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Rancho santa fe review 7 4 13From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Location of Monrovia in .
Monrovia, California
Location in the United States
Coordinates: :
December 15, 1887
Government
 o 
Mayor Pro Tem Tom Adams
Joe Garcia
 o 
Stephen Baker
 o Total
13.714 sq mi (35.519 km2)
 o Land
13.605 sq mi (35.237 km2)
 o Water
0.109 sq mi (0.282 km2)  0.79%
571 ft (174 m)
Population ()
 o Total
 o Estimate (2013)
 o Density
2,700/sq mi (1,000/km2)
 o Summer ()
feature ID
Monrovia is a city located in the foothills of the
of , United States. The population was 36,590 at the 2010 census, down from 36,929 at the 2000 census. Monrovia has been used for filming TV shows, movies and commercials.
Monrovia, 1886 (Myrtle Avenue, looking north)
Monrovia is the fourth oldest general law city in Los Angeles County and the
(after Los Angeles, , and ). Incorporated in 1887, Monrovia has grown from a sparse community of orange ranches to a residential community of 37,000.
Around 500 BC, a band of Shoshonean-speaking Indians named the
established settlements in what is now the San Gabriel Valley. They were called the Gabrieli?o Indians by early Spanish missionaries, a tribe of
. The Ton they gathered wild seeds, berries, and plants along rivers and in marshlands. Abundant oaks in the Valley, such as
provided a staple of the Tongva diet:
mush made of boiled acorn flour.
Monrovia, 1892 (Myrtle Avenue, looking north)
In 1769, the
was the first recorded Spanish (or any European) land entry and exploration of present day California, then the Spanish colonial
(colonial México). It had been claimed from sea by
in 1542 for the , Europeans first visited the San Gabriel Valley, including Monrovia. The expedition, lead by , proceeded north from , passing through the area en route to . Accompanying Portolà was
padre , famed diarist of the expedition. Much of what is known of early California is from Crespi's detailed descriptions.
In 1771, the Franciscans established the
in the San Gabriel Valley. The mission continued after Mexican independence in 1822. In 1833 the Mexican Congress initiated
of the missions in , to begin seizure of mission properties for sale to private rancho grantees.
to , a M and for
to , a naturalized Mexican citizen of Scottish birth. Monrovia is made of parts of these two .
In the mid-19th century, most of Rancho Azusa de Duarte was subdivided and sold by Duarte to settle his debts. Some of those parcels became part of the ranch of , Monrovia's namesake.
Pacific Electric in Monrovia, 1903
Rancho Santa Anita changed hands several times before the multimillionaire, silver baron and rancher,
acquired it in 1875. That same year his Los Angeles Investment Company began subdividing and selling parcels from many of his ranchos. In
acres (970,000 m?) of Rancho Santa Anita were sold to Monroe for $30,000. Additional parcels of Rancho Santa Anita were sold to Edward F. Spence, , James F. Crank, and J.F. Falvey.
The completion of the
in 1887, later sold to the , (which would run through Monrovia), and
railroads to Southern California would bring new people looking for homes and investment opportunities. With this in mind, Monroe, Spence, Bicknell, Crank, and Falvey combined their land under the business name of the Monrovia Land and Water Company in 1886. The combined lots formed the Town of Monrovia Subdivision. The original borders of the Town of Monrovia Subdivision were Canyon Boulevard to the east, Walnut Avenue to the south, Magnolia Avenue to the west, and Lime Avenue to the north. The subdivision was subdivided into 600 500-foot (150 m) by 160-foot (49 m) lots and sold.
The town was incorporated in 1887 under the leadership of prohibitionists who wished to control the arrival of an unwelcome saloon. The first order of business for the newly formed government was to pass a tippler's law, prohibiting the sale of alcohol.
In 1903 the Monrovia News was established. In the same year, the
was opened providing transportation to and from Los Angeles, making it possible for Monrovian homeowners to work in Los Angeles.
Monrovia, 1914 (Myrtle Avenue, looking north)
funds became available and with the help of the Board of Trade (forerunner to the ), and the Monrovia Women's Club, a bond issue was passed to purchase the Granite Bank Building to be used as a City Hall, and to acquire property for a public park. The Granite Building serves as the city hall, fire and police department facilities in 1961 and the fire department in 1974. In 1956, the old
building was torn down and a new library was constructed. In March 2007, a new library was voted on by the people of Monrovia. It won with 70% yes votes. The library now has 190,000 books, a heritage room for historical documents, and areas for children, teens, and adults.
type government was instituted in 1923.
Monrovia was the home to the precursor to . In 1937, Patrick McDonald opened a food stand on Huntington Drive (Route 66) near the old Monrovia Airport called "The Airdrome" (hamburgers were ten cents, and all-you-can-drink orange juice was five cents); it remained there until 1940, when he and his two sons, , moved the building 40 miles (64 km) east to
to the corner of West 14th Street and 1398 North E Street, renaming it "McDonald's". (The
still in operation is in , which opened in 1953.)
The , home to activist and author , is located in Monrovia and is a . In 1995 Monrovia received the
Award from the .
According to the , the city has a total area of 35.5 square kilometers (13.7 sq mi). 13.6 square miles (35 km2) of it is land and 0.1 square miles (0.26 km2) of it (0.79%) is water.
reported that Monrovia had a population of 36,590. The population density was 2,668.1 people per square mile (1,030.2/km?). The racial makeup of Monrovia was 21,932 (59.9%)
(41.1% Non-Hispanic White), 4,107 (11.2%) , 2,500 (6.8%) , 279 (0.8%) , 76 (0.2%) , 5,818 (15.9%) from , and 1,878 (5.1%) from two or more races.
of any race were 14,043 persons (38.4%).
The census reported that 36,434 people (99.6% of the population) lived in households, 61 (0.2%) lived in non-institutionalized group quarters, and 95 (0.3%) were institutionalized.
There were 13,762 households, out of which 4,725 (34.3%) had children under the age of 18 living in them, 6,295 (45.7%) were
living together, 2,073 (15.1%) had a female householder with no husband present, 778 (5.7%) had a male householder with no wife present. There were 793 (5.8%) , and 131 (1.0%) . 3,649 households (26.5%) were made up of individuals and 1,276 (9.3%) had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.65. There were 9,146
(66.5% of all households); the average family size was 3.24.
The population was spread out with 8,514 people (23.3%) under the age of 18, 3,084 people (8.4%) aged 18 to 24, 10,733 people (29.3%) aged 25 to 44, 10,018 people (27.4%) aged 45 to 64, and 4,241 people (11.6%) who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 37.9 years. For every 100 females there were 91.6 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 87.0 males.
There were 14,473 housing units at an average density of 1,055.4 per square mile (407.5/km?), of which 6,809 (49.5%) were owner-occupied, and 6,953 (50.5%) were occupied by renters. The homeowner vacancy rate was 1.3%; the rental vacancy rate was 4.9%. 18,478 people (50.5% of the population) lived in owner-occupied housing units and 17,956 people (49.1%) lived in rental housing units.
According to the 2010 United States Census, Monrovia had a median household income of $71,768, with 9.8% of the population living below the federal poverty line.
As of the census of 2000, there were 36,929 people, 13,502 households, and 9,086 families residing in the city. The population density was 2,686.5 inhabitants per square mile (1,037.0/km?). There were 13,957 housing units at an average density of 1,015.3 per square mile (391.9/km?). The racial makeup of the city was 62.92% , 8.67% , 7.02% , 0.87% , 0.13% , 15.61% from , and 4.77% from two or more races.
of any race were 35.24% of the population.
There were 13,502 households out of which 35.4% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 46.4% were married couples living together, 15.4% had a female householder with no husband present, and 32.7% were non-families. 26.0% of all households were made up of individuals and 8.8% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.71 and the average family size was 3.29.
In the city the age distribution of the population shows 27.4% under the age of 18, 8.0% from 18 to 24, 34.0% from 25 to 44, 20.2% from 45 to 64, and 10.4% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 34 years. For every 100 females there were 92.2 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 87.6 males.
The median income for a household in the city was $45,375, and the median income for a family was $49,703. Males had a median income of $41,039 versus $32,259 for females. The
for the city was $21,686. About 9.7% of families and 13.1% of the population were below the , including 18.3% of those under age 18 and 9.7% of those age 65 or over.
In the , Monrovia is in , represented by
, and in , represented by
In the , Monrovia is split between , represented by
, and , represented by
operates the Monrovia Health Center in Monrovia.
operates public schools.
was built in 1887. It was located where Monroe School now stands, and housed the entire elementary and high school student body. A new high school on the property now occupied by Clifton Middle School was erected in 1905, and in 1912 was greatly expanded by the addition of new buildings. In 1928 a high school to serve the communities of Monrovia,
was built. The same structure now serves only Monrovia students, as the elementary and high school district were unified into one district in 1961. The district now has one high school, one continuation school, two middle schools and five elementary schools, and is part of the . There are three parochial schools in Monrovia.
The city's schools are:
Bradoaks Elementary School, K-5, 930 E. Lemon
Calvary Road Baptist Academy, K-12, 319 W. Olive
Canyon Early Learning Center, public pre-K, 1000 South Canyon
Canyon Oaks High School (public alternative), 7-12, 930 Royal Oaks Drive
Church of the Nazarene, K-6 303 W. Colorado
Clifton Middle School, 6-8, 226 S. Ivy
First Lutheran School, pre-K-8, 1323 South Magnolia
First Presbyterian Church Preschool, 101 E. Foothill Blvd.
Immaculate Conception School, K-8, 726 Shamrock
Joe Ferrante Music Academy, K-12, 126 E. Colorado Blvd.
Mayflower Elementary School, K-5, 210 North Mayflower
Monroe Elementary School, K-5, 402 W. Colorado
Monrovia Community Adult School 920 South Mountain
Monrovia High School 9-12, 845 W. Colorado Boulevard
Monrovia Mountain School, public Alternative K-8, 950 S. Mountain Avenue
Mt. Sierra College, An accredited Bachelor's Degree granting institution, 101 E Huntington Dr
Plymouth Elementary K-5, 1300 Boley Street
Santa Fe Middle School 6-8, 148 W. Duarte Road
Serendipity Early Care and Education Center, K, 940 W. Duarte Road
Wild Rose Elementary, A California Distinguished School K-5, 232 Jasmine
Vista Ridge Academy, 1311S. Shamrock
Monrovia Trolley Bus in front of the landmark Krikorian Theater
Monrovia main roads include
(historic ). It is also served by the
will open a new
station in Monrovia.
will be located at the intersection of Myrtle Avenue and Duarte Road, and will be served by the . It will be at the same location of the former , which still stands.
are based in Monrovia. Monrovia has a "Technology Corridor, " which includes , Tanner Research, , Xencor, and ITT Deep Space Division.
According to the city's 2010 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report, the top employers in the city are:
# of employees
Monrovia Unified School District
AeroStructures
Vinyl Technology
City of Monrovia
The house seen in the 1986 horror-comedy cult film
is located at 329 Melrose Avenue in Monrovia.
The house seen in "Georgia's Rules" is at 243 N. Encinitas. The house number was changed from 247 to 243 for the movie.
, singer and actor
, frontman, , late night TV announcer
, vocalist and guitarist
, guitarist for
(of "Wipeout" fame)
, playwright
, president of
, founder of
, puppeteer/actor
, nutrition researcher
and , authors and producers
(), champion
pro, co-inventor of modern , oil investor, and flower and
farmer (developer of the Spinks avocado ); also maintained a home and farm in nearby Duarte
, entertainers
, actor, ,
, keyboardist for
(WORD). California Association of
. U.S. Census Bureau 2014.
. California Citizens Redistricting Commission 2014.
"." . Retrieved on March 27, 2010.
. Cityofmonrovia.ws.
Luis Rodriguez, Captain of the Notorious Mafia Oak Tree Gang.
Wikimedia Commons has media related to .
 "". . 1920.
: Hidden categories:Apple’s unified system font for OS X, iOS, WatchOS — and, I’ll bet soon, Apple TV. See also: .
My thanks to Answers for again sponsoring this week’s DF RSS feed. Their landing page is just terrific — a gorgeous layout, and the inside story of how a small team went from zero to being the number two mobile analytics tools in just a few months. Check them out.
Here we go: the full video from Tuesday night’s live audience episode of The Talk Show, with special guest Phil Schiller. Here’s the direct link to . Family-friendly note: there’s some adult language in the first few minutes with You Look Nice Today.
Pretty happy with the way this turned out.
Jaw-dropping, epic-length work of art from Paul Ford. Save this for when you have time to sit back and let it sink in. Glorious.
The European Commission:
The European Commission has opened a formal antitrust
investigation into certain business practices by Amazon in the
distribution of electronic books (“e-books”). The Commission will
in particular investigate certain clauses included in Amazon’s
contracts with publishers. These clauses require publishers to
inform Amazon about more favourable or alternative terms offered
to Amazon’s competitors and/or offer Amazon similar terms and
conditions than to its competitors, or through other means ensure
that Amazon is offered terms at least as good as those for its
competitors.
The Commission has concerns that such clauses may make it more
difficult for other e-book distributors to compete with Amazon by
developing new and innovative products and services. The
Commission will investigate whether such clauses may limit
competition between different e-book distributors and may reduce
choice for consumers.
Benjamin Mayo, writing for 9to5Mac:
Ad blocking extensions have been possible on Safari for Mac for a
long time, but plugin architecture for Safari on iOS is much more
limited. With iOS 9, Apple has added a special case of extension
for ad blockers. Apps can now include “
that define resources (like images and scripts) for Safari to not
load. For the first time, this architecture makes ad blockers a
real possibility for iOS developers to make and iOS customers to
install and use.
The inclusion of such a feature at this time is interesting. Apple
is also pushing its own news solution in iOS 9 with the News app,
which will include ads but not be affected by the content blocking
extensions as they only apply to Safari. There is also clearly the
potential for Safari ad blockers to hurt Google, which seems to be
a common trend with Apple’s announcements recently…
I think the timing with News is coincidental. But this is huge news — there are way more iOS Safari users than OS X Safari users.
Vindu Goel, reporting for the NYT:
Dick Costolo, Twitter’s embattled chief executive, is stepping down, the company said Thursday.
Jack Dorsey, the company’s co-founder and chairman, will serve as interim chief executive while the board searches for a permanent successor.
The change is effective July 1. Twitter shares were up more than 7 percent in after-hours trading immediately after the news was announced.
Rightly or wrongly, the writing has been on the wall: Wall Street wanted Costolo out. But I think what Wall Street wants is a pipe dream: for Twitter to turn into another Facebook. No CEO is going to make that happen. Maybe someone else will do better, but I think Costolo started with a hand dealt from a stacked deck.
My biggest fear: Twitter brings in a new CEO with a plan that pleases Wall Street but ruins Twitter as we know it.
My biggest hope: the new CEO resuscitates Twitter’s neutered, stagnant developer platform.
Recorded last night in front of a live audience at Mezzanine in San Francisco, Phil Schiller joined me on stage to discuss the news from WWDC: OS X 10.11 El Capitan, iOS 9, the new native app SDK for Apple Watch, and the 2004 American League Championship series. (This is the audio recording of the show — the video will be coming in the next day or two, so feel free to wait for that.)
New listeners: .
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[Update: Well, that was something. We’ll get the audio recording into the regular podcast feed soon, and we’ll publish the recorded video soon after that. My thanks to everyone in the audience, and to everyone who watched the live stream.]
Two notes on tonight’s live audience episode of The Talk Show:
Last year we streamed the audio from the show live. This year, . Fingers crossed that it’ll hold up. The event is 6-9 PDT (9-12 EDT), but the actual show should run from around 7-8 PDT (10-11 EDT).
Tickets have been sold out for weeks, but we’ve got space for 50 more attendees. .
Another fascinating item that didn’t make it into the keynote: Apple is introducing a new app called “Move to iOS”, for Android switchers:
Just download the Move to iOS app to wirelessly switch from your
Android device to your new iOS device. It securely transfers your
contacts, message history, camera photos and videos, web
bookmarks, mail accounts, calendars, wallpaper, and DRM-free songs
and books. And it will help you rebuild your app library, too. Any
free apps you used — like Facebook and Twitter — are suggested
for download from the App Store. And your paid apps are added to
your iTunes Wish List.
It’s both an Android app and an iOS app.
One thing that wasn’t clear to me in the keynote is just how much of the iTunes Store library is included with Apple Music. The most Apple is saying publicly is that Apple Music has “over 30 million songs”. From what I’ve been able to gather today, that pretty much means “everything”. There might be some exceptions, and there might be some deals that haven’t been finalized yet, but the idea is that for $10/month you get access to everything, from every artist.
A mild surprise (to me at least) is that they’re bringing it to Android. So: Does that mean Apple will be paying Google 30 percent of their revenue from Android users?
Some of these features, like the time lapse and photo watch faces, were shown at the September event — they must have been dropped in the race to ship 1.0 in April.
It wasn’t mentioned during the keynote, but Activation Lock is coming. (Finally.)
John Kirk, writing at Techpinions in response to John Naughton’s the-headline-alone-tells-you-just-how-craptacular-it-is column for The Guardian, “”:
The author has — as so many have before him — reversed cause and
effect. People didn’t buy Apple products because they revered
Steve Jobs. They revered Steve Jobs because he created products
that people wanted to buy. Similarly, people don’t buy Apple
products because they like Apple. They buy Apple products because
Apple makes products they like.
Along similar lines, here’s a phrasing/line of argument I’ve been noticing a lot recently: “”, employed by writers and pundits who seem to remain convinced that Apple is never more than a misstep or two away from collapse.
The best piece I’ve read arguing for the other side of the “Google violates your privacy” debate is this piece from Dustin Curtis, written back in October:
Apple is going to realize very soon that it has made a grave
mistake by positioning itself as a bastion of privacy against
Google, the evil invader of everyone’s secrets. The truth is that
collecting information about people allows you to make
significantly better products, and the more information you
collect, the better products you can build. Apple can barely sync
iMessage across devices because it uses an encryption system that
prevents it from being able to read the actual messages. Google
knows where I am right now, where I need to be for my meeting in
an hour, what the traffic is like, and whether I usually take
public transportation, a taxi, or drive myself. Using that
information, it can tell me exactly when to leave. This isn’t
it’s actually happening. And Apple’s hardline
stance on privacy is going to leave it in Google’s dust.
There’s much I disagree with in Curtis’s piece, but it’s well-worth reading. I think he’s wrong, and that his fundamental mistake is conflating the collection of information in order to provide useful context-aware services with the collection of information in order to sell targeted advertising. But maybe he’s right. His is certainly the best articulation of the pro-Google perspective that I’ve seen.
Natasha Lomas, writing for TechCrunch regarding
from the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania:
One thing is clear: the great lie about online privacy is
unraveling. The obfuscated commercial collection of vast amounts
of personal data in exchange for “free” services is gradually
being revealed for what it is: a heist of unprecedented scale.
Behind the bland, intellectually dishonest facade that claims
there’s “nothing to see here” gigantic data-mining apparatus have
been maneuvered into place, atop vast mountains of stolen
personal data.
Stolen because it has never been made clear to consumers what is
being taken, and how that information is being used. How can you
consent to something you don’t know or understand? Informed
consent requires transparency and an ability to control what
happens. Both of which are systematically undermined by companies
whose business models require that vast amounts of personal data
be shoveled ceaselessly into their engines.
Anna Quito, writing for Quartz:
Hermann Zapf, the designer of fonts such as Palatino, Optima,
Zapfino, Melior, Aldus, and the bizarre but much beloved Zapf
Dingbats, has died at age 96. The revered German typographer and
calligrapher passed away on June 4. In his long and prolific
career, Zapf worked on many fonts, but his personal favorite was
the humanist sans serif typeface Optima, the lettering chosen for
the Vietnam Veterans Memorial wall in Washington, DC.
A fun dose of classic Mac OS nostalgia, thanks to developer Bryan Braun.
See also: .
The WWDC 2015 prelude episode of my podcast, The Talk Show. My special guest is Mark Gurman, and talk about anything and everything you’d want to know heading into WWDC next week.
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I missed this excerpt from Losing the Signal: The Untold Story Behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of BlackBerry, by Jacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff, when it ran in the WSJ two weeks ago. It’s a good read:
The iPhone’s popularity with consumers was illogical to rivals
such as RIM, Nokia Corp. and Motorola Inc. The phone’s battery
lasted less than eight hours, it operated on an older, slower
second-generation network, and, as Mr. Lazaridis predicted, music,
video and other downloads strained AT&T’s network. RIM now faced
an adversary it didn’t understand.
“By all rights the product should have failed, but it did not,”
said David Yach, RIM’s chief technology officer. To Mr. Yach and
other senior RIM executives, Apple changed the competitive
landscape by shifting the raison d’être of smartphones from
something that was functional to a product that was beautiful.
“I learned that beauty matters…. RIM was caught incredulous that
people wanted to buy this thing,” Mr. Yach says.
Sounds to me like they still don’t understand the appeal of the iPhone. It wasn’t (and isn’t) only about beauty. It’s about being a real, true, personal computer in your pocket or purse.
Evan Rodgers, writing for Motherboard:
Android phones do have good cameras, but what we need is better
software. RAW support allows us to see what these cameras are
technically capable of, but until we can trust phone makers to
invest in quality processing algorithms, Android cameras will
continue to lag behind Apple and Microsoft’s.
I look at these gorgeous little movies, and all I can think is that eight years ago, we were all anxiously waiting for the original iPhone — which didn’t even shoot video at all. From that to this in eight years.
You really can’t make these things up.
My thanks to Answers for sponsoring this week’s DF RSS feed. Their landing page is just terrific — a gorgeous layout, and the inside story of how a small team went from zero to being the number two mobile analytics tools in just a few months. Check them out.
Tim Bradshaw and Shannon Bond, reporting for the FT:
Apple is planning a departure from the pricing formula that has
defined the economics of digital media for a decade, which would
cut the 30 per cent fee that media companies pay on subscriptions.
The iPhone maker is discussing new commercial terms with media
companies, people familiar with the matter said, to change the
70/30 “Apple tax” pioneered by Steve Jobs when its late founder
launched the iTunes music store in 2003.
Unclear what the new terms would be, but interesting still.
Megan Smith, chief technology officer for the United States, in an interview with Charlie Rose:
“There are these incredible photographs from the launch of the
Macintosh in the 80’s, and the Rolling Stone pictures that were
published. The historic record shows this group of 10 people in a
pyramid — actually 11, seven men and four women. Every photograph
you see with the Mac team has Joanna Hoffman, who was the product
manager, a great teammate of Steve Jobs, and Susan Kare who did
all the graphics and user interface on the artist side. None of
them made it into the Jobs movie. They’re not even cast. And every
man in the photographs is in the movie with a speaking role. It’s
debilitating to our young women to have their history almost
erased.”
She’s misremembering , slightly. It featured eight men and three women (Susan Kare, Rony Sebok, and Patti Kenyon). Joanna Hoffman wasn’t in the photo — but Smith is exactly right that . If it’s true that none of these women are in Sorkin’s movie, that’s just criminal.
Update: It’s
in the film, and
claims Sebok and Kenyon were cast as well.
Via Twitter,
that Megan Smith’s criticism was about the Ashton Kutcher movie, not the upcoming Sorkin one.
John Arlidge, interviewing Marc Newson for The London Evening Standard:
Given that this is his first print interview since he formally
started his new role, let’s start with the formalities. What’s
your job title? ‘I don’t really have one but I work on special
projects.’ Is it full-time? ‘It’s about 60 per cent of my time.’
How long will you do it? ‘Indefinitely, I hope.’ Did you work with
Steve Jobs before he died? ‘No, but I met him.’ Who earns more,
you or Jonathan? ‘I think you can guess that.’ Ive is equal 637th
on the latest Sunday Times Rich List, worth ?150m.
Is that a British thing, asking so bluntly who earns more? Strikes me as rather uncouth, but maybe that’s my perspective as an American.
What is Newson’s next move? He’s not allowed to say, of course.
But the clue is in his job title. Don’t expect a Newson iPhone or
iPad: stand by for something more. He’s particularly interested in
what technology can bring to fashion. ‘We will start to see more
technology embedded in garments — magic woven in. There are some
incredible things that are going to happen.’
Another big leap would be a car. Both he and Ive are petrolheads.
Each owns several hundred thousand pounds’ worth of mainly classic
Aston Martins, Lamborghinis and Bentleys. Newson has designed a
concept car for Ford. Car firms are racing to make their new
models so hi-tech they create the auto-motive answer to the
iPhone. BMW has even set up its own hi-tech division that makes
electric cars with the prefix ‘i’. Why not accelerate ahead of the
pack with an iCar? Newson does little to damp down the
speculation: ‘There is certainly vast opportunity in that area to
be more intelligent.’
“The response to Apple Watch has surpassed our expectations in
every way, and we are thrilled to bring it to more customers
around the world,” said Jeff Williams, Apple’s senior vice
president of Operations. “We’re also making great progress with
the backlog of Apple Watch orders, and we thank our customers for
their patience. All orders placed through May, with the sole
exception of Apple Watch 42 mm Space Black Stainless Steel with
Space Black Link Bracelet, will ship to customers within two
weeks. At that time, we’ll also begin selling some models in our
Apple Retail Stores.”
So space black stainless steel is one exception. Another — unmentioned by Apple in this press release — are the 38mm Modern Buckle bands. In the online store, . You can get the watches that come with the Modern Buckle (right now they’re quoting “June 18–25” as the delivery window), but not the standalone bands.
Mike Ramsey and Douglas MacMillan, reporting for the WSJ:
Carnegie Mellon University is scrambling to recover after Uber
Technologies Inc. poached 40 of its researchers and scientists
earlier this year, a raid that left one of the world’s top
robotics research institutions in a crisis.
In February, Carnegie Mellon and Uber trumpeted a strategic
partnership in which the school would “work closely” with the
ride-hailing service to develop driverless-car technology.
Behind the scenes, the tie-up was more combative than
collaborative. […]
Uber and Carnegie Mellon have yet to work jointly on any projects.
Daniel Engber, writing for The New Yorker:
But the secret of 3-D — its central irony, let’s say — is that
it isn’t any good for spectacle. Adding a dimension often serves
to shrink the objects on the screen, instead of giving them more
trees and mountains end up looking like
people . Action, too, suffers in the format,
because rapid horizontal movements mess with the illusion and
fast-paced edits in 3-D tend to wear a viewer out.
I spoke about this , with Rene Ritchie. I find when I watch 3D movies in the theater, when I walk out, I can’t remember half of what happened. I like 3D in short doses, like on attractions at Disney World, but for feature films I find it ruins the whole experience.
See also: Legendary film editor and sound designer Walter Murch, explaining why “” in a 2011 letter to Roger Ebert. (.)
Remarkable new GUI Mac client for Git by Pierre-Olivier Latour (one of the founders of the late, great Everpix photo service). If you use Git, you need to check this out.
Om Malik and Josh Topolsky on Bloomberg TV with Emily Chang, discussing
regarding what Twitter should do.
Brent Simmons on leaving Q Branch, the company he co-founded with me and Dave Wiskus to produce Vesper:
I decided to leave because I wasn’t working on the software that
I’ve been obsessed with for more than a decade.
I turned 47 a little while ago, and I’ve had some reasons to
reflect on the shortness of life, and I realized how very
important it is for me to work on the software that I think about
every day. I kept putting it off, but every day that I put it off
hurt more than the previous day. I realized that I couldn’t
continue — I have to do the work that I need to do.
I’ve known Brent since before I was writing Daring Fireball, and he’s always been on my short list of “people I’d love to work with”. And, he still is. He’s a good friend and one of the most amazing developers I’ve ever encountered.
For Q Branch and Vesper, life goes on. We don’t have anything to announce today, other than that this is not the end. In the meantime, I simply want to publicly wish Brent well. He’s
full-time at The Omni Group, which means Q Branch work had been relegated to nights-and-weekends time. Nights-and-weekends time is for your passions, not for obligations.
Another clever HTML5 site, this one from U.K. car dealer Evans Halshaw. (Can’t believe they left out
from Diamonds Are Forever, though.)
Speaking of updates to my favorite apps, the new version of Fantastical for iPhone now has a Watch app, and it’s good. In addition to providing a “list of upcoming events” calendar view that makes way more sense to me than the built-in Calendar app, Fantastical on the watch also gives you access to your system-wide reminders and provides a more useful glance.
Update: Turns out the built-in Calendar app does have a list view — you can switch to it with a force tap. I’ve obviously violated my own second rule of Apple Watch: Try force tapping everything. (My first rule of Apple Watch: Re-read the Getting Started pamphlet that came with the watch after a day or two.)
Sweet Yosemite-style update to my favorite Twitter client.
Margalit Fox, writing for the NYT:
Jerry Dior, a graphic designer who created one of the most
instantly recognizable logos in the history of American
marketing — the silhouetted batter that has long symbolized
Major League Baseball — but who received official credit for it
only 40 years after the fact, died on May 10 at his home in
Edison, N.J. He was 82.
Truly one of the best and most enduring logos in the world.
Gorgeous, amazing pure HTML/CSS/JavaScript website by Bryan James.
Brian Fung, reporting for The Washington Post:
PayPal users, this is for you.
The payments company is
an update to its
that threatens to bombard you with “autodialed or
prerecorded calls and text messages” — and worse, by agreeing to
the updated terms, you’re immediately opted in.
PayPal can even reach you at phone numbers that you didn’t
provide. Through undisclosed means, PayPal says it has the right
to contact you on numbers “we have otherwise obtained.” […]
“If you do not agree to these amended terms,” the revised document
says, “you may close your account within the 30 day period and you
will not be bound by the amended terms.”
In other words, put up with it — or get out.
I don’t even see the need to comment on this one.
Chris Sacca — a major investor in Twitter — wrote an enormous essay on what he sees as the way forward for the service. I wish there were a Cliff’s Notes summary, because it’s rambling. But, it’s also full of interesting insights. I like this bit, as a summary of what’s wrong at the moment:
It’s worth noting that Wall Street is the only place in the world
where 300 million people using a service and an additional 500
million people visiting a site each month lead to charges that it
isn’t “big” or “mainstream.”
That said, Twitter has failed to meet its own stated user growth
expectations and has not been able to take advantage of the
massive number of users who have signed up for accounts and then
not come back. Shortcomings in the direct response advertising
category have resulted in the company coming in below the
financial community’s quarterly estimates. In the wake of this,
Twitter’s efforts to convince the investing community of the
opportunity ahead fell flat. Consequently, the stock is trading
near a 6-month low, well below its IPO closing day price, and
the company is suffering through a seemingly endless negative
press cycle.
Speaking of iOS apps, Up Next is interesting. It’s a to-do list manager that integrates with your iCloud reminders. I know, there are a million to-do list apps on the App Store, but what brought Up Next to my attention is that it has a good WatchKit app, too. I’m not sure why Apple didn’t include a built-in Reminders app on Apple Watch, but Up Next gives you access to your iCloud reminders list, right from your watch. Incredibly cheap: just $2.
. He astutely observes that Ive’s newly-promoted lieutenants, Alan Dye (UI design) and Richard Howarth (industrial design), both were featured prominently in recent feature articles granting access to Apple executives:
The message again, is clear: when Ive took over software, Dye
was there.
Indeed, taken as a whole, this entire episode is a masterful
display of public relations: plant the seeds of this story in two
articles — ostensibly about the Watch — that provide
unprecedented access to Apple broadly and Apple’s design team in
particular, and happen to highlight two designers in particular,
neither of whom had any public profile to date (kind of — as John
Gruber and I discussed on
— Dye is a polarizing
figure in Apple circles). Then, after a presumably successful
Watch launch, announce on a holiday — when the stock market is
closed — that these two newly public designers have newly
significant roles at Apple.
A “masterful display of public relations” feels exactly right. With one exception, though: clarifying the degree of Ive’s ongoing involvement in Apple’s design work.
[A brief interpolation on Alan Dye as a “polarizing” figure within Apple: It’s not about his personality (a la Scott Forstall, or maybe even Tony Fadell), but rather Dye’s background in branding and graphic design. The Dye-led redesigns of iOS 7 and OS X Yosemite — and the new design of the Apple Watch OS — are “flat” in large part because “flat” is how modern graphic design looks. Suffice it to say, there were (and remain) people within Apple who consider this trend a mistake — that what makes for good graphic design does not necessarily make for good user interface design, and often makes for bad user interface design. Another way to look at it is that when Ive consolidated UI design under his purview, he and Dye more or less assembled a new team. This sort of thing invariably ruffled feathers from the prior UI designers in the company — especially those who worked under Forstall on the iOS team.
Anyway, personality-wise, I’ve heard nothing but good things about Dye — that he’s anti-political, pro-designer, and easy to get along with. End interpolation.]
There are two basic ways to read this news. The first is to take Apple at its word — that this is a promotion for Ive that will let him focus more of his attention on, well, design. That he’s delegating management administrivia to Dye and Howarth, not decreasing his involvement in supervising the actual design work. The second way — the cynical way — is that this is the first step to Ive easing his way out the door, and that his new title is spin to make the news sound good rather than bad.
In short: is this truly a promotion for Ive, or is it (as Thompson punctuated it) a quote-unquote “promotion”?
One reason for skepticism is the odd way the story was announced, via a feature profile of Ive (and to a lesser degree, Tim Cook) by Stephen Fry. It was
and an even odder way for Apple to announce the news. One line from the article caught many observers’ attention (boldface emphasis added):
When I catch up with Ive alone, I ask him why he has seemingly
relinquished the two departments that had been so successfully
under his control. “Well, I’m still in charge of both,” he says,
“I am called Chief Design Officer. Having Alan and Richard in
place frees me up from some of the administrative and management
work which isn’t … which isn’t …”
“Which isn’t what you were put on this planet to do?”
“Exactly. Those two are as good as it gets. Richard was lead on
the iPhone from the start. He saw it all the way through from
prototypes to the first model we released. Alan has a genius for
human interface design. So much of the Apple Watch’s operating
system came from him. With those two in place I can …”
I could feel him avoiding the phrase “blue sky thinking”… think
more freely?”
Jony will travel more, he told me. Among other things, he will
bring his energies to bear — as he has already since their
inception — on the Apple Stores that are proliferating around the
world. The company’s retail spaces have been one of their most
extraordinary successes.
From my own first take on the news:
Part of the story is that Ive is going to “travel more”, which I
take to mean “live in England”.
That seems like an odd jump to make — from “travel more” to “live in England” — but it was based on two factors: the news being announced in a London newspaper, and the
that Ive and his wife had been thinking about moving to England with their children since 2011. That speculation is entirely based on
— behind a paywall, alas, but :
However, despite the ‘rock star’ status Essex-born Ive has in the
design world, with his work lauded by peers and used by millions
around the world, the newspaper said his desire to ‘commute’ from
his ?2.5million manor house in Somerset was being opposed by
bosses at the technology company, who want him to stay in the U.S.
He and wife Heather, who met while they were studying at Newcastle
Polytechnic, are said to want to educate their twins in England.
Ive, like all of his colleagues in Apple senior management, is intensely private. Neither he, nor Apple, to my knowledge has ever said a word confirming or denying the Times’s claim that he wanted to spend more time in England and send their children to school there.
[Update: I failed to remember this bit from :
Ive told me that he never planned to move: he and his wife bought
the house for family vacations, and sold it when it was underused.
But he also connected the sale to what he called inaccurate
reporting, in the London Times, in early 2011, claiming that
Apple’s board had thwarted his
he did not
want to be shadowed by gossip.
So he has refuted it. File it under spin if you will, but it doesn’t make sense to me for Ive to say this to The New Yorker if his true intentions were to take steps to do just the opposite a few months later.]
Having thought about this some more, though, today, in 2015, we can maybe call bullshit on this aspect of the Times report. His twins are now 10 years old. They’re already being educated — in California. He’s clearly not bolting from Apple any time soon — even if this is a precursor to him leaving eventually, we’re talking about a few years down the road. And “a few years” from now his children will be even older. Again: Ive may be winding down, and he may, someday, return to England. But the time is running out — if it hasn’t already — for his family to return to England to raise their children there. I don’t ever expect Jony Ive to drop the “aluminium”, but he and his family are Californians.
A simpler way to look at this would be to see Ive having been promoted to, effectively, the new Steve Jobs: the overseer and arbiter of taste for anything and everything the company touches. One difference: Jobs, famously, was intimately involved with Apple’s advertising campaigns. Cook, in his internal memo, wrote: “Jony’s design responsibilities have expanded from hardware and, more recently, software UI to the look and feel of Apple retail stores, our new campus in Cupertino, product packaging and many other parts of our company.” But, still, it’s hard not to read Cook’s description of Ive’s responsibilities as pretty much matching those of Steve Jobs while he was CEO.
Lastly, a title can just be a title, but Apple has only had three C-level executives in the modern era (excepting CFOs, whose positions are legally mandated): Jobs (CEO, duh) Cook (COO under Jobs, now CEO), and now Jony Ive (CDO). It’s possible this title is more ceremonial than practical, but Tim Cook doesn’t strike me as being big on ceremony. Apple doesn’t exactly throw around senior vice-presidentships lightly, either, but a new C-level title is almost unprecedented.
[Update, 28 May 2015: Here’s a big exception I’d forgotten about: .]
I can see Cook-Ive as a sort of titular reversal of the Jobs-Cook C-level leadership duo. Cook oversees operations and “running the company”; Ive oversees everything else. So they created a new title to convey the authority Ive already clearly wielded, and promoted Dye and Howarth, his trusted lieutenants, to free him from administrative drudgery. I could be wrong, and we’ll know after a few years, but that’s my gut feeling today.&
If you press this button, these are the potential events that will
transpire on your Watch’s screen:
You’ll be taken to the “watch face” view.
You’ll be taken to the “home screen” app view.
You’ll stay in the “home screen” view, but it will re-center on
the “watch face” app.
You’ll move from a detailed view of a notification back to the
notifications summary.
His proposed solution:
Fortunately there is an easy fix for this confusion, which is to
streamline the Digital Crown so that it focuses exclusively on the
Watch’s two homes. Pressing the Digital Crown should simply toggle
you back and forth between the “watch face” and the “home screen.”
(Its other functionality could all be achieved through other
for instance, you can already re-orient the “home screen”
simply by dragging your finger across the Watch’s screen.) That’s
still more complicated than the iPhone home button, but it’s the
kind of thing most users would pick up in a matter of minutes
using the Watch. And it has a conceptual clarity that is sorely
lacking in the current design.
His whole piece is worth reading, because it aptly describes, almost exactly, how I felt about Apple Watch after using it for just a few days. Several of his complaints, which I would have agreed with in my first few days of Apple Watch use, I no longer consider problems. And even now, with seven weeks of daily Apple Watch experience under my belt, when I first read his suggestion for simplifying the digital crown button, I was nodding my head in agreement. But when I sat down to write about it, I realized there’s really only one small thing I would suggest Apple change: the last of its four roles noted by Johnson — its function as a hardware “back” button while looking at the detail view for a notification.
Otherwise, I would keep the functionality of the crown button as-is:
If the watch display is off, pressing the crown wakes it up.
If the watch is showing your glances or notifications, pressing the crown takes you back to the watch face.
If the watch is displaying your watch face, pressing the crown switches you to the home screen showing all your apps.
If you’re using any app, pressing the crown takes you back to the home screen, with the view centered on the app you just left.
If the watch is on your home screen and the clock app is not centered, pressing it will re-center.
If the watch is on the home screen, centered on the clock, pressing it will switch you to the watch face.
That looks more complicated than it is. And I’m even leaving out at least one other scenario: when you’ve put your home screen into edit mode — where you can delete and rearrange the installed apps — pressing the crown takes you out of editing mode.
Here’s a better way to think about it — and without thinking about it, the reason why I think most people aren’t frustrated or confused by the crown button after a week or so. It’s best to think of Apple Watch as having two modes: watch mode, and app mode.
You do not need to understand this to use the watch. Most Apple Watch owners will never really think about this. But this idea of two modes is central to understanding the design of the overall interaction model.
Watch mode:
Shows your watch face by default.
Swipe down for notifications.
Swipe up for glances.
Tap a complication — date, weather, activity — to launch its corresponding app.
Tap a glance to open to the corresponding app.
Force tap to switch or edit watch faces.
Shows your home screen, centered on the clock app, by default.
No notification list or glances.
Tap an app to open it.
Long-tap on the home screen to open editing mode.
Watch mode is where you take quick glances at informati app mode is where you go to “do something”. Watch mode is where most people will spend the majority — perhaps the overwhelming majority — of their time using Apple Watch. App mode is a simple one-level hierarchy for “everything else”.
If you think about Apple Watch as having these two modes, the role of the crown button is clear:
From the “default” view of either mode, the crown button switches you to the other mode.
From anywhere else, the crown button takes you to the default view of the current mode. (There’s a slight exception here in app mode: if you’re using an app, pressing the crown first takes you to the home screen centered on the app you were just using, and you have to press it again to center the home screen on the clock app.)
Consider: What happens when you press the digital crown button while in, say, the Weather app? The answer is: It depends how you got there. If you start from the home screen and tap the Weather app icon, the digital crown button returns you to the home screen. If you start from the watch face, though, and launch the full Weather app by tapping the Weather glance, then the digital crown button returns you to the watch face.
This sounds confusing. And if you’re expecting Apple Watch’s digital crown button to work like iOS’s home button, it is not the expected behavior. But in practice, I think it works very well. I suspect this arrangement wasn’t designed in advance but was instead the result of many months of play-testing by the designers on the Apple Watch team.
Again, I agree with Johnson that if you’re looking at a notification detail view, the crown should take you all the way back to the watch face. You have to tap on screen to get into a notification detail view, and they all have a large “Dismiss” button at the bottom if going “back” is what you want. “Back” just doesn’t feel right for the digital crown button. It should simply mean go home in the current mode, or, if you’re already home, switch to the other mode.
I don’t mind the “re-center and re-zoom on the clock app” extra action for the digital crown button. To me, it’s directly analogous to the way the home button takes you back to the first home screen in iOS. More importantly, you don’t have to go back to the watch face (or, as I’m referencing it here, watch “mode”). That just happens automatically when you lower your wrist and stay away from the watch for 30 seconds. You don’t have to “clean up” and go back to the watch face manually. It just happens automatically when you stop using the watch. A few special apps behave otherwise — Workout and Remote, so far — but in both of those cases that makes sense. And, yes, there is a setting (General → Activate on Wrist Raise → Resume To) that allows you to always return to the last-used app, but I don’t see why anyone would use that unless they stubbornly insist upon treating their Apple Watch like a miniature iPhone. Another way to think of this option is as a toggle between treating “watch mode” and “app mode” as the primary mode.
Another insight: the side button exists outside either mode. It behaves the same way no matter which mode you’re in, no matter what you’re doing. One press of the side button brings up your Friends circle. A double-press initiates Apple Pay. In either case — Friends circle or Apple Pay — pressing (or double-pressing) the digital crown button dismisses the side button mode you entered.&
As more people get their news on mobile devices, we want to make
the experience faster and richer on Facebook. People share a lot
of articles on Facebook, particularly on our mobile app. To date,
however, these stories take an average of eight seconds to load,
by far the slowest single content type on Facebook. Instant
Articles makes the reading experience as much as ten times faster
than standard mobile web articles.
A few thoughts:
This looks beautiful. Clearly it’s built by the team that did Facebook Paper, with things like the way you tilt the phone to pan around large photos. The knock against Paper is that it only “works” if your friends and family post beautiful, well-crafted content to their Facebook feeds, and, well, that’s not the case for most people. Instant Articles, on the other hand, is all about professionally-produced content.
I’m intrigued by the emphasis on speed. Not only is native mobile code winning for app development, but with things like Instant Articles, native is making the browser-based web look like a relic even just for publishing articles. If I’m right about that, it might pose a problem even for my overwhelmingly-text work at Daring Fireball. Daring Fireball pages load fast, but the pages I link to often don’t. I worry that the inherent slowness of the web and ill-considered trend toward over-produced web design is going to start hurting traffic to DF.
There’s also a convenience advantage over per-publication native apps. People are already checking Facebook many times a day on their phones. When they encounter these Instant Articles, they’re one tap and a moment away from reading them. People just don’t check many apps — check the New York Times, check National Geographic, check BBC News — that just isn’t how people use their phones. At best, standalone per-publication apps can get our attention through notifications, but notifications are bothersome in a way that something scrolling through your Facebook feed is not. And an aggregator of content from multiple sources — like, say, Flipboard, to name one obvious competitor — is asking users to check an extra app every day. There are only so many apps people will check for “new stuff” every day.
Like Paper, Facebook Instant Articles is iPhone-only, and from what I can tell, Facebook hasn’t said a word about Android support. (Paper is even North America US-only — Instant Articles are supported worldwide.) Many are presuming it’s forthcoming, but Paper remains iOS-only. For the moment at least, Facebook isn’t really treating “mobile” as their first-class target platform — they’re treating the iPhone as their first-class target platform. (Instant Articles isn’t even available on iPad yet.)
about this whole thing from the publishers’ angle. Seems dangerous to cede control over your content to a company like Facebook. But it sounds like the business aspects are very favorable. Publishers can use their own ads and keep 100
if Facebook sells the ads, . And there’s no exclusivity.&
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