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It has tremendous potential and lots of room for growth if only someone were to give it some love. Is that someone you?

I like this app. I think someone could do a lot with it.

Igloo allows you to share files, coordinate calendars, provide updates and manage projects easily.

• Why use the latest, sleekest devices if you are going to use them to stare at an intranet website that looks like it was built in the 90’s?

• Igloos are CSS and HTML5 friendly, which means they can be customized to look amazing.

• They are also responsive right off the bat, which means that everything you can do at your desk, you can now do on the go, on your phone.

• And just like your favorite Apple devices, Igloo helps you do your best work.

• Share files, coordinate calendars, provide status updates and manage projects. Igloo’s not just for your traditional intranet stuff like HR policies and expense forms. It also lets you work better together with your teams.

• For example, with Igloo’s latest release, Wolf, you can preview Photoshop, InDesign, HTML or CSS files straight from the platform, making it easier for co-workers to give feedback on creative assets.

• Head over to igloosoftware.com to sign up for a free trial today and invite up to 10 of your favorite coworkers to try it too.

One of the best ways to measure how a product is being received by its owners is customer satisfaction. This statistic alone is highlighted by Apple continually as the barometer in which they measure a product’s success. Many pundits will look to Apple Watch sales as the metric for its success. But the real question is, do people love it? The answer is yes.

I agree that pundits will look for sales numbers and I also agree that satisfaction is an important question in determining success.

Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum:

For the Smithsonian’s first-ever Kickstarter campaign, we are proud to announce plans to conserve, digitize, and display Neil Armstrong’s Apollo 11 spacesuit in time for this milestone anniversary. We want to preserve Armstrong’s spacesuit – and the story it tells of its incredible journey – down to the particles of lunar dust that cling to its surface. Just like the Apollo program, we will accomplish this in collaboration of thousands of people across the country and around the world. And that’s where you come in.

I’m a vocal critic of Kickstarter in general but this is for a great cause and a relative pittance. Some smart company or billionaire should just step up and cover the costs of the suit’s restoration and dispaly.

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The Atlantic:

I talked to Lisa Hardaway, an engineer at Ball Aerospace in Colorado who led technical development of the one called “Ralph.” Ralph captures visible and some infrared light. When you see Pluto looking tan- and sepia-toned in the new, high-resolution photos, you’re looking at data captured by Ralph.

​Since it captures visible light, Ralph is in many ways comparable to the camera found in a phone or fancy DSLR. In conventional camera terms, it’s a 75mm lens at f/8.7. But it was far harder to build than a normal camera.

Hilarious that these incredible images we are getting from New Horizons are from a “Ralph”. An “Omar” or a “Brad” I could understand.

Cool, but no.

New York Times:

Free smartphone navigation apps from Apple and Google offer turn-by-turn driving, walking and biking directions. And many new cars have the option of built-in navigation systems. So is there any longer a reason to buy a stand-alone GPS unit?

While smartphone navigation apps have some advantages, including limiting the number of devices one needs to buy and carry around, they also have some negatives.

I’m still a huge fan of stand-alone GPS devices for the reasons stated here and many others. I’ve tried almost every iPhone navigation app and I still come back to my Garmin or TomTom GPS on my motorcycle. If you’re just going around town, the phone may do the trick but, if you are travelling and/or wanting to “customize” your trip, a dedicated GPS is the way to go.

When I posted earlier today about Neil Young pulling his music catalog from streaming services because of poor quality, I kept wondering why he would do that. Neil is right, quality does matter, but not at all costs. […]

NASA:

New close-up images of a region near Pluto’s equator reveal a giant surprise: a range of youthful mountains rising as high as 11,000 feet (3,500 meters) above the surface of the icy body.

NASA’s Twitter account and web page are starting to post some amazing photos after New Horizon’s fly-by of the planet.

Neil posted this to Facebook today:

Streaming has ended for me. I hope this is ok for my fans.

It’s not because of the money, although my share (like all the other artists) was dramatically reduced by bad deals made without my consent.

It’s about sound quality. I don’t need my music to be devalued by the worst quality in the history of broadcasting or any other form of distribution. I don’t feel right allowing this to be sold to my fans. It’s bad for my music.

For me, It’s about making and distributing music people can really hear and feel. I stand for that.

When the quality is back, I’ll give it another look. Never say never.

Neil Young

Global Human Resources Chief Denise Young Smith said at Fortune Brainstorm Tech on Tuesday morning that Apple’s next “diversity report” will come “sometime this summer” and will reveal some progress on recruiting diverse employees. “We did have some movement in our hiring or women and hiring of minorities,” said Young Smith, noting that about 35% of Apple’s recent recruits are women. The upcoming report, which Young Smith claims will have “more transparency” than its report last year, will show an uptick in hiring African-American and Hispanic recruits as well.

Apple should hire the most qualified person for the job, regardless of their gender or color of their skin.

They guys at 3 Monkeys Amps are building me a new amp and are documenting the progress on Facebook. This beast is hand-wired and built from scratch by hand. I can’t wait!

A book review from Om Malik. It sounds like an interesting read.

Apple on Wednesday updated its iconic iPods with new colors and a host of new features for the iPod touch. […]

Something’s coming.

“‘I can’t support this, you need to pay us from the first stream,’” Borchetta, the CEO of Big Machine Records, says he told Apple execs. “And those conversations led up to the weekend where Taylor posted the blog.”

Taylor Swift did a great thing.

I haven’t used this, but Yamaha is a great music company. This may be worth checking out as you look for an outdoor speak this summer.

Apple UK:

Apple Pay has officially launched in the UK. Users will be able to useApple Pay at more than 250,000 retailers with support from eight banks UK banks. The service is currently supported with credit and debit cards from American Express, Visa, Mastercard, First Direct, HSBC, Nationwide, NatWest, Royal Bank of Scotland, Santander, and Ulster Bank.

Good news for our friends in the UK but the downside is purchases will be limited to a £20 cap that will expand to only £30 in September. So no buying big ticket items just yet. The £20 will just cover two pints of lager and a packet of crisps.

Ben Brooks’ post on the problems keeping up with a personal journal resonated with me. I’ve tried this over the years too and could never keep it up.

Merlin and Jim talk about Apple Music.

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CBC:

A CBC News crew was interviewing an Ontario police officer as a road-rage incident was happening right behind them.

CBC’s Neil Herland was speaking with OPP Const. Graham Williamson about a fatal collision on Black Creek Drive in Toronto on a nearby overpass, but shouting interrupted the interview, which was quickly captured by CBC camerawoman Tyna Poulin.

“Hey! Get back in the car,” Williamson yelled.

Less “road rage” and more, “road slightly peeved off”. No punches thrown, no gun fire, no horns honking – yeah, so Canadian.

Apple on Monday released an update for iTunes supposedly fixing some issue with iTunes Match and Apple Music. You can download the update by launching the App Store on your Mac and clicking Update.

Observatory:

Sometimes I wonder if people understand how organizations like Slice work. They make money by selling their services to client companies, and they attract new business by sending out press releases that become “news.” The more shocking the story, the more PR they get — and, in theory, the more new clients they can reel in.

In this case, Slice got exactly what it hoped for. Its name was attached to one of the biggest stories of the week. But, in the absence of any numbers from Apple, just how believable is the story?

As someone who is forced to read this stuff for a living, watching this particular feeding frenzy is simultaneously frustrating and unsurprising. While the general public’s lack of critical thinking when it comes to the media is slightly understandable, when the media itself is guilty of the inability to look at press releases and see them for what they actually are – simple promotion – it’s particularly aggravating. We can’t expect the consumer to think critically when the media refuses to do so.

Comic Book Resources:

After 25 years, Berkeley Breathed is returning to his Pulitzer Prize-winning comic strip, “Bloom County.” Breathed announced the new incarnation of the politically-minded strip via a post on Facebook that featured him working on a new comic with the words “Bloom County 2015” at the top.

“Bloom County” originally ran from December 1980 until 1989, just two years after he won the Pulitzer. The characters, such as Bill the Cat, Opus the Penguin, Hodge-Podge the Rabbit, Milo Bloom, and Cutter John, lived on in the Sunday-only strip “Outland” from 1989 to 1995, as well as “Opus” from 2003 to 2008.

Along with “The Far Side” and “Calvin and Hobbes”, “Bloom County” was always one of my favorite comic strips. For those of you who know me, you’ll know how excited I am to have Opus back. Thanks to my friend Sly for the link and Donald Trump for the inspiration.

ZDNet:

While some smartphone makers chase market share, Apple is pulling away when it comes to profits: For every dollar of operating profit in the smartphone market, Apple is nabbing $0.92, leaving the others fighting for scraps.

That estimate comes from Canaccord Genuity as noted by the Wall Street Journal over the weekend.

Considering that Apple’s iPhone sales globally account for roughly 20 percent of all smartphones sold, the situation for its competitors will only get worse.

Android users and vendors can and do brag about market share. I’m sure Apple is very happy with profit share and wouldn’t have it any other way.

Business Insider:

If everything goes according to plan, a NASA spacecraft, called New Horizons, will fly by Pluto at 7:49 am ET. New Horizons is the first spacecraft in history to ever visit Pluto, and it’s been a long time coming after 9 years in space.

NASA will stream live countdown coverage of the event starting at 7:30 am, followed by a briefing on the mission from 8:00 to 9:00 am ET.

It’s more than a little mind boggling to think that something we flung into space nine years ago is now about to send us pictures of the tiny little planet.

Macstories:

Earlier this week, Apple released the first public betas of iOS 9 and OS X El Capitan, and, knowing that would be the case, I cautioned MacStories readers against leaving negative reviews on the App Store for third-party apps that developers can’t update with new features and fixes yet.

Unfortunately, since yesterday I’ve already seen tweets from the developers of two excellent iOS apps – Screens and Day One – post screenshots of negative reviews they’ve received by users who are unsurprisingly running into problems when using their apps on the iOS 9 beta.

People posting negative reviews on the Apple Store because apps broke while they were running a beta fundamentally misunderstand what the point of a public beta is.

All I had to do to turn my phone into a stealth Google Photos uploader was to turn on the backup sync, then uninstall the app. Whereas one might reasonably believe uninstalling the app from the phone would stop photos from uploading automatically to Google Photos, the device still does it even in the app’s absence. Since making this discovery, I have re-created the issue multiple times in multiple settings on my Galaxy S5.

So, you delete Google Photos and it continues to upload your photos without your consent. Perfect.

Thanks to Hullo for sponsoring The Loop this week. Have you ever slept on a buckwheat pillow? It’s kind of like a beanbag for your head. The hull fill supports your head and neck in a way that can’t be matched by traditional pillows.

Hullo’s features include:

• Quality construction & organic materials
• Breathable fill that provides cool comfort all night long. No more flipping to the cool side in the middle of the night!
• American-made craftsmanship
• Free shipping
• 60-night money-back guarantee

Drop what you’re doing—go and check out Hullo. Try it for 60 nights. If it’s not your favorite pillow, return it for a refund. You can’t lose!

Have you heard about HTC lately? 2015 is shaping up to be an awful year for the company. In March the company had a market cap of $4.06 billion, and today—only a few months later—it’s worth less than half of that. The stock price, at about two bucks a share, is at a 10-year low. HTC just wrapped up the second quarter of 2015, where it posted a net loss of $258 million. And the trend is downwards—year over year, HTC’s monthly revenue was down 38% in April, 48% in May, and 60% in June.

I feel bad for HTC. They have tried to make some good products, but Samsung’s tactics have pushed them down.