The Power of the S Cycle →

Couldn't agree more with the below.

“If you put aside what the phones look like, the S model years have brought some of the biggest changes to the platform. The display changes came in non-S years, of course — the iPhone 4 going retina; the iPhone 5 expanding from 3.5 to 4 inches diagonally and changing the aspect ratio; and of course last year’s 6/6 Plus expanding to 4.7 and 5.5 inches and higher display resolutions. But it was the 3GS that first improved on CPU performance and gave us the first improvements to the camera. The 4S ushered in Siri integration and a much faster camera. The 5S was Apple’s first 64-bit ARM device, years ahead of the competition, and was the first device with Touch ID. For a typical iPhone user on a two-year upgrade cycle, I think the S years are the better phones, historically.”
— John Gruber, Daring Fireball

Blood Analysis Complete →

A common trope among future-based sci-fi is the ability to quickly scan or analyse blood for "known contagions" or stuff like that. It's a capability for which details are often glossed over but in fact, it's rather hard. Today one needs to take a blood sample for each and every test they want to run to check for... anything. There's no one way to scan for "everything."

But that's changing. And in an age where each of the above-mentioned tests is expensive and insurance companies, governments and consumers alike are trying to lower costs and use preventive, rather than reactive measures to keep people healthy, a woman named Elizabeth Holmes just made a breakthrough.

This tech may be worthy of the physiology Nobel Prize.

The Growing Muslim World →

Previously pollsters theorized that the world's Muslim population would exceed that of Christians by 2050. But if this report is correct, the inflection point may change. Either it'll be well before that as muslim refugees in Europe find opportunities that weren't otherwise available to them and then procreate prolifically. Or it could be well after as a significant amount of the world's Muslim population finds shelter in Europe and is confronted with the economic realities of raising large families in the developed West.

Either way, Europe stands to gain with this influx of muslim immigration.
 

The Empire Strikes Back →

Steve Jobs "thermonuclear war" against Android has yet to be extinguished as courts continue to resolve whether Samsung cheated by stealing Apple's intellectual property in order to gain their spot as the world's number 2 mobile phone maker (by profit).

If the war is still hot or even lukewarm, this is a warmth of attrition. Both companies have moved on. The devices subject to injunction certainly got Samsung noticed and on the path to where they are today, but they're barely in production, if at all, with extant devices moving about the overseas grey market, rather than the Stateside retail space. It's a moral victory for Apple; and while it's not exactly a pyrrhic one, we do have to wonder if the juice (hit to PR, costs, resources, focus) was worth the squeeze.