That’s the what the invitation to the Apple event now set for October 16th says.

It’s been two years since the Mac mini’s been updated but I really doubt it’s in reference to that. Apple TV? Maybe a tongue-in-cheek reference to having just had an event? Please tell me there isn’t a U2 song by that name.

Kathy Sierra’s horrible story about how she was driven to leave the Internet contains a comparison that might make it more understandable to readers of this site.

But here’s the key: it turned out he wasn’t outraged about my work. His rage was because, in his mind, my work didn’t deserve the attention. Spoiler alert: “deserve” and “attention” are at the heart.

A year later, I wrote a light-hearted article about “haters” (the quotes matter) and something I called The Koolaid Point. It wasn’t about harassment, abuse, or threats against people but about the kind of brand “trolls” you find in, say, Apple discussion forums. My wildly non-scientific theory was this: the most vocal trolling and “hate” for a brand kicks in HARD once a critical mass of brand fans/users are thought to have “drunk the Koolaid”. In other words, the hate wasn’t so much about the product/brand but that other people were falling for it.

She’s disturbingly right about the use of Twitter as a platform for harassment.

MarketWatch headline back in early September. It’s funny because it’s not true.

The Guardian’s Charles Arthur details the bind that Samsung is in.

“It appears that Samsung has been cutting prices in order to maintain market share but has lost market share anyway,” [Radio Free Mobile consultancy’s Richard] Windsor said. “This increasingly looks like beginnings of the vicious cycle which ended the dominance of Ericsson, HTC, Motorola, BlackBerry and Nokia.”

Wait, you mean that cutting prices and racing to the bottom isn’t a winning strategy? That has to be a typo, right?

T-Mobile’s John Legere is obviously motivated to push iPhones, but you still have to admire the way he expresses his feelings about Bendghazi.

“That is such horses—t. Listen, what the f—k‚ did you need to see? The video of the guy that’s doing this, and if you could have seen his face he probably would have been purple and the veins are coming out of his fingers. And the thing moves a little bit? Are you sh—ing me?”

“This is an amazing supercomputer in your hand. What the f– are you putting it in your pants and sitting on it for? Seriously. You know what, those nine people who sat on their phones, first of all, they need jeans that fit them a little better.

“Let me help you about bendgate or whatever it was. It’s not slowing down demand. The demand for these devices in the last few weeks is unbelievable.”

Pretty glad AT&T didn’t acquire T-Mobile or we would have missed out on all this.

Riccardo Mori takes exception to some of the points in that piece by Andrew Cunningham I linked to on trying to use Mac OS 9 for work and offers some further suggestions. He does agree that the pain point is web browsing and Internet security.

(Via Grant Hutchinson)

9to5Mac’s Benjamin Mayo:

Yesterday, Chinese iPhone 6 reservations were stated as 2 million in six hours, a rather stunning statistic. Today, an update from the Chinese media press Tencent now says that reservations have topped 4 million. If all these reservations convert into orders, China alone may beat out the iPhone 6’s launch numbers, which — at the time — were considered to be impressive.

Apple continues to struggle in China.

Rumor Has It is back. This time I take a look at the rumors of a Mac mini refresh, delayed iPad Airs and colors for the MacBook Air. We’ll laugh and learn something about ourselves together.

Droid Life:

Curious as to how ugly interesting TouchWiz would make Google’s Android L? We now know, thanks to an 8-minute video preview of Android L running on the Galaxy S5, courtesy of SamMobile.

They recommend muting the audio which is like the soundtrack to a 1980s Turkish science fiction film, but I think it really adds a certain je ne sais quoi. It’s no wonder Xiaomi is eating their lunch.

(Via Ryan Bateman)

iMore’s Rich Edmonds:

Chinese news sources have reported that retailers and local carriers have surpassed 2 million pre-orders in just 6 hours since the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus were made available at respective stores.

Also, the lack of a cheap iPhone means Apple will never be successful in China.