Colorizing retoucher Jordan J. Lloyd of Dynamichrome took vintage photographs of global landmarks under construction and added color to them to give us a different look at history.

These are outstanding.

[Via Kottke]

The colors they chose don’t look connected to the colors of the old icon’s rainbow. In short, it looks and feels like an altogether new brand for Instagram, not an update or refresh of their old brand — and I’m not convinced that was the right move.

Some interesting thoughts from Gruber. As with most major design changes, this one is polarizing, as John points out.

I want McDonald’s fries and bacon. Or McDonald’s fries and anything… or bacon and anything.

Calling him “one of the last members of the original Siri team,” The Information reported on Wednesday that Darren Haas has left Apple for General Electric. He’ll join Steve D’Aurora, another ex-Siri team member who resigned from Apple for GE a few weeks ago.

The changeups also come a few days after a team of ex-Siri personnel unveiled Viv, a new, advanced virtual assistant that aims to offer functionality well beyond what Apple’s Siri can currently do. Demonstrated tasks include ordering a car from Uber, buying flowers from FTD, and ordering tickets from a variety of services, and offer intelligent, contextual responses, such as alternatives when a showtime for a movie is sold out.

This is very sad, especially considering what we’ve seen from the now departed Siri team and what they’ve done with Viv. These types of advances is what we expected Apple to do with Siri.

Before the introduction of Apple News in iOS 9 I was a big user of Flipboard. I’ve used RSS readers in the past but I’ve always liked the casualness of being able to flip through the current news and add stories for reading later. I was pretty hooked on this way of working and when News launched I tried it straight away, it wasn’t ready for prime time. It was slow and didn’t seem to update correctly but with iOS 9.2 it had a big update making it useable and reliable.

Here is how to use Apple News, it’s how I use it daily and gotten the most out of it.

Interesting article from an RSS and Flipboard user. I’ve never really used Apple News—it seemed like a solution in search of a problem to me, but if you’ve been considering using it, take a look at what Lee wrote.

I love these examples of what CSS can do.

Apple cares about accessibility. They’ve shown this over the years and they’re doing it again. […]

I always find these types of deep looks into design very fascinating.

Stephen Hackett wrote a piece looking back at iTunes Ping. Apple just never really gets social and music integration.

Cabel Sasser, the co-founder of Panic, made the coolest sign I’ve seen in a long time. Really.

Locate and remove duplicate files, even if they’re in remote corners of your system. Gemini 2 scans your whole disk speed-of-light fast, no matter how massive it is. Dig through scan results and hand-pick the files to erase, or better — let Smart Select do all the work.

Very nice looking interface and something I know I could use.

The Black Album Drums is a drum library for BFD3 and Kontakt 5.5 (full version) inspired by the drum sound featured on the “Black Album” by Metallica from 1991.

This is pretty special—these guys found the kit played on that record, not just the same model, but that exact kit.

Castamatic is the best way to listen to podcasts on any iOS device. Quickly assemble a custom sequence of shows to listen to, create a smart playlist, and listen to your favorite shows with top-notch audio quality, thanks to Castamatic’s custom DSP algorithms.

Another interesting podcast app.

Cheers bearded people!

Visa “has demanded that we allow fraud-prone signature verification for debit transactions in our U.S. stores because Visa stands to make more money processing,” Wal-Mart said.

The retailer pays about five cents more for a signature transaction than a PIN payment, said a person familiar with the rates.

I had no idea they paid more per transaction for a signature.

Spotify, which was created in Stockholm 10 years ago, now boasts of having close to 100 million users in more than 59 markets, despite increasing competition and, so far, a lack of profits.

Spotify claims it has 30 million paid users compared to Apple’s 13 million. Both Apple and Spotify say they are growing, so the users are coming from other services, or they are new to streaming.

Not much to really say about this one.

We all know by know that Apple doesn’t do social well at all, and that includes Apple Music. Its failed attempts with Ping and Connect underscore the company’s lack of understanding in attempting to engage customers in the social realm. However, I’ve been testing a free new app called SoundShare that really gets the integration of social and music.

I never thought Axl could pull this off, but this is pretty damn good.

Late last month, Apple brought seven leading podcast professionals to the company’s campus in Cupertino, Calif., to air their case to a room full of employees, according to two people who were there. The people would speak only on the condition of anonymity because they had signed nondisclosure agreements. The company made no promises, the people said, but several pressing issues for podcasters were discussed in frank terms.

Apple has problems, there’s no question about that. I hope these types of meetings will help, but we’ll see—I have my doubts.

Apple CEO Tim Cook has been named as one of several tech industry executives that will speak at Startup Fest Europe, a festival geared towards helping startups grow faster, according to the event website.

That would be an interesting talk!

In the iOS 10 Apple Music redesign, the Connect feature will follow Ping’s lead and will be demoted. Apple Music Connect currently exists as its own tab across the Apple Music interface, but multiple sources say that the feature will lose its tab and become integrated into the “For You” recommendations page.

I do hope this is true. Connect is the most useless thing since Ping. However, I hope that “integrated” into For You doesn’t mean that it will be mixed in with my recommendations—that would completely ruin the For You tab for me. Just kill Connect and be done with it.

Immersion, a company which developers haptic feedback technology, has filed its second complaint of the year against Apple. The company claims that 3D Touch on the iPhone 6s and the Force Touch trackpad found on the 12-inch MacBook and recent MacBook Pro models violate a number of Immersion patents.

I wonder how Apple will argue this case.

I don’t even know what to say about Cupertino Mayor, Barry Chang. He complains in an article The Guardian that he showed up unannounced at Apple’s headquarters and was denied a meeting—I assume with Tim Cook–he was asked to leave. […]

This looks pretty cool. All done from the menubar.

I’ve known David for 15 years or so now—he’s one of my favorite bass players ever.

SAP, whose business software runs inside 87 percent of the world’s 2,000 biggest companies, said it would work with Apple to develop mobile business apps for iPhones and iPads that run on its HANA database software.

Another good move for Apple and its customers in the corporate world.

The study, now in its fifth year, measures customer satisfaction with tablets across five factors (in order of importance): performance (28%); ease of operation (22%); features (22%); styling and design (17%); and cost (11%). Satisfaction is calculated on a 1,000-point scale.

I love my iPad. I don’t care what Wall Street says, my 9.7-inch iPad Pro is a brilliant device and I recommend it to everyone.

John brings up some great points about Apple Music’s product design and marketing. Definitely worth a read.

Jim talks to Dave Wiskus and Joe Cieplinski of the indie rock band Airplane Mode about their stage setup, the perils of performing live, and their appearance at the upcoming WWDC 2016 Beard Bash.

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Relevant links:

• Airplane Mode — Official site
• Clickarus — Stage-friendly metronome app from Airplane Mode
• Some notes on how the band sets up their metronome
• Setlists — iPad app for creating set lists and viewing lyrics
• BeatMaker 2 — For Joe’s fancy foot samples