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The first made into a stool is nice.

Much respect to this kid.

The Loop Magazine Issue 24:

In this issue, Jim Dalrymple talks to Keith Urban about songwriting and his guitar collection; Gavin McKeown goes to car racing school; Arthur Turnbull tells a story about trying to see Prince in 1988; Carson Suggs looks at our reliance on technology; and Lee Peterson wonders if we can be productive using Apple’s iOS apps.

Mozilla Chief Executive Brendan Eich has stepped down, the company said on Thursday, after an online dating service urged a boycott of the company’s web browser because of a donation Eich made to opponents of gay marriage.

“We didn’t act like you’d expect Mozilla to act,” wrote Mozilla Executive Chairwoman Mitchell Baker in a blog post. “We didn’t move fast enough to engage with people once the controversy started. We’re sorry.”

Wow, that’s incredible.

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Quartz:

“What Google really wants is for everybody to be signed in to their Google accounts all the time,” a Google insider told me in passing last month.

This change affects only Apple users who have upgraded to iOS 7, the latest version—but that’s 85% of iOS devices. They no longer have the ability to remain anonymous as they watch videos on YouTube or navigate their cities using Google Maps.

“Don’t be evil” indeed.

After a nearly blemish-free record that culminated in a $3 billion acquisition by Google, Nest today issued a surprising halt to sales of Protect, its gesture-controlled smoke alarm. One of the device’s key features was that you could wave at it to turn it off. Turns out, sometimes people wave their arms around when there’s a fire in the house, too. Thus, as CEO Tony Fadell put it, “This could delay the alarm going off if there was a real fire.” Oops.

“Without getting into counsel’s discussions, I can tell you that as a rule, the White House objects to attempts to use the president’s likeness for commercial purposes, and we certainly object in this case,” he said.

Fucking morons at Samsung.

. Priceonomics:

Susan Kare “was the type of kid who always loved art.” As a child, she lost herself in drawings, paintings, and crafts; as a young woman, she dove into art history and had grandeur dreams of being a world-renowned fine artist.

But when a chance encounter in 1982 reconnected her with an old friend and Apple employee, Kare found herself working in a different medium, with a much smaller canvas — about 1,024 pixels. Equipped with few computer skills and lacking any prior experience with digital design, Kare proceeded to revolutionize pixel art.

Kare is a legend and I never tire of reading or hearing about her story.

This looks really cool. It even generates the files needed for Xcode on export—there’s a public beta available for download.

One of my favorite songs.

MG Siegler:

I’m going to try to only respond to email at a set time during each day. I’m going to put an hour (or perhaps two) in my calendar for this at the end of the day. And in that hour (or two), I’m not going to do anything besides email.

It’ll be interesting to see how this experiment goes.

Jake is a great player.

Fascinating case studies from Amazon, Google, Bing, and others.

Mathew Ingram:

Lapham’s Quarterly came up with some relatively ancient examples in a recent post entitled “Going Viral in the 19th Century.” At that time, it was commonplace for newspapers and magazines to include silly or amusing anecdotes, trivia, jokes and bad poetry as a way of lightening up the news. Newspaper editor Frederick Hudson was apparently driven to despair by these light-hearted items, which ran under headings like “Witticisms” or “Oddities.”

I thought this particular review was very interesting because it comes from a company that follows the publishing industry.

Wow, the rest of the companies are pretty pathetic. eBay (6%), Amazon (15%), Twitter (21%), Google (48%) and Facebook (49%).

Because nobody in their right mind would use that piece of shit unless they were getting paid.

According to the CDC, one in 68 children have an autism spectrum disorder (ASD), a 30% increase from 1 in 88 two years ago. You can also check out the Autism specific apps for the iPhone and iPad.

Just incredible that they’re in this position.

All the beauty of Fantastical, but now for the iPad. I use it for the Mac and iOS—I beta tested the iPad version and love it.

The Fire TV device will stream Amazon Prime Instant Video titles as well as content from other providers such as Netflix and Hulu. Amazon also bundled games into the device with support for an external $39 Fire game controller. Well-known gaming studios such as Disney, Gameloft, EA, Sega, Ubisoft and Double Fine have partnered with Amazon to bring their titles to the Fire TV device.

Some competition for Apple TV.

So far, there aren’t clear signs of quite what it is that smartwatches and fitness trackers are replacing…

That’s key.

New gestures include left and right swipe to navigate through screens and a three finger tap to share snippets or notes. Improved organization options include reordering of snippet groups via drag and drop and moving snippets between groups. The new snippet group info view includes a setting to turn off expansion of the group’s snippets.

Lots of changes and additions, including being built for iOS 7.

This is very interesting. It’s kind of like a cross between Kickstarter, but with a writing platform like Medium. It would be very nice if something like this worked.

This is just incredible.

Still on the stand, Schiller is getting into slightly new ground as he is asked to think back to his first reaction to the first Samsung Galaxy.

“It looked so much like an attempt to copy the iPhone,” Schiller said.

Competition is not the problem here. Blatantly stealing and copying Apple is the problem.

Good story from Hayley Tsukayama looking at the HTC M8.

“The total damages are high,” said Harold McElhinny, a lawyer for Apple. “But I hope you understand the reason the damages are high is because the scope of Samsung’s infringement is massive.”

Samsung should be made to pay every penny.

Big day for iWork. The updates can all be downloaded from their respective App Stores.

iWork on the Mac
– Delete, duplicate, and reorder sections using the page navigator in Pages v5.2 – Set margins and create headers and footers in print setup in Numbers v3.2 – Enhanced presenter display options and new transitions including Droplet and Grid in Keynote v6.2

iWork for iOS
– Improved support for bi-directional text in Pages v2.2 – Progress indicator for calculations in Numbers v2.2 – New remote feature lets you control slideshows on other devices in Keynote v2.2

iWork for iCloud beta
– New “view only” setting lets you share documents you want others to view but not edit – Updated design in document editor – Open documents directly from iCloud Mail