For some, it’s a staple of the American morning: a comforting routine, a good deal. Anything that costs more than $1 is needlessly expensive, a waste of money — the coffee from a deli, diner or doughnut cart is all you need to start the day. For others, the $1 cup is suspiciously cheap. Maybe it tastes bad, or its production does harm to the land and is unfair to laborers. If you have to pay more, then that is probably a reflection of a drink’s true cost.

I just want a plain cup of black coffee.

Although a launch date is still unclear, when it debuts the new Spotify Apple Watch companion app will finally give Spotify listeners a comparable experience on Apple Watch as Apple Music subscribers have had over the past few years.

This is huge for Spotify users.

To celebrate the Golden State Warriors’ NBA-best regular season record—and star Kevin Durant’s return to the team just in time for the 2017 NBA Playoffs—artist, teacher and sports fan Robert Generette III shares an exclusive illustration of Durant coming to life on iPad Pro.

Wow, this is so impressive.

John Warren Geils Jr., better known as J. Geils, the guitarist of the the J. Geils Band, was found dead in his home in Groton, Massachusetts Tuesday. He was 71. Rolling Stone has confirmed Geils’ death. According to Groton Police, “a preliminary investigation indicates that Geils died of natural causes.”

R.I.P.

Apple updated TestFlight today and outlined the changes on its developer web site.

Welcome to Grid Garden, where you write CSS code to grow your carrot garden! Water only the areas that have carrots by using the grid-column-start property.

Have fun learning.

Drawing on your phone or computer can be slow and difficult—so we created AutoDraw, a new web-based tool that pairs machine learning with drawings created by talented artists to help you draw.

That’s pretty cool.

Apple has filed a complaint in a Swiss court over the use of the slogan “Tick Different” in a Swatch marketing campaign, arguing that the watchmaker is unfairly referencing the Californian company’s successful 1990s “Think Different” ad campaign for its own gain.

Seems pretty obvious to me.

djay Pro, Algoriddim’s award-winning DJ application, is available for macOS, iOS, and Android. Now it’s also on Windows 10, bridging a native desktop and touch experience across every platform and fulfilling our mission of making everyone a DJ. Anywhere. Any time. Any platform.

In 2012, Twitter fought the New York District Attorney so protect tweets sent by an Occupy Wall Street protester, and in 2014 it sued the U.S. government so that it could share these kinds of user information requests more publicly. Then in 2015, Twitter successfully protected the identity of two anonymous users who were being sued for defamation.

And the company also gets into legal fights where it doesn’t even have a stake. In early 2016, Twitter signed an amicus brief alongside Google in support of PubPeer, a website that allows people to comment anonymously on scholarly articles. PubPeer was being sued by a professor who received unflattering anonymous comments about his work.

Twitter does deserve kudos for this.

What were you doing when you were 12? Getting quite good at Guitar Hero? Clumsily finding your way around a real instrument? Maybe even attempting a jam session with some of your mates?

Let’s face it, you weren’t going on tour through South America with a Grammy award-winning, platinum-selling metal band, were you? Not unless you’re Tye Trujillo, who has just signed up to play for Korn while their bassist Reginald “Fieldy” Arvizu is unable to tour with them.

Robert Trujillo is one of my favorite bassists of all time and there’s no doubt that his son is very talented too. This is pretty amazing.

I can’t speak to what the other five types of users need, but I have a pretty good idea of what I’d want as an iOS developer who uses a Mac every day. Not that anyone in Cupertino is asking me, but if they did I’d say this is my dream Mac.

A very nice article on what’s needed from a developer’s point of view.

This is just awful. Why do people have to be like this?

My thanks to Daylite for sponsoring The Loop this week.

Want to know what your sales or marketing team is working on without having to interrupt them? Now you can get a quick overview of what each team is working on with Team View in Daylite on Mac.

Daylite is a Mac CRM & Project Management app that helps teams work better, together. Now with Team View, you can see each team’s appointments, tasks, and project deadlines for today and the next seven days – all in one place.

“This new feature is an easy way to get a big picture view of how my teams are doing. It makes it easy for me to delegate tasks, check on task status, compare work loads for individuals/teams, and creates a continuity for me between individuals and teams.”

– Libby Flores, COO of E.L. Achieve

Team View is another way Daylite makes managing projects and clients easier as a team. Want to learn more? Visit marketcircle.com/daylite and start your free 30-day trial.

This week I’m joined by Shawn Blanc, who has built a business through blogging, setting up speciality web sites, and designing courses for people to purchase. He is a really interesting guy and has some valuable opinions on efficiency in your life.

Subscribe to this podcast

Links:

shawnblanc.net

The Sweet Setup

Tools & Toys

This is such a great video. I visited the custom shop for a look around with Fender a few years back and it was incredible.

The 1982 alumnus jumped right into the subject of his discussion. He advised students – of all backgrounds and majors – to prepare to encounter people with diverse backgrounds in every career field.

OmniOutliner now comes in two editions: Pro and Essentials. The Pro edition has all the power that we’ve always brought to OmniOutliner, with support for multiple columns, attachments, focus, automation, and so on—and for version 5 we’ve added even more, with advanced filtering, word count, typewriter mode, customizable keyboard shortcuts, and so on.

For the new Essentials edition, our goal was to introduce the joys and benefits of outlining to a much broader audience than our core Pro customers. Our focus for this edition was on making OmniOutliner much simpler, and much more affordable.

Ken Case and the folks at Omni are just great people and developers.

As you would expect, I laughed loudly.

Here are the main features:

• Live TV streaming from ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC, and popular cable networks

• Cloud DVR with no storage limits

• 6 accounts per household included

It costs $35 a month and there are a lot of other stations available, but they are still missing some big ones. Not having storage limits on the cloud DVR is a great feature.

“I’ve never seen a record this strong in 42 years,” [U.S. District Judge William] Alsup said. A hearing on Waymo’s request for an injunction on Uber’s self-driving program is scheduled for May.

Waymo sued ride services company Uber earlier this year, claiming that former Waymo executive Anthony Levandowski downloaded over 14,000 confidential documents before leaving the company to join Uber. Waymo said Uber benefited from those documents and has sued for damages and to stop Uber from using the technology Levandowski allegedly stole.

Wow.

This was a bizarre day to say the least. We woke up this morning to news that Apple is indeed working on new Mac Pros, but they won’t be ready this year. That is huge coming from Apple and its news that I welcome. […]

Like the iOS version, Apple Music for Android features a bolder, cleaner look with reorganized sections: “Library,” “For You,” “Browse,” and “Radio.” Also included are iOS 10 features like song lyrics and a revamped For You recommendation section, plus with the redesign, there’s more of a focus on album art.

I could say something sarcastic like “I wonder if Android gets the iTunes Match feature that doesn’t work, or is that an iOS-only feature.”

But I won’t.

Music streaming service Spotify said on Tuesday it had signed a deal with Universal Music Group that lets artists release new albums exclusively on its paying premium service for two weeks.

And

The multi-year license agreement with Universal Music could make Spotify more attractive to Universal Music’s artists, who include Taylor Swift, Adele, Lady Gaga, Coldplay and Kanye West.

A couple of notable Apple favorites in there.

Apple today began sending out emails to customers who purchased popular automation app Workflow in the last few weeks, letting them know that they’ll be receiving a refund for the purchase price of the app.

Apple is handing out refunds because following its recent acquisition of the Workflow app and team, it made the Workflow app free to download and removed some key functionality.

Respect, Apple.

Want to know what your sales or marketing team is working on without having to interrupt them? Now you can get a quick overview of what each team is working on with Team View in Daylite on Mac.

Daylite is a Mac CRM & Project Management app that helps teams work better, together. Now with Team View, you can see each team’s appointments, tasks, and project deadlines for today and the next seven days – all in one place.

“This new feature is an easy way to get a big picture view of how my teams are doing. It makes it easy for me to delegate tasks, check on task status, compare work loads for individuals/teams, and creates a continuity for me between individuals and teams.”

– Libby Flores, COO of E.L. Achieve

Team View is another way Daylite makes managing projects and clients easier as a team. Want to learn more? Visit marketcircle.com/daylite and start your free 30-day trial.

If there is a better way to end of the week than these pictures, I don’t know what it is.

Daniel Jalkut has been developing the app for ten years now—it’s quite an accomplishment. Every post I do publish on The Loop is done in MarsEdit.

Congrats, Daniel.

Thanks to Daylite for sponsoring The Loop this week.

Still digging through emails and passing around spreadsheets & notes? There’s a better way to manage leads & projects – with Daylite.

Daylite streamlines your lead management & project management process so you can win more business & get more done.

Integrate directly with Apple Mail to organize emails for clients, projects, and sales opportunities. Track your sales pipeline and set reminders when to follow up. Share projects, schedules, and tasks with others on your team – from your Mac or iPhone/iPad.

Whether you’re a sales team, real estate firm, or lawyer, Daylite can help you win more business and get more done.

Try Daylite free for 30 days!

Within days of Congress repealing online privacy protections, Verizon has announced new plans to install software on customers’ devices to track what apps customers have downloaded. With this spyware, Verizon will be able to sell ads to you across the Internet based on things like which bank you use and whether you’ve downloaded a fertility app.

Sigh.