Court’s antitrust decision against Apple is flawed

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Lex McFarley:

Here is where the Court’s logic is strained and incorrect. The Court concedes that there is nothing wrong with using the agency model, the MFN clause or pricing tier caps. So essentially the Court is finding Apple liable for antitrust violations for knowing that the publishers wanted to raise prices. The Court is essentially holding that faced with that knowledge, Apple supplied those terms (agency, MFN, price tiers) to the publishers so they could then go to Amazon and impose the agency model and raise retail prices.

PDFpen [Sponsor]

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PDFpen is the all-purpose PDF editor. Version 6 now includes Microsoft Word export, an editing bar for faster workflow, Retina graphics, and more.

If you work with PDFs, you need PDFpen, the multi-purpose PDF editor. PDFpen can make changes, fix typos, resize images, fill and save forms. It can perform OCR (optical character recognition) to digitize scanned documents as part of a paperless workflow. It can even redact sensitive information by removing it permanently and completely from a PDF.

Jim’s note: PDFpen saved me in the past, so I am a loyal user.

Insta-delete

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Get your apps ready for iOS 7 now—don’t become an insta-delete.

Dexter

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This was well done.

Microsoft sues U.S. Customs

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The U.S. International Trade Commission in Washington issued the import ban in May 2012 after deciding that Motorola Mobility devices infringed a Microsoft patent for a way mobile phones synchronize calendar events with other computers. Microsoft’s lawsuit, filed yesterday in Washington, says that order isn’t being enforced.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection, after having secret meetings with Google, continued to let the Motorola Mobility mobile phones enter the country even though Google has done nothing to remove the feature at the heart of the ITC case, Microsoft said in the complaint.

Apogee ThunderBridge

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Apogee’s Symphony 64 | ThunderBridge enables Apogee’s flagship audio interface, Symphony I/O, to connect to any Thunderbolt equipped Mac for true Thunderbolt compatibility and performance. Capable of up to 64 channels of input and output at sample rates up to 192kHz, Symphony 64 | ThunderBridge delivers impressive channel counts at unprecedented speeds for a latency and hassle free recording experience that meets the requirements of the most demanding professional audio I/O applications.

Apogee’s gear is some of the best in the industry, trusted by studios and engineers. It’s great to see a solution that allows the Symphony I/O to be connected to Thunderbolt equipped Macs.

New Taylor acoustic guitars

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Taylor Guitars continues to celebrate its newest body shape, the Grand Orchestra, with the addition of two new rosewood/spruce models, the 718e and 818e.

My Taylor acoustic is one of the most amazing guitars I’ve ever heard.

MoneyWell

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I’d like to thank MoneyWell for sponsoring The Loop’s RSS feed this week. MoneyWell is personal finance software that increases your wealth while reducing your debt using the tried-and-true envelope-budgeting method.

Robber steals iPhone, leaves his Samsung in its place

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A man smashed a case in a Springfield wireless store and escaped with several iPhones, but the scheme was foiled by one glaring oversight: The robber, police say, left his own Samsung Galaxy at the scene of the crime.

LOL.

Microsoft realigns

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In an email to employees Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer explained how the company is realigning. It damn near put me to sleep.

Storing data to last up to 1 million years

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A team of researchers at the University of Southampton have demonstrated a way to record and retrieve as much as 360 terabytes of digital data onto a single disk of quartz glass in a way that can withstand temperatures of up to 1000 C and should keep the data stable and readable for up to a million years.

BlackBerry set to cut more jobs

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As part of its restructuring, the company is planning to cut more jobs across middle management in the sales and support divisions, say people familiar with the matter, on top of the 5,000 layoffs last fiscal year.

Part of the latest cuts included Richard Piasentin, the company’s vice president for sales in the U.S., who was fired last month, these people said.

At some point there will be no more fat to cut from the company. I doubt it’s the sales teams fault—It sounds more like people just don’t want the product.

Apple’s ebook trial

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Adam Engst takes a look at the Apple’s ebook trial and answers some of the questions everyone has asked over the past few months.

Verizon could owe Apple $14 billion

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Because of slower-than-expected sales, Verizon now must double its iPhone sales of last year. If it falls short, the company could be on the hook for as much as $14 billion, Moffett Research said in a report released this week.

That’s an incredible amount of money to pay because you didn’t sell as many iPhones as expected. However, I don’t know of any other carrier in the world that hasn’t met sales expectations.

Lumia 1020

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BGR had some time with the new Nokia Lumia.

Google kills Latitude

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Google Latitude will be retired on August 9th, 2013. Products being retired include Google Latitude in Google Maps for Android, Latitude for iPhone, the Latitude API, the public badge, the iGoogle Gadget, and the Latitude website at maps.google.com/latitude.

Zombies and assholes

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Sascha Segan:

So you see the self-serving nature of this study: Adeven is trying to boost its business by making app developers worry they won’t make any money without Adeven. In the meantime, the company promotes a half-blind idea of what Apple’s App Store is. That’s why I’m not actually linking to the study here.

When are the mainstream media going to get off their asses and realize that the “research” from these companies are designed to help those companies sell their products. Nothing else. The BBC, CNBC and the others are just assholes for falling for this type of marketing.

Learn the guitar solo for “Sunshine of Your Love”

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Alex Vollmer is an incredible guitarist and he put out the first in a series of lessons on how to play some of the greatest guitar solos ever written. The first is for Cream’s “Sunshine of Your Love.”

Line 6 Pod HD500X

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I haven’t had a chance to try this one out yet, but I really like the Pod family of products. This is on the high-end of the product spectrum, so it’ll most likely be a hot item.