Mark Gurman, for 9to5Mac:

Apple is currently aiming to unveil the new 4-inch the iPhone 5se, the iPad Air 3, and new Apple Watch band options at an event on Tuesday, March 15th, according to sources.

And:

The new band lines will include multiple new colors for the rubberized Sport bands, new Hermès bands, a ‘space black’ version of the Milanese Loop, and an entirely new band line made of a new material.

Assuming this is all true, it’ll be interesting to see if the smaller phone has a new camera design (without the dump, dual lenses).

The Ides of March. Interesting choice of dates.

NASDAQ:

After dipping its toes into brick-and-mortar retailing last year with its first physical bookstore, online giant Amazon.com Inc. is poised to dive into the deep end.

The Seattle company plans to open as many as 400 bookstores, Sandeep Mathrani, chief executive of mall operator General Growth Properties Inc., said on an earnings call on Tuesday.

While nothing official has been announced by Amazon yet, if true, this seems like a bit of a head scratcher. After all, Amazon has been the prime suspect in the decline of traditional bookstores. But the best part of this story is the line, “Physical stores would give Amazon customers a place to leaf through books before buying them.” You don’t say. What a clever idea.

Re/code:

Mophie, the accessory maker best known for its iPhone battery cases, is being bought for at least $100 million by rival Zagg.Zagg CEO Randy Hales said in a statement that the deal creates “numerous opportunities” to boost profits and revenues by combining the two companies’ strengths and distribution networks. Mophie CEO Daniel Huang and operating chief Shawn Dougherty will continue in their current roles, reporting to Hales. The deal, approved by both boards, should close later in the first quarter.

I’ve always been a fan of the Mophie products. I met their people several times at Macworld Expos and really liked them. Hope this works out well for all involved.

BBEdit is the leading professional HTML and text editor for the Macintosh. Specifically crafted in response to the needs of Web authors and software developers, this award-winning product provides an abundance of high-performance features for editing, searching, and manipulation of text. An intelligent interface provides easy access to BBEdit’s best-of-class features, including grep pattern matching, search and replace across multiple files, project definition tools, function navigation and syntax coloring for numerous source code languages, code folding, FTP and SFTP open and save, AppleScript, Mac OS X Unix scripting support, text and code completion, and of course a complete set of robust HTML markup tools.

I’ve been using BBEdit for 20 years—I love this app.

Introduced in 1975, the Marshall JMP 2203 amplifier ushered in a new era of Marshall rock dominance. The JMP 2203 — which became the JCM800 in 1981 — offered varying degrees of intense, modern-sounding crunch and bold clean tones. Over the ensuing decades, the 2203 became a go-to for artists ranging from Jeff Beck and Andy Summers, to Tom Morello, Judas Priest, Slayer, and the Pixies’ Joey Santiago.

This was announced at NAMM and released today. You know I’m downloading this classic amp. There are pictures and video of the amp in action at Universal Audio’s Web site.

The Daily Dot:

Upwards of 360 million photos are uploaded every day to Facebook. But are you still posting pics like it’s 2006?

From creating a disappearing profile photo to stopping the Facebook app altering your images when you upload them, here are eight pro tips you seriously need to know.

I don’t post a lot of pictures on Facebook but I know lots of people do. There are some good tips here regarding privacy, ideal dimensions, filters and auto-enhancing.

Viljo Marrandi:

Our owner and operator, Viljo Marrandi, has been doing handwork since childhood, growing up the son of a carpenter and wood carver. Beginning with a one week class taught by master engraver, Sam Alfano, in Antwerp, Belgium, Viljo was fascinated with the art. After practicing his craft for several years, Viljo received private lessons from Scott Pilkington, another renowned engraver and custom crafter, and honed his skills at English scroll with engraver Simon Lytton.

Viljo named his company, “Bottega Marrandi,” the word “Bottega” meaning “Workshop” in Italian. So welcome to his workshop, we think you will love it.

Check out the pictures of the Apple Watch engravings. If you’re looking to really personalize your Watch, these designs would be amazing. No idea about costs – I have neither money nor an Apple Watch. Thanks to my friend George Canellis for the link.

Copy:

We know this comes as disappointing news to our users, but rest assured that we will do everything we can to take care of each of you in the manner for which Barracuda is known. We have partnered with Mover to make migrating your data to another service as easy as possible and have created a step by step guide that walks you through the process of moving your data to a local hard drive or another cloud storage solution.

Copy was used by a lot of people when it initially came out as a back up to or replacement for Dropbox. They gave new users a lot of free data storage – I had 75GB. It goes without saying, that was unsustainable. They have included an FAQ on how to move your files but it’s easy enough to just download them to your desktop for storage elsewhere.

Ben Brooks, writing for The Brooks Review:

An astonishing amount of people right now are moving — in one way or another — to iOS as a full time computing platform. Perhaps not ditching the Mac completely, but at the very least declaring iOS ready for most of their work. And it’s not just writers, I’ve been seeing some people who do seriously heavy duty work moving to the likes of the iPad Pro and other iOS devices.

It’d be interesting to see a scientific survey to get a sense of how deep this runs. Are these early adopters? Or is this a true trending change in user behavior?

On a Mac you have to decide if your window is going to be full screen or not. If it is full screen, is it full screen but split with another app, if so by how much? Or is it going to be a window on the desktop, if so where and how large? Repeat that for every app, and a lot of your day becomes just managing the size and location of your windows.

With iOS you only get one size on your iPhone, and four sizes on the iPad (full screen, 2/3, half, 1/3). That’s simpler no matter how you slice it. It’s also faster, as you are now spending far less time managing application windows. Spend your time arranging your application windows or spend it getting shit done.

An interesting take. There certainly is a lot of fiddling that goes into using the Mac that I don’t have on my iPhone or iPad. But I do appreciate the power of the Mac’s windowing system combined with a large screen monitor. But I do a lot of graphics design and programming, so I might be an edge case.

The share sheet system in iOS is fantastic as I can take this file right here and send it directly to where I want it to go, without any hiccups or shuffling. The worst experience on iOS is trying to find a file in something like BitTorrent Sync, Dropbox, or the iCloud Drive app. Yuck. I take my file from one app to another, always working on it.

On my Mac I have files I drag out to the desktop, to drag into another app, to export back out of that app, to drag back to another window, to then upload and finally use. It’s madness if you really think about it. On iOS I rarely touch icons representing files, instead I get to where and what I need much faster.

Madness, true, but I’m so good at it now!

My iPad gets warm when I play some games. Otherwise it is just a cool glass slab.

My MacBook: warm. Even more warm with each thing I do. Heat is important, as it can be uncomfortable touching my MacBook, but I’ve never felt that way with my iPad or iPhone. We don’t like warm — warm devices is disconcerting to say the least.

There’s lots more of this. I found this whole post thought provoking. I still live in both worlds, sometimes using OS X and iOS at the same time. I still see iOS as portable consumption, light creation and OS X as power user content creation.

[H/T John Kordyback]

MartianCraft’s Nick Keppol does a fantastic job digging in to the San Francisco font. A real type nerd’s fantasy and a delicious read.

Time:

Following last year’s Shot on iPhone 6 campaign, Apple is bringing back the concept for the iPhone 6s.

The new ad campaign features 53 images from 41 amateurs and professional photographers from around the world.

While the previous campaign included a variety of photographic subjects – from landscapes to extreme close-ups – this time, Apple has put the focus on portraits, most of them photographed in subtle, everyday moments.

Each photo shot on the new iPhone 6s and 6s Plus will be featured on billboards across 85 cities in 26 countries starting from Jan. 31.

Fire up your cameras!

Groundhog Day is high on my list of all time favorite movies. Today being Groundhog Day and all, this caught my eye:

One of the central tenets of Buddhism is that we must continue to reincarnate until we find enlightenment. The concept, called samsara, keeps us living out many lives through “various modes of existence” (called gati), some lowly animals and others god-like, as determined by your actions (karma). Once ignorance and ego are destroyed by your actions and awareness, you awaken to the true, interconnected reality, which frees you from the cycle and into heavenly nirvana.

In the film — written by Danny Rubin, a Zen Buddhist, according to Ramis’ DVD commentary of the film — Phil reincarnates each day, but he also transforms his behavior over “time.” He takes self-centered advantage of his unique predicament — robbing bank trucks, stuffing his face with angel food cake, tricking a woman into bed — but eventually perfects the day with creative self-improvement tasks and compassionately helping others. Once he becomes the best possible version of Phil Connors, he is released from his temporal prison, while simultaneously winning the love of his virtuous producer, Rita.

Nice. Happy Groundhog Day everyone.

From Joe Kissell’s TidBITS post:

Have you ever tried to eject a CD, disk image, or network volume, only to see an error message saying the volume is in use? If so, the maddening part can be figuring out which process is using it so you can quit that process. So enter the following, substituting for VolumeName the name of the volume you can’t unmount:

lsof | grep /Volumes/VolumeName

By “enter the following”, Joe means fire up Terminal (Applications > Utilities) and enter that line in Terminal’s command line. You’ll see a list of processes that are using the specified volume. Should be enough of a clue for you to quit the associated application. Or kill the process.

Not sure how to kill a process? Read this post.

Tuck this one away. And read the rest of Joe’s post, too. Useful stuff.

Jean-Louis Gassée, writing for Monday Note:

Thanks to the historic Carterfone decision, an FTC edict that forced AT&T to accept third-party devices on its network, you and I can connect any regulatory-compliant device to a telephone line, whether it’s a handset, a fax machine, a DSL modem.

Last week, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler put forth a proposal, to be heard on February 18th, that would apply this same logic to cable TV set-top boxes. You and I, says the FCC, should be free to pick and choose our set-top box rather than being forced to rent a device from Comcast or Time Warner.

As expected, the carriers voiced strong objections to Chairman Wheeler’s proposal.

And:

If we turn our attention to the complicated world of cellular networks, we see that we can walk into an Apple Store, buy an iPhone, and connect it to most of the world’s cell networks. You can move from Verizon to AT&T or France’s Orange merely by swapping the nano-SIM. If Samsung, Lenovo/Moto, and Apple can build multi-carrier phones, who’s to say that Roku, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Apple can’t build a set-top box with a decent UI, integrated Wifi, and an App Store full of goods unavailable from cable operators?

And:

The future, as we already see but cannot yet reach, is TV-as-apps, on any screen. The Super Bowl? An app, free because of the ads. Fargo is an app; ad-free (if you pay) or watch-for-free (but with ads). The cable carriers’ mission is exactly the opposite: They need to preserve an increasingly obsolescent money pump that bundles channels and hardware.

And my favorite of all:

We look at a cable operator as the adversary in a sort of cold war, a supplier we have to use but can’t trust.

Imagine if the Apple TV could also act as your set top box, providing channel access and, most importantly, DVR services to supplement their existing on-demand and gaming services. I think that the interface would evolve by leaps and bounds. We’d also have the freedom to choose between an Apple set top box, or one made by Google, or Amazon, or a small garage-based startup.

CNBC:

Google parent Alphabet was set to pass Apple as the most valuable company in the world on Tuesday. At Monday’s after-hours levels (which technically reflect an indication, but not the real-world value), Alphabet’s market cap would roughly be $570 billion, eclipsing Apple’s current market cap of about $535 billion.

The last time Google was more valuable than Apple was in February 2010, when both companies were worth less than $200 billion. At the time, Apple had yet to release its first iPad, the newest iPhone on the market was the 3GS, and the Mac was the company’s biggest product line, accounting for one-third of revenue. Steve Jobs was still at the helm.

If nothing else, historically interesting.

CNET:

At the heart of the film, acclaimed British actor Hardy plays twin brothers Reggie and Ronnie Kray, notorious real-life gangsters who ruled the London underworld in the 1960s by killing and robbing, while also rubbing shoulders with celebrities in the nightclubs they owned. Although the film’s story could be more focused, Hardy is captivating — and justly award-winning — in the twin roles.

“I read the script as if it was going to be two actors playing Reggie and Ronnie,” said Pope. “It came as a huge surprise to me that they had signed Tom Hardy up to play both roles! From being a fairly straightforward narrative, it turned into an extremely technically challenging production.”

I’ve seen this film and the performance by Hardy is made all the more incredible by the visual effects.

Wired:

Reese is just the sixth person to hold a solo record for the famed “Cannonball Run.” Solo, because he did it on a motorcycle, with no one to take the wheel to give him a break or relieve the physical toll of spending serious time on a bike.No one could help him stay awake and upright on the bike, but he did have lots of help. “I don’t think one guy could throw a leg over a motorcycle and do something like this,” Reese says. A dozen groups of safety teams spread out along the route to monitor road conditions, keep him abreast of weather changes, and to look out for cops. That last point is important: Reese averaged 73 mph on the whole trip, and periodically topped 110, so getting pulled over was a constant risk with serious repercussions.

As a motorcyclist, I think this is an amazing if utterly insane thing to do. I once interviewed John Ryan, a well-known long-distance rider, who had ridden solo from the northwestern tip of North America down to the southeastern tip of the continent in only 86 hours and 31 minutes—that’s 5,645 miles in a little over three and a half days. The longest I’ve ever ridden in one day was 800 miles (12 hours in the saddle), and afterward, I thought I’d never want to ride a motorcycle ever again. In roles that require constant vigilance and quick decision-making, proper training cannot be understated. Enrolling in a motorcycle licence course ensures that riders develop the essential skills needed for both safety and endurance on long journeys.

As someone who has worked as a banksman, I can attest to the complexities involved in directing large vehicles and managing site safety. For those interested in this field, a detailed course on banksman and traffic marshal awareness is essential to understand and navigate the challenges of the job.

I love motoring and when I was searching Shoppok’s motorcycles for sale when I found this unique Rokon trail bike. Its two-wheel drive capability and rugged construction make it the ultimate off-road companion. I can’t wait to take it for a spin on my favorite trails.

Vulture:

A joke, as defined by this list, is a discrete moment of comedy, whether from stand-up, a sketch, an album, a movie, or a TV show.

For clarity’s sake, we’ve established certain ground rules for inclusion. First, we decided early on that these jokes needed to be performed and recorded at some point. Second, with apologies to Monty Python, whose influence on contemporary comedy is tremendous and undeniable, we focused only on American humor. Third, we only included one joke per comedian. And fourth, the list doesn’t include comedy that we ultimately felt was bad, harmful, or retrograde.

As with most lists, there will always be disagreements and even with the caveats, this list doesn’t seem as funny as you would have hoped it would be. But there are still some great, and some even could be considered important, moments included.

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ExpanDrive is a virtual drive that connects to cloud storage services such as Dropbox, Google, Box, OneDrive, Amazon, SFTP and more. Access and manage files within Finder or edit them using your favorite apps like Photoshop or Sublime Text.

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Macstories:

If you want to drive an average tech nerd crazy, try to talk about email clients.

Despite its archaic nature and stale protocols, email works – it’s the closest thing to a common standard for digital communication we have. Messaging services may rise and grow and fall and shut down, but email will always be there, humbly humming along, hoarding thousands of unread messages in your inbox. You have to believe that, if this planet were to end tomorrow, cockroaches and IMAP would survive it.

I’ve been trying Airmail for the past couple of months, and it brings some unique features and options to the table, but, as usual, the road ahead is going to be long.

I consider myself an email power user (I get approx 2000 emails/day) and there is no way I would try and deal with that many emails on the iPhone or even an iPad.

Time:

Following last year’s Shot on iPhone 6 campaign, Apple is bringing back the concept for the iPhone 6s.

The new ad campaign features 53 images from 41 amateurs and professional photographers from around the world.

While the previous campaign included a variety of photographic subjects – from landscapes to extreme close-ups – this time, Apple has put the focus on portraits, most of them photographed in subtle, everyday moments.

As someone who teaches beginners how to take better photographs no matter what camera they have, I love this campaign and have used past iterations to show students what kind of amazing images you can create with “just” an iPhone.

Techinsider:

On Monday, the NHL will release NHL.TV, a new app that allows hockey fans to watch live, out-of-market hockey games, keep up with their favorite teams, and more.

NHL.TV was built by MLB Advanced Media (MLBAM), major league baseball’s tech division. It’s the same company that handles streaming video for HBO Now, the WWE, the MLB, and many others.

I checked out the app on Monday night. I’m not even a hockey fan, but what immediately piqued my interest was the new mosaic view, which allows you to watch as as many as six HD video feeds at a time. It only works on some games for now, but when it does work, it’s an awesome way to watch a hockey game.

I’ve seen some hockey fans complaining about this app (one of the issues is you can’t watch a replay of a game without seeing highlight descriptions first) but this is certainly the future for sports apps. And for sports information junkies, it’s going to get even better.

TidBITS:

Super Bowl 50 (yes, 50 and not L, because the NFL has switched from Roman to Arabic numerals) will take place 7 February 2016 at 6:30 PM EST. If you want to watch the showdown between the Carolina Panthers and the Denver Broncos, but don’t have traditional TV service, the good news is that CBS will be streaming the game for free to viewers in the United States.

Here’s how to stream the game on any of your Apple devices:

If for some reason you can’t be in front of a TV this coming Sunday, there are still ways for sports fans to see The Big Game.

Reuters:

The comments from Porsche Chief Executive Oliver Blume show that some car makers believe their drivers want to remain firmly in control at the wheel.

“One wants to drive a Porsche by oneself,” Blume said in an interview with regional newspaper Westfalen-Blatt published on Monday.

“An iPhone belongs in your pocket, not on the road,” Blume added, saying that Porsche did not need to team up with any big technology companies.

Even though some Porsches do come equipped with Apple’s CarPlay, it makes corporate sense to take this line. Besides, why would you buy a sports car only to let a computer have all the fun?

Outdoor Hub:

Wildlife experts advise that if you run across a moose on a trail in the winter, it may be prudent to turn around and leave. Just like you, moose would rather walk on trails than sink their legs into deep snow. Whatever else you do, don’t approach the moose or try to push it off the trail. Moose can be aggressive animals, especially when they are already tired. As you can see in the video, this moose decided to speed through a patch of snow rather than confront the skiers.

I’ve encountered a couple of moose in my life and they are gigantic, stupid and therefore terrifying animals. Never get into a confrontation with them. As this video shows, you will lose. I find it safer just to not go into the woods.

Thanks to ExpanDrive for sponsoring The Loop this week.

Native access to cloud storage without sync?

ExpanDrive is a virtual drive that connects to cloud storage services such as Dropbox, Google, Box, OneDrive, Amazon, SFTP and more. Access and manage files within Finder or edit them using your favorite apps like Photoshop or Sublime Text.

Save 20% today using the coupon LOOP20.