Screwed

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Five months after replacing the longstanding co-CEOs, Heins desperately needs more time to right the now-struggling company and he likely has next to nothing concrete to offer his restless audience in terms of new products and services.

Turn any iOS device into an AirPlay audio receiver [Sponsor]

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Want to send audio on your iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad? Airfoil Speakers Touch has you covered! With it, you can send audio via AirPlay directly from iTunes or from one iOS device to another. There’s no reason to spend hundreds on costly third-party AirPlay receivers – the iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch you already own can do the job!

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Úll Conference is the best I’ve ever attended

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I’ve been to countless conferences over the last 20 years, speaking, attending and talking to developers, but never have I attended a conference organized as well as Úll in Dublin, Ireland last week. […]

Apple in talks with EPIX to stream movies on TV

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Reuters:

Apple Inc began talks earlier this year to stream films owned by EPIX, which is backed by three major movie studios, on devices including a long-anticipated TV, according to two people with knowledge of the negotiations.

I may be on the outside with this one, but I believe Apple is looking at this market for a future product.

A CSS3 cycling slideshow

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More CSS3 goodness. Although I don’t agree with what they said about being careful of CSS3 because of the older browsers that don’t support it. It’s time to move forward.

Irish Prime Minister visits with Apple employees in Cork

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I’m in Ireland this week and thought this was very interesting. The Irish Prime Minister meeting with Apple employees in Cork.

I’m in Ireland this week and picked up this little tidbit. Here is the Irish Prime Minister meeting with Apple employees in Cork.

[caption id="attachment_23285" align="aligncenter" width="460" caption="Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny visits with Apple employees in Cork, Ireland on Friday, April 27, 2012. Apple recently announced plans to expand its presence in Cork, adding over 500 new jobs to support the company's growing business across Europe."][/caption]

ScreenCastsOnline

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Many thanks to ScreenCastsOnline for sponsoring The Loop this week. Established in 2005, ScreenCastsOnline is acknowledged as one of the primary online training resources for the Mac and iOS, publishing two brand new video tutorials each and every week. ScreenCastsOnline … Continued

Engineering Red Hot Chili Peppers, mixing Adele

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Andrew Scheps’ engineering and mixing credits read like a who’s who of popular music. He mixed four tracks on Adele’s Grammy-winning album, 21, and engineered and mixed 11 songs on the latest Red Hot Chili Peppers album, I’m with You. The latter was one of his many collaborations with production legend Rick Rubin. Scheps has also worked with Jay-Z, U2, Justin Timberlake, Green Day, Metallica, and many others. As a producer, Scheps’ credits include bands such as Favez, The Duke Spirit, and Audrye Sessions.

It’s always interesting to see how the pros do it.

One-in-four iPad purchases made by first-time Apple owners

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The iPad is drawing new consumers to the Apple brand with more than one-in-four iPad owners saying the device is their first Apple product. According to leading market research company, The NPD Group’s recent Apple Ecosystem Study, 33 percent of U.S. homes, (37 million households) own Apple products. While a majority (69 percent) of these consumers own iPods, ownership of iPads is growing.

This is good news for Apple. It doesn’t matter if it’s a Mac, iPhone or iPad that draws people to Apple, once they start using the product they will buy more. The simplicity of using any Apple products will win people over.

iPhone, iPad claim top spots in Enterprise activations

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The Q1 findings showed that Apple’s iPhone 4S hit a record high, claiming the number one device spot overall, with 37 percent of all activations for the first quarter (four times that of any other device). The iPad 2 claimed the second spot overall, with 17.7 percent of activations for the quarter. With less than one month on the market, the new iPad™, released in March 2012, rocketed to the number four spot with 4.3 percent of all activations for the quarter, and an impressive 12.1 percent of activations in March alone.Good found that iPads collectively represented roughly 97.3 percent of its tablet activations for Q1 2012. Apple’s continued growth is not only being driven by consumers and the overall BYOD trend, but also by proactive enterprise deployment of iPads.

We knew Apple was doing really good in the consumer market, but this is quite impressive.

Pixelmator updated

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Image editing software Pixelmator has been updated to version 2.0.3 with the following improvements:

  • Improves the performance of the Move Tool
  • Fixes memory leaks
  • Fixes a situation where performance would degrade over time
  • Fixes issues with Export for Web
  • Fixes a problem that caused corrupt PXM files

Samsung hires protesters against Apple

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Taylor Wimberly:

We know Samsung has an unhealthy obsession with Apple, but this is getting a little weird. This week in Australia, Samsung hired a marketing agency called Tongue to conduct some kind of guerrilla marketing campaign where they sent a bus of protesters to an Apple store and taunted people with the message “WAKE UP.”

Here’s an idea: just make products that don’t copy everything Apple does.

Apple to lead tablet market until 2016

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Financial Post:

Over the next five years, the global market for touchscreen tablets is expected to grow to 375 million devices sold in 2016, up from 56 million sold in 2011, bringing the total global tablet install base to more than 760 million.

To infinity and beyond.

iPhone accounted for 78% of AT&T smartphone activations

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Among the 4.3 million iPhones that AT&T sold in the first quarter of calendar 2012, 21 percent of those were new to AT&T. The total 5.5 million smartphones AT&T sold in the three-month period was a new record for the company.

Android is winning!

Clicky keyboards

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Shawn Blanc has a very detailed review of his favorite clicky keyboards, including sound recordings of the sound they make when you type. I found the words per minute and accuracy were particularly interesting.

Google’s Andy Rubin on the hot seat

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Dan Farber:

In 2006 email thread, Rubin said that Sun owned the intellectual property and brand for Java and that the Java.lang APIs were copyrighted. Over the next several years his thinking changed.

Your thinking may change, but the truth remains constant.

No meaningful revenue

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Dustin Curtis:

I think Facebook is terrified of the usage transition from desktop PCs to mobile. A billion dollars for Instagram, as an insurance policy to guarantee that the company will have an anchor in content creation on mobile, is worth every penny.

That’s exactly what I think about the deal.

State of Creativity

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Research firm StrategyOne conducted surveys of 5,000 adults, 1,000 per country, in the US, UK, Germany, France and Japan.The research was designed to identify attitudes and beliefs about creativity and provide insights into the role of creativity in business, education and society.

Massey’s Drum Replacement Tool

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DRT is a Pro Tools AudioSuite plugin which effortlessly replaces drum hits with fresh audio samples, MIDI notes or audio “clicks” all with near flawless accuracy.

I have a lot of respect for Steven Massey, a former Digidesign software engineer. He makes some really nice plug-ins.

Nokia’s big problems

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Jean-Louis Gassée:

Nokia’s results for Q1 2012 are in: They’re not good.Compared to the same quarter last year, Nokia overall revenue is down 29%, to $9.7B. And the company is now losing money, $1.8B, 18.5% of revenue.

ScreenCastsOnline [Sponsor]

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Established in 2005, ScreenCastsOnline is acknowledged as one of the primary online training resources for the Mac and iOS, publishing two brand new video tutorials each and every week.

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Consumers would have preferred Twitter buy Instagram

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59% are concerned that Facebook will destroy the simple and elegant Instagram user experience as Facebook begins to integrate the photo service with its platform. 73% think that Twitter as the new Instagram owner would be taken better care of the Instagram users.

The Border Collie

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This is an old article, but it’s really funny. And true. I have a pair of one-year-old Border Collies and everything in this article describes them perfectly. Luckily my last dog was a Border Collie too, so I know what I’m in for as they get older.

Border Collies have a trait called, “THE EYE.” The eye is a hypnotic stare that the BC turns on anything it wants to control. BC owners talk about “THE EYE” with reverence and love to expound on the way the dogs use it to control sheep. It would be fine if these dogs used “THE EYE” only with sheep, but the BC turns “THE EYE” on anything it might engage to produce fun or work.Recently I dog-sat a BC for the weekend. Two days. Forty-eight hours of being stared at. No blinking. Unwavering scrutiny. In human culture, staring is wrong. Parents invest incredible energy teaching children not to stare. Being stared at briefly is uncomfortable. Try an hour with a Border Collie if you want to experience serious discomfort.