Joanna Stern:

Without much thought, I did what most Americans do every two years: I agreed to be locked in by a multibillion-dollar wireless company. With pricey contracts and confusing add-ons, they make it incredibly hard to leave, let alone take our phones with us. I deserve to walk around with “Property of Verizon” stamped on my forehead.

I know a lot of people that are going for the unlocked phone so they don’t have to be locked in any more. It’s more expensive upfront, but sometimes the flexibility is worth it.

Rumors have been swirling since late last night that Apple acquired Instrument and effect plug-in maker, Camel Audio. I contacted Apple today to see whether or not the rumors were true. […]

Broadcast television may be now facing a similar, scary phase shift. Netflix has been making inroads among U.S. consumers for years, but its impact on the key 18-to-49-year-old demographic has so far been limited. Old habits die hard and many viewers have remained mostly loyal to habit of gorging on linear television on Thursday nights.

But the most recent numbers have some scary elements that point to a possibly massive disruption in the near term. Broadcast TV consumption among 18-to-34-year-old Americans plunged by 11% in the Christmas quarter. Ominously, audiences of young-skewing cable channels like Nickelodeon and MTV are now sliding by 14 to 17% year-on-year.

I’ll be honest, I’m more excited about a new Netflix series than I am about anything on one of the big networks.

Interesting article from John Cassidy in The New Yorker. If Apple is working on a car, I think they could give the traditional car companies more of a run than Cassidy does.

Tim Cook posted this tweet today. I still miss Steve. He would have been 60 today.

The car was from 1999, but Marc has designed a lot of transportation vehicles. Just another interesting point.

djay Pro for Mac provides a complete toolkit for performing DJs. Its unique and modern interface is built around a sophisticated integration with iTunes and Spotify, giving you instant access to millions of tracks. Pristine sound quality and a powerful … Continued

A handy bit of info from Apple’s support site, just in case you ever need it.

I’ve been watching this robot tuner for quite some time. I decided to take the plunge this morning and give it a try.

But the kicker here is that the Fire TV actually works. My Apple TV has been plagued by poor performance and repeated crashes—sometimes right in the middle of a show. Every time that’s happened, it’s been faster to switch inputs to my Fire TV and resume the video there than it has been to wait for the Apple TV to finish its glacial restarting process.

I found this really interesting. It’s certainly not a good sign that the Apple TV has such poor performance when watching a program. If it was caused by Dan’s Internet, then the Fire TV wouldn’t work either, but it does. I don’t have many problems with my Apple TV, except when watching the NHL station—that usually sucks really bad.

My thanks to Edovia for sponsoring The Loop’s RSS feed this week. Screens is a beautiful, yet powerful VNC client for iOS and Mac that lets you connect back to your computer from the comfort of your living room, the corner coffee shop or anywhere in the world.

Until the end of the month, we’re happy to offer 20% off Screens for Mac to the readers of The Loop. Simply use this link to save!

Jim’s Note: I’ve used Screens for Mac and iOS since they were first released. I love them both.

Top Hat quickly answers the one question that indie developers have every morning: How well did our apps do in the App Store yesterday?

Top Hat lives in the Yosemite menu bar and shows up-to-date daily sales figures for your apps. Revenue from In-App Purchases is aggregated to give you a single total for each app. Weekly figures can be inspected by holding ⌥ as you click the Top Hat icon.

A great new app from Oisin Prendiville, the man behind Castro podcasting app, Unread and Tokens. I’m buying this.

Use the Mac creative tools you know & love, like Photoshop, with the touch experience of your iPad.

Made by some ex-Apple engineers (of course). This is one of the most exciting things I’ve seen in a while.

Les Paul’s personal 1954 Les Paul Custom “Black Beauty” sold to Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay last night for $335,500. According to the New York Times, Irsay’s guitar curator, Christopher McKinney, placed the bid at the February 19, 2015 auction held by Guernsey’s in New York City.

I would love to have this guitar. If only I had a few hundred grand laying around.

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The Loop Magazine Issue 31:

Jim Dalrymple looks at the key to Apple’s success. Is it design, software, hardware? Maybe none of those things; Matt Gemmell talks about the colors of his various computer bags—It’s okay to skip safe; Darren Murph looks at where the DSLR is now that so many people are using an iPhone; Joe Caiati has a look at the origins of his writing; Steven Aquino has a wonderful story on how music and the iPod helped people with memories; With so many recordings of the same classical piece, Kirk McElhearn is still searching for the perfect recording, but does it exist?; Darren Murph looks at mobile data and how everything is being commoditized in mobile; and Tim Schock talks about the resurgence of the cassette… really.

You can download The Loop Magazine and preview the latest issue on your iPhone and iPad for free. A subscription is only $1.99 per month and you get access to all previous issues.

Apple has determined that a small percentage of MacBook Pro systems may exhibit distorted video, no video, or unexpected system restarts. These MacBook Pro systems were sold between February 2011 and December 2013.

More information is available from Apple’s Web site.

A nice looking bundle of 8 apps for Mac users. The apps purchased separately would cost $469, but they are selling it for $44.99. If you use code ULTRAMAC5, you can get it for $39.99.

Chinese PC maker Lenovo has found itself in the middle of a public relations disaster, following revelations that it sold a number of notebook computers with pre-installed software that hijacks users’ browser sessions to inject customized advertisements and seriously degrades the security of encrypted connections.

No matter what else they may do, everyone knows that Apple would never pull shit like this.

Really nice looking game for iPhone and iPad.

I love Border Collies. They are the smartest dogs in the world.

Eric Clapton has been tapped for induction into the Blues Hall of Fame for his many musical achievements as well as for his role as a popularizer of the entire genre. He brought the blues to audiences in his native Britain and throughout the world, illuminating the work of the original blues artists who inspired him.

Well deserved.

That may be why I’ve been getting a lot of questions from developers and designers regarding what I’d like to see from Apple Watch apps. After thinking about it for a good long while, the list turns out to be pretty straightforward.

Rene Ritchie has a good list of things to look out for when designing for the wrist. Like Rene, I’ve been getting a lot of questions on this too. We’re in for some interesting times.

In the first episode of “Behind the App”, a special series of Inquisitive, we take a look at the beginnings of iOS app development, by focusing on the introduction of the iPhone and the App Store.

Congrats to my friend, Myke Hurley, on his new show.

This pretty much marked the end of The Jimi Hendrix Experience.

Over a series of late October days, camera operators working on an episode of ABC’s “Modern Family” set aside their typical high-definition videocameras and picked up iPhones. The command “Action!” was followed by a tap of that familiar red button on the device’s small video screen.

The result, which will be shown next Wednesday, Feb. 25, is an episode shot almost exclusively on mobile devices, an approximation of the way that many actual modern American families (of a certain class) communicate today.

This is truly amazing. Not just that it’s being shot with iPhones, many filmmakers are doing that, but that such a popular show has that much confidence in the quality and capabilities of an iPhone.

“I think somebody is kind of trying to cough up a hairball here,” Akerson said in a telephone interview. “If I were an Apple shareholder, I wouldn’t be very happy. I would be highly suspect of the long-term prospect of getting into a low-margin, heavy-manufacturing” business.

Recognizing that this is merely a rumor, I have two thoughts here: First, Apple is aware of all of this. Second, it’s Apple—they were probably warned against making a phone too, but they did it. Apple is going to enter markets it believes it can dominate in some fashion—markets that need changing and where they can break the status quo.

It will probably not come as a great surprise to learn that Apple won in a number of categories for 2015 customer satisfaction survey. The study, conducted by market research brand keys, also gave Apple subsidiary Beats an award as well. […]

Good rundown of apps and audio interfaces for iOS devices from Charlie Sorrel. I’ve used most of these at one time or another over the last few years.

A scathing critique of Michael Bromwich, the lawyer overseeing Apple after it lost an iBooks antitrust lawsuit, alleges that he has unfairly billed the company some $2.65 million for investigative practices that have gone well beyond the initial intent of his role.

This is just awful.

I’m looking forward to getting my hands on this gear.