As much as we love to spend our free time trekking through mountains or finding great road riding routes, us editors spend the lion’s share of our weeks sitting at desks, staring at screens just like everyone else. Our technology is important to us.
For that reason, we closely watched the livestream from Apple’s annual keynote Monday—and realized our interest in Apple might not be one-way.
Apple kicked off the keynote with an announcement about its new OS X operating system, which the company named Yosemite. You’ll remember that Apple named its initial OS X releases after exotic cats, like Snow Leopard and Mountain Lion. Last year, it bucked that trend by naming OS 10.9—which, if you’re like the majority of Mac users, you’re probably operating right now—Mavericks, after the famous California surf destination.
Fair enough. Apple employees presumably love to get outside like the rest of us, and it makes sense the company would gravitate toward the national park that’s practically in its backyard—and maybe even read our recent national parks package. And, as it’s started to name its software after some of our favorite places, we’ve made big cats a priority, covering tigers in our June issue.
Okay, okay. All this cross-pollination could have been coincidental. Or at least, that’s what we thought until Apple’s CEO Tim Cook introduced the new operating system for iPhones and iPads—iOS 8. What’s that we spied on the far right screen? ϳԹ‘s logo and the header of our homepage.
We can’t be sure if Cook or Apple’s software guru Craig Federighi is reading ϳԹ. It certainly seems like someone in that office is, though, and that the outdoors can allure even people who earn their keep with their eyes glued to screens. To demonstrate iOS’s social capacity, Federighi showed how he’d use the software to plan a camping trip to Yosemite with his friends—an activity we’re quite familiar with.
Of course, Apple also introduced some other features that really excite us, especially its new , designed to synthesize all your mobile health apps. We’ll have more on that once we get our hands on the software, but for now, we’re stoked one of the coolest tech companies around is showing its love for the outdoors.
So Apple, we love you too. , if you read ϳԹ as well, now’s the time to speak up.