“Harrison Ford sustained an ankle injury during filming today on the set of Star Wars: Episode VII. He was taken to a local hospital and is receiving care. Shooting will continue as planned while he recuperates,” said a statement from Disney.

A source tells THR that the actor, who reprises his role as Han Solo from the original franchise, was injured by the door of the Millennium Falcon, the spacecraft that his character pilots in the original films. The spaceship looks to be making a return in the sequel.
—Rebecca Ford, Hollywood Reporter
This is the kind of shit that happens when you have to help Chewy fix the hyper drive.
In other news, actor Mark Hammill lost a hand during filming of a fight scene with his on-screen father, Vader.

“Traditional” taxi companies and drivers are not down with Über:

Europe’s taxi drivers on Wednesday picked a fight with Uber, an increasingly popular smartphone car-paging service, and dared consumers to choose sides.

From London to Lyon and Madrid to Milan, thousands of taxi drivers protested the rise of Uber, an American upstart, stopping in the middle of streets and shutting down major portions of cities.

The public display laid bare the growing tension between some of Europe’s traditional industries that have barely changed in decades and the rising influence of companies from Silicon Valley, for which disruptive technologies are badges of honor.
So what’s the reaction to this public tempter tantrum?
Oh, just a 850% increased in sign-ups for Über.
If you want to be assholes and cause road shut-downs, this is what you get. Everyone should be allowed to protest for what they believe is right, but don’t fuck up things for everyone else.
Adapt or be left behind.

Patrick Joust
via thisisnthappiness

—George Carlin
This one deserves a repost.

—[Garth Braithwaite](GarthDB: With Feedly down I don’t know what to do when I open a browser.)
Feedly and Evernote have been down all day because hackers launched a DDoS attack and are demanding a ransom. Charming shit.

Criticism of post-Jobs Apple tends to run in one of two directions (unless you’re the author of Haunted Empire and want to have it both ways): Either Apple is doomed because it’s slavishly following the out-of-date playbook of its former CEO, or it’s doomed because it’s not following the playbook of its genius former CEO.

As a close observer of Apple before, during, and after Jobs’s tenure, I can tell you that the Apple of today is not playing by the Steve Jobs playbook–except for the bit that demanded that everyone stop asking what Steve would do. Tim Cook and his lieutenants are immersed in the Apple culture created by Steve Jobs, of course, but they’re applying that culture to an ever-changing world–rather than going to the 2011 playbook.
—Jason Snell, MacWorld
via Daring Fireball

Albert Einstein said, “You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother.”
One of the best ways to explain something to someone is through metaphor and analogy.
Horace Dediu, as usual, nails Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference:

The path to realizing this is to imagine the world as the “D” in WWDC see it. Developers don’t just build. Using an analogy of building or construction, they are architects and designers as well as contractors and craftsmen and artists as well as builders. And not of just of houses but of cities and communities. They see and think through tools and techniques for building and innovations in building materials. Innovations which allow them to imagine first and, later, to build new cities in ways that were never before possible.

We were therefore witnesses to an event which was, in essence, a cement conference. A new building material was introduced along with the methods for using it and the tools for shaping it. Perhaps some observers expected to see skyscrapers and interstate highways presented, and thus were disappointed. But they should not have had such expectations. A cement conference is esoteric. It’s about the rudiments which, when combined with imagination, ingenuity and a lot of work, generate livable spaces.
Outsiders seemed disappointed with last week’s WWDC. No new toys, nothing shiny to take pictures of and post on their websites, but every insider (including a coworker of mine) who went was super-excited with all the announcements.
Such is life, though. I can’t count the amount of times I’ve explained something (like a Kickstarter project) I’ve envisioned and it’s fallen on deaf ears. Most people have shitty imaginations. Only once you’ve executed your vision do they jump on the bandwagon (to be fair to my imaginary skeptic, most people never execute, they just love to talk).
It’s no different with what Apple announced at WWDC. The hundreds of new features and tools in iOS and OS X open up countless new ways of doing things we’ve never been able to do before on these platforms, but most people will not “get it” until developers start building new things.

Kindle version 4.3 was released today, and it has some great features, including the ability listen to audiobooks directly in the app. But…does it have scrolling view yet? No, it does not.

—Shonda Rhimes

Let me understand something.
If the one major downside to the Samsung Chromebook 2 is the fact that it’s “too slow to really get anything done,” how the fuck does it get a 7.6 score?!
That’s like dropping a four cylinder, 92-horsepower engine into a Ferrari 458 Italia and saying it’s “too slow to really race against other sports cars,” but still giving it a 7.6 score of of 10.
I don’t get it (and this isn’t the first time The Verge has posted wack reviews).

Influencer: Nest Thermostat, introduced in 2011

Influenced: Honeywell Thermostat, introduced 10 June 2014

via Instagram

When iOS 8 hits, the notification center is going to be the most important screen in your iPhone. Think about it: Notifications already are the way you know about everything that happens without having to fire up an app. A notification lets you know you have a new email, a new text message, a new Snapchat. (Hi, Tony. Looking good.) But with iOS 8 they become interactive. They’re not just simple announcements–or even calls to action–anymore. They are actions in and of themselves. Entirely new windows onto our data. It’s nearly impossible to overstate how much this will change the way you use your phone.

— Mat Honan, Wired

I’m very cautious with notifications. They can be dangerous and annoying as shit.

Right now on my iPhone running iOS 7 I’ve turned off almost all notifications for email and text messages. I don’t get interrupted with message panels and windows whenever something new pops onto my phone. I find doing this helps me act less like a person with obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Some people might view my OS customizations as making my iPhone less smart. I’m fine with that if it means making me less distracted.

I’ll keep an open mind with notifications in iOS 8 when I see how they work differently.

All these assholes calling for the death of skeuomorphism and praising flat design can continue on with their pointless quest because skeuomorphism isn’t going anywhere. It’s thriving in the supposedly flat iOS 7 (and 8) and in OS X Yosemite.
The truth is we still need and like visual cues telling us certain things are clickable and other things are not. That certain things are (virtually) closer to us, and others are (virtually) farther away.
Below are Mavericks icons (left) and Yosemite icons (right):


Sure, iOS 1 through 6 might have looked a bit like a whore with the amount of skeuomorphism she wore, but she’s still wearing it in iOS 7 & 8, just this time she’s applying it sparingly. She’s started letting her natural beauty shine through in iOS 7.
*[*I say IOS 7 & 8 are “supposely flat” because they are. There are still shadows when you go back and forth between interface panes in Mail, Music and many other apps and system-level panes can be pulled in from the top and bottom of the screen, blurring the content underneath them like translucent, frosted glass. So I repeat: skeuomorphism is doing fine.]