Pretty soon, you may be plugging new headphones into the iPhone’s Lightning port. Apple is reportedly expanding its Made for iPhone program with new terms that allow manufacturers to make headphones that link with iOS devices via the small connector– first introduced with the iPhone 5 in 2012. 9to5Mac claims that Apple will add support for Lightning headphones in an upcoming iOS firmware update. The company has a history of doing away with dated components (i.e. the 30-pin dock connector), but eliminating the headphone jack would be a drastic step even for Cupertino. It’d be another way for Apple to achieve consumer lock-in, but aside from that, it’s hard to come up with obvious or practical benefits to such a change.
—Chris Welch, Apple reportedly paving the way for Lightning headphones, but benefits are unclear
Just as the iPhone isn’t really a phone (it’s a mobile computer with cellular capabilities), maybe we should think about headphones having the potential to be more than headphones.
Last month’s rumor about Apple making headphones that track your pulse might have been a hoax, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out not to be (or not far from the mark).

Apple’s desktop and mobile operating systems have been gradually converging for some time. So it was inevitable that one typographic palette would displace the other. With OS X 10.10, Mac desktops will sport Helvetica everywhere. But I had really hoped it would be the other way around, with the iPhone taking a lesson from the desktop, and adopt Lucida Grande. Check the lock screen on your iPhone. You’ll see Helvetica there, a half-inch tall or larger, and it looks good. Problem is, there aren’t many other places where it looks as good.
—Tobias Frere-Jones, Co.Design
I’m disappointed Apple is doubling down on Helvetica Neue.
Make no mistake: Helvetica is a classic, like the E-Type Jaguar. It’s a beautiful typeface, but just as many more (dare I say most) cars today handle better than the E-Type, there’s many more readable, contemporary typefaces for tablets, phones and laptops than Helvetica Neue.
This was a missed opportunity for OS X and iOS.

(my emphasis)

Hats off to Apple. The markets may disagree, but WWDC 2014 was a resounding success. Its mixture of imitation and innovation plugged holes against Android and set off a new war in both wearables and smart homes via smart SDKs (software developer kits). Furthermore Apple execs seemed upbeat and relaxed, as if the company was finally comfortable in its post-Steve Jobs skin. And yet there was one major, potentially disastrous mistake.

Here’s a hint: Apple made an ad about it.

Yes – unlike owners of increasingly big Android rivals – users of iPhones can easily reach the top corners of their devices. It is convenient and, to quote the ad, “a dazzling display of common sense.” But the common sense won’t last much longer.

Everything changes with the iPhone 6. Not only because Apple is widely known to be increasing the screen size from 4 inches to 4.7 inches (a sizeable jump in its own right), but because the company is keeping the distinctive, large, circular and utterly outdated home button.
—Gordon Kelly, Forbes
So Kelly, is that your final answer? Your opinion about how Apple is shooting itself in the face is tied to the hardware home button on their iOS devices?
That is a stupid statement. Or a bold one. Maybe both. Definitely stupid.
I wonder if Gordon Kelly believes carmakers have made a disastrous mistake by keeping the distinctive, large, circular steering wheel on automobiles year after year.

While I watched Apple’s WWDC 2014 opening keynote on Monday morning, I couldn’t stop thinking about the infectious mixture of fun and confidence everyone onstage seemed to be exuding. It was something new for this era of Apple, and it felt like a mirror image of the announcements being made. The message was loud and resonant from where I sat: We’re back, we’re ready to play, and we know who we are.
—Joshua Topolsky, The Verge
I got the same feeling watching the keynote intermittently as I “worked” at my desk Monday morning. Only experience will tell if OS X and iOS 8 work as well as they looked on stage, but everything appears tighter and more consistent across both platforms.
And as the guys said on the latest episode of ATP, there wasn’t enough time to talk about all the great new features and functionality under the hood of both operating systems. In the days since the Keynote news stories continue to pop up discussing things the Apple leadership either failed to mention due to time constraints or gave only a few minutes of attention to.
Regardless of how tight the Apple ship appears to be running, we’ll continue to hear from the naysayers and clueless analysts who are still convinced Apple is lost without Steve Jobs and they’re no longer able to innovate.

Natalia Stuyk
via thisisnthappiness

via The Verge

So Rihanna’s choice to highlight her bare breasts with 216,000 crystals on an extremely Instagrammable night — a night she was being honored with the CFDA’s Fashion Icon Award, no less — was not only on purpose, but a brilliant strategy. She ensured that thousands of users would commit the same atrocity (posting her nipples) that got her banned in the first place, and she also took another step in what is bound to be an incredibly long journey towards removing the stigma attached to the female breast.
—Isabella Biedenharn, Flavorwire
I won’t lie, Rihanna has some perky crystals.

Kickstarter’s human approval process was never billed as an endorsement — it consisted of a simple check for rule violations that could take as little as five minutes. That check will now be done by an algorithm that looks at keywords in the campaign, the creator’s track record on Kickstarter, and other metrics to create a profile of the project and compare it to similar projects that have been approved, rejected, flagged, and removed. If the campaign passes the algorithmic check, the creator can choose to either launch without a human review or request feedback from the Kickstarter team.
—Adrianne Jeffries, The Verge
At what point will the algorithms be able to create new Kickstarter projects for us to then submit them for approval to the algorithms of Kickstarter?
Is there an algorithm to ship all the hardcover books from my Kickstarter project? Because that would save my ass a hell of a lot of time.

I love this Mini electric concept vehicle, although the fact that it’s a concept vehicle means it’s not likely to look this beautiful if it gets mass-produced.

Headline of the year, via The Washington Post

via Reddit

On Episode 3 of Weekly Exhaust Michael and Bryan discuss the changes in journalism, what it means when you expect people to innovate, more on Schwarzenegger’s ego, Jack White’s ego, Miles Davis being as asshole, good people doing bad things, random pages on Reddit, soccer sucking, Apple buying Beats and how much the tech press sucks.