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It’s simply beautiful.

United Airlines today announced the carrier will equip its flight attendants with Apple’s iPhone 6 Plus, putting important safety and service information at flight attendants’ fingertips while enhancing their ability to meet customers’ needs.

The airline will begin distribution to its more than 23,000 mainline flight attendants during the second quarter of 2015. Upon introduction, the devices will have the ability to handle most onboard retail transactions and will enable access to company email, united.com and the company’s Intranet as well as policies and procedures manuals.

Future enhancements include replacing the flight attendants’ printed safety manual with an electronic version on their iPhones and providing real-time reporting and improved follow-up on aircraft cabin issues and repairs. Additionally, United plans to develop a number of customer-focused tools for the device.

United also renewed the iPad program it started in 2011 with the iPad Air 2. Great moves from United.

Slate:

You don’t speak Turkish. You don’t speak Finnish. You don’t speak Mandarin or Cantonese. None of these languages is remotely related to English. In fact, none of these languages are even in the same language family. Yet you can recognize, within the two quick syllables of kah-vay, ka-vee, and ka-fay, the word you know as coffee.

I am always fascinated by where words come from and their commonalities. I’d never thought about why “coffee” is so similar around the world and in so many different languages.

Jim and Shawn talk about three months with an iPhone 6 Plus, Apple lawsuits, Apple’s Best of 2014 and connecting instruments to an iPad!

Macworld:

I’m somewhat paranoid about backing up my data files. And by “somewhat paranoid,” I mean “petrified.” If you’re not of a similar mindset, you should be.

Consider what it would mean to lose some irreplaceable photos, for instance. Or the please-let-me-keep-my-job presentation that you’ve been pulling together for months. Or your financial data. Being paranoid in every waking hour isn’t a great way to get through life, but when it comes to backing up your data it’s nearly impossible to go too far.

I’m constantly on people to have, make and verify their backups. As a victim of not having a backup in the past, I know the pain losing important data can cause. I’m doing this for your own good.

MacStories:

I’ve spent weeks comparing features and changing apps to understand the kind of experience they want to promote. But implementation details and design differences aside, I also kept wondering the same question: was the real Twitter different from the third-party clients I used for three years?

I use Tweetbot on iOS but am always interested in reading what others think of the other major iOS Twitter clients.

Interesting visualization tool. You start with a mix of triangles and squares. There are rules that determine whether a shape is happy or not, based on the neighboring shapes being the same type (bias). Hard to explain, but spend a minute stepping through each scenario and you’ll see the point of the exercise.

A very good, common sense article from Kelly Guimont. I know we’ve all seen those ignorant people in the stores—don’t be that person.

Wired:

The car, Bloodhound SSC, marks a bold attempt to set a new Land Speed Record of 1,609 kph (1,000 mph) by 2016. If successful, it will not only mark the biggest jump in land-speed history, but will also be the culmination of a decade-long experiment in education and open engineering.

What a great story about the engineering challenges of trying to push a car, and I use that term loosely, faster than any has ever gone before.

The Verge:

In an age where fans expect direct relationships with the artists they love, Prince has turned himself into a reclusive legend. But 30 years ago, he was still a young artist on the cusp of releasing his greatest record — and former Vibe and Spin editor-in-chief Alan Light’s Let’s Go Crazy: Prince and the Making of Purple Rain documents how the record and film came to be.

I’m all kinds of biased as a huge Prince fan but I think the album is still amazing and listen to it at least once a month. The movie doesn’t hold up as well but it’s still a lot of fun to watch every now and then.

File this one under sweating the details.

Many of those seminal steps occurred not in the Silicon Valley garages of lore, but in the stuffier labs and offices of Greater Boston, stretching back at least to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Whirlwind Project.

We always think that many of the great innovations happened in Silicon Valley, but before that, there was Boston.

Artcurial Motorcars:

The Collectors’ Car Department at Artcurial has discovered 60 collectors’ automobiles, all major marques dating from the early days of the motor car through to the 1970s. Found following fifty years of lying dormant, the Baillon collection will be sold by Artcurial Motorcars in the first part of the traditional sale at Retromobile Salon, on 6 February 2015, in Paris. These motor cars have been tucked away in a property in the West of France, under makeshift corrugated iron shelters and in various outbuildings.

One of the cars, a Ferrari 250GT SWB California Spyders, is one of only 60 ever built. Another, a 1956 Maserati A6G Gran Sport Frua, is one of just three ever built.

Next time you drive past a barn, take a peak inside – you never know what you’ll see.

What a great question. I know people that hate Uber, but I’m not convinced they actually know why. I think it’s probably the company’s business practices and the fact they have been creepy, more than anything.

For fuck sakes, the plaintiffs didn’t even own eligible iPods to bring the $350 million lawsuit.

Yes, I am breaking the gift guide by putting this here. Why? Because as you’ll notice, none of us recommended the Nexus 9 (edit: Cameron recommended it, but don’t listen to him), because it’s not exactly great. In fact, I’d argue no Android tablet is. The Shield Tablet is a lot of bang for your buck, but the screen kind of sucks and the battery life isn’t spectacular (standby is bad in particular) and it’s heavy, thick, and kinda ugly.

Much respect Android Police people.

As a user, when sites put text on an image, I like the blur or using the out-of-focus techniques. I always feel like contrast makes the text much easier to read, which makes my interaction with the site or app much better.

An interesting post from John Martellaro. I’ve wondered about this myself after using Apple Pay recently. Sometimes, I need to sign, while other times they just wave me on without any other interaction.

Photographer Brooks Kraft has been covering the White House since 2000, and over the years, he’s had plenty of opportunities to document the unveiling of Christmas decorations at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. This year, however, he decided to mix things up a bit — and shot the event with Apple’s new iPhone 6.

Great story.

The tone-creation possibilities are now virtually infinite with BIAS. Download artists’ signature amps, or try out the latest and most popular matched amp models created by your fellow guitarists.

The new version of BIAS Desktop really is amazing. You can match a real amp using the software and then recall it whenever you want. The company made some new amp match models available to download from within the app.

PDFpen 2 is fully optimized for iOS 8 with an all new look and feel which runs on both iPad and iPhone. The enhanced toolbar and new editing bar make popular writing and highlighting features easy to access, with minimal taps. Import and export documents via iCloud Drive, making it easy to share cloud-based documents not just with the Mac, but with other apps on an iPad or iPhone. Use AirDrop to quickly send documents to other devices. PDFpen 2 supports palm and wrist protection when writing and highlighting. Documents can be secured with a password. Number pages automatically, including Bates numbering. All this and more make PDFpen 2 the perfect solution for all of your mobile PDF editing needs.

In short, we’re told that while Transmit iOS can download content from iCloud Drive, we cannot upload content to iCloud Drive unless the content was created in the app itself. Apple says this use would violate 2.23 — “Apps must follow the iOS Data Storage Guidelines or they will be rejected” — but oddly that page says nothing about iCloud Drive or appropriate uses for iCloud Drive.

I really don’t understand some of these decisions.

During an appearance before a U.S. appeals court on Thursday, lawyers for Samsung sought to have vacated the $930 million judgement awarded to Apple earlier this year in a landmark patent infringement lawsuit, saying the sum was “absurd.”

No, what’s absurd is that Samsung made so much money from copying Apple’s design. The judgement against Samsung should have been much more.

This is great, I love it.

Mashable:

The Calgary Hitmen held their 20th annual Teddy Bear Toss on Sunday, which allowed fans to throw 25,214 stuffed animals onto the ice in a heartwarming and entertaining display of charity.

The bears, which are bagged prior to tossing, are gathered up by the team and donated to more than 60 charities for the holiday season.

The Hitmen do this every year and it’s heartwarming and funny every time I see it.

Apple on Monday released its list of the best and most downloaded music, apps, TV shows, movies and books from its stores. There are certainly some great apps and music in this year’s, along with some surprises, like the top selling album being “Frozen.” […]

Darrell asked Eddie to make him a replica of his famous black and yellow striped guitar a few months before he died.

When Van Halen arrived at the viewing, he had the guitar, but it wasn’t what Rita expected. He brought his original 1979 Bumblebee Charvel Hybrid VH2 to be placed inside Dimebag’s casket and buried along with him.

Much respect to Dime and Eddie.

The New Yorker:

High oil prices would force governments, corporations, and consumers to find another way to power the world. It was a nice dream, but it’s over now. We are awash in cheap oil. Propelled largely by a boom in domestic production, due to hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,’’ and horizontal drilling, oil prices fell below $70 a barrel on Thursday—from a high in June of $112.12. Prices have fallen nearly every day for the past two months, and some economists predict that we will soon see oil selling for less than fifty dollars a barrel.

Domestic production isn’t the only reason prices are falling but it’s certainly true that cheaper oil just delays the inevitable.

Peter King:

The sight of players going into contact without helmets is jarring to observers accustomed to standard football drills. Players dive at tackling dummies, or push into blocking sleds, or wrap up a live runner without helmets. Their heads are bare, and so by instinct, they don’t lead with their heads.

“At first, tackling without a helmet doesn’t seem like the best idea, with the size of the guys we have around here,” says Cameron Shorey, a 6-5, 252-pound sophomore defensive end. “But when we started doing it, it made more sense to keep our heads out of the contact zone. We use our chests, use our legs, and absorb most of the force with our bodies, not our heads.”

I love football – I played it in high school – but I definitely believe we have to find ways to make it safer for the players’ brains.

My thanks to Algoriddim for sponsoring The Loop’s RSS feed this week. Algoriddim, creators of the world’s best selling DJ app with over 15 million downloads on iOS, has partnered with the AppStore and (RED) to bring you an exclusive (PRODUCT)RED version of djay. Available for a limited time only, djay 2 for iPhone and iPad contains a free (djay)RED skin as well as an exclusive (djay)RED sample pack available via In-App Purchase. From now through December 7, 100% of the proceeds when buying djay 2 or any of the (djay)RED In-App Purchases go to (RED)’s fight against AIDS.

Stand with Algoriddim, App Store, and (RED) to fight for an AIDS FREE GENERATION.

Get djay 2 on the App Store today: Mix Tracks. Save Lives.