Remote control airplanes were soaring through the sky yesterday at the Steinbach Fun Fly event.
There were plenty of passionate airplane enthusiasts at the event, including Andrew Rodriguez who has a collection of over 40 planes. Then there was Scott Haslem who built some fairly large planes, and his significant other Diana who crocheted pilots for the planes he built.
Another fun fact: some of the planes at the event could fly at over 150mph!
Enjoy these photos we took at the event! Make sure you send us your summer photos to win some awesome prizes that are being given away throughout the season during the Show Us Your Summer contest.
Welcome to our weekend Apple Breakfast column, which includes all of the Apple news you missed this week in a handy bite-sized roundup. We call it Apple Breakfast because we think it goes great with a morning cup of coffee or tea, but it’s cool if you want to give it a read during lunch or dinner hours too.
The importance of putting people in a room
Some companies have embraced remote working over the past two years, and recognize that it saves money and makes life easier for staff. But others, such as Apple, have been more skeptical.
Apple has the tech and expertise to be one of the world’s great remote companies, but it refuses to give up on face-to-face meetings without a fight. Internally this is because of a phenomenon it refers to as serendipity, the idea that members of separate teams will bump into each other in the corridor and share ideas. But externally there’s a different sort of magic that the company doesn’t want to lose.
Apple knows that its special events are an intense experience, and that no amount of online press releases can compare to putting products in the hands of excited journalists. Which is why, despite the many advantages of virtual events, the company will be hugely relieved that next month’s Sept 7 event is once again open to in-person attendees.
It’s not quite the first such event, since WWDC in June had a small number of attendees on one of the days. And leaked information suggests that even this event will still have hybrid real/virtual elements, and feature the pre-recorded video that has been so popular at virtual gatherings. It will also be streamed live to anyone who’s interested, of course: it should embody many of the best characteristics of both approaches.
But there’s no mistaking Apple’s intentions. Fundamentally, at every opportunity, this is a company that wants to put people in a room. Even if it doesn’t seem to make sense from a strictly rational, is-this-the-most-efficient-approach point of view.
Virtual events are quicker and slicker than in-person ones. Remote working has numerous advantages over the office, and Apple has infuriated staff by demanding that they show up three days a week. All of this seems to make little sense–but then, it made little sense to throw resources into bricks and mortar when other companies were withdrawing to online, but the Apple Stores were a roaring success.
Perhaps it isn’t rational. But Apple has a corporate culture of inspiration, of persuading customers and employees to believe in things that aren’t entirely rational. And it’s a lot easier to do that sort of conjuring trick when the person you’re inspiring is in the same room.
Trending: Top stories of the week
Apple is toying with the idea of putting more ads on your iPhone, and the Macalope is worried.
The end of summer is approaching, and you know what that means: iPhone season is upon us! What does the rumor mill say about the upcoming iPhone 14? Find out in this episode of the Macworld Podcast!
Apple has extended its Self Service Repair program to include MacBooks, but not everyone is happy. Frustrated by the enormous (162-page!) manual and high cost, the repair site iFixit has accused Apple of creating an “excruciating gauntlet of hurdles.”
iOS 16 Public beta 5 is out now—here’s how to get it.
And with that, we’re done for this week. If you’d like to get regular roundups, sign up for our newsletters. You can also follow us on Twitter for breaking news stories. See you next Saturday, enjoy your weekend, and stay Appley.
Twine, a company that provides networking tools for virtual events and remote teams, will soon bring its services to Zoom thanks to its just-closed acquisition of the Y Combinator-backed startup, Glimpse, which had developed a “speed matching” platform designed for virtual events. Glimpse’s idea was to offer a way to facilitate the connections that typically took place at real-world events, and bring them online by matching attendees within video chats using A.I. intelligence. Recently, Glimpse had been testing a new integration that would allow event hosts to add speed networking to their Zoom meetings, webinars and events.
This integration is powered by Zoom’s new “Breakout Room” APIs, which Glimpse and a handful of others had early access to. Though both companies were working in a similar space of working to connect people remotely, Glimpse’s Zoom integration put them ahead of twine in terms of product development. Plus, twine co-founder and CEO Lawrence Coburn admits his company had even lost some deals to Glimpse.
With this acquisition, Glimpse’s technology will become available to twine’s customer base, including its plans to expand to reach the broader Zoom user base.
In the next few weeks, a small group of apps built using Zoom’s new breakout room APIs will be added to its app store, the Zoom App Marketplace, which today houses dozens of apps either designed to work within the Zoom client itself, or expand its capabilities in other ways. The forthcoming “twine for Zoom” product will be among them, giving customers access to matching tools, networking and virtual watercooler tools that can be used not only for virtual events, but also other types of meetings, like company socials, all-hands meetings, new hire onboardings, community meetups, and more.
“We’ve admired the Glimpse team and products from afar for a long time, and we are thrilled to be teaming up with them,” Coburn said. “What they’ve managed to build within the Zoom ecosystem is nothing short of remarkable, with game-changing impact for remote teams and virtual events.”
Though a relatively young company with only a small amount of revenue, Glimpse had grown to 150 customers and had a waitlist of 700 more businesses interested in using its platform. These ranged from edtech companies to VCs to even enterprise clients. The latter appealed most to twine, which already had larger companies using its tools, including Amazon, Microsoft and eBay, for example.
“Glimpse is a great example of a highly innovative company utilizing the Zoom App Marketplace to enhance the customer experience,” said Ross Mayfield, Product Lead Zoom Apps & Integrations, in a statement. “I look forward to seeing the twine team bring twine for Zoom to market,” he added.
Glimpse had participated in startup accelerator Y Combinator’s winter 2020 batch and had seed-stage investment from both YC and Maven Ventures. Its co-founders, Helena Merk and Brian Li, will remain on retainer to be available to twine during the transition. However, its team of three employees is joining twine, which now has 16 people full-time. The acquisition terms aren’t being disclosed, as this is a small exit, given the early nature of both companies. However, we understand this to be an all-stock deal in the seven-figure range.
