I’ve been waiting for this version since I saw it at NAMM in January. The new software includes Apollo Expanded featuring Console 2.0 Software; Sound Machine Wood Works Plug-In; Distortion Essentials Plug-In Bundle; Friedman Amplifiers Plug-In Collection; and (Mac) Support for OS X Yosemite. This is a great update.
Kanye talking to Oxford students:
“I love Steve Jobs, he’s my favourite person, but there’s one thing that disappoints me. When Steve passed he didn’t give the ideas up. That’s kinda selfish. You know that Elon’s like ‘yeah, take these ideas’. Maybe there are companies outside of Apple that could work on them and push humanity forward. Maybe the stock brokers won’t like that, the stock holders wouldn’t like that idea, but ideas are free and you can’t be selfish with them.”
What a moron.
This is a really nice looking app. I just downloaded the trial and it works great too—if there’s one thing I would add, it would be access to custom fields in WordPress. Otherwise, I really like it.
Steve was wicked smart. I was always amazed at how sharp he was and how quickly he could focus on what was important. I don’t know ANYONE that even comes close to how good he was at being able to do that.
Don’t just read the story, read the comments too. I miss Steve.
I don’t know why I found this so cool, but I did. Working CSS Clocks.
Sports Illustrated:
Eleven-year-old Jordyn Leopold misses her dad. NHL defenseman Jordan Leopold started the season with the Blues and was traded to the Blue Jackets in November. Jordyn and the rest of her family have been living in Minnesota, so she wrote a letter to the Wild asking them to trade for her dad.
Such a sweet story. And the daughter’s letter shows she knows more than a little bit about hockey.
Petapixel:
A photographer and birdwatcher in London has captured a strange and rare photo that has the Internet abuzz: an image showing a weasel riding on the back of a woodpecker as it flies through the air.
Perfect example of what I teach in my photography class – always be ready to shoot.
Remember Crystal Quest? It was one of the first color Mac games, one of the first games ever with a user modding tool and a level editor. And that sound it made. If you ever played the game, you know what I mean.
Now there’s a Kickstarter in the works to bring Crystal Quest back to life for Mac, PC, and Linux. I’m definitely in.
Now where did I put my old copy of Lode Runner?
[H/T to Rudy Richter]
The Guardian:
Criminals in the US are using the new Apple Pay mobile payment system to buy high-value goods – often from Apple Stores – with stolen identities and credit card details.
Banks have been caught by surprise by the level of fraud, and the Guardian understands that some are scrambling to ensure that better verification and checking systems are put in place to prevent the problem running out of control, with around two million Americans already using the system.
The crooks have not broken the secure encryption around Apple Pay’s fingerprint-activated wireless payment mechanism. Instead, they are setting up new iPhones with stolen personal information, and then calling banks to “provision” the victim’s card on the phone to use it to buy goods.
Bottom line, this is not a flaw in Apple Pay, this is a flaw in bank card verification. I suspect the banking industry will react quickly to this.
Apple’s reaction:
“Apple Pay is designed to be extremely secure and protect a user’s personal information,” the spokesman said. “During setup Apple Pay requires banks to verify each and every card and the bank then determines and approves whether a card can be added to Apple Pay. Banks are always reviewing and improving their approval process, which varies by bank.”
Why this won’t be a problem as Apple Pay moves beyond US shores:
Dave Birch, a UK-based mobile payments expert, told the Guardian: “in the UK there probably won’t be a ‘green path’” – meaning that people would have to call their bank to add any card to Apple Pay once it is introduced here.
The US lags behind much of the world in its adoption of secure retail payment systems and mobile payments. “Chip and Pin” systems, used throughout Europe for years, will only become compulsory in the US later this year. As retailers replace old magnetic stripe systems, which were vulnerable to widespread fraud, with new ones, they are also adding NFC capabilities, already used in the UK for Oyster cards and in many shops.
Just in time for the rollout of Samsung’s mag-strip dependent LoopPay. Hope they didn’t pay too much for that.
Interesting reactions from around the auto industry. From Volkswagen:
“If these two companies intend to solely produce electric vehicles, it could go fast,” Volkswagen AG Chief Executive Officer Martin Winterkorn said at the Geneva International Motor Show. “We are also very interested in the technologies of Google and Apple, and I think that we, as the Volkswagen company, can bring together the digital and mobile world.”
From Germany’s Center for Automotive Management:
“The competition certainly needs to be taken seriously,” said Stefan Bratzel, director of the Center of Automotive Management at the University of Applied Sciences in Bergisch Gladbach, Germany. “The closer we get to autonomous driving, the weaker the connection becomes between the customer and the car. And Google and Apple aren’t burdened with old technology but can start fresh.”
From BMW:
“We never underestimate any competition,” said Ian Robertson, Bayerische Motoren Werke AG’s sales chief. “The entry barriers, which were in the past maybe more substantial, are now slightly lower. But at the same time, the complexities of the car industry are still there as well.”
From Jaguar Land Rover:
“The traditional thinking in the automotive industry isn’t suited to exploit the opportunities in the Internet community,” Wolfgang Ziebart, Jaguar Land Rover’s head of engineering, said in an interview. “If you need committees and so on to make decisions, then you’ve lost before you started.”
From Toyota:
“The key element is to make sure that when we’re working with them — and we’re totally open to work with any of them — it’s a real win-win,” said Didier Leroy, Toyota Motor Corp.’s European chief. “The carmakers don’t want just to become a kind of commodity, where somebody will only deliver an empty box and somebody will put in the box something which will be the real added value.”
The common elements to all of these? Respect, with a tinge of fear.
This is a fantastic idea. Apple started by scrounging the internet, looking for candidates for its Shot on iPhone 6 campaign. Some incredibly beautiful shots there. Great composition, crisp colors, wonderful lighting, all do a great job showing off the iPhone 6 camera.
Next up, take some of the best of the best and hang them on the sides of buildings. And not just any buildings, but big buildings, some of them giant skyscrapers. Follow this link to see this for yourself. Pretty cool.
Buzzfeed:
Apple’s latest ad campaign, Shot on iPhone 6, is crowdsourced using iPhone photography from around the world. It is taking photos found online, typically seen in a browser window, and plastering them up in massive sizes out in the real world.Apple found them by scouring online communities for photos that were tagged as having been taken with its newest iPhones.
Looks like keywording paid off for these folks.
The Workflow Video Field Guide starts with a few, easy workflows and builds upon them over the course of an hour to turn you into a Workflow pro. By the time you get to the end, you’ll be able to roll your own workflows and change the way you work on your iPhone and iPad.
I always like David Sparks’ work.
People take incredible photos and videos on iPhone 6 every day. And here are some of our favorites. Explore the gallery, learn a few tips, and see what’s possible with the world’s most popular camera.
A new page from Apple highlighting some great shots taken with the iPhone 6. These are quite impressive.
A note from John Gruber on Vesper device support and pricing.
This is a new project from the very talented Khoi Vinh. I think this is such a great idea and will make things much easier for a lot of people. You can get a deal after the 30-day trial by using code LOOP.
A new book by Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli that John Gruber had the opportunity to read and he likes it.
This was an interesting article from Om Malik on his recent apartment purge of items that were cluttering his life. We all have so much “stuff” that a purge is good once in a while.
Editor’s Note: This story was written by Steven Aquino and first appeared in The Loop Magazine Issue 31, which is available on the App Store for iPhone and iPad.
My maternal grandmother died in 2007, about a month after Steve Jobs introduced the original iPhone at Macworld Expo. Toward the end of her life, she suffered effects from dementia, a disease that robbed her of memories of herself and of her family. That her memory was getting progressively worse hit me hard, as my grandma was a seminal figure of my childhood. She effectively raised me, and it was painful for me to reconcile the person she was to the barely recognizable shell of herself she became. During this difficult time, I found solace in small distractions, one of which was exploring trang casino trực tuyến. The memories of her with dementia still haunt me to this day, despite all the happy times.
It was my grandmother who immediately came to mind when I was alerted to the film Alive Inside. Alive Inside is a documentary — winner of the Audience Award at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival — which follows Dan Cohen, a medical social worker and executive director of Music & Memory, as he works to introduce music to residents of a New York nursing home. Cohen’s belief is that music is instrumental in helping the elderly with memory loss “rediscover” lost memories, the effects of which help them in being more socially interactive.
Cohen introduced patients to the iPod shuffle, loaded with music that the recipient listened to when he or she was younger. The impact was apparent right away: soon after putting on the headphones and hitting Play, patients were bopping their heads to the tunes and even humming along with the songs. These moments were breakthroughs in the truest sense of the word, insofar that music really does have tremendous power in eliciting a slew of emotions and memories in people. Music is meaningful to everyone, but the fact that it works so well for people with brain-related diseases such as dementia or Alzheimer’s means that they no longer have to live withdrawn into themselves all the time. Experiencing music allows patients to be “human” again: singing, moving, being one with the world. It’s powerful stuff, not only for the afflicted, but also for their loved ones.
In the film, Cohen interviews doctors and nurses at the nursing home, who all speak effusively about the influence that music has on residents. And as important as unlocking forgotten memories and facilitating pro-social behavior is, there is another, unique angle to this story: accessibility.
In terms of accessibility, Alive Inside is, at its core, about access. The music — and the iPod itself — gives patients a lifeline to the memories they’ve lost and to the opportunity to open up socially and emotionally through those memories. Furthermore, it is perhaps the quintessential example of just how abstract and far-reaching accessibility truly is. Accessibility is not something that’s limited to just people with physical disabilities or just children in schools. It can also benefit the elderly, as is the case here, and even users with no challenges at all.
The conduit through which this music gets delivered to patients, the iPod shuffle, deserves a look from an accessibility point of view. It was a brilliant choice for two reasons. For one thing, the shuffle has only a few buttons for controlling playback, practically eliminating any learning curve. Patients needn’t worry about which button does what, so there’s less chance of someone becoming frustrated and abandoning the device. Second, the shuffle includes VoiceOver, which is very helpful in announcing artist and song information (not to mention battery status) to listeners. That’s a lifesaver to those who can’t remember what’s currently playing and who’s singing it. In essence, the shuffle is the easiest and simplest iPod of them all.
In a broader sense, the fact that the iPod shuffle is the perfect vehicle for delivering music to the patients featured in Alive Inside underscores an important point: the iPod line has life in it yet. While there can be no denying that the iPod’s relevance (and sales) have steadily faded over the last few years, the truth of the matter is that it still has a place in the market. If nothing else, Cohen shows in the film that the iPod remains a useful device, particularly when we’re talking about the shuffle. The iPod does one thing, and it does it very well; twilight be damned, the iPod is alive and well in fulfilling needs and use cases like it does in Alive Inside.
I had the opportunity to talk to Cohen via email about the film and the role the iPod played in his project.
Q: Why help those with Alzheimer’s or dementia?
A: People with dementia — and their families — are in a tough spot. Not only is this a terminal illness, but the progression leads to no longer recognizing family, or even being able to communicate. People become agitated because they are frustrated and then all too often prescribed heavy antipsychotic medications to calm them down. But these drugs come with serious side-effects, and the government is encouraging doctors to stop using these mostly ineffective drugs. Music that holds personal meaning is a back door to one’s cognition and sense of self. Much of the time the drugs can be replaced by music, which is amazing. People become more social and happier. It is not guaranteed to work all the time, but it does mostly. And if it doesn’t work, the worst-case-scenario is no improvement. Forty percent of those with dementia have a more advanced form of the disease. That’s more than 2 million in the U.S. People view them as no longer being able to experience pleasure… and give up on them as a result. With musical favorites, we know we can reach them and change their quality of life for the better.
Q: Why choose the iPod shuffle for this project?
A: Without a screen or click wheel, it is the easiest to use, not just for nursing home residents who are able, but for staff who are managing the iPods for many they care for. Many direct care staff have never owned or used an iPod, so the shuffle makes for great “training wheels.” Once they master the shuffle, they more quickly adopt to other iPod models. Mary Grace Lynch, director of therapeutic recreation at A. Holly Patterson Extended Care Facility in Uniondale, Long Island, New York, has 250 iPods for that many residents. Although she has used all models, the shuffle continues to be her first choice.
Q: What was the response from the residents to the iPod? Was it easy for them to use?
A: The first residents were perfectly capable of using the iPods, as they were in for different physical as opposed to cognitive issues. They had no trouble learning.
Q: How did you choose which music to load onto each iPod? Did you create personalized playlists in iTunes for each person?
A: The key here is total personalization. Long-term care facilities already have no shortage of music from various genres. Just as we wouldn’t want anyone else to pick our favorite songs just because they know what genre we love, the same will be true when we’re older and someone else is doing it for us. We learn as much as we can from each individual if they are able to articulate their preferences. If they are unable, then we work with the family to learn what music they enjoyed when they were young.
Q: Do you see other Apple technologies/products being useful to the elderly? If so, are there any plans to explore them in the future?
A: As soon as the iPad first came out, I loaned mine to nursing homes asking them to “see what you can do with it.” The feedback? It’s better than the music alone. In my view, every nursing home, assisted living facility, and hospital should have iPads available for those they care for. It is part of Music & Memory’s charter to leverage digital technology for this digitally-isolated population.
For anyone interested in music, iPods, or simply who know of family member or friend suffering from Alzheimer’s or dementia, Alive Inside is well worth a watch. (It certainly brought back memories of my grandmother and her battle with dementia.) And Music & Memory gladly accepts donations of old iPods to help with the program. (Speaking of donated iPods, a personal recommendation of mine is to consider creating a personalized playlist for a loved one with Alzheimer’s or dementia; I wish I would have done so for my grandma as she was in the throes of the disease.) The iPod may no longer be the focal point of Apple’s business, long overshadowed by the iPhone and iPad, but even in decline, Apple’s music player still has the ability to make a tremendous impact.
From the Internet History Podcast:
Filo had discovered the Mosaic browser shortly after it was released, and this led the pair to an all-consuming obsession with the World Wide Web. In those days, it was still possible to visit every single website in existence in a matter of a few hours. But new websites were popping up every day. So, in the hours when they should have been doing research, they were browsing the web instead, trying to find and catalog the new. Always a bit intellectually competitive, the two began collecting and trading links to the new websites they found. They started compiling these favorite links into a list, each trying to outdo the other by finding the coolest new site of the day. “I kept bugging Dave to show me the sites he had found,” Yang remembered later. “So he made his hot-list, and I made my hot-list, and he wrote some software to combine both our lists.”
This was right at the moment when Mosaic was lighting the fuse under the powder keg that was the early web. As the web grew that summer, things got a bit more complicated. Because Yang’s workstation was hooked up to Stanford’s public Internet connection, other people could view the list the two were generating by going to http://akebono.stanford.edu. The list was called Jerry’s Guide to the World Wide Web (initially, Filo didn’t want his name attached) and it proved popular among Yang and Filo’s group of friends. Word of mouth spread news of the list even further and soon complete strangers were emailing in suggestions of new sites to be included.
On the Yahoo! name:
The pair decided that their project needed a better name. A convention among software developers at the time was to name projects “Yet Another Something Something.” For example, YAML was Yet Another Markup Language. So, Yang and Filo settled on the name Yahoo!, which they claimed stood for Yet Another Hierarchical, Officious Oracle. The exclamation point was irreverent and entirely intentional—as Filo put it, “Pure marketing hype.” The url became http://akebono.stanford.edu/yahoo.
On leaving Stanford’s hallowed halls:
Stanford had a long history of being supportive toward student-run projects that may or may not evolve into startups at some later date. So, at least initially, Stanford was a generous host of Yahoo’s traffic and content, free of charge. When Netscape launched its beta browser late in 1994, it decided to make Yahoo the default link when a user clicked the “Directory” button on the top menu of the browser. No one could have anticipated it beforehand, but it turned out that having a button in Navigator’s menu bar was almost as valuable as having an icon on the Windows desktop. All those early web users who surfed the web via Netscape were introduced to Yahoo as the defacto search utility. The flow of curious web searchers grew into a flood. Yahoo had its first million hit day late in 1994. By January of 1995, soon after the domain Yahoo.com was registered, Yahoo had grown into a directory of 10,000 sites and was getting more than 100,000 unique visitors a day. The servers began to struggle under the deluge. And it turned out that there was a limit to Stanford’s generosity. The university asked Yang and Filo to find another host for their website.
I absolutely loved this read. Fascinating to relive this chapter in tech history.
Samsung revealed their next counter to Apple’s iPhone 6, 6 Plus, and Apple Pay. Samsung’s Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge are being decried by most people as shameless copies of the phones that have brought Apple so much success.
Hard to dispute that. After all, Samsung did ditch a number of features that helped distinguish their phones from Apple’s. Remember all those Samsung commercials that poked fun at the iPhone’s battery life and that quaint non-removable battery? Yup, Samsung saw the light, switched from plastic to metal and a non-removable battery. Along the way, they ditched another Samsung selling point, the removable SD card.
They’ve also improved their camera (adding the little bump that goes with it) and replaced the cheap plastic with Gorilla Glass 4, front and back, an effort to bring their hardware more in line with Apple’s.
What they’ve really done is scrub most of the originality from their product, making the safe move by simply following Apple. I say most of the originality because the S6 Edge does feature a screen that wraps around the edge of the phone, allowing the phone to flash for incoming phone calls, even if it is face down. Time will tell if that feature is an innovation or a nuisance. But I digress.
Perhaps the most significant feature in the new S6 is the improved (allegedly) fingerprint sensor. Samsung recently acquired LoopPay, a payment processing technology that mimics the magnetic strip on your credit card. They’ve also rolled out a new payment scheme called (wait for it) Samsung Pay that seems straight off the Apple Pay playbook. Getting the fingerprint sensor right is critical here.
From the New York Times Q&A on Samsung Pay:
Q. How secure is Samsung Pay?
Samsung Pay, like Apple Pay, promises to be more secure than plastic. With both services, the merchant gets a substitute 16-digit card number stored on the device. A verification code is created for each transaction, based in part on unique keys on the phone. Even if hackers get that substitute number, they need the actual phone for the verification code.
That said, LoopPay’s stand-alone technology uses the regular card number, and magnetic signals are easy to detect and replicate. Samsung is working with both Visa and MasterCard to make substitute numbers available with LoopPay on the phones to boost security. James Anderson, a senior vice president for mobile at MasterCard, says the bank issuing the card needs to participate. If they don’t, some card holders might not be able to make mobile payments, even with the right phone. Samsung says participating banks will include American Express, Bank of America, Citi, JPMorgan Chase, and U.S. Bank.
LoopPay is interesting, but it is mired in the present, mimicking the magnetic strip already in everyone’s wallet. As to Samsung Pay, it’s simply a case of copy, copy, copy. The problem for Samsung is that they are on the same side of the fence as Google (being an Android phone), Xiaomi, and others. To succeed, they will have to stand out from the crowd. By jettisoning the features that make their phones unique, they’ve lost the ability to do so. Perhaps they will be satisfied with being the most Apple of all the Android phones.
To me, Samsung’s latest move is disappointing. Rather than push the ball forward, they’re back on their heels. Not chess so much. More like follow-the-leader.
Apple:
People take incredible photos and videos on iPhone 6 every day. And here are some of our favorites. Explore the gallery, learn a few tips, and see what’s possible with the world’s most popular camera.
This is a gorgeous gallery of images that are hard to believe were all taken with the iPhone 6.
New York Times:
When Apple releases its watch in April, it will enter a market already flooded with smartwatches running Android Wear, a version of Google’s Android software system tailored for wearable computers.The results so far for Android smartwatches have been disappointing. About 720,000 smartwatches with Android Wear were shipped in 2014, according to Canalys, the research firm.
How is that “flooded”? Chen doesn’t even back up the premise of his story’s headline. I’ve spoken to dozens of “normal” people who are very excited to see the Apple Watch. Chen writes another of his typical poorly written and thought out New York Times hack jobs.
Thanks to John Molloy for the link.
“We come from the land of the ice and snow,
From the midnight sun where the hot springs flow.”
If those words mean anything to you, spend a few minutes watching these awesome kids getting their Zeppelin on.
The 2014-15 Louisville Leopard Percussionists rehearsing Kashmir, The Ocean, and Immigrant Song by Led Zeppelin. The Louisville Leopard Percussionists began in 1993. They are a performing ensemble of approximately 55 student musicians, ages 7-12, living in and around Louisville, Kentucky. Each student learns and acquires proficiency on several instruments, such as marimbas, xylophone, vibraphone, drum set, timbales, congas, bongos and piano.
Note the two drummers, keeping the beat through the whole series. Then keep an eye out for the kid on the right with that awesome hat. So great!
Pretty cool. Reminds me of Wendy’s which, back in the day, had these old-timey ads (scroll about halfway down the page) embedded on all their table-tops.
This Wikipedia page is for the more modern version. Interestingly, it is marked for deletion, so visit while you can.
Thank you to Algoriddim for sponsoring The Loop this week. djay Pro for Mac provides a complete toolkit for performing DJs. Its unique and modern interface is built around a sophisticated integration with iTunes and Spotify, giving you instant access to millions of tracks. Pristine sound quality and a powerful set of features including high-definition waveforms, four decks, audio effects, and hardware integration give you endless creative flexibility to take your sets to new heights. Special introductory pricing (40% off) for a limited time.
Jim’s Note: I had the opportunity to test djay Pro for Mac and loved it. I’m still using it.
A few highlights from yesterday’s Tim Cook Telegraph interview:
The watch has also been designed and engineered to be a great time-keeper: it will be correct to 50 milliseconds, he promises.
No traditional watch mechanism will ever be as precise as a digital watch. Great precision is to be expected.
The Watch will operate a special rewards system: users will get credits if they exercise enough. They will also be encouraged to increase their metabolic targets if they meet their exercise targets consistently. Consumers will clearly have an incentive to wear the watch for as much of the day as possible, and even in the shower.
Clearly the Apple Watch is waterproof if you are being encouraged to wear it in the shower.
The watch is designed to be able to replace car keys and the clumsy, large fobs that are now used by many vehicles
Love this idea. I wonder about the security involved. Will Apple Watch work with any car fob, or just those from companies that do a deal with Apple?
The watch’s battery life will last the whole day, Cook says, in another revelation that will please potential users, and it won’t take as long to charge as an iPhone.
As expected.
shop floor staff treated their CEO like a visiting guru. It could have been embarrassing or cringe-inducing- but for some reason wasn’t.
One member of the sales staff put his hand up: he wouldn’t ask a question, he said, but wanted to deliver a short statement.
He thanked Cook for coming, and for his hard work and that of the senior staff in California. The staff then mobbed their hero, taking selfies with him and shaking him by the hand.
Tim Cook has really taken on the hero’s role at Apple. Seems like all the reverence that used to be directed at Steve Jobs is now finding a new direction.
The Grand Budapest Hotel won the Academy Award for Best Production Design (an award that combines the categories of art direction and set decoration). In my opinion, no other movie even came close.
To get a sense of the elements involved, take a read through this interview with the film’s lead graphic designer Annie Atkins, who was responsible for every graphic prop in the movie.
Wes is completely involved in every aspect of his filmmaking, and I worked very closely with him and the production designer, Adam Stockhausen, every day. This film was particularly fun, I think, from a graphics point of view, because we were creating this entirely fictional country that Wes had written – the State of Zubrowka. It meant that every little detail had to be made from scratch – flags, banknotes, postage stamps, everything. Adam had already collected a huge amount of reference from 1930s Eastern Europe when I joined them, and I would start each graphic prop by showing Wes a real artefact from the time. I would show him redrafts of designs sometimes 20 times a day. Wes has a very graphic sensibility – that’s evident in all his films, of course.
Once the layout of each design had been decided, then it was time to make the prop physically, and make something that will work on set in an actor’s hands. I use traditional methods in graphic prop-making wherever possible: a real 1930s typewriter for typewritten documents; a dipping pen and ink and for any handwriting. Pieces have to be aged, too, as nothing should look like it was made in an art department five minutes ago. Madame D’s last will and testament took a lot of ageing, for example, as it contained over 600 pieces that were scripted as being some 46 years old. I have some tricks of the trade that I’ve learnt over the years… mostly involving a big vat of tea and a hair dryer.
This shows how much time and craft Wes Anderson puts into his movies, and it shows.
[Hat tip to Bryan Hart]