MyAppleMenu

The Saved-Money Edition Friday, October 21, 2016

Comment: IBM’s Apple Deployment Stats Should Be A Lesson To Enterprise Companies Everywhere, by Ben Lovejoy, 9to5Mac

It said that the default attitude to Macs within the company used to be that they were more expensive, more challenging/expensive to support and required retraining. The reality, it discovered, was rather different. We already learned last year that support costs turned out to be dramatically lower for Mac users, and the company revealed that it also saved money in other ways.

Hard drive encryption, for example, used to be something the company had to implement on top of a standard Windows installation; with macOS, FileVault is a standard installation option. It also saved money on anti-virus protection, XProtect built-in to Macs while Windows machines require third-party software. Beyond this, however, it reported improved employee productivity – and even found that user satisfaction with Macs was helping staff retention rates.

A Cashless Future? Sounds Like A Dream But Don’t Be Fooled, by Gaby Hinsliff, The Guardian

You don’t have to pine for the days of bringing wages home in a brown paper packet to worry about whether a cashless future serves corporate interests rather better than social ones.

Don’t Hold Your Breath For An iPhone Edition, by John Gruber, Daring Fireball

Let me add here a note about something that’s been bothering me for months: the notion that Apple is going to do something “special” next year to commemorate the iPhone’s 10th anniversary. I would wager heavily that they won’t. Apple under Tim Cook is a little bit more prone to retrospection than it was under Steve Jobs, who was almost obsessively forward-thinking, but only slightly. They made a 40-years-in-40-seconds video to commemorate the company’s 40th anniversary this year, for example, but it was only 40 seconds long. Blink and you missed it.

Apple is not going to make a special edition of any product — let alone the iPhone, their most important product — just to mark an anniversary. Don’t tell me about the 20th Anniversary Macintosh — that was a product from the old Apple that was heading toward bankruptcy, and a perfect example of why they shouldn’t do something special to mark something as arbitrary as an anniversary.

Five Ways To Master The Stand Ring On Apple Watch (And Have Fun Doing It), by Serenity Caldwell, iMore

So I came up with a plan. An evil plan. You see, the Stand Ring is really based around a minute of movement rather than strict standing versus sitting — it wants to see you get up and walk around, or step away from the standing desk and do something more energetic.

If I wanted to get my Stand hours, I was going to have to turn that one minute of "standing" into something a bit more fun and useful. Enter: The Stand Ring games!

Stuff

TakeTen App To Restore Calm In A Stressful World, by Emily McDaid, Silicon Republic

TakeTen is a biofeedback app that helps young people manage their physiology and emotions. It shows them a visual depiction of their stress levels – via an iPad or iPhone – and teaches them how to bring themselves back to calm.

Review: Zagg Slim Book Pro, by Christopher Null, Wired

This iteration on the Zagg Slim Book—the Slim Book Pro—sees a number of incremental changes, the most notable of which is that the keyboard is now detachable, magnetically connecting to the case unit when you want it.

Notes

‘Alan Turing Law’ Unveiled By Government Will Posthumously Pardon Thousands Of Gay Men Convicted Of Historic Offences, by Ashley Cowburn, The Independent

Announcing what has been dubbed as the ‘Alan Turing law’ justice minister Sam Gyimah said the Government would seek to implement the change through an amendment to the Policing and Crime Bill. It will effectively act as an apology to those convicted for consensual same-sex relationships before homosexuality was decriminalised in England and Wales in 1967.

The Tech Media Mogul Who Changed My Life, by Karen Wickre, Backchannel

David could be enigmatic, was sometimes uncommunicative, and he did change his mind now and again. At the same time, he embodied much of what is familiar in the tech landscape today: It can be fine to pursue ideas based on curiosity; failures come and go; and serving readers first is a laudable goal. Rather than run his magazines according to the old rules of publishing, David allowed his titles to reflect the optimistic new industry he covered, which celebrated innovation over tradition.

For reasons I still don’t fully understand, David thought I was worth a try in an unknown job at a young company in a very young industry. In the years since, he celebrated my path, and I grew to appreciate the wide web he created. From that one-off job David offered me have come the working and personal relationships that make a life. I’m lucky I can credit a single man who first opened that door.