Fuck you Google

Google is close to rolling out a tool named “Customer Match” which, it appears, will combine a logged-in Google account with any email address handed by a customer to a retailer to create lists of addresses to target specific users with marketing material.

Creepy bastards.

Sonos introduces Trueplay to tune your speakers

Nobody’s home has perfect acoustics, and we don’t want to adapt our lives around our speakers. Your speakers should sound great, wherever you choose to put them. So, we decided to make them adapt to the environment around you. We call this Trueplay. Sonos speakers already sound fantastic, but Trueplay brings you even closer to how music should sound. With Trueplay tuning, your speaker can analyze the acoustic profile of any room and fine-tune itself. Most importantly, tuning with Trueplay is incredibly easy to do.

This sounds really impressive. I love Sonos products and can’t wait to hear this.

Ironic

Sometimes I just love Gruber.

iFixit in shit with Apple

A few days later, we got an email from Apple informing us that we violated their terms and conditions—and the offending developer account had been banned. Unfortunately, iFixit’s app was tied to that same account, so Apple pulled the app as well. Their justification was that we had taken “actions that may hinder the performance or intended use of the App Store, B2B Program, or the Program.”

Live and learn.

Well yeah, it’s an unreleased product that’s meant for developers to make apps and test on. Nobody is allowed to post information about it. I have a hard time believing they didn’t see this coming.

Amplified: Running Stock

Jim and Dan talk about today’s release of Mac OS X 10.11 (El Capitan!), iOS 9.0.2, Dan’s new iPhone 6s, 3D Touch, the awesomeness of Siri, and a new age of computing.

Brought to you by Braintree (To learn more, and for your first $50,000 in transactions fee-free, go to braintreepayments.com/amplified) and Squarespace (Visit the link and use the code GUITARS for a free trial and 10% off your first purchase).

TextWrangler 5.0

Built on a new, modernized foundation and compatible with Mac OS X 10.11 ‘El Capitan,’ TextWrangler 5.0 introduces newly overhauled systems for Find Differences and syntax coloring. In addition, TextWrangler 5.0 introduces new built-in support for EditorConfig and adds dozens of other enhancements and new features.

I love Bare Bones Software. I’ve been using their products for 20 years.

Younity streaming media server

This is pretty cool. I just downloaded it on my Mac and setup was very easy—using the iPhone as a client was simply entering my email address into the app. I wonder if they’ll have an app for the new Apple TV.

Twocanoes: Winclone and Boot Runner 2 [Sponsor]

Thanks to Twocanoes Software for sponsoring The Loop this week. Makers of Winclone, the best Mac app for migrating, cloning and backing up your Boot Camp partition. This week Loop readers can use the code “theloop” to get 10% off Winclone 5, just in time to backup Boot Camp before upgrading to El Capitan. If you run Boot Camp in labs or classrooms, Boot Runner 2 from Twocanoes is a time saver for remote scheduling of maintenance reboots and an easy to use OS picker for your users. Check out the video or get the 14-day trial and see how easy Boot Runner makes managing dual boot Macs.

Oh Samsung

Walk along the bedraggled queue of people, and pillows and discarded bottles of water bore the same bright blue color and were emblazoned with the hashtag #NextIsNew.

“They were given to us by Apple,” a person in queue told International Business Times. A friend of his, however, was a little more savvy, quietly informing him: “No man, it was Samsung, I did a little research.”

What the fuck is wrong with this company? Instead of these types of stunts, why not try to build a better product—that philosophy is the one thing they haven’t copied from Apple.

Pixelmator 2.1 for iOS

Pixelmator for iOS 2.1 update includes support for iOS 9, multitasking on iPad via Split View and Slide Over, 8K resolution support, Open in Place and Save to Photos features, and more.

I love and use Pixelmator on iOS and Mac, and have for years. These guys make great apps.

Photographic wallpapers

Flo Gehring made some great wallpapers available for users to download free. I really like the water droplets.

Fake Apple Stores thriving in China

On a bustling street in China’s southern boomtown of Shenzhen, more than 30 stores carrying Apple Inc’s iconic white logos peddle pre-orders for the new iPhone, a gadget that has become a status symbol among many better-off Chinese.

Many of the stores look just like Apple’s signature outlets, right down to the sales staff kitted out in blue T-shirts bearing the company’s white logo and the sample iPads and iWatches displayed on sleek wooden tables.

First, what the fuck is an iWatch? Second, I wonder if there’s anything Apple can, or would, do about this. According to the story, the stores are selling “genuine Apple products.” Interesting problem.

Amplified: TV, TV, TV

Jim and Dan talk about Dan’s newfound Apple love, the iPhone 6s, Watch OS 2, apps as the future of TV (and the fundamentally changing way we view TV as a medium), the iPad Pro, the Pencil, and ad blocking from the standpoint of an independent content creator.

Brought to you by lynda (Visit the link to get free 10 day trial access to their 3,000+ courses), Braintree (To learn more, and for your first $50,000 in transactions fee-free, go to braintreepayments.com/amplified), and Squarespace (Visit the link and use the code GUITARS for a free trial and 10% off your first purchase).

An amateurish dick measuring contest

Samantha Bielefeld talking about The Verge:

What I would like to see is the author not afraid to bite the hand that feeds, to confront the real issue here…the problem isn’t with there being advertising on the web driven by page impressions. The issue is how awful they look, how invasive they can be (auto-play audio/video, yuck!), their attempts at deceiving your website’s audience, and tracking your every mouse click or tap around the web in order to serve their own needs while sacrificing the privacy of the customers they are seeking to gain.

Great read.

The Deck and ad tracking on The Loop

I’ve been asked about ad tracking on The Loop quite a bit since iOS 9 and its content blockers were released. I use The Deck to serve ads on the site, and have for the last few years. Jim Coudal, the owner of The Deck, and I share a philosophy that ads should be unobtrusive and respectful to the reader.

Here is The Deck’s official stance on ad tracking (spoiler: there is none):

Short version. We don’t track our readers in any way or allow any other behind-the-scenes shenanigans. We just serve useful, relevant ads in a simple, unobtrusive way to support independent publishers. Please white-list The Deck when using ad blocking software. Thanks.

We will never share your personal information obtained by tracking, either individually or in aggregate, with advertisers or any one else for one very good reason: we don’t have any.

I understand people are upset with being tracked and having ads all over the sites they want to visit, but that’s not what The Deck or The Loop is about. When you block the sites that do make you angry, remember to white-list the ones that treat you with respect.

Coudal also recently spoke with Fast Company about ad blocking.

Review: iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus

Many people look at the “s” model of the iPhone as a less significant release than the years Apple does a full design change, but that’s just not the case. This year’s iPhone 6s and 6s Plus is full of new features and is probably the strongest “s” model iPhone Apple has ever released. I’ve been using the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus for about a week and a half, having received the devices from Apple two days after the September 9 keynote. […]

WSJ: Apple targets 2019 for its first car

Apple Inc. is accelerating efforts to build an electric car, designating it internally as a “committed project” and setting a target ship date for 2019, according to people familiar with the matter.

The go-ahead came after the company spent more than a year investigating the feasibility of an Apple-branded car, including meetings with two groups of government officials in California. Leaders of the project, code-named Titan , have been given permission to triple the 600-person team, the people familiar with the matter said.

This would be such a huge deal. Apple’s designers would undoubtedly come up with something great, and it fits with the company’s commitment to make the world a better place.

Review: watchOS 2

I picked up my Apple Watch with watchOS 2 from Apple in the days following the September 9 keynote presentation in San Francisco. I hadn’t installed any of the watch betas, so I was really looking forward to giving the … Continued

Apple releases watchOS 2

After a slight delay last week, Apple has released watchOS 2 to the public. You can download the update by going to the Watch app on your iPhone.

Low: Live video texting

Thanks to Low for sponsoring The Loop this week. Low is live video texting you can do from anywhere without being overheard. More fun than plain texting. Less awkward than video chat.

Google’s own security researchers don’t even agree with PR

Members of Google’s Project Zero vulnerability research team have challenged a key talking point surrounding the security of Google’s Android mobile operating system. To wit, a key exploit mitigation known as address space layout randomization does much less than the company’s overworked public relations people say in blocking attacks targeting critical weaknesses in Android’s stagefright media library.

Peace: Marco Arment’s iOS 9 ad blocker

Today, I’m launching my own iOS 9 content blocker, called Peace, to bring peace, quiet, privacy, and — as a nice side benefit — ludicrous speed to iOS web browsing.

I always like the software Marco makes.

Gruber: Smug

Gruber responding to a Nilay Patel tweet:

Perhaps I am being smug. But I see the fact that Daring Fireball’s revenue streams should remain unaffected by Safari content-blocking as affirmation that my choices over the last decade have been correct: that I should put my readers’ interests first, and only publish the sort of ads and sponsorships that I myself would want to be served, even if that means leaving (significant) amounts of money on the table along the way.

Fucking right.