November 4, 2011
Written by Jim Dalrymple
Pro Tools 10 is chock full of new features and functions that will dramatically speed up your workflow and production time. Pro Tools guru Michael Costa takes you step by step through each new feature and function, in-depth, leaving no stone unturned.
I’ve watched several of Costa’s videos before and he is a really good trainer.
Written by Peter Cohen
Engadget:
Based on leaked slides that we’ve received, the Nook Color will be dropping to $199 by November 16th, but the $50 price savings ain’t all that B&N’s throwing your way. The Nook Color v1.4 update will bring along some pretty intense extras, including the addition of Hulu Plus, “millions of songs” from services like Rhapsody, Grooveshark, Pandora and MOG and a litany of new tailored apps (with Scrabble called out in particular).
As Amazon gets ready to ship the Kindle Fire and as holiday sales heat up, Barnes & Noble isn’t taking it lying down. They’re bound and determined to keep their own tablet very much in the minds of consumers.
Written by Peter Cohen
New York Times:
It wasn’t just Gawker. The waters quickly muddied after the first wave of obituaries passed. Thanks to Facebook and Twitter, anyone with a beef against Mr. Jobs or Apple found a platform to sound off about an industrialist who doubled as a pop star.The Steve Jobs backlash began as quickly as the mythmaking had. Candlelight vigils were just starting to form outside Apple stores worldwide when bloggers began their assault.
I suspect it’s a combination of the ever-shortening news cycle and bloggers’ and news posters’ understanding that everything to do with Apple is link bait.
Written by Jim Dalrymple
It’s hard to imagine that the PlayBook isn’t catching on with this type of interface.
November 3, 2011
Written by Jim Dalrymple
Hugo Miller and Matt Walcoff:
Research In Motion Ltd. (RIM)’s decline below book value for the first time in nine years leaves the BlackBerry maker worth less than the net value of its property, patents and other assets in a sign of investors’ lowered faith.“This is a wounded puppy,” Timothy Ghriskey, who oversees $2 billion as chief investment officer of Solaris Group LLC in Bedford Hills, New York.
Investors had the chance to kick the co-CEOs to the curb at the last annual meeting and they didn’t. Instead they asked the pair softball questions and accepted their lame explanations. The downfall of the stock is as much the fault of the investors as it is the CEOs at this point.
Written by Jim Dalrymple
Chris and Michael, Fusion’s previous owners, have done a great job building and running the network. We’re honored to be the new owners, and plan to build upon the great work they have done. We will continue to run Fusion Ads as it’s own standalone network. The value we bring for Fusion publishers is our ability to run these types of networks efficiently, profitably, and with great care toward the community that they help support. The value we bring for advertisers is similar, but with the added benefit of our software running their campaigns that will have real-time insight into performance and hassle-free billing and creative management. We look forward to working hard to serve the Fusion Ads advertisers and publishers for years to come.
I was with Buy Sell Ads for two years before joining Fusion in September. Now I’m back, sort of. The BSA people were always good to me and the way ads are done on The Loop under Fusion will not change.
Written by Jim Dalrymple
Joshua Schnell:
For instance, the iPod nano doesn’t have built in Bluetooth or Wi-Fi, so wirelessly connecting it to your audio systems is out of the question.Well, at least, that was a problem. A new Kickstarter project, named The Proof, has the lofty goal of changing all of that by including not only Bluetooth into their iWatch case design, but also waterproofing.
Lots of cool Kickstarter projects around. Good find by Schnell.
Feral Interactive announced the release Thursday of Batman: Arkham Asylum for the Mac. It’s available for $39.99 either for download through the Mac App Store and other services, or as a boxed product.

Batman: Arkham Asylum is the award-winning stealth-based action game featuring the Dark Knight himself, trapped in Gotham’s home for the criminally insane by none other than the Joker. Batman squares off against Harley Quinn, Bane, Killer Croc, Poison Ivy and Scarecrow along with myriad henchmen and goons before he can escape.
The game was developed based on original story by Emmy award-winning writer Paul Dini, with voices including Mark Hamill and Kevin Conroy, who reprise their roles as the The Joker and Batman respectively.
System requirements call for a 2.0 GHz Intel Mac with 2GB RAM, 128MB graphics card and Mac OS X 10.6.8 or later. There are additional graphics requirements, so check Feral’s mini site for complete details.
Written by Jim Dalrymple
Microsoft’s Tom Rizzo:
In cancelling this group of social media-like services, it is clear that Google is not in tune with the market needs and does not have a product roadmap and clear vision for productivity for their business customers. The Microsoft Office team does. Our vision demonstrates a clear focus on what business customers are looking for, such as intuitive interfaces across a wide range of devices.Google releases experimental products and tracks adoption to determine whether to continue providing them. Its products are like spaghetti, Google throws them up against the wall to see if they stick.
Michael Gartenberg’s take on Twitter is classic. “pot to kettle, you’re black.”
Written by Jim Dalrymple
Matt Alexander:
I have nothing against Android, but I find it brutally frustrating to watch Google flounder in the face of the professionalism offered by iOS, and even Windows Phone.
Matt brings up some good points in his article about Google’s massive Gmail failure yesterday. People trust Apple and their products, which makes them talk about them, which makes more people trust their products.
Written by Jim Dalrymple
Sam Oliver:
A total of seven domains featuring hardcore pornography have been targeted by Apple in a new complaint filed with the World Intellectual Property Organization. As noted by Domain Name Wire, all of the sites feature the word iPhone, but perhaps the most troubling is the iphone4s.com website, which features the same name as Apple’s latest handset.
I would have thought Apple had that one locked up.
Written by Jim Dalrymple
Smashing Magazine:
Frequently, when I discuss CSS3 with other developers, the issue of stubborn clients comes up. They tell me that even though they personally don’t think a website should look the same in all browsers and they’re eager to try all of these new techniques, their clients insist that their website should look the same, so the developers are stuck with the same Web development techniques that we used five to ten years ago. Their clients just don’t “get” graceful degradation.
When we were doing the redesign for The Loop last summer, I told Phil that I don’t care about old browsers. Modern browsers only.
Written by Jim Dalrymple
BGR:
Following a meeting with the pair of Apple chief officers, Reitzes delivered a note to investors suggesting that the company sees Amazon’s forthcoming tablet as good news for the iPad. The Kindle Fire’s low price point makes it accessible, but Apple believes it further fragments the Android ecosystem, which may cause consumers to flee to the iPad.
This is just what I said back in September. Kindle Fire will be successful, but it’s not an iPad killer.
People have asked for my iPad guitar setup, so I thought I’d post a few pictures of what I use.
Many of the people that email me ask how I write songs on the iPad. The fact is, I don’t. The iPad for me is a scratchpad for ideas. I often sit and just jam — if something strikes me, I’ll press record, capture the riff and send it to myself.
Just like all of my other guitar gear, the iPad is a tool that I take advantage of. It allows me to play whenever I have a few minutes of downtime, without having to go into my studio.
The products I’m using right now are:
Taylor SolidBody guitar Ampkit+ Apogee JAM iPod headphones Very short guitar cable
Written by Jim Dalrymple
Federico Viticci at MacStories
What’s interesting about this folder when used with two Macs under the same iCloud account is that it provides a basic “drop box” functionality for files that don’t necessarily belong to an iCloud-enabled app.
You knew it was hidden in there somewhere.
Written by Jim Dalrymple
Air Users Blog:
Avid are sticking to their Pro Tools 10 pricing guns (see what I did there?) and I’m told that they are internally patting themselves on the back for such a great product launch. I’m also told that Avid team are sending YouTube links around on the internal messaging system, that compare this with Steve Jobs’ handling of criticism at an Apple event some years ago. Well I hope for their sakes the wishful thinking proves true, especially where the stock price is concerned.
I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen a company take so much heat after a product launch.
November 2, 2011
Written by Jim Dalrymple
Arnold Kim at Mac Rumors:
Developers of these sandboxed applications must take special measures to break up their application into individual processes that only are able to do exactly what they need. Apple still allows user initiated actions to perform as expected and override the sandbox, but app-initiated actions in sandboxed applications will be restricted. This means that system wide file access and inter-app scripting and interactions will not be allowed.
Arnold wrote a great piece about Apple’s plans to sandbox apps. While it was supposed to happen this month, Apple put it off until 2012. It’s definitely worth a read.
It appears Apple has activated iTunes Match on the Apple TV. I noticed this when I turned on my Apple TV tonight.


Written by Jim Dalrymple
Reuters:
Costly hardware failures are more common on Android devices than on Apple Inc iPhones and Research In Motion Inc BlackBerry phones, which have strict control over the components used in their devices, WDS data showed.
You get what you pay for.
Written by Jim Dalrymple
Brent Simmons:
I was thinking about names I thought were awesome, and remembered one of my favorite place names: the Free Mars café in Belltown. It occurred to me that “Mars” was perfect, because Mars is cool, it fits with NetNewsWire’s space theme, and Mars is at a distance.
I love reading things like this.
Written by Jim Dalrymple
JamBase:
Roger Waters, the co-founder and principal songwriter of the archetypal progressive band Pink Floyd, has announced the return of the historic production of “The Wall” to North America in 2012. Tickets for “The Wall” 2012 go on sale beginning on Monday, November 7th at LiveNation.com.
I would love to see Roger live.
Since its release, some users have been complaining about battery life issues with iOS 5. Apple on Wednesday confirmed that it has found some issues.
“A small number of customers have reported lower than expected battery life on iOS 5 devices,” an Apple spokesperson told The Loop. “We have found a few bugs that are affecting battery life and we will release a software update to address those in a few weeks.”
There are plenty of battery life saving tips that have hit the Web over the past couple of weeks. Turning off Location Services, Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi are just a few of the tips that have worked for some.
Written by Jim Dalrymple
Reuters:
Research In Motion shares fell to a seven-year low in Toronto on Wednesday as the market digested further evidence of the smartphone maker’s declining share of the lucrative U.S. market.
How much more evidence do you need?
Written by Jim Dalrymple
It’s a universal app for iPhone and iPad and it’s free from the App Store.
Retrospect – the long-time backup software for Mac and Windows – has been spun off as an independent company. The eponymous software publisher has also announced the release of Retrospect 9 for Mac.
Retrospect 9 features data de-duplication, network backup of Mac, Windows and Linux computers, and new support of cloud-based storage: Retrospect 9 can now target any WebDAV-compatible storage system, including services from providers like Egnyte and Dreamhost.
Retrospect’s network backup client for Intel-based Macs has been reworked in the new release; it’s 64-bit and uses optional AES-256 encryption for sending backup data to the Retrospect server. It allows users to initiate backups and restores either from the desktop or the Retrospect Client preferences pane. Users can be notified of backup operations through Growl.
Also new in this release are improvements to performance, task workflows, user interface elements and reliability.
Retrospect 9 goes on sale in boxes at the end of November. Upgrades from previous releases are available – free if you purchased Retrospect 8 on or after July 20, 2011.
Prices for the full version range from $129 to $1,669 depending on desktop and server configurations. More details are available from the Retrospect Web site.
Retrospect started life in the 1990s as a backup software app for the Mac from Dantz Development Corp. Dantz was acquired by EMC Corp. in 2004, which published the software until Roxio acquired Retrospect in 2010.
Written by Jim Dalrymple
Bloomberg:
Telefonica Czech Republic AS won’t sell Apple’s new iPhone 4S and will end sales of all Apple’s models because of Apple’s business terms, Hospodarske Noviny reported, citing Telefonica’s local spokesman Hany Farghali.
That might be a good business decision if the competition wasn’t selling the iPhone. Vodafone and T-Mobile will both be selling the iPhone in that country.
Written by Jim Dalrymple
Mat Honan for Gizmodo:
Mobile devices are turning us all into reporters. The citizen journalist hasn’t been such an important player since the days of the American Revolution. That’s largely been a cell phone phenomena; everyday people can both record and broadcast information widely, and in narrow channels.When conditions at Occupy Oakland turned violent, I didn’t go to the San Francisco Chronicle, which had a paucity of static information. I didn’t turn to the local TV networks (one of which was off-air for a helicopter refuel), I went to Twitter and YouTube, which gave me a steady stream of reportage, video and photos from the ground, describing events as they happened.
So true. Think about how many major news items you’ve heard about on Twitter or Facebook over the past couple of years and compare that to how many you heard about on TV or radio. I usually hear about the event on Twitter and then turn on CNN and watch the two together.