY: It's time to start taking those Apple Car rumors seriously

We'll admit it -- we were highly, highly skeptical when earlier this week rumors started bubbling up that Apple might be looking into making a car. And while we'd still bet against an "Apple Car" coming out in the near future, a new report in The Financial Times shows that it's time to start taking rumors about Apple getting into the car space seriously.

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Posted in 2015 at 06:35PM, February 13

Microsoft Demos Free Windows 10 Update, Debuts New 'Project Spartan' Web Browser

In the fall of 2014, Microsoft announced its newest operating system, Windows 10, and gave a brief preview of the upcoming software, which is designed to incorporate elements of both Windows 8 and Windows 7, in an attempt to make it more appealing to users who have thus far not upgraded to Windows 8.



Today, Microsoft is holding an official unveiling of Windows 10, sharing new details on the OS and demonstrating how it works across a range of devices. With Windows 10, Microsoft is hoping to cut down on operating system fragmentation with one unified platform thats designed to run on PCs, tablets, phones, and more.



Microsoft's tagline for Windows 10 is "More personal computing," a philosophy that's evidenced in its three design guidelines that it used when developing the software: mobility of experience, trust, and natural interaction, through a range of different input options from mice and keyboards to pens and simple touch.





Windows 10 somewhat mirrors Apple's efforts to unify iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite by creating a deep level of integration with features like Continuity, because Microsoft promises a unified experience and platform integration that will make it easy to put one device down and continue where you left off on another device.



In an effort to get its users to adopt Windows 10, Microsoft is planning to distribute Windows 10 to Windows 8.1 and Windows 7 users at no cost for the first year, which is an unprecedented move for the Washington-based company. Unlike Apple, Microsoft has never offered Windows for free, but Apple's success getting the majority of its users on the same operating system has likely inspired Microsoft to make the same effort.



Once a device is upgraded to Windows 10, Microsoft plans to keep the operating system current for the lifetime of the device. With a unified operating system, developers can target every single Windows device, and Microsoft is planning for long term support.



"Windows 10 is so much more than the latest version of Windows," said Microsoft VP of Operating Systems Terry Myerson. "Windows is turning into a service that will run across every device."



At today's event, Microsoft demoed Windows 10 running on several different devices, beginning with a tablet equipped with a keyboard and a mouse, running the full Windows 10 operating system. Windows 10 melds elements of Windows 7 with Windows 8.1, maintaining the tile system but also returning the iconic Start Menu.





There's an action center that delivers notifications and supports quick actions like turning off Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, and there's also a merged PC Settings and control panel option, which will be universal across all devices. With Continuum, a new feature that's designed to make transitioning from PC mode to tablet mode seamless, the mouse and keyboard were removed and Windows 10 offered a popup that transformed it into tablet mode. "A device like this elegantly transforms from one mode to another."



Microsoft also demoed its virtual assistant Cortana on a Windows PC, demonstrating her ability to search for information, set reminders, and more. Previously, Cortana was limited to Windows Phone, but the assistant will be available across all devices with the introduction of Windows 10. Cortana in Windows 10 is quite powerful, able to answer queries like "Bring up all my photos from December," or "Play my music," and she'll be integrated into the Maps app.



Windows 10 was also shown off on a small form-factor tablet and on a phone, with an emphasis being placed on the unification between the devices, with the same methods being used to access settings, apps, and more. For messaging, for example, Microsoft has plans for Skype integration, making it easy to transition from messaging to making a Skype call. Microsoft apps like Office and Outlook will be available on PCs, phones, and tablets, and it will be easy to transition between apps on various devices.





Microsoft is introducing a slew of universal apps, and in addition to those mentioned above, Microsoft has a new Photos app that's formatted to fit any screen on a tablet, phone, or PC. It aggregates photos from all devices, providing one simple view of photos and filters clutter like double shots, which sounds similar to what Apple is aiming to do with its own Photos app.



Along with Windows 10, Microsoft debuted a new browser for the modern web, which is currently codenamed Project Spartan. It's a new web browsing experience for Windows 10, which has a new rendering engine, a new look and feel, and features like a note-taking mode that lets users draw directly on their browsers before sharing a link, a reading mode with reading list and offline browsing, and access to Cortana in the browser.





Finally, Microsoft debuted a unified Xbox app that can be accessed on PCs, tablets, and smartphones, connecting those devices to Microsoft's Xbox gaming platform. It can be used for sharing gaming clips, and with Windows 10, Microsoft plans to enable streaming of any Xbox game to Windows PCs and tablets running Windows 10 in the home.



Microsoft has already provided access to Windows 10 to some users through its Windows Insider Program, a project that it plans to continue to use to seed out new Windows 10 features. Project Spartan and the features shown off today will come to Windows Insider testers in the coming months.

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Posted in 2015 at 06:35PM, January 21