While at NAMM, Jim joins Dan and special guest Merlin Mann to talk about their favorite Macs new and old, the future of the computer in the home, the power of portable and wearable devices, amps, guitars, Yamaha’s purchase of Line 6, new gear, why Jim isn’t getting a new Mac Pro, and more.
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I love the idea of this. Watch the movie on the site to see it in action.
Calendars 5 is complete re-imagining of what the best mobile calendar experience should be.
Calendars 5 is smart, excels in both tasks and events and runs on any iOS device you might have.
This looks really nice.
I just don’t know what to say about this.
This is a new site from Russ Hughes, the man behind Pro Tools Expert. Russ has turned Pro Tools Expert into the must-go-to site for everything Pro Tools and is now turning his attention to Logic Pro. Russ won’t be doing the new Logic site on his own—he’s turning to Dennis Van Den Driesschen, who is the founder of the popular Danski’s Logic Pro Blog. It’s certainly going to be interesting to see if Russ and Dennis can turn the new Logic site into something as big as Pro Tools Expert. With their history, I’m betting they can.
Matt Gemmell:
So I’m going to try this. Maybe it’s foolish, and from a commercial point of view it certainly looks that way, but I must try. As of this moment, I’m no longer developing software, either for myself or for others. I’m writing full-time.
Matt is one of the few writers on the Internet that I truly enjoy reading. I’m really looking forward to reading more.
I agree with most of what Kendra Gaines has to say about navigation bars. I don’t mind some controlled navigation1, whether in the sidebar or on the top of a site. I don’t believe that we’ve gone too minimal overall, because I think we’re giving users what they want—or maybe that’s what readers want access to—that’s the content. If you make readers jump through hoops to read your Web site, you’ve failed, regardless of the design element you’re talking about.
In other words, not a bunch of hierarchal Flash menus with 100 items in them. That’s unruly and not necessary. You failed. ↩
I don’t get why Feedly needs to do this.
Nest CEO Tony Fadell:
“The data we collect is all about our products and improving them,” Fadell said, reiterating a statement he issued about the company’s smart thermostat and smart smoke detector following the announcement of the acquisition. “If there were ever any changes whatsoever, we will be sure to be transparent about it, number one, and number two, for you to opt in to it.”
I’m not convinced. Google’s recent changes to Google+ show they are an opt-out company and could care less about their users.
Come on people, seriously.
Great article from Harry McCracken detailing some of the people that said “Apple must…” do this or that.
Rene Ritchie wrote a great article on Google, and all large companies for that matter. I agree with everything he said, until this:
I value my privacy. I’m deeply concerned about who collects my data and how they use it. But I’m no more concerned about Google owning Nest than I am Nest existing in the first place.
The problem that I have is that Nest sold a product—we bought that product, used it and we’re satisfied with that transaction. With Google, the transaction is Google mining my data looking for information so they can show me the best advertisement.
With Google, I am the product.
When the CEOs of Apple and Samsung, accompanied by several in-house lawyers, meet for their (court-requested) settlement negotiations on or before February 19, there will probably be flexibility on both sides relating to the billions of dollars in license fees that may change hands, but if Samsung wants a deal, it will have to accept, as HTC did before it, an anti-cloning provision that would allow Apple to still bring lawsuits if Samsung’s products resembled Apple’s offerings too closely in ways that could actually be avoided by means of designarounds.
Good. There is no sense in going through all of this only to have Samsung copy the next thing Apple comes out with.
I saw this on Huffington Post. It is truly incredible how powerful our devices are these days.
Good article from Alicia Katz Pollock—it might be one of those articles you bookmark just in case.
This is a nice ad, I wonder where they came up with the idea…
Peter Cohen:
The Mac mini is overdue for a major refresh. It’s been well more than a year, and it’s been several years since the Mac mini had any significant work done to it. That’s got me thinking about what Apple could do it and probably should do to it.
It will certainly be interesting to see what Apple does with the Mac mini. Clearly, Apple’s interest has been with the iPhone and iPad, as well as the MacBooks and Mac Pro in recent years.
On Thursday night, KSDK in St. Louis reported on a high school lockdown. And it was one that they had caused. Kirkwood High School went into lockdown earlier that day and, after more than an hour, people in St. Louis began finding out why.
I would be pissed off.
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Sam Rijver:
I’m using quite a few iHealth products to measure a few things regarding my health. I have measurements of my blood pressure, blood-oxigen levels, weight, activity and sleep patterns and more. I do this because it’s useful information I can use to monitor my own health. More importantly I can (choose to) provide this information to my physician during my yearly check-up. I have yearly check-ups due to heart disease running in the family and with the iHealth products I can provide a great amount of data points for about 80% of the tests they run on such a check. It’s great. It’s useful. It’s also scaring the crap out of me that Google might go out and buy the company for an insane amount of money. I just can’t shake the feeling that if that happens I would feel worried about the implications of Google getting their hands on that kind of data.
For me, all of this commentary comes back to simple point: people don’t trust Google. Eventually that has to come back and bite them in the ass.
Everyone has their favorite DAW to work in, and most people are very attached to their workstation of choice, but eventually there comes a time when it becomes necessary to transfer the individual elements of a project to a different program.
Transferring projects has always been problematic, but there’s some good tips here.
I kind of like the default look of Logic Pro Pro X, but if you want a different look, the modding community has been hard at work.
That’s quite a headline from Consumer Reports. And the FTC goes after Apple.
Don’t forget to hit reload, there are some real gems in there.
Om Malik has diabetes and thought about some things Google didn’t.
I would lose my fucking mind if this happened to me.
Matt Drance:
Put simply: the Internet we know and depend on will become something very different. The business relationship with your provider will change its focus from consumption (how many ones and zeros came over the wire) to behavior (what kind of ones and zeros). The latter is much more discriminatory and insidious.
Research firm NPD today announced the results of its latest Connected Home Report, showing that Apple increased its share of the U.S. smartphone installed user base by seven percentage points, from 35 percent in the fourth quarter of 2012 to 42 percent in the same quarter of 2013. Second-place Samsung increased its share of the market by a smaller margin from 22 percent to 26 percent, while other major manufacturers saw their shares drop.
There are only two players in the smartphone business.
This week, Merlin Mann sits in to chat with Jim about the Nest acquisition, the problem with Google’s opaque creepiness, Jim’s upcoming trip to NAMM, plus some special interactive tips from Jim on working the pentatonic blues solo.
Homework: Practice on GnR’s “Knocking on Heaven’s Door.”
5by5’s bandwidth for January provided by CacheFly: The fastest, most reliable CDN in the business.
Sponsors this week:
I love Beta Monkey drum loops—I use them on a lot of my songs.