Nathan Olivarez-Giles | The Verge

The Apple team behind the original iPhone recalls its stressful, terrifying development

2013-10-04T19:13:07-04:00

Original iPhone 1020

One day before the anniversary of Steve Jobs’ death, The New York Times Magazine has published a captivating recollection of the terrifyingly stressful two-year development of the first iPhone. The piece is an excerpt from journalist Fred Vogelstein’s upcoming book, Dogfight: How Apple and Google Went to War and Started a Revolution, and it includes insight from Andy Grignon, the senior engineer in charge of the radios in the original iPhone, among other former Apple employees. Grignon told Vogelstein that he was so impacted by his work on the iPhone that he gained 50 pounds and was left emotionally exhausted. “It was very dramatic,” Grignon said. “It had been drilled into everyone’s head that this was the next big thing to come out of Apple. So you put all these supersmart people with huge egos into very tight, confined quarters, with that kind of pressure, and crazy stuff starts to happen.”

“It was very dramatic.”

On the day of the announcement at San Francisco’s Moscone Center, Grignon and his colleagues took shots from a flask they had smuggled into the auditorium, hoping their still-buggy software and hardware held strong as Jobs worked through a long, exhaustive demo. The cellular radio, which was still prone to crashing, had been hard-coded to show five bars — full strength — throughout the presentation.

The article reveals that Apple had considered buying Motorola in 2003 — shortly before the two companies collaborated on their ill-fated ROKR phone — but that company executives ultimately concluded that it was “too big” of an acquisition at the time (a laughable notion by 2013 standards, where Apple clocks in over $30 billion in revenue each quarter). Vogelstein also details the prototypes that led up to the production iPhone; legend has it that the project began after Jobs asked for a device that would allow him to read email in the bathroom. An early device resembled an iPod that used its circular clicker to dial, while a later model was crafted entirely of aluminum — a major problem for wireless signals — before engineers and designers settled on the plastic-capped metal model that debuted in 2007. One executive estimates that the effort cost about $150 million in total.

The story also features interviews with former Apple executives Tony Fadell (who went on to start Nest) and Scott Forstall, famously ousted in the wake of iOS 6. It’s a must-read for those interested in the history behind the device that redefined the smartphone, and a telling look into the way Steve Jobs ran Apple after his return in the late 1990s.

Chris Ziegler contributed to this report.

Guillermo del Toro teams with ‘The Simpsons’ for a love letter to the horror genre

2013-10-03T22:12:03-04:00

The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror 24 Guillermo Del Toro (via Fox on YouTube)

Some argue that The Simpsons, which first hit the airwaves in 1989, is past its prime, despite it being one of the greatest TV shows of all time. If you’re among those who question whether or not the animated series can still deliver something spectacular, we suggest you take a look at the fantastic opening sequence of this coming Sunday’s Treehouse of Horror episode — the show’s 24th such homage to Halloween and horror. This year’s opener was put together by none other than horror guru and acclaimed director Guillermo del Toro. And, as you might expect, it contains nods to many del Toro films — including Hellboy, Blade, Pan’s Labyrinth, The Devil’s Backbone, Cronos, and Pacific Rim.

“I ended up cramming in about 1/50th of what I wanted.” But as del Toro explains to USA Today in an interview, the sequence is more than just the filmmaker honoring himself. “We talked about doing it around the movies I have done, but I felt I’d rather mix those images with the creatures and monsters of film, which have influenced me enormously,” del Toro says. “So, I said, ‘Why don’t we do a really long riff on the title sequence, rather than just a couch gag?'”

The result in a nearly three-minute opener with references to Edgar Allan Poe, Alfred Hitchcock, Stephen King, the classic Universal monsters, and the cartoon series Futurama. “I ended up cramming in about 1/50th of what I wanted,” del Toro says. “To get to do a love letter to two things I love, which is fantasy and horror films and The Simpsons, is great. I enjoyed myself enormously.”

Apple reportedly starts OS X 10.10 development as Mavericks is set for late October launch

2013-10-03T20:04:06-04:00

OS X Mavericks lead (1024px)

Apple’s OS X Mavericks is nearly ready for its public release, which means that development on its successor is now underway. Mavericks, version 10.9 of Apple’s venerable Mac operating system, is expected to launch toward the end of this month, according to 9to5Mac’s Mark Gurman. When it arrives it’ll include more than 200 new features, a few of which Gurman says haven’t yet been formally announced — such as the ability to block phone numbers and Apple ID’s in the FaceTime and Messages apps.

The report says Mavericks could reach Golden Master status (which means it’s finally ready for consumers) at Apple as early as this weekend. The follow up to Mavericks, OS X 10.10 (it hasn’t been given a fancy nickname just yet), will continue to bring design elements from iOS 7 and iCloud over to the desktop. It is believed that Apple will continue its longstanding tradition and announce OS X 10.10 next summer alongside iOS 8 — likely at WWDC 2014.

Update: As noted by 9to5Mac, the OS X Mavericks Golden Master has now been seeded to developers.

Fabian Oefner turns simple science into stunning art photography

2013-10-03T15:48:02-04:00

Fabian Oefner the invisible dimension (via FabianOefner.com)

Swiss photographer Fabian Oefner is known for using art to breathtakingly illustrate simple science at work. His latest series of images, called The Invisible Dimension, captures crystals of color rising in reaction to a speaker’s soundwaves, magnetic liquid pushing paint into canals, and a flame of burning whiskey traveling through a glass bottle. In a recent TED talk, the artist explains the motivation behind his creations: “I’m trying to use these phenomena, and show them in a poetic and unseen way, and therefore invite the viewer to pause for a moment and think about all the beauty that is constantly surrounding us.” You can see Oefner’s artistic process demonstrated in his TED talk below, and check out his website to see The Invisible Dimension photos in high resolution.

Tesla stock hits a bump after burning Model S video and analyst downgrade

2013-10-02T22:45:04-04:00

Tesla Model S

Tesla investors displayed a bit of doubt on Wednesday, driving stock down after a YouTube video of its popular Model S sedan on fire circulated online. The video, shot near Seattle, marks the first time that a Model S has caught on fire, but Washington State Patrol told the Associated Press that the fire wasn’t started by the car itself. Instead, the car seen in the video, which was first reported by Jalopnik, collided with some debris on Washington’s Route 167 on Tuesday morning.

The debris triggered the fire, but troopers were unable to locate the debris after the accident, State Patrol said. There were no injuries in the accident and the fire was contained to the front of the all-electric vehicle. Still, Tesla’s stock took a 6.24 percent dip, falling $12.05 a share to a closing price of $180.95. Adding to the drop in share price was a downgrade from RW Baird analyst Ben Kallo, who warned of “several milestones that could contain execution risk” in the company’s future. Kallo now rates Tesla as neutral rather than outperform.

The stock decline is relatively minor — Tesla stock has jumped up more than 400 percent since the beginning of the year. Still, some investors are jittery at the sight of a burning electric car. For its part, Tesla told Jalopnik that the Model S reacted to a Tesla says the Model S didn’t start the fire collision with a “large metal object” just as it was supposed to. “The car’s alert system signaled a problem and instructed the driver to pull over safely, which he did,” Tesla explained. “No one was injured, and the sole occupant had sufficient time to exit the vehicle safely and call the authorities. Subsequently, a fire caused by the substantial damage sustained during the collision was contained to the front of the vehicle thanks to the design and construction of the vehicle and battery pack.”

Tesla, of course, isn’t the first car company to see one of its models go up in flames. Last year, General Motors was the subject of a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) investigation after one of a Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid caught on fire during a routine test crash. GM found that the cause of the fire was a battery pack that was punctured in testing, and it made enhancements to the Volt to prevent owners from running into the same issue. NHTSA later closed its investigation saying that it failed to find any systematic defects.

Bizarre shirts turn famous faces into Facebook-confusing camouflage

2013-10-02T21:43:03-04:00

Realface Glamouflage (via Simone C. Niquille)

Facebook’s ongoing efforts to use facial recognition software to identify its 1 billion users in the quarter-trillion photos shared on the social network is an ever divisive topic. Some Facebook users don’t want to be automatically pointed out in a photo while others simply don’t care. Simone C. Niquille, a design student in Amsterdam, is tackling this issue in her Sandberg Institute thesis called FaceValue, which includes a series of custom printed t-shirt covered in a creepy camouflage made up distorted faces of celebrity impersonators. The shirts, Niquille told Wired in an interview, aim to trick Facebook’s facial recognition software into recognizing public figures that aren’t really in the photos. However, the shirts won’t stop Facebook from spotting your face — this is more about screwing with the world’s largest social network than undoing its controversial tactics.

With the shirt on, Facebook can still spot you Niquille’s shirt set — which she calls Realface Glamouflage — includes an eerie Michael Jackson pattern, a disturbing Brittany Spears mashup, and an unsettling design depicting a smiling and waving President Obama. The student is selling the shirts online for 50 euros, or about $68, each. Nicquille explained to Wired that she decide on t-shirts as a way to fight against Facebook’s facial recognition because she sees the clothing item as such a ubiquitous and mundane article. “I was interested in creating a tool for privacy protection that wouldn’t require much time to think in the morning,” she said. “An accessory that would seamlessly fit in your existing everyday. No adaption period needed.”

Obama’s $100 million effort to map the human brain suspended by government shutdown

2013-10-02T16:59:07-04:00

President Barack Obama (Pete Souza/White House via Flickr)

The US government’s shutdown has put about 800,000 people out of work, and caused stoppages at NASA, the Department of Health and Human services, the CIA and NSA, and nearly every other federal agency. Now the start of the Obama Administration’s Brain Research Through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) initiative, which was set to officially begin early next year, is in jeopardy too. The BRAIN project is already an ambitious one running on a tight schedule — $100 million is to be set spent in 2014 to start the daunting task of trying to map the human brain. But now, due to the government’s failure to pass a federal budget, BRAIN has been indefinitely placed on hold, putting the effort’s start and its progress as a decade-long process at serious risk.

“This is no way to run a government.”

Bill Newsome, one of BRAIN’s co-chairs and a Stanford University professor, told Popular Science that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) was set to spend the first $40 million of the project’s budget. That money is supposed to hire scientists to begin working on understanding normal brain functions, he said. “Those understandings of brain function are critical to understanding what goes wrong in neurological and psychiatric disorders,” Newsome said. “Every month and year we delay in getting this going are going to have consequences.” The setbacks will, of course, also delay the discoveries of potential therapies that could come out of the research initiative — which aims to map the brain as a means to develop new technologies that could help fight diseases such as Alzheimer’s and epilepsy.

Several private research organizations have pledged money to the project over the next 10 years, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the National Science Fountation — both of which are also dealing with the shutdown — are involved too. But the NIH is where the project begins, Newsome explained to Popular Science. “To write good proposals, to get them evaluated, to get the money committed “It’s pretty much a disaster.” for this next year flowing, that’s a long process — even with the NIH process moving at warp speed, it takes the better part of a year,” he said. “We on the working group, we delivered our end of the bargain. NIH wants to deliver on its end of the bargain, but they simply can’t do it if they’re sitting at home on an unwanted furlough.”

Newsome said that he isn’t even able to get email responses from NIH officials to talk about all the ways that the shutdown will impact BRAIN. “The whole thing is just at a complete standstill. I don’t know what to say,” he said. “I just know that this is no way to run a government, and it’s no way to run support for science… it’s pretty much a disaster.”

Iran’s president tweets with Jack Dorsey, hints at reversing Twitter ban

2013-10-02T01:49:53-04:00

Iran President Hassan Rouhani (via president.ir)

The people of Iran are blocked from using Twitter and other social networking websites, although Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is one of the few exceptions to that rule. This situation could change however. On Tuesday, Rouhani hinted in tweets traded with Twitter’s chairman and co-founder Jack Dorsey that his country’s social media ban could eventually ease up.

@HassanRouhani Good evening, President. Are citizens of Iran able to read your tweets?
— Jack Dorsey (@jack) October 1, 2013

@HassanRouhani thank you. Please let us know how we can help to make it a reality.
— Jack Dorsey (@jack) October 1, 2013

Rouhani, who has been president for about a month now, has been on Twitter since May — his first tweet shared a link to a YouTube video announcing his run for the presidency. He also tweeted to US President Barack Obama after the two spoke on the phone last week. In his tweets with Dorsey, Rouhani mentions a recent interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour in which he said he’s working to “ensure that the people of Iran will comfortably be able to access all information globally and to use it.” Still, he explained to Amanpour that delivering on this would take at least a few months.

Rouhani admitted that his supporters used social media heavily during his presidential campaign and that hasn’t stopped just because he took office. “I always welcome their views on these networks as well as those who criticize me, because the government does need to be open to criticism,” he said. “There are large social networks at a global level around today and I believe that all human beings have a right, and all nations have a right, to use them.”

‘Warcraft’ movie slated for December 18th, 2015 release

2013-10-01T21:48:33-04:00

World of Warcraft Cataclysm (Blizzard)

The Warcraft movie now has a release date — December 18th, 2015. The feature film based on Blizzard’s hugely popular World of Warcraft series of video games will be directed by Duncan Jones, the filmmaker behind the critically acclaimed sci-fi thrillers Moon and Source Code. Charles Leavitt, who penned the Leonardo DiCaprio political drama Blood Diamond, is writing the movie; Legendary Pictures and Universal Pictures are handling financing and distribution. Warcraft‘s December release puts it at the end of a year that will be packed with tentpole flicks including Star Wars: Episode VII, Avengers: Age Of Ultron, Ant-Man, Jurassic World, and the Ben Affleck-as-Batman sequel to Man of Steel.

Unlike Jones’ previous films, which had smaller budgets in the $35 million range, Warcraft is set to be a big, CGI-filled, blockbuster with a reported budget of more than $100 million. So far, Legendary has largely succeeded at bringing fantasy and spectacle to the big screen with hits such as 300, Inception, Man of Steel, and the Dark Knight Trilogy. Shooting is set to start early next year, but there’s no official word on who’ll inhabit the world of Azeroth on the big screen just yet.

New programming language could code DNA to deliver drugs and detect diseases

2013-10-01T19:41:03-04:00

DNA strand

The University of Washington envisions a future where our bodies will be tuned to heal us just as easily as software is built to entertain us — and it’s come up with a method that could eventually turn this idea into a reality. University researchers have developed a programming language that engineers could use to build artificial DNA molecules that can be embedded into human cells. While the language is still in its infancy and not far enough along for use in the medical industry, the university says it hopes its creation will eventually be used to craft custom molecules that can be inserted into a patient’s body to deliver drugs or detect diseases and other abnormalities.

It’s like Java or Python, but for DNA

The language essentially builds on the sort of chemical equations anyone who has taken a chemistry class will be familiar with. In a report published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, researchers said the language lets them write equations for DNA in code that can be used to test new drugs and medical treatments. In theory, the language could program DNA molecules to control our cells no differently than a rudimentary computer. If Washington’s software-like approach to dictating how our cells operate pans out, doctors could someday have us ingesting code instead of pills to fight off diseases.