Thanks to Acorn for sponsoring the The Loop this week.

Brought to you by Flying Meat’s Acorn, the Mac OS X image editor for humans.

• New Saint Amp effect emulates a classic amp+cab in a pedal.
• New switch to enable/disable automation for smart parameters
• Improvement: the list in the sound browser now scrolls to show the current sound and variation
• Improvement: better compatibility when RTAS and AAX plug-ins are both present

I started using this a couple of weeks ago and I’m impressed so far.

If you’ve ever wanted to learn how to play the guitar but didn’t know where to start and don’t want to spend a lot of money on private lessons, this is the book for you!Follow along with our guitar expert Jen Trani—a guitar instructor who’s been playing since she was 13—as she leads you through 20 video lessons! With interactive diagrams and quizzes, this beginner guitar course will get you acquainted with the basics so you can start rockin’ out today!

If you can play your guitar on the iPhone and iPad, it makes sense that you should be able to learn how to play to.

AppleInsider:

After hearing Page’s interpretation of Jobs’s words, Isaacson spoke out this week in a speech at the Royal institution of Great Britain. Isaacson said he felt that Android had ripped off many of his ideas found in the iPhone and iPad, and that his ire was very real, according to Macworld.“It’s almost copied verbatim by Android,” Isaacson said. “And they license it around promiscuously. And then Android starts surpassing Apple in market share, and this totally infuriated him. It wasn’t a matter of money. He said, ‘You can’t pay me off, I’m here to destroy you.'”

It’s time for Google to shut up.

John Gruber:

The sliding camera button on the iOS 5.1 home screen is a perfect example of Apple favoring obviousness over simplicity and even elegance.

Adrienne LaFrance:

Pew says around 150 U.S. dailies have digital subscription models, but AP reports 300 newspapers with paywalls.

I gladly pay for a number of blogs, but I don’t have a subscription to a single newspaper.

I associate “undesign” with websites where the design and content is scaled back to the bare necessities, allowing for the quick implementation of a simple yet professional design.

Chris Armstrong:

There’s been a lot of concern raised recently about Apple’s use of the term “4G” to describe the cellular connectivity in the new iPad. There seems to be some confusion. I decided I’d try to make sense of it.

AP:

He designed Porsche’s classic 911 sports car – the sleek model that evokes power, wealth and envy among aficionados – cementing his grandfather’s name into the modern psycheFerdinand Alexander Porsche died Thursday in Salzburg, Austria at age 76, Porsche AG said. No cause was provided.

First Jim Marshall, now Porsche.

Russ starts at the beginning with opening and saving a session, then goes into using loops, recording and editing audio, using virtual instruments, built-in effects and exporting your masterpiece for CD and the internet.

The 1 hour video is free with registration. I use Groove3 all the time for Pro Tools video training and it’s always high-quality stuff.

So why didn’t Nokia pack the phone with the newest processor, best display, and more storage? I think it all comes down to price.

There is a place for low-end smartphones, but I don’t think people want shit products.

Chris Sauve:

iOS 5 captured approximately 75% of all iOS users in the same amount of time it took Gingerbread to get 4% of all Android users. Even more astounding is that 15 weeks after launch iOS 4 was at 70% and iOS 5 was at 60% while Ice Cream Sandwich got to just 1% share at the same age. If there were any question as to whether iOS had a less fragmented ecosystem than Android, the past two charts provide a fairly definitive answer.

But Android is winning.

Odi Kosmatos:

Here’s why I think there will be a tablet from Apple that’s optimized for reading and has a 7″ retina display that runs iPhone apps unmodified, not a tablet with a 7.85″ display that runs iPad apps unmodified.

Rian van der Merwe:

I understand and appreciate the arguments these designers and writers are trying to make, but as someone who teaches introductory courses on User Experience Design, this plead to call ourselves something else (or nothing at all) is problematic.

It is with profound sorrow that we announce the passing of our beloved founder and leader for the past 50 years, Jim Marshall. While mourning the Guv’nor though, we also salute a legendary man who led a full and truly remarkable life.

Marshall amps are the sound of Rock for so many of us. I had the pleasure of meeting Jim Marshall a few years ago and was able to tell him the effect his life’s work had on me.

Rest in Peace.

It’s worth checking to find out. I did, but I’m not infected.

Wired Gadget Lab:

There are only around 400 North Atlantic right whales left in the world today, according to International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), one of the collaborators on the app. With such a small population, the right whales are one of the rarest large animals and are close to extinction. Collisions with ships is currently the leading cause of death for these remaining whales.To prevent ships from striking whales, Whale Alerts works by linking near-real-time acoustic buoys that listen for whale calls to an iOS device in a ship’s bridge. Using these whale calls, a GPS system and a vessel’s Automatic Identification System (AIS), the app displays a whale’s location in relation to a ship’s location on a digital nautical chart. The app also sends alerts with National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration conservation measures when a ship enters a conservation area.

“Find My Whale” app?

Picking up where UA’s original 1176LN Limiting Amplifier plug-in left off, this new 1176 collection provides unrivaled emulations of three distinct 1176 hardware units, and is indispensable for any serious engineer or producer.

Some of the best.

Mat Honan:

Steve Jobs is dead. He doesn’t need to do another day’s work as your puppet pundit. Let the man rest.

Yes, please.

Free MP3 Download from the Red Hot Chili Peppers 2011 Europe Tour.

Google CEO Larry Page:

I think that served their interests. For a lot of companies, it’s useful for them to feel like they have an obvious competitor and to rally around that. I personally believe that it’s better to shoot higher. You don’t want to be looking at your competitors. You want to be looking at what’s possible and how to make the world better.

So, Larry looks to make the world a better place and Steve didn’t? Oh please.

The Dropbox Blog:

For every friend you invite that installs Dropbox, you’ll both get 500 MB of free space. If you’ve got a free account, you can invite up to 32 people for a whopping total of 16 GB of extra space. Pro accounts now earn 1 GB per referral, for a total of 32 GB of extra space. Have you already invited a bunch of people? Don’t worry. Within a few days, you’ll get full credit for every referral that’s already been completed. Boom!

Nice little bonus for those of us who use Dropbox.

CIO Journal:

About 46% of corporations now issue Macs to employees, up by half in just two years, according to a Forrester report. “The use of iPads and iPhones in the workplace is creating increased awareness and consideration of Macs,” said Frank Gillett, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester.Even though more companies are starting to issue Macs, the percent of workers using them is still fairly slim. About 7% of computers companies give to employees are Macs, he said.Macs are the de facto choice of many Silicon Valley startups, and many larger companies now let workers choose a Mac. For example, Cisco CIO Rebecca Jacoby told CIO Journal that about 25% of Cisco’s 63,870 employees use Macs.

Walter Isaacson:

Even though he will not be around to see them to fruition, his rules for success helped him build a company that not only will create these and other disruptive products, but will stand at the intersection of creativity and technology as long as Jobs’s DNA persists at its core.

“as long as Jobs’s DNA persists” may be the key to the future success or failure of Apple.

Dave Caolo:

I’ve noticed an interesting shift in blogging. In short, there’s a trend moving away from hyper-focused niche blogs, back to what I’d call “personality” blogs. It makes me think of when I started writing online in 2000, and I like it.

Dave’s article really took me back to when I began writing on the Internet.

For me, blogging in 2000 is what Twitter is today. People posted short items or a picture of what they were doing, but then it started to become a business. That’s not a bad thing at all, but it is nice to reminisce.

Erica Ogg for GigaOM:

Snapguide and Paper have two things in common. Both appeal to the creative side of mobile users, and both are themselves beautifully made and deceptively simple to use.I think it’s these qualities that are going to provide a roadmap for more iOS apps to come that will appeal to the artsy, creative side of people, rather than the traditional consumption-oriented theme of what have so far been the most popular types of apps on Apple’s platform.

Absolutely right. We’ve gone through several of these waves of apps from productivity to games and every time developers start to push the envelope of what can be done, we get another one. Creativity looks to be the new wave.

CNET has a stupid article full of stupid about how Apple should dump the iPod touch. Instead of linking to the stupid, I’m going to link to Harry Marks’ article tearing it apart.

It’s smart.

Mark Hattersley for Macworld UK:

BlackBerry’s woes continue after a celebrity party, thrown by the company last night to celebrate BBM, ended in a vicious stabbing that forced police to lock celebrities inside the club and BlackBerry to cancel the event.

I could make a joke like maybe someone threw an iPhone into the crowd, but out of respect for the person that was injured, I won’t.