These are a few of my favourite things
by Bryan Peters
Yesterday I linked to a rumour about CarPlay coming to third-party stereo systems this year. Today, Pioneer has announced—and Apple has confirmed to The Verge—that it will be selling aftermarket receivers that will support CarPlay, and existing 2014 NEX models will get a firmware update to support CarPlay.
Exciting. If the first reviews are good, then I may have to look into getting one.
Following up on Jim Dalrymple's thoughts, here's a good piece by John Gruber over at Daring Fireball.
It was inevitable that competitors would follow the iPhone’s lead, and it was inevitable that Apple would feel wronged when it happened. What I wonder about is whether it was inevitable that Apple would sue. Are they pursuing Samsung in court because Samsung is so clearly their most successful rival in the handset industry, or is it because Samsung so clearly copied — not merely followed but gratuitously copied — so much from Apple? I suspect it’s both — that it was the combination of Samsung’s blatant copying and mimicry of the iPhone’s trade dress, combined with their success, that has compelled Apple to fight them tooth-and-nail in court.
This is one rumour I hope comes true. I really don't post too much in the way of rumours because I wade through so much rumour crap every day, but this is more of a wish list than a rumour for me. Being only 1 year into financing a new car for the next several years, I'd really like a third-party option.
[via The Verge]
The Verge and many others are reporting today that 900 social insurance numbers were stolen from the Canada Revenue Agency due to the Heartbleed bug.
Dalrymple at The Loop:
Remember last week when Android engineering VP, Hiroshi Lockheimer, testified in the Apple vs. Samsung trial and lied his ass off saying, “Google did not look to copy the iPhone when it designed Android.” Lies.
I really like Jim. I'm actually a really big Google fan too, but the picture below is pretty compelling.
Commenter "kyron" on The Loop added a great quote too. Chris DeSalvo, Google engineer working on Android, after seeing the iPhone unveiled:
As a consumer I was blown away. I wanted one immediately. But as a Google engineer, I thought ‘We’re going to have to start over.’
Thankfully, charges were dropped because the baby had a solid alibi: he has witnesses that will vouch for his inability to walk, talk or wield weapons of any kind.
Thanks to iPhone in Canada for letting us know that 1Password for iOS and Mac is 50% off right now. Great app for keeping your passwords safe and checking the quality of your existing passwords. I've used both the iOS and Mac version for a few years now.
I'm sure everyone has heard of this one by now, but in case you haven't, it's kind of a big deal. I think the Bruce Schneier quote to which Daring Fireball links, says it best.
Bruce Schneier:
“Catastrophic” is the right word. On the scale of 1 to 10, this is an 11.
Mobile Syrup also links to a pretty handy tool in Last Pass. Go to Last Pass, type in a site's URL and it will tell you if that site was ever vulnerable, and if it's still vulnerable. Once the site's SSL certificate is confirmed as safe, you are then recommended to change your password, but not before. There is no sense in changing your password until the site is safe.
Good for him. First, D-I NCAA football player, and future NFLer, Michael Sam, now a D-I NCAA basketball player. I hope these guys blaze the trail to make more athletes—and non-athletes—more comfortable to openly be themselves.
[via Deadspin]
Seems to me like a pretty shady thing to do. If you want people to use your Messenger app, then make a great app that people want to use. Don't try to force people to use it.
[via The Verge]
After reading a very well written and glowing review of Dispatch on The Sweet Setup, I decided to download the app and give it a try. I was very excited about many of the features extolled by The Sweet Setup.
- support for most IMAP based email clients (Gmail, iCloud, Yahoo, etc.)
- a unified inbox for multiple accounts
- fluid, intuitive gestures for easy deleting, archiving, and marking email as spam
- advanced settings for custom salutations, signatures, and form responses
- powerful tools for turning important emails into to-do items, reference material, and calendar events
The app also comes with support for TextExpander snippets—which is awesome—and other great features. I was sold right away.
I had been using Mailbox for more than a year now, and it was very good, but I had a few minor issues with it—mostly the lack of support for Yahoo. It also lacked some of the power features that Dispatch was promising, like snippets, turning emails into reminders, sending to Evernote or Fantastical, etc.
So, I downloaded Dispatch and set up my 7 (yes, 7) IMAP email accounts, and started playing around with the app. At first, everything seemed great. But, things turned south pretty quickly. When I tried to send an email, I got an error message. I tried over and over again, but ended up with the same result. Also, the app crashed pretty regularly. Mostly when I was archiving emails and moving onto the next one pretty quickly. Within the first day, I deleted and reinstalled the app, but ended up with the same results. Next, I contacted the app's support email through the app, which default's to Apple's Mail.app, as per iOS rules (kind of ironic). Anyway, I waited a few days before I got a very basic response from the developer telling me that I should try to uninstall and reinstall the app. I explained that I already did that, and that all the other functions seemed to be working okay, aside from crashing. That was it. That was the last response I received. It's been about 12 days since that first response and I'ver heard nothing since. I responded with all the pertinent details (phone model, iOS version, etc.), but never heard back again. I've since contacted the author of the review on The Sweet Setup on Twitter—who was very nice, by the way—and he tells me it's only a single developer. That's great, but that doesn't solve my problem. I paid $4.99 for an app that doesn't work for me. It won't let me send emails. Let me say that again—it's kind of a critical function for an email app. I can't send emails! Oh, and it crashed on me quite a bit. Now, I'm willing to accept that there's a chance that I'm an edge case and most users aren't having the same problems as me. But, that's why I sent in my details. Users with an iPhone 5S, running iOS 7.1, with 7 IMAP accounts running on the app can't be that out of the ordinary. Maybe I'm wrong.
In the end, I've now deleted the app. I shouldn't have waited as long as I did, but the review was just so damned good, that I really wanted the app to work for me. Now, I'm back to Mailbox, which is fine by me. I'll miss the support for TextExpander snippets (not enough apps have snippet support), and I'll miss being able to send emails directly to several different "to do" apps. The good news is that Mailbox announced today that they'll be releasing Android and Mac apps, and a new feature called Auto-swipe, that tries to predicts which emails you will archive or snooze.
I'm back to Mailbox, and I'll let you know how I like using the new apps and Auto-swipe feature.
Marco links to Scotty Loveless' great piece on how to get the most out of our iOS battery.
My favourite is step 3. Tons of my friends think this is the coolest trick they've ever seen on an iPhone.
Step 3: Stop Quitting Your Apps in Multitasking
iOS 7 made it super fun to close your apps: all you have to do is double-click the home button and swipe up on the app preview to blast it into a digital black hole.
What most people tell you is that closing your apps will save your battery life because it keeps the apps from running in the background.
Wrong.
Yes, it does shut down the app, but what you don't know is that you are actually making your battery life worse if you do this on a regular basis. Let me tell you why.
By closing the app, you take the app out of the phone's RAM . While you think this may be what you want to do, it's not. When you open that same app again the next time you need it, your device has to load it back into memory all over again. All of that loading and unloading puts more stress on your device than just leaving it alone. Plus, iOS closes apps automatically as it needs more memory, so you're doing something your device is already doing for you. You are meant to be the user of your device, not the janitor.
The truth is, those apps in your multitasking menu are not running in the background at all: iOS freezes them where you last left the app so that it's ready to go if you go back. Unless you have enabled Background App Refresh, your apps are not allowed to run in the background unless they are playing music, using location services, recording audio, or the sneakiest of them all: checking for incoming VOIP calls , like Skype. All of these exceptions, besides the latter, will put an icon next to your battery icon to alert you it is running in the background.
Android Police is reporting that Virus Shield—a $4 app that does nothing but turn an "x" into a checkmark to show that your phone is "safe" from viruses. It made it to the number one new paid app and number three overall paid app in the Google Play Store in just over a week. It garnered more than 10,000 downloads.
Not cool.
Apparently, it's already been taken down from the store.
[via The Verge]
The Verge has gotten some pretty extensive inside scoop on Google's next foray into the world of set top boxes.
…Android TV will look and feel a lot more like the rest of the set top boxes on the market, including Apple TV, Amazon’s Fire TV, and Roku.
It will be interesting to see how this looks when it's released. Google TV flopped pretty bad, and Amazon just released their own set top box (U.S. only) last week. As per last week's episode of Accidental Tech Podcast, a big part of the problem is still too much exclusive content. Apple keeps iTunes content exclusive to the Apple TV. Amazon Prime Instant Video doesn't have a native app for the Apple TV, and isn't available outside of the U.S. Netflix and YouTube are available everywhere, which is great, but HBO Go isn't available on the Amazon Fire TV. You just can't all the content you might like to watch on a single box—at least not without some workarounds that only tech nerds can handle.
The Sweet Setup has some good tips on how to get the most out of the rechargeable batteries in your Apple devices.
It only took 11 days. I think this is great.
[via The Verge]
It's being widely reported that David Letterman will retire from the Late Show in 2015. The New York Times has the story.
I was always a Letterman guy more than a Leno guy.
Shopper's Drug Mart has iTunes gift cards in their flyer until tomorrow.
Today, Ontario's Bill 60 came into effect. The bill complements the CRTC's Wireless Code of Conduct, with caps on cancellation fees, rules for how the timeframe in which subsidies must be paid back, and penalties for individuals and companies that break the rules.
Money has flown into Bitcoin and money will begin to flow into public companies that avail themselves of the Bitcoin protocol and bitcoin as a transaction option for their customers. Think Overstock. We may be looking at one of the greatest arbitrage opportunities in the stock markets history. And this is largely due to the lack of understanding surrounding the opportunity connected to Bitcoin.
I think I see a pattern.