Nick Heer, Pixel Envy:

I’m not convinced, though, that Clips is a serious competitor. I think it’s a perfectly fine app; the Live Titles feature — which makes onscreen captions based on what’s being said — is especially cool. But Clips is separate from Messages, so there are more steps between starting to capture a moment and showing it off.

Time will tell if Clips gains traction. One thing Apple has done is add more importance to Messages, complementing the addition of stickers and the Messages app store.

Jon Russell, TechCrunch:

The (PRODUCT)RED Special Edition iPhone 7 is the first time that Apple has supported the charity through its flagship phone, — previous (PRODUCT)RED editions have included Beats headphones and Apple accessories — so it is sure to heighten international awareness and generate additional funds since each purchase includes a contribution to the charity. The limited edition iPhone will go up for sale in over 40 parts of the world starting this Friday, but one market where the charitable tie-in will go unnoticed is China, the world’s largest country based on population.

Despite the potential for sales in China — where iPhones are status symbols, and a unique color can make a limited edition release particularly desirable — the red iPhone is not being promoted using the (PRODUCT)RED branding.

And:

Apple, which has been caught in the political crosshairs in China over its purported use of location data and President Trump’s aggressive trade policies, is likely steering clear of controversy here by decoupling the device’s association with [Red]. That applies to both authorities and consumers, too.

A difficult situation for Apple. Clearly, this is a cause in which they believe, no question. But compromise won out here, in deference to the need to build their business in China. Tough call.

If you use Flickr, read and pass along.

The Hungarian government is planning to implement a law that would ban all symbols that refer to Nazi occupation or communist suppression, which according to them, includes the red star on Heineken’s logo. This means that Heineken may be forced to change its label in Hungary, RTL Nieuws reports.

Damn.

From Apple’s press release:

Apple today announced iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus (PRODUCT)RED Special Edition in a vibrant red aluminum finish, in recognition of more than 10 years of partnership between Apple and (RED). This gives customers an unprecedented way to contribute to the Global Fund and bring the world a step closer to an AIDS-free generation. The special edition (PRODUCT)RED iPhone will be available to order online worldwide and in stores beginning Friday, March 24.

I have to say, those are some gorgeous looking iPhones.

Brian knows his gear. Take a few minutes to read his first post and throw some suggestions Brian’s way. I’m looking forward to watching this site evolve.

DoorDash is putting a small fleet of six-wheeled delivery robots into action for the first time in Redwood City, California following weeks of tests. The robots, built by a company called Starship Technologies, are about the size of a golden retriever and roll around sidewalks with relative ease. They’ll be used to lug food from restaurants to customers on short-distance orders, spanning anywhere from one to two miles.

This is starting on Thursday. I think it’s cool as hell—I’m going to give it a try for sure.

Since getting an Apple Watch last fall, I’ve been disappointed by the lack of content. To help address this, I made my own game a few months ago (a 3D RPG), but obviously it still didn’t address the bigger issue. An idea I had was to port an existing catalog, and emulation made perfect sense.

Very cool.

[Via MacRumors]

My thanks to Twocanoes Software for sponsoring The Loop with SD Clone 3 this week.

If you do any projects that use SD cards (like the Raspberry Pi), check out SD Clone. SD Clone makes an exact copy of your SD card right on your Mac and makes it easy to restore back to either a single SD card or multiple SD cards at once. You’ve spent a lot of time getting a Raspberry Pi project exactly right and want to make an image of your SD card to protect all that work. SD Clone makes creating an image simple. If you want to make multiple of copies of that SD card to start shipping your project, SD Clone restores up to 8 SD cards at once, making it super fast to do something that was slow and painful before. SD Clone can also check any SD card to make sure it is not failing or isn’t a counterfeit. Learn about these features and more here.

Get 50% off all editions of SD Clone 3 this week with coupon code SDCLONELOOP

I used to collect vinyl albums when I was younger because that’s all that was available, but they are making a huge comeback. I was amazed with how many new and old albums were available on vinyl.

Go to the main page, scroll down, click on the genre you want, and then on the right hand side click “vinyl” for the format. Lots of choices here.

Are you frustrated by trying to figure out how to get started encrypting email with iOS Mail? It’s easy in macOS, but not so much so on the iPhone or iPad. I’ve dug into the process, consulted dozens of forum posts and support articles. Then I tested, retested, and tested my process again. As of iOS 10.2.1, the process I detail below should get you going with sending encrypted email under iOS, using Apple’s Mail app.

If you are interested in encrypted email in iOS, this is worth a read.

io9:

When the first trailer for Universal’s The Mummy reboot came out, one of the most impressive moments was the scene where Cruise, Wallis, and a bunch of soldiers were being tossed around a crashing plane like a bunch of ragdolls.

“Tom said, ‘Yeah we’re gonna do it for real, we’re gonna get on a real plane and we’re gonna crash,’ and I thought, ‘This is just never gonna happen,’” director Alex Kurtzman said.

Love him or hate him, you’ve got to admire Cruise for pushing the envelope when it comes to these stunts.

The Fader:

On Friday, Chance The Rapper posted series of tweets detailing his relationship with Apple Music in an attempt to defend his status as an “independent artist.”

The Chicago rapper claimed that Apple paid him for two weeks of exclusivity for his mixtape Coloring Book on their music streaming platform Apple Music. “That was the extent of my deal, after 2 weeks it was on SoundCloud for free,” he wrote. “I needed the money and they’re all good people over there.”

I don’t know if the $500,000 Apple paid for the exclusive is out of line with other deals but I do have a prediction: After shooting his mouth off, Apple will not have any more exclusives from this artist.

Recode:

Some of Uber’s self-driving cars aren’t driving as smoothly as the company hoped they would. Documents circulated throughout the company’s self-driving group, which Recode obtained, gives us a first look at the progress of the ride-hail company’s robot cars in Pennsylvania, Arizona and California.

The top line: Uber’s robot cars are steadily increasing the number of miles driven autonomously. But the figures on rider experience — defined as a combination of how many times drivers have to take over and how smoothly the car drives — are still showing little progress.

Our future full of autonomous cars may be further away than the “experts” think.

Lifehacker:

Bee populations are in decline, and Cheerios wants to help. So far, so good. But they are sending free packets of wildflower seeds to people all over the country—and some of the flowers included are invasive species that, in some areas, you should probably not plant.

Forget-me-not is banned as a noxious weed in Massachusetts and Connecticut, for example. The California poppy is nice in California, but listed as an “invasive exotic pest plant” in southeastern states. And many of the flowers on this list are not native to anywhere in the US, so they are not necessarily good matches for our local bees.

When I first heard about this giveaway on social media, I thought it was a good, cute way to help an “endangered population” of bees. But read the article. As mentioned above, the seed packets are not “one size fits all” and actually may be harmful to your particular area. The article does list several other, better ways you can help both honey and wild bees.

Terrible. Completely avoidable.

Mark Gurman, writing for Bloomberg:

Investors impatient for Apple’s next breakthrough will be happy to know that Cook is very serious about AR. People with knowledge of the company’s plans say Apple has embarked on an ambitious bid to bring the technology to the masses—an effort Cook and his team see as the best way for the company to dominate the next generation of gadgetry and keep people wedded to its ecosystem.

Apple has built a team combining the strengths of its hardware and software veterans with the expertise of talented outsiders, say the people, who requested anonymity to discuss internal strategy. Run by a former Dolby Laboratories executive, the group includes engineers who worked on the Oculus and HoloLens virtual reality headsets sold by Facebook and Microsoft as well as digital-effects wizards from Hollywood. Apple has also acquired several small firms with knowledge of AR hardware, 3D gaming and virtual reality software.

And:

Building a successful AR product will be no easy task, even for a company known for slim, sturdy devices. The current crop of AR glasses are either under-powered and flimsy or powerful and overwhelmingly large. Apple, the king of thin and light, will have to leapfrog current products by launching something small and powerful.

Adding AR features to the iPhone isn’t a giant leap. Building glasses will be harder. Like the Watch, they’ll probably be tethered to the iPhone.

And:

In 2015, Apple recruited Mike Rockwell, who previously ran the hardware and new technologies groups at Dolby, the iconic company known for its audio and video technology. Rockwell also advised Meta, a small firm that makes $950 AR glasses and counts Dolby as an investor.

Rockwell now runs the main AR team at Apple, reporting to Dan Riccio, who’s in charge of the iPhone and iPad hardware engineering groups.

Read the whole thing. I can’t wait for Apple’s take on AR. This is a gigantic problem, combining the difficulties of crafting brand new, power hungry hardware with sophisticated, layered, ground-breaking software. To me, this is way bigger than the Apple Watch, a much harder nut to crack.

Will Apple start with vertical applications, designed for a specific space like, say, construction, or home design? Or will they try to craft a killer AR app usable by the masses?

Will Apple bring Siri into the mix? If so, how deeply? And, if so, how will they leverage Susan Bennett’s voice? At some point, doesn’t Siri need some backup talent in case Susan is unavailable?

Why not? This is just the tip of the iceberg. Why not add in tech that lets us speed up a video, dropping duplicated frames when a camera shot stays in place for an extended period, or when a transition from scene to scene is overly slow? How about a smart button that lets us jump from scene to scene to more accurately find a specific spot in a movie?

For purists, this is anathema. I get it. But the beauty of adding tech like this is, you can easily just ignore it. It’s not the same as the difference between a director’s cut and one cut for commercial TV. Those are different as night and day and there’s nothing you can do to convert the cut up version to the original.

I applaud the layering of AI in this space. Bring it on. Just be sure I can disable any add-ons and watch the content in its original form.

Julio Ojeda-Zapata, writing for TidBITS, digs into the morass of charging accessories for Apple laptops, tablets, phones and watches, presenting nine that made the cut. Spend a few minutes scanning through these, see if any fill a need for you. Good stuff.

Swatch is a major player in the watch space. To give a sense of their size, The Swatch Group employs about 36,000 people. Jean-Louis Gassée writes about the Swatch’s move into the smart watch space and their decision to avoid Android Wear and roll their own solution from scratch.

I found the whole read interesting, but wanted to highlight this bit about how Swatch was born:

Lebanese-born and Europe-schooled, Nicolas Hayek père was a genius.

In 1983, two venerable but mortally ailing Swiss watch industry companies, ASUAG and SSIH, called Hayek to their bedside to perform the last rites and liquidations. The companies had been unable to withstand competition from Japanese quartz watch manufacturers such as Seiko, Casio and Citizen. It was the humane thing to do.

But rather than pull the plug, Hayek demonstrated his unique combination of management, technology, and marketing savvy by making a counter-intuitive decision: In the middle of the “quartz crisis”, Hayek refused to give up on traditional mechanical designs. He merged the two entities and adopted a project from subsidiary ETA SA, whose CEO, Ernst Thomke, and two engineers, Elmar Mock and Jacques Müller, had come up with a simplified mechanical design that used only 51 pieces when 150 was considered the minimum.

As an aside, the name Swatch was built from Second Watch, not Swiss Watch (as I was told as a kid).

And spoiler, Jean-Louis thinks this move by Swatch will not help it compete against Apple Watch.

Daily Mail:

An incredible video posted by a self-proclaimed extreme aerobatics pilot shows just how difficult it is to land a commercial airline in extreme wind.

Kielak uses both hands which appear to be going wild to maintain control of the plane in the conditions. With the video on Facebook he wrote: ‘I’m always saying that airline pilot gets his salary for one landing per month… this is the day I earned mine.

The video is amazing. It looks like he’s driving a rally car.

Bloomberg:

But none of these (Uber) scandals has the potential financial impact of the one Uber has said the least about: a lawsuit from Alphabet Inc.—the parent of Google and Google’s self-driving car division, now called Waymo—over driverless cars. Waymo says Uber is in possession of, and is basing the future of its business on, technology that was stolen by a former employee.

There’s no doubt that various versions of “autonomous cars” are the future. But, just like the cars we drive from dozens of different manufacturers today, I don’t think that future belongs to just one company.

New York Times:

It is the unofficial soundtrack of basketball, a noise consistently heard but rarely considered — rubber-soled shoes squeaking on the hardwood.

Squeaks are the background rhythm to the game. But that sound is also one of the enduring mysteries of sports, and presents a question that gets scientists talking: Why do basketball shoes squeak?

To understand, it may help to consider violins and the California spiny lobster.

The facetious answer to the headline, “Because of the sneakers”, belies the very interesting science behind it. I love the sound. It’s the sound of my childhood.

Fast Company:

Garry James, 60, is perched on the edge of his hospital bed, temporarily unhooked from monitors that track his vital signs. It’s his third week waiting for a heart transplant, a nerve-wracking process that can stretch out months or even years, but he greets me with a wide smile.

These days, James uses the iPad to message his nurses, order magazines, make notes, browse medication side effects, reserve lodging for his family when they visit from Las Vegas, and review his medical record. The device has helped him feel more in control of his own care. “I want to have an intelligent conversation with my doctor,” James says. “Just enough to be guided on the right path.”

An iPad might not seem revolutionary in the internet age, but it’s actually a big step forward for patients to have digital health information at their fingertips.

Apple has made overtures into the health care market but I don’t think we are even close to seeing what their complete plans are yet.