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“‘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.

Some good advice here from Apple, especially heading into summer for much of the world.

Due as a part of El Capitan this fall, and available right now as a public beta is the first major update to Photos for Mac, the replacement for iPhoto and Aperture that Apple launched earlier this year.

Here are the major additions you can expect to see in Photos when 1.1 arrives this fall (or when you install the public beta, depending on your enthusiasm):

I always enjoy reading Jason’s look at software.

Editor’s Note: This story was written by Dan Sokol about his experience with Comcast.

Some Background…

Comcast is my ISP. Like most of us in the US we have no real choice if we want fast internet in our homes.

iMore mentioned that some people that signed up for the iOS 9 beta have been notified that it’s available to download. Mac Rumors says that OS X El Capitan will also be available to day. You can sign-up on Apple’s site to test both versions.

The new version for the Mac is here. I haven’t tried the Mac version, but I’m really impressed with what they’ve done with the iOS version of the apps.

Bad ads on the Internet are a real problem, even on some of our favorite sites. Rene Ritchie has been very open about addressing this issue with iMore, and I commend him for that.

A great compressor plug-in from Universal Audio. I always like watching the videos they publish for little tips and tricks on how to use them.

Clearly this isn’t going to be for everyone, but if you love your Les Paul, you may want to have a look at these.

Dan and Jim talk about Apple Music, changing tastes in music, and the future of radio.

Brought to you by lynda (Visit the link to get free 10 day trial access to their 3,000+ courses).

There are some nice looking guitars here.

Techcrunch:

Many companies have best practices and the Hacking Team, the “computer security experts” who sold hacking tools to various federal and state agencies around the world, are no exception. Their database of information includes a number of interesting hacking tips, including mention of a 0-day, unpatched hole in Adobe Flash that the company is currently closing.

It’s long past time that Adobe should do the right thing and stop developing Flash and web site creators should stop using it.

Black Sabbath with Ronnie James Dio. This is legendary.

The Sweet Setup:

In the read-it-later space, the two dominant players have long been Instapaper and Pocket. Each app has its own strengths and weaknesses, and Pocket has some features that could make it the ideal app for some use cases, but Instapaper is our favorite app for actually reading the best writing on the web … later.

I was an original user of Instapaper but switched to Pocket (when it was still named Read It Later). After reading this article, I’m going to at least give Instapaper another shot.

The linked images are graphic and really give a sense of the risks of riding a bike at high speed as part of a tightly packed group of competitors.

A lot of people have asked what music I listen to while I do my walks, so I thought I’d put it up on Apple Music. The songs were chosen to keep up a good walking pace—each of the songs makes me want to sing or play air guitar while I’m walking. I hope you enjoy it.

Jim’s Walk playlist on Apple Music.