I recently got the 9.7″ iPad Pro and I love it. I also got the Apple Pencil and I’m really enjoying drawing / sketching using great apps like Paper by 53.
Tag Archives: apple
On my radar – Sep / Oct 2015
- A San Francisco Street Transformed by Food (New York Times)
- TiVo Bolt review: Watching TV faster (The Verge)
- iPhone 6s vs. iPhone 6: Has everything really changed? (BGR)
- WatchOS 2 hands-on: What Apple Watch should have had from the start (Engadget)
- Spotify is getting unbelievably good at picking music – here’s an inside look at how (Tech Insider)
Week of 10/24/11 – Roundup
Tech News
It was another dismal week for Netflix. The stock dropped 35% after announcing that they lost 800,000 subscribers and projecting that fourth-quarter earnings would be below expectations. Henry Blodget (Business Insider) says: Sorry, but this Netflix collapse is overdone.
HP announced that it will keep it’s PC division but there was speculation that they would shut down the webOS division. The head of HP’s PC division this was an unfounded rumor.
Google announced an update to Google TV and there were rumors of a Siri-powered, integrated Apple TV coming in 2013.
The New York Times published a very touching eulogy of Steve Jobs written by his sister Mona Simpson. A must-read.
Death didn’t happen to Steve, he achieved it.
– Mona Simpson, A Sister’s Eulogy for Steve Jobs
People aren’t happy about Google’s plans to discontinue the social features of Google Reader.
Flipboard, the popular news/social reader application for tablets, is about to get some competition from Google (Propeller) and Yahoo (Livestand).
Benchmark-backed Nextdoor launches a private social network for neighborhoods.
Y Combinator held their Startup School. Mark Zuckerberg, Paul Graham, and Marc Andreessen all spoke.
Mark Zuckerberg interview at Y Combinator Startup School
Apps
- Mint finally launches an iPad app (iTunes, Mashable post)
- Scan old photos and post them to Facebook using the Shoebox iPhone app (iTunes, TechCrunch post)
- The creators of Daily Booth launch a great new photo sharing app called Batch. The buzz about this app is off the charts.
- Mike Arrington (CrunchFund) says: Batch may be the perfect photo sharing app
- Paul Graham says he was “blown away” and “this is the app everyone’s been waiting for“
- Robert Scoble says” “I have NEVER seen an app get this widely hyped“
- Soundcloud launched a new iPad app (iTunes, All Things D post)
- You can watch live TV on DIRECTV’s new iPad app (iTunes)
- Bloomberg TV launched an iPad app (iTunes)
Television / Movies
- A couple of PBS shows worth watching:
- America In Primetime (premiers Sunday, 10/20)
- Steve Jobs – One Last Thing (premiers Wednesday, 11/2)
- Cars 2 is available on DVD, iTunes
Sports
- The St. Louis Cardinals win the 2011 World Series. Game 6 will be remembered as one of the greatest World Series games ever.
- The 49ers defeat the Cleveland Browns and are 6-1 for the first time since 1998.
- Buster Posey is swinging the bat in Arizona. Hank Schulman (SF Chronicle) writes about his recovery here.
David Freese’s Game 6 walk-off home run:
The Week Ahead
The Groupon IPO is scheduled for Thursday, November 3rd. Before you consider investing, read this piece by Nicholas Carslon (Business Insider): INSIDE GROUPON: The Truth About The World’s Most Controversial Company
Week of 10/17/11 – Roundup
Steve Jobs
A couple of weeks after his death, Steve Jobs continues to be a huge topic. On Wednesday, Apple celebrated the life of Steve Jobs at the Apple campus in Cupertino.
The biography of Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson was released on October 24th.
Here’s the video of the celebration of Steve Jobs
Sixty Minutes devoted an entire show Sixty Minutes devotes an entire show to the Steve Jobs Biography
Reviews of the Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson
- New York Times
- Washington Post
- Huffington Post
- The Telegraph
- USA Today
- George Stephanopoulos / ABC News
An unabridged version of the biography is available on Audible
More from 60 Minutes videos: The Steve Jobs Family Photo Album
Lots of speculation out there about the final project(s) that Steve Jobs was working on.
- Apple Television? (MG Siegler / TechCrunch)
- Text books? (NY Time Bits blog)
- iPhone 5? (CNET News)
- All of the above?
Tech News
Other tech news this week:
- Apple sold over 4 million phones last weekend
- Apple reported their 4th quarter earnings. For the first time in a long time, they fell short of analysts’ estimates because they didn’t release a new iPhone in June. But Apple predicts a blow-out 4th quarter and MG Siegler says you’re an idiot if you were one of the many people who sold Apple stock.
- Google announced Android 4.0 a.k.a. Ice Cream Sandwich
- Google announced that a Google Music Store is coming soon (All Things D)
- The AsiaD conference was held in Hong Kong. Videos: Jerry Yang talks about what’s next for Yahoo, Bradley Horowitz talks about Google+
- The Web 2.0 Summit was held in San Francisco. Videos: Sean Parker, Sergey Brin (Google), Marc Benioff (Salesforce), Kevin Rose (Milk), Dennis Crowley (FourSquare).
- GroupOn sets Nov. 4th IPO Date (WSJ)
Sergey Brin at Web 2.0 Summit
Apps
- Instapaper 4.0 (iTunes)
- Hipster – send digital postcards from your phone (iTunes)
- 500 px for iPad – photo sharing (iTunes)
Music
- Peter Gabriel – New Blood
- M83 – Hurry Up We’re Dreaming (Spotify)
- Pallers – The Sea of Memories (Spotify)
- Radical Face – The Family Tree: The Roots (Spotify)
- Real Estate – Days (Spotify)
- Coldplay releases Mylo Xyloto on October 24th (Amazon)
Radical Face – Mountains (video by YouTube user celmannn)
Sports
- Albert Pujols hit 3 home runs in Game 3 of the World Series. Reggie Jackson and Babe Ruth (twice!) are the only other players to accomplish that.
- The Raiders trade for Carson Palmer to replace the injured Jason Campbell
Week of 10/10/11 – Roundup
Tech
The iPhone 4S went on sale on October 14th. Despite lukewarm reaction to the announcement of the 4S, initial sales number appear to be very healthy. As usual, people were lined up at Apple Stores. Pre-order sales were very strong – over one million pre-order units in the first 24 hours – and AT&T’s activation servers were overloaded when everyone tried to activate their phones at the same time. Some analysts predict that Apple will sell 4 million phones over the weekend and another analyst estimates that Apple will sell 24 million iPhones in Q4 2011. Apple stock closed at an all-time high ($422 a share) on Friday.
iPhone 4S launch at Apple’s 5th Avenue Store:
Reviews of the iPhone 4S were very positive, especially for the new Siri personal assistant.
Speech recognition. Crazy good, transformative, category-redefining speech recognition.
David Pogue, New York Times – New iPhone Conceals Pure Magic
Here’s a roundup of other iPhone 4S reviews:
- The iPhone 4S: Faster, More Capable And You Can Talk To It – MG Siegler / TechCrunch
- The iPhone 4S Review – Joshua Topolsky / This Is My Next
- The iPhone Finds Its Voice – Walt Mossberg / Wall Street Journal
- It’s the iPhone 4, Only More So – Harry McCracken / Time Magazine
- The iPhone 4S – John Gruber / Daring Fireball
- more reviews here
People are having a lot of fun with Siri.
- S**t That Siri Says – a Tubmlr blog highlighting funny responses from Siri
- Siri says some weird things -Â Joshua Topolsky / This Is My Next
- Why So Siri-ous? – MG Siegler / TechCrunch
Siri Demo from SlashGear:
A few days before the iPhone 4S went on sale, iOS 5 was released.
- iOS 5 Review: Ambitious update rings in the changes – MacWorld
- There were some upgrade issues when iOS 5 was released but those issues appear to be calming down
- iOS 5 discussion on GDGT
- There are some issues with apps that store content for offline viewing. This post by the creator of Instapaper goes into details.
- iOS 5 video on Apple.com
Other tech news this week:
- A memorial service was held for Steve Jobs on Sunday (MercuryNews.com)
- Google reported a blowout quarter
- Facebook launched their long awaited iPad app
- Netflix abandoned their plan to rent DVD’s on Qwikster
- Is Yahoo going private?
- The TiVo Premier Elite – a 4-tuner DVR that can store up to 300 hours of programming – is now available
- Google announces a new programming language called Dart
- Web 2.0 Expo was held in New York. View videos & slides here
Apps
- FourSquare introduces Radar – a location-based alert system (iTunes)
- The new Facebook iPad app (iTunes)
- Pearltree for iPad (iTunes, RWW review, Robert Scoble video)
- Hipstamatic will release an app that simulates the disposable camera experience. You can’t view the photos until you finish the roll.
Music
- Ryan Adams / Ashes & Fire (Spotify, Stereogum review)
- An album of cover-songs of U2’s Achtung Baby will be released in November. You can listen to Jack White’s cover of Love Is Blindness here
- Tycho – Dive is a great album for chilling out
- The Treasure Island music festival was held over the weekend near San Francisco
Sports
- The 49ers’ impressive 25-19 victory over the previously undefeated Lions is almost overshadowed by Jim Harbaugh’s overly aggressive post-game handshake
- Good news for Giants fans: Buster Posey catches bullpen sessions in Arizona
- Inside the Collapse – more details about the Boston Red Sox 2011 Implosion
Television
- The Breaking Bad season 4 final was last Sunday. Here are the reviews:
- Listen to the Breaking Bad Insider podcast where producer Vince Gilligan, editor Kelly Dixon, and others discuss the finale
San Francisco Restaurants
- Paxti’s (Chicago-style pizza) new location on Irving Street is opening soon
- Umami Burger on Union Street opened earlier this week
- You wouldn’t know if from their Twitter or Facebook accounts, but Suppenkuche Biergarten in Hayes Valley is open for business. In This City SF has details.
The Week Ahead
- Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, Oct. 17-19
- The World Series starts on Wednesday – Rangers vs Cardinals
- Product Camp San Francisco on Oct 22nd (sold out)
- The annual Bridge School Benefit Concert (Neil Young, Arcade Fire, Foo Fighters, Eddie Vedder, Mumford & Sons, Beck, and others) Oct. 22-23 at Shoreline Ampitheater in Mountain View
Update – video highlights from this concert…