iOS 9 on the 9th of 9, 2015.
Mark your calendar for Apple special event “Hey Siri, give us a hint.” on September 9, 2015. Apple will be providing live stream of the event.
Requirements: Live streaming uses Apple’s HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) technology. HLS requires an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch with Safari on iOS 7.0 or later, a Mac with Safari 6.0.5 or later on OS X v10.8.5 or later, or a PC with Edge on Windows 10. Streaming via Apple TV requires a second- or third-generation Apple TV with software 6.2 or later.
Edge on Windows 10, that’s interesting.
The event will take place at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco at 10:00 am.
The Bill Graham Civic Auditorium is a 7000 capacity arena, as such it has several elevated tiers of seating around an open plan hall.
Now, who would be the musical guest for the event?
Alongside the new models of iPhone, Apple would be introducing expanded Siri functionality across multiple devices; at least that’s what firstnameatappledotcom hinted at.
Mini Rufus
It’s Mini Rufus in her kitten form. She is now a cat with a cat personality.
Acorn 5
Acorn 5 is out now and on sale for a limited time for $24.95.
Available through Flying Meat Store and Mac App Store.
I’ve been using Acorn and Pixelmator in lieu of Adobe Photoshop for cropping, touch-up and quick edit. One thing that I find pleasant about Acorn is that it has similar shortcut keys with Adobe Photoshop.
Acorn 5 requires OS X Yosemite (10.10) or later.
Acorn 5 would be the third time I purchased Acorn.
The Verge, With and Without Ad-Blocker.
“People who work for ad-analytic-tracker infested websites shouldn’t complain about the browser.” First and foremost, this post would include fairly sizable graphics; but the total size is a lot less than any articles on The Verge. Take a look at The Verge article “The mobile web sucks”; one with ad-blocker and one without. 
There are a lot of Javascript loaded for just one page. 
I unapologetically have been using Ad-Blocker and Host File to prevent the Ads, Analytics and Trackers from being loaded.
Mobile Web and Glass Houses
Nilay Patel is wrong on the “The mobile web sucks” article he posted on the Verge.
Let’s take a look at the article itself.
In portrait mode, the site logo is on the top of the screen followed by a large ad. The title of the article is in the bottom half of the screen.
In Landscape mode without the navigation bar, only part of the article title showed up on the screen.
Let’s see how it looks with mobile Safari navigation bar. The title of the article doesn’t even show up on the screen.
The fact is that The Verge is one bloated site, littered with ads and analytics. I generally avoid The Verge like a plague because of that.
Patel adds:
Now, I happen to work at a media company, and I happen to run a website that can be bloated and slow. Some of this is our fault: The Verge is ultra-complicated, we have huge images, and we serve ads from our own direct sales and a variety of programmatic networks. Our video player is annoying. (I swear a better one is coming, for real this time.) We could do a lot of things to make our site load faster, and we’re doing them.
Patel knows what the actual source of the problem, but he is trying to shift the blame to the web-browsers. If the square peg doesn’t fit the round hole, you should stop giving the peg paint jobs.
I unapologetically use ad-blocker and host-file to make my web-browsing experience better.
iPhone, Eight Years to The Day
The original iPhone went on sale on June 29, 2007. I was one of the “few” people who waited in line to get one at the Apple Store. The line was reasonably long, but the buying process was really quick. I spent roughly 5 minutes to finalize the transaction. I walked out with two iPhones, one for my colleague and one for me.
Today marks the eight anniversary of the release of the original iPhone.
‘Twas The Night Before Apple WWDC 2015
Apple will kick off this year’s Worldwide Developer Conference at 10:00 a.m. San Francisco time.
As usual in addition to Apple live stream1 of the Keynote, some sites will provide live coverage.
Apple’s own live blog
Warning, Autoplay!
Links will be added when they are made available (or if the author of this post is not slacking – ed).
There are a lot of expectations with regard to what apple would announce at WWDC. Remember, this is a developer event; so don’t expect introductions of new iPhone or iPad on Monday. In 2010 Apple introduced iPhone 4 at WWDC. Since then Apple introduced new iPhone on its own event in the September-October time.
To dispel (or fueled) some rumors on Apple products, firstnameatappledotcom, who claimed to be definitely not Phil Schiller, told me a few things on and off the record.
firstnameatappledotcom: “Seriously, you won’t tell anyone all the stuff I said OFF THE RECORD, will you?”
Certainly, because I want firstnameatappledotcom to keep his/her job at Apple.
firstnameatappledotcom: “Some of us really want to stick it to the Apple Rumor sites and call it iOS 8.5 instead of iOS 9.”
That’d be hilarious since both Tech Press and Community assume that the next iOS will be called iOS 9.
firstnameatappledotcom: “Rotate the 8 90° and we get iOS ∞. Forget iOS 9”
Just like the seemingly perpetual OS X (read: OS Ten)?
By the way, iOS 8.4 beta 3 was last released on May 11, 2015; iOS 8.4 Golden Master is likely to be released during WWDC week.
me: “What else do you feel like blabbing about?”
firstnameatappledotcom: “It is reckless to assume that Force Touch will be in the next iPhone and iPad.”
firstnameatappledotcom: “Just because Force Touch is in the Apple Watch and MacBooks, doesn’t mean it works well on the iPhone.”
I have thought about that. There are a lot of elements to deal with bringing feature such as Force Touch to a larger touch screen device. For sure the Tech Press, analysts and pundits ignore the challenges.
firstnameatappledotcom: “Some expect Apple Watch to have plethora of sensors, GPS module, cellular connectivity, etc. At the same time they want Apple Watch to be thin and have ultra long battery life. Seriously, you can’t have all those features with the current state of our technology.”
Apple Research & Development department are certainly looking into those features.
me: “I can think of one Apple Watch feature that is relatively easy to incorporate to iOS. I’d like to see iOS gaining “doodle” or “sketch” feature. From Apple Watch to iPhone, iPad, iPod touch; vice versa.”
firstnameatappledotcom: “I can’t tell you on the record about unannounced features or products. One of the hardest parts is to figure out which features would be suitable for any products. Apple R&D comes out with tons of ideas for products, a lot of them didn’t even make it past prototype stage.”
I guess we’ll have to wait for WWDC 2015 Keynote to see what’s coming from Apple for the next 6 months.
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- Live streaming video requires Safari 6.0.5 or later on OS X v10.8.5 or later; Safari on iOS 6.0 or later. Streaming via Apple TV requires second- or third-generation Apple TV with software 6.2 or later. ↩︎
