Apple’s history in music began with selling Macs to musicians. That remains important to us today, but we also bring music to hundreds of millions of customers with iTunes, which is at the forefront of the digital music revolution. Music holds a special place in our hearts at Apple, and we know that we can make an even bigger contribution to something that is so important to our society. That’s why we have kept investing in music and why we’re bringing together these extraordinary teams — so we can continue to create the most innovative music products and services in the world.

“The whole idea of MacTech Conference is to allow members of the Apple community to meet and exchange ideas,” says Edward Marczak, Conference Chair and Executive Editor of MacTech Magazine. “This will be spurred on by presentations from some of the best and well-known experts in the community.”

This is the conference’s 5th year.

Apple on Wednesday said it agreed to acquire Beats Music and Beats Electronics for $3 billion. As part of the acquisition, Beats co-founders Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre will join Apple. […]

Amazon is pathetic in this respect. The company always comes out with statements about how many Kindles they sold, but provide nothing to back it up. The press is partly responsible for letting them get away with it, but you can’t claim that news coverage is unfair if you’re not willing to comment.

Maybe it’s just me, but I always like seeing what new blogging tools are available. Like a lot of things in technology, sometimes it’s the fresh faces that do things right.

Take a listen to the samples and you’ll see how important microphone choice and placement is to your sound.

We’ve become aware of some unauthorized access to our systems and internal company data and we wanted to let you know the steps we’re taking in response. As soon as we were aware of this issue we immediately launched an investigation. Information security and data protection are of great importance to us at Spotify and that is why I’m posting today.

Our evidence shows that only one Spotify user’s data has been accessed and this did not include any password, financial or payment information. We have contacted this one individual. Based on our findings, we are not aware of any increased risk to users as a result of this incident.

Interestingly, it’s only Android users that will have to take any steps here. No action is required for iOS or Windows Phone users.

Now this is great news. I’ll be there, but having the video available for everyone is great.

The new version of PCalc for iOS now shares the same core calculator code as PCalc 4 on OS X. There are a lot of updated features in this release.

Pixelmator 3.2 Sandstone features an all-new Repair Tool. Redeveloped from the inside-out, the new Repair Tool is built on breakthrough technologies that enable the removal of unwanted objects or image imperfections with an unsurpassed level of quality and precision. The new version also brings 16-bits per channel support to the Mac. With 16-bits per channel support, you have more color data to work with and greatly reduce the risk of color banding. In addition, with Lock Layers you can simply lock certain layers to protect their content from any further changes so that you can freely edit the rest of your composition.

A very extensive list from The Wirecutter.

My thanks to Mighty Deals for sponsoring The Loop’s RSS feed this week. If you’re looking for a little logo inspiration, this Mighty Deal has your name on it! The ultimate Logo Mockup & Design Kit includes 70 retro logo templates, as well as 50+ photo-realistic logo mockups. These high-quality vector files, from Cruizine Design, are fully customizable and a snap to use. In no time at all, you can change up the color, size, shape or details and have yourself a professional logo, banner, sign or promotional piece for your latest project! And speaking of promotions, act now and you can save more than 75% off the regular price!

One of the best things I’ve ever done is move all of my writing to Markdown. If you don’t know it yet, learn. It’s quite easy to grasp.

I hate people that keep inviting me to play games on Facebook. STOP IT! This may be the best article on the Internet.

Amazon, under fire in much of the literary community for energetically discouraging customers from buying books from the publisher Hachette, has abruptly escalated the battle.

The retailer began refusing orders late Thursday for coming Hachette books, including J.K. Rowling’s new novel. The paperback edition of Brad Stone’s “The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon” — a book Amazon disliked so much it denounced it — is suddenly listed as “unavailable.”

You can see the photo captions by hovering.

[Via Michael Mulvey]

Who fucking knew there was such a thing.

You Could Be in Star Wars: Episode VII

Fantastic.

Om Malik:

It is irrational and it is crazy, but I am indeed that “guy” who lately has been fighting for the mayorship with that “girl” for the mayorship of that “coffee shop.” It is one of the primary reasons why I keep Foursquare app on the first screen of my iPhone.

I never understood this.

I enjoyed this. Easy-to-read and he gets to the point.

Algoriddim on Thursday released a new version of djay for iPhone and iPad. Like previous releases, djay has a number of cool features, but the one that stood out to me was Spotify integration. […]

“We recently fixed a server-side iMessage bug which was causing an issue for some users, and we have an additional bug fix in a future software update,” Apple told Re/code in a statement. “For users still experiencing an issue, please contact AppleCare.”

An annoying bug for a few people, but it was fixed.

Yet in its simple, two-trick-pony earphone gadget, LG seems to have delivered on the promise of its product packaging. No, the HeartRate Earphones don’t run apps, or tell the time, or respond to voice commands. But they play music and monitor your heart rate—ostensibly with a high degree of accuracy. And that’s all they need to do.

Sometimes doing one thing, and doing it well, is all it takes.

Apple’s environmental initiatives VP, Lisa Jackson, discusses the challenges the tech giant faced when trying to be green.

“Nest is being run independently from the rest of Google, with a separate management team, brand and culture,” he said in an emailed statement. “For example, Nest has a paid-for business model, while Google has generally had an ads-supported business model. We have nothing against ads — after all Nest does lots of advertising. We just don’t think ads are right for the Nest user experience.”

I really like Nest CEO Tony Fadell. It’s not him I don’t trust, it’s the Google bosses.

While Samsung sold the most handsets, Apple remained the top vendor of U.S. smartphones, claiming 37 percent of smartphones sold outside of the variety of Android and Windows Mobile licensees that Counterpoint analyzed.

Apple accounted for the largest share of smartphones for three of the top four U.S. mobile carriers: 52 percent at AT&T, 51 percent at Verizon Wireless, and 36 percent at Sprint, while taking the second place spot behind Samsung on the more value-oriented T-Mobile/Metro PCS with 24 percent.

The Beard Bash is back for 2014, bigger and better than ever. This year we’re partnering with AltConf to bring the first AltBeard Bash to be held June 3, 2014 from 7-11 at the Children’s Creativity Museum at Moscone, 221 4th St, San Francisco.

The latest version of Facebook for iOS and Android automatically recognizes the song you’re listening to or TV show you’re watching and adds it to your status. The Shazam-like feature is called “audio recognition,” and starts listening as soon as you start typing a new status.

I wonder what this will do to Shazam. Facebook has a lot of users that will use the new feature by default.

EBay Inc. operator of the online-auction site, asked users to change their passwords after a cyber-attack exposed a database with login information and data such as birthdays and phone numbers.

There’s no evidence of unauthorized activity resulting from the breach, EBay said today in a statement. While credit-card numbers are stored separately and encrypted, it’s still best to change passwords, the company said.

Go change them now.