This is one clever design. Take a bulky UK iPad charger and give it a twist so it folds flat. Perfect for travel. Terrific job.

Interesting infographic. Take a look, see if it all looks right to you, then read the comment below it.

Some breathtaking shots. My favorite is number 69, Invisible Reflection. Wow.

Many thanks to BlissList for sponsoring The Loop’s RSS feed this week. BlissList is an iPhone app that enables you to buy from all stores in one central place, with just one account.

While social shopping hubs such as Pinterest and Wanelo do a great job of helping you discover products from different stores, they require you to go to each store’s site to buy those products. What stands between you and the perfect pair of jeans and shoes is that you have to go through a painful, multi-step checkout process at different stores. Not to mention, the inconsistent buying process between stores and the small canvas of a mobile phone make you want to tear your hair out. BlissList eliminates all these hassles by providing a centralized and convenient way for you to buy the products you want. With BlissList you can add any product from any store and securely check out in one place, so your credit card is not all over the web. Additionally, you can connect with your friends for social funding for your products. BlissList is free and there are no service fees or price markups. Buy your shoes and keep your hair. Download BlissList on the App Store.

A great article from Charles Arthur that delves into the differences between market share and installed base.

According to Reuters, BlackBerry’s board has had discussions with Apple, Microsoft, Cisco, Google, Lenovo and others about selling BlackBerry intellectual property, similar to the patent purchases from bankrupt Nortel back in 2011.

Allyson Kazmucha does a nice review of the Olloclip with lots of comparison photos. I’ve always wondered if these things were really worth it, but it looks nice.

Jim and Dan talk about the new iWork, iMac performance for recording, Universal Audio’s Apollo, guitar cabinets, IK Multimedia’s iLoud, MacBook Pro 13-inch keyboard and trackpad issues and a fix, desktops, Alfred and launch-bar style alternatives, and more.

Besides emphasizing Office, Elop would be prepared to sell or shut down major businesses to sharpen the company’s focus, the people said. He would consider ending Microsoft’s costly effort to take on Google with its Bing search engine, and would also consider selling healthy businesses such as the Xbox game console if he determined they weren’t critical to the company’s strategy, the people said.

Xbox is the only Microsoft product I currently use.

When Eddie Van Halen releases a new guitar and amp, people notice.

Everyone needs a beard.

Don’t worry it’s safe for work. I don’t know how this works and I don’t think I want to.

Lots of new features in the latest version for iPhone and iPad.

They did a pretty incredible job putting this together.

I loved listening to this one.

Eugene Wei worked for Amazon from 1997-2004. The linked blog post explores Amazon’s push for revenue growth while forsaking profits, at least for the short term.

Does Amazon lose money on sales of some individual items? For sure. The first Kindle ebooks that were priced at $9.99 when Amazon had to pay more than that per copy to publisher were one example. Giant, heavy electronics items that Amazon sometimes ships for free when the shipping cost is clearly non-trivial and cost more than the usual thin margins on such goods are another.

But those represent a tiny fraction of the whole:

The vast vast majority of products Amazon sells it makes a profit on. Over time, more of these products that inadvertently sell at a loss will be corrected so that no longer happens, and what remains will be products Amazon intentionally uses as loss leaders.

And then there’s Marketplace sales:

The platform of Amazon is profitable, too. When other people sell products on Amazon Marketplace the gross margin is huge. I sell a used book on Amazon, it takes a cut of the transaction, I am the one packing and shipping that item to the buyer. You don’t have to be a financial whiz to understand the cost of that transaction to Amazon is minimal.

If Amazon tends to make money on the vast majority of its transactions, why doesn’t it generate boundless profits?

Because Amazon has boundless ambition. It wants to eat global retail.

Given that giant mission, Amazon has decided to continue to invest to arm itself for a much larger scale of business. If it were purely a software business, its fixed cost investments for this journey would be lower, but the amount of capital required to grow a business that has to ship millions of packages to customers all over the world quickly is something only a handful of companies in the world could even afford.

Fascinating read.

Yes please!

If Apple is going to make inroads into the console gaming space, this is an experience they will have to exceed. The Kinect voice recognition has gotten better than on the 360 (as you’d expect), and more solidly integrates with the OS.

Voice controls are now a system-level process that runs in the background while you’re using an app or game. You can call out, “Xbox, snap friends” while playing a game to bring up your friends list on the side of the screen, without even pausing. Then there are the handy app-specific shortcuts activated by voice commands. “Xbox, watch Comedy Central” let me jump straight to watching the channel even from another app, for instance.

This is certainly a step towards the magical computer/living room holy grail of integration. Just a step, since this is not a desktop experience. You won’t be editing documents or creating emails on your Xbox One. But definitely a solid step forward.

Aside from voice, the most significant system-level feature enabled by the Kinect is the ability of the Xbox One to log a user in automatically based only on their visuals. The first time you set up the system, it takes you through a 30-second process where you log in to your Microsoft account. Kinect then builds a personal profile it will associate with that account based on facial recognition but also the camera’s basic skeletal model of your body. This process forms a unique biometric ID that the Kinect uses to automatically identify a user, logging them in to Xbox Live and bringing up a personalized menu that includes their recent apps and favorite items.

Another step forward. Touch ID works well on a phone and is a solid security solution. But it is still an active solution (meaning you need to take an action to achieve your goal). The ability to walk up to your Xbox One and have it automatically log you in is a passive solution. Remains to be seen how secure this form of biometric profiling is, but not so sure security is as big a requirement in the living room, where you have more control over physical access than you do with your laptop or phone.

The process of unlocking your device based on some form of biometric has lots of room for improvement and is a real opportunity for the company that gets it right. There are keyless deadbolts for your front door that allow you to unlock your front door remotely via a Bluetooth signal from your phone. There’s an app that lets you knock on your phone to unlock your computer, also accomplished via Bluetooth (read the comments before you buy).

Point is, this is a wide-open, wildly innovative field. Apple has a real opportunity here. The living room is like the Wild West. Still untamed, still full of possibility.

In Issue 14 of The Loop Magazine:

Jim Dalrymple reviews the new iPad Air and and then looks at which iPad—the Air or the iPad mini—is right for you; Victor Agreda, Jr. discusses “Magic and Creativity”; Alex Vollmer explains everything about using Audiobus in “Get on the Audiobus”; and Roy J. Moss reveals “What They Don’t Tell You About Being A Sysadmin”.

All logos should have a death metal version.

I use these cabinets all the time. If you play guitar and record, you have to try these.

Federico Viticci:

With iOS 7, Apple has introduced the possibility for third-party developers to support custom shortcuts with external (Bluetooth) keyboards in their apps. Keyboard shortcuts, longtime favorites of OS X power users, can now be enabled in iOS apps.

Love lists. Always fascinating to see what other people think of as scary. To me, the scariest books are the early works of Clive Barker and almost anything by H. P. Lovecraft.

Designed by an MIT research team, the so-called “seat-e” is a public bench that provides a range of services:

Installed recently at the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway, each of these two sleek, backless benches has a solar panel on one side to provide power to recharge cellphones, a connection to the Internet, and for night lighting. Soon they also will have sensors to detect for air pollution — even telling whether someone nearby is smoking.

Love this.

Traditionally, if you brought your damaged iPhone in to an Apple Store for repair, they would have to give you a brand new (to you, at least) phone, then send your damaged phone out for repair or recycling.

According to 9to5 Mac (see the headline link), that process has changed for the iPhone 5c and 5s.

> Apple is gearing up to soon begin hardware repairs for the iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c in its chain of retail stores, according to sources with knowledge of the upcoming initiative. These sources say that Apple Stores will be able to replace several parts of the iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c on-site, meaning that Apple will no-longer need to fully replace iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c units with damage or other problems… > > The sources say that Apple will be providing its stores with special machinery, which you can learn more here on how to get it fixed when necessary, to replace the touchscreens on both the iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c. These machines will be used specifically to calibrate the displays. The screen replacements cost $149 for each device, and this price point is significantly more affordable than the several-hundred dollars required to completely replace a device with a damaged/cracked screen. > > In addition to displays, Apple will have the capability to replace the volume buttons, vibrating motor, rear-camera, and speaker system on the iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c. Apple Stores will be able to replace the conventional Home button on the iPhone 5c, but it does not appear that Apple will be able to conduct swaps for the Touch ID-based button on the iPhone 5s

This is good news all around. Better for the environment, and a potentially cheaper and faster path for an out of warranty problem with your phone.