Former Apple Marketing Exec Talks About Working For Steve Jobs

Allison Johnson, in an interview with Behance's Scott Belsky, talks about Apple and what it was like to work for Steve Jobs. From Vimeo:

There are only a few people who have worked directly under Steve Jobs, and Allison Johnson is one of those people. The former head of marketing at Apple, Johnson oversaw the launch of the company's hallmark products like the iPhone and its famous campaigns like "Mac vs. PC" and "There's an app for that."

Cord Cutting Update – It's Harder Than I Thought

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about my hopes to cut the cord on cable TV. I would really like to cut the cord, but as a huge sports fan, I'm realizing that it's not as easy as I was hoping. The latest reminder is March Madness. I'm a huge fan of this annual sporting event—it's the best event of the year, in my opinion—and without cable TV, it's almost impossible to get many of the games (legally). CBS is streaming the games they will be airing for free, but the other networks aren't following suit. In fact, we've actually gone backwards with March Madness over the past few years, especially in Canada. There is an iOS app in the US App Store called March Madness Live, that let's you watch all the games on your iPhone or iPad if you can prove you have a valid cable subscription—like HBO Go. The app was available in Canada back in 2011 and was 100% free (ad supported), but it hasn't been available in Canada for the past 3 years. You didn't have to prove you had a cable subscription or anything like that. It was amazing. I was watching games on my TV and keeping an eye on a second game on my iPad. But, it was removed from the Canadian App Store prior to the 2012 tournament and hasn't come back since. Even if you have a US iTunes account and can download the app, you would still have other hoops to jump through to try to validate a cable subscription. It's very frustrating to be further behind than we were 3 years ago.

I was this close to cutting the cord 2 weeks ago. I actually called my cable provider and straight up told them I was cancelling. I wasn't even bluffing to get a better deal, like I've suggested in the past. I was really ready to cancel. I was already on a "retentions" plan (a deal they gave me before to keep me from cancelling), and I thought it was a deal that had a 2 year term attached, so I was worried that there might be some kind of cancellation fee. It turned out there was no fee and the deal was still good until November. I was already paying only $76 after tax for a great cable package (pretty much everything except the movie channels) with 2 cable boxes, including 1 DVR. But as we progressed through the cancellation process, the customer relations rep kept trying to sweeten the deal to get me to stay. In the end, I didn't cancel, but got another $24 per month off my bill. My new cable bill is only $52 per month and I didn't lose anything that I already had. So, I'm saving another almost $300 per year and I can still cancel at any time. I may very well still cancel after March Madness is over, but in the mean time I'm saving a few bucks during the tournament. The deal is also good for 2 more years.

In the end, the process of trying to cancel just further reinforced for me that everyone should call to cancel at least once per year. I do it more often than that, and somehow get a better deal every time. In the past few months alone I've saved about $40 off of my combined wireless plan and $24 off of cable. The key is to be convincing and polite. Don't cancel because you're angry, cancel because you've found a better deal or want to save money. They will try to give you a better deal and usually can.

Apple Kills Off iPad 2 and Brings Back iPad 4 – 30-Pin Connector Almost Dead

Today Apple has discontinued the iPad 2 and replaced it with the, now re-released, iPad 4 at the same price. This kills off one of the last iOS devices that still used a 30-pin dock connector and also one of two iOS devices with a non-Retina display. Only the iPhone 4S still uses the 30-pin connector, and the original iPad Mini still has a non-retina display. Both of those should be gone later this year when the next generation of iPads and iPhones launch. 

Apple also released an 8 GB iPhone 5c yesterday in international markets to hit a lower price point. 

[via The Verge]

March Madness: The Best Sporting Event of the Year is Upon Us

I've been running March Madness bracket pools for years and have tried several different services. CBS Sports still has the best "office pool" site. 

Good luck to all on their brackets.

Warren Buffett is not a fan of Bitcoin, Marc Andreesen blasts back

Warren Buffett was on Squawk Box and was asked about Bitcoin. Apparently he isn't a fan. He said it's a "mirage" and "stay away". Marc Andreesen fired back on Twitter, saying that "Warren has gone out of his way for decades to avoid understanding new technology. Not a surprising result." 

This Buffet guy, what does he know about money anyway? 

DEAL: $100 Off iPod Touch At Target Canada

Thanks to iPhone in Canada for posting the news that Target has the 64 GB iPod Touch (5th Generation) on sale for $299 compared to its regular price of $399. 

Apparently the sale isn't advertised and stock is limited, but if you find one, it will scan at checkout for $299. 

Google Slashes Google Drive Prices, Undercuts Dropbox

Recode reported today that Google has dropped the prices for it's cloud storage product, Google Drive. The first 15 GB are free, like before, but the prices for 100 GB and 1 TB have dropped to $1.99 and $9.99 per month, respectively. Dropbox charges $99 per year for 100 GB and Microsoft's OneDrive is $50 for the same amount — Google is now at $23.88 per year. 

This is what Google does. They give away services for incredibly cheap or free and then make money off of the sheer volume of users and advertising revenue. Free email, free maps, free cloud-based documents, free mobile operating system, free cloud storage with cheap upgraded tiers. Along the way they've disrupted many other services and industries. Do you remember how little mail storage Microsoft gave away with Hotmail before Gmail came along? Anybody remember buying GPS units for your car before every smartphone came with it for free? 

It will be interesting to see how Microsoft and Dropbox react. 

Arnold Schwarzenegger For Charity

A couple of pretty entertaining videos by Ahnuld and his "fucking tank" for Omaze, benefitting After-School All-Stars, a charity that provides free after school programs for children. I particularly like the "crush things" video where at the end he says "let's crush a Microsoft Zune — I don't even know what it is". Don't worry Arnold, nobody else did either. 

New iPad Models Tipped in iOS 7.1

9to5Mac has found references to new iPad models in iOS 7.1. Specifically, they have found iPad models named iPad 4,3 and iPad 4,6, where 4,1 and 4,2 are versions of the iPad air and 4,4 and 4,5 are versions of the iPad Mini with Retina Display. 9to5Mac speculates that these could be simple hardware tweaks, potentially to optimize for cellular networks in China. 

When I first read this, I was hoping for an iPad Air and iPad Mini with Touch ID, but I don't think that's it. I know many people were hoping for Touch ID in the iPad after the iPhone 5S launched but many reports have said that the Touch ID sensor was the component that was slowing production of the iPhone 5S. Maybe the next iPads will have Touch ID.

iOS 7.1 Will Make Your iPhone 4 Faster Again

Nice link from The Loop to an Ars Technica article where they tested the iPhone 4 running iOS 6.1.3, iOS 7.0 and now iOS 7.1 that was released as an over-the-air update yesterday. iOS 7.0 really slowed down the — almost 4 year old — iPhone 4 when it shipped in the fall. It looks like iOS 7.1 makes your iPhone 4 faster across the board than iOS 7.0, but still slightly slower than iOS 6.1.3 (the last build before iOS 7.0 was released). 

If you're still running iOS 6.1.3, then it's up to you if you want to stick with it, but it looks like this is the first version of iOS 7 that is almost as fast and also brings some of the new iOS 7 features, look and feel.

Hackers Accusing MtGox of Still Controlling the "Stolen" Bitcoins

Fortune has reported that hackers have apparently broken into MtGox's servers and allegedly found evidence that MtGox still has control of some or all of the 850,000 bitcoins they have said were stolen. The exchange's current balance is reportedly 951,116 bitcoins. The hackers also took over the personal blog and Reddit account of MtGox's CEO and posted messages and a file they claim is evidence that MtGox and Mark Karpeles have committed fraud. 

On Sunday, hackers took over the Reddit account and personal blog of Mark Karpeles, Mt. Gox’s CEO, to post an angry screed alleging that the exchange he ran had actually kept at least some of the bitcoins that the company had said were stolen from users. “It’s time that MTGOX got the bitcoin communities wrath instead of [the] Bitcoin Community getting Goxed,” wrote the unidentified hackers, referring to the multiple occasions over its three year history when Mt. Gox has gone offline, delayed trades or suspended withdrawals, events so common that Bitcoin users coined the phrase to be “goxed”–to suffer from Mt. Gox’s technical glitches.

iOS 7.1 Available to Download Right Now

The iOS 7.1 update brings a fix for the annoying reboot bug, other bug fixes, some UI changes and CarPlay. The Verge has an overview of the changes. 

Flying the world's fastest plane: Behind the stick of the SR-71

Fantastic interview from SB Nation with pilot Rick McCrary about what it was like to fly the SR-71 Blackbird. First flown in 1964, the Blackbird is still holds the airspeed record for a "manned air breathing jet aircraft", 50 years later. I'm not exactly sure what that means, but I'm going to say it means airplane and not a rocket ship or something like that. The record has stood since 1976. It's a fascinating read.

You get into the seat, close the hatch, and you're in your cocoon. Startup was also a unique thing. It had this special fuel, because the temperatures during flight got up to over 600 degrees Fahrenheit when you're at speed. The worry is that normal fuel, which you want to explode quickly during flight and have a low flashpoint, well...you wanted the exact opposite with the Blackbird. You're carrying so much fuel that the last thing you want to worry about is it self-igniting.

More Free Money - iTunes Gift Cards on Sale at Superstore

The Real Canadian Superstore has iTunes gift cards on sale for 15% off until March 20th. To get the deal, you apparently need to present a coupon that you pick up on the gift card rack. 

Newsweek: The Face Behind Bitcoin

Early this morning Newsweek published an article claiming to have found Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin. It's certainly worth a read, but I'm not totally convinced they have the right guy.

Leah McGrath Goodman doesn't give any conclusive evidence that this man is, in fact, the Satoshi that everyone has been looking for. There is lots of compelling circumstantial evidence, but nothing concrete. The Reddit world has already gotten to work today on comparing writing styles between the "real" Satoshi and Satoshi Nakamoto, who Newsweek claims is the same guy. There seems to be some serious skepticism already that their writing styles are far too different to be the same person. 

I also found an interesting error — or, at the very least, misleading — figure in the article.

Even so, Bitcoin is vulnerable to massive theft, fraud and scandal, which has seen the price of Bitcoins whipsaw from more than $1,200 each last year to as little as $130 in late February.

That just isn't true. Those prices quoted are for MtGox only, and we all know what happened to MtGox. When BTC got down to $130 on MtGox in late February, that was a totally misleading number because no one could actually withdraw their BTC. Some speculators may have been buying some BTC at a very discounted rate on the gamble that MtGox would pull through, but that's all it was. Some MtGox customers wanted to get something instead of nothing for their BTC, and others were willing to take on that risk. So, the fact that Goodman quotes those prices, quite frankly, scares me. If she was really researching this article for two months and interviewed many people high up in the Bitcoin Foundation, then she should understand Bitcoin better than to make that mistake. For me, it takes away from the credibility of the rest of the article. 

Either way, this should bring more scrutiny to the matter and we may actually end up finding out the real story sooner than later. Maybe he is the Satoshi we're looking for, maybe he isn't.

Open Letter in Wired: Regulation of Bitcoin Not the Answer

Jerry Brito has another take on the issue of regulating Bitcoin to make it safer, in an open letter to Wired. Also a good read.

Tech entrepreneurs have successfully disrupted industry after industry — from journalism to retailing to music and TV — by leveraging the internet-driven principle of permissionless innovation. It’s time for finance to be added to that list.  After all, consumers are the ones who benefit from innovation that makes financial services cheaper, faster, and more convenient. Ensuring that consumers are absolutely safe may not make them better off overall if doing so means they only have access to expensive, telegraph-era services.

NYT: Does Bitcoin Need Oversight?

Farhad Manjoo at the New York Times wrote a good piece on the future of Bitcoin and potential ways to make it more secure. Worth a read.

One frequent analogy in the Bitcoin world is to the early days of the Internet and web. Just a decade and a half ago, the web was a rough-and-tumble network ruled by pornography and illegal file-trading, a place where fraud flourished and danger lurked around every corner. Today the web is still all that, but it is also, in its more respectable corners, the place where you post pictures of your children, where you shop for Christmas presents, where you hold secure conversations with your doctor and where companies make billions of dollars every year without worry of being defrauded.

The Inside Story of Mt. Gox, Bitcoin's $460 Million Disaster

Wired has done some investigating on what led to Mt. Gox's collapse last month. What it basically boils down to is the exchange was run by amateurs, particularly the young and inexperienced CEO. It sounds like their back end software was an absolute mess, and their accounting was worse. Somehow they either didn't notice or chose to ignore the fact that they were leaking bitcoins by the hundreds of thousands. Some have also speculated that it wasn't that innocent. Maybe they know where those 850,000 bitcoins are. 

Mt. Gox, [an insider] says, didn’t use any type of version control software — a standard tool in any professional software development environment. This meant that any coder could accidentally overwrite a colleague’s code if they happened to be working on the same file. According to this developer, the world’s largest bitcoin exchange had only recently introduced a test environment, meaning that, previously, untested software changes were pushed out to the exchanges customers — not the kind of thing you’d see on a professionally run financial services website. And, he says, there was only one person who could approve changes to the site’s source code: Mark Karpeles. That meant that some bug fixes — even security fixes — could languish for weeks, waiting for Karpeles to get to the code. “The source code was a complete mess,” says one insider.

I think this disaster will end up being a good thing for Bitcoin in the end. It's definitely big enough to serve as a major wake up call to the rest of the Bitcoin community that they need to weed out the amateurs and bad actors before Bitcoin will be able to go mainstream and become more widely adopted. The community seems to be taking it seriously with their recent joint statement, so we will see how things unfold in the coming months.  

iOS 7.1 May Ship This Week

I had a good chuckle about this one a few hours ago. John Gruber speculated that iOS 7.1 should ship "any day now" based on some feedback from a "little birdie", and about seven different sites that I follow turned around and reported it as pretty much fact, immediately. I'm sure he's right, but one of the most annoying things about following tech news is how rumour and speculation get re-reported as fact by dozens of other sites so fast. Sometimes some very improbable or even implausible rumours spread like wildfire in a matter of minutes and then end up getting shut down as untrue or a hoax shortly there after. Component "leaks" are the best for this. I end up reading several versions of the same story — or at least the headlines — over and over again every time somebody's got some potential scoop to report.

So, here I am, jumping on the bandwagon for this one. It makes sense, and Gruber doesn't speculate very often.  

Amazing New Beer I Just Discovered

Many thanks to a good friend who just introduced me to Beau's Lug Tread Lagered Ale a couple of weeks ago. It looks like it's been around for several years, but I've only just had the privilege of trying it for the first time recently. It really is a tasty treat, and it's brewed in Ontario.