One of the smaller bits of Apple news from yesterday was Apple retiring the iPod Classic.
But the end of the click wheel? Not so fast.
Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, the Wheel lives on except now it’s called the Digital Crown:

Yes, this is a real screen shot.

Were you like me this morning? Hearing the audio of the Chinese translator for Apple’s keynote alongside the audio of the actual white dudes in Cupertino? Maybe you got a few dozen error pages in Safari after numerous page refreshes?
Well, here’s why:

Unlike the last live stream Apple did, this time around Apple decided to add some JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) code to the apple.com page which added an interactive element on the bottom showing tweets about the event. As a result, this was causing the page to make refresh calls every few milliseconds. By Apple making the decision to add the JSON code, it made the apple.com website un-cachable. By contrast, Apple usually has Akamai caching the page for their live events but this time around there would have been no way for Akamai to have done that, which causes a huge impact on the performance when it comes to loading the page and the stream. And since Apple embeds their video directly in the web page, any performance problems in the page also impacts the video. Akamai didn’t return my call asking for more details, but looking at the code shows there was no way Akamai could have cached it. This is also one of the reasons why when I tried to load the Apple live event page on my iPad, it would make Safari quit. That’s a problem with the code on the page, not with the video.
Fuck me.
Apple, you need to step it up.

Richard V. Reeves about writing biographies on intellectuals:

When the subject of a biography is a great politician or military leader, the life is what makes the story: what they did, and said, not what they thought. A subject who has had an important and interesting life during interesting times can, in skilled hands, be brought to life like the character of a good novel.
And:
The life of an intellectual, Mr. Ignatieff claims, provides a petri dish for the universal human experiment of thinking, being and doing. It’s a lovely idea. The trouble is that intellectuals seem no better at it than anyone else. They often think great thoughts, while being ignoble characters. Maybe Mill and Berlin and John Dewey were noble characters. But Marx was a serial adulterer, Karl Popper was a pompous narcissist, and Heidegger was a fascist. Elite thinkers, maybe: but as amateurish humans as the rest of us.
Ideas are beautiful. Life is dirty.
It’s just how it is.

—Fight Club

I want to focus on my favorite visual update in Yosemite — the dock icons. Before Yosemite, Apple maintained a system for icon design through a checklist of mostly unstated and understood guidelines paired with a few specific recommendations in the Human Interface Guidelines (HIG). With Yosemite, that system becomes more consistent, and regular, yet the HIG remains silent on the specifics.
—Nick Keppol doing an awesome job inspecting the icons in OS X Yosemite

If the awesome tie I wore today wasn’t enough to kill The Mondays then this little bit of Microsoft news is:

In among the larger-than-life humans on NFL sidelines this season, you’ll notice a slew of Microsoft’s Surface Pro 2 tablets helping out. Used by players and coaches to review photos of plays, the tablets are encased in chunky cyan protective cases and have been attracting the attention of the broadcast commentators when put to use. The only problem is that the announcers don’t seem to have been briefed on the name, leaving them to describe Microsoft’s slates as “iPad-like tools.”
Hahahahahahaha.
Oh boy. Nothing like a nice cup of schadenfreude in the morning to get ya going.

Analysts and trend-spotters agree that a major shift in teenage trends, and in teenage spending, is underway. John Morris, a retail analyst at BMO Capital Markets, says that his regular focus groups with teenagers about what trends they find most appealing often stray from clothing.

“You try to get them talking about what’s the next look, what they’re excited about purchasing in apparel, and the conversation always circles back to the iPhone 6,” he said. “You get them talking about crop tops, you get a nice little debate about high-waist going, but the conversation keeps shifting back.”
—Elizabeth A. Harris and Rachel Abrams, Plugged-In Over Preppy: Teenagers Favor Tech Over Clothes

This week Michael and Bryan discuss fall in New York, appreciating jazz and classical music, the celebrity iPhone hacking drama and Apple’s expected wearable computer device thing we didn’t know we wanted. The episode opens with the exhaust from a Lamborghini Countach.
Weekly Exhaust – Episode 15

via Twitter

—found in The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch

—American Dreaming Teaser from Jim Toscano on Vimeo.
taken from The Combustion Chamber

—Ernest Hemingway
via Bombtune

This week Michael and Bryan discuss Bryan’s news embargo, adults not belonging on Facebook, how Xenon headlights suck and blind you, how useless humans are, how shitty humans drive, the likelihood of our universe being a hologram and how your brain can f$#k with you. The episode opens with the exhaust from a 1970 Plymouth Barracuda.
Weekly Exhaust Episode 14