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Sadly, this kind of incredible penmanship is a dying art in the age of keyboards and iPhones (I literally can’t remember the last time I wrote more than a few words on a piece of paper) but it is fascinating to watch a master calligrapher create.

The 100th annual Pulitzer Prizes were handed out on Monday, bringing honors to the AP for a series that freed thousands of slaves, a Washington Post database that tracked the number of deadly police shootings in the U.S., and a hip hop Broadway musical about Alexander Hamilton.

In addition to launching its WWDC Web site on Monday, Apple also launched a new part of its site dedicated to helping developers get on the App Store.

The App Store makes it simple for users around the world to discover, download and enjoy your apps. Grow your business with resources designed to help you create great apps and reach more users.

There is just so much I could say about the App Store, but I won’t right now. Another time.

The opportunity to buy tickets to this year’s conference will be offered by random selection. Register now through Friday, April 22 at 10:00 a.m. PDT for your chance to attend. We will let you know your status by Monday, April 25, 5:00 p.m. PDT.

Go!

Whether true or not, this is a fascinating read. I’m convinced that it’s something Apple is at least looking into.

I don’t know what this means for Mac users (hopefully, nothing) but it’s sad to see the demise of what, for Apple, was supposed to be its next great platform. Myself and others were encouraged directly by Apple (but behind the scenes) to develop and use QuickTime. Apple sent me a QuickTime Streaming Server (back in the days when there was such a thing) in order for me to broadcast my show using QuickTime 4. But, over the ensuing years, it became obvious that Apple was losing interest in developing QuickTime much further. This issue is yet another sign of that.

Nothing official from Apple, but this is what Siri says. [Via 9to5Mac]

Bill Campbell — who garnered the name “The Coach” for the sage advice and counsel he gave numerous tech leaders from Apple’s Steve Jobs to Google’s Larry Page to Amazon’s Jeff Bezos — has died.

My condolences to his family and friends.

Angus Young joined Guns N’ Roses on stage for a couple of songs over the weekend.

I’m sorry but I’d have to put the Spider-Man theme number one if only because it was the only song my brothers and I ever sang at the top of our lungs every time it played. Drove my mother nuts.

Apple has always had this obsessive attention to detail. I love that some of these are so subtle you’d never notice them but Apple went to the effort to create them anyway.

“The government has utterly failed to demonstrate that the requested order is necessary to effectuate the search warrant, including that it exhausted all other avenues for recovering the information it seeks,’’ Apple argued in the new filing to U.S. District Judge Margo Brodie. “Before the government demands that Apple do the work of law enforcement, the government must offer evidence that it has performed an ‘exhaustive search’ and that it remains unable to obtain the data it seeks without Apple’s assistance.”

How many of you had “sea monkies” when you were a kid? I remember seeing the ads in the back of almost every comic book I read but not believing for a second they looked as pictured. Sure enough, some kid in our neighborhood managed to convince his parents to let him buy the package and they were just as disappointing as I had imagined they would be.

Spirit of the West was/is one of my favorite bands. I saw them often when I was in college here in Vancouver and they were very approachable, often sitting with us after gigs and chatting. The song, “The Crawl”, was seen as a challenge to us college boys. We wanted to hit all the pubs in the song in one evening. We tried many times but my friends didn’t have my Nova Scotia stamina for heavy drinking. And check out one of their most well known songs, “Home for a Rest”. Very sad to hear of their myriad of health issues and even sadder I won’t get to see them one last time.

I absolutely hate these blast dryers. Now there’s scientific evidence for my hatred.

This is such a bizarre and useless accomplishment but, having wasted countless hours on this game, I can certainly appreciate the effort.

I used the hell out of iTunes allowances, but Family Sharing is a great way to share content.

My thanks to MacScan for sponsoring The Loop this week.

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MacGameStore.com today announced the release of an exciting “Pay What You Want” bundle to celebrate great Indie games. We’re also thrilled to announce that 10% of the proceeds from the sale of the bundle will go to “Stand Up To Cancer”, a groundbreaking initiative created to accelerate innovative cancer research that will get new therapies to patients quickly and save lives now.

If you beat the average price, you get even more games. The average price right now is just over $5.00.

The company that helped the FBI unlock a San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone to get data has sole legal ownership of the method, making it highly unlikely the technique will be disclosed by the government to Apple or any other entity, Obama administration sources said this week.

Not a big surprise. The government doesn’t want Apple to fix the exploit, but there is no doubt Apple is working very hard to close it.

A fascinating read from Ben Thompson, a nice analysis of Facebook, it’s core values, and how the changing nature of advertising and the growing sophistication of Facebook users’ sense of identity is stressing those values. Terrific insights.

Apple Inc. has constructed a secret team to explore changes to the App Store, including a new strategy for charging developers to have their apps more prominently displayed, according to people familiar with the plans.

Among the ideas being pursued, Apple is considering paid search, a Google-like model in which companies would pay to have their app shown at the top of search results based on what a customer is seeking. For instance, a game developer could pay to have its program shown when somebody looks for “football game,” “word puzzle” or “blackjack.”

I’ll be honest, this seems like a very un-Apple thing to do. This will only widen the gap of small developers having any chance of being fairly featured on the App Store, and that gap is pretty large already.

U.S. federal, state and local government agencies rank in last place in cyber security when compared against 17 major private industries, including transportation, retail and healthcare, according to a new report released Thursday.

No reason to be concerned, right?

Apple Inc and the FBI will return to Congress next week to testify before lawmakers about their heated disagreement over law enforcement access to encrypted devices, a congressional committee announced on Thursday.

We knew it wasn’t over.

This is a really well done video that does a great job of showing the issues that are only now being slowly resolved go back much farther than most Americans realize.

This was pretty obviously what was going to happen when Motor Trend started pimping this on Twitter yesterday. But many ClickWhores expectedly left their common sense at the door and happily “reported” the “Exclusive”. Sure enough, today’s “news” showed Motor Trend knows nothing about the mythical Apple Car. But many in the tech media won’t say that – they’ll just re-report uncritically because that’s so much easier than actually thinking.

Apple teamed up with 25 developers to donate the profits of their apps to WWF until April 24.

With Smile Software making significant changes to its shortcut utility, lots of folks have been looking at and for alternatives. I was a big fan of TypeIt4me long before I ever used TextExpander.

Sure, your browser can download. But does it let you easily accelerate downloads, limit bandwidth, download on a schedule, or execute rules to sort incoming downloaded files? Doubt it. And clearly, you’re not going to be able to quit that RAM-consuming monster of a browser until all your downloads are done.

I like the folks at Many Tricks. I think they make good software.

A core member of Apple’s elite industrial design team for more than 20 years, Mr. Coster is credited for his contributions to a wide range of now iconic consumer electronics ranging from the iPhone 4 to the iPad wireless keyboard. He holds more than 500 design patents and several utility patents, and has been recognized by several international design organizations for his work.

I’m always interested to see how Apple designers do outside the Apple ecosystem.