When you look at the other products, the iPhone is absolutely amazing.

Woven throughout the micro-biographies are visual factoids like a timeline of notable events in the history of women in science, statistics about the alarming gender gap in STEM fields, and a visual taxonomy of lab tools.

Mercedes-Benz has defended an advertising campaign for its new E-Class against allegations that consumers were being misled about the car’s self-driving capabilities, the latest backlash by consumer groups in the wake of a fatal Tesla accident.

People need to understand that they are responsible for the vehicle at all times. If they can’t grasp that simple concept, they shouldn’t be driving in the first place.

Mac Kung Fu:

I switched to an iPhone SE a few days ago and, while I’m happy with the diminutive device, I’ve been a little worried to see battery life draining incredibly quickly. I would take the device off charge and after an hour of non-use the battery would be down to 90%. A full working day’s standby brought it down to 10%. This was very odd because all the reviews said that iPhone SE had superb battery life, and perhaps even better than the iPhone 6S. Whether you’ve accidentally shattered the screen of your iPad or your iPhone is experiencing charging issues, our expert iPhone reparatie service is here to provide prompt assistance and resolve your device’s problems. If you want a more secure way to call or communicate using your mobile phone, you may consider using a virtual phone number for telegram.

I removed various apps that Settings > Battery reported were eating juice. Gone were the news apps I had installed that fed me news flash notifications. However, battery life was STILL gobbled-up. I eventually realized the bad guy in the picture was the Wi-Fi Calling feature. Back into the Settings app I went, and tapped Phone > Wi-Fi Calling, and disabled it. It was a miraculous fix. The battery percentage figure now barely changes across an hour of non-use.

I use Wi-Fi calling all the time and I’ve never noticed a problem with battery life. I say this not to cast doubt on the article (or anyone else’s experience) but to wonder if there’s another factor being missed, something that makes some iPhones drain their batteries and not impact others. iPhones are great, but they can run into issues from time to time. You may need to take your phone in for repairs if your iPhone is not charging or if it is running slow.

Nonetheless, I did find this an interesting read.

Patently Apple:

Today, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office published a patent application from Apple that reveals that Jony Ive and his team have considered expanding the Apple Watch’s digital crown to other iOS devices such as the iPad. Apple notes that the digital crown could be used as a volume controller or locking the touch screen, turning on the touch screen, taking a picture, resizing text and other actions.

This is an interesting choice. The digital crown is effective for sliding back and forth through a list or set of settings. The trick is to connect the digital crown to a specific element in the user interface. With the Apple Watch, there is always a single part of the current interface connected to the digital crown. With a bit of tinkering, I can see this working with the more complex iOS interface hierarchy.

The physical part will bring its own set of challenges. Case makers will have to ensure that the case doesn’t get in the way, that there is enough clearance for your fingers to easily grasp the sides of the digital crown with room to accommodate the twisting motion. And that extra clearance means a gap of less protection, a place for liquids to creep in.

A challenge, but one with potential.

Stuff:

One of the world’s best collections of ghetto boomboxes is up for auction, and it’ll cost you $20,000 to open the bidding.

“If I just sold the top 20 they would reach $20,000, and I’ve already had interest in some of those,” he said. “But I would prefer to sell them as a collection.”

Kenton started collecting 15 years ago and admits the more he looked for them, “the more out of control it got”.

How many of you are old enough (or were “cool enough”) to have one of these beasts in the 80s? In my neighbourhood basketball court in Halifax, the winning team was the one who got to control the music so it was mandatory for you to have the biggest, most powerful ghetto blaster possible. We’d even take up a collection for batteries because the damn things sucked up D cells. Check out pictures of the collection here.

MIC:

Throughout the RNC, a plethora of artists have come forward condemning the unauthorized use of their songs. It’s continued into this week. Monday, the GOP’s White House pick Donald Trump was asked by the producer of the 1997 movie Air Force One, Gail Katz, to stop using the film’s score by late composer Jerry Goldsmith, writing in a letter that the soundtrack “was hijacked” — a great pun, which was likely intended — “in a misguided attempt to associate Trump with the film and the president in that film.”

So, are these obvious affronts to musicians legal? Is there a way to stop these charades? Unfortunately, the answers aren’t entirely black and white.

This is one of those things people, artists included, don’t often understand. Most of the time, the artist has no control over who or how their music is played in these situations.

These are pretty cool.

Apple Map users will be able to view key information about parking garages and lots around the world. In addition, users will have the option to click through to Parkopedia’s website and iOS app to view more detailed information including pricing, user reviews, special offers and real-time space availability. They will also be able to make reservations.

This is a great addition to Maps.

Take better photos without extra effort! Microsoft Pix has serious intelligence behind the lens, so it can automatically tweak settings for each shot, and immediately enhance your photos, to help people and scenes look their best. Now you can just enjoy the moment, instead of struggling to capture it! Point. Shoot. Perfect.

This sounds really interesting—I’ll give it a try. Designed for iPhone and iPad

Upthere, a little-known startup founded by former Apple software gurus, thinks it can do far better than Apple iCloud, Dropbox, Box, and others when it comes to quickly storing, organizing, and searching digital photos, videos, and more.

This new company was co-founded by Bertrand Serlet, the former Senior Vice President of Software Engineering at Apple. This is going to be really fun to watch. I would not count these guys out.

One of the first things I thought of when I first experienced Pokémon Go was how dependent the game was on location and how easy that would be to spoof. It didn’t take long for developers to bring that idea to life:

A new wave of PC-based Pokémon Go “bots” take the hacking a step further, spoofing locations and automating actions to essentially play the game for you while you sit in the comfort of your own home.

There are a number of competing bots out there, from the open source Necrobot to the pre-compiled Pokébuddy to MyGoBot, which recently started charging $4.99 for its automation tool following a three-hour free trial. All of them work on the same basic principles, sending artificial data to the Pokémon Go servers to simulate an extremely efficient, entirely tireless player.

This same sort of thing happened in the early days of World of Warcraft. It took some time, but the folks at Blizzard figured out how to tell if robots were playing for you and took a hard line, suspending accounts that leveled up impossibly quickly or were otherwise found to be cutting corners in some automated fashion.

I suspect Niantic will learn this same lesson, or things will go south pretty quickly.

Craig Cannon, interviewing Apples’ first employee (beyond Steve Jobs and Woz), Bill Fernandez:

Craig: So at what point do Woz and Jobs come together and decide that they want to start working on Apple?

Bill: Okay, well during this Hewlett-Packard period when Woz and I were both there, Woz in the after hours designed his own Pong game. Pong was the first really popular, you know, video game that bars and pizza shops and restaurants could buy and put it in stores and people would come and put quarters in and play. So he built his own circuitry and used it with a small black and white TV set as the display.

Then a couple of things happened. He started working on building his own computer and he started attending the Homebrew Computer Club that was happening at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, SLAC.

So all of those things happened at the same time and then as his computer came together he would take it and show it off after the meetings. At some point there was enough interest shown that Jobs became aware of this. I don’t know if he went to the Homebrew Computer Club or just when he and Woz were together Woz was talking about it. Basically Jobs said, “You know, we could make printed circuit boards and just sell the computer already assembled so people wouldn’t even have to buy all the parts on the open market and figure out how to wire them together. We could just do it for them.” And so that was the beginning of Apple Computer.

Jobs got a printed circuit board made and he figured out where to get all the parts. They decided what to name the company and then, this is funny, Jobs got a front office front. There was a company at 770 Welch Road. If you look at the old literature that was their address, Apple’s mailing address. So there was this company on the second floor that had people who would answer the phone and depending upon what number was called would say, “Hello, this is Apple Computer, how can I help you?” And would receive packages mailed to Apple Computer and would mail things from Apple Computer. Jobs was working in his father’s garage and in his bedroom, you know, and this was like our front to make it look legit.

This is a nice, long interview, with lots of edge-on views of the stuff of legend, the birth of Apple.

This is a terrific interview. Some of it is inside baseball (anecdotes about the politics of tech journalism), but all of it is readable and fascinating. Feels like no punches were pulled.

Ars Technica:

When we recently reviewed the Moto Z, we said that the device would not be getting Android’s monthly security updates. Motorola doesn’t make this information officially available anywhere, but when we asked Motorola reps at the Moto Z launch event if the company would commit to the monthly updates, we were flatly told “no.”

And:

Motorola has clarified the update situation of the Moto Z and Moto G4, calling Android’s monthly security updates “difficult” and deciding not to commit to them.

Tough to say no to an update that patches a known security vulnerability.

From Moto:

We strive to push security patches as quickly as possible. However, because of the amount of testing and approvals that are necessary to deploy them, it’s difficult to do this on a monthly basis for all our devices. It is often most efficient for us to bundle security updates in a scheduled Maintenance Release (MR) or OS upgrade.

That delay is no small thing, security-wise.

Graham Spencer, writing for MacStories:

In a rather extraordinary move, four of Australia’s largest banks have written to Australia’s competition regulator requesting permission to join together in a collective boycott whilst they negotiate with third-party mobile wallet services including Apple Pay, Android Pay and Samsung Pay.

And:

At the heart of their request is the claim that third party wallet providers have the power to “impose highly restrictive terms and conditions”. The banks point out that 90% of smartphones sold in Australia run iOS or Android, and Samsung is the leading manufacturer of Android phones. Therefore, they claim, Google has significant bargaining power over Android, Samsung over Galaxy phones, and Apple over iPhones. But it is Apple that the banks say “has particularly significant bargaining power in negotiations relating to Apple Pay due to its control of both a key operating system and key mobile hardware”. They point out that in Australia the iPhone has a share of 41.2% of the market and Apple sells the two most popular phones on the market.

And:

The banks also make the argument that Apple has refused to permit third-party apps from accessing the NFC functionality contained in recent iPhones, unlike other manufacturers. They argue that it is inconsistent with other hardware and software features Apple has introduced such as the iPhone camera, accelerometer, and Touch ID sensor which are available to third-parties.

This is a first domino, a potential precedent.

iMore did their usual transcript of the earnings call, which is always good.

Cowarobot R1:

Cowarobot R1 is a fully autonomous smart suitcase, that follows its users while avoiding any obstacles in its path. We have merged upcoming technology with the suitcase in hopes that our new invention can allow people to travel more conveniently.

With all due respect to my esteemed colleague Dave Mark, I think “rideable luggage” is a silly idea. Now, luggage that follows you around like a puppy? I’d buy that. But this is yet another Indiegogo campaign I don’t expect to be delivered on schedule or, for that matter, delivered at all.

The Atlantic:

Several popular brands of wireless keyboards have been betraying their owners, broadcasting their keystrokes for savvy hackers to intercept from hundreds of feet away.

According to research published Tuesday by Bastille, a cybersecurity company, eight wireless keyboards manufactured by major electronics companies transmit information in a way that makes it possible for a hacker to eavesdrop on every sentence, password, credit card number, and secret typed on them.

This hack doesn’t affect non-wireless or Bluetooth keyboards and none of the more popular keyboards used by Mac or iPad users are included on the list of affected keyboards. At least, not yet.

Apple has emerged as the surprise buyer of the unscripted TV series based on the “Carpool Karaoke” segment of CBS’ “The Late Late Show with James Corden.”

I’ll admit to being a little surprised.

Under the deal, Vizio will be operated as an independent subsidiary, with the company’s current management team staying in place and working out of its offices in Southern California. Vizio’s data business, Inscape, will be spun out into a privately held company, with Vizio CEO William Wang serving as chairman and CEO. The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter of this year.

Adobe:

With this Lightroom for Apple TV release, you’ll be able to share your photos one by one in a slideshow, with the ability to stop and zoom in to see all the detail within your photo. Quickly navigate through all your photos to find that exact memory you’re looking for.

All your photos, are always available with your latest edits. In Lightroom for Apple TV, you can view and share all of your synced Lightroom photos including photos you’ve uploaded via Lightroom CC on your desktop, Lightroom on mobile, or Lightroom on the web.

Lightroom for Apple TV requires an Apple TV 4th Gen as well as a Creative Cloud subscription to login. The app can be downloaded for free from the App Store on your Apple TV, and is available right now.

I use Flickr right now as a way to show off my images on an Apple TV but this would allow me to keep up with any edits I may make to them.

The smartphone platform wars are pretty much over, and Apple and Google won. But it’s interesting, in passing, to note the final score, and think about what it means.

Some good work from Benedict Evans.