Terry Collins, writing for CNET:

Medical researchers at Harvard University have created an app that lets former players share how on-field injuries may still be affecting their brains and bodies.

Ex-players spend about 20 minutes a week with the app, called TeamStudy, recording their pain tolerance, mobility and memory. The broader public is also encouraged to use the app so researchers can compare the health of nonathletes to that of the former players.

Great use of HealthKit.

Wired:

We saw hyper-efficient sedans—some apparently designed on drugs—high-performance machines tuned to within inches of their lives, silky-smooth drop-tops, and smart safety and powertrain technologies that continue to trickle up, down, and sideways within manufacturers’ lineups. These are our favorites from the Big Apple—ten cars that caught our attention in big ways and small.

I really miss the New York Auto Show. The Vancouver version is on now and it’s more of a “car dealer show”. Sadly, we get few of the “cool cars” the Detriot, LA and New York shows are lucky enough to see. I’d give up body parts for that 2017 Nissan GT-R.

Mashable:

You probably already know how to customize ring tones on your iPhone, but there’s a way to personalize vibrations to tell who’s calling, too.

With a few setting adjustments, it’s easy to set up customized vibration so you can know when mom’s calling when your phone is on the other side of the room.

This is one of my favorite tips to show to those unfamiliar with the ins and outs of the iPhone’s OS. It’s really helpful because you can set customized vibrations so you don’t even need to look at the screen or hear the ringer to know who’s calling.

Appleinsider:

Netflix has been throttling video for AT&T and Verizon mobile subscribers for over five years, the streaming service has newly admitted, claiming it was in customers’ best interests.

The company said it was trying to “protect consumers from exceeding mobile data caps,” according to the Wall Street Journal.

The issue came to the fore last week when T-Mobile CEO John Legere noted that AT&T and Verizon subscribers were getting lower-quality video. The latter carriers denied doing any throttling.

The line, “to protect viewers”, feels like a load of bull. If that’s what they were doing, why not be transparent about it and let the users make the decision whether or not they wanted to be throttled?

Microsoft:

As many of you know by now, on Wednesday we launched a chatbot called Tay. We are deeply sorry for the unintended offensive and hurtful tweets from Tay, which do not represent who we are or what we stand for, nor how we designed Tay. Tay is now offline and we’ll look to bring Tay back only when we are confident we can better anticipate malicious intent that conflicts with our principles and values.

I want to share what we learned and how we’re taking these lessons forward.

I find this whole story fascinating. Not just Microsoft’s seeming cluelessness about how this would turn out (entirely predictably) but how Twitter reacted to Tay (offensively and again, entirely predictable) and the hows and whys of AI chatbots in general.

This is a fantastic story about a young skinny kid who was constantly overlooked, by high school coaches, by Virginia Tech and, ultimately, by Nike.

Nike owned the first opportunity to keep Curry. It was its privilege as the incumbent with an advantage that extended beyond vast resources. “I was with them for years,” Curry says. “It’s kind of a weird process being pitched by the company you’re already with. There was some familiar faces in there.”

Curry was a Nike athlete long before 2013, though. His godfather, Greg Brink, works for Nike. He wore the shoes growing up, sported the swoosh at Davidson. In his breakout 54-point game at Madison Square Garden on Feb. 28, 2013, he was wearing Nike Zoom Hyperfuse, a pair of sneakers he still owns, tucked away in his East Bay Area home, shielded from the light of day.

Then came the pitch meeting, where Nike tells Curry how much he means to them. Remember, this is before his truly breakout season, before everyone knew how elite a player Curry truly is.

The pitch meeting, according to Steph’s father Dell, who was present, kicked off with one Nike official accidentally addressing Stephen as “Steph-on,” the moniker, of course, of Steve Urkel’s alter ego in Family Matters. “I heard some people pronounce his name wrong before,” says Dell Curry. “I wasn’t surprised. I was surprised that I didn’t get a correction.”

It got worse from there. A PowerPoint slide featured Kevin Durant’s name, presumably left on by accident, presumably residue from repurposed materials. “I stopped paying attention after that,” Dell says. Though Dell resolved to “keep a poker face,” throughout the entirety of the pitch, the decision to leave Nike was in the works.

There’s an Apple angle here, too:

As athletic companies move into wearable technology, Nike boasts Apple CEO Tim Cook as a member of its board. Sonny Vaccaro is less sanguine on what losing Curry means for one of the world’s biggest companies. “This is Nike’s biggest fear,” he says. “They can’t overcome this in the shoe business. This is going to be detrimental to them. Psychologically.”

Finally, there’s this gem:

In 2013, Nike retained Curry’s matching rights, analogous to how NBA restricted free agency works. They still could have signed Curry, regardless of his preferences. According to a Sept. 16, 2015, report from ESPN’s Darren Rovell, “Nike failed to match a deal worth less than $4 million a year.”

Curry’s current value to Under Armour is pegged by Morgan Stanley as $14 billion. That’s a helluva miss.

[H/T Daniel Mark]

Apple Inc said the U.S. Justice Department’s new attempts to unlock an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino shooters without the tech giant’s help could eliminate the government’s need for its assistance in a similar dispute in New York.

And

“On the other hand, if the DOJ claims that the method will not work on the iPhone here, Apple will seek to test that claim, as well as any claims by the government that other methods cannot be used,” Apple said in the letter.

If there is a flaw in its encryption, Apple wants to know what it is so it can lock it down. Makes perfect sense.

My Thanks to Marketcircle for sponsoring The Loop this week. Marketcircle develops small business apps exclusively for Mac & iOS. Daylite is a CRM & Project Management app. Billings Pro is a time-tracking and invoicing app. Daylite and Billings Pro are great for solopreneurs and SMBs from freelance designers to consultants and law firms. Work offline. Sync in the cloud. Visit Marketcircle’s website to learn more.

Jason Del Rey, writing for re/code:

Apple has been telling potential partners that its payment service, which lets shoppers complete a purchase on mobile apps with their fingerprint rather than by entering credit card details, is expanding to websites later this year, multiple sources told Re/code.

The service will be available to shoppers using the Safari browser on models of iPhones and iPads that possess Apple’s TouchID fingerprint technology, these people said. Apple has also considered making the service available on Apple laptops and desktops, too, though it’s not clear if the company will launch that capability.

Sources say that Apple is telling potential partners that the Apple Pay expansion to mobile websites will be ready before this year’s holiday shopping season. An announcement could come at WWDC, Apple’s conference for software developers, which typically takes place in June, though sources cautioned that the timing of an announcement could change.

I wonder how this will impact PayPal. Will Apple create an ecosystem where I can generate a bill and have someone pay me (or vice versa), all using Apple Pay?

Very interesting. This is a search of the General Services Administration public facing web site for Cellebrite and the FBI. One match. A purchase order for $15,278.02 dated March 21, 2016, the day before the original hearing was scheduled.

[Via BGR]

Emily Steel, writing for the New York Times:

Apple announced on Thursday that it was working with the entertainer Will.i.am and two veteran TV executives, Ben Silverman and Howard T. Owens, on a new show that will spotlight the app economy.

“One of the things with the app store that was always great about it was the great ideas that people had to build things and create things,” Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet software and services, said in an interview.

Details about the production are scant, and it was unclear how directly the show would promote or refer to Apple’s own app store. Executives declined to discuss specifics, such as financing, title, timeline, storylines, episode length or how people will watch the show.

I mean, we’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent TV show. PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in. (With apologies to Ed Colligan).

Can’t wait to see what they come up with.

Geoffrey Fowler, writing for The Wall Street Journal:

I wouldn’t want to use it as my everyday phone, but as many as 20% of Americans would prefer a 4-inch phone. Apple says it sold 30 million older, slower (and cheaper) models at that size last year. Yet remarkably, no other major manufacturer offers a high-end phone at this size in the U.S.

And:

The new phone is nearly indistinguishable from the three-year-old iPhone 5s, which is a hair thicker and less pleasantly rounded than Apple’s more recent designs. (The SE even fits in most existing 5s cases.) The SE will come in Apple’s newer rose-gold hue, but it lacks design improvements you’ll find in Apple’s competitors, such as waterproofing and expandable storage.

And:

The standout news is battery life. Unlike many other recent Apple products, the iPhone SE’s is a significant improvement over its predecessors’. In my lab stress test, which cycles through websites with uniform screen brightness, the SE lasted 10 hours—more than two hours longer than both the iPhone 6s and iPhone 5s, and nearly three hours longer than the Galaxy S7.

This feels like a quietly important upgrade, designed to keep the smaller form factor active and capable of working with the latest version of iOS.

Chance Miller, writing for 9to5Mac:

Apple, just hours after it confirmed issues relating to iOS 9.3 on the iPad 2, has released a new build of the operating system for the device. Carrying build number 13E236, the update appears to be rolling out to iPad 2 users now. Presumably, it’s the same build that was released to everyone earlier this week, just with the activation issues fixed.

From Twitter comments, appears that this new build addresses the problem.

Garry Shandling was one of my very first comedians. When I was growing up, Shandling was always different, irreverence with great intelligence. His first show, It’s Garry Shandling’s Show, came along as one of the very first cable TV shows, running on Showtime when Showtime was just a baby.

It’s Garry Shandling’s Show was original in many ways, from the self-referential theme song (see the embed below) to the constant breaking of the 4th wall, where Shandling would stop, mid-scene, turn to the camera and make some aside directly to the audience. That was the first time I’d ever encountered such a direct (and effective) flouting of the rules of television.

Tom Petty played a neighbor on the show who was, well, Tom Petty. He’d pop by every so often and play a few songs. Gilda Radner (one of the original cast members of Saturday Night Live) was also a pop-by friend. Her battle with cancer became part of the show. Incredible.

Shandling went on to create a more well known series for HBO called The Larry Sanders Show, a searing sendup of late night talk shows that featured talents such as Jeffrey Tambor (Hey Now!), Rip Torn, Janeane Garofalo, Jeremy Piven, Mary Lynn Rajskub, Bob Odenkirk, Jon Stewart, Joshua Malina, Sarah Silverman, a brilliant turn by David Duchovny, and many more great talents.

Though It’s Garry Shandling’s Show is tough to find outside of sporadic bits on YouTube, Shandling closed a deal with HBO just a few days before he died to allow Larry Sanders back on the network, both on air and via HBO Go and HBO Now streaming. Watch the show. It is well worth your time.

Shandling brought a lot of joy to my life. He was a genius. Words cannot express how much I appreciate him and will miss him.

The Journal quoted Netflix as saying it had limited its videos to most wireless carriers across the globe, capping them at 600 kiliobits-per-second, to “protect consumers from exceeding mobile data caps.”

Okay, certainly not good without letting people know, but if you’re watching on a phone, you probably wouldn’t notice a quality difference.

“We’re outraged to learn that Netflix is apparently throttling video for their AT&T customers without their knowledge or consent,” Jim Cicconi, AT&T senior executive vice president of external and legislative affairs wrote in an email.

That made me laugh out loud. AT&T would probably do the same thing if they thought they could get away with it.

Apple, in a statement given to Rene Ritchie:

Updating some iOS devices (iPhone 5s and earlier and iPad Air and earlier) to iOS 9.3 can require entering the Apple ID and password used to set up the device in order to complete the software update,” an Apple spokesperson told iMore. “In some cases, if customers do not recall their password, their device will remain in an inactivated state until they can recover or reset their password. For these older devices, we have temporarily pulled back the update and will release an updated version of iOS 9.3 in the next few days that does not require this step.”

There’s also a support article.

I never really considered all of the data these cars would collect and how it would be used.

Google:

Photo enthusiasts all over the world use the Nik Collection to get the best out of their images every day. As we continue to focus our long-term investments in building incredible photo editing tools for mobile, including Google Photos and Snapseed, we’ve decided to make the Nik Collection desktop suite available for free, so that now anyone can use it.

The Nik Collection is comprised of seven desktop plug-ins that provide a powerful range of photo editing capabilities — from filter applications that improve color correction, to retouching and creative effects, to image sharpening that brings out all the hidden details, to the ability to make adjustments to the color and tonality of images.

I’ve used these plug-ins in the past and they are very good. At the low, low price of free, they are even better. You can download them here.

I remember beta testing OS X. That first demo that Steve Jobs did on stage was amazing, but it took a few versions to reach its full potential.

U.S. officials said on Thursday that they are hopeful they will be able to unlock an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino shooters without help from Apple Inc, but said the national debate over privacy and encryption must still be resolved.

I still think that if the government thought it could have won the case, it wouldn’t have vacated the court date. Either way the judge rules, it will set a precedent. It seems to me the government wasn’t confident enough to move forward.

Politico:

“I certainly don’t think, let me just comment, that Apple’s been flouting the order,” Magistrate Judge Sheri Pym said Monday, according to a transcript obtained by POLITICO. “The order, essentially … pending a final decision, there’s not really — it’s not in a stage that it could be enforced at this point,” Pym said.

Also this sparring back and forth between Apple’s attorney (Boutrous) and the prosecutor in the case (Wilkinson):

“I can’t exaggerate to you how — the perception, some of which I think has been reinforced by the government in their brief, that the company has been somehow doing something wrong,” Boutrous said.

“The government has really only been interested in trying to get into this phone and has done all of its filings and all of its work here in an effort to get into this phone and not saying anything nefarious about Apple,” Wilkison insisted.

Boutrous then cited a point in the government’s brief that says: “Apple’s rhetoric is not only false, but is corrosive of the very institutions that are best able to safeguard our liberty and our rights.”

The Justice Department now has until April 5th to make its next move.

Start by using Photos on your Mac or iOS device to build a custom album. The linked post walks you through the rest.

As soon as I get back from my rocket watching trip, going to give this a try.

Nice tip, Kirk.

Terrific.

MacRumors:

Although more prominent features like Night Shift and a few new Quick Actions are getting the spotlight with the launch of iOS 9.3, one new lesser-known update is definitely worth checking out. In iOS 9.3, Apple has improved the functionality of its first-party Notes app with the ability to add password or Touch ID security for individual notes.

The feature allows users to prevent access to sensitive information on a case-by-case basis (some notes, like a shopping list, might not be as high risk), just in case someone gets past the lock screen security of the iPhone itself. With some people even using Notes to store passwords for various sites and services, Apple’s security-enhanced update is well worth checking out.

Ever since Notes was upgraded to sync via iCloud, I’ve started using it all the time. This move to password protect individual notes is that “one more thing” to make Notes a home run for me.

Mashable:

Liam is a large-scale robot, with 29 freestanding robotic arms at various skill stations. But while most assembly-line robots help put together products you’ll one day hold in your hands, Liam is hard at work disassembling your ruined, returned iPhones.

Liam was revealed at Apple’s spring product launch event on Monday, but Mashable got an exclusive look at the system in action a few days earlier. To keep Liam a secret, I’m told, only a handful of Apple staffers knew of its existence.

This is another of those things that Apple does because it makes economic sense but has the additional benefit of making environmental sense.