Because Apple likes to sell things that actually make it money, so that it can continue to make more things for you.

Brazil.

Any working commercial, wedding or portrait photographer has to be at least part salesperson. You can do an incredible job shooting a subject and still not make enough to pay the bills if you don’t sell the client on the images. That’s why I was so excited for the first iPad back when I was shooting for money.

One of the most crucial parts of the sales process was presenting either your portfolio or your proofs in a way that was easy for the client and rendered them beautifully. I used to use an HDTV hooked up to a computer, then an Apple TV, to run a slideshow of the images. But when the iPad came around, it was a revelation. You could load up an album and have the client look through their images while you talked about your various offerings and made them feel comfortable enough to purchase what you were pitching. The images were easy to navigate and, I felt, presented well on the...

Whatever you think about electric cars and their future (I think it’s bright, but not for fuel economy reasons) you have to admit something about charismatic Tesla founder Elon Musk: He is out there making things.

Not just software things, either. Hardware things. Things you can touch and drive and fly to space in. That kind of ingenuity and relentless pursuit of turning ideas into physical things is sorely lacking in a lot of folks running software companies. Not that the products that they make aren’t necessarily important or interesting, or that they don’t have the potential to make enormous impacts on people’s lives — just look at the way Twitter has altered communication on this planet.

But I grew up as the son of a craftsman. Someone who made things with his hands every day for a living and then again at night for pleasure and eventually turned that pleasure into what he did...

Unlike a lot of pundits, I have no problem with Apple’s switch to the lighting connector, and unfazed that it didn’t go with Micro USB or another standard. The smaller, dual-orientation plug is fantastic in use and the proprietary connector allows Apple to offer compatibility with audio accessories and more that a Micro USB plug would not be able to offer.

But that aside, I’m happy about the change for a completely different, if somewhat pedantic, reason: The lightning connector will no longer gouge the top edge of my pinkie finger.

This may be silly to some, but those of you that use an iPhone incessantly will likely know what I’m talking about. When I hold my iPhone one-handed, I tend to support the bottom edge with my pinkie. This allows me to not worry about it slipping out of my hand and support it while I bash away with my thumb.

My one-handed grip looks something like this:

I’ve seen a lot of people on Twitter and even tech writers getting confused about how Passbook looks on the iPhone 5. Many are saying that it’s not been optimized for the new display (which would be silly). But it actually is.

The problem is that most people are just loading one pass in the app. When you do that, the pass is centered on the screen, making it look letterboxed. But the splash screen is iPhone 5 ready and looks just fine. So what gives?

Well, all you have to do is add one more pass of another type to see that all is well, this is just how Passbook was meant to look. Remember, Apple designed Passbook knowing that the iPhone 5 would have a larger screen.

I’m not really in the habit of breaking down other writer’s posts, but in this case I’ll make an exception. Erica Ogg wrote the article linked above at GigaOm, entitled Apple’s New Passbook Isn’t Quite Ready For Primetime. In it she describes the points that she feels are still showing signs of friction in the Passbook process.

I’m not trying to hurt any feelings or disparage anyone here, but it bears correcting.

The answers to these questions come from my research as well as talking to professionals from organizations and heads of mobile that are already implementing Passbook passes and have worked closely with Apple to do so.

Notifications - Ogg mentions that the notifications stayed on the screen and wouldn’t go away when her event got close. This is by design. It’s so you don’t have to fumble around in your phone to find the Passbook app and pull up your pass. Instead, you grab...

Because it didn’t want to.

John Gruber talks about the recent Braun v. Apple graphic that’s been floating around, (something which was actually done better a long time ago by Jesus Diaz at Gizmodo). He talks about the difference between ripoff and homage, and what makes Apple’s Braun-inspired designs different than Samsung’s copies of the iPhone.

I think that it’s even simpler than that, though. Ive freely admits that Rams continues to influence him to this day. When was the last time you heard a Samsung designer publicly admit (outside of court) that they were influenced by the designs of Jony Ive, or anyone else at Apple? Never.

Ive’s designs for Apple apply the Braun aesthetic to devices that depart widely in purpose and function from the original Rams-crafted products. Samsung took Apple’s design for a smartphone and applied it directly to…a smartphone. And then tried to pretend that they didn’t.

Only…not really.

The headline over at Fortune, which is quickly being mirrored by sites like 9to5Mac, is summarily deceptive. The ‘Apple execs’ that it refers to are Peter Oppenheimer and Eddy Cue, its CFO and SVP of Internet Software and Services, respectively. They held a meeting with analysts Wednesday in which they were, of course, asked about Apple making a more significant move into television distribution.

Their responses were taken by the analysts to mean that an Apple television ‘appeared extremely unlikely’, according to the headline of the note quoted right in Philip Elmer-DeWitt’s article.

This was an inference on their part based on Cue’s comments. But if you read the actual text of the note, the only comment from Cue is that Apple will ‘enter markets where it feels it can create great customer experiences and address key problems’. If that sounds familiar, it’s because...