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ExtraBITS for 2 June 2014

In case Apple’s massive WWDC announcements aren’t sufficient for you this week, Google has built a prototype of a self-driving car and brought the Rubik’s Cube to the Web. You can also get a look at Apple products that never came to pass, and Joe Kissell explains why he loves Nisus Writer Pro over all other word processors. eBay had a major security breach, so be sure to change your password, and Apple is working on a fix for iMessage woes for those who dare to leave the iPhone nest.

Google Unveils Its Self-Driving Car — Google is now an automaker of sorts. It has built a prototype of its long-brewing self-driving car, which looks like a mix between a Volkswagen Beetle and a Smart Fortwo. The car features no manual controls, and, as a precaution, is limited to 25 miles per hour. Google has produced a video showing it being test-driven by a number of people — including a blind man.

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The Apple That Never Was: Prototypes from Frogdesign — Back in the 1980s, Apple didn’t design products in house, but instead turned to design firm Frog, then called Frogdesign. Frog founder Hartmut Esslinger has released a new book, “Keep it Simple,” that features pictures of a number of forgotten Apple prototypes from that era. The Verge has posted some of Esslinger’s photos, including prototypes for cell phones, tablets, and laptops that range from the ludicrous to the downright prescient.

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A Reminder to Change Your eBay Password — eBay has announced that a database containing customer names, encrypted passwords, email addresses, physical addresses, phone numbers, and dates of birth — but not “financial information or other confidential personal information” — was compromised between late February and early March of this year. eBay subsidiary PayPal was unaffected by the breach. The company is notifying users, but not particularly quickly, so if you haven’t already done so, change your eBay password today. As always, changing your password is
particularly important if you used the same password on other sites.

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Apple Working on a Fix for the iMessage Trap — As we reported previously, users who switch away from the iPhone are having trouble with their phone numbers remaining tied to iMessage, causing them to miss SMS text messages from other iPhone users. Apple told Re/code that it has fixed a server-side bug that was partially responsible for the issue and that it is working on a software update to address the issue more fully.

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Joe Kissell on Why He Loves Nisus Writer — There are lots of word processors out there — Apple’s Pages comes with every new Mac and Microsoft Word has been the professional standard for years. But when it comes to writing one of his many books, Joe Kissell prefers Nisus Writer Pro — so much so that he switched to the Mac in 1991 to use it. In this Macworld piece, Joe explains what makes Nisus Writer so great.

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Google Digitized the Rubik’s Cube — Google has used HTML5 and JavaScript to create a Web version of the famous Rubik’s Cube puzzle. Educator Ernő Rubik created the cube in the 1970s to teach his students about spatial geometry, and it became a commercial hit in the 1980s. You can fully rotate and manipulate Google’s virtual cube, and there are even a number of keyboard shortcuts.

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