Yearly Archives: 2012

Apple should keep the jobs in China

Written by

Trevor Gilbert:

In light of this increase of attention, it’s apparent that the record needs correcting and that someone needs to show that while jingoistic posts may be enticing, they aren’t based in reality.

I have said this before and agree with Trevor.

Facebook buys Instagram for $1 billion

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Facebook announced today that it has reached an agreement to acquire Instagram, a fun, popular photo-sharing app for mobile devices.The total consideration for San Francisco-based Instagram is approximately $1 billion in a combination of cash and shares of Facebook. The transaction, which is subject to customary closing conditions, is expected to close later this quarter.

Pixelmator [Sponsor]

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Pixelmator – beautifully designed, easy-to-use, fast and powerful image editing app for Mac OS X.

Beard font

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Imagine if I wrote all of the posts using this font.

Las Vegas missed out on a full sized Starship Enterprise

Written by

Gary Goddard:

My concept was to do something so large and so epic, it would fire the imaginations of people around the world. After looking at how difficult it would be to bring people to the downtown core (from the Strip), I knew we had to have something really exciting, dynamic, and without equal. We kicked around a few ideas, and then I came up with something really unique. I went to Chuck Canciller, my lead designer then – and a genius as well – and said, “What if we built the STARSHIP ENTERPRISE – FULL SCALE – on the land at the end of the street. Imagine that…”

That would have been amazing….

While Apple is criticized for Foxconn, other companies are silent

Written by

New York Times:

Apple’s rivals are quick to say how much better, faster, cheaper or more popular their smartphones, computers and tablets are.Yet when it comes to working conditions in the Chinese factories that build these competing products, Apple’s electronics rivals go silent.So why would these electronics makers be so reluctant? They won’t tell us, but Li Qiang, executive director of China Labor Watch had an idea: “Many companies, like H.P., Sony and Dell, don’t publish the full reports because they find violations and problems that are much worse than Apple, and they don’t want the media fallout from the reports.”

As the article says, while Apple may not be a “paragon of open communication”, they are certainly do more and doing it more openly than their competition.

Two more execs leave RIM

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Alan Brenner, a senior vice president for the BlackBerry platform, will leave after a transition period, and Alistair Mitchell, a vice president for the BlackBerry Messenger instant messaging product, has already left, RIM spokeswoman Tenille Kennedy said in an email on Friday.

It just keeps getting worse.

Flashback

Written by

John Moltz:

Back when XP was the current version of Windows, it seemed that every Windows user I know complained about being affected by malware. I even knew Windows users who used to brag about how fast they could reformat their machine and have it back up and running in pristine form.

Managing Notes with Siri

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However, I found that I can create, update and list notes with Siri. In fact, Siri is even smart enough to know which note you’re talking about. Here’s how to create and maintain notes with Siri.

I didn’t know you could do that.

The Titanic at 100

Written by

The Big Picture:

The sinking of the RMS Titanic caused the deaths of 1,517 of its 2,229 passengers and crew (official numbers vary slightly) in one of the deadliest peacetime maritime disasters in history.The 1985 discovery of the Titanic wreck on the ocean floor marked a turning point for public awareness of the ocean and for the development of new areas of science and technology. April 15, 2012 will mark the 100th anniversary of the Titanic disaster.

The Big Picture, as always, has some amazing photos – including personal effects brought up from the site. Should those artifacts be left at what is, in effect, a burial site? Or is there more value to the living to actually see them?

Acorn image editor

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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.

TH2 guitar amp software updated

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  • 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.

Learn Guitar from iBookstore

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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.

Isaacson says Steve Jobs was pissed at Google

Written by

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.

Obviousness

Written by

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.

How many newspapers have paywalls?

Written by

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.

Undesign 101

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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.

Chasing 4G

Written by

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.