MyAppleMenu - Fri, Aug 14, 2015

Fri, Aug 14, 2015The Read-Between-Meetings Edition

The Rise Of Phone Reading, by Jennifer Maloney, Wall Street Journal

Mr. Vestal’s iPhone has offered him a way to squeeze in time for reading that he otherwise might have given up. He reads on lunch breaks. He even reads between meetings as he walks across Microsoft’s Seattle campus, where he works as a program manager.

Before he tried it, he wondered whether reading in snippets might be dissatisfying. But to his surprise, he found he could quickly re-immerse himself in the book he was reading. “I want reading to be part of my life,” said Mr. Vestal, age 35. “If I waited for the kind of time I used to have—sitting down for five hours—I wouldn’t read at all.”

Vertical Video On The Small Screen? Not A Crime, by Farhad Manjoo, New York Times

Holding your phone “the wrong way” to shoot a video provokes surprisingly apoplectic reactions. Professional videographers tend to regard vertical videos as the mark of an amateur, and they react to these clips with the same sense of wounded outrage that snooty writers reserve for people who confuse its and it’s, or who type two spaces after a period when everyone knows there should only be one.

But perhaps there’s a deeper reason that Mario, Fafa and many professional videographers become so enraged: They worry they are on the wrong side of history. The future of video, it turns out, just may be vertical.

Things That Will Happen If I Don’t Take My Phone Out Right Now, by Scaachi Koul, New Yorker

Someone will post a photo of a brunch sandwich—like, a really great brunch sandwich, one with bacon and avocado—and I won’t get to comment, “omg where.”

Backup Before Updating Your Stuff

Apple Releases OS X 10.10.5 To Squash Mail, Photos, And QuickTime Bugs, by Andrew Cunningham, Ars Technica

The update contains a fix for a bug that gives attackers unfettered root privileges, a feat that makes it easier to surreptitiously infect Macs with rootkits and other types of persistent malware.

Apple Releases iOS 8.4.1 With Improvements To Apple Music, by Brent Dirks, AppAdvice

iTunes 12.2.2 Update With Bug Fixes For Apple Music Released, by OS X Daily

Apple's Diversity, Or Lack Thereof

Inclusion Inspires Innovation., by Apple

We are proud of the progress we’ve made, and our commitment to diversity is unwavering. But we know there is a lot more work to be done.

Some people will read this page and see our progress. Others will recognize how much farther we have to go. We see both. And more important than these statistics, we see tens of thousands of Apple employees all over the world, speaking dozens of languages, working together. We celebrate their differences and the many benefits we and our customers enjoy as a result.

Apple Wants To Be Diverse, But White Dudes Still Run Things, by Davey ALba, Wired

That may sound like a whole lot of progress. But a closer look at the actual composition of Apple’s workforce tells a more dismal story.

Apple Reports Little Progress In Workforce Diversity Efforts, by Tracey Lien, Los Angeles Times

Apple more than doubled the number of women, blacks and Latino workers hired in the last year, according to a report released Thursday, but the result was only an incremental improvement in its overall workforce diversity figures.

Stuff.

Apple Recalling Some Apple TVs, by Topher Kessler, MacIssues

If you recently purchased an AppleTV, then its possible you may receive an e-mail from Apple requesting you ship the system back to Apple for a replacement. For unknown reasons besides mention of a faulty component, Apple has initiated the recall, and is offering affected users an iTunes gift card for the inconvenience.

Listening To Classical Music On Apple Music, by Kirk McElhearn, Macworld

I recently made some suggestions about how you can manage a classical music library in iTunes. Apple Music, however, can be even more of a challenge for listening to classical music. This isn’t surprising; the music streaming model is designed around the “song” rather than multi-movement works, such as symphonies and sonatas. Here are a few tips to help you listen to classical music more efficiently.

Art App Helps Teens With Depression, by Madeleine Dore, ArtsHub

Harnessing the power of art to improve our general wellbeing, the team behind the online initiative Rosie Respect have created the free iPhone app Wake Up Rosie.

Dedicated to helping young women develop courage and resilience, Wake Up Rosie is a modern alarm clock that helps people start their day in the right frame of mind through inspiring music and design. Each time the alarm sounds, Wake Up Rosie will send the user an inspirational image designed to give you a boost.

Develop.

Facebook Is Open-Sourcing Its Parse SDKs, Starting With iOS, Android, And Mac OS X, by Jordan Novet, VentureBeat

Notes.

Apple's Products Are Getting Harder To Use Because They Ignore Principles Of Design., by Don Norman

Apple has gotten carried away by the slick, minimalist appearance of their products at the expense of ease of use, understandability, and the ability to do complex operations without ever looking at the manual.

Apple V. Samsung: Court Rejects Samsung's Latest Appeal, by Howard Mintz, San Jose Mercury News

Without comment, the U.S. Federal Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Samsung's bid to reconsider a previous ruling largely backing Apple -- leaving the U.S. Supreme Court as the only legal option left for Samsung to try to overturn hundreds of millions of dollars in damages it now owes Apple in their ongoing patent feud.

Parting Words

One of my greatest professional regrets is I was unable to convince NYTimes to make the “printer-friendly” button say “fit to print”

— Karen McGrane (@karenmcgrane) August 12, 2015

Thanks for reading.