Apple on Monday introduced CarPlay, a new way to use the iPhone in your car. CarPlay allows the user to access Maps, Messages, Music, and make phone calls with a touch of the screen in your car. You can even press the voice button in your car to activate Siri. […]

Biblical delivers crushing riffs drenched in cinematic atmosphere.

Yeah, that caught my attention for sure. I previewed to the first couple of singles on iTunes and then pre-ordered the album.

My thanks to Gestrument for sponsoring this week’s RSS feed on The Loop. Gestrument is a powerful tool for the professional musician but also an intuitive app for the beginner. Gestrument lets you delve into the “musical DNA” of a genre, artist or song. With full control over all musical parameters you can play and compose music with just the swipe of your finger.

Visit www.gestrument.com to see Gestrument perform music by Meshuggah, Richard Devine, Claude Debussy or see keyboard wizard Jordan Rudess from Dream Theater demo his own preset.

Apart from our artist we have videos and presets showing how to play for instance Dubstep, Cool Jazz, String Quartet and Indian Raga – all with just the swipe of your finger.

Gestrument is developed by contemporary classical composer Jesper Nordin and software developer Jonatan Liljedahl – Kymatica (the developer behind AudioShare, Sector, AUFX, NordBeat, BitWiz and many more iOS music apps).

With Samsung making the two OSes so closely resemble each other, some day it might be possible to quietly swap OSes in Samsung’s mainstream smartphone, just like it did with the Gear line. For the interface at least, the change-over seems like it would be pretty seamless.

I give Samsung credit, this is the smart way to transition to a new OS—make it seamless for the user. As noted in the article, apps remain the big problem. This is a nightmare for Google.

Bryan Chaffin:

the NCPPR representative asked Mr. Cook to commit right then and there to doing only those things that were profitable.

What ensued was the only time I can recall seeing Tim Cook angry, and he categorically rejected the worldview behind the NCPPR’s advocacy. He said that there are many things Apple does because they are right and just, and that a return on investment (ROI) was not the primary consideration on such issues.

“When we work on making our devices accessible by the blind,” he said, “I don’t consider the bloody ROI.” He said that the same thing about environmental issues, worker safety, and other areas where Apple is a leader.

Cheers Tim.

Salvador Rodriguez reporting the LA Times:

For the next week, customers who buy an Apple TV at one of the tech giant’s retail stores will reportedly receive a $25 iTunes gift card as part of a promotion that could signal a new Apple TV is on its way.

Nope.

Confidence is a powerful feeling. It makes countries strong, athletes perform amazing feats and it allows companies, like Apple, to release products that bring a smile to faces around the world. As strong as confidence can be, lack of confidence can be absolutely devastating. […]

There are some great examples of using these new plugs with your Apollo.

You are being watched.

Google’s Android head Sundar Pichai:

“We cannot guarantee that Android is designed to be safe… If I had a company dedicated to malware, I would also be addressing my attacks on Android.”

Those are the first true words to come out of Google in a long time.

Forbes has become the place to write if you don’t have a fucking clue what you’re talking about. Such is the case with one of their latest articles, but Zach Epstein at BGR does a good job pointing out the mistakes and reality of the iPhone business.

This is the seventh year in a row.

The developers behind Castro shared some numbers after figuring out a great way to ask for App Store reviews.

Go and sign-up.

Arizona Governor Governor Jan Brewer on Wednesday vetoed a controversial bill that would have, in effect, legalized wide-ranging discrimination of homosexuals as an extension of religious freedom. Apple, along with a number of other major U.S. corporations, banded together to have the bill shot down.

Good.

Many magazines are going digital only, but “The Great Discontent” wants to take it’s magazine to print.

Clearly, this is not good for Avid.

Ben Bajarin:

Carriers own a cell tower that they upgrade to provide faster service and broader access. That’s about it. They used to have much more differentiation than they do today. Some had proprietary devices or solutions. Some were known for better quality or were the only ones available. Those days are long past in most cases. Pricing is a particularly strategy that T-Mobile and Sprint are trying to compete with, but they have simply embraced their “dumb pipe-ness” sooner than other carriers.

He’s right.

BlackBerry, once a must-have device for every business executive and government official because of its pioneering secure email service, has hemorrhaged market share to Apple Inc’s iPhone and rival devices running on Google Inc’s Android software.

Clearly BlackBerry doesn’t see competing with Apple will work, so it’s going after the low-end of the market to boost its sales.

SMS startup Nexmo is finally launching its voice service at Mobile World Congress. The new set of application programming interfaces basically allows any app developer to embed calling features into his apps and set up voice services in the cloud.

Watch this space.

Such a great rock band.

In short, Apple’s focus is the product and what’s best for the consumer. This is a great article with lots of insight from Steve Jobs.

And what you can see is that on the 16GB model of the Galaxy S5, half of the on-board storage is used up before the owner even turns on the phone.

That’s just awful.

As it turns out, this isn’t a native Windows Phone app — and it wasn’t made by Redfin. It was developed by Microsoft, by packaging up Redfin’s mobile website in the form of an installable app.

In fact, the existence of the Redfin app for Windows Phone was a surprise to Redfin.

So, Microsoft has gone from irrelevant to slimy and irrelevant.

Congrats to everyone at Mariner Software—24 years deserves recognition.

As Om Malik points out, Bitcoin wasn’t the first.

Apple has released an update fixing the SSL encryption issue for both Mavericks and Mountain Lion. In addition, OS X Mavericks 10.9.2 also:

• Adds the ability to make and receive FaceTime audio calls
• Adds call waiting support for FaceTime audio and video calls
• Adds the ability to block incoming iMessages from individual senders
• Improves the accuracy of unread counts in Mail
• Resolves an issue that prevented Mail from receiving new messages from certain providers
• Improves AutoFill compatibility in Safari
• Fixes an issue that may cause audio distortion on certain Macs
• Improves reliability when connecting to a file server using SMB2
• Fixes an issue that may cause VPN connections to disconnect
• Improves VoiceOver navigation in Mail and Finder

You can download the updates using Software Update on your Mac. More information on Mavericks 10.9.2 and Security Update 2014-001 for Mountain Lion can be found on Apple’s Web site.

So many things I didn’t know.