This week, with the sun at my back and the wind in my hair, I return from Florida to discuss WWDC, the latest Apple rumors and Google Now.
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I mean, how was I not going to link to this?
Finally, our long national nightmare of listening to our iPhones at our desks is coming to an end.
Tim Stevens, opening his Google Glass review at Engadget:
Smartphones are amazing things, but for those who have become addicted to messaging instant gratification, they are a bit unwieldy. This annoyance gets even worse as these devices grow larger and larger. Well, certainly one approach would be to relax a little and stop feeling so compelled to check for Facebook notifications every 30 seconds. Those fully immersed in the information age, however, will be more inclined to fix the physical inconveniences presented by the problem. A heads-up display seems like a natural fit, and thus we have Google Glass.
Stevens has described the reason I dislike Glass but haven’t been able to put my finger on. In our nearly-always-on world, Glass would have our brief moments of peace be filled.
I don’t want that. I don’t want that at all.
Arrive in the office, make a cup of coffee, open up your email, and turn up your favorite song. We know how it goes.
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Take care when driving at high volume. Find more at jengo.com.
If you didn’t make it to Atlanta, the Show Me Apple Museum in Canada looks pretty cool, too.
The collection appears to be very well-rounded. In fact, scrolling through the pictures, I can’t think of a single important machine that’s not on display.
Adrianne Jeffries at The Verge:
Path, the photo-centric social network that just hit 10 million users yesterday, has been getting some heat for what some users say are spammy tactics to recruit new users. Digital marketer Stephen Kenwright downloaded the app earlier this week, tried it out, uninstalled it, and went to bed. When he woke up, he found that Path had gone on a rogue mission early in the morning, texting and robocalling an unknown number of his contacts, including his grandparents.
You can read Kenwright’s account here. It’s pretty damning, especially in light of Path’s tangle with the FTC a few months ago.
I haven’t opened the Path app in months, but after reading these articles, I deactivated my account.
Mine is here, and it’s adorable:
This new Nokia Lumia 920 ad is amazing.
Jacqui Cheng:
OS X 10.9 will reportedly focus on the so-called “power user,” according to sources speaking to 9to5Mac. The release, code-named “Cabernet,” isn’t expected to significantly overhaul how the operating system functions, but will reportedly bring over more iOS features that could benefit OS X.
What might those features be? According to 9to5Mac’s sources, Apple has been “testing a new multi-tasking system” that’s similar to the app-switcher within iOS. “The multitasking feature will be functional for applications in the background, according to this person. Additionally, Apple could use app-pausing technologies from iOS to pause background application processes in OS X,” the site wrote, though apparently it’s unclear whether this feature will make the official 10.9 release.
That doesn’t seem to be real power user-oriented to me. The rumors of a tabbed Finder and a better Safari do, though.
Apple is expected to preview Mac OS X 10.9 at WWDC in June.
Aaron Mahnke:
To that end, the April edition of the Read & Trust Magazine is the last issue we publish for the foreseeable future. The group itself is still alive and thriving, and we have lots of great ideas in the works for the coming year. Right now, though, my energy is required elsewhere, so for the moment all regular publications will be put on hold.
When in Atlanta last month together, Aaron and I discussed this at great length. Props to Aaron for seeing that and doing the hardest thing when it comes to projects: saying goodbye when the time is right.
Dean Takahashi:
Inside the building is a data center full of humming servers — double the size that the company used in the past — that would be considered one of the top 25 supercomputers in the world. The 2,000 computers have more than 24,000 cores. The data center is like the beating heart behind the movie’s technology.
Even with all of that computing might, it still takes 29 hours to render a single frame of Monsters University, according to supervising technical director Sanjay Bakshi.
Holy moly.