A lot of amazing stories in our podcast today, including one about the guy who designed the Apple World Today logo…who is now one of the executive producers of an Amazon Video project that just got greenlit.
- The Orchard apparently got chopped down
- Prisma supports video!
- Buy your Aeroflot tickets and Russian gas with Apple Pay
- Aaron Mahnke goes Hollywood!
The text version of the podcast can be viewed below. To listen to the podcast here, click the play button on the player below.
Text Version
Hi, this is Steve Sande for Apple World Today, and this is the AWT News Update for October 6, 2016. This week our sponsor is Pagico 8, a powerful, cross-platform data and task management application that will keep you or your business running smoothly. Find out more about Pagico 8 for Mac, Windows and Ubuntu Linux, as well as Pagico Plus for iOS and Android by visiting our website at the link found in the show notes.
Early this morning a really weird web page showed up on the Apple site highlighting “The Orchard”, which was apparently a way to create a small marketing team of the future. The entire thing was done as one big PNG file and it was topped off with a logo that featured the letter O with a red leaf sticking out of it — actually quite amateurish compared to the Apple World Today logo, I might add. Well, the page disappeared. There are still jobs listed for a Copywriter, Strategist and Art Director/Designer at “The Orchard” in the Santa Clara Valley of California, but the weird page? Gone. Some pundits have mentioned that apparently this is an apprentice program that’s actually been around for a while, so who knows — maybe one of you listeners will get the job and you can create some amazing stuff.
Have you ever used the Prisma app? It’s been one of my favorite photo apps since it came out in June, and it lets you apply filters in the styles of famous artists to any of your photos. Well, today they added the ability to do videos of up to 15 seconds in length. I have a funny feeling that we’re going to see a lot of those videos on social media in the next few days. Prisma is free and can be found in the iOS App Store.
Apple Pay got a big boost today; first, New York rail commuters can now buy tickets and passes with Apple Pay through the MTA eTix app. The payment option can be used for the Metro-North Railroad and Long Island Rail Road, for one-way trips or weekly and monthly passes. Next, Apple Pay on the Web just added the Staples office supply chain and two airlines — easyJet, which is a low-cost airline based in the UK, and Russia’s Aeroflot. Finally, Apple Pay can also be used at some BP gas stations in Russia, located in Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Pskov, Tver, Smolensk, and Novgorod. Now if we could only get US air carriers to start supporting Apple Pay, I’d be a happy camper.
And congratulations today to the designer of the Apple World Today logo, Aaron Mahnke. Aaron started up a horror anthology podcast called Lore not long after he designed our logo, and it was so successful — 3.2 million monthly listens — that he’s no longer doing design work. Well, today things went even crazier. Amazon has greenly an original video series based on Lore, with Gale Anne Hurd of Walking Dead fame, Ben Silverman of The Office, Howard T. Owens of The Biggest Loser, Brett-Patrick Jenkins of Face Off and Mahnke as executive producers. Glen Morgan will be the show runner; his previous experience includes the X-Files.
That’s all for today; We’ll be back tomorrow afternoon with another edition of the AWT News Update.
