This Is An Ad For Something

Via Engadget:

Someone, somewhere thought it was a good idea for HTC to make its own hip hop music video. Whoever approved the project might be regretting that decision right now, but never mind -- at least we get a hilariously cringeworthy tune to stick on repeat for the rest of the day. If you're curious, the man dissing the iPhone 6 and Samsung Galaxy S5 in equal measure is Greg Carr (aka "Doc G") of the musical group P.M. Dawn. He's actually the cousin of Attrell Cordes, or Prince Be, who used to lead the hip hop act during their heyday in the '80s and '90s.

TIME Magazine calls it "the worst Apple attack ad ever." 

Viral Video Of The Day

Over 20M views in one day.

iPhone 6 Shatters Sales Records

Via Forbes:

Apple didn’t need the world’s largest smartphone market to break records this year. The latest iPhone models broke opening weekend sales records with over 10 million new iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus sold since Friday. It was a blockbuster weekend for Apple, exceeding the 9 million iPhone 5 and 5S models sold in the same weekend last year. And Apple did it without China — where the phones likely won’t go on sale until early 2015. The iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, the largest phones Apple has made to date, were only available in 10 regions: the US, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Puerto Rico, Singapore, and the United Kingdom. Apple says the iPhones will be available in 115 countries by the end of the year.

RELATED: Twitter is lighting up with the hashtag #bendgate.

Experts are divided over whether Apple should respond to claims that its new iPhone 6 handsets are prone to becoming bent when carried in trouser pockets. Several members of the public have posted photos to the Mac Rumors site that appear to show the problem. A reporter for the Geek.com news site also reported his phone had warped. And it is not yet clear if the new iPhones' aluminium shells make them particularly vulnerable. Even so, the claims have been reported across tech blogs as well as mainstream media including the Independent, the Washington Post, India Today and the Sydney Morning Herald. Twitter users have also posted thousands of comments about the claims. The BBC has contacted Apple but the firm has yet to provide any comment.

New Yorkers Line up For iPhone 6

ABC News reports on Twitter that iPhone 6 lines are blocks long at all five Manhattan Apple stores this morning.  Above is the four block-long line at Meatpacking District store, where fans have been camped out for days. Industry watchers estimate that as many as ten million phones will have been sold by Sunday. The first retail sale was made in Australia, but the eager customer's triumphant on-camera unboxing didn't turn out so great. 

iPhone 6 Line Begins In NYC

The iPhone 6 presumably doesn't go on sale until September 19th, but a handful of folks have been in line outside the Manhattan flagship Apple store for several days. They're being paid to be there.

Joseph Cruz and Brian Ceballo arrived in front of Apple’s glass cube on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan on Sunday, August 31. They brought tarps, chairs, sleeping bags, and lots of T-shirts for BuyBackWorld, an online electronics retailer. BuyBackWorld is picking up their food bill for the three-week urban campout. The company is also paying for the iPhone 6 of their choice, assuming that’s what Apple unveils at its event next week and begins selling, as expected, on Friday, Sept. 19. Ceballo, 20, and Cruz, 21, know what to expect. The cousins, who are musicians by day, say they have been camping out for new Apple products for the past five or six years. This time will best their personal record of lining up 15 days before the iPhone 5S’s release.

Photo via Twitter.

New JMG Mobile Interface Launches

We launched a new mobile interface for JMG today. Don't freak out if you don't like it - just hit the "desktop" button at the top and you'll be returned to the regular version. The new interface supports the following devices at this stage:

• iPad (Mobile Safari on iOS 5+, Chrome on iOS 5+)
• iPhone (Mobile Safari on iOS 5+, Chrome on iOS 5+)
• Nexus 7 (Google Chrome)
• Kindle Fire (Amazon Silk)

Other Android devices will be supported in the next couple of months. Just click on a photo or title to read each post. You can then swipe back and forth between the posts as you do with any mobile photo gallery. Hit the JMG logo to return to the home page and tap "add to home screen" to create a dedicated JMG button on your device. Everybody hates change, including me, but since you've got the option to stick with the old interface, I'm hoping there won't be too much screaming. But just in case, I'm putting my mandrake earmuffs on.

UPDATE:  Some important features have proven to be buggy or not working from the start. The provider is working to install some fixes and the interface will likely be up and down as they make changes. You'll continue to be able to access JMG on mobile devices the regular way while they do this. Sigh. I guess I was kidding myself that it would work like a dream right out of the gate, huh?

The Robots Have A New Hat

Even diehard Apple fanboys should love this. Really cute.

(Tipped by JMG reader Chris)

The Voice Of Siri Comes Forward

CNN reports:

Her name is Susan Bennett and she lives in suburban Atlanta. Apple won't confirm it. But Bennett says she is Siri. Professionals who know her voice, have worked with her and represent her legally say she is Siri. And an audio-forensics expert with 30 years of experience has studied both voices and says he is "100%" certain the two are the same. Bennett, who won't divulge her age, fell into voice work by accident in the 1970s. Today, she can be heard worldwide. She speaks up in commercials and on countless phone systems. She spells out directions from GPS devices and addresses travelers in Delta airport terminals. Until now, it's been a career that's afforded her anonymity. But a new Apple mobile operating system, iOS 7, with new Siri voices means that Bennett's reign as the American Siri is slowly coming to an end.

RELATED:  In the 70s Bennett sang the earworm jingle, I'm Tillie, The All-Time Teller, for First National Bank's just-debuted ATM. Whenever my college roommate needed cash, he'd say, "I gotta go fuck Tillie."

Can A Penis Unlock An iPhone?

If it can be done with a cat's paw and with a human nipple, why not see if it works with a penis? According to Manhunt, it does. All the usual "hey, this link might get you fired" warnings apply. Especially for the video. And the animated gif.

Brawl At California Apple Store

There was a brawl outside a Pasadena Apple store yesterday after a man refused to pay dozens of homeless people the $40 he'd promised each of them for waiting in line for the new iPhone.

Two people were already arrested for fighting in the long line outside the Pasadena store before dozens of people hired from a nearby homeless shelter attacked a man who refused to pay them for their hours-long wait, cops said. “He was cheating us,” Calvin Windell Pleasant told the Los Angeles Times. The destitute group said they were driven to the Colorado Blvd. store by vans from a Los Angeles shelter, where a man promised $40 each for them to wait in line for the coveted smartphones. But when the doors opened, the businessman only managed to buy a handful of phones before the store ordered him out and deemed the rest of his vouchers useless. And when he refused to pay the rest of the 70 to 80 people he hired to stand in the line, the furious group pounced.

Police removed the man for his own safety. Some commenters on news sites are criticizing him for exploiting the homeless. The fracas was, of course, recorded by many other patrons still waiting in the line.

New Hat Fever In NYC

Mashable reports:

Apple's flagship store in New York City always attracts a big crowd on launch days, but the line for the new iPhones this year hit a new record. There were 1,417 people in line for the launch at the flagship store as of 8 a.m. ET Friday, according to Gene Munster, an analyst at Piper Jaffray, who has surveyed Apple store lines every year since the original iPhone launched in 2007. That is the longest the line ever at the flagship store for an iPhone launch — beating the line for the iPhone 4 — and it marks an 83% increase from the number of people who waited in line there for the iPhone 5.

CBS even had their helicopter hovering overhead.

Kitty Paws Can Unlock New iPhone

A product tester at Techcrunch added a cat as an authorized user for the new iPhone.

The cat’s paw worked, and while it encountered more frequent failures than did a fingerprint, it was able to unlock the phone again repeatedly when positioned correctly on the sensor. Note that no other paw pads would unlock the device, and that cats essentially have unique “fingerprints” just like people, so this doesn’t make the Touch ID sensor any less secure.

This 11-second clip as gotten 200K views in 24 hours.

First Ad For The New iPhone

Wil Wheaton On New iPhone

She's Got A New Hat!

Here's a live-stream of today's iPhone announcement.

UPDATE: The live-stream has concluded. Details about the new $99 phone are here.

New App: Gay Haiku

Joel Derfner's hit book is now an iPhone app.

More Mildly Interesting Trivia

Just over 25% of all JMG readers access the site via mobile devices. That's about five times the number of mobile readers as two years ago. Above is the breakdown of the ten most-popular brands. No surprises here. Interestingly, the Nook and the Kindle are far down the list at 52 and 67, respectively.  Google Analytics tracks 500 models of mobile devices, about 100 of which have one daily JMG reader each.

Orthodox Rabbis: iPhones Aren't Kosher

Apple CEO: Sorry About That Map App

Apple CEO Tim Cook has posted an apology on the company's home page:

At Apple, we strive to make world-class products that deliver the best experience possible to our customers. With the launch of our new Maps last week, we fell short on this commitment. We are extremely sorry for the frustration this has caused our customers and we are doing everything we can to make Maps better. We launched Maps initially with the first version of iOS. As time progressed, we wanted to provide our customers with even better Maps including features such as turn-by-turn directions, voice integration, Flyover and vector-based maps. In order to do this, we had to create a new version of Maps from the ground up. There are already more than 100 million iOS devices using the new Apple Maps, with more and more joining us every day. In just over a week, iOS users with the new Maps have already searched for nearly half a billion locations. The more our customers use our Maps the better it will get and we greatly appreciate all of the feedback we have received from you.

Photo Of The Day

Buzzfeed has posted a photo compilation of Apple employees around the world cheering for customers as they exit with their new iPhone. The above NYC employees don't seem to notice that their customer's t-shirt is advertising a website that specializes in buying yesterday's now-useless model.