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Swedish music streamer Spotify has more to lose from Apple’s anticipated Beats Music revamp than its competition, according to new usage data, as iOS accounts for a majority of Spotify’s active users.

Apple really has to do this right. We’ve seen music services do big, splashy relaunches and users really don’t care—I really don’t care. There are some key points that Apple needs to take care of to beat out Spotify—if they don’t, it’s going to be a tough road ahead for them. Music is very important to Apple, there is no doubt about that, but they have to keep the focus and intensity on this that they’ve shown for their other products.

Vinepair:

In America Cinco de Mayo has evolved to become one of the country’s largest drinking holidays. In 2013, over $600 million dollars worth of beer was sold, according to Nielsen data, which is more beer than is sold for St. Patrick’s Day or the Super Bowl, two holidays where beer consumption is the primary focal point. And most of that beer is Mexican in origin, which has also meant that the Mexican beer sector, thanks to Cinco de Mayo, has continued to grow and thrive north of the border, experiencing the best sector growth in the American market according to EuroMonitor data, second only to the rapid growth of American craft beer.

Suffice it to say, Cinco de Mayo is a behemoth when it comes to selling booze, but how did a holiday that isn’t really even celebrated in Mexico – Mother’s Day, which occurs around the same time, is a much bigger deal – become not only the most powerful U.S. holiday when it comes to selling alcohol, but also the only connection most Americans have to our largest immigrant group? You can thank Texas distributors of Corona in the 1980s.

Yet another completely made up “holiday” created in the service of marketing.

Craig Hockenberry:

I started reporting these issues early in the Yosemite beta release and provided tons of documentation to Apple engineering. It was frustrating to have a Mac that lost its network connection every few days because the network interfaces were disabled while waking from sleep (and there was no way to disable this new “feature”.)

Marco Arment and many others are having similar issues.

They pay for shipping and promise a three-day turnaround. I feel like doing it just to see how it works.

Great performance.

CBC News:

It was a busy weekend in Torbay, as the first iceberg of the season arrived in eastern Newfoundland just off the coastline near Tapper’s Cove.People flocked to the area over the weekend to take advantage of the site.

The Canadian Coast Guard says there’s currently more than 100 icebergs off the province’s coastlines, so it’s just the beginning of iceberg season in Newfoundland and Labrador.

This is how cool Canada is – we have icebergs, baby! By the way, if you ever want a fun vacation, visit Newfoundland. Starkly beautiful province and wonderful people.

CBC News:

To mark Star Wars Day, as May the 4th has come to be known, the carillon bells inside the Peace Tower on Parliament Hill rang out the Imperial March music for Star Wars, among other space-related tunes.

It was part of a 15-minute carillon concert with a space theme that began at noon.

The concert included the Star Wars theme by John Williams, arranged by Janet Dundore; Princess Leia’s Theme, arranged by Janet Dundore and Andrea McCrady; and The Imperial March, arranged by Andrea McCrady.

There’s nerdy and there’s cool. Rarely do the two intersect but this is definitely Nerd Cool.

When an app isn’t responding or working correctly, it might use more of the processor (CPU) than it should, even when the app doesn’t seem to be doing anything. As the CPU gets busier, it uses more energy, which reduces the length of time that your Mac can run on battery power. It also generates heat, which can cause the fans in your Mac to spin faster. 

I’ve used this from time to time to see if an app was dragging the system down.

I’m not a huge Star Wars fan, but obviously the people at Amazon are. They are selling everything from toys to dog outfits in the Star Wars theme.

As you design your Apple Watch app, understand the foundations on which Apple Watch itself was designed:

Some great information posted on Apple’s developer Web site.

A new and exciting website has recently been launched for web designers and developers.

You likely spend hours every morning browsing through hundreds of posts on your RSS feeds, hoping to stumble across relevant stories. Webdesigner News was built to provide web designers and developers with a single location to discover the latest and most significant stories on the Web.

They search through hundreds of posts on blogs, social media, and news channels, to deliver the most essential stories of the day. The content covers quality news, fresh tools and apps, case studies, code demos, inspiration posts, videos and more.

With frequent updates throughout the day, you’ll always find something interesting and fun to read.

Click here to visit the Webdesigner News website and subscribe to the newsletter for the latest stories of the day.

Techcrunch:

The idea behind Dufl is that frequent travelers waste a lot of time trying to clean and prep their clothes for each trip, especially when those trips are pretty much back-to-back. With Dufl, the user never has to pack a bag or clean their travel clothes ever again.

I’d hate to be such a frequent business traveller I’d need this kind of service but it does sound like a pretty cool idea and an example of a business that wouldn’t have been possible ten, maybe even five years ago.

Mapbox:

The Geotaggers’ World Atlas is my long-term project to discover the world’s most interesting places and the routes that people follow between them. Five years ago I first started retrieving photo locations from the Flickr search API and drawing lines between them to make the first version of the Atlas.

Today I’m able to launch the full Geotaggers’ World Atlas covering every city in the world. Thanks to Flickr’s API, it exposes over 10 years of photo locations, and as a web map it lets you explore not just the largest centers of activity but also their context, anywhere on earth.

As an exercise in coding, this is interesting. As a visualization of data, it’s utterly fascinating. The only downside is the interactive map doesn’t have details like street names so it may be hard to find out what is so fascinating about that particular location but look up your own city on the map and see if you can spot “the most interesting places”.

Pictures and videos in this update. The scale of this project is just unreal.

Mathew Ingram:

The idea that someone could monetize Twitter before Twitter itself got around to doing so was what one investor called a “holy shit moment” for the company.

I wonder what would have happened if Twitter embraced the third-parties years ago.

Thanks to HelloTalk for sponsoring The Loop this week. Finally, learning and practicing a new language is easier and more intuitive than ever before. Introducing HelloTalk, the language app where your teachers are native language speakers from around the world. You just pick the language you want to learn—there are over 100 from which to select—and almost instantaneously you’ll be in touch with native speakers of that language … and you’ll start learning and practicing immediately.

HelloTalk isn’t a course you strictly follow; rather, you learn and practice at your pace and in the manner that best meets the way you learn. Practice foreign languages with people around the world. Simultaneously speak and type the language you’re learning. Record your voice before speaking to your HelloTalk friends and compare your recording to standard pronunciations. Change your friends’ audio messages to text for better understanding, and receive help to improve your grammar. Easily translate whenever you don’t understand, and so much more.

With HelloTalk, you’ll discover learning a new language is fun … and fast. Download your copy for iPhone or Android today.

Jim and Dan talk about the Apple’s record second quarter results, the Apple Watch’s issue with tattooed skin, and more.

Sponsored by MetaCDN (Use the code ‘5by5’ for a 10% discount for life) and Macminicolo (Get a full year of hosting for just $100).

The company updated its Apple Watch heart rate support page, noting that tattoos could affect the watch’s ability to read your heart rate.

[Via 9 to 5 Mac]

A new Apple support article covers the steps needed to unfair your watch. Might be handy to bookmark for the future, although it’s easy to find in the Apple Watch app on your iPhone.

You’d think that all five color bands for the 38mm Apple Watch Sport would weight the same. Turns out, color has weight.

Some great thoughts, although using it must of been kind of freaky.

Shares of LinkedIn Corp, operator of the most popular social network for professionals, fell 20 percent in early trading on Friday, wiping out more than $6 billion of market value, after the company slashed its full-year forecast.

LinkedIn reported on Thursday its slowest quarterly revenue growth since it went public four years ago.

The surprisingly weak results followed Twitter Inc’s on Tuesday. Twitter’s stock fell by as much as 24 percent, slicing about $6 billion off its market value.

Social media companies are a bit to volatile for me.

The National Post:

Backed by the Quebec justice system and the provincial police, sheriffs have raided sugar shacks down country roads and seized barrels of maple syrup, using trucks and front-end loaders. The federation’s goal: enforcing a supply management system that controls the sale and proceeds of maple syrup in Quebec.

“They have more power than police,” says Daniel Gaudreau, a syrup producer in Scotstown, Que. “They can come into my house anytime they want.”

Quebec is the Saudi Arabia of maple syrup.

We have written about this issue in the past but this story really brings home the enormous power of the The Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers – power that looks, on the surface, out of control.

The Daily Dot:

Before you go cancelling your order for Apple’s first smartwatch, it’s important to grasp the facts.

But “Apple Watch Defective!” is such a sexier headline. By the way, it’s a good rule of thumb that, when the headline includes something bad about an Apple product, wait 24 hours before commenting. Invariably, the facts come out and it’s not nearly as bad as the Chicken Littles would have you think.

The Loop Magazine released a new issue today with eight new articles. You can download the app for iPhone and iPad and get a free preview of every article in this month’s issue. You can purchase the issue for $1.99 or get a subscription for just $1.99 per month and get access to all of the issues.

In this issue:

Review: 12-inch MacBook: Jim Dalrymple got his hands on one of the new MacBooks Apple recently introduced and gives you his thoughts, from the Retina display to using the one USB-C port.

Skating To Where The MacBook Is Going To Be: Rene Ritchie takes a look at why the all-new MacBook is ahead of the curve and why competitors will have a hard time catching Apple.

The MacBook: A New Mac Laptop For A New Mac Customer: Peter Cohen tackles the criticism lobbed at the new MacBook and why he thinks they are wrong.

What Entertainment Looks Like In The Cord Cutting Age: Cable TV isn’t gone yet, but Darren Murph imagines what the future of TV will look like.

Behind The Mask: This is a really great piece written by Mateusz Stawecki. He talked to some of the people we hear speaking at conferences and finds out what bothers them about public speaking.

Apple Pay: Technology Done Right: Jim Dalrymple looks at Apple Pay and how the new payment technology is working for developers.

To Live, Or To View? Periscope and Meerkat Are Turning Life Into ‘Show & Tell’: Darren Murph looks at how some new apps have changed we way we share our lives.

My Life with iPad: The iPad recently turned five years old. Jim Dalrymple talks about his love of Apple’s tablet device.

Would you pay $6 to commute in a bus that looks like a cafe crossed with a Virgin America plane?

A luxury-bus startup called Leap Transit relaunched in San Francisco last week, carting passengers from the wealthy Marina district to downtown. It’s the latest company to offer a high-end alternative to public transit.

I’d do it.

App Camp for Girls:

The Quiz Compendium includes 15 personality quizzes created by camper project teams. You’ll learn so many things about yourself, such as what your superpower is, where you should go on vacation, and even what your breakfast choices say about your personality.

I utterly despise these kinds of “personality quizzes” but App Camp for Girls is a great cause started by a wonderful person, Jean MacDonald. The app is only 99 cents and goes to a very worthy organization. So I’ll swallow my disdain and buy the app and you should too.

According to Apple, iOS 8 is at 81 percent, iOS 7 has 17 percent, and earlier OSes are at 2 percent.

Samsung Electronics Co. said its first-quarter net income has plunged 39 percent as the smartphone business saw its profit shrink to less than half from a year earlier.

And

Sales fell 12 percent from a year earlier to 47.12 trillion won while operating income dropped 30 percent to 5.98 trillion won, in line with Samsung’s earnings preview earlier this month.

The wider-than-expected drop in net profit was due to a big profit plunge in Samsung’s mobile business. The maker of Galaxy smartphones said its mobile division generated 2.74 trillion won in quarterly profit, compared with 6.43 trillion won a year earlier.

Ouch, sucks to be Samsung. This may look like the smartphone market is falling, but it’s not. Apple sold 61.1 million iPhones, up 40 percent over last year.

Pixelmator 3.3.2 is out, featuring lots of new stuff — Photos app support, Force Touch trackpad support, jaw-dropping Repair Tool enhancements, and much more.

This is just great software. I use it everyday.