Today, I’m launching my own iOS 9 content blocker, called Peace, to bring peace, quiet, privacy, and — as a nice side benefit — ludicrous speed to iOS web browsing.

I always like the software Marco makes.

Gruber responding to a Nilay Patel tweet:

Perhaps I am being smug. But I see the fact that Daring Fireball’s revenue streams should remain unaffected by Safari content-blocking as affirmation that my choices over the last decade have been correct: that I should put my readers’ interests first, and only publish the sort of ads and sponsorships that I myself would want to be served, even if that means leaving (significant) amounts of money on the table along the way.

Fucking right.

Rene Ritchie really outdid himself here. This is a long, almost encyclopedic read, but well written and full of useful detail. Lots of screenshots, too.

Find yourself a couch to curl up on, this is worth the read.

Chance Miller, writing for 9to5mac:

> AT&T today has revealed a slight change to how it is handling throttling users grandfathered into unlimited data plans. Up until today, AT&T has throttled unlimited data users when they hit 5GB of usage and are in a congested area. As a reader has pointed out to us this evening, however, the carrier has updated its website with a new policy for throttling those on an unlimited data plans…

From the AT&T web site:

> We recently revised our practices such that Unlimited Data Plan smartphone customers can now use 22GB of high-speed data during a billing period before becoming subject to network management practices that might result in reduced data speeds and increased latency. > > As always, Unlimited Data Plan smartphone customers will still have the comfort of knowing that, no matter how much data they use in a billing cycle, they will continue to pay a single monthly flat rate. That is the essential promise of the Unlimited Data Plan, and we are pleased to continue honoring that promise. Further, speed reductions will occur only when the customer is using his or her device at times and in areas where there is network congestion and only for the remainder of the current billing cycle after the customer has exceeded the 22GB data usage threshold. > > We will notify customers during each billing cycle when their data usage reaches 16.5GB (75% of 22GB) so they can adjust their usage to avoid network management practices that may result in slower data speeds.

If you’ve got one of those vintage AT&T unlimited plans, good to know what the rules are.

If you already have a podcast or are considering creating one, you’ll need a good mic (or two or three). Veteran podcaster Marco Arment put a bunch of mics through their paces, with sound samples and recommendations. Absolutely worth digging through (bookmark and pass along). You’ll learn a lot and, I suspect, this will keep you from wasting money on the wrong mic.

Note that the review is still active, meaning Marco is still finding new Mics to test. Excellent.

[Via Daring Fireball]

The first of what will be a number of iOS 9 reviews that come out today. There’s a lot to process, but it’s all pretty positive. I’ve been living with iOS 9 since the first beta and I have to say, this has been a very solid experience.

The bottom line from the review:

iOS 9 delivers on the attributes Apple is already well known for: innovation, solid design, stability and performance. Given all of the welcome additions, what is most remarkable is how fluid and responsive the OS remains. The fact that it works on devices that are now several years old is a boon, and for those with newer hardware, it’s a clear winner.

Bookmark and pass along.

Stephen Colbert was in rare form last night. He clearly is an Apple fanboy, and that made his Tim Cook interview all the more fun to watch.

From his opening monologue:

I’ll also be talking with the cello Apple time cook…I’m sorry, that should be the CEO of Apple, Tim Cook. It’s the damned autocorrect again. I’m sure it’s going to be a great interview, though he’ll probably just release a cooler, updated version of the interview three months from now.

Cue rimshot.

Here’s a link to the official CBS video of the show. If you want to jump straight to the video, it’s about 27 minutes in. There are ads, so you’ll need to bear with a few. The whole thing was very entertaining. Tim did himself proud.

If you watch nothing else, watch the video embedded below, with Tim talking about what drove him to come out publicly as gay and help people in hardship.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos on Tuesday unveiled plans to build a rocket manufacturing plant and launch site in Florida, a business that will compete against fellow tech billionaire Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

Bezos taking on Elon Musk.

John Paczkowski had 20 minutes with Apple CEO, Tim Cook, to discuss a number of things while he’s in New York.

Coded CSS icons have some significant advantages over icon fonts or static images. CSS icons are a part of the DOM and unless you’re using a CSS icon library like Icono, they don’t require another HTTP request. Just like font icons, CSS icons can be colored by CSS and You can also animate the icons in an easy, smooth way without much effort.

Google Fiber is slowly expanding, moving from city to city, crushing the download speeds available from the traditional ISPs like Comcast and Verizon.

Here’s one example, this one sent over from Google Fiber subscriber Jesse Waldack:

That’s almost 1,000 Mb/s, which is more than twenty times the speed of my current FiOS connection. And all at a price of about $70 per month.

This kind of performance should be the rule, not the exception.

A visit to the Infinite Loop company Apple Store has long been a pilgrimage for me. Unlike what has emerged as a standard Apple Store, the company store was more of a hand-curated boutique, full of a blend of clothing and chachkas, but almost absent of computers and iOS devices.

I’m looking forward to my next visit, though I’m hoping the company store still carries something unique, something that makes it different, special.

Kirk McElhearn, writing for his blog:

When Apple updated the Music app in iOS 8.4, the company added Apple Music. This streaming service is tightly integrated into iOS (and iTunes, on the desktop). In fact, it’s so well integrated that you can’t turn it off.

There’s a setting in Settings > Music that lets you toggle Apple Music’s visibility. But there’s nothing that turns Apple Music off entirely. You can see this by asking Siri to play some music. As long as you have an Apple Music subscription – trial or paid – and you’re signed into your account, Siri will play music from Apple Music, sometimes even when you already have music by the same artist on your iOS device.

I wonder if that’s why the Settings switch is labeled Show Apple Music instead of Enable Apple Music or some such. I also wonder if that behavior will continue with iOS 9.

Jeremy Horwitz, writing for 9to5mac:

Transferring files from your old iPhone to a new iPhone 6s or iPhone 6s Plus isn’t difficult, but after a reader emailed about the many, many hours he expected to wait for the old-to-new iPhone transfer process to complete, I realized that his experience has become more common — even though it’s not necessary. Years ago, iTunes was the only (and fairly straightforward) way to transfer one iPhone’s contents to another. But now, between iCloud, larger device capacity sizes, and iTunes encryption options, there are certainly ways to turn a simple process into a day-long ordeal.

This quick How-To guide is designed to save you a wasted day by helping you select the best options in iTunes and get most of the work done ahead of time. I’ve used this process more times than I can count, and beyond working perfectly each time, it requires far fewer hours than relying on iCloud…

As far as I can tell, this advice extends to all new iOS devices. Tuck this one away til your new device gets here.

Barring unseen developments, tomorrow should see the official release of iOS 9. Macworld put together this short take on getting ready for the upgrade.

The article starts with the expected advice to back up your devices before you start on the upgrade. Sage, if not obvious, advice.

But the thing I found most interesting was this take on making sure you have a way back if things go south:

Here’s the deal: Apple “signs” versions of iOS. This tells the device that the version you wish to use is OK to use with that device. While that version is signed, you can install it on your iOS device—even if it’s a version of the operating system that’s earlier than the one you just installed.

However—and this is very important—Apple traditionally stops signing old versions of iOS just a day or two after releasing major updates (such as iOS 9). If you were to update to iOS 9 say, a week after it ships, you might find that you can’t go back to iOS 8.

Read the post to find out how to locate the old updaters on your hard drive and, failing that, find them online.

Low is live video texting you can do from anywhere without being overheard. More fun than plain texting. Less awkward than video chat.

We have some sponsorships available on The Loop, including a last minute cancellation for this week that I’ll sell at a great deal. If you want to get your product or service in front of the wonderful readers of The Loop, get in touch with me.

Jim and Merlin talk about procrastination, software privacy, and swap live-performance horror-stories.

Subscribe to this podcast

Brought to you by:

Casper — An obsessively engineered mattress at a shockingly fair price. Use code ‘entersandman’ to save $50.

Hover — The best way to buy and manage domain names. Use code ‘greenbottle’ to save 10% on your first order

I understand that Macminicolo is looking for your business, but this article brings up some good alternatives if you want to get away from Google and its tracking.

Just a reminder to set your DVR.

Vlad Savov, writing for The Verge:

When Apple redesigned the MacBook Air in 2010, it created one of the best machines to ever carry its Mac label. That new laptop was a revelation: extremely thin and light, like the original Air, yet also powerful enough for most tasks and equipped with a long-lasting battery.

When it was released, the MacBook Air was absolutely groundbreaking.

For years, the MacBook Air has been a standard-bearer, the role model for every Windows ultrabook, but 2015 has not been so kind to its leadership position. Apple introduced the new 12-inch MacBook and updated the 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro, both directly competing with the Air, and for those not umbilically attached to OS X, Dell’s XPS 13 offered a compelling Windows alternative. And this week there’s the looming threat of the iPad Pro on the horizon.

When the new 12-inch MacBook was announced, I saw that as the death knell for the MacBook Air. But I did not see the iPad Pro as a MacBook Air threat until I read this.

Apple is not a company that can be accused of doing things thoughtlessly, and the decision to leave the Air’s display at the lower quality and resolution must be taken as a deliberate one. In other words, Apple is comfortable with keeping the Air as a technological straggler in its lineup. That leaves us with a choice of two most likely scenarios: either the Air is destined for a future overhaul and its first redesign in five years or it has no future at all. There’s not enough room in Apple’s lineup for a MacBook, a MacBook Air, and a MacBook Pro — the MacBook is Apple’s ultraportable machine of the future and the MacBook Pro is the do-it-all laptop of today. The MacBook Air’s position seems tenuous already, and if the alleged iPad Pro does indeed materialize, then we may as well bid adieu to the Air entirely.

Hard to argue with this logic.

David Pierce, writing for Wired:

That’s when I noticed the difference between the Pencil and just a stylus: It felt great. Perfect. Better than any stylus I’ve ever used by a wide margin. Not because the thing itself is so terrific—I like holding FiftyThree’s Pencil better, and there are lots of good styli out there—but because it’s the first time I’ve ever written on a screen and actually felt like I was writing on the screen. There was almost zero latency, meaning the ink appeared to flow out of the Pencil and not trail half an inch behind. With the tiniest added pressure, the line became the tiniest bit thicker. I tapped on the No. 2 pencil mode, and it wrote and shaded just like all the pencils I used to sharpen with that wall-mounted thing you had to crank.

It’s all about the latency. Make the latency disappear and then developers can really go to town.

Om Malik was at the Apple Event and had the chance to snap a few photos. Take a look.

Apple, in a statement to CNBC:

“Customer response to iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus has been extremely positive and preorders this weekend were very strong around the world,” the company said in a statement. “We are on pace to beat last year’s 10 million unit first-weekend record when the new iPhones go on sale September 25.”

Amazing.

Benjamin Mayo, writing for 9to5mac, on why this upgrade from 1 GB to 2 GB on the iPhone 6s and Plus matters:

RAM upgrades for the iPhones has been somewhat overdue, with many complaining apps have to relaunch too frequently on current hardware, especially on the iPhone 6 Plus. RAM affects how much app data the device can keep in memory at once. This is often seen through the number of tabs Safari can open before having to reload a website. More RAM (obviously) provides a better experience across the system. The iPhone has been stuck on 1 GB RAM since the iPhone 5 in 2012.

Read on if you are interested in how this was discovered.

Note that the onboard RAM (actually onboard the 64-bit A9 chip) is what is used by iOS to run your apps, move your data around.

This RAM is not the same as the long-term storage that holds your photos/music/etc. A 16 GB iPhone 6s has the same amount of onboard RAM (now 2 GB) as a 128 GB iPhone 6s.