MyAppleMenu - Wed, Jul 15, 2015

Wed, Jul 15, 2015The Exposed-To-Water Edition

A Watch, Water And Workouts, by Craig Hockenberry, furbo.org

This report will explore how well the watch works when it’s exposed to water. I’ll also make some recommendations for Apple to improve the usability of its Workout app, especially when tracking water sports.

Few seemed to pick up on that nuance.

Why Web Pages Suck, by Ben Thompson, Stratechery

It’s that last line that should give Gruber, or anyone else complaining about crappy websites, pause. After all, if iMore respects their readers, the only alternative explanation is that their development team is incompetent. Unless, of course, iMore, along with the vast majority of ad-supported sites on the web, have basically no choice in the matter.

Taylor Swift And Apple: The Back Story, by Michal Lev-Ram, Fortune

“‘I can’t support this, you need to pay us from the first stream,'” Borchetta, the CEO of Big Machine Records, says he told Apple execs. “And those conversations led up to the weekend where Taylor posted the blog.”

According to Borchetta, he hadn’t spoken to Swift earlier in the week, and was caught by surprise when she let him know about her letter.

Apple Watch, Not Dead Yet, by Dawn Chmielewski, Re/code

“We’ve always been very clear that we’re talking about U.S. online sales. We’re not projecting other channels,” said Agarwal. “Anytime we send data to reporters, I was the first to say, ‘Look, it could be sales are shifting online to in-stores.’ That’s how we present it.”

Stuff.

Sandvox 2.10 Review: A Newcomer-Friendly Tool For Publishing Simple Sites, by Nathan Alderman, Macworld

For everyday folks who want to build a website but don’t know how, Sandvox offers a friendly all-in-one solution. Web design pros who need powerful, versatile tools won’t find them, however.

Hands On: Adventure Time -- Card Wars 1.5.0 (iOS), by Amber Neely, MacNN

Chatting In Secret While We're All Being Watched, by Micah Lee, The Intercept

But if you take careful steps to protect yourself, it’s possible to communicate online in a way that’s private, secret and anonymous. Today I’m going to explain in precise terms how to do that. I’ll take techniques NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden used when contacting me two and a half years ago and boil them down to the essentials. In a nutshell, I’ll show you how to create anonymous real-time chat accounts and how to chat over those accounts using an encryption protocol called Off-the-Record Messaging, or OTR.

Notes.

How Apple’s iCloud Drive Deletes Your Files Without Warning, by Mark Jaquith

Cloud storage is a brilliant idea, but the way Apple has implemented it is reckless and irresponsible. People’s data is sacred, and Apple makes it really easy to just vaporize it, forever.

Apple Advances On Diversity, Slowly, by Patricia Sellers, Fortune

Global Human Resources Chief Denise Young Smith said at Fortune Brainstorm Tech on Tuesday morning that Apple’s next “diversity report” will come “sometime this summer” and will reveal some progress on recruiting diverse employees. “We did have some movement in our hiring or women and hiring of minorities,” said Young Smith, noting that about 35% of Apple’s recent recruits are women. The upcoming report, which Young Smith claims will have “more transparency” than its report last year, will show an uptick in hiring African-American and Hispanic recruits as well.

Apple Saves Publishing... For Itself, by Joel Johnson, Fast Company

But the worst case scenario that's developing here is that we're going to let Apple and Facebook control the means of distribution simply by pitting readers who don't want to pay for content saddle with slow, hard-to-navigate web pages against publishers who are operating businesses with thin profit margins. The list of publishers already working with Apple News is long, with titles from big conglomerates like Condé Nast and Hearst already on board. And again, given the financial climate in publishing, I do not blame them.

Parting Words

The 5 world religions. pic.twitter.com/dBhB2EF5hd

— Karin Kosina (@kyrah) July 13, 2015

Thanks for reading.