Apple Inc’s China business experienced “strong growth” in July and August, Chief Executive Tim Cook told CNBC on Monday, seeking to assuage investor concerns over the company’s prospects in a market considered critical for its growth.

IPhone activations in China had accelerated over the past few weeks and the App Store in China had its best performance of the year over the past two weeks, Cook told CNBC in an emailed response to questions about Apple’s business in China.

Considering everything that’s been happening in the stock market, it was important that Cook did this. Apple has consistently bucked the trend in selling its products and this appears to be no different.

Thanks to MiStand+ for sponsoring The Loop this week. MiStand+ your tablet, any angle. Innovative, multi-axis adjustable stand for use with any tablet.

The CSS clip-path property is one of the most underused and yet most interesting properties in CSS. It can be used in conjunction with CSS Shapes to create interesting layouts, and can be taken to the extreme to create some incredibly impressive layouts and animations like the Species in Pieces project.

Okay, now you’ve gone too far South Korea.

MiStand+ your tablet, any angle. Innovative, multi-axis adjustable stand for use with any tablet.

Benedict Evans:

None of these are killer apps or ‘use cases’. All of them could be done with your phone. They’re just better with a watch.

This really sums up how I feel about the watch’s UI.

Six additional stainless steel links for wrists that exceed 205mm.

I can say from experience that it’s very easy to add or remove links to the Link Bracelet.

Apple has introduced a new feature for iCloud on the web that allows you to restore deleted items. Not only can you recover files that you’ve deleted, but also restore contacts, calendars, and reminders. This new feature also shows you how long it will be until those items are permanently deleted if you choose not to restore them.

Great feature.

For example, even with Cortana and searching the Web from the Start menu disabled, opening Start and typing will send a request to www.bing.com to request a file called threshold.appcache which appears to contain some Cortana information, even though Cortana is disabled. The request for this file appears to contain a random machine ID that persists across reboots.

As the article notes, it appears to be harmless traffic, but it still shouldn’t happen.

Realmac Software’s Daniel Counsell revisits a topic that’s been discussed for years, but still not addressed by Apple: Paid upgrades in the Mac App Store.

Thanks to Pad & Quill for sponsoring The Loop this week. I own a number of their products and they are all top quality.

From Kari (Mrs PQ):

Pad & Quill is passionate about designing and crafting unique leather bags, accessories and cases for Apple products. We employ the best leathers, canvas and various materials to make products that are beautiful, functional, durable and ageless. Our craftsmen exemplify the heart and soul of our company and we celebrate their skill by inviting each artisan to sign each Leather Bag or Apple Watch Bands as it is completed for you, our customer.

I love this interview. Marc talks about some of his favorite, and not so favorite, things in life.

Without comment, the U.S. Federal Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Samsung’s bid to reconsider a previous ruling largely backing Apple — leaving the U.S. Supreme Court as the only legal option left for Samsung to try to overturn hundreds of millions of dollars in damages it now owes Apple in their ongoing patent feud.

Good. Make the scumbags pay already.

In May, engineers from Apple’s secretive Special Project group met with officials from GoMentum Station, a 2,100-acre former naval base near San Francisco that is being turned into a high-security testing ground for autonomous vehicles.

Very interesting.

Happens to me every day.

Tim Cook:

Diversity is critical to innovation and it is essential to Apple’s future. We aspire to do more than just make our company as diverse as the talent available to hire. We must address the broad underlying challenges, offer new opportunities, and create a future generation of employees as diverse as the world around us. We also aspire to make a difference beyond Apple.

Great progress.

Graham Cochrane is doing a series a videos showing users how to mix a song. I always like watching these types of videos—every audio engineer has their own way of doing things, but I usually pick up a tidbit from everyone.

Apple posted a support document showing users how to install or upgrade to Windows 10.

Jim and Merlin talk about beta software, bass players, and how to minimize stress while traveling.

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To be clear, I haven’t used this, but a reader wrote and said it’s very fast and does the same thing as Ghostery. It’s always good to have an alternative.

Here is the company’s new Gear S2 smartwatch interface.

Apple released iTunes 12.2.2 this morning with a number of updates aimed specially at problems people have had with Apple Music. Here’s what’s new in this version:

But I can’t quite put my finger on it.

…when iOS 9 beta detects a flight number, in this case Delta #2182, it transforms the text into an actionable link connected to data pulled from an offsite server. A long press on said link brings up options to preview flight information or copy text.

This is a great little added feature.

Catalog your repertoire. Prompt your lyrics live on stage. Keep everyone in sync. If you perform live on stage, alone or with a group, Setlists will make you a better professional. Forget carrying around heavy binders of paper and writing up tonight’s set on a napkin with a Sharpie.

Great looking app. I’ll be using this one.

Rene Ritchie takes an in-depth look at multitasking in iOS.

Flyovers are very cool.

Rite Aid announced today that all of the Company’s nearly 4,600 stores nationwide will begin accepting mobile payments, including Apple Pay and Google Wallet, starting Saturday, August 15.

The significance here is that Rite Aid was a supporter of CurrentC. Clearly that didn’t work out so well for them.

BMW on Tuesday said it was looking into whether Google infringed any trademark rights after the Silicon Valley-based group set up a new company called Alphabet, which is also the name of a BMW subsidiary.

“We are examining whether there are any implications over trademarks,” a BMW spokeswoman said on Tuesday. The spokeswoman said there were currently no plans to take legal steps against Google.

This is a very important topic for many people, especially when considering what technologies to implement on the Internet.