The Reality Editor is a new kind of tool for empowering you to connect and manipulate the functionality of physical objects. Just point the camera of your smartphone at an object and its invisible capabilities will become visible for you to edit. Drag a virtual line from one object to another and create a new relationship between these objects. With this simplicity, you are able to master the entire scope of connected objects.

Woah.

via Fast Company

Interesting to see how iOS apps are taking advantage of 3D Touch:

Flickr may have my favorite twist on 3D Touch so far, with a slight change to how peek works. When you’re previewing a photo in your camera roll, Flickr lets you scrub from side to side to quickly see more pictures. It’s a small change, but as soon as you try it, you wonder why Apple didn’t figure this out in the first place — it ought to be in the iPhone’s camera roll, and maybe even everywhere there’s a gallery of photos. Unfortunately, Flickr has only implemented this so far for your own overall camera roll; it doesn’t work inside of albums or for other users, and it totally should. (Flickr does, however, let you do a standard peek at most profiles, photos, albums, and notifications.)

I’m looking forward to getting an iPhone 7 next year.

Uh-oh. Stephen Hackett is done with iCloud Photo Library:

A bunch of empty duplicate albums would be annoying to clean up, but upon digging, I discovered that not all my albums had been duplicated. Some — including one with 1800 family photos from a vacation — had been overwritten with an empty album of the same name.

Turning iCloud Photo Library back on from my iPad introduced some sort of leftover data not deleted from my iCloud account, overwriting (and removing) newer data on my Mac.

Because I am a nerd, I have backups. I have all of my photos safe and sound, but I’ve got iCloud Photo Library off forever now. I can’t trust it after this failure. I know that there’s a lot of talk that CloudKit is better than the shit Apple first shipped with iCloud, but this is unacceptable.

Not cool.

I used DropBox to back up all my iPhone photos—specifically I used the Carousel app from Dropbox (I also use Image Capture in OS X to backup photos to manually backup an external drive).

When you launch Carousel, it immediately starts backing up your entire camera roll (with you permission). Over the last 8 years or so, Dropbox has earned my trust. When it tells me files have been synced, I believe them.

For whatever reason, Apple is still having problems managing files in the cloud, whether it’s music or photos. They really need to fix this.

Interesting observations from John Gruber on the iPad Pro and Pencil:

For capacitive (finger) touch, the iPad Pro samples at twice the rate of previous iPads — 120 times per second instead of 60. With the Pencil, though, the iPad Pro samples at 240 times per second. The way the Pencil works requires cooperation with the display, and so there’s no way this Pencil could be made to work with existing iPads. The Pencil is not iPad Pro-exclusive out of product marketing spite — it’s exclusive to the Pro because the two were engineered in coordination with each other. And if Apple had designed the Pencil differently, to allow it to work with existing iPads, there’s no way it could have had this level of accuracy, because the tip would have needed to be broader and capacitive. (The Pencil’s tip is not capacitive at all — it doesn’t register as a touch at all on any other iOS device.)

I think it’s quite possible the iPad ends up being a slow win for Apple unlike the quarter-after-quarter smash hit the iPhone is.

Michael Lopp has added drones to his list of “holy shit” moments:

I’ve written about this topic before, but as it’s been a few years since I’ve experienced a Holy Shit, it bears repeating. A Holy Shit moment is when you first discover a new idea that drastically and forever changes your perspective. You know when you’re having these moments because you stop, you stare at the new idea or thought with your mouth half open, and you say – out loud – “Holy shit.” Here are three from my life to help you calibrate:

Telnet – Sitting in the computer lab at UCSC as Frank explained, “Type telnet 81.201.83.45. Ok, now enter this user name and password. Great, you are now logged into a computer in Germany.” Pause. I’m what? Pause. Holy shit, the whole world is eventually going to be connected.

Doom – Playing Doom primarily on the promise of Castle Wolfenstein 3D. I distinctly remember walking around a corner in the game and having an Imp leap out at me. I jumped out of my chair, Holy shit, the computer will eventually be able to render the world as I see it and I’ll be able to walk around.

iPhone – Writing my first email of significance where it wasn’t an absolute mobile chore to do what I did effortless on my desktop. Wait. Holy shit, a computer is not just a bulky something that sits on my desk. Computers are going to disappear by being everywhere.

You are unable to un-see a Holy Shit moment. It is burned in your brain because the world as you knew it is now forever different. This brings us back to drones.

I too have a father who’s an engineer and I too want to buy him a drone.

Ok, I want a drone too.

I just don’t have an extra $700 to drop on one.

Ben Bajarin on Android’s “good enough” problem:

One of the most interesting observations about all of this is that the Innovator’s Dilemma was supposed to impact Apple. This was a fundamental tenet of most bear cases. When the market for smartphones became filled with good-enough devices at very low prices, why would anyone buy an iPhone? Yet this is impacting Samsung exactly according to the guidebook — but not Apple.

The fundamental lesson to learn here is that the Innovator’s Dilemma, in this case, only applies to Android land, because all the hardware OEMs run the same operating system. As I’m fond of saying, when you ship the same operating system as your competition, you are only as good as their lowest price. This is the curse of the modular business model.

What about Apple?

One of the most interesting observations about all of this is that the Innovator’s Dilemma was supposed to impact Apple. This was a fundamental tenet of most bear cases. When the market for smartphones became filled with good-enough devices at very low prices, why would anyone buy an iPhone? Yet this is impacting Samsung exactly according to the guidebook — but not Apple.

The fundamental lesson to learn here is that the Innovator’s Dilemma, in this case, only applies to Android land, because all the hardware OEMs run the same operating system. As I’m fond of saying, when you ship the same operating system as your competition, you are only as good as their lowest price. This is the curse of the modular business model.

Which brings us to today in late 2015 with Microsoft pretending to drop their modular business model.

Dan Goodin at Ars Technica on the data plundering going on in iOS and Android:

Apps in both Google Play and the Apple App Store frequently send users’ highly personal information to third parties, often with little or no notice, according to recently published research that studied 110 apps.

The researchers analyzed 55 of the most popular apps from each market and found that a significant percentage of them regularly provided Google, Apple, and other third parties with user e-mail addresses, names, and physical locations. On average, Android apps sent potentially sensitive data to 3.1 third-party domains while the average iOS app sent it to 2.6 third-party domains. In some cases, health apps sent searches including words such as “herpes” and “interferon” to no fewer than five domains with no notification that it was happening.

Well fuck, this is awesome.

PuzzlePhone is a new project on Indiegogo. It’s a phone with modular parts. It runs Android. And they claim it lasts up the 10 years? No way. Apple just introduced 3-D Touch on the iPhone 6S. There’s no telling where Android is going to be in 10 years (or the smartphone market).

James Vincent at the Verge also notes their flexible funding structure:

Flexible funding can be something of a warning sign on Indiegogo as it means that the campaign organizers will keep the money they raise no matter what happens. Obviously this doesn’t mean that all flexibly funded campaigns are scams, but it’s not always a good look. Puzzlephone says it was “forced” to go with flexible funding as Indiegogo only allows payment via PayPal for fixed funding campaigns. The company notes that it has also already raised funding for R&D, so the Indiegogo money is only for manufacture, shipping, and the product itself.

There’s no way I would give them my money to be a guinea pig. Their goals of being ‘upgradable and sustainable” are admirable (if they’re genuine) but they’re not realistic.

I don’t need a Glowforge, but I want one.

Tim Bajarin on Microsoft admitting with their actions Apple’s way is the best way:

But if you look at Microsoft’s new strategy, one can’t help but see this is an acknowledgment Apple’s business model of owning the hardware, software and services is ultimately the best one that assures Microsoft’s control of their destiny. At the moment, it looks like Microsoft will only have three serious PC partners — HP, Dell, and Lenovo — doing any volume. Some are asking how long even these vendors will continue to support PCs given shrinking margins.

Yep. I said as much a few weeks ago.

On that last point regarding partners, I’ve said this before but I think Microsoft needs to proactively drop it’s partners and go full in on the Apple way.

Light-based computers are on the horizon:

“The phase speed is infinite—much larger, infinitely larger than the speed of light,” Mazur tells Quartz.

This doesn’t mean light itself is traveling faster than the speed of light, which would violate the laws of relativity. “Phase velocity” refers to the speed of the crest of waves that ripple out when light strikes a material. The Harvard scientists created a material that allows these wave crests to move infinitely fast. This is a strange thought to wrap your head around, and means the crests of the waves are oscillating through time, but not space. Under these peculiar conditions, the Harvard scientists found that it’s easy to manipulate the photons, squeezing them down to the microscopic scale and turning them around. In other words, we can treat photons in the same way we currently manipulate electrons.

And:

Light-powered telecommunications would allow phones and computers to process information millions of times faster. And because light conserves energy far better than electrons (which tend to waste energy by creating heat), battery lives would be far longer.

So cool.

via Rands in Repose

Let’s see how things go for Microsoft with Windows 10, but right now, Windows Phone is still a fucking mess:

While the app gap has always been a problem, Windows Phone is now five years old and it’s still facing new challenges. Over the past year developers haven’t flocked to Microsoft’s platform to improve its app situation. Instead, more and more high-profile apps have actually disappeared. Mint’s removal this week is the latest, angering Windows Phone fans, but it’s not the first, nor will it be the last.

American Airlines, Chase Bank, Bank of America, NBC, Pinterest, and Kabam have all discontinued their Windows Phone apps in the past year. These huge apps have simply disappeared or will no longer be updated. Some companies have cited a lack of Windows Phone users, and others have remained silent, but each removal has put Microsoft another step behind in the mobile race.

And on Microsoft’s constant rebooting of the OS:

It’s easy to blame the lack of apps on developers, but they’ve been saddled with a platform that is constantly rebooting. Windows Phone 7 launched as a Windows Mobile reboot back in October 2010. Windows Phone 8 then launched two years later in October 2012 and existing handsets couldn’t upgrade, and apps needed to be heavily updated. Windows Phone 8.1 arrived last year, finally bringing many features lacking from Microsoft’s platform. Now, Microsoft is on the verge of rebooting once again with Windows 10 Mobile.

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I think what Microsoft presented at their Windows 10 Devices Event looks great, but who’s to say they don’t just reboot Windows 10 like Windows 7 & 8?

Microsoft had a very short window to respond to the iPhone six years ago, but Google beat them to it with Android. Since then, they’ve simultaneously been revising their strategy AND competing with Google and Apple (hence the schizophrenic behavior).

Alex Wilhelm at TechCrunch on Windows 10:

A few questions: Will Windows 10’s release lead to lift in PC sales, even if temporary? If that is the case, did the release of Windows 10 come too late in the quarter to make much of an impact? If that is not the case, then it seems that Windows 10 will not drive an increase in PC sales.

The very first blog post I wrote for The Next Web — where I worked before coming to TechCrunch — had the following headline: “No Windows 7 PC Sales Bump Coming.” And that was Windows 7, mind, one of most popular versions of Windows ever.

I don’t recall Windows 8 doing the PC market many favors, either, at its debut. So we have at least some historical precedent that new builds of Windows are not key drivers of new unit volume.

My question is, why should a new version of Windows ever help sales of PCs?

This isn’t the launch of Windows 95. Those days are over. Microsoft knows this and I think it’s the impetus behind their cloning of Apple’s business model, despite the fact that they can’t duplicate said business model because they have OEMs they license Windows to.

It’s all about great, integrated hardware/software products and now that Microsoft has gotten a taste of the power that comes with controlling the whole stack they could give a fuck about OEMs.

Of course they won’t say that but it’s true. If they could sell Apple levels of Surface tablets and Windows Phones with Apple profit margins they’d be loving life.

They’re just still too scared to rip off that band-aid.

Yellow cabs in NYC might be getting an overhaul:

The technology inside many New York City yellow taxis is in for an overhaul after regulators on Thursday approved a trial run for systems that calculate fares using global positioning.

The changes mean the back seat “Taxi TVs” could be on the way out, along with dashboard-mounted meters that display fares in red blocky alarm clock-style numbers.

Imagine that!

Instead of suing to keep Uber and Lyft out of NYC, yellow cabs are overhauling their system to better compete—and provide a better customer experience (we hope).