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The Asking-for-Skeuomorphism Edition Wednesday, September 5, 2018

Software Survival, by Craig Hockenberry, Furbo.org

This book changed my view of Scott Forstall because it gave context to his work. Ken’s account breaks down the approach and shows how important Scott’s leadership was to Apple’s success.

Having Steve Jobs as a boss for your entire professional career would not be easy, but Scott handled it with great success. Even when that powerful mentor was asking for skeuomorphism.

The hardware would be lesser without Jony, and Ken shows that the software would be lesser without Scott.

Security Researcher Highlights macOS Remote Exploit With Custom URL Schemes, by Chance Miller, 9to5Mac

It starts with a user visiting a malicious website where a .zip file is automatically downloaded, as Apple allows automatic downloads and unzipping of “safe” files. This zip contains the malicious application in question. From there, the custom URL scheme is registered.

Stuff

Shooting And Editing Great Photos With Halide And Darkroom, by Nick Heer, The Sweet Setup

We love Halide — we picked it as our favorite third-party camera app for the iPhone. We’re also big fans of Darkroom, which is our favorite photo editing app. Not only great on their own, these apps work brilliantly together to allow you to shoot and edit fantastic photos. Let’s take a look.

Skype’s Latest Version Now Has Call Recording Built In, by Dani Deahl, The Verge

To record a call in Skype, click the + symbol at the bottom of the screen and then select “start recording.” Once started, a banner will appear letting everyone on the Skype call know that it is being recorded. If you are recording a video call, the recording will capture everyone’s video as well as any shared screens. The recording all happens in the cloud, and when the call is done, it’s then posted to your chat and will be available to download and share with other Skype contacts for 30 days.

Develop

The #1 Office Perk? Natural Light, by Jeanne C. Meister, Harvard Business Review

In a research poll of 1,614 North American employees, we found that access to natural light and views of the outdoors are the number one attribute of the workplace environment, outranking stalwarts like onsite cafeterias, fitness centers, and premium perks including on-site childcare (only 4-8% of FORTUNE 100 companies offer on-site child care).

[...]

These findings support a larger trend of the growing importance of employee wellbeing. According to Gallup’s most recent iteration of the State of the American Workplace, more than half of employees report better overall well-being as “very important” to them. In the same survey, work-life balance and overall well-being were determined to be the second most important factor when choosing to work for an organization. When employees are fulfilled in all aspects of their well-being, this leads to increased employee engagement and increases individual performance.

Why Work Has Failed Us: Because Companies Aren’t Sharing The Profits, by Cale Guthrie Weissman, Fast Company

Stories like this are not uncommon, and while they sometimes generate some outrage, private equity deals that strip companies of their assets and leave the workers with nothing are just one particularly egregious part of a larger trend: that the value created by companies is being shared with fewer and fewer people. While the stock market continues to grow, wages have stagnated. There are myriad causes, but they all point to one problem: investor greed. Private equity firms buy up companies they think they can quickly fix and extract returns from. Boards increase the pay of CEOs while saying they can’t afford to raise wages. And companies are offering shareholders billions in stock buybacks, instead of reinvesting returns into a company and its employees.

Notes

Apple Store Robberies On The Rise -- But Are Thieves In For A Surprise?, by CBS News

"People think that you could run in, grab a bunch of stuff from the Apple store, run out and boom, you've got a bunch of laptops and iPhones. Not necessarily the case," Ackerman says. "It's fairly well known that they install special custom versions of the operating systems on these so they're of very limited use, if any, if you take them out of the store."

Another reason for the recent rise in thefts may be due to Apple's lack of common security features in its stores, like attaching devices to security tethers. And that's not by accident.

Bottom of the Page

I have just finished re-organizing my stacks and notebooks and notes inside my Evernote.

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When Apple's Safari first introduced Reader view, there was quite a few websites that I frequented that intentionally 'block' the feature. When I invoked the Reader view, the content is basically a scolding from the web site telling me how I am robbing them of advertisement money.

Now, as blocking of tracking code is getting more popular, I am starting to see web sites scolding me for robbing them of advertisement money again, just because I am using Firefox. (I did not even install any extensions to block advertising.)

And the end result, at least for me, is still the same: removal of the web site's subscription from my RSS reader.

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Thanks for reading.