A very thoughtful post from Om Malik. I found myself nodding my head on more than one occasion while reading it.

Many thanks to Pixelmator for sponsoring The Loop’s RSS feed. Pixelmator for iPad is a powerful image editor that gives you everything you need to create, edit, and enhance your images. It lets you work seamlessly between Mac and iPad and even work effortlessly with Photoshop images. Packed with powerful creative tools and engineered to harness the full iOS and 64-bit architecture power, Pixelmator for iPad is a real image editor right at your fingertips.

I really like Unread on my iPhone. It’s all about gestures and swiping to navigate the app, which is a nice way to do an RSS reader. There’s an iPad version too—I bought both.

A lot of new changes for one of my favorite apps.

Jackie Gleason did a remarkable job playing Buford T Justice. I laughed out loud watching these quotes.

Talk about telling stories—CW McCall did it with this classic song. I can sing all of the lyrics of “Convoy,” including the CB parts.

I needed a good laugh today and this did it. We all hate spammers, so I have no sympathy for this guy.

Superior Drummer and EZDrummer are two of the best products on the market for people that want production-level drums in their songs. And Toontrack loves Metal!

Jim Croce is one of the great storytellers of our time. This is one of my favorites.

I have one of the older Satellite units and love it. I use it all the time, along with Universal Audio’s plug-ins when I record music.

Jim and Shawn talk Tim Cook, Surface Tablets as iPad stands, Dave Grohl and indie music

Sponsored by lynda.com (Start learning something new by visiting lynda.com/thebeard and get a FREE 7-day trial where you can access all of their 2,400+ courses).

Earlier today we posted news of new malware targeted at users in China. An Apple spokesperson sent this statement to me: […]

I guess in the U.S. this would be akin to trying to hire a hitman.

I don’t see the problem.

A wonderful pictorial by Doug Menuez with pictures of Jobs that I hadn’t seen before.

A friend of mine is selling this guitar and it’s a beauty. I wish I had the money to pick it up.

Pixelmator for iPad is a powerful image editor that gives you everything you need to create, edit, and enhance your images. It lets you work seamlessly between Mac and iPad and even work effortlessly with Photoshop images. Packed with powerful creative tools and engineered to harness the full iOS and 64-bit architecture power, Pixelmator for iPad is a real image editor right at your fingertips.

Much respect to all the participants of the 2014 World Beard and Mustache Championships. But holy shit, that neck beard is scary as shit.

It’s fascinating to see that people in different parts of the world get things so wrong about their own country.

This is one of my all-time favorite songs. I had no idea this is what it was about though.

This app allows you to change the pitch of a song, get the chords, slow down a song and much more. I’ve been using it for a while and really like it.

New in this version:

• View your calendar and event list in Notification Center with Fantastical’s Today widget
• Quickly create events or reminders from selected text in extension-enabled apps with Fantastical’s app extension
• Interactive notifications let you quickly snooze an alert or complete a reminder
• Enhanced landscape view shows your event list when using iPhone 6 Plus

I love Fantastical—I have it on all of my devices.

This is a very interesting update from Rogue Amoeba if you’re using iOS 8.1 and Yosemite.

On this week’s Amplified, Jim and Shawn talk about the new iPad Air 2, the iPad mini 3 and does Apple offer too many iPads for sale?

Sponsored by lynda.com (Start learning something new by visiting lynda.com/thebeard and get a FREE 7-day trial where you can access all of their 2,400+ courses).

Pixelmator for iPad is a powerful image editor that gives you everything you need to create, edit, and enhance your images. It lets you work seamlessly between Mac and iPad and even work effortlessly with Photoshop images. Packed with powerful creative tools and engineered to harness the full iOS and 64-bit architecture power, Pixelmator for iPad is a real image editor right at your fingertips.

Pixelmator for iPad is a powerful image editor that gives you everything you need to create, edit, and enhance your images. It lets you work seamlessly between Mac and iPad and even work effortlessly with Photoshop images. Packed with powerful creative tools and engineered to harness the full iOS and 64-bit architecture power, Pixelmator for iPad is a real image editor right at your fingertips.

I picked up my new iPads after the event in Cupertino ended last Thursday where Apple introduced the new products. I’ve been using the new iPads just as I have used the previous generation devices, so I could get a good idea how they function under my normal working conditions. […]

BIAS Desktop is the world’s most accurate, thorough and versatile guitar-amp modeler and designer. Its advanced amp-modeling engine captures the warmth and feel of real tube amps in every aspect, component by component. To start, the plug-in includes 36 authentic models of the most sought-after vintage and modern amps in rock ‘n’ roll history.

This alone is worth it—BIAS is my favorite amp modeling software for iOS, but then they added this:

Amp Matching utilizes a collection of underlying technologies to analyze and compare your currently selected BIAS amp model and the sound of a target tube amplifier, the corresponding cabinet and the microphone in front of it. It then executes the tonal compensation and enhancement needed to make your amp model accurately match the target tube amplifier.

Holy shit!

“I’m sorry.”

The Washington Post ran a sensationalistic story this morning that claimed Apple would have user’s location, unique identifying codes and search terms when using Spotlight in OS X Yosemite and iOS 8. […]