Troy Wolverton for the Mercury News:

My conclusion: For PC users, Windows 8 is a major misstep.

Tim Bajarin:

This is a very important OS for PC vendors and most are betting their companies on it for any future growth. I am just not convinced that it will be a raging success out of the gate without the proper optimized alternate input that matches the touch input that is supposed to be the center of Metro’s real user value.

Windows 8, the new Vista.

Julien’s Auctions is proud to present Property From The Estate of Les Paul. Les Paul not only revolutionized the sound of the electric guitar, but also the technology behind modern day sound recording.

Incredible.

Nathan Ingraham for The Verge:

Microsoft’s working quickly to counter backlash it’s receiving after denying a user who won a Windows Phone challenge his just reward. Yesterday, Sahas Katta won a “Smoked by Windows Phone” challenge when his Galaxy Nexus displayed the weather of two different cities faster than the Windows Phone he was up against, but the Microsoft store claimed that he had to show weather from two different states. Microsoft has been roundly bashed for this technicality since then, so Windows Phone evangelist Ben Rudolph has just taken to Twitter to apologize and offer Katta a new laptop and Windows Phone, as well as an apology.

I’m unclear why the idiots at the Microsoft Store thought they could or should have gotten away with this on a technicality; the “Smoked by a Windows Phone” campaign is there simply to draw attention to the devices to encourage people to try them. But Microsoft’s ways are often indecipherable to me, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.

Mike Daisey, on his own blog:

When I said onstage that I had personally experienced things I in fact did not, I failed to honor the contract I’d established with my audiences over many years and many shows. In doing so, I not only violated their trust, I also made worse art.This is not the place for me to try and explain my good intentions. We all know where the road paved with good intentions leads. In fact, I think it might lead to where I’m sitting right now.

Aww, poor baby.

Mike Daisey, for the uninitiated, is the activist stage performer whose one-man act, “The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs,” sought to turn the spotlight on the treatment of workers in the Chinese factories where Apple products are made. A reporter at NPR’s Marketplace discovered that Daisey fabricated his description of his trip to China and the meetings he had, despite Daisey’s insistence to attendees of his performances and journalists alike that it was true.

Now that he’s been exposed as a liar, his colleagues and – perhaps more importantly – the venues willing to pay him for his work are pulling away from him, and he is finally able to understand what he’s done.

This isn’t to diminish the very real issue of factory conditions at Foxconn and other Apple-contracted facilities. They’re certainly not ideal by Western standards.

But that doesn’t mean liars should be able to make money by exploiting people’s good will, either.

Michael Kan for Computerworld:

The iPad device was granted the China Compulsory Certification by the China Quality Certification Center according to the regulator’s website. The certification is a mandatory stamp necessary for Apple to sell the device in the country.

The new iPad is already available in China via the black market. This regulatory hurdle doesn’t affect Apple’s standing in Chinese court, where it is being sued by the Chinese firm Proview for trademark infringement. Apple says it paid Proview to use the name; Proview claims that Apple paid its Taiwanese subsidiary, not the parent company.

This has to be the most amazing sponsor page ever made. The guys at Oomph made this page to promote Sidekick as the sponsor on The Loop this week. (Tip: click on the lightning bolt on the right hand side).

Sidekick is a stealthy little Mac app that automatically updates laptop settings based on where you are. It takes care of annoying tasks so you can focus on what you need to do.

Krystian Kozerawski interviewed Polish Member of Parliament John Godson on how he uses his iPad. The link is translated using Google.

I’ve still never played a single game of Angry Birds.

Some good stuff in here.

Paswall claims that she didn’t realize that she was walking into a wall of glass as she approached the store, and says that she broke her nose as a result of the collision.Her suit claims that “the defendant was negligent … in allowing a clear, see-through glass wall and/or door to exist without proper warning.”

Don’t blame your stupid on someone else.

Ina Fried for All Things D, quoting from an e-mail she received from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC):

“…The bottom line is that AT&T’s proposal to acquire a major competitor was unprecedented in scope and the company’s own confidential documents showed that the merger would have resulted in significant job losses.”

What does it say about the state of the nation when major corporations and federal bureaucracies act like bloggers?

Smithsonian Air and Space:

After flying 148 million miles and orbiting Earth 5,830 times, Discovery, first flown in August 1984, was being decommissioned and readied for its trip to the National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in northern Virginia, where it will arrive in mid-April.The three main engines had been removed from the shuttle’s aft end, which was now covered by a tightly fitted mask with three white discs the size of the engine bells. Clear plastic stretched across the crater in the orbiter’s nose, where the forward reaction control system—small thrusters that maneuvered the spacecraft in orbit—had been removed.And this harvesting of the orbiter’s components was only the beginning.

I always wish I had seen one of these launches in person.

AllThingsD:

Apple’s move to make Best Buy an outlet for the iPhone back in 2008 is proving a wise one — lucrative, too.Over the past few years, the retail chain has become an increasingly important outlet for Apple, extending its reach and distribution via its 1,100 stores. About 600 of them host an Apple Store-within-a-store, most of those in geographic locations that Cupertino feels are too small to support a dedicated Apple store.And they’re selling a lot of iPhones.

Actually, given the number of stores and the reach, I’m surprised Best Buy doesn’t sell even more iPhones.

Jessica Chou, the Daily Meal:

We guess a delivery car or bicyclist was too pedestrian for tech folks; over in San Francisco, something called TacoCopter has popped up, delivering online orders of tacos via helicopter — an unmaned, robotic one, to be exact.

TacoCopter. The concept fills my imagination with gleeful images of fleets of robotic drones delivering packages of all sorts. We live in the future!

AT&T made it pretty clear it would work to avoid exactly this from happening if its acquisition of T-Mobile were approved. This blog post is AT&T’s “I told you so” moment.

Many thanks to Edovia for sponsoring The Loop this week with Screens.

Screens VNC for iOS and Mac. It just works.

Josh Topolsky:

Mike Daisey is not a hero, but I’m not sure he’s a villain either.He leaned into his lies to sell tickets to a show, to get on network TV, to make money and get famous. But along the way — either on purpose or by accident — he opened a lot of eyes.And that’s the truth.

Bullshit.

Daisey made up some horrendous lies about Foxconn and Apple that never should have been told. He didn’t open anyone’s eyes. Rather, he infuriated the population with false stories of abuse, caused harm to the reputations of both companies and many of its executives, including Steve Jobs and Tim Cook.

Apple has been auditing its factories since 2007 and making conditions better for workers — that’s before Mike Daisey came along and they’ll be doing it after he leaves the public eye. Why? Because it’s the right thing to do. In fact, much of the information that media organizations use against Apple comes from the reports it makes public.

There is no reason to make excuses for Daisey or his lies.

SlashFilm:

Disney is a prolific company with its name on a great many successes, and it likes to hide its missteps and failures. The process of doing so sometimes helps those mistakes become things of legend. Song of the South, with its politically incorrect and racist portrayals of certain characters, is likely the most famous example. Another example might be The Sweatbox, a very rarely-seen documentary about the failed making of an animated film called Kingdom of the Sun, which eventually morphed into The Emperor’s New Groove.The Sweatbox filmmakers John-Paul Davidson and Trudie Styler were given unprecedented access to Disney’s process and the resulting film painted the executives in such a negative light, they more or less made sure the film would never been seen in public.

A harsh look at the process of making movies with some cool behind the scenes footage.

Om Malik:

Unlike the past, when Coca Cola, Levi’s and McDonald’s were icons of globalization, today the brands are very different. They aren’t entirely American, but instead very global.

I remember when seeing a European brand was odd, but not so much anymore. It really is becoming a small world.

Chris Ziegler for the Verge:

T-Mobile USA CEO Philipp Humm has sent a memo to his employees today announcing the net elimination of around 1,900 jobs nationwide, primarily resulting from the closure of seven call center facilities…3,300 positions are being slashed in total, with 1,400 being added at the company’s remaining 17 call centers.

The company has to contract before it can grow again, provided it can survive the LTE migration. Big challenges ahead for T-Mobile and for Humm. In some ways, he’s in the same unfortunate position as Gil Amelio was before Steve Jobs returned to Apple.

Stock that baby up with Heineken and we’re on the road.

Imagine you have a tool to express your talent with the best tone ever. Imagine people listening to your guitar tracks and saying “wow! how did you get that killer tone?!”Imagine you have more than 160 models including Randall, THD and Brunetti amplifiers. And that these, for the first time in software form, cannot be distinguished from the real ones. That’s Overloud TH2.

I just got this software this afternoon, but holy shit is it ever good. I need to dig into it some more, but I’ll give you some more detail and a buying recommendation when I do.

I joined host Chuck Joiner and book author/TUAW’s Steve Sande on this week’s MacJury to discuss Apple’s dividends and stock buyback program, the new Apple TV and other issues of the day.

Would you like a new desk or cubicle? What if you could have one of these two designs? The Blackhawk Trunk is “inspired by the gleaming nose cones and fuselages of mid-20th-century aircraft” and the Mayfair Trunk “spares no detail with handmade distressed cigar leather, a solid wood frame and over 3000 hand-hammered brass nail heads.” Both are gorgeous and would look great in your home or office!