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The New York Times:

Law enforcement agencies have a legitimate need for evidence, which is all the more pressing in terrorism cases. But the Constitution and the nation’s laws limit how investigators and prosecutors can collect evidence. In a 1977 case involving the New York Telephone Company, the Supreme Court said the government could not compel a third party that is not involved in a crime to assist law enforcement if doing so would place “unreasonable burdens” on it. Judge Pym’s order requiring Apple to create software to subvert the security features of an iPhone places just such a burden on the company.

Interesting opinion piece by the Times. This story has a long way to go before it gets resolved and everyone is lining up and taking sides.

The Atlantic:

The winning entries of the 59th annual World Press Photo Contest have just been announced. The 2016 Photo of the Year is a haunting nighttime image of refugees climbing through razor wire over the the Hungarian-Serbian border, taken by photographer Warren Richardson. This year, according to organizers, 82,951 photos were submitted for judging, made by 5,775 photographers from 128 different countries.

This contest is different from others in that they are all “press photos”. By their nature, they aren’t allowed to be edited in any significant​ way. It makes them even more raw and immediate.

My thanks to Marketcircle for sponsoring The Loop this week.

Track time. Invoice. Get paid. Billings Pro is a time tracking and invoicing app made exclusively for the Mac, iPad, iPhone, and Apple Watch. By yourself or in a team, Billings Pro makes it easy to track time from all your apple devices. Whether you’re tracking time on your iPhone, invoicing on your Mac, or adding a payment on your iPad, all your devices stay in sync.

Marketcircle, the makers of Billings Pro, just released Billings Pro 2.2 for iOS with a significant UI revamp and new functionality on the iPhone.

New for Billings Pro on iPhone

Whip up estimates and invoices from scratch right from the Home Screen. Start building an invoice with one tap when you launch the app.

Compare billable time over the last 14 days using the Activity Graph. See how many hours you’ve tracked and the value that time adds to your business.

Stay on top of your invoices. See any overdue and unpaid invoices right from the iPhone Home Screen. Swipe to scroll through recent invoices or tap to jump to all.

Billings Pro 2.2 also offers the ability to view all invoices, estimates, projects and clients, sorting options for clients and invoices, and adds support for Apple Watch OS2. Learn more about Billings Pro 2.2 for iPhone and iPad and read what freelancers and small businesses are loving about Billings Pro.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey:

We stand with @tim_cook and Apple (and thank him for his leadership)!

It’s about time. Most other companies are too scared to take a stand on this issue. Good for Twitter for standing with Apple.

Macworld:

Apple really, really wants you to stop using that old iPhone and to upgrade to a new one. On Thursday, the company announced the Trade Up With Installments plan, the third purchase plan customers can opt into when buying a new iPhone.

The Trade Up With Installments plan is targeted at users of the iPhone 4, 4s, 5, 5c, 5s, 6, and 6 Plus and is only available at the Apple Store. You can bring in your old iPhone and Apple will give you credit for the device, and then you can pay off the new unlocked iPhone in monthly installments.

This sounds like a great plan to get newer iPhones in the hands of those who want the latest and greatest iPhones but just don’t have $600+ to put down upfront. I hope this program is available outside the US.

Techcrunch:

Today, Apple is issuing an updated version of iOS 9.2.1 for users that update their iPhones via iTunes only. This update will restore phones ‘bricked’ or disabled by Error 53 and will prevent future iPhones that have had their home button (or the cable) replaced by third party repair centers from being disabled.

A new support document on Apple’s site has been issued that details the causes and repair methods for Error 53.

Good move on Apple’s part to make this right.

Bloomberg:

At the center of all this is Srouji, 51, an Israeli who joined Apple after jobs at Intel and IBM. He’s compact, he’s intense, and he speaks Arabic, Hebrew, and French. His English is lightly accented and, when the subject has anything to do with Apple, nonspecific bordering on koanlike. “Hard is good. Easy is a waste of time,” he says when asked about increasingly thin iPhone designs. “The chip architects at Apple are artists, the engineers are wizards,” he answers another question. He’ll elaborate a bit when the topic is general. “When designers say, ‘This is hard,’ ” he says, “my rule of thumb is if it’s not gated by physics, that means it’s hard but doable.”

Those of us old enough to remember the anemic processors in Macs of the past can marvel at the power of the present day chips. It can’t be overstated how important Apple making their own chips is and, therefore, how important this guy is.

Matthew Panzarino:

The point is that the FBI is asking Apple to crack its own safe, it doesn’t matter how good the locks are if you modify them to be weak after installing them. And once the precedent is set then the opportunity is there for similar requests to be made of all billion or so active iOS devices. Hence the importance of this fight for Apple.

That is exactly right. All devices, even newer ones, will be susceptible if the government is successful.

Atlas Obscura:

In the coverage at the time, almost all the media outlets (including Sports Illustrated and World Press Photo) described the image as a physical manifestation of the breaking of the sound barrier. Gay seemed to believe that, telling one interviewer, “I clicked the same time I heard the boom, and I knew I had it.” Other coverage described the cone as a result of the Prandtl-Glauert Singularity, a phenomenon predicting that aerodynamic forces would approach infinity as aircraft neared the sound barrier.

It turns out neither of these are correct. Instead, Gay had captured an effect known as flow-induced vaporization that sometimes forms around objects flying at high speeds in the right environmental conditions.

It’s an amazing photograph that has been around for years and almost always incorrectly described as a “F/A-18 Hornet breaking the sound barrier”. The truth is a lot more complicated.

It is always fascinating to read, or listen, to Tim and Jony.

Vogue:

Apple’s lexicon of pure, pared-down forms, smooth surfaces, gleaming metallic colors, and soft contours within hard carapaces has emerged over the past 20 years under the eye of chief designer Jony Ive. Talking over coffee on the old campus about the growing synergy between the company and the fashion world, Ive points to his rose-gold Apple Watch, a precious counterpoint to the Clarks on his feet.

“Nine years ago, the iPhone didn’t exist, and the most personal product we had was too big to carry around with you,” he explains. “The technology is at last starting to enable something that was the dream of the company from the very beginning—to make technology personal. So personal that you can wear it.”

Apple’s interest in and focus on fashion is really interesting, if potentially a big pitfall. Fashion is notoriously fickle and a misstep could do irreparable harm to the brand.

Macworld:

Make no mistake: This is unprecedented, and the situation was deliberately engineered by the FBI and Department of Justice to force a showdown that could define limits our civil rights for generations to come. This is an issue with far-reaching implications well beyond a single phone, a single case, or even Apple itself.

As a career security professional, this case has chilling implications.

Mogull is my go-to guy when it comes to security and privacy issues. When he writes, I pay attention. I’ve also got an audio interview with him on tonight’s Your Mac Life show. He’ll be on right after The Loop’s Publisher, Jim Dalrymple.

Imagination is our window into the future. At NASA/JPL we strive to be bold in advancing the edge of possibility so that someday, with the help of new generations of innovators and explorers, these visions of the future can become a reality. As you look through these images of imaginative travel destinations, remember that you can be an architect of the future. Click on any of the thumbnails below to learn more and download a free poster sized image.

Very cool, NASA.

Om Malik:

Over the past few days, though, I have been contemplating if it is time to get Instagram off my home screen as well. Why? Because it has been infesting my feed with too many ads — and not just any ads but terrible ads. Video ads. Ads that make absolutely no sense to me. Ads that have less relevance to my feed and me than dumb follow-me-everywhere banners on the web.

Sometimes companies force us to make decisions. I’m not saying Instagram shouldn’t have ads, they just shouldn’t allow bad ads.

This debate will rage for a long time now. Neither party is going to back down.

Apple must provide “reasonable technical assistance” to investigators seeking to unlock the data on an iPhone 5C that had been owned by Syed Rizwan Farook, Judge Sheri Pym of U.S. District Court in Los Angeles said in a ruling.

Apple has said they can’t unlock iPhones running iOS 8 or later—the shooter’s phone was running iOS 9. I’m not sure what’s going to happen here, but clearly the government doesn’t believe Apple can’t break into the phone.

Ozzy and Randy.

Track time. Invoice. Get paid. Billings Pro is a time tracking and invoicing app made exclusively for the Mac, iPad, iPhone, and Apple Watch. By yourself or in a team, Billings Pro makes it easy to track time from all … Continued

Bon Appetit:

You intentionally grab a café table next to the window on overcast days and you’re a pro at tinkering with your eggy photos on VSCO, but have you ever gone on a professional photoshoot with just your iPhone?

Imagine the surprise the photographers we worked with on our March Culture Issue experienced when they got the call saying they’d have to ditch their DSLRs and tethers for the hippest pocket camera around. We spoke with the photographers who made the issue happen and found out what they think of a print magazine going full-on Instagram for an issue.

How freaked out were the photographers when they heard about this? Imagine your boss telling you that you had to use “inferior” tools to get your job done. It’s an interesting experiment.

Jim and Merlin talk about guitar amps, TaskPaper, and Metallica’s “Too Heavy for Halftime” show.

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links

• Marshall JCM800 – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
• Orange Amps | Dark Terror Head
• TaskPaper — Simple to-do list software for Mac
• Questions about taskpaper history – TaskPaper – Hog Bay Software Support
• Introduction | TaskPaper User’s Guide
• Why TaskPaper? | TaskPaper User’s Guide
• Hog Bay Software Wiki — TaskPaperArticles
• Taskmator – TaskPaper Client, Reminders, Task, To-Do List, Outliner in PlainText on the App Store
• Airplane Mode
• About — Airplane Mode
• Huffduffer
• huffduff-video
• Steve Allen show, Frank Zappa Playing music on a Bicycle 1963 – YouTube
• Live Review + Interview: Metallica at AT&T Park, San Francisco (2/6) | Consequence of Sound
• Set list: Metallica rocks AT&T Park – San Jose Mercury News
• Metallica – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
• Master of Puppets – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
• Metallica (album) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
• Metallica – Fuel [The Night Before – San Francisco 2016] HD – YouTube
• Loveless (album) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
• My Bloody Valentine – Only Shallow – YouTube
• My Bloody Valentine – Only Shallow (OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO) – YouTube
• My Bloody Valentine – To Here Knows When (Live) – YouTube

Boredpanda:

I wanted to take a coast-to-coast journey across Canada in a way that had never been seen before. To give a fresh perspective to the journey I decided to take the train. It’s not just any train, but rather the legendary 1959 passenger train that was first to be called “The Canadian.”

When I saw the post title, I thought, “Wait – there’s no vintage train you can take across Canada…” Then I saw the pictures and realized what he was talking about. Very clever.

A great new album from a couple of my friends, Dave Wiskus and Joe Cieplinski. They also happen to be developers and podcasters in the Mac and iOS world. I’m listening to the album right now and it’s really good. Congrats guys!

There’s been a lot of talk about AR and VR. I think AR will hit the market sooner and bigger than VR. This video shows a practical example of how AR can help in training pilots.

Slashfilm: Have you never experienced the wonders of seeing Humphrey Bogart on the big screen? Have you never watched a John Huston film in a movie theater either? Well, now you can do both, because Fathom Events and Turner Classic … Continued

NPR:

Valentine’s Day is a time to celebrate romance and love and kissy-face fealty. But the origins of this festival of candy and cupids are actually dark, bloody — and a bit muddled.

Though no one has pinpointed the exact origin of the holiday, one good place to start is ancient Rome, where men hit on women by, well, hitting them.

I love these origin stories – as a kid, I was a big fan of Roman and Greek mythology. Our present version of Valentine’s Day, regardless of your feelings about the day, is certainly better than its origin story.

The Verge:

Amazingly, the new Deadpool movie does work. That has a great deal to do with Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick’s screenplay, but so much of what keeps the film from flying out of control is the editing. Julian Clarke had to do the heavy lifting in Adobe Premiere to strike a balance between the character’s love of gore and gleeful absurdity, making a movie that’s accessible to both fans and neophytes. It’s not easy, since Deadpool seems made for situations that fly out of control. I spoke with Clarke about the film, the challenges he faced making it, and why the sequel might be harder to pull off than anyone expects.

Interesting interview with the editor of the film and the particular challenges he had in keeping the level and tone just right. I haven’t seen the movie but I’ve heard good and bad things about it. But, from the trailers, it feels like one of those movies you’re either going to immediately form an opinion about one way or the other. Personally, I loved what I saw in the trailers and during the marketing campaign leading up to this weekend’s release.

Hodinkee:

Having worn an Apple Watch almost exclusively for the last month, I feel absolutely confident that mechanical watches aren’t going anywhere for now. But the Apple Watch isn’t either.

It’s almost improbably well done, and it shows a willingness to think creatively that ought to be heeded by the luxury watch industry – and it also suggests to me that underestimating its impact, and Apple, is dangerous.

This is a long and well detailed review of the Apple Watch from the point of view of a person who loves and lives for mechanical watches. This is a guy who reviews $95,000 mechanical watches on a regular basis so his opinions regarding the Apple Watch are very interesting.

Petapixel:

Here’s a major warning to those of you who use Adobe Creative Cloud on a Mac: the latest version of Creative Cloud has a bug that deletes unrelated data from your root directory without warning.

The bug in Adobe Creative Cloud version 3.5.0.206 was discovered by the cloud backup service Backblaze, whose customers were having their data deleted by Adobe’s app.

This is yet another in a long line of issues with apps in Adobe’s Creative Cloud and it may be the most destructive one yet. I was forced to use CC but I don’t do any of the updates as they pop up. I know Adobe screws this stuff up on a regular basis so I keep myself one update behind.

Rogue Amoeba:

While the App Store has many shortcomings, it’s the onerous rules and restrictions Apple has for selling through the Mac App Store which pose the biggest problem. The type of software we make is precluded from being sold through the store, particularly now that sandboxing is a requirement, and Apple has shown no signs of relaxing those restrictions. Fortunately, unlike iOS, the Mac platform is still open. We’re able to distribute and sell direct to our customers, right from our site. We’ve got almost 15 years of experience and success doing just that, and we have no plans to stop.

I get why Apple does sandboxing and, in broad terms, it’s great for users. But we are seeing more and more developers unable to create the products they want because of sandboxing. The good news is that companies like Rogue Amoeba make products for more experienced users and those users will always be able to find and buy stuff directly from Rogue Amoeba. Buying direct is my preferred method, too. It may be less convenient but it puts more money directly in the hands of a developer in know and trust.