A new amp in Fender’s Pawn Shop Series. I bet this sounds great.

Ben Bajarin:

Folks claim that because Apple’s competition is doing something that Apple should also or they will lose. Yet what I love about Apple’s strategy is that it is never around what the competition is doing. Apple marches to beat of their own drum. This is fundamentally mis-understood by so many.

I agree with Ben. Companies will release products that may be in a category Apple is interested in, but Apple is not going to change its strategy to release something before it’s ready. The so-called experts fail to realize that many of the products introduced are guesses by companies to try to beat Apple to a market. Often times, these products are not thought out very well and eventually fail. Apple enters a market because it feels it can dominate that market. It makes products for its customers, with the expectation that the money will follow—exactly the opposite of how most other companies operate.

As Michael Mulvey points out, it’s not just fragmentation, but Google’s lack of attention to design.

Blackberry has today filed a lawsuit against startup Typo Keyboards, which is backed by Ryan Seacrest. The company alleges that Typo copied BlackBerry’s patented ‘iconic’ keyboard design.

I actually agree with BlackBerry.

Our mission is to take the pain and tediousness out of the DMCA takedown submission process. We make this as easy as possible by creating tools that help you quickly create submissions, track existing submissions and organize the results.

Great idea.

Snapchat, the red-hot private messaging service, said on Thursday that it knew for months about a security loophole that allowed hackers this week to harvest millions of phone numbers and announced changes to its systems.

Assholes.

In this issue Wil Shipley talks about why developers ask you to rate their apps; Darren Murph wonders why American companies don’t give employees more time off; Jonathan Rhyne looks at some steps developers should take to legally protect themselves and their business; Matt Dusenbury tells of a sad story between a mother and daughter; and Doyle Armbrust talks about the new classical music scene.

I don’t even know why I posted this. Just for a chuckle I guess.

Jim travels to Austin, Texas to join Dan in person for this very special episode. Along with 5by5 Producer Haddie Cooke, they discuss the new Mac Pro, Bitcoin, iPad keyboards, the iA Writer patent controversy, Tim Cook’s thank you to Apple employees, and more.

Sponsored by HostGator (coupon DANSENTME), SquareSpace (coupon DANSENTME1213) and Shutterstock (coupon DANSENTME12).

Great list of iOS and Mac apps.

Focus is a beautiful and easy to use pomodoro timer. Built exclusively for iOS 7 and OS X Mavericks, Focus is the best way to focus on a single task for a period of time.

What is the Pomodoro Technique?

The Pomodoro Technique is a time management philosophy that aims to provide the user with maximum focus and creative freshness, thereby allowing them to complete projects faster with less mental fatigue.

The process is simple. For every project throughout the day, you budget your time into short increments and take breaks periodically. You work for 25 minutes, then take break for five minutes.

Each 25-minute work period is called a “pomodoro”, named after the Italian word for tomato. Francesco Cirillo used a kitchen timer shaped like a tomato as his personal timer, and thus the method’s name.

After four “pomodoros” have passed, (100 minutes of work time with 15 minutes of break time) you then take a 15-20 minute break.

Focus lets you enter and manage your task, work with customizable session length, see you completed tasks and incorporates the latest technologies. It helps you to focus on your tasks and stay productive all the time.

Focus is available for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch with iOS 7 and also for OS X Mavericks.

This is cool. What a lot of work though.

Every year, thousands of people resolve to get organized in the new year. If you’re one of them, let Benjamin help. Benjamin is a task manager for iOS based on the FranklinCovey system of time management. Built specifically for those who love the Franklin Planner, Benjamin stores all your tasks, projects, and notes so they’re always at your fingertips. Best of all, Benjamin lets you sync your information between iPhone and iPad so that it’s conveniently available whether you’re at your desk or on the go.

Give yourself the tools you need to succeed in 2014. Give yourself Benjamin on the iPhone and iPad.

It’s been an incredible year for The Loop—we launched The Loop Magazine this year and the Web site is doing better than ever. I really couldn’t ask for anything more. […]

Take that Van Damme.

Yamaha Corporation and Line 6, Inc. today announced a definitive agreement for Yamaha to acquire Line 6, a leading manufacturer of innovative solutions for musicians. The acquisition expands Yamaha’s portfolio of modeling guitar processing products as well as pro-audio equipment, and offers new and exciting opportunities for accelerated growth for both companies.

Holy shit, that’s big news.

Great idea for a magazine on the iPhone. We are all photographers in some ways these days.

Nice little collection of apps at a discount.

Lessonator is a tool for creating beautiful music slideshow presentations on your Mac. It’s like a mashup between Apple’s Keynote and Garageband, where each slide is an animated music score. Lessonator creates and plays interactive slideshows containing 3d instruments, audio, video, notation (standard & tabs), images, diagrams and text. These slideshows are interactive because they can animate, ask questions, receive answers and track your musical progress.

Very cool looking app and a great idea.