The iOS design lab will offer technological training and certification to students, faculty, staff and members of the broader community interested in developing apps in Swift, the Apple programming language used to write some of the most successful apps in the App Store. The lab will support educational innovation, career development for students and economic development opportunities for the central Ohio community and the university’s other campus locations.

The Digital Flagship University initiative will launch during the 2017-18 academic year. The iOS design lab will open in a temporary space in 2018, moving to a permanent location in 2019. Students will begin training in Swift coding in spring semester 2018.

Sounds like a great program for the school and Apple.

Earlier this week, a small startup called Init.ai announced that it soon would be discontinuing its service — a smart assistant for customer representatives to parse and get better insights from their interactions with users, as well as automate some of the interactions — because the team was (according to a notice on the site) “joining a project that touches the lives of countless people across the world.” TechCrunch has now learned what that project is: the team is joining Apple.

This is great news. As much as Apple touts Siri and how smart it is, I still can’t get it to work reliably.

Apple on Wednesday released an update for Apple Watch owners that fixes an issue where the watch would join—and stay connected to—unauthenticated (captive) Wi-Fi networks.

You can download the update by opening the Apple Watch app on your iPhone, going to General > Software Update and then follow the onscreen instructions.

Today, along with a new family of hardware products [link], we’re introducing Google Pixel 2. We want you to be able to ask even more from your phone—so we’re giving you the highest-rated camera ever that helps you take great pictures and interact with the world around you, all-day battery life, and an Assistant that understands you better and helps you get more done.

I’m not sure about Google’s camera claims, but features like Google Lens sound interesting.

Today, we’re welcoming two new products to the Google Home family: Google Home Mini is small and mighty for hands-free help in every room. And Google Home Max is our biggest and best-sounding Google Home ever. They’re both radically helpful, and packed with the power of the Google Assistant, including some brand new features.

I haven’t seen or used either of these products, so I’ll reserve judgement. I have seen and listened to Apple’s HomePod and I know how good it sounds for music. There’s still a lot of questions to be answered with the HomePod, but I think I’ll wait until it’s released.

When it comes to multi-room audio, Sonos is still the gold standard. But the company has lagged behind on the smart speaker revolution, promising only that integration with assistants like Amazon’s Alexa would come in due time.

There is a ton of good news from Sonos today.

The European Commission said on Wednesday it was taking Ireland to the European Court of Justice for its failure to recover up to 13 billion euros ($15.3 billion) of tax due from Apple Inc, a move labeled as “regrettable” by Dublin.

Both Apple and Ireland are appealing the ruling that any money is owed, so this seems a bit heavy-handed by the EU.

Teach a machine using your camera, live in the browser. No coding required.

A new experiment done with Google.

You’ll be missed, Tom.

Apple on Tuesday released an update to iOS 11, bring ing the current version to iOS 11.0.2. The latest version fixes an issue where some users reported hearing crackling noises during calls, and it also fixed a problem that caused some photos to be hidden.

You can update by going to Settings > General > Software Update on your device.

This is a fascinating look at how the guitar rigs are set up. I was surprised to see that they are not using Tube amps anymore.

So good.

Tom Petty, the rocker best known as the frontman of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, is dead at 66, CBS News has confirmed.

Much respect, Tom.

Thanks to Bombich Software for sponsoring The Loop this week. Bombich Software has released Carbon Copy Cloner 5, an upgrade to its bootable backup software for macOS. The upgrade features scheduled task grouping and sorting, guided setup and restore, task history trend charts, a health check for backups, advanced file filtering, and includes hundreds of improvements and fixes.

Carbon Copy Cloner 5 requires macOS 10.10 or later and will be compatible with APFS and Apple’s macOS 10.13 High Sierra release this autumn. A full-featured thirty day trial version is available.

Carbon Copy Cloner is an app that I’ve used for years, in fact, since it was first released. The new version goes a long way to make the software easier to use, while still adding more advanced features.

You can get 15% off Carbon Copy Cloner until September 3 by using the code LOOPINSIGHT at checkout.

The PGA TOUR hired Brad Mangin to shoot the Presidents Cup with his new iPhone 8 Plus. Using the 12MP dual cameras on the new iPhone while taking advantage of the intimacy of such a pocketable device, Brad is able to capture stunning professional photos that would be tough with larger, traditional cameras. At the 2017 Presidents Cup, Brad is taking advantage of the new Portrait Lighting feature on iPhone 8 Plus to put a sharp focus on faces around Liberty National. The photos provide a unique look at the PGA TOUR through the eyes of a photographer who has been covering sports for 30 years.

Incredible.

Portrait Lighting is pretty amazing.

Introduced in 1982, the KORG SDD-3000 Digital Delay was popularized by U2 guitarist, The Edge, to forge one of the most identifiable guitar sounds in the history of rock. Far from a one-instrument-pony, however, the SDD-3000 also found a home in early new wave and 80’s synth music. Fully endorsed by KORG, the KORG SDD-3000 Digital Delay plug-in for UAD and Apollo interfaces exactly captures the original unit’s colorful analog circuitry, and burnished-sounding 13-bit delays.

There is no company that does better emulations than Universal Audio. Take a listen to the sounds on the company’s page.

Thanks to Twocanoes Software for sponsoring The Loop this week. If you are upgrading to High Sierra and have a Boot Camp partition, check out Winclone 6. Winclone 6 is the ideal Mac App for backing up your Boot Camp partition. You spent a ton of time getting your Windows setup just right, and Winclone makes sure that you can always get back to that same setup. Winclone creates a exact clone of your Boot Camp partition, including all Windows system files, applications, and data. If you have a failed update, bad drive, or ransomware attack in Windows, you just restore your Winclone backup and you are back up and running.

Get 50% off Winclone 6 with code WCLOOPHS through Sept 30th.

I’ve been using Edovia’s screen sharing app for some time now and love it. If you need such an app, give this a try, you won’t be disappointed.

Apple has released macOS 10.13 High Sierra, the newest operating system for Mac. To improve High Sierra security when installing system software (such as UAD drivers), the software must be explicitly allowed to load in the Security & Privacy pane within macOS System Preferences.

These are my most used audio plug-ins, so compatibility is a must for my music machine.

I just love this song.

Apple has released a small update to its recently released iOS 11 on Wednesday. Go to Settings > General > Software Update on your device to download the latest. Apple says the update provides “bug fixes and improvements.”

Thanks to Twocanoes Software for sponsoring The Loop this week. If you are upgrading to High Sierra and have a Boot Camp partition, check out Winclone 6. Winclone 6 is the ideal Mac App for backing up your Boot Camp partition. You spent a ton of time getting your Windows setup just right, and Winclone makes sure that you can always get back to that same setup. Winclone creates a exact clone of your Boot Camp partition, including all Windows system files, applications, and data. If you have a failed update, bad drive, or ransomware attack in Windows, you just restore your Winclone backup and you are back up and running.

Get 50% off Winclone 6 with code WCLOOPHS through Sept 30th.

There are some good plays in here.

On September 22, Apple Watch Series 3 with built-in cellular and Apple Watch Series 3 with GPS went on sale around the world at 8 a.m. local time. The new Watches add powerful health and fitness enhancements, a faster dual-core processor, a new wireless chip and watchOS 4.

Enjoy folks, I’m loving mine.

Uber will not be issued a new private hire licence, Transport for London (TfL) has said.

TfL concluded the ride-hailing app firm was not fit and proper to hold a London private hire operator licence.

I really don’t understand this decision. Uber and Lyft and wonderful services for the consumer and should be supported.

Serenity Caldwell does a great job of explaining what’s going on with the Apple Watch connectivity problems. It also reaffirms why I didn’t experience any of these issues in my Apple Watch review—I don’t connect to these types of networks.

While writing my review of the Apple Watch Series 3 with LTE capabilities, I experienced notable connectivity issues. The new Watch appeared to try to connect to unknown WiFi networks instead of connecting to cellular, when I was out and about without my phone.

Within the first couple days of experiencing this, Apple replaced my first review unit with a second one, but that one proved to be problematic, too.

Eventually, the company issued an official statement, acknowledging the issue. “We have discovered that when Apple Watch Series 3 joins unauthenticated Wi-Fi networks without connectivity, it may at times prevent the watch from using cellular,” an Apple spokesperson said in an emailed statement. “We are investigating a fix for a future software release.”

I’m not sure what’s going on here, but I never had this issue with my Apple Watch. Every time I tried to do something, it worked just fine.

Perhaps Gruber explained it:

I suspect one reason I haven’t run into this is that I generally avoid using unauthenticated Wi-Fi networks. They’re a security risk, and at least in my experience they generally offer slower, less reliable connectivity than LTE.

I don’t do that either, so that could be it. Whatever the reason, Apple needs to get it fixed and they will.

When Apple released the Apple Watch Series 3 at its event last week, it added a few really big new features, including cellular capabilities to the device. I’ve been testing out a cellular model with an iPhone 8 for about a week. […]

Apple introduced the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus during a special event at its new Apple Park campus last week. While many people were focused on the launch of the iPhone X, the iPhone 8 is an incredible piece of hardware that features many improvements over its predecessor. I’ve been testing both the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus for about a week.