CNN:

Apple will replace AT&T in the Dow — an exclusive club of 30 stocks that also includes tech giants Microsoft, Intel, and Cisco as well as brand-name consumer firms Walmart, Coca-Cola, and Disney.

“As the largest corporation in the world and a leader in technology. Apple is the clear choice for the Dow Jones Industrial Average,” said David Blitzer, managing director and chairman of the index committee at S&P Dow Jones Indices, in a statement.

Apple will enter the Dow at the close of trading on March 18.

As tha article says, this is mostly symbolic but, for a company on the edge of bankruptcy less than 20 years ago, it’s a remarkable journey.

This may just ruin your weekend. Load the page, check and uncheck to winnow the available content (no cartoons or commercials, for example), then hit the Power button. Sit back in your bellbottoms, open up a Tab, cross your hushpuppies, and enjoy.

[ Big h/t to Brother Stu]

I think these are pretty nice looking, elegant without complexity. Each sample features a Live Demo button so you can see the site in action. And, if you are of a mind, you can view the page source of each demo to get an idea of how it was put together.

Each template is 100% free under the creative commons attribution license (attribution, in this case, means give html5up the credit they deserve).

Austin Mann was in Dallas to watch one of his photographs being hung on the side of a building.

I couldn’t be more proud to announce I’m part of Apple’s new Shot on iPhone, World Gallery campaign! They’ve selected a collection of images from photographers and every day iPhone users around the world and are plastering them on buildings, billboards, bus transits and more.

Three of my pieces were selected, two photos and one time-lapse! It’s super surreal looking up on the side of the building in Dallas and realizing I shot this picture!

The above video shows a bit of the process of capturing the transformation of this building into a big piece of waterfall art (and also a few tips about how I captured the time-lapse.)

Jump to the page and watch the video. You’ll watch the process of taking down an existing ad, see a time lapse of the new piece being hung, and get a really nice tip on shooting a panorama. All of this was done using an iPhone 6 (of course!)

Financial Times’ columnist Nick Foulkes had the chance to sit down with Sir Jony Ive just a few days before Monday’s big Spring Forward event, an event presumably designed to pull the curtain back on the missing details of the Apple Watch.

This is a reasonably long piece, so there’s a lot to digest. I found the piece incredibly well written, but with a tone that suggests an outsider’s voice, someone familiar with technology and gadgets, but without that intimate knowledge of Apple’s history. But rather than being off-putting, this gave the article a certain charm. Well worth the read.

Some details:

When asked how many Apple Watches the company will sell, he answers: “I’m much more concerned about how we can make them as good as possible than how many we’ll sell. We’re brutally self-critical and go through countless iterations of each product.”

And:

When the issue of the frequent need to recharge the iPhone is raised, he answers that it’s because it’s so light and thin that we use it so much and therefore deplete the battery. With a bigger battery it would be heavier, more cumbersome, less “compelling”.

And:

“One of the things that struck me,” says Ive, “was how often I’d look at my watch and have to look again quite soon afterwards, because I hadn’t actually comprehended what the time was. If I had looked at something on my phone, because of the investment involved in taking it out of my pocket or my bag, I would certainly pay attention. I quite like this sense of almost being careless and just glancing. I think for certain things the wrist is the perfect place for this technology.”

One final nugget, a mention (turns out this estimate was mistaken, as confirmed by 9to5mac’s Ben Lovejoy) of the pricing:

He runs through the three ranges of Apple Watch with their different materials – the stainless-steel Apple Watch, the anodised-aluminium Apple Watch Sport (both from $349) and the Apple Watch Edition in 18ct yellow or rose gold (with an as yet unconfirmed price of around $4,500) – and almost infinite combinations of colours and aesthetics.

About two weeks ago, I did my own little pricing exercise and came up with a range of $3,400 to $6,800 for the high end model. Even if the $4,500 price for the high end model is wrong, it does fit squarely in that range. Hopefully, we’ll hear more about this on Monday.

A street photography project to document world’s humanity in one single day. World wide participants will share their city stories through one photo per hour during 24 hours.

Sounds great.

In February 2015, I traveled far north to Norway to hunt down and photograph the Northern Lights, one of the most mesmerizing natural phenomena of this planet.

The Northern Lights are amazing.

Apple received the highest score for loyalty of any brand cited across all categories. What explains Apple’s unrivaled loyalty in China? Yes, the products are attractive. Yes, the price point is high enough that the iPhone is a status symbol that is more accessible than a diamond-studded watch or flashy sports car.

Very interesting article.

AltConf is a free, community-driven and supported event, held in downtown San Francisco alongside Apple’s WWDC. We’re currently planning the 2015 conference, and we’ve got some very exciting plans in the works that we’re hoping that we can announce very soon.

Mike and Judy do a tremendous job with AltConf. If you’re interested in speaking or wish to support the conference, be sure to get in touch with them.

People hate him. Boy, wow, do they hate him. At first they loved him, and then they were confused by him, and then they were irritated by him, and now they straight-up loathe.

I’m definitely in the “loathe” camp. I’ve loathed him since way back in his days in Seattle. But it’s still an interesting, well written (and well presented on the web site) article. And, after reading it, I still loathe him.

CBC:

The contest is held in association with the Yukon Sourdough Rendezvous festival, but Takhini Hot Pools owner Andrew Umbrich says he runs the contest the entire month of February to account for unpredictable temperatures.

He says -20C works for hair sculpting, but -30C is ideal.

“It just takes 10 minutes to a half hour to make a pretty incredible picture,” he says.

Goofy Canadians.

This is a cleverly designed site that allows you to mix and match various Apple Watch bodies with different straps. Fun few minutes diversion. What’s your favourite look?

Good post by Joe Caiati, writing for dot info:

HBO made it clear that it didn’t care if friends and family were sharing logins, just as long as they were getting hooked on the shows. (I’ll admit, I have a friends login right now that I’m using.) The current problem with it, is that when there is a big season premier or finale – HBO Go dies. It’s unusable. Too many people have given their logins out and millions of unanticipated customers are using the service. When the True Detective season finale premiered on a Sunday evening last year, the HBO Go app was riddled with server errors and the Apple TV app just out-right wouldn’t load. Paying customers who were not home and wanted to watch it were out-of-luck until the following day. And now HBO wants to open up access to millions more.

The price barrier that HBO Now will introduce will help them with traffic, but I think more people than they are anticipating are going to pay and this service has to be rock solid.

Totally agree. If HBO is going to step out on their own, they need to ensure that their delivery vehicle is up to the task. Right now, their customer experience is purely based on the quality of their content. Once someone pays for HBO Now, HBO has to deliver rock solid streaming, regardless of the load on the system.

About two months ago, Apple’s posted iOS 8 adoption rate was at 68%, up from 56% from two months before that.

The latest pie chart shows iOS 8 adoption at 75%, with iOS 7 at 22%. Helped, no doubt, by massive iPhone 6 sales.

[H/T Robert Davey]

Yesterday, I posted about the Impossibility domain name generator. In a somewhat similar startup vein, Withoomph takes a business name and a set of keywords and gens up a set of logos for your consideration. The suggestions are free, and I find them great food for thought.

If any of the logos hit the mark, you can buy screen and print resolution versions from the site. You can also hire them to do custom work.

A nice little treasure trove of Mac tips, all of them making use of the option key. As always, you may know most of these, but take a look, there might be a gem in here that’s new to you.

My favorite:

When you copy a file in your Mac’s Finder and go to Paste it, this will create a copy of the original file. There’s no way to “Cut” a file before pasting it to move it, as there is on Windows and Linux.

Instead, when you want to move a file, copy it normally. Next, go to the folder you want to move it to, right-click (or Control-click), and hold Option when the context menu appears. The normal “Paste Item” menu item will become “Move Item Here.”

This works for many other menu items, too. “Get Info” becomes” Show Inspector.” “Arrange By” becomes “Sort By.” “Open in New Tab” becomes “Open in New Window.” “Quick Look” becomes “Slideshow.” “Open With” becomes “Always Open With.”

Enjoy!

International Business Times:

HBO is in talks with Apple to make Apple TV one of the launch partners for its highly anticipated streaming service when it debuts next month. HBO and streaming partner Major League Baseball Advanced Media are working to have the standalone service, called “HBO Now,” ready to launch in April in conjunction with the premiere of the fifth season of “Game of Thrones,” according to sources familiar with their plans.

When it launches, consumers will be able to subscribe to HBO Now directly from HBO for the first time, rather than through a cable, satellite or telco TV distributor such as Comcast or Verizon. The retail price is expected to be $15 a month when purchased directly from HBO, or about what consumers pay when they order HBO through their cable, satellite or telco provider.

An important part of net neutrality: The cable companies can’t slow down HBO Now packets in an attempt to steer you to their own HBO packaged service.

Samsung lawyer Kathleen Sullivan of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP said the South Korean company had all but stopped using the patents, so no injunction was needed.

Wait, I thought Samsung said it didn’t infringe on Apple’s patents. Now they’re saying they did infringe, but they sort of stopped. This company is crazypants crazy.

The seven-track demo (Metallica’s second overall) dropped during the summer of 1982, when the band members themselves (which then included Dave Mustaine on guitar in the pre-Kirk Hammett days) sent the copies out to friends and the underground metal cognoscenti.

Yeah, I’ll be picking this one up.

Jim, Shawn and Dave talk about the Apple Watch, healthier lifestyles and guitar amp software!

Sponsored by lynda.com. (Start learning something new in 2015 by visiting the link to get a 10-day free trial and access their 2400+ courses)

A newly-discovered flaw in some implementations of cryptographic protocols SSL and TLS — including those used by Apple’s Safari and Google’s Android AOSP browsers — could allow an attacker to force clients to use older, weaker encryption that would make it significantly easier to intercept secure communications.

Apple has promised to distribute a client-side patch for the issue on both iOS and OS X by next week, while the researchers who discovered the flaw — from INRIA, IMDEA, and Microsoft Research — have been working to notify hosts who still serve export ciphers.

“These products are the result of a simple philosophy,” Samsung CEO J.K. Shin said. “It comes to two words: Relentless innovation.”

Here are two more accurate words: Copying Apple.

Here’s some news from the Zeppelin camp: A film offering a bevy of Led Zeppelin live footage is coming to a movie theater near you. The movie, appropriately called Led Zeppelin, will feature Zeppelin performing several concerts that happened throughout their career and play in more than 300 U.S. cinemas March 30.

This is going to be a must-see film. I hope they make it available on iTunes because I’ll be buying it.

This piece by Federico Viticci is moving. It is equal parts a cancer survival story, full of harrowing detail and heroic triumphs, and, at the same time, a detailed look at the HealthKit ecosystem. But the best part for me is the denouement, the upshot of his journey:

The iPhone is an object that we buy. It’s made by Apple, which is a company that wants to make money. But that’s not how I look at this. Call me naive and romantic, but I dropped cynicism a long time ago. Think about it this way: there are people who found a way to make a tiny computer that’s always with us. Then, there are other people – indie developers and big companies – who make software that can help us work and live better. We get the chance to experience all this and tweak our lifestyles with the aid of apps. And even if some of these people are driven by greed or questionable motives, the end result is that today we can use a phone to be healthier.

And:

I believe that Apple’s interest in health is genuine. With the iPhone, the App Store, and the upcoming Apple Watch, they have created an ecosystem of hardware and software that, beyond productivity and games, can help people live healthier lives. I ran this experiment on myself, and I know this because I’m seeing the results. I’ve almost reached my ideal weight, my physical therapist is happy with my muscle tone, and my MRIs show clear improvement in the area where my femur was reconstructed. I’ve never felt healthier or stronger. I honestly believe that I wouldn’t have been able to find the motivation and tools to reimagine my lifestyle if I didn’t trust my iPhone.

Here’s to a long and healthy life, Federico. Thank you for the inspiration.

From the International Forum web site:

Apple Watch features revolutionary new technologies, a pioneering interface, and a design that honors the rich tradition of watchmaking. Apple Watch’s design and interface were created specifically for a smaller device. The Digital Crown is an innovative way to navigate, the display features Force Touch, which senses the difference between a tap and a press, and the Taptic Engine enables a new vocabulary of notifications you can both hear and feel. The beautifully designed and durable Apple Watch enclosures are crafted from custom alloys of polished or space black stainless steel, space gray or silver anodized aluminum, and 18-karat gold.

Pretty good, for a product still in preview.

[Via MacRumors]

Have you ever had the need to come up with a new domain name? When I’m wearing my startup hat, this need strikes often. And though it might seem frivolous, the Impossibility domain name generator is a real boon to creativity.

Impossibility has you provide the core word you want in your new domain name, then give it a focus by specifying it as either an adjective, verb, noun, or wild card. It then spits out a series of available domains, providing links to Go Daddy, Namecheap, and Company Name as registrars, though you can, of course, just take the name to your registrar of choice.

The key here is the word “available”. Impossibility does prune the tree of possibility, limiting you to a set of algorithmic choices, but all of its suggestions are available, which will save you the time of coming up with a list of candidates, looking them up, only to find that they are already taken.

Definitely worth a look.

Samsung ditched almost all of its hardware differentiation to go all in on iPhone 6-style design — though layering in, iPhone 4-like, with glass on both sides.

Does this company have no shame? Can they not come up with anything on their own? Pathetic.