Uncrate:

Emirates unveiled its new first class suites for its Boeing 777 and the amenities surpass most luxury hotels. Inspired by the Mercedes-Benz S-Class, each zero-gravity seat is enclosed in its own cabin with floor-to-ceiling sliding doors for complete privacy. Everything from the 32-inch TV screen, lights, and temperature are remote controlled. For those not lucky enough to snag a window seat, each interior room is equipped with its own virtual windows that project the view from outside the aircraft using real-time camera technology.

I’ve flown First Class before but I can’t imagine ever being able to afford First Class at this level. That’s a real shame because I’m headed to Australia in a few weeks and the flight is literally 24 hours in total. I’d love this “suite”.

Our passports are packed and we’re crossing the border. Before you know it, Lyft will be coming to you live in Toronto. We’ve been looking forward to taking our brand of ridesharing international for some time, and we’re super pumped to share this with our close friends up north.

Lyft is a great service and the one I use all the time. This is a good first step to expand Lyft’s reach.

YouTube has confirmed it is working to resolve a bug in its mobile app that causes significant battery drain on Apple devices, even when the app is running in the background.

Definitely something to keep on an eye on until it gets fixed.

Josh Hawley, a Republican seeking to unseat Democratic U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill in next year’s elections, announced at a press conference that he issued an investigative subpoena to Google. He expressed concern over the accuracy of the company’s privacy policy, allegations it misappropriated content from rivals and claims it demoted competitors’ websites in search results.

The first thing I wondered is if Reuters put the first line in because they think this is a political move. Regardless, Google will have to answer the charges.

Willamette Week:

On November 12, 1970, the Oregon Department of Transportation blew up a dead whale that had washed up on a Florence beach. In what was called a “controlled explosion,” they used a half-ton of dynamite. It didn’t go well.

Chunks of dead whale blubber ended up all over both bystanders and the beach, flying out as far as a nearby parking lot where the flying flesh severely damaged at least one car. The decision to publicly dynamite an enormous mammal has become one of Oregon’s all-time most bizarre moments.

This is one of those videos that showed me the power of the internet. I still remember seeing this decades ago in a tiny QuickTime window and marveling at the fact that I could watch it on this “internet thing”.

I also marveled at the fact people could be so stupid as to think they could blow up a whale carcass.

Thanks to my friend and lifelong Oregon resident Ian Schray for the link.

Go to the site, turn on your volume, and just play.

To get started, slide the sliders, and click on the various presets.

This is perfect background music for me.

Kif Leswing, Business Insider:

According to numerous blue-shirted “geniuses” that Business Insider spoke to, a rising tide of store visitors and on-the-job performance expectations have pushed the system to the breaking point.

And:

Retail employees notice that the stores are packed. One says that his store can’t keep up. “We haven’t been able to keep up with traffic since I started 8 years ago,” a senior Genius at a small store in the Midwest that has yet to be redesigned told Business Insider. “I wouldn’t even walk in the store because of how crowded it gets. During Christmas [season] you can hardly move.”

Even consumers who purchased their phones through their wireless carriers now increasingly turn to the Apple store as their de-facto service center. In some cases, the arrangement is deliberate: T-Mobile earlier this year started bundling AppleCare, Apple’s warranty and service program, into its own device insurance program, funneling its own customers to Apple for service.

This is a natural result of Apple’s enormous success. The question is, what is Apple doing to help alleviate this strain?

In 2016, Apple introduced a new repair role, named Technical Expert, which can do iPhone repairs and replacements for customers, but can’t repair Macs. The new Technical Expert roles seem to be doing a better job accommodating people who walk in with broken iPhones without appointments.

And:

With the new store design, Apple is rethinking the concept of the Genius Bar itself. Although new stores still have the traditional scheduled appointments for customers, the system has shifted to what Apple calls the “Genius Grove,” in which roving techs can service customers in a large tree-lined part of the store.

I go to the Apple Store pretty regularly, and I am seeing a difference. The original service model reserved the majority of the floor for sales, pushing all technical/service issues to a relatively small space at the rear of the store.

But the modern Apple Store feels different, the flow of technical/service response feels more triaged. Go in, find any Apple-shirted person, and explain your issue. Frequently, the path to a solution starts with that person either responding directly, or connecting you to the right someone in the store to work through a problem, often without spending time in any sort of queue at all.

It’s a night and day difference, from a customer experience perspective.

Tim Bajarin, Fast Company:

About six months before the iPhone hit store shelves in 2007, Steve Jobs called Corning’s CEO, Wendell Weeks, and asked him if he could create a glass cover for a new Apple product that would resist scratches and breakage.

And:

The original iPhone spec called for a plastic cover over the touchscreen display. The story goes that Jobs, after using a prototype iPhone for a few weeks, became very worried that the device’s display would get scratched when jumbled around in user’s pockets with keys and coins. So he gathered his engineers and demanded a new glass covering be used for the iPhone. Hence Jobs’s phone call to Weeks.

And:

While many other smartphone makers have crowed about using Gorilla Glass, Apple has rarely (if ever) publicly acknowledged Corning as the maker of the iPhone’s glass cover.

Corning is a critical part of the iPhone’s success and the iPhone a critical part of Corning’s growth as well. If you ever find yourself in the finger lakes region of New York, take some time to stop by the Corning Museum of Glass.

And spend a few minutes with Tim Bajarin’s article, as well as this fantastic New York Times article which details the iPhone’s move, under Steve Jobs’ urgent direction, from a plastic to a Gorilla Glass screen.

Fubiz:

Reinhard Görner is a German photographer specializing in architecture and the fine arts. For the photographic series “Libraries”, he travels across Europe to capture the solemnity of the libraries of the Old Continent. From Madrid to Stuttgart, passing through Turin, he immortalises modern immaculate white interiors, monumental frescoes and the old woodwork of these places dedicated to knowledge.

Absolutely stunning images. If you want to know where the specific images are, you’ll have to go to Görner’s website to see the captions. My bucket list includes this staircase of the Lello Bookstore in Porto, Portugal.

Antipodes Map:

This map helps you find the antipodes (the other side of the world) of any place on Earth.

Drag the left map, by clicking and holding as you move it, and when you will find the desired location, just click on it, and our “man” will dig a tunnel from selected location, right through the center of the Earth, up to the other side of the world which will be represented on Right Map.

This is pretty cool but, for the majority of us, our opposite point will be in an ocean.

Fstoppers:

Depending on the camera you have, the typical life of a shutter can vary from anything as low as 50,000 shutter actuations right up to 350,000. Some photographers may get unlucky and find themselves on the lower side of those numbers while others may find their cameras are still going strong after 500,000 shots.

For this reason, it’s crucial you keep an eye on how many pictures your current camera has made and how many frames your particular model will be at when it reaches the end of its life cycle. Knowing these numbers is equally as important to be aware of when looking to purchase a camera secondhand. If something you find on eBay has already taken a lot of pictures it may not last as long as you hope or be as much of a bargain as you think.

No, this won’t tell you definitively when your camera’s shutter will fail but it might help to know how many actuations your DSLR has done. It’s also helpful for those who buy used bodies to find out how much wear and tear there may be on the shutter mechanism.

FastCompany:

It’s better than any advertisement, social campaign, or press write-up. Appearing onstage at an Apple press event is the dream of every iOS developer. It can almost instantly lift a tiny bootstrapped company from obscurity to name-brand status. It can also be the beginning of a long-lasting and lucrative relationship with Apple.

But as the folks at Scrollmotion, a New York-based iOS app developer, can tell you, getting there is a long, careful dance that can be full of heady highs, heartbreaking lows, and sudden death. The company marshaled a laborious campaign to present its app onstage at an Apple event last spring, and while the campaign was unsuccessful, the company says it would do it again in a heartbeat.

I know developers are of two minds – it is a Darwinian pressure cooker attempting to satisfy all of Apple’s demands and to be better than a dozen other developers, some of them your friends, who are all trying to do the same thing. But, on the other hand, it’s the kind of jumpstart a small company craves.

Metro News:

For years, Canadians have been able to watch episodes of iconic American classics such as “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” “Batman” or “I Love Lucy.” But where was Canada’s TV heritage? Why was our homegrown fare always, after its initial run, locked away in a vault?

Well, “The Littlest Hobo” has finally been let out of his kennel. After years of development, the Canada Media Fund and Google Canada have teamed to launch encore+, a new YouTube channel giving viewers here and around the world access to decades of Canadian film and TV gold.

My weekend just might be spent watching “The Littlest Hobo” reruns.

Business Insider:

Disney has kept a tight lid on details about all the new “Star Wars” movies — but its strategy has been breached by Google Maps.

The service shows the street views of addresses all across the world via satellite images, which are typically one to three years old.

But Kevin Beaumont found something interesting at Longcross Studios, a film and TV production facility near London, on Google Maps: The Millennium Falcon is on site, or at least near a golf course close by. And it’s surrounded by shipping containers, seemingly in an attempt to hide it.

I don’t know why I find this so amusing.

Mental Floss:

On November 10, 1975, two ships made their way in tandem across the stormy waters of Lake Superior. One was the Arthur M. Anderson, led by Captain Jesse Cooper. The other, captained by Ernest McSorley, was the S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald.

The ship was last seen on radar around 7:15 p.m. All 29 men on board were lost with it, and today, 40 years after the most famous shipwreck in Great Lakes history, the cause is still a mystery.

Here’s what we do know about the S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald, and what happened to it that fateful day.

“The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” is a beautifully tragic song from Canadian songwriting legend Gordon Lightfoot. I’m probably not wrong in saying that all Canadians, at least those over the age of 40, know every word to that song.

Rich Mogull, writing for TidBITS:

Put simply, Face ID is the most compelling advancement in security I have seen in a very long time. It’s game changing not merely due to the technology, but due to Apple’s design and implementation.

And:

I believe Face ID is slower at actual recognition than Touch ID, but it’s nearly impossible to notice due to the implementation. In the time it takes to move your finger to the Touch ID sensor, Face ID could have already unlocked your iPhone.

That’s the real Face ID revolution. Since you’re almost always looking at your phone while you’re using it, Face ID enables what I call “continuous authentication.”

This is a fascinating article, worth the read. But even better, if you’ve not yet seen it, is the video embedded in Rich’s piece, which I’ve embedded below.

In it, Wall Street Journal’s Joanna Stern tries her best to defeat Face ID using siblings, triplets, and a well crafted theatrical mask.

Benjamin Mayo, 9to5Mac:

With the latest version of iTunes, Apple buried the interface for making ringtones on the Mac. It’s still possible but a lot more cumbersome to manage.

A little-known secret is that you can actually make custom alert an ringtones for iOS on your iPhone itself, using GarageBand. Here’s how.

If you like playing with sound, this is a fun, achievable project to take on.

Gorgeous prose, images, layout. Well worth your time.

The Verge article is worth a quick read, good to know about. And you might also want to check out Apple’s official AssistiveTouch support page.

Apple:

Apple today announced a major update to Clips, the free app for iOS that makes it easy to create and share fun videos using iPhone or iPad. Clips introduces Selfie Scenes and adds artistic style transfer effects and a redesigned interface that makes it easier than ever to create great videos on the go.

Selfie Scenes is an exciting new feature that places users into animated, 360-degree scenes when recording selfies. Using the sophisticated TrueDepth camera system on iPhone X, Selfie Scenes transports users into bustling cities, serene landscapes, abstract paintings and even the Millennium Falcon and Mega-Destroyer from “Star Wars: The Last Jedi.”

And:

New artistic effects use advanced machine learning and style transfer technology to turn any photo or video into a moody oil painting, vibrant watercolor or elegant pencil sketch — in real time while recording.

Follow the headline link and watch the video, check out the samples. The fact that that last bit is done in real time, while recording, is amazing to me.

Follow the headline link, take a look at the chart. Note the market share rankings. Samsung steadily falling, Apple makes a big gain in that last quarter.

From the TrendForce report:

Samsung is expected to slightly scale back the production of its high-end models in the fourth quarter as the brand is seeing the sales of its smartphones being squeezed by the strong demand for Apple’s latest iPhone devices.

And:

As for highly anticipated iPhone X, the yield rates of its key components (e.g. Wi-Fi modules and 3D sensing modules) have been lower than expected, thus delaying production of the device. With the limited support from iPhone X, Apple was not able to significantly raise its total volume.

On the other hand, TrendForce estimates that the iPhone production volume for this fourth quarter will reach 81 million units with iPhone X accounting for 33% of the total. TrendForce expects a surge of iPhone X production that will last through the first half of 2018.

If the limited component yield rates comment is true, Apple was able to make this leap while a bit hamstrung, which would mean this surge in production (and in demand) will last longer.

Good news for Apple all the way around.

The Associated Press:

The board game Clue. In the National Toy Hall of Fame. With the Wiffle Ball and paper airplane.

The mystery of which toys earned the status of toy superstardom was solved Thursday with the announcement of the hall of fame’s Class of 2017.

Well, this is a travesty of justice. Back in September, I predicted Matchbox Cars and Risk would be inducted. I demand an immediate recount.

BoingBoing:

When you get a scam email, forward it to [email protected] and a bot will keep the scammer busy emailing back and forth with it, giving the scammer less time to rob gullible humans.

This certainly won’t stop scammers and will take more time than simply deleting the email but it might give you a small measure of satisfaction.

GLITCHERS:

“It’s not just a game, it’s a quest to help scientists fight dementia!”

It sounds too good to be true but this really is a game, where simply by having loads of fun chasing creatures around magical seas and swamps, you can help to fight a disease that currently affects 45 million people worldwide.

In fact playing SEA HERO QUEST for just 2 minutes will generate the equivalent of 5 hours of lab-based research data.

I’ve played the first couple of levels of the game and it seems pretty simplistic. If it weren’t for the research goals behind it, I don’t think I’d actually play it through to the end but it’s for a great cause so I’ll definitely play a few rounds each day.

Here’s what one of the images looks like in place:

You can pick them up here (they’re free). Click to the page, then click on an image to get to the high res version.

From Cabel Sasser on Twitter:

And thanks to the Apple person who added this "floor crosshair" feature to iOS 11 for perfect face-down junk food shots!! That was the goal pic.twitter.com/fA5oobTdcN

— Cabel Sasser (@cabel) November 7, 2017

First things first, this is a great new feature. To see it for yourself, go to Settings > Camera, and make sure that Grid is enabled.

Now, when you tilt your camera flat and facing the floor (or, interestingly, the ceiling), a crosshair will appear.

But what really struck me was reading the replies to the thread, where the Apple developer who created the feature as an intern chimes in. For all its faults, this is the gold heart of Twitter.