Apple's Big Day, Home Depot's Bad Day, Scotland's Day in the Sun & Other Stories You Need to Know

COUNTDOWN: It's a big day for Apple: At 10 am PT CEO Tom Cook & Co. put on a show for which there are enormous expectations. At the risk of repeating myself, two new larger iPhones and a smartwatch which lazy tech journalists have dubbed the iWatch are highly anticipated. My own little rooting corner will be for the introduction of near field communication (NFC) in the iPhone 6(s), which could jumpstart the nascent e-wallet business. Three big hardware announcements would go a long way to silence the Apple-has-lost-its-mojo critics. And, Apple would be firing on all cylinders: With larger iPhones Apple would be chasing thunder and introducing products that will do better in other parts of the world — big screen phones are favored in China, for example — just as it had with a smaller iPad and the somewhat larger iPhone 5. But with a smartwatch and NFC Apple would endorse what I think are great ideas that haven't really caught on yet — another Apple speciality. That's a lot on the table. I'll be live blogging Apple's special event (lnkd.in/appleliveblog). See you later!

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FIRE SALE: Just to drive home how tough the smartphone racket is: Amazon has put the Fire phone on sale after just six weeks on the market. CEO Jeff Bezos had a big event of his own to launch his company's first smartphone, but a day before Apple's Special Event the retailer announced a (wait for it …) fire sale for the Fire phone: 99 cents (with contract, blah blah blah). As many tech writers noted, the top feature of the Fire phone seemed to be a way to better consume Amazon products and services. If the best feature of thing you are selling is to make it easier to sell things, that's good for you, not as much for your customers. That said, Firefly tech needs to survive: bridging the gap between the bits and bytes world is dominated by QR codes, and they just ain't sexy.

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PUNTING: If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? "No" seems to be the answer by NFL, which had given Baltimore Ravens star Ray Rice a mere two-day suspension last July for a domestic violence incident involving his then fiancé (and now wife) Janay Palmer. Now TMZ Sports has obtained and released elevator video of Rice slugging Palmer and — only now — Rice has been cut by the team and suspended by the league. As LinkedIn member Rob Wyse mocked in a post titled "Is Pot Smoking More Serious Than Wife Beating?" the NFL was tougher on Cleveland Browns wide receiver Josh Gordon for smoking marijuana. This is a hot mess. TMZ Sports accused NFL Commissioner Rodger Godell of willful ignorance. Palmer refused to cooperate with the criminal investigation, and allowed herself to be paraded out — and apologize! — in the original press conference (she also subsequently married Rice, the father of her child). It's unclear what Godell knew and when he knew it. It's wrong to punish someone without due process. It's rare that the bad behavior of a single employee can jeopardize an entire business. As workplace dilemmas go, this is a doozy — to what extent should private live transgressions threaten your livelihood? In any event, this is even a bigger problem for Godell now. Two weeks ago Godell said of the first, minimal Rice sanction: "I didn’t get it right." That was then. The stakes are much higher now. He needs to get whatever remains of in front of this story ASAP.

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FIXER-UPPER: Home Depot has acknowledged what a prominent information security service asserts could rival Target's massive data breach. Official word comes a week after KrebsOnSecurity revealed the breach, said it could extend back to April and affected all of Home Depot's 2,200 US stores. In a statement HD Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Frank Blake said "we now have enough evidence to confirm that a breach has indeed occurred" and asserted there was no evidence online customers were affected or PINs compromised. How bad is it? As Nandita Bose writes for Reuters, think of the 110 million accounts Target has acknowledged were compromised last December.

Target has spent $146 million to resolve data breach-related issues since the fourth quarter of 2013. Most of these expenses were for settling actual and potential breach-related claims, mainly by payment card networks.

The interesting question will be if Home Depot customers punish the retailer as much as Target's punished that company. My guess is that HD won't feel it — assuming there isn't a rash of fraud from the breach — for the simple reason that is a greater loyalty (fewer competitors) in the warehouse DIY space.

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THERE WILL ALWAYS BE AN ENGLAND: But will there be an independent Scotland? It's starting to look like this might actually happen. For the first time in the campaign for Scottish independence a poll has shown that Scots favor throwing off the oppressive British yoke. Sure, the 51%-49% edge is within the margin of error. But coming as it does less than two weeks before the vote — and after many polls which had double digits to the negative — the trendline is troubling for the colonialists. I won't pretend to know what the international economics of this huge decision is (that's what explainers like this piece from CNN's Laura Smith-Spark are for), but I will offer some words of advice from one average American: Dumping your British overlords tends to work out. And if you can do it without firing a shot — go for it.

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Photo: creative commons licensed (BY-SA) flickr photo by Keith Allison & unsplash