Elizabeth Dwoskin, Washington Post:

On Sunday night, technology giants Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Netflix, Twitter, Uber and many others filed a legal brief opposing the administration’s contentious entry ban, according to people familiar with the matter. The move represents a rare coordinated action across a broad swath of the industry — 97 companies in total— and demonstrates the depth of animosity toward the Trump ban.

The amicus brief was filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, which is expected to rule within a few days on an appeal by the administration after a federal judge in Seattle issued late Friday a temporary restraining order putting the entry ban on hold. The brief comes at the end of a week of nationwide protests against the plan — as well as a flurry of activity in Silicon Valley, a region that sees immigration as central to its identity as an innovation hub.

From the brief:

Immigrants make many of the Nation’s greatest discoveries, and create some of the country’s most innovative and iconic companies. Immigrants are among our leading entrepreneurs, politicians, artists, and philanthropists. The experience and energy of people who come to our country to seek a better life for themselves and their children—to pursue the “American Dream”—are woven throughout the social, political, and economic fabric of the Nation.

And:

America has long recognized the importance of protecting ourselves against those who would do us harm. But it has done so while maintaining our fundamental commitment to welcoming immigrants—through increased background checks and other controls on people seeking to enter our country.

And:

Immigrants or their children founded more than 200 of the companies on the Fortune 500 list, including Apple, Kraft, Ford, General Electric, AT&T, Google, McDonald’s, Boeing, and Disney.

Here’s a link to the amicus brief, in case you want to read it for yourself.

Mental Floss:

More than 30 years ago, Apple defined the Super Bowl commercial as a cultural phenomenon. Prior to Super Bowl XVIII, nobody watched the game “just for the commercials”—but one epic TV spot, directed by sci-fi legend Ridley Scott, changed all that. Read on for the inside story of the commercial that rocked the world of advertising, even though Apple’s Board of Directors didn’t want to run it at all.

For many of you, this might be an old familiar story but, on Super Bowl Sunday, it’s still interesting to read how the “greatest commercial ever made” might never have been broadcast.

Ken Segall:

What follows is the tale of HAL: Apple’s 1999 Super Bowl commercial starring the malevolent computer from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.

HAL became Apple’s first Super Bowl appearance since 1985, when the ill-conceived Lemmings commercial ran. That, as you know, was the follow-up to the previous year’s amazing 1984 commercial — arguably the greatest commercial of all time.

Read on if you’re interested in learning how ads were often born in Steve Jobs’s Apple. The process was not at all like what you find in most big companies today (including Apple).

I don’t know how “successful” the ad was for Apple but, re-watching it again after all these years certainly brought back the creepy factor of the ad.

Thanks to Marketcircle for sponsoring The Loop this week.

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Recode:

LG has found a fix for a problem that left its high-end Mac monitor unable to work properly when placed within a few feet of a router.

An LG spokesman told Recode that the company is adding additional shielding to newly manufactured models.

And if you already own one:

Existing models will be able to be retrofitted with the enhanced shielding, which will allow the monitor to be placed near a router.

If you already bought one of these displays, be sure you register it, and check the LG web site for details.

Indian Express:

India is a crucial market for Apple in terms of future growth, especially with the US, Europe and China markets pretty much saturated by now. It would not have been an easy decision for Apple, given that it will have to source about 30 per cent or inputs, locally. How they cross this hurdle will be interesting, especially since the company has sought exemption from this norm. There is a possibility that the government might actually grant a concession given that getting Apple to make in India will be a badge the Modi government can wear proudly on its sleeve.

Apple manufacturing in India is a win for Apple, a win for the Modi government. Apple expands their market, India gets a prestige brand to manufacture locally.

Actual manufacturing is much easier, given that both Foxconn and Wistron Corp are already in India. In fact, Apple seems to have decided that Wistron Corp will be the first to make the iPhone in India, most probably the iPhone SE if reports are to be believed. The Taiwanese company is known to have manufactured the iPhone SE and the iPhone 5, both of which have similar chassis.

All the pieces seem to be in place here. So how does this impact the economics of owning an iPhone in India?

Let’s take the case of the iPhone SE. This 4.7-inch smartphone has a box price of Rs 39,000 in India, while it is possible to buy the phone for around Rs 30,000 online the US price of the phone is at least 10 per cent less than even this price. With local manufacturing, Apple should be able to offer the best price in India.

Clearly, building locally is a benefit to the Indian economy (jobs and taxes) and to Apple (units sold, expansion of ecosystem, better margins).

Would this model translate to the US if Apple built iPhones locally? Not likely, given the higher wages, pricier real estate, taxes, and heavier regulations found in the US. Not without a push or incentive via tariff or taxes.

Bloomberg:

Apple Inc. will begin assembling iPhones in India by the end of April, a regional minister says, heightening its focus on the world’s fastest-growing major smartphone market as growth slows elsewhere.

The U.S. company has tapped Taiwan’s Wistron Corp. to put together its phones in the tech capital of Bangalore in Karnataka, said Priyank Kharge, the state’s information technology minister. Apple executives met with him in January and confirmed the timeline, he said in an interview.

And:

It signals a renewed focus on the country, where it just scrapes into the top 10, as growth begins to slow in China and other more mature markets. The Cupertino, California-based company is said to have put forward a long list of demands in negotiations with India’s federal government, including a 15-year tax holiday to import components and equipment.

This is a big step for Apple, both in expanding the market for iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Mac, etc., along with associated services, but also in the maturation of Apple’s ability to build locally, rather than centrally.

Apple hired former Spotify VP of Content Steve Savoca in January, an Apple spokesperson confirmed to Business Insider.

He’ll be doing the same thing for Apple that he did for Spotify — heading up label relations based out of New York, focusing on relationships with smaller, independent labels, especially internationally, Business Insider has learned.

Sounds like a good choice. Clearly Spotify did well with him doing that job.

The Newseum announced today that Apple CEO Tim Cook will receive the Newseum’s 2017 Free Expression Award in the Free Speech category. Cook, who has led Apple since August 2011, will be recognized for his leadership in creating technology that has had a profound impact on how we communicate. Further, he has used his spotlight to take a public stand on major societal issues, including racial equality, privacy, protecting the environment, access to education and LGBT rights. Cook will accept the award during a special event to be held at the Newseum on April 18, 2017.

Much respect, Tim.

The fees come into play if you continue to use the Roku in addition to your Comcast set-top box after the beta trial wraps. At that point, Comcast will treat the Roku device like any other “additional outlet.” That additional outlet incurs a $9.95 fee, minus the bring-your-own-device credit of $2.50 for using a Roku, instead of Comcast’s box. This is also how a secondary outlet that connects to Comcast’s network via a TiVo would be charged and credited.

Basically business as usual.

Recode:

Alphabet, Apple, Facebook, Uber and Stripe, along with a consumer packaged goods company and others, are working together on a letter opposing U.S. President Trump’s travel ban, according to sources.

Tech companies are leading the effort but are working to involve other industries, the sources say. The letter will be the first major push from big U.S. businesses to try to support immigration in the wake of a recent travel restriction order by Trump.

The restrictions affect the tech sector in a huge way. If it continues, Apple will have issues with WWDC in a few months.

When the owner built this apartment building, he left one wall open, drove the car inside, then finished the wall, trapping the car inside. This is incredible.

This is brilliant marketing. Serenity clearly loves Linea, shows it off just perfectly, and Iconfactory gets some nice buzz for their new app.

Wish I could draw.

Gordon Mah Ung, Macworld, gets to the bottom of the MacBook Pro’s disparate battery tests. Most testers got great battery life, others found it to be terrible. Why? Turns out, it’s a bug:

In looking at other battery run-down scenarios, I ran smack into a problem that’s likely at fault for many of the confusing battery life issues with the laptop, at least in macOS Sierra 10.12.2. On occasion, the laptop’s discrete GPU would just get stuck on and consume power even when it wasn’t used. Others had reported this too, but you’d really have to stumble onto it.

I was able to reproduce the issue in Safari by opening Google Maps, which would cause the laptop to switch over to the GPU for the WebGL workload. Opening additional browser tabs and then closing the Google Maps tab would, on occasion, leave the GPU consuming up to 10 watts of power while doing absolutely nothing.

Terrific job homing in on this. Nothing helps tech support more than a problem they can reliably reproduce.

Via Reddit, this is fascinating to me. Don’t want to reveal the spoiler, but if you make your way through this, be sure to read the comment at the bottom by a user named rouverius. I believe that is exactly what is happening here.

This is one of those posts filled with tips you’ll know most of. But scan through the list, just in case there are a few you don’t know.

Even better, pass this post along to the folks in your life to whom you are the go to tech support. Good, foundational info every Mac user should know.

If you use Time Machine for backups, read the post before you do a restore. Even better, do a verify periodically to make sure you are not backing up on top of a bad backup.

UPDATE: Turns out that the verify backup option is disabled (appears in grey) for USB drives. My sense is that this was designed for Time Capsule. Well here’s an article from a few years back that discusses this.

Mark Gurman and Ian King, Bloomberg:

Apple Inc. is designing a new chip for future Mac laptops that would take on more of the functionality currently handled by Intel Corp. processors, according to people familiar with the matter.

The chip, which went into development last year, is similar to one already used in the latest MacBook Pro to power the keyboard’s Touch Bar feature, the people said. The updated part, internally codenamed T310, would handle some of the computer’s low-power mode functionality, they said. The people asked not to be identified talking about private product development. It’s built using ARM Holdings Plc. technology and will work alongside an Intel processor.

If this interests you, take a look at Rene Ritchie’s take on the Bloomberg report. Here’s a taste:

Power efficiency is Apple’s jam. Unless and until they license x86 or swap MacBook to ARM, there’s only so much even the tight and belabored integration they do with Intel will deliver them.

Offloading low-power, low-level tasks to their own silicon, though, is absolutely something Apple could and would do regardless of the main processor architecture. Same as they could and did offload display to their own, custom timing controller when they wanted to bring 5K to the iMac and the industry just hadn’t gotten there yet.

To me, it makes sense for Apple to control as much of the silicon as it can. This is just another step down the road to an ARM Mac.

A U.S. jury in Texas on Wednesday ordered Facebook Inc, its virtual reality unit Oculus, and other defendants to pay a combined $500 million to ZeniMax Media Inc, a video game publisher that says Oculus stole its technology.

Ouch.

Live Science:

A stunning new video has captured a huge fire hose of lava streaming into the ocean at Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park. The stream of lava is currently pouring into the ocean from a sea cliff near Kamokuna on the Big Island of Hawaii, according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). When this massive lava chute hits the cool seawater below, the result is explosive steam.

Seeing this in person is definitely on my bucket list. Until then, watch the video and marvel at the power of nature.

Time:

Every year, companies spend millions of dollars for just a few seconds of airtime in hopes of getting consumers attention—and then, maybe, their money. Whether funny, sad, self-referential or downright weird, Super Bowl ads have become a spectacle and tradition in their own right.

This weekend is the proverbial “Big Game”. It’s no secret that a large number of people are more interested in the advertising than they are the football. We all know which one is number one, right?

Engadget:

Snapseed doesn’t see quite the amount of updates that other Google-owned products do, but each one lately has been pretty significant. The name of the game for the latest is the addition of curves. Essentially, what this new feature does is allow manipulating things like contrast, brightness and color intensity in a given image. Oftentimes, it’s one of the easiest and most dramatic ways you can edit a photo.

I have literally dozens of image editing apps on my iPhone to adjust photos but Snapseed remains my favorite.

Inspired by a typewriter—I think this will certainly have its fans when released.

I had no idea there was a firmware update available for the AirPods, but I followed the instructions on TidBITS and sure enough it updated. To be clear, the way the update is done, you’ll eventually get the update, but I did it manually anyway.

The New York Times:

Our objective in making this film was something of a psychology experiment: We sought to capture people facing a difficult situation, to make a portrait of humans in doubt. We’ve all seen actors playing doubt in fiction films, but we have few true images of the feeling in documentaries. To make them, we decided to put people in a situation powerful enough not to need any classic narrative framework. A high dive seemed like the perfect scenario.

I still remember my first jump off the ten meter (approx 33 feet) tower at a public pool. I was ten years old and I was utterly terrified.

Tesla Motors Inc changed its name to “Tesla Inc” as Chief Executive Elon Musk looks to transform the Silicon Valley firm from an electric car maker to a diversified energy products company.

It’s weird, I never really considered Tesla as just an automobile company. I always just referred to it as Tesla, knowing that the company had its fingers in a lot of different tech.