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Bryan Chaffin fills in the “gaps” that Amazon tends to leave out of its numbers.

Marked is a previewer for Markdown files. Use it with your favorite text editor and it updates every time you save. With robust features for previewing, reviewing and exporting beautiful documents, you can work in plain text while reveling in rich formatting.

Brett Terpstra did a nice job with this app.

This is just great. Pick a year and see what songs were popular when you were growing up.

Apple executives have visited Beats’ Southern California headquarters this week and last week to offer groups of employees positions at Apple and to notify some members of the Beats staff that they will not be included in the transition.

This makes perfect sense. Redundant admin type positions are always going to be casualties in any acquisition.

Right now, today, in 2014 is the best time to start something on the internet. There has never been a better time in the whole history of the world to invent something.

I really enjoyed reading this article because I was around in 1985, where Kevin starts the article. There is always room for another great idea. Definitely worth a read.

Epicurious:

Each tree begins as a slightly odd-looking specimen resembling some kind of science experiment, and for much of the year, looks like just any other tree. In spring, the trees bloom to reveal an incredibly striking and thought-provoking example of what can happen when nature inspires art. Then, over the course of several months, Van Aken’s trees produce an incredible harvest of plums, peaches, apricots, nectarines, and almonds, including many you’ve likely never seen before.

All on one tree. Spectacular looking.

iStumbler is the leading wireless discovery tool for Mac OS X, providing plugins for finding AirPort networks, Bluetooth devices, Bonjour services and Location information with your Mac.

This is a great wireless utility that I’ve used for years. I met the developer, Alf Watt, shortly after I started using the software and he’s a terrific guy.

The Wirecutter:

For students, small-office denizens, or anyone with modest printing needs, the Samsung Xpress M2835DW is the most efficient way to make hard copies of term papers, tax forms, or any other documents that look great in grayscale.

I haven’t needed to print this kind of stuff in years but this looks like a pretty good deal.

This has always been my favorite Mötley Crüe song.

Horace Dediu has a look at iTunes growth after Apple reported its earnings. I’ve long held that it’s the ecosystem that Apple’s competitors can’t easily copy. The company was very stealthy in the early 2000s in building the infrastructure for what we have now with the App Store, music and video delivery. It all just syncs and works—that’s what consumers want to happen. I’m not saying it doesn’t need work, but even as it sits, Apple’s ecosystem is pretty remarkable.

A former IDC researcher:

“So, the mantra became, preserve the growth rates; to hell with the actual numbers. Even the growth rates are fiction. The fudge is in the “others” category, which is used as a plug to make the numbers work out. In fairness, we did do survey work, calling around, and attending white box conferences and venues to try to get a feel for that market, but in the end, the process was political. I used to tell customers which parts of the data they could trust, essentially the major vendors by form factor and region. The rest was garbage.”

So they make shit up.

Red Bull TV:

Lollapalooza 2014 is coming! 3 days. 5 stages. 100+ artists. Live from Grant Park in Downtown Chicago. Didn’t score a ticket? Not to worry! Watch the global Lolla Livestream and on demand highlight performances exclusively on Red Bull TV and never miss a beat.

Select from 3 channels: one hosted stream featuring artist interviews and behind-the-scenes access for a more curated experience or from 2 other channels capturing live performances from the main festival stages for an “all live, all the time” experience.

Finally – a use for that Red Bull TV icon on my Apple TV.

Jared Sinclair opens the books on his RSS reading app, Unread. These are some sobering numbers, to be sure. I use Unread and really like the app.

Apple’s acquisition of talk-radio service Swell appears to now be a done deal: the start-up’s App Store app and website shut down this morning.

I’m shocked at the lack of security in this piece of shit operating system. SHOCKED!

Apple on Tuesday updated Apple TV with a number of new channels from around the world. […]

Kind of scary.

WSBTV:

Atlanta-based Delta airlines is looking into a tense exchange between a pilot and an air traffic controller.

The exchange happened Friday when a controller told a pilot his plane was approaching the wrong runway.

“Hey you know what, we’ll taxi out there any way we want unless you tell us to, I don’t like your attitude,” the pilot said.

The best part of this story is the “Settle down, Captain Happy” dig from another pilot. The worst part is the characterization of the exchange as a “rant” or “extremely heated”. It wasn’t nearly as bad as the media portrays it to be.

Wow, I just don’t know what to say about this store opening.

Brooklyn Botanical Garden:

In the 19th century, apples came in all shapes and guises, some with rough, sandpapery skin, others as misshapen as potatoes, and ranging from the size of a cherry to bigger than a grapefruit. Colors ran the entire spectrum with a wonderful impressionistic array of patterning—flushes, stripes, splashes, and dots. There was an apple for every community, taste, purpose, and season, with winter varieties especially prized. Apples were used for making cider, baking, drying, eating out of hand—even as livestock feed.Compare all of this to the 90 or so varieties grown commercially in North America today, or to the handful of shiny cultivars on display at the local supermarket, and you are immediately faced with a pomological conundrum: How could Americans grow 14,000 different apples in the 19th century, and a hundred years later be conversant with only a few varieties, most notably, ‘Red Delicious’, ‘Golden Delicious’, and ‘Granny Smith’?

Really interesting article on how we got to where we are, apple-wise.

Slate:

Last year, Eric Chemi of Bloomberg Businessweek pointed out the amazing fact that Apple’s iPhone sales alone were larger than the revenues at 474 of the companies in the S&P 500 stock index. So I thought I’d ask: If Apple’s product lines were their own companies now, which corporations would they stack up against?

No one is suggesting Apple would break their products out into separate companies but it’s fascinating to see how the “APPLE IS DOOMED!” crowd ignores the simple hugeness of Apple’s business.

Jalopnik:

LCDR Joe “Smokin” Ruzicka was the Radar Intercept Officer (RIO) to fly the last F-14 Demonstration before the Tomcat’s final demise in 2006. Commander Ruzicka took the time to sit down with Foxtrot Alpha to talk Tomcats and share his amazing experiences and lasting impressions of being part of one of the most competitive, demanding and rewarding cultures in American history- the F-14 Tomcat community.

My bucket list will sadly go unfinished because one of the things on it was to get shot off of a US Navy aircraft carrier in an F-14 Tomcat.

And this is why BlackBerry and Dell can’t do anything right.

Bose alleges that Beats has infringed on 50 years’ worth of research, development and engineering of noise cancelling tech, and that its current lineup of these devices incorporates “at least 36 U.S. patents and applications,” broken down into 22 granted patents and 14 applications currently undergoing review. Beats products named as having infringed upon Bose’s IP include the Beats Studio line, which include the new Studio Wireless Bluetooth headphones.

I wonder if Apple and Beats saw this coming?

I laughed out loud several times.

Headquartered in San Francisco, which also serves as its debut market, Fixed first launched this January, allowing residents to snap photos of their tickets using an iOS device. Afterwards, Fixed checks for common errors before proceeding to write a customized contest letter on your behalf, which is sent to the city.

Seems the city of San Francisco are being dicks about this.

Brianna Wu released her game for iPhone and iPad to the App Store this week. I’ve been following her progress for about a year and really like what I’ve seen. You can download the game for free or you can watch a trailer first.

This could be interesting, but I’d still use the Uber app. I don’t use Facebook Messenger, but I can see the benefits for both companies.

You’re a free spirit. You don’t like rules. You expect to be asked about your trophy beard.

The main purpose of this book is to help product managers who work specifically with digital projects build better — less complex, more focused, less long-winded and more intelligent — products. By featuring lessons learned from real-life projects, the book provides a structured framework for strategic product management — to help build the right products, at the right time, for the right people with just the right amount of process involved.

I have a lot of respect for Rian van der Merwe, the author of this book. You should have a look.