Kirk McElhearn, writing for Macworld:

I recently checked my iPhone’s Storage & iCloud Usage settings, and it said that I didn’t have a lot of space left. On this 64GB device—which, according to the iPhone, only really has 55.5GB—there was only 696MB available.

But then I synced the iPhone with iTunes. The latter showed me how much free space it thought I had: 2.68GB. And it also said that the iPhone’s capacity is 55.7GB, or 200MB more than what the phone itself says.

This is a valid point. It’d be nice to have a single take on iOS storage, one that starts with your phone’s size, then shows what is used for what. A view that showed me my device’s full storage, similar to the Manage Storage setting or the iTunes bar of storage, but one that lets me drill down for actual details, one that lets me delete things I don’t need.

For example, if I have old updaters I no longer need, let me delete them. Let me delete videos from that same view. Or music I have backed up elsewhere. As is, I get snippets and clues from various places, and have to visit different apps, deal with wildly different schemes to delete things. And sometimes, I can’t figure out how to delete things, or simply can’t delete them.

Lara Williams, writing for The Guardian:

Is there a more divisive valediction than the default “Sent From My iPhone” sign-off? When the iPhone first appeared, users were roundly condemned for their thinly veiled humblebrag among the mounting popularity of Apple products.

The message was clear: having an iPhone was so much more than having something on which you could make calls and browse the internet. It was a gorgeous trinket and elite lifestyle marker that signalled both sophistication and technological know-how. Membership of the club was something to be boasted about, and you could feel the conceit as users pressed send. The backlash was immediate.

And:

Recently, however, the refrain has returned to our correspondence, but those using the sign-off can no longer be accused of not knowing how to switch it off (it’s easy) or gloating (it’s not a big deal). Rather the phrase has become an important part of online decorum. Including the sign off contains an innate apology for the brevity of the message. It begs forgiveness for any spelling or grammatical errors. It allows a little wiggle rooms for errant emojis. It is a nod of acknowledgement that you are on the hoof and doing as well as can be expected.

Nice writeup, solid read. Not to mention the genius of whoever thought to include that feature in the first place. My money is on Steve.

Jake Kanter, writing for Business Insider:

Ben Winston, the co-founder of Fulwell 73 Productions, told us that the Apple show will be about “broadening out to different talents” in a way they are reluctant to do with “The Late Late Show With James Corden.”

And:

“If a movie star was to call up and say ‘can I do ‘Carpool Karaoke’?’’ the answer would always have been ‘no’ because it’s specifically for musicians. Now on this new show, we’re broadening that out to different talents. More in a documentary-based way,” Winston told Business Insider.

And:

“I’ve come to know Jimmy Iovine quite well and Apple Music is looking for more and more content. They’re big fans of James and the work that we’re doing and we started talking about ideas we could do together.

“We had an idea of how ‘Carpool’ could be a series without James, which we’re working on at the moment, and Jimmy was very insistent that Apple has first option on that. I was very happy with that. I think it’s an amazing brand.”

It’ll be interesting to watch this unfold. This is one of Apple’s first forays into this sort of original content, a bit like the rollout of Beats 1 Radio. Apple is bankrolling the venture, but putting control of the creative end in the hands of the people who created the content in the first place.

Jonny Evans, writing for Computerworld:

If we take ComScore figures for January 2016 we see that around 198.5 million people in the US own smartphones. 52.8 percent of these use Android and 43.6 percent use iPhones, ComScore claims.

If we use ComScore’s figures as base we can make some estimates based on Fluent’s research. Fluent believes 29 percent of all iPhone users will definitely buy a new phone this year, and while 87 percent of them will stick with Apple (21.8 million), 6 percent will switch to Android. This suggests that around 1.5 million US iPhone users will make this switch.

And:

22 percent of Android users will “definitely” upgrade their device this year, and while 76 percent of them will stick with that platform, 17 percent will switch to iPhone. This works out to mean 3.91 million Android users seem likely to switch to Apple’s new iPhone this year.

1.5 million leave, 3.9 million arrive. Clearly, the wind is blowing from the Android shores toward the iPhone.

The Verge:

The starting line is just ahead of us, and the guy behind the wheel of this 650-horsepower muscle car is showing off for the crowd. We’re spinning the tires, doing burnout after burnout. Ostensibly it’s warming them for a quick blast up the 1.16-mile hill climb, but really it’s to show off. This is what the Goodwood Festival of Speed is about.

It’s glorious. And I think I can safely say that this event, held every year in the south of England, is the greatest car show in the world. I’ve been to a lot of car shows, and none of them are like this.

Goodwood is high on my automotive bucket list.

Wired:

You hear it before you see it—the whirring clack of plastic flaps as they turn over to display a new set of numbers and letters. For more than three decades, a mechanical flip board made by the Italian company Solari has guided passengers as they travel through Philadelphia’s 30th Street Station, but things are about to sound (and look) a lot different. The station is the latest, and among the last in the country, to ditch its Solari board for a newer, quieter digital departures screen.

No big deal—a departures board is a departures board, right? Not if you ask Philly travelers:

The first and only time I’ve seen these kinds of displays outside of old pinball machines was at the Charles De Gaulle airport in France. It was so fascinating, I stood and stared at it for 10 minutes. The story makes the good point that a digital display is more reliable and flexible but the anachronistic sound and visuals of the old display will certainly be missed.

I think, “boring as dirt” pretty much sums it up.

Much respect, Colonel.

Shared by his daughter, Shannon Lee:

Learning is discovery, the discovery of the cause of our ignorance. However, the best way of learning is not the computation of information. Learning is discovering, uncovering what is there in us.

Interscope Records, which was co-founded by current Apple Music executive Jimmy Iovine in 1989, is one of the many labels owned by Universal Media Group. Apple’s rumored exclusivity loss of Lady Gaga’s new album appears to be the first ripple generated by UMG’s CEO Lucian Grainge decreeing earlier in the week that the company would no longer support exclusive music streaming on any service.

I’ll be honest with you, I’ll be glad if the exclusives stop. I want Apple to build a service that is second to none. Build an Apple app the way we know they can. Building a service on exclusives is a numbers game to boost subscriptions—as soon as the exclusive is over people will go to the service that’s the best. Apple is arguably not that service for many people right now. They need to change that quickly.

Earlier this month, the university announced it would sue the Kernel over requests for documents involving the investigation of James Harwood, an associate professor of entomology accused of sexual assault and harassment in an investigation spanning seven months, after three years’ worth of allegations, according to the Kernel.

Respect to the student newspaper.

Spotify has been retaliating against musicians who introduce new material exclusively on rival Apple Music by making their songs harder to find, according to people familiar with the strategy. Artists who have given Apple exclusive access to new music have been told they won’t be able to get their tracks on featured playlists once the songs become available on Spotify, said the people, who declined to be identified discussing the steps. Those artists have also found their songs buried in the search rankings of Spotify, the world’s largest music-streaming service, the people said. Spotify said it doesn’t alter search rankings.

I hate that musicians are the ones caught in the middle of this Apple, Spotify fight, but you had to see something was going to happen. Apple is targeting Spotify, and they are fighting back.

From the just-released report by China Labor Watch:

> Pegatron is one of Apple’s major suppliers, employing almost one hundred thousand workers3 in Mainland China. Working conditions are terrible, and workers are subject to terrible treatment. Currently, Apple’s profits are declining, and the effects of this decline have been passed on to suppliers. To mitigate the impact, Pegatron has taken some covert measures to exploit workers. This report is based on interviews with Pegatron workers and a comparative study of 2015 copies of paystubs collected in 2015 and 2016. Through our investigation, we have found that Pegatron has taken some surreptitious measures to pass Apple’s audits. In addition, we discovered that Pegatron’s working conditions have worsened in 2016 compared to 2015. As for the workers who have suffered tremendously, especially on the mental side of the condition, they can purchase products like CBD Oil.

And:

> Excessive and illegal overtime work is still prevalent in Pegatron. Pegatron claimed that their ID check system could effectively control workers’ overtime hours, but this system did not have any effect in the departments where more overtime was needed. It is merely a tool for public relations. Paystub records reveal that the highest amount of overtime hours put in by a worker was recorded in March, which was a worker with 109 overtime hours. The worker was found to have put in a total of 293 hours of work in March.

And:

> Pegatron has recruited many student interns, who had overtime work amounting to 80 hours per month on average. This is roughly the same amount as full-time employees. However, the Chinese law forbids companies from asking interns to work overtime.

And:

> Workers are exposed to potential occupational injuries without proper protection. For example, in departments that have noise and the use of lasers, the factory does not provide them with protection equipment.

There is a lot more.

Thanks to Pad and Quill for sponsoring The Loop’s RSS feed this week.

Pad and Quill has partnered with The Loop to offer you a chance to win a $700 Back to Work giveaway. One winner will receive a Luxury Briefcase, Leather Ipad pro case, Woodline case for the Iphone, and a Classic leather band for the Apple Watch.” Sign up for your chance to win!

From the interview, starting when EVH was a kid:

When I first started playing guitar, I was at the local music store, which wasn’t even a music store, it was kind of like a Radio Shack that also sold musical instruments, it was called Lafayette Music.

I fell in love with this hollowbody 12-string because of the neck, and the first thing I did was I took six strings off, because it was a 12-string, and I didn’t want 12! They didn’t have what I wanted in the store, so it had already started there!

And:

I saved the money from delivering papers for two and a half to three years, and bought my first real guitar, which was a ’68 Goldtop Les Paul with single-coil P-90 pickups.

So what do I do? I take the chisel to it right away! Because I wanted a humbucking pickup! But in Pasadena, there were no Les Pauls with a humbucker in them. There was one store in northern Pasadena – a Les Paul came in and they called me right away ‘Hey, we’ve got a Les Paul!’ I walk in and I go, ‘Ah, shit! It ain’t the kind Clapton plays!’ It didn’t have humbuckers.

So, of course, I hunted down a humbucker, took a chisel and made the hole bigger and crammed it in there. I was lucky enough to solder it back properly, then I painted it black and added binding. I did all kinds of crazy shit to it.

So much more. This is a great read.

[H/T Pavan Rajam]

Bloomberg:

Apple is already at work on a major redesign of the iPhone for 2017 that focuses more heavily on the display by removing the Home button, according to a person familiar with the matter.

An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment.

The sense I get from the article is that this is the follow-on to the iPhone said to be announced next month.

Interesting to watch Mark Gurman ply his trade for Bloomberg.

Nasa’s Mars site:

Mars needs YOU! In the future, Mars will need all kinds of explorers, farmers, surveyors, teachers . . . but most of all YOU! Join us on the Journey to Mars as we explore with robots and send humans there one day. Download a Mars poster that speaks to you. Be an explorer!

And:

Night owls welcome! If you lived on Mars’ moon Phobos, you’d have an office with a view, mining for resources with Mars in the night sky. Settlers below on Mars would see Phobos rise and set not once, but twice in one day!

This is some compelling prose, feels like part of a beloved sci-fi set. The accompanying posters were originally developed for the Kennedy Space Flight Center’s visitors complex. Now they can be yours, free.

Frightening.

Google:

We went there so you can too.Follow rangers on a journey to places most people never go. Experience the sights, sounds, and adventures of Kenai Fjords, Hawai’i Volcanoes, Carlsbad Caverns, Bryce Canyon, and Dry Tortugas in stunning 360° video.

The teaser video above is gorgeous but take some time to go to the full videos. Utterly spectacular and in honor of this month’s 100th anniversary of the National Parks Service.

If you like to know exactly what Apple did to improve security in the latest update, you can read this update on the company’s Web site.

Alicia Keys, Bastille, Britney Spears, Calvin Harris, Chance the Rapper, Elton John, Michael Bublé, OneRepublic, Robbie Williams and The 1975.

Those are the headliners for the festival. Elton John!

Important to note that in order to watch the festival, you will need to sign-up for Apple Music. That wasn’t a requirement in the past. Seems like just another way to boost subscriptions, but it’s a numbers game these days.

Verge:

Microsoft has released a big update for its Word Flow keyboard on the iPhone this week. The biggest addition is a new search interface that lets you find GIFs, emoji, images, contacts, and anything from Bing search results without leaving the keyboard. Microsoft’s GIF search feature copies the animated pictures into your clipboard, allowing you to paste them in. Word Flow will even pick out GIFs from words you type, so if you say “deal with it” in a message you’ll get a GIF icon that brings up the relevant image.

Interesting to see the keyboard as a point of search competition between Google and Bing.

MacRumors:

An Apple collector who was selling his vintage Apple software collection on eBay received a surprise earlier this month when Apple itself bought out much of his software inventory for its software archives (via MacGeneration).

According to seller “Marcoguy,” he made several listings of various Apple CDs and received a message from someone asking to buy a dozen discs. When he went to ship the package, he noticed it was going to 1 Infinite Loop in Cupertino, California, Apple’s corporate address. Upon asking the buyer about the purchase, he was told that Apple maintains a lab at its headquarters containing archived materials. “We were missing some of the disks that you placed on eBay,” wrote the buyer.

Fascinating.

Bloomberg:

Apple Inc., seeking to capitalize on the popularity of social networks, is developing a video sharing and editing application and is testing new related features for its iPhone and iPad operating systems.

The early plans are part of a newly directed focus to integrate social networking applications within Apple’s mobile products and are a response to the success of social media-focused companies such as Facebook Inc. and Snapchat Inc., according to people familiar with Apple’s strategy. An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment.

And:

Now Apple is starting to develop a video sharing app that allows users to record video, apply filters and drawings to the media — much like Snapchat does — and send it to contacts or via existing social networks such as Twitter Inc., according to the people familiar with its development. The software is currently being designed to be used mostly with one hand and with the intention that video could be shot, edited, and uploaded in less than 1 minute, the people said. At least one of the prototype designs for the app would shoot video in an Instagram-like square shape, one of the people said.

It’s easy to be skeptical when you read Apple and social in the same sentence. Brings back memories of Ping and Connect and the potential of what could have been. But photo and video have long been in Apple’s sweet spot. Getting social right is tough, a bit like catching lightning in a bottle.

No matter, if and when this emerges from the secret lab, sign me up.