I’m looking forward to the launch of Beats 1 for a couple of reasons, but mostly because I have no idea what it’s supposed to be. I was at the keynote, I read the New York Times article, and I read Apple’s Web site. I still have no idea what it is.

There are a few slots on The Deck available in July and August. Need to get your product in front of millions of curious folks? Drop a line for a nice price for a new advertiser. The Deck only works with the highest quality sites, including The Loop, Daring Fireball, and many others.

My thanks to Marketcircle for sponsoring The Loop this week. Marketcircle, helping small businesses grow with amazing Mac, iPad, iPhone apps, and now Apple Watch. Marketcircle is a Mac-based software company in Toronto that develops award-winning apps to help you save time, stay organized, and work happier. Serving the Apple/Mac community for over 10 years, Marketcircle’s Daylite and Billings Pro can take your business to new heights.

Daylite is a business productivity app that brings together the benefits of a CRM, project management app, calendar app, and to-do app all in one. Daylite helps you share information, build effective processes, and increase efficiency. With Daylite to keep you and your team organized, you can accomplish more than you thought possible.

Billings Pro is a time tracking and invoicing app that helps freelancers and small businesses create beautiful and professional invoices in as little as 60 seconds. With less time managing invoices, you have more time to focus on clients and do the work you love.

Read about how small businesses have grown with the help of Daylite and Billings Pro. Get 10% off your Daylite license(s) when you use the promo code: LOOP0615 (valid until July 12th 2015).

The next iOSDevCamp is from July 10-12, 2015 in San Jose. I’m thinking of stopping by and saying hello.

Alright boys and girls, get ready to be schooled. A new study conducted by the University of Queensland’s School of Psychology has found that listening to extreme music like heavy metal can help people process anger and even increase their positive emotions, like inspiration.

Clearly this is me.

Jim and Dan speculate on what really happened with the Apple Music policy change, and talk about the changing music industry, Eddie Van Halen, The Terminator, and more.

Sponsored by Squarespace. Use promo code GUITARS for 10% off your first purchase.

I must have this. Much respect to this guy.

I don’t think Beats sound particularly good, but it’s an interesting article.

Essential apps, what makes a great app, and some stuff about KISS.

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Dropbox made itself a household name by giving away cloud storage. The eight-year-old company, valued at $10 billion, had 300 million registered users a year ago; now it’s got 400 million. Its two-year-old effort to make money from business users has been less impressive. While Dropbox led the $904 million global market for business file-sharing last year with about a 24 percent share, No. 2 Box and No. 3 Microsoft each took about 21 percent and doubled their slice of the pie, growing almost twice as fast, according to researcher IDC.

Dropbox is hugely popular, but it seems clear they need to figure out this sales strategy quickly.

Rene Ritchie put together an FAQ of Apple’s new iOS.

This is a YouTube playlist showing how this guitar was built. Just wow.

BOOM!

Marketcircle, helping small businesses grow with amazing Mac, iPad, iPhone apps, and now Apple Watch. Marketcircle is a Mac-based software company in Toronto that develops award-winning apps to help you save time, stay organized, and work happier. Serving the Apple/Mac community for over 10 years, Marketcircle’s Daylite and Billings Pro can take your business to new heights.

Daylite is a business productivity app that brings together the benefits of a CRM, project management app, calendar app, and to-do app all in one. Daylite helps you share information, build effective processes, and increase efficiency. With Daylite to keep you and your team organized, you can accomplish more than you thought possible.

Billings Pro is a time tracking and invoicing app that helps freelancers and small businesses create beautiful and professional invoices in as little as 60 seconds. With less time managing invoices, you have more time to focus on clients and do the work you love.

Read about how small businesses have grown with the help of Daylite and Billings Pro. Get 10% off your Daylite license(s) when you use the promo code: LOOP0615 (valid until July 12th 2015).

This is just fascinating. I love EVH and what he’s done for guitar players over the years. This is definitely a must read.

I just love Pad & Quill’s products. The workmanship and care put into every aspect of their bags is top notch. I own one of the bags already, but that backpack is calling my name. They also have a new briefcase available.

After a lot of bad press and a letter from Taylor Swift bringing attention to the cause, Apple Senior Vice President, Eddy Cue said on Twitter that artists will be paid for streaming music, even during the three-month Apple Music trial. […]

Apple is going to offer users a three-month trial for its new Apple Music streaming service. That’s good. However, Apple will not pay the artists for any music streamed during that time. That’s not just bad, it’s downright wrong. […]

Jim and Dan talk about how the Apple Watch has changed Jim’s life for the better.

Sponsored by lynda (Visit the link to get free 10 day trial access to their 3,000+ courses), MetaCDN (Visit the link and use the code ‘5by5’ for a 10% discount for life), and Hover (Visit the link to get the domain of your dreams).

My thanks to HelloTalk for sponsoring The Loop this week. Finally, learning and practicing a new language is easier and more intuitive than ever before. Introducing HelloTalk, the language app where your teachers are native language speakers from around the world. You just pick the language you want to learn—there are over 100 from which to select—and almost instantaneously you’ll be in touch with native speakers of that language … and you’ll start learning and practicing immediately.

HelloTalk isn’t a course you strictly follow; rather, you learn and practice at your pace and in the manner that best meets the way you learn. Practice foreign languages with people around the world. Simultaneously speak and type the language you’re learning. Record your voice before speaking to your HelloTalk friends and compare your recording to standard pronunciations. Change your friends’ audio messages to text for better understanding, and receive help to improve your grammar. Easily translate whenever you don’t understand, and so much more.

With HelloTalk, you’ll discover learning a new language is fun … and fast. Download your copy today.

Download HelloTalk for iPhone

Download HelloTalk for Android


The emails and tweets about the weight loss I’ve experienced using HealthKit and Apple Watch have been heartwarming, to say the very least. It was probably the most difficult piece I’ve ever written, just because I was putting myself all out there for everyone to see. Honestly, I wasn’t sure I would even post it. Finally, I looked at the screen, hit publish, and walked away. […]

After winning the 2015 Helen Keller Achievement Award for VoiceOver, Apple has highlighted some of the popular apps using VoiceOver that are available on its App Store.

AFB is recognizing Apple for VoiceOver, a gesture-based screen reader that allows users to hear a description of everything happening on the display, and other features that make iPhone, iPad and other iOS devices accessible to people with vision loss. Apple received an AFB Access Award in 2009 for its trailblazing engineering of accessible products and continues its extraordinary efforts to make their products accessible for everyone.

Congrats to all at Apple for thinking of ever customer.

Apple earns five stars in this year’s Who Has Your Back report. This is Apple’s fifth year in the report, and it has adopted every best practice we’ve identified as part of this report. We commend Apple for its strong stance regarding user rights, transparency, and privacy.

Congrats Apple.

EFF’s evaluation of Google (three stars):

Google should take a stronger position in providing notice to users about government data requests after an emergency has ended or a gag has been lifted. Furthermore, Google should provide transparency into its data retention policies.

Over 600 million Samsung mobile device users may be at risk due to a significant security threat, according to researchers at mobile security specialist NowSecure.

and

“Welton found he could hijack the process of updating one of the virtual keyboards Samsung installs on many Android smartphones. From there, he could eavesdrop on phone conversations, rummage through text messages and contacts, or turn on the microphone to capture audio,”…

Enjoy your phone Samsung people.

Jim and Merlin recap WWDC and talk rock.

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I have been reporting on Apple for more than 20 years now, and in all that time no product has had such an impact on my life as this little piece of hardware and software. I don’t say that for dramatic effect, it has had a profound effect on the way I live. As you will read later, this is the most personal review I have ever written. […]

Finally, learning and practicing a new language is easier and more intuitive than ever before. Introducing HelloTalk, the language app where your teachers are native language speakers from around the world. You just pick the language you want to learn—there are over 100 from which to select—and almost instantaneously you’ll be in touch with native speakers of that language … and you’ll start learning and practicing immediately.

HelloTalk isn’t a course you strictly follow; rather, you learn and practice at your pace and in the manner that best meets the way you learn. Practice foreign languages with people around the world. Simultaneously speak and type the language you’re learning. Record your voice before speaking to your HelloTalk friends and compare your recording to standard pronunciations. Change your friends’ audio messages to text for better understanding, and receive help to improve your grammar. Easily translate whenever you don’t understand, and so much more.

With HelloTalk, you’ll discover learning a new language is fun … and fast. Download your copy today.

Download HelloTalk for iPhone

Download HelloTalk for Android


.

The folksy roots, the founder breakups, the dysfunction — all those things made Twitter a very human and a much beloved service. It was a service everyone (especially those in the media) wanted to love — and yet it is 2015 and the narrative around the company has become negative and toxic. The more I read all these things about the company, the more I wonder — how did Twitter lose the plot, the narrative. Till not too long ago, the press was generally very kind to the company.

It’s very true, there’s been very little positive out of Twitter in a while.

I began using OS X El Capitan shortly after last week’s WWDC keynote when I met with Apple to talk about the latest release of the operating system. […]