bending iPhone 6: Solving the problem

The crisis of the bending iPhone 6: Solving the problem

Given the painful possibility that new iPhones may lose their shape when pressure is applied in pockets, forward thinking is required. Here is the answer.

I've been up all night.

Ever since I heard reports that brand-new iPhone 6 Pluses had their minuses, I've been doing what all responsible people should have been doing: drinking pinot noir while trying to avert disaster.

Should you only now be emerging from dreams in which you wore a purple dress and were referred to as "Your Majesty," you may not know that there have been reports that the iPhone 6 Plus is excessively flexible.

Those who have been shoving it in their pockets and then coding for 24 hours straight have discovered that their iPhone becomes bent out of shape. It takes on a permanent stoop, looking not unlike a British prince of advanced years or a president bowing to some obscure potentate whose oil he desires.

This is not merely inelegant. It is imperfection at its worst. Apple is all about design exactitude, not instant aging.

Display specialist Dr. Raymond Soneira insists that the deformation may not be permanent. I don't think you should take any chances, though.

I would therefore like to offer solutions before this crisis becomes an epidemic and Apple stores are besieged with lines of people trying to give back phones that they planned to sell on the black market for three times the price they paid.

The first solution: don't put your phone in your back pocket.

This has never been a good look. Even in the days when all phones did was flip, it created an unsightly bulge in an area which is, for so many, a fulcrum of human attraction. It makes you look as if you have two entirely different buttocks, one which underwent a botched enhancement.

The iPhone 6 Plus provides, therefore, an excellent opportunity to return your rear view to its natural shape.

What about your front pockets? Clearly, the types of Dockers worn by San Francisco 49-ers coach Jim Harbaugh would likely accommodate the iPhone 6 Plus with no problem.

Style like Harbaugh's, however, brings up desperate issues of taste, ones which no iPhone owner could possibly risk.

Moreover, what happens when you sit down with your phone in your front pocket? Some speculate that the tightness of your pants is significant here. The tighter they are, the more pressure they exert on your phone. It seems clear, too, that a lot depends on whether you lean forward when you sit or maintain a more correct upright position.

You'd imagine that you'd be able to feel your bones or the chiseled tautness of your thigh muscles beginning to crush your phone. Perhaps, though, you're so engrossed in your work that you don't sense what you're doing to your status symbol until it's too late.

My digestion has already been twisted by some who suggest that this is the time for a belt clip or even a phone holster. Please, just look at this link and understand that the world is in a terminal state and anyone who suggests this should be escorted away for immediate remedial treatment.

The ideal solution is, in fact, both geeky and retro: we all need to return to the glorious days of the shirt pocket. Once it was a place to hang your Mont Blanc pen. Now it has a more beautiful use.

Whether you wear a T-shirt or one with buttons, whether you wear tight sweaters or drapery of a looser kind, you're going to have to have a special built-in iPhone Plus breast pocket.

We're in the era of wearable tech, aren't we? Tech and fashion are beginning to embrace each other like ill-washed teens on the subway. So Prada, Gucci and Dolce and Friends should immediately design all their garments with a perfectly sized, perfectly tight iPhone Plus top pocket. (I'll leave the finer design details to them.)

The pocket must be perfectly tight so that the iPhone Plus won't fall out when you bend down to pick up your dog's morning emissions. It must come in sizes that reflect the two Apple phones. You should also be able to order garments that have pockets for your Samsung, HTC, LG and any other devices that may be at peril.

The minute that the Pradas of this world have not merely solved the problem but also insisted that this is the new fashion, H&M, Zara, Forever 21 and the rest will follow suit. And when they follow suit, the perfectly pocketed shirts will be in the stores before the posh designers have got their act together.

It's true that all of us will have to wear our iPhones close to our hearts. But isn't that a lot more symbolic and true than placing them near our bottoms and crotches?

by Chris Matyszczyk from CNET.com

iPhone 6 bending

iPhone 6 bending? Why the iPhone 6 Plus warps so easily.

Apple's new iPhone 6 and 6 Plus are bending in people's pockets according to reports. What's causing the phones to bend?

When Apple CEO Tim Cook reveled the iPhone 6 Plus, he probably didn't think that its most talked about feature is its ability to bend.

Since the new iPhone 6 and 6 Plus began selling Friday, customers have complained that the phone bends and warps while in their pockets. The new generation of iPhones is much larger than previous generations – iPhone 6 is 4.7 diagonal inches and the iPhone 6 Plus is 5.5 inches – and many are wondering if the new size has anything to do with the bending problem.

"Previous iPhones were thicker and not as long. In material bending, larger cross sectional areas (thickness x width) and shorter lengths make things stronger (You can't easily bend a cube), while the opposite makes things very easy to bend (paper is easily folded)," Jeremy Irons, a design engineer at Creative Engineering, tells Gizmodo . "The increased length and decreased thickness contribute to the weakness of the new iPhone. Strength is proportionally related to length, but strength is affected much more by changes in thickness."

The new iPhones are also 0.02 inches thinner than pervious iPhones. And, according to Mr. Irons, that makes a big difference. "While the iPhone 5S was only 7% thicker than the iPhone 6 Plus, it was actually 22% stronger in bending. When you make something longer, it gets proportionally more bendable, when you make it thinner, it gets a lot more bendable," he says.

Adding to the bending problem is the aluminum case surrounding the phone. Aluminum is a light-weight and flexible metal. Apple uses anodized aluminum in its new phones, which is supposed to make them stronger, but that doesn't seem to be working.

"From an engineering standpoint, the iPhone is an amazingly small and delicately constructed device," Irons says. "The only thing really contributing to the structural integrity of the iPhone 6 Plus is the thin aluminum frame that covers the back and reaches around the sides. There is also another very thin piece of steel behind the glass, but we are not working with much as far as bending strength."

This isn't the first time customers have complained about bending Apple phones. In Apple discussion forums, customers complained about the iPhone 4 in 2010  and the iPhone 5S in 2013 .

The number of people who have experienced the bending in the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus isn't clear, but it was enough for #BendGate to became a big topic on Twitter.

Apple's phones aren't the only phones that supposedly bend. Owners of the Samsung Galaxy S4  and BlackBerry Q10  complained about similar problems in online forums.

YouTube channel Unbox Therapy, which posted a video of the bending iPhone 6 Plus, tried to bend  the Samsung Galaxy Note 3. After several attempts to bend the phone, the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 showed only slight signs of warping, but no damage was done.

News of bending phones came days after Apple announced that its iPhone 6 and 6 Plus sales were a record 10 million in the first weekend. That number doesn't include sales in China, one of the world's largest smart phone markets, because the phone is still waiting to be approved by regulators.

Apple has yet to comment on what, if anything, it will do about the bending of the new iPhones.

From csmonitor.com

The Blacklist

The Blacklist Season 2 Premiere Review: Family Matters

Welcome to Season 2 of The Blacklist, Red-heads. In its debut season, The Blacklist quickly became one of the more popular shows on all of television, raising NBC's sails, reminding us of James Spader's constant goodness, and introducing us to Megan Boone's really terrible wig. The show closed out its first 22 episodes with a two-part extravaganza that put Red's life in danger thanks to the mysterious and resourceful Berlin (Peter Stormare) and wrapped up Lizzie's long and nightmarish relationship with her spy husband Tom... or did it?
Point is, as these things tend to go, The Blacklist suggested a major shakeup at the end of Season 1; various characters ended up dead (R.I.P. Agent Malik, you were utterly disposable), emotionally broken, in hiding, or some combination of the three. But as these things also tend to go, especially when you're a massively popular TV series, The Blacklist needed to reestablish some kind of new normal in its Season 2 premiere, "Lord Baltimore." Consequently, while this opening episode had some really solid moments peppered throughout, it also fell victim to rushed storytelling and choppy editing, and I generally felt as if the show was trying to stuff a couple of episodes into one 42-minute package.

Last season, The Blacklist did some fun things with pseduoscience-y villains; sometimes it even approached sci-fi territory. Similarly, the show sometimes told good procedural stories that eventually dovetailed with the various ongoing plots (Tom spying on Lizzie, her dad's identity, Red's cavalcade of enemies). "Lord Baltimore" tried to do both of those things, and with some fairly prominent guest stars, on top of all the work necessary to reintroduce the core characters and their problems of varying import. That's simply a lot to do in such a short time, even for a show that's become efficient in its storytelling protocols.

In particular, the first half of this premiere felt noticeably spastic to me. The Blacklist is a fast-cutting show, no doubt, but it was really churning through the material early on just to get to the set-up of the titular Lord Baltimore and eventually the introduction of Red's ex-wife (played by the lovely but a little underused Mary Louise Parker). By the second commercial break, we'd seen Red in Cameroon, New York City, and Washington, D.C., seemingly in a day's time. His extraction from a hotel by the Mossad agent (Mozhan Marnò, in another fine guest-casting get) was an extremely pointless detour, present mostly to serve as a misdirect and to allow the show to illustrate that it can still do sloppy-ish action sequences on a weekly TV budget. At least the opening sequence—with Red getting himself kidnapped by a murderous rebel group so that he could obtain more info about the people Berlin sent after him—included a more enjoyable ineffectual action moment. Hellfire missiles are cool enough, right?

Along with all that, "Lord Baltimore" hit the ground running with the so-called Blacklister of the week, which put a bit of a damper on its attempts to also remind us that Lizzie, Ressler, and Cooper are in pretty dark places. To be fair, it's not always easy to condense the previous season's character arcs into a few lines of dialogue or a brief montage, but the conversations between Lizzie and Ressler about her paranoia of being followed and his inability to handle the emotional fallout of his lady's death and everything else that happened last spring were pretty rough nonetheless. Worst of all were the forced-in reference to Agent Malik's death, as if any of the characters could recite two interesting things that she added to the equation last season.

Thankfully, the case itself was more compelling, even though that's not too surprising given The Blacklist's track record last season. I liked the discussion about how BIG DATA could be used nefariously by much more villainous parties than the government—Red's luddite criticisms of the internet notwithstanding—and all the admittedly half-baked ideas of using the social graph and all that stuff to predict behaviors and track your marks. Also, big ups to the show for working in a reference to THE DEEP WEB, that mythical and dangerous place that keeps popping up on TV shows once writers' rooms get ahold of those articles about Silk Road.

Best of all was the appearance by Krysten Ritter—who, like Mary Louise Parker, doesn't really need to be doing spots on network action procedurals but also did some cool stuff with what could have been a dumb (or perhaps a dumber) character. Dissociative identity disorder is in itself challenging to pull off in a procedural framework, and to blow that out by having Ritter play a woman who takes on the identity of her dead sister (whom she murdered) was a bit convoluted. Yet, because the disorder can reportedly be caused by trauma, The Blacklist had some latitude to let Ritter shift from 'innocent sister' to 'murderer and criminal mastermind' in as believable a manner as possible. She was good, and given how busy this episode was, that's worth acknowledging.

Finally, Parker made her debut as Red's ex-wife Naomi, which is yet another wrinkle in the show's attempts to display the human consequences of Red's multi-decade run as one of the world's most wanted criminals. Naomi was quickly captured by the still-lingering Berlin, who frankly enjoyed more character shading in the episodes that aired before we actually met him than he's had since is introduction as a dude who looks like Peter Stormare. By the end of the hour, Berlin had sent Naomi's finger to Red as a form of payback for Berlin's daughter's demise all those years ago, but I'm not sure that this character is the uber-villain that The Blacklist seems to be positioning him as.

At times "Lord Baltimore" felt weirdly light on Red, particularly in the second half of the episode, and maybe that's just the result of the case and The Blacklist's need to remind us that there are people on the task force we're supposed to care about too. Nevertheless, I'm very curious to see how the Red/Berlin feud continues, particularly because I actually enjoyed the early parts of Season 1 that emphasized how terrible and evil Red can be; I don't need the show to humanize him too much so quickly. With so many good, veteran performers involved, you'd think that the show could turn this Berlin-Red story into something special—and violent.

I don't really fault The Blacklist for handling its premiere this way. If anything, "Lord Baltimore" was just Part 3 or Part 4 of the extended Berlin arc; when viewed that way, the episode seems a smidgen more successful. However, it's important that the show doesn't forget that its first season thrived with sturdy, efficient standalone episodes that didn't try to jam so much stuff into the proceedings. I'm sure it'll level out sooner rather than later, so let's just hope the conclusion (however temporary) of the Berlin arc is satisfying in the coming weeks.

By Cory Barker at tv.com

Chicago Bears

Signs good for unheralded Chicago Bears

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. -- There was a noticeable lack of jersey-popping, of asking for respect because of what happened more than eight days earlier, no begging for love to be shown. Winning at San Francisco on a Sunday night and beating the New York Jets in the Meadowlands the following Monday night isn't to be taken for granted, especially for a Chicago Bears team hardly anybody expects to be special.

Jared Allen, the grizzled vet, decided very quickly as he entered the locker room what he liked most about beating the Jets, and it wasn't Jay Cutler's second straight game with no interceptions or the quarterback's 94.7 passer rating, nor the team's plus-2 turnover advantage, nor the defense allowing only one touchdown on the night.

"I'm probably most impressed," Allen said, "by the humility of the team, to go back to work this week and approach tonight as if last Sunday in San Francisco never even happened. You think you know what the answer will be. But you have to actually do it to find out, to know for sure."

There was nothing dominant about Monday's 27-19 win over the Jets, who actually outgained the Bears by more than 150 yards, averaged 4.4 yards per rush and were robbed of four points when Jerome Boger, a recent Super Bowl referee, cost New York four points by blowing dead a Cutler fumble that should have resulted in a return-for-touchdown and not an eventual field goal. But the Bears, by virtue of what has happened these past two weeks, could be one of those teams that could do something which escapes most fans and media (but not coaches and players), which is to say, win now ... and get good later.

Looking for a sign? How about plus-6 in turnover margin the past two weeks? Plus-4 against the 49ers, followed up by plus-2 against the Jets. No interceptions for Cutler for the second consecutive week. The defense seems to be coming together ... not quickly, but gradually, enough that Allen and tag-team graybeard Lance Briggs think they saw something again Monday night. "We're far from peaking," Briggs said. "We've got guys playing together for the first time ... and we're not close to a finished product."

Allen said, "The sign to me was the play of our young guys. I've been on teams with young guys who are just a little too cocky. We don't have one rookie on this defense who acts entitled. ... And with the injuries we had, we needed them to step up and really produce tonight, and they did."

By "they," Allen was talking about cornerback Kyle Fuller, who had another interception; about tackle Ego Ferguson, who ripped through the Jets for an early sack of Geno Smith; about Will Sutton at the other defensive tackle and Christian Jones at linebacker; about Brock Vereen, who was forced to play more than the coaches had planned because of the injuries to fellow safeties Chris Conte and Ryan Mundy.

"They all had a humility and an excitement to play," Allen continued. "Fuller doesn't say much of anything; he just works and works. Ego and Will had to play tonight, and they didn't play like rookies. Last year [as a member of the Minnesota Vikings] the thing I noticed was [the Bears] didn't have any depth when they suffered all those injuries to front-line guys. But now, we have depth."

Even Cutler said of the defense, which stopped the Jets on fourth down late to end it, "The defense ... they're getting some edge to 'em, forcing turnovers."

In the meantime, the offense isn't exactly overpowering, not at 257 yards and 20 points. But again, there are signs. Even as receivers Brandon Marshall and Alshon Jeffery play through injuries, Cutler knew when to lean heavily on tight end Martellus Bennett, all 6-foot-6 and 265 pounds of him. "They're all 6-4 or bigger, plus a huge range," Cutler said afterward. "You put it in an area and they're gonna catch it."

And this time it was Bennett's turn. He's never going to have the impact on games the way, say, Rob Gronkowski did a couple of seasons ago in New England. Cutler targeted Jeffery 13 times Monday (with Marshall injured) and Bennett eight. Bennett caught five balls, two for touchdowns, giving him four for the season.

Bennett is likely the biggest character in the Bears' locker room. He feigned being offended by Rex Ryan last week when Ryan called Marshall/Jeffery/Forte "monsters" but left out Bennett.

"Hey, when you talk about me have a little enthusiasm," Bennett said afterward. "If they're monsters, I'm a monster, too! I'm more than just a big guy; I run my routes. I'm not just a spare tire you throw on the car. ... See, I can play with a chip on my shoulder."

Don't the New York Giants wish they hadn't gotten rid of that chip before last season, and didn't Bennett know exactly where he was Monday night as he caught those two touchdown passes.

The Bears rushed for a mere 60 yards Monday, and the No. 1 rushing defense in football held Matt Forte to 33 yards in 13 attempts. That might frighten fantasy owners everywhere but it shouldn't concern the Bears in the least, since Forte picked up some very necessary yards to secure the fourth-quarter field goal which pushed the lead, importantly, from five points to eight.

It all seems to be morphing into something, piece by piece, an improving pass-rusher here (Willie Young), an emerging cornerback there (Fuller), a late-blooming tight end here (Bennett, who is 27), a couple of mentors there (Briggs and Allen). Nobody will much mention the offensive linemen after this game because Cutler was sacked four times, but Cutler wisely decided to eat it a couple of times, and the line more than held its own against a carnivorous Jets defensive front that had hoped to be a lot more disruptive than it was.

Bottom line, the Bears are in darned good shape three games into the new season, tied with the Detroit Lions atop the NFC North, a game ahead of the struggling Green Bay Packers and Vikings, who could list completely depending on what happens with Adrian Peterson. Speaking of the Packers, they visit Soldier Field on Sunday, and the Bears can feel pretty good about their chances if they find healthy corners to actually put on the field against Aaron Rodgers.

If there's a pleasant surprise so far it's the way the defense is gradually finding its way. Allen talked about the time necessary to have a bunch of new players effectively deal with a new monster like the zone-read, in which patience and discipline are required but have to be learned. Allen said it could take until early December before the defense becomes all it can be, but added, "In the meantime, while you're learning all the nuances, we can't take steps back and we can't make excuses."

The Bears haven't needed either the past two weeks, but the schedule ahead is frightful, what with the Packers on deck and trips upcoming to Atlanta, Carolina and New England. The mood Monday was strangely controlled after a road victory, which somebody always wants to celebrate in the NFL. It was a room without declaration or proclamation, which, as Allen said, might be telling. As Cutler cautioned, "We have a lot of veterans on this team who know how quickly it can go good or go bad."

For another week, at the very least, there's every reason for the Bears to think it's the former, not the latter.

From Michael Wilbon, 

Michael Wilbon is a featured columnist for ESPN.com and ESPNChicago.com. He is the longtime co-host of "Pardon the Interruption" on ESPN and appears on the "NBA Sunday Countdown" pregame show on ABC, in addition to ESPN. You can follow him on Twitter: @RealMikeWilbon

Kendrick Lamar

Kendrick Lamar

The soulful track samples the Isley Brothers’ “That Lady”

Kendrick Lamar’s 2012 opus good kid, m.A.A.d city was one of the most-discussed rap albums in recent memory — so it would be understandable if Lamar wanted to rest on his laurels and take his sweet time following up a record that earned rave reviews and crashed numerous year-end best lists.

But no, the Compton rapper is back with “i,” the first single from his as-yet-untitled next album. Instead of mining the grit of his past for inspiration, Lamar this time opts for some self love on the soulful, feel-good offering, which samples the Isley Brothers’ 1973 jam “That Lady”: “Everybody lack confidence, how many times my potential was anonymous? / How many times the city makin’ me promises, so I promise this / I love myself.”

From time.com

Kendrick Lamar Promises 'Aggression and Emotion' on 'good kid' Follow-Up

"If I can say anything about this record," says Kendrick Lamar, "it's that it will connect again." Lamar, 27, is in the middle of sessions for his next LP, and the stakes are high: It's the follow-up to 2012's good kid, m.A.A.d. city, a platinum-selling breakthrough that established Lamar as the most exciting young rapper alive. His debut tracked the experiences of a thoughtful kid growing up in gang-scarred Compton; now, Lamar has to decide how much he wants to extend that story."There was a lot I left out of good kid – it could have been a 30-track album," Lamar says. "There are a few new [songs] that can tie in with what I was talking about."

Lamar has yet to announce a title or release date for the new album. It definitely won't be called United States of A.L.A.R.M., as has been reported ("That's a good title, though," he says, laughing. "I'm thinking, what are they talking about with that acronym?"). Asked whether the album would be out this year, he says he's "not sure at all."

But Lamar is making steady progress: The first single, "i," is out today, and Lamar has plenty of other songs in the can — including "a bunch of tracks" with mentor Dr. Dre. "He's just gone into the lab and made beats," Lamar says of Dre. "He's trying to find that next thing – just really elevating himself and the team to grow as a creator." (Lamar has also been working with Digi+Phonics, the in-house production team for his label, Top Dawg Entertainment.)

Lamar says to expect "aggression and emotion" from the album, as well as some straight-up freestyling. "There's one particular [untitled] track I'm really excited about," he says. It's one where I just went in the booth and spilled out what I want to say at that moment. I just freestyled, because I really just wanted to grab the raw emotion of it."

What shouldn't you expect? Cameo appearances — so far, Lamar hasn't called on a single guest MC. "I have so much to say!" he says, laughing. "It's somewhat selfish of me." In fact, Lamar doesn't like a lot of company in the studio at at all. "I really don't like nobody in the studio but me and the engineer because opinions can affect you."

Lamar has more or less been living in the studio. "I'm definitely a studio rat. I can go in the booth and do it all day, every day," he says. "Sometimes I go into the studio and study music. Just sit in there and vibe out to music that's not really of the — Marvin Gaye or something like that… I haven't been listening to a lot of the music that's out right now. You can get influenced by it."

From RollingStone.com

Charlo Greene

Alaskan Reporter Charlo Greene Profanely Quits On The Air

KTVA reporter Charlo Greene put a new twist on the old cliche during Sunday’s broadcast

she stepped down from her post at the Alaskan TV station, and it’s safe to say she won’t be getting a glowing reference from her former employers.

In an arrangement that would have been deemed an obvious conflict-of-interest (had it been revealed) Greene reported for four months on the ongoings of the Alaska Cannabis Club, a medical marijuana establishment she owns.

Gwen Stefani

Gwen Stefani’s Husband: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know

1. Gwen Stefani’s Husband Is Rossdale’s Love Child

While married to Gwen Stefani, it was revealed that Rossdale actually had a love child named Daisy Lowe. Rossdale reportedly fathered her with mother (model and designer) Pearl Lowe, while Lowe was married to someone else. A paternity test in 2004 revealed that Daisy Lowe, who was 15 years old then) was actually Rossdale’s daughter. Until the paternity test, Daisy believed that Pearl Lowe’s ex-husband Bronner Lowe was her father. Stefani was “devastated and infuriated” by the news, which led to some dark times in her marriage to Rossdale. Today, Rossdale remains Daisy’s “godfather” and keeps a friendly relationship with her.

2.  Gwen Stefani’s Husband Has Admitted to a Gay Relationship In the Past