Now on the App Store for $4.99 for the already bored four days into summer kid in your household. The boy and I have played this on the Wii and even though the LEGO game formula is a little rote now, tired of having on his helicarrier.

(Via Touch Arcade)

On Turning This Car Around, we look again at gear and Lex tells the most terrifying baby monitor story ever.

From the Verge’s live blog of the Amazon Fire phone announcement:

Basically this is the fastest “Hey I see that thing I want to buy that thing” machine ever made by human hands. Push a button, buy the thing I’m looking at. It’s kind of stunning if you think about it. And terrifying.

That was pretty much my reaction as well.

The unlimited photo storage, dedicated camera button and headphones that are supposedly less tangle-prone are nice, less terrifying features, though.

MacNN:

[The China-based Economic Daily news service] claims that the Apple iWatch will see release in the third quarter, with production at Foxconn, Pegatron, Quanta, and Inventec. An OLED display is expected, but power draw issues are currently causing problems.

Uh-huh. Sure. That’s gonna happen.

Pricing is reputedly $349, with about 10 million units available at device launch.

I’m so old I remember when the iWatch cost thousands of dollars. I’m sure we can take this price to the bank, though.

(By the way, we didn’t get those new iPhones at WWDC we were supposed to.)

Ina Fried for Re/code:

AT&T has been pretty quiet about its plans for “toll-free” data service since announcing its plans at CES in January.

With sponsored data, companies foot the bill for certain kinds of data use, meaning it is free for consumers. AT&T said at the time it was testing the service with a handful of partners, but has gone radio silent since then.

That could change Wednesday if, as some suspect, Amazon chooses to subsidize some of their customer’s data usage on the smartphone it is introducing.

Huh. If only there were some kind of phrase for a situation in which when you are not paying for a product then you are the product. Oh, well.

At least people already know Amazon just wants you to buy more stuff. I find the relationship with an Amazon device to be a little more honest than the relationship with a Google Android device. I do have a hard time imagining how AT&T’s network will hold up if Amazon phone owners can stream Prime video over LTE for free. Still, that would be a neat feature to have if it worked.

MacNN reports that Ahrendts is moving away from an organization based on geography:

The new plan is to organize stores based on sales volumes — in particular on how much of each particular product outlets sell. Instead of instituting sales targets, which were unpopular under Ahrendts’ predecessor, John Browett, the goal is allegedly to improve shopper satisfaction and streamline operations by giving similar stores similar leadership and promotions.

Apple is also opening a second store in Chengdu, China. My wife and I were in Chengdu in 2005 and my sense was that Apple was almost completely unknown, so it’s interesting to see how much that’s changed.

Eric Meyer’s remembrance of his daughter, Rebecca, who died of cancer on her 6th birthday:

What matters in this life is not what we do but what we do for others, the legacy we leave and the imprint we make.

If you can, make a donation to fight childhood cancer to Ronald McDonald House or St. Baldrick’s Foundation. No one should have to go through what Eric has.

iMore’s Chuong Nguyen quotes Ahrendts’ email to Apple staff:

“Looking forward to the future, I feel our greatest opportunity will be continuing to focus on and evolve the consumer journey online and in our stores,” Ahrendts said. “Although technology is rapidly changing how customers shop, they will still want to feel surprised and delighted by the personalized Apple experience we provide at every turn.”

Ask a long-time Apple retail employee: the phrase “surprise and delight” has been the mission statement for Apple retail since the mid-2000s at least. So this seems to be more a tone of sticking to their guns rather than shaking things up. And why not?

(An early version of this said “As a long-time Apple retail employee…” To be clear, I have never worked for Apple in any capacity. Well, other than unpaid booster. An Apple retail employee told me years ago that “To surprise and delight our customers” was their mission statement.)

Attention fellow Pacific northwest denizens: App Camp for Girls still has openings for its August 4-8 session in Seattle.

The Verge says it could be the best iOS game controller yet, although that might not be saying much:

The $99 Junglecat, which comes in black or white, looks to the unsuspecting eye like any other plastic iPhone case. It just about doubles the thickness of the iPhone, though it’s not terribly heavy. But the bottom half of the case slides out to reveal a four-way d-pad, ABXY buttons, and two bumpers for your index fingers — suddenly your iPhone looks a bit like a Nintendo 3DS or the Sony Xperia Play.

At $99 it’s still a niche product but this is my favorite design so far because it’s the easiest to have with you all the time.