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When Apple first introduced MagSafe for the iPhone in 2020, I did not fully appreciate it. iPhones had supported wireless charging for a few years at that pointand Android phones started doing so in 2012and while MagSafe offered faster and less finicky charging, it didn’t really change how you use your phone. Over time, though, Apple’s magnetic charging and docking system has blossomed into an important piece of the Apple accessory ecosystem. All of which makes the lack of MagSafe on the new iPhone 16e a letdown. It’s not the only compromise Apple made in pursuit of a $600 price tag: It also has just one rear camera lens, only two color options, and a front camera notch that cuts out Dynamic Island features. But to me, the MagSafe omission stands as the biggest reason to seek out other iPhone options. Beyond the overnight charge Admittedly I still don’t use MagSafe for overnight charging. I keep an Anker 3-in-1 charger on my nightstand, and placing my iPhone up against the vertical charging stand is simple enough. The 7.5W charging speeds are slower than MagSafe’s 15W (or 25W, on the latest version), but that’s irrelevant for an eight-hour charge session. For me, MagSafe matters most in two scenarios: Power banks: I have a couple of portable batteries that snap onto the iPhone’s backside for a wireless top-up. They’ve been essential on trips where I’m using the camera and mapping extensively and don’t want to have charging anxiety toward the end of the day. Dashboard mounting: The car we use for family trips doesn’t support CarPlay, so my wife and I use a magnetic vent mount to keep one of our phones within reach for navigation and music. Beyond that, accessory makers have tapped into MagSafe in all kinds of other creative ways: MagSafe iPhone grips prevent you from dropping your phone. MagSafe laptop and monitor mounts work with Apple’s Continuity Camera feature to turn your iPhone into a webcam. There’s even a freestanding mount that tracks your face during video calls. MagSafe tripods, tripod mounts, and ring lights can help out in photo shoots. MCON is working on a magnetic iPhone game controller that fits in your pocket. Double magnet rings let you attach an iPhone to all kinds of surfacesincluding other iPhones. You may be familiar with MagSafe wallets, but what about MagSafe notepads? Meanwhile, Apple’s using MagSafe to turn iPhones into miniature smart displays using StandBy mode, which shows time, photos, and widgets when the phone is charging in landscape mode. I’m in the market for a desktop charger and will be seeking out MagSafe for StandBy in particular. As a frequent iPhone-to-Android switcher, I’ve tried to minimize the number of pain points that arise when bouncing between ecosystems, but MagSafe is a big one. I typically go back to the iPhone while traveling just to make use my existing MagSafe accessories, and it’s odd for Apple to exclude the feature from any of its phones as the MagSafe ecosystem continues to grow. In theory, MagSafe shouldn’t be this much of a differentiator for the iPhone. The open Qi2 standard, to which Apple was a main contributor, allows any phone to have similar magnetic attachments with 15W charging speeds, But while Qi2 has been available for more than year now, major Android device makers still aren’t building it into their phones,, so they can’t tap any of the accessories designed for magnetic charging and docking. The work-arounds Those who buy an iPhone 16e won’t be entirely frozen out of the MagSafe ecosystem. The phone still supports standard wireless charging, and lots of iPhone cases have built-in magnets that snap tightly onto MagSafe accessories. With a compatible caseor even just a MagSafe stickeriPhone 16e owners could still use MagSafe accessories and chargers, albeit at slower charging speeds. Still, the lack of built-in MagSafe is an issue for anyone who prefers a caseless phone, uses a lightweight protective bumper, or has a case thin enough to support MagSafe accessories without its own magnets. Besides, Apple still markets the iPhone around caseless usefor instance, with ads that point to its durabilityso it’s probably not assuming that all of its users will have a case to use with MagSafe accessories. Apple continues to sell the iPhone 15 for $699, which is $100 less than the iPhone 16e, but the refurbished and used markets offer considerable discounts. Back Market and Amazon, for instance, sell like-new refurbished iPhone 15 models with one-year warranties for $540 and $529, respectively. While the iPhone 16e improves on the iPhone 15 in some wayslonger battery life, newer processor with Apple Intelligence support, and an Action ButtonI’d rather have MagSafe than any of those features. At this point, it’s hard to imagine using an iPhone without it.
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E-Commerce
Competency checking is a practice that imposes extra scrutiny on Black professionals and people of color, challenging their qualifications, intellect, and ability to advance. There are three primary ways competency checking is deployed in the modern workplace. The first is the assumption of Black intellectual inferiority and/or a lack of qualifications. This can manifest in low expectations, marginalization, and extreme micromanagement. (More simply: If someone assumes, consciously or unconsciously, that all Black people are intellectually inferior, they may question the person and their qualifications more closely during an interview and, once hired, pay much more attention to their work while looking for any mistakes.) The second method of competency checking is the expression, particularly of surprise or unease, with open displays of Black intelligence, which can trigger requests or demands to confirm how it was acquired and whether its the result of rote memorization or actual, integrated knowledge. This can manifest as dismissal, quizzing, argument, and tokenization. (If a Black person knows something that their white coworker doesnt already know, the coworkers reaction isnt I didnt know that! but more often How do you know that?) The third method of competency checking is activation, specifically the feeling of fear when confronted with a Black person who holds any authority, especially someone in a leadership position. This can manifest as requests for identification, undefined feelings of unfairness, anger, unease, and what I would describe as an autoimmune level rejection of Black leadership. While competency checking can happen to other people of color and, to some extent, white women, there are specific historical and cultural reasons why Black people seem to bear the brunt of it. This book is an exploration of these methods; when, how, and why they were created and implemented; and how they continue to have an outsize impact on Black people and other people of color at work. The idea that it is not incompetence that is holding back Black professionals is for many a foreign concept. Thats understandable, given that the narrative surrounding Black peopleand the reason the workplace looks the way it does todayis that they dont value education or that theres no one in the hiring pipeline because there are so few qualified Black people, or that Black people want special treatment. Whats interesting is that both anecdotal and empirical evidence suggests that Black workers are getting a type of special treatment, just not the type that many people think. In 2019, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) released research that revealed the impact of race and racism in the workplace. That year was a hot labor market, and the U.S. saw the longest economic expansion in its history, with more than 100 consecutive months of job growth and more than 21 million jobs added. But the EPIs analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics and Local Area Unemployment Statistics and U.S. Census Bureau data uncovered some surprising things: Per their report, Black workers are twice as likely to be unemployed as white workers overall, even Black workers with a college degree are more likely to be unemployed than similarly educated white workers. That unemployment gap, apparently, is a pattern that has persisted for more than 40 years. In fact, this 2-to-1 ratio holds in practically every state in the nation where Black workers make up a significant share of the workforce. I believe that gap is linked, especially when it comes to new hires and leadership, to competency checking. And it starts with a name. In 2024, The New York Times reported on research from the National Bureau of Economic Research about the impact of a Black- or white-sounding name on job applications. In a 2019 study, researchers sent 80,000 fake résumés for 10,000 job openings at 100 companies. The résumés were modified to imply different racial and gender identities, using names like Latisha or Amy to indicate a Black or white woman, respectively, and Lamar or Adam for a Black or white man. According to the resulting data, on average, candidates believed to be white received contact from employers about 9.5% more frequently compared to those thought to be Black. This type of research is known as an audit study, and it was the largest of its kind in the United States. Ultimately, it found that the results demonstrate how entrenched employment discrimination is in parts of the U.S. labor marketand the extent to which Black workers start behind in certain industries. Its not all doom and gloom: Some companies showed little to no bias when it came to screening applicants for entry-level positions. And while there is much to learn from the companies that got it right, we must remember that this study pertains solely to entry-level positions that do not require a college degree or extensive work experience. It also does not cover aspects of career progression or advancement opportunities within these companies, which are equally critical to understanding the full scope of how competency checking shows up in the workplace. From the book Qualified: How Competency Checking and Race Collide at Work by Shari Dunn. Copyright 2025 by Shari Dunn. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.
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E-Commerce
Ford has used some version of its famous script logo for more than a century, but despite its widespread usage, people are scratching their heads over a detail they just noticed. In a viral TikTok, user Monica Turner asked viewers to pick the correct version of the automaker’s logo, one with a funny-looking flourish on the logo’s F and one without. Viewers were split on which version they thought was correct, and to some commenters’ surprise, it’s the one with the curlicue. @monicasopenhouse Mandela Effect- The Ford Logo! I think they BOTH Look wrong, ! #MonicasOpenHouse #FYP #mandelaeffect #FordLogo #strangebuttrue #TimeShift #Cern #WeirdStuff #Over30 #Over40 #Over50 #GenX #ConspiracyTheory #tinfoilhat original sound – Monica Turner Side by side and to the untrained eye, the real Ford logo looks fake next to its dupe. In the age of corporate blanding, the curlicue flourish reads as fake, but it’s been there as far back as the 1910s, according to a vintage advertising sign in the Henry Ford Museum. Some commentersincluding a former Ford mechanic and another who worked at a Ford dealershipgot it right, but the rest of us should know better too. Ford’s F-150 truck has been the long-running best-selling vehicle in the U.S., and over multiple rebrands, Ford has kept the script styling of its logo intact. From top: The 1907 version of Fords logo by C. Harold Wills, and a contemporary version [Images: Ford] The origin of Ford’s logo The logo, designed by Ford engineer and former letterpress printer C. Harold Wills, is inspired by its founder’s signature, but it’s not an exact replica. (Ford’s signature, notably, didn’t include the curlicue.) Like the script logo for Coca-Cola, founded several decades before Ford, the automaker’s logo was created in an era of ornate script branding that’s survived through multiple iterations and a trend toward sans-serif type all the way to the 21st century. When legendary designer Paul Rand created a handsome, modern, non-script logo concept for Ford in 1966, Henry Ford II decided against it because he thought it would have been too radical. [Photo: Ford] Imagine Ford’s logo, and you’re likely to recall the script font and blue oval, but perhaps other details are a bit hazy. That’s normal. Studies have shown that humans are terrible at remembering logos because our brains don’t bother storing unnecessary information unless we choose to memorize it; that way we can free up space to remember more important things. That leads to our inability to remember whether the bite mark and tilt of the leaf on the Apple logo is on the left or right (it’s the right) or whether or not the Fruit of the Loom logo has a cornucopia in it (it doesn’t). Since the minutia of Ford’s logo isn’t a pressing concern for most of us, our brain stores only the basics. See an oval badge with script type, and you know it̻s Ford. Look a little closer, though, and the details may surprise you.
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E-Commerce
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