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http://www.tested.com/videos/44220-how-pixar-almost-lost-toy-story-2-to-a-bad-backup/

Read the full article at TidBITS, the oldest continuously published technology publication on the Internet. To get a full-text RSS feed, help support our work and become a TidBITS member! Members also enjoy an ad-free version of our Web site, email delivery of individual articles, the ability to make long comments with live links, and discounts on Take Control orders and other Apple-related products.

http://tidbits.com/article/13003?rss

Okay, maybe we’re getting a little obsessed with Pebble. (Only because it’s the best smartwatch idea ever.) But this news is way too juicy to pass up: when it ships, Pebble will work with another Kickstarter-funded wireless device called Twine. Which opens up the possibilities for both devices in wildly creative ways.

First, a bit of explanation.

Twine is a tiny (2.5″ square) wireless device, and it may not be much to look at, but it’s got some crazy cool goodies under the hood. It’s loaded with sensors and designed to send you notifications when it detects various things happening. For example, attach a Twine box to your front door, and the on-board accelerometer will notify you when someone opens it. How you’re notified is up to you — it can be anything capable of receiving notifications, including your computer or smartphone, and using email, text, or even Twitter. Twine also comes with a clever web app, which you use to set up the notifications you want to receive via simple, point-and-click “if/then” commands (i.e., “if my front door vibrates, then send me a text message”). The device is so smart, Twine will even email you when its two AAA batteries need replacing.

Twine's web app interface

After a Kickstarter fan of both Twine and Pebble noted that the two devices would work beautifully together “like peanut butter and chocolate,” the two teams of developers put their heads together and made it happen. Now, Twine’s web app will include Pebble actions, so you can have your Pebble smartwatch notify you whenever Twine senses some action you’ve set it to monitor.

And that’s only the tip of the iceberg. Since both devices are open source, code-writers should find it easy to dream up new applications for how the two devices will work in tandem. The possibilities might just be endless. The initial pre-order pledges for both Pebble and Twine are now sold out, but both companies intend to offer their devices for sale to the public once those orders have been filled.

Now I’m hardly an open source enthusiast, but the irony is not lost on me that one of the most exciting Apple-friendly accessories to come along in a while completely eschews Apple’s “closed system” dogma.

http://www.applegazette.com/news/pebble-twine-sittin-in-a-tree/

http://rss.feedsportal.com/c/570/f/7332/s/1f5ce834/l/0L0Smacworld0O0Cmac0Ecreative0Cnews0Cindex0Bcfm0Dnewsid0F33575570Golo0Frss/story01.htm

http://rss.feedsportal.com/c/570/f/7332/s/1f5ce835/l/0L0Smacworld0O0Cdigitallifestyle0Cnews0Cindex0Bcfm0Dnewsid0F33575550Golo0Frss/story01.htm

http://rss.feedsportal.com/c/570/f/7332/s/1f5ce836/l/0L0Smacworld0O0Cmacsoftware0Cnews0Cindex0Bcfm0Dnewsid0F33575560Golo0Frss/story01.htm

http://rss.feedsportal.com/c/570/f/7332/s/1f5ce838/l/0L0Smacworld0O0Capple0Ebusiness0Cnews0Cindex0Bcfm0Dnewsid0F33573490Golo0Frss/story01.htm

Nokia has accused Apple of deliberately tampering with Siri to change results, after the virtual personal assistant was found to have stopped endorsing the Nokia Lumia 900 phone.

As we reported last week, when asked ‘What is the best smartphone ever’, Siri recommends the new Nokia phone, built on Microsoft’s Windows Phone operating system and not the iPhone 4S or other Apple devices.

Reports have now suggested that the results have since changed, with the Lumia 900 no longer the answer, and Nokia believes that Apple is responsible, having deliberately edited Siri’s answer.

In statement published by the Sydney Morning Herald today, Nokia spokesperson Tracey Postill said:

Apple position Siri as the intelligent system that’s there to help, but clearly if they don’t like the answer, they override the software.

The real reason, as Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land astutely points out, has nothing to do with Apple or Siri and everything to do with the Wolfram Alpha, the search engine that gives the program its intelligence.

Sullivan explains that Siri’s response is based on reviews from Best Buy and other unknown factors which produces an array of possible answers. Although he tried changing parameters to get the Lumia endorsement, he wasn’t able to, here’s his explanation of the phenomenon:

Of course, Wolfram will use its own mechanism for sorting. The bottom line is that Wolfram has ratings from Best Buy, and it’s not trying to weight those in any particular fashion such as number of reviews or number of purchases.

His article is well worth reading in full (here). He wasn’t able to get the Lumia endorsement despite questioning Siri using a number of different approaches, some of which are below:

Nokia hasn’t hesitated to point the finger at Apple, despite the fact that Siri draws its information from a third party and produces multiple responses.

We got in touch with Postill, who confirmed her comments to the SMH. We reached out for further comment, in light of the explanation of how Siri gets its data, and will update this post with any response that we’re given.

We also contacted Apple and will, likewise, provide any statement that is provided in response.

http://thenextweb.com/apple/2012/05/15/nokia-accuses-apple-of-overriding-siri-to-remove-lumia-900-endorsement/

If you’re at all curious about Apple’s App Store review process, then then this is an interesting tidbit that you’ll love. Dive Apple (cached) is what appears to be a (now closed) test account used by App Store reviewers to test Facebook apps. It was uncovered via a tip to Jon Mitchell at ReadWriteWeb, who has a detailed writeup of the contents of the account.

As the review process for apps is notoriously black box, the account is interesting as a curiosity, at the very least. It was set to public, with several friends set to varying levels of account security, implying that they would be used to test apps with certain permissions.

The account, which belongs to a cat called Dive Apple, was full of pictures and test posts with various apps, including some of the reviewers desk with an iMac and a sheet of what appear to be review instructions. Notice that the dock of the Mac appears to hold a bunch of interesting-looking icons as well.

We did just a little poking around and discovered that Dive Apple had accounts on some Facebook-connected services like Wavii and Gripe. You can check out the detective work that Mitchell did to verify the account, including some developer testimonials and more evidence, here.

A neat little peek behind the curtain of the App Store reviewer. If you’re a developer that has an app with Facebook login or other features, check your logs. If Dive Apple visited, you may have been tested!

http://thenextweb.com/apple/2012/05/15/apple-app-store-reviewers-facebook-test-account-discovered-then-shuttered/

An update to Apple’s MacBook Pro lineup that brings a thinner construction, Retina displays and Intel Ivy Bridge chips will be revealed at the company’s Worldwide Developer’s Conference, reports Bloomberg. This report follows a report this morning that claims much the same by 9to5Mac’s Mark Gurman.

The new MacBook Pro machines—note the plural by Bloomberg, as opposed to the earlier report from Gurman, which specifically reports a 15-inch MacBook—are said to feature ‘high-definition’ screens like the iPhone and iPad. This would confirm suspicions that many have had about Retina-level panels coming to the Mac. The NVIDIA GeForce GT650M may be the graphics card powering this display.

Bloomberg adds a slimmed-down profile and Ivy Bridge chips provided by Intel as coming in the new laptops.

Gurman’s post goes into more detail regarding the features of the 15-inch MacBook Pro, claiming that it will pack a redesigned keyboard that places the power button where it exists on the MacBook Air and will feature USB 3.0.

The ports include two Thunderbolt-sized connectors, an SD card slot, three USB ports, a charging cable, a headphone jack and an audio-in cable. The mockup below is from the 9to5Mac article.

The Retina display sounds reasonable, as we laid out in our piece back in February, although developer Marco Arment raises a good point, in that many web resources will be woefully under-resolved for display on the panel, and will look kind of crappy.

The thinner, presumably lighter, construction, will be a nice improvement if that’s what ends up happening. The USB 3.0 connector will bring greater compatibility for fast, cheap hard drives in the future, as Thunderbolt peripherals are still very sparse.

Announcing the MacBook(s) at WWDC would be an interesting move, although not unprecedented. Apple has introduced new Macs at the conference before and it probably needs to do some shuffling around of its release schedule now that the iPhone and iPod, and perhaps a 7″-ish iPad, are a late-year item.

http://thenextweb.com/apple/2012/05/14/new-thinner-macbook-pros-with-retina-displays-and-ivy-bridge-chips-said-to-be-due-at-wwdc/