So it turns out encryption wasn’t exactly what you wanted.

Encrypting your smartphone or tablet is a great way to add a passive layer of security to your device, something that doesn’t require a lot of work on your end and could actually protect your data if your device is stolen or you’ve somehow managed to become a target of some kind. It’s far from an impenetrable shield in terms of security, but as long as its not getting in your way there’s certainly no harm in having the protection, right?

Truth is, sometimes Full Disk Encryption can get in the way. Performance hits, especially when combined with the workload some power users (you know who you are) put on their devices, can be too much to deal with. The good news is it’s pretty easy to turn off encryption on most devices, even the new encryption offered in Android 5.0. In most cases all you really need is 20 minutes near an outlet and some know how. In other cases, most notably the Nexus 6, things get a little stickier.

Google unveiled its proposal for a new campus located at its Mountain View, California headquarters that looks like something from a science fiction movie. The proposal is being submitted to the Mountain View City Council for their approval.

‘Timeless design’ and ‘smart within’ frame Huawei’s unannounced wearable for Mobile World Congress.

As journalists and industry members alike start hitting Barcelona Airport for MWC 2015, they’ll be greeted by a large number of ad placements from Huawei for a watch that, frankly, we weren’t expecting just yet. The “Huawei Watch,” as the ad calls it, is circular and shown off in three distinct styles on the billboard – silver with a silver mesh band, gold with a brown leather band, and black with a black sports band.

The billboards read “Timeless design. Smart within.”, with a sophisticated-looking model wearing a nice suit and the silver watch. The “timeless” portion of the pitch refers to the classic design – this is a round watch, of course – and “impeccable craftsmanship,” while the “smart” portion lists state-of-the-art wearable technology and Android Wear as features.

I hope the Apple Watch gets this weird.

All my life I’ve been fascinated by weird things. The weirder the better. Apple’s product designs were really weird for a while. Weird, and really pretty.

The weirder the better

When I was a young teen in the 1980s, few things gave me as much pleasure as reading Fangoria magazine from bloody cover to bloody cover. Fangoria was — and is — a great magazine if you’re interested in practical special effects in the movies, and at that age I was obsessed with gory movies.

One particular horror movie director who caught my attention was David Cronenberg. Cronenberg made his mark with unusual R-rated horror fare like Videodrome and my particular favorite, Scanners.

Cronenberg was tapped to direct Naked Lunch, a movie adaptation of William S. Burroughs’ surreal beat generation novel of vignettes based on his own experiences traveling internationally.

Cronenberg used nightmarish visuals in his interpretation, none more disturbing than the talking insectoid typewriter that speaks from a sphincter hidden under its shell. I found its image to be fascinating, disturbing and even stomach-churning, but I couldn’t look away.

One of Apple’s old industrial designs makes me think of the alien typewriter, but if it was cuddly, not scary. It’s the jeweled, green eMate 300, looking chitinous but oddly inviting.

The Swatch Generation

Apple’s disrupted more industries than you can shake a stick at. Nicholas Hayek disrupted an industry too, after he launched Swatch in 1983. The company manufactures watches and is based in Switzerland.

Swatches became all the rage to a generation of teens in the 1980s when they started coming out with creative and imaginative designs that matched the pop culture zeitgeist of the age.

Swatches weren’t as cheap as the knockoffs you’d find at lesser department stores and malls, but having a Swatch on your wrist became just as much of a status symbol as having a pair of Air Jordan sneakers or the right denim jacket.

A brief history of touch

We take it for granted these days that Apple has pioneered and mastered many of the techniques used in touch interface technology for smart devices. Hundreds of thousands of developers write millions of lines of code and make billions of dollars selling apps for those devices through the App Store. But this isn’t Apple’s first round of touch-based screen input technology. Years before the iPhone, years before the iPod, there was the Newton MessagePad.

The Newton was famously unsuccessful, but that didn’t stop Apple trying cool things with it. I have an original MessagePad, but my favorite piece of Newton memorabilia is my eMate 300. The eMate 300 is a laptop computer based on Newton tech.

The eMate 300 was in production for less than a year starting in 1997, but for many of us old-timey Apple fans, it was a memorable run. It ran for up to 28 hours between charges on a rechargeable battery, included networking and had an expansion card. It didn’t have a hard disk; the eMate 300 stored everything in non-volatile memory, just like today’s smart devices.

The unique translucent design of the eMate 300 was the idea of Thomas Meyerhoffer, who created the shell to evoke a sense of accessibility.

The shell suggests but doesn’t actually reveal the hardware that’s inside. There’s an air of mystery to the eMate 300, a jeweled murkiness that makes you wonder what’s inside.

The built-in keyboard made it easy to input lots of data into the device, which used a touch-sensitive LCD screen you could write on with the included stylus. Using the Newton OS is nothing like using Macs or iOS devices now, but there are familiar ideas afoot, like a document and activity-based workflow and the mirroring of real world gestures to affect what’s happening on the screen.

There was even handwriting recognition; initially it was the emphasis of many criticisms for its poor interpretation. Apple got it right, but it took them longer than it should have. By the time it got to the eMate 300 it was pretty solid.

The eMate 300 was built for smaller hands and was envisioned as a way of getting computers into the hands of schoolkids. If Apple had been in a different place with different fortunes at the time, kids all over the country might have used eMates instead of iPads, as many are now.

It was a very different Apple at a very different time, but you can still see the spirit of innovation in today’s products, right down to the Apple Watch.

It’ll be interesting to see how the Apple Watch is received by multiple generations of Apple users. As a Swatch kid, now an adult with a family of my own, I’m getting a distinct sense of deja vu.

UPDATED – Ahh, there was a full change log. The update just wasn’t showing it. I have now included it below.

If you’re a beta tester for BBM on iOS, you now have a new update available for you through TestFlight. While the change log for this one appears rather long, a lot of it’s just the same as previous versions so it seems there’s no huge changes in this release despite the larger version number. One item that appears new though is there has been some adjustments made to the ‘connecting’ messages that get displayed when network coverage and WiFi is low. Still an update is an update. Go get it!

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We’re inching ever-closer to the start of the 2015 baseball season, and the MLB At Bat app for iPhone and iPad has been updated accordingly. Some of the main highlights of the update include a refreshed UI, expanded player search, and Spanish language support.

Here’s a rundown on what’s new in version 8.0

• New UI for all 30 team pages & the league-wide scoreboard (iPhone only)
• Player search expanded to include all active and historical MLB player cards (iPhone only)
• Re-designed UI for the newsreader (iPhone & iPad)
• Team-by-team statistical data filters (iPhone only)
• Native resolution to optimize At Bat for iPhone 6 and 6 Plus
• Easy access to every game with new team schedule navigation (iPhone only)
• Application available in Spanish language, requires device language set to Spanish (iPhone & iPad)

With spring training just around the corner, the update couldn’t have come at a better time. If you’d like to grab MLB At Bat 8.0, you can do so from the source link below.

• Free (optional subscription) – Download

If Twitter is where you hang your social hashtags, we’ve got two great ways for you to stay up to date with iMore!

For those who prefer a carefully curated experience, we have the main @iMore account. It brings you the very best of our original content — features, editorials, opinions, reviews, guides, and the most important news. It won’t flood your feed, but it will make sure you know about everything that matters.

For those who want absolutely every story we publish everyday, we have the @iMore_firehose account. It will bring you every story, including every bit of news we link to from morning to noon to night. It’ll make sure your feed always has the latest and the greatest updates.

If you want all the behind-the-scenes action as well, especially when we’re at special events and conferences, you can also follow our editors. Each has diverse interests, but iMore really is the sum of its people — and these are our people:

• Serenity Caldwell – @settern
• Peter Cohen – @flargh
• Georgia Dow – @Georgia_Dow
• Ally Kazmucha – @iMuggle
• Rene Ritchie – @reneritchie

Apple has also begun tweeting more regularly in recent years. Most Apple employees prefer to keep a low profile, and we respect their privacy, but Apple executives are quite public:

• Tim Cook – @tim_cook
• Angela Ahrendts – @AngelaAhrendts
• Eddy Cue – @Cue
• Phil Schiller – @pschiller

iTunes also has a bunch of accounts it uses to help promote all the content it helps deliver every week:

• App Store – @AppStore
• iBooks – @iBooks
• iTunes – @iTunes
• iTunes Festival – @iTunesFestival
• iTunes Movies – @iTunesMovies
• iTunes Music – @iTunesmMusic
• iTunes Podcasts – @iTunesPodcasts
• iTunes TV – @iTunesTV
• iTunes U – @iTunesU

For many people, Twitter is the new RSS. If you’re one of them, hope this helps keep you up-to-date!

We’re inching ever-closer to the start of the 2015 baseball season, and the MLB At Bat app for Android has been updated accordingly with a some Material Design touches and Spanish language support.