MyAppleMenu - Sun, Jul 19, 2015

Sun, Jul 19, 2015The Great-Indian-Wedding Edition

Apple's First TV Ad For India Celebrates Weddings And The iPhone 6, by NDTV

Apple is looking to capture the Indian market's attention with the release of its first-India specific television commercial. The iPhone 6 advertisement released on Friday is based around the immediately identifiable ritual of the great Indian wedding.

My Dog’s Activity Tracker Is Letting Me Watch Her Die, by Molly McHugh, Wired

It’s not that Whistle is inaccurate—hardly. It’s just that when you’re not there, actually seeing your dog, the reports don’t spell out the entirety of what’s happening. Sure, she still meets her activity goals, but Whistle doesn’t record how she slipped on a stair. I can see that she’s still eating her dinner, which is fantastic, but the device can’t show me how confused and panicked she seems when she wakes up—all very obvious differences now that, despite her relative health, are startling. I was somewhat lured into thinking everything was fine, that I would come home to my dog, the ageless wonder. Because on paper (or, screen, rather), that’s what I’d convinced myself she was.

Stuff.

Who's Actually Buying iPods These Days?, by Matt Birchier

So who are iPods for? They're for people who don't have a smartphone, and that's about it. This makes complete sense, though. The smartphone came in and ate so many products' lunch. Apple's iPhone can do everything these iPods can do and do so much more as well. A smartphone is almost essential if you're a young to middle age adult these days, so you probably already have one in your pocket. For that majority of the population, iPods are redundant, and they don't even think about them most of the time.

iPods remain somewhat relevant amongst the very young and very old. But once again, the rise of affordable tablets has made even those markets shrink by the day. It's hard to think the iPod line is going to do anything but continue shrink even with this refresh.

iPod Touch 6th Generation Teardown, by iFixIt

How To Find The Wi-Fi Password Of Your Current Network, by Digital Inspiration

Your Mac OS X uses Keychain to store the configuration details of the WiFi network and we can use the BSD command “security” to query anything stored inside Keychain, including the Wi-Fi password.

Casey Neistat’s Beme Is A Social App That Aims To Replace Illusions With Reality, by Mike Issac, New York Times

The point of Beme, though, is to erase some of what Mr. Neistat sees as the facades created with social media in its current forms, stripping away the identities people consciously produce with the perfect Instagram filter or the cutesy doodles on a Snapchat photo.

“How would I look if I were just talking to myself in the mirror?” Mr. Neistat said in an interview. “If I’m in the stands at a U2 concert watching Bono, how can I capture this moment without interrupting it and making it fake?”

Develop.

Dropdowns Should Be The UI Of Last Resort, by Luke Wroblewski

All too often mobile forms make use of dropdown menus for input when simpler or more appropriate controls would work better. Here's several alternatives to dropdowns to consider in your designs and why.

Oh, Dear Safari

@atpfm @daringfireball Safari is the new… pic.twitter.com/yruwCSe6H7

— Kārlis Dambrāns (@janitors) July 17, 2015

Streams.

Okay, I haven't played a DVD for a long time. Until today, when I switched on "Toy Story" for a visiting relative... and I was momentarily confused when advertisement came on.

Parting Words

Yesterday a line of tourist Segways rolled by and I remembered how cities were supposedly going to be redesigned for them. Now we have Uber.

— Ian Bogost (@ibogost) July 18, 2015

Thanks for reading.