Uh, Ok . . . . .

CFO Luca Maestri announced that the company will no longer be reporting unit sales of its iPhones, iPads, and Macs because the figures don’t accurately reflect the business. It’s like they say, you can’t change what you can’t measure.

(BroBible.com)

I Concur

Ditching the iPhone headphone jack is annoying for everyone except Apple

The con arguments are plentiful. For one, it probably means you have to go buy new stuff — either new headphones or a new attachment to modify your old headphones — which is never a happy thought for folks already buying a $550 phone. If Apple does this and doesn't include a set of Lightning-enabled headphones with every phone, it will look like a particularly soulless money grab.  

Secondly, it tightens Apple's control on the accessory market and possibly over digital music as well. Nilay Patel at the Verge makes the argument that these headphones would tacitly support DRM — a.k.a. digital rights management, a.k.a. the thing that keeps you from being able to freely move media files between devices. Get rid of the analog headphone jack, he argues, and you lose the motivation to support anything analog. Daring Fireball’s John Gruber isn’t so sure about that argument but does point out in his rebuttal to Patel that anyone making Lightning headphones will require certification from Apple.

Beats, one imagines, would be among the brands to support the new standard.

No matter what, that’s more control for Apple, which can be a bad thing for consumers. Moving from an open standard to a closed one often leads to confusion and higher costs for consumers.

Finally, if Apple doesn’t add a second Lightning port to the phone — an addition that seems unlikely if Apple wants to make more room inside the phone — it will also mean that you can’t charge your phone and have your headphones plugged in at the same time. Even the one-port MacBook, which has its own power port pull double duty, lets you do that.

(WashingtonPost.com) 

More Proof That Apple Has Way Too Much Money

The Disruptor: Apple Is Spending More Money On Auto R&D Than The Top 14 Automakers Combined

Don't expect Apple's $1 billion investment in Chinese ride-hailing startup Didi to be its last.

Morgan Stanley analysts led by Katy Huberty and Adam Jonas recently took a look at Apple's spending on incremental r&d and found something shocking. Not only is the creator of the iPhone spending more now than it did when it launched its most successful product, it's also burning more cash than the top 14 automakers combined, and that's an industry deep in transformation.

While Apple has spent $5 billion on additional research and development from 2013 to 2015, the major automakers spent only $192 million. (Tesla Motors, though not one of the 14, has spent about $444 million over that same time frame.)

(AutoSpies.com)

Talk About Aging Gracefully

(BroBible.com)

Apple Still Made It Even After It Failed Miserably For The Competition

My God-Awful Year With the Apple Watch

I bought the Apple Watch a year ago. I stopped wearing it two months ago, and I’m not sure if I’ll ever wear it again. That’s because it doesn’t really do anything that anyone needs, and even when it does, it doesn’t always work like it’s supposed to.

With an iPhone, everyone knows how to use it, assuming they have access to fingers. With Apple’s wrist-time-box, I still find myself lost every time I grab hold, even if it’s just trying to recreate the steps to something I did earlier. Which mostly results in me just giving up trying to do anything at all. For its solid aesthetic design, the Watch is not at all intuitive.

If you did somehow manage to figure out how to do something on the watch, there’s literally no comfortable way to actually use it. You’re constantly changing your grip style because none of them ever feel right. What I settled on is placing a thumb on the bottom left corner of the watch to stabilize it and then I use the left side of my index finger to twirl the knob and hit the crown. Other times I just use my finger tip to spin the crown. Or a thumb only method sort of works. With reasonably sized phones, your thumb can reach anything on the screen just by holding the phone in your hand. One grip, done. But with the small size of the screen on the watch and because it’s attached to your wrist, you’re always awkwardly trying to make things half-work with multiple finger dancing grips and none of them ever feel right. And yes, I’m aware that I also look like a total tool when using it (no matter the grip).

(Gizmodo.com)   

Impressive

What Does The ‘i’ In iPhone Actually Mean? It Might Not Be What You Think

(BroBible.com)

I Need To Take Advantage Of This Deal

Apple iPad Mini 3 Price Slashed By $300

Speaking of price, the 128 GB variant of the Apple iPad Mini 3 will now set the buyers back by $299.99. The original price of the tablet is $599.99. This means, buyers can save $300 with this limited period offer.

The discounted iPad Mini 3 unit is available in Silver and Space Gray colors. Here is the link to order the 128 GB Wi-Fi only iPad Mini 3 from Best Buy. It is worth noting that, buyers can avail “Titanium Internet Security” subscription free of cost for 6 Months, upon purchasing the device.

As far as the specifications go, the iPad Mini 3 comes with a 7.9-inch LED-backlit IPS LCD display and 1,536 x 2,048 pixels screen resolution. This display combination translates to a pixel density of 324 ppi. Under the hood, it is powered a dual-core Cyclone (Apple A7) processor clocked at 1.3 GHz and backed by 1 GB of RAM.

(IBTimes.com)

It's Because They're A Big Business

The Real Reason Apple Won't Fix Its Crappy Charging Cables

When looks trump function, though, you end up with designers opting for a particular aesthetic, even when it goes against the engineers’ advice -- or massive complaints from users. Simply put: an elegant design is more important to Apple than one that prolongs the life expectancy of a product.

So that, very likely, is why the chargers fray and fall apart -- and will continue to do so. It's not just because they want us to keep sinking money into replacement cords. One former Apple employee claims on Reddit that the Industrial Design team just hates the look of popular “strained relief”-style cords, which exist specifically to prevent cords from bending at harsh angles, and they insist on sticking with the more elegant-looking white brick with USB cord.

The other obnoxious thing at play here is that all the frustrated customers like myself are left pretty much optionless -- Apple cautions against using non-Apple chargers for laptops and iPhones because they can be detrimental to the machine and fry your battery.

(Thrillist.com)

This Is A Cool Feature I Didn't Know About

Randomly Useful Things You Didn't Know Your iPhone Could Do

Invert your screen's colors to reduce eye strain

• It's no secret that staring at screens all day, every day is ruining our eyes. To decrease the strain on your peepers, you may want to consider inverting your phone's colors, since it's been shown to make it easier to read at night. To try it out, go into the Accessibility menu under General settings. Once it's enabled, it also inverts the colors your camera sees -- which comes in handy if you're the guy from One Hour Photo and want to look at film negatives.

Complete list (Thrillist.com)

Apple & Samsung Common Ground - Both Of Their Watches Flopped

It looks like Apple Watch sales are tanking

(Yahoo.com)