This week on Relay FM’s most global of podcasts, we spoke about OS X El Capitan, the iPhone 6S Plus and how some of us are kinda meh on watchOS 2 so far.
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KBase Article of the Week: Upgrade your notes with iOS 9 and OS X El Capitan⇢
OS X El Capitan Review
OS X El Capitan is here, and to be honest, even as a hardcore Mac user, it’s kind of a sleepy release. That’s not to say there isn’t good stuff in the new version of OS X; there are a lot of nice features here, but its a quiet year.
Between you and me, I’m a little glad about that.
A year ago, OS X Yosemite brought a wide-reaching redesign to the operating system, building on top of the foundations laid by OS X Mavericks just 12 months before that. This year, El Capitan brings a new level of polish to the OS, tweaking some things here and there that needed attention.
Tribune publisher: the kids will come around to newspapers⇢
Lynne Marek, writing about an interview with Chicago Tribune Publishing CEO Jack Griffin:
Holding the paper up, he said: “I could be wrong, but I don’t think that this entirely goes away. I think there’s enough about it—the experience that’s sufficiently different with both the advertising and the editorial. I mean, how do you do that online?” He answers his own question later: “That’s really hard to do online or on a phone."
NASA: Liquid water flows on Mars⇢
NASA:
New findings from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) provide the strongest evidence yet that liquid water flows intermittently on present-day Mars.
Using an imaging spectrometer on MRO, researchers detected signatures of hydrated minerals on slopes where mysterious streaks are seen on the Red Planet. These darkish streaks appear to ebb and flow over time. They darken and appear to flow down steep slopes during warm seasons, and then fade in cooler seasons. They appear in several locations on Mars when temperatures are above minus 10 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 23 Celsius), and disappear at colder times.
An interview with Rachel Binx⇢
This week on my podcast about spaaaaaaaaace with Jason Snell, we gush over more Pluto photos and wish some Mars hardware a happy birthday before interviewing Rachel Binx from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
This was a really fun interview, and I think it turned out great. Go check it out.
Thank You⇢
September is winding down, and currently, my fundraising page for St. Jude is sitting at just over $18,000.
Which is awesome.
Apple has sold 13 million iPhone 6s and 6s Plus models⇢
Apple PR:
Apple today announced it has sold more than 13 million new iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus models, a new record, just three days after launch. iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus will be available in more than 40 additional countries beginning October 9 including Italy, Mexico, Russia, Spain and Taiwan. The new iPhones will be available in over 130 countries by the end of the year.
I guess we shouldn’t underestimate the attraction of the S models, or the power that the two-year contract still holds. Just check out the jumps in launch weekend sales in S years:
6S Plus First Impressions
I’ve enjoyed my iPhone 6 Plus since first realizing #MykeWasRight and trading in my small, junky iPhone 6 for a nicely-sized, amazing iPhone 6 Plus back in the spring.
Like many of you, I pre-ordered a phone a couple of weeks ago, and today it came: a 64GB Space Gray iPhone 6S Plus. There’s a lot I haven’t done with this new phone yet, but I’ll be taking notes for a review. Here are some initial impressions until then:
iPhone Upgrade Plan off to rocky start⇢
According to this growing Reddit thread, Apple’s iPhone Upgrade Plan is struggling to keep up with demand. Customers are being denied, and it seems that Apple Retail employees’ hands are tied, waiting on Citizen’s system to recover. (Citizen is the company Apple is using to finance the iPhone purchases.)
Reading this reminded me of the giant cluster that was the iPhone 3G launch. Clearly, this issue with Citizen is nowhere as bad, but I’m sure its still frustrating for everyone involved.
Sunday’s eclipse⇢
Loren Grush at The Verge:
This weekend, the Moon will provide a big, bloody show for those looking up into the night sky. A total lunar eclipse — sometimes referred to as a blood moon due to the Moon’s dark red glow — is scheduled to begin at 10:11PM ET on Sunday.
But this eclipse is particularly special, because it’s happening on a night when the Moon will also be a supermoon. That’s when a full moon occurs on the same night of the Moon’s perigee, or the time when the Moon is closest to Earth.
Apple posts XcodeGhost FAQ⇢
Apple:
We always recommend developers use the free, secure tools we provide them — including Xcode — to ensure they’re creating the most secure apps for App Store customers. Some developers downloaded counterfeit versions of Xcode that have been infected with malware and created apps that were just as infected.
Becuase of speed issues through China’s Great Firewall, some developers were downloading Xcode from a third-party site. Apple says they are working on ways to make these downloads faster. As to how bad the breach was, Apple says: