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Max Piantoni presents an exploration of the Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh and the rare Experience CD that accompanied the machine’s release. Including a lengthy and hard to find 1997 interview with Jony Ive.

Max did a nice job with this.

Vox:

We’re getting closer to the point where you can cancel your cable subscription and still continue to enjoy all your favorite cable TV shows. Today at the Consumer Electronic Show, the satellite TV company Dish announced the next step in that direction. Sling TV is a service that lets you watch cable TV channels over the internet.

Crucially, the Sling TV lineup includes ESPN, the nation’s most popular cable channel and a must-have for sports fans. And unlike some other streaming services, you can sign up for it without getting a conventional cable subscription.

Is this of interest to you cordcutters?

Reuters:

At this week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, mobile-marketing firm TapSense plans to release an Apple Watch ad-buying service. The service will provide a first glimpse of how businesses can serve up ads on the watch, even though the gadget will not be available until later this year.

At issue: the same qualities that render the watch exciting to Madison Avenue, such as the ability to detect customers approaching a store and to zap an ad directly to their wrists, also risk alienating those customers.

Before any one panics and screams about ads on the Apple Watch (oh, too late – they already are), keep in mind this is a “service” being offered to developers to include in their apps and there is no indication that Apple will allow such functionality. And, even if Apple does, I can promise you it will be an entirely opt-in process. Apple is not going to allow developers to push ads at you without your permission.

The history of the PBS NewsHour can be traced back to the Watergate hearings.

Robert MacNeil and Jim Lehrer covered the 1973 hearings for PBS. In 1975 MacNeil began anchoring The Robert MacNeil Report which soon evolved into the 30-minute MacNeil/Lehrer Report.

Om Malik:

How to find originality in a “networked society” is on my mind, because I have recently come across three individuals who have been original for such a long time. During a conversation for my new art project, Pi.co, Frank Clegg, a US-based bag maker put it best when he said, “If I make something different, then I don’t really have any competition. Either people like what I do, or they don’t like what I do.” Such a simple statement, but so hard to implement, because many find such comfort from hiding in the herd.

This is exactly how I see Apple. They make products that we don’t always know we need—people are going to like them or they won’t. Either way, it’s going to be different.

I’m easily entertained, but I love these.

Jacob Gube covers the six ways to declare colors in CSS.

One app that continued to impress and fascinate me in 2014 was Storehouse. Mark Kawano and his team have done a great job with the service and app.

I hope everyone had a great holiday. The new year is here and it’s time to get back to work. If you would like to get your product or service in front of the good looking, intelligent readers of The Loop, now is your chance to book. I’ve opened up the first two months of 2015 on the sponsorship page. If there’s a week that you would like to book later in the year, just get in touch.

The lifespan of electronics is shrinking and their number is increasing. Most electronics end up in the trash, doing terrible, toxic damage to the environment.

Fortunately, there are a number of efforts to make responsible recycling of your electronics much more possible, if not easier.

Marco Arment:

Apple has completely lost the functional high ground. “It just works” was never completely true, but I don’t think the list of qualifiers and asterisks has ever been longer. We now need to treat Apple’s OS and application releases with the same extreme skepticism and trepidation that conservative Windows IT departments employ.

I hate agreeing with Arment but sometimes, he’s bang on. I believe in this case he is. From embarrassing software updates to apps that simply don’t work properly or well – Apple’s poor quality and functionality of the Mail.app being just one of many examples – the assessment that “We don’t need major OS releases every year” is something many of us hope Apple listens and pays attention to.

Bloomberg:

CES, the world’s largest trade show, is far from a hit-making machine. While the technology show is a leading indicator of trends and attracted 160,000 attendees last year, many products debuting at the event take years to get into consumers’ living rooms — if at all. The last time the event had a true stand-alone sensation was when Microsoft debuted the Xbox game console at CES in 2001.

I’ve been to several CES shows and they are a huge, hectic mess. Everyone in the tech media knows “the real show” is the behind the scenes deals made largely in private and in secret. But that isn’t sexy so the media hypes ridiculous products and their own presence at the show as if it actually means something to average consumers. It’s a shame to the show and a disservice to their readers when the media won’t be honest and objective in their assessment of what CES offers.

Thanks to my friend Greg for the link.

Dan Frommer:

From Apple’s financial followers to the culture pages, expect few technology topics to garner as much attention in 2015 as the Apple Watch, which is set to launch “early” in the year.

Why? Because it’s not just a new gadget. Several people, companies, and entire industries are counting on it to be a hit. Without hyperbole, the Apple Watch has the potential to create new billionaires and to change the way people live.

Here are a few reasons—from micro to macro—the Apple Watch is shaping up to be the launch of 2015.

I don’t know about “Year of the Apple Watch” but I do believe it will eventually be a hugely successful category for Apple, much like the “slow burn” of the iPod.

Businessweek:

Would you “scam” an airline’s ticketing policy if it saved $25? $70? $400?

A federal lawsuit is bringing public attention to “hidden city” ticketing, the technique of buying an airline ticket between two cities with a connection but ditching the rest of the trip. Say, for example, you want to fly from Boston to San Francisco but notice that a ticket from Boston to Seattle—with a connection in San Francisco—is cheaper. Once your flight lands in San Francisco, you prance out of the airport at your intended destination, pocketing the savings.

Airlines hate this maneuver—which has been around for decades—and argue that it violates the terms of the sale.

I’m normally not a fan of “scams” but the airlines have screwed us so often and in so many different ways, I’d have no problem using this method to save money.

Tunity: Tunity allows you to hear a muted TV’s audio directly to your mobile device. It acts just like a wireless headset – no need to purchase an expensive set. Scan the TV and let Tunity locate and match the … Continued

Boing Boing:

Marriott is fighting for its right to block personal or mobile Wi-Fi hotspots—and claims that it’s for our own good.

The hotel chain and some others have a petition before the FCC to amend or clarify the rules that cover interference for unlicensed spectrum bands. They hope to gain the right to use network-management tools to quash Wi-Fi networks on their premises that they don’t approve of. In its view, this is necessary to ensure customer security and to protect children.

If Marriott’s petition were to succeed, we’d likely see hotels that charge guests and convention centers that charge exhibitors flipping switches to shut down any Wi-Fi not operated by the venue. The American hotel industry’s trade group is a co-filer of the petition, and Hilton submitted a comment in support: this isn’t just Marriott talking.

I don’t travel often but when I do, I won’t be staying in a Marriott any more.

Few of us give a thought to the inside of a watch, whether you wear one or not. This video of the inner workings of a $10,000 Rolex Submariner shows how intricate and complicated the mechanisms are.

The Old Fashioned is my drink of choice. Happy New Year.

Mental Floss:

If you can’t check out these places in person, you can at least visit them virtually—no flights or long road trips required.

Do not go to this site unless you’ve got an hour or more to kill. Spectacular imagery. I’ve been to eight of the fifteen but this is an entirely different perspective of the places.

Johnson & Johnson:

Donate a Photo, the free donation app from Johnson & Johnson takes your photos and turns them into a way to do good. For every photo you share through Donate a Photo, Johnson & Johnson will donate $1 to the charity of your choice.

Your photos can do things like help a newborn breathe with Save the Children, get school supplies for a girl in Guatemala with Girl Up, or help a deployed service member call home with the USO.

The web site says your photos won’t be used “to sell any products or for any other commercial purposes.” This looks like a great way to donate to some of the associated charities.

The Atlantic:

Mission Control in Houston literally never sleeps now, and in one corner of a huge video screen there, a counter ticks the days and hours the Space Station has been continuously staffed. The number is rounding past 5,200 days.

It’s a little strange when you think about it: Just about every American ninth-grader has never lived a moment without astronauts soaring overhead, living in space. But chances are, most ninth-graders don’t know the name of a single active astronaut—many don’t even know that Americans are up there.

A long but fascinating article about the ISS. It’s a shame it has become so “ordinary” that most of us never think of or hear about what is going on and why it is so important to mankind’s future.

What are Samsung Experience Stores? Why, they’re a dying species, if the latest development in Samsung’s efforts to establish its own retail empire are any indication. The flagship Samsung store in London, occupying a large and prominent spot at the Westfield Stratford City shopping center, has now been “permanently closed,” ostensibly in response to the company’s slumping smartphone sales.

As much as Samsung tries to copy Apple, they prove time and again that they really don’t understand the market.

Everyone needs a Zamboni!

iMore:

Apple has introduced a new cancellation feature for digital content in several European countries, including the UK, Germany, and France. The new policy allows customers in applicable countries to essentially “return” digital purchases from iTunes, including apps, music, and books, for a refund within 14 days of purchase.

For those of you who want to ask, “When is this coming to the US/Canada?”, keep in mind this is mandated by Europe wide consumer protection policies and directives. It may never be available to those of us in the US and Canada.

Great to see Avid add Yosemite support to the latest release.

To be clear, I don’t think that people who work for Facebook are evil. Instead they are part of a corporate machine whose job is to control all of our attention, for as long as possible. On the other hand, Facebook having empathy would mean a wholesale cultural graft towards a different way of thinking, developing and interacting with people.

Great read here from Om Malik.

This is a funny story from Brad Reed at BGR. For what it’s worth, it does look like a crappy gadget.

It’s clear that Santa is no longer into cookies – he prefers Apples. It was a banner Christmas for the Apple, the company that started the mobile revolution with the introduction of the first iPhone in 2007. Seven years later, Apple accounted for 51% of the new device activations worldwide Flurry recognized in the week leading up to and including Christmas Day (December 19th – 25th). Samsung held the #2 position with 18% of new device activations, and Microsoft (Nokia) rounded out the top three with 5.8% share for mostly Lumia devices.

That’s a pretty substantial gap between first and second.

Microsoft Corp’s Xbox Live and Sony Corp’s PlayStation Network, Internet services that video gamers use to play online, were hit by connection failures on Christmas Day, with the hackers Lizard Squad claiming responsibility.

That would really piss me off.

Bored Panda:

We all know that movie and TV producers use VFX (short for visual effects), but you’ll be surprised to learn just how extensively they’re used to create movie magic! These photos reveal just how much your favorite shows and movies rely on the magic of VFX.

These effects shots always fascinate me. I’m a sucker for any DVD that includes “here’s how we do it” extras.