When worlds collide.

This is a truly epic post from Pitchfork. It digs into the history of music valuations and explores the conflicts that emerge when trying to pin a value on something created as art. A fantastic read.

Hard to pick a favorite bit, but this one is solid:

In 2012, Jana Hunter of Baltimore dream-pop explorers Lower Dens wrote on her Tumblr: “Music shouldn’t be free. It shouldn’t even be cheap.” When I spoke with her earlier this year, she was a bit sheepish about what she called the “capitalist” presentation of those remarks. She told me, “What I meant to say is we are living in a society where everything is valued, and, within that context, why is music a thing that we have decided we shouldn’t be paying for?” Still, she continued to have pointed views about the music economy.

“What makes it so frustrating for musicians is that if you really try to center your life around making something creatively, then this becomes a huge distraction and it comes into direct conflict with what you’re trying to do,” she said, referring to the complexity of the business side in the time of streaming. “It derails you creatively.”

Also worth scanning for: Charts showing the average price of a single from 1974-2014, as well as the average price of an album over that same period, all adjusted to 2015 dollars (so you can compare apples to apples). Think those prices have risen over the years? Fallen? Take a guess before you peek.

Andy Ihnatko:

Before I begin what’s going to be a multi-part, in-depth Apple Watch review, I thought it’d be valuable to write down all of the fundamental observations that I believe to be true of all wearables, as of August 2015.

In his usual long-winded but wonderfully entertaining style, Andy Ihnatko makes some great points of what smartwatches need in order for them to be successful.

Everyone posts “A week with [insert device here],” but Lee Peterson spent a week without the Apple Watch and missed it. I’ve become dependent on my watch now and wouldn’t want to go a week or a day without it.

Apple:

Apple has determined that, in a small percentage of iPhone 6 Plus devices, the iSight camera has a component that may fail causing your photos to look blurry. The affected units fall into a limited serial number range and were sold primarily between September 2014 and January 2015.

If your iPhone 6 Plus is producing blurry photos and falls into the eligible serial number range, Apple will replace your device’s iSight camera, free of charge.

If you have an iPhone 6 Plus, it doesn’t hurt to enter you serial number to check to make sure your iPhone isn’t on the list of affected phones. If it isn’t and you’re still taking blurry photos, you might want to take a photography class.

Apple Inc’s China business experienced “strong growth” in July and August, Chief Executive Tim Cook told CNBC on Monday, seeking to assuage investor concerns over the company’s prospects in a market considered critical for its growth.

IPhone activations in China had accelerated over the past few weeks and the App Store in China had its best performance of the year over the past two weeks, Cook told CNBC in an emailed response to questions about Apple’s business in China.

Considering everything that’s been happening in the stock market, it was important that Cook did this. Apple has consistently bucked the trend in selling its products and this appears to be no different.

BBC:

Some words refer to things Americans don’t seem to have: toque for a kind of fitted knitted hat; poutine, Nanaimo bars, and butter tarts for three of Canada’s great culinary gifts to the world if the world would but accept them; Caesar for a bloody Mary made with clamato juice (tomato plus clam).

These Canadianisms stand as evidence of the difference between Canadian and American culture. It is very important for Canadians to maintain that difference, even if people from Vancouver sound more like people from San Francisco than people from San Francisco sound like people from San Antonio.

Until I moved to the US, I had no idea that Butter Tarts were Canadian. If you get a chance, try them. They are delicious.

The Next Web:

The next version of iOS comes with a major new feature called ‘content blockers’ which will allow users to install apps that block trackers, advertisements and other unwanted content for the first time.

Much has been written about the impending threat of ad blocking on iOS — it’s the first time blocking mobile advertisements en masse will be possible and publishers may face an existential threat to their revenue streams.

I spent the weekend with my new found family in Ontario and surfing my usual web sites on iOS was a torturous process. Most of the time, I was on 3G or – gasp! – Edge and some popular web pages would take several minutes to load enough to be readable. It’s going to be interesting how this whole ad blocking things shakes out but, if the examples included in the story are any indication, it’s going to be great for users in some ways.

Here’s a palette cleanser from that last post. From the MIT Technology Review:

The process requires molten lithium carbonate, with another compound, lithium oxide, dissolved in it. The lithium oxide combines with carbon dioxide in the air, forming more lithium carbonate. When voltage is applied across two electrodes immersed in the molten carbonate, the resulting reaction produces oxygen, carbon—which deposits on one of the electrodes—and lithium oxide, which can be used to capture more carbon dioxide and start the process again.

If this proves cost-effective, this could be the start of an effective campaign to pull carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

This is a bit of a wild ride. A colleague of ours died about a week ago, and this hit me right in the middle of processing all that.

Don’t read this if you are not in a solid place. But it did help me connect some dots.

From Kottke.org:

These folks created a real-life first person shooter game and invited strangers on Chatroulette to control the action.

This is not quite the way it sounds. It made me laugh, and puzzle over how they pulled this together. Well done.

Nine noteworthy apps for Apple Watch.

Ben Evans, writing for his blog:

No more worrying about parking. If you don’t need to worry about parking yet can be driven there directly and affordably, how much travel shifts from public transport to cars? How many people visit a busy central area they might previously have avoided for that reason (the West End of London, for example)? But then, where does that car go afterwards – does it drop you off for dinner and drive off to a cheap carpark, or does it spend the next few hours driving other people around for a fee? The more autonomous cars there are, the more appealing on-demand becomes. Quite where the second-order effects end up is hard to predict – for example, where does it leave public transport if routes start emptying out, and what does that mean for people on very low incomes? What does it do to cycling?

This is just a tiny point in a post chock full of them. There is just so much richness in this writing.

There’s the sea change coming to the way cars are built, as they move from complex transmission and combustion engines to far simpler electric motors, with the commoditization of parts that makes cars simpler to build and enhances competition.

Take the time to read the whole thing. It makes me excited about the future of cars and helps me understand why Apple would and could get into this market.

Big hat tip to Marco Arment for this tweet:

If you’re gonna do bullshit App Store update notes, you gotta go all out.

With a link to a shot of the latest Tumblr app update notes. So great!

Thanks to MiStand+ for sponsoring The Loop this week. MiStand+ your tablet, any angle. Innovative, multi-axis adjustable stand for use with any tablet.

Jonny Evans takes a tour through iOS 9’s proactive intelligence. The proactive concept is not being marketed by Apple as an individual feature, rather as an overall approach to seeding contextual awareness throughout the iOS 9 experience.

To get a sense of this, go to the iOS 9 preview page or the iOS 9 press release and search for the term proactive. Not a product, more of an approach.

One point that stands above others, from the end of Jonny’s writeup:

So, with all this information inside of iOS 9, what about privacy? Do you really want Apple knowing where you go, who you know, where you work and what you do?

Apple wants you to keep your private lives private.

This is why (unlike competitors who want to make money from insights into your private lives) it has engineered Proactive to process its data directly on your device, rather than in the cloud. This means your life does not become some Alphabetized telephone book for surveillance, sale or sociopathic snooping.

Just so.

Sarah Guarino, writing for 9to5mac:

Apple Watch comes with Apple Maps, which allows you to find your current location, pan and zoom around on the area, search the map, get information about a location, call a location, get directions, and more. One of the benefits of having Maps on the watch is that it allows you to get directions without needing to pull out your iPhone, especially if you happen to be lost or in a sketchy neighborhood. In this how-to article, we will discuss how to use Apple Maps on the Apple Watch.

If you’ve still not spent quality time with the Apple Watch Maps app, this is well worth the read.

Despicable.

Passengers moving through JFK Airport’s Terminal 4 are now presented with estimated processing times on 13 new screens. The large and prominent screens are placed at TSA Security and Customs and Border Protection checkpoints, as well as the indoor taxi queue.

“It continuously updates,” says Daryl Jameson, vice president at the company JFKIAT, which runs Terminal 4. People like to know how long they are going to wait in queues. Nobody likes to wait in lines and signage helps to manage expectations.”

The wait times are driven by beacons that anonymously monitor passenger’s mobile devices as they move through the airport.

Smart.

From the Samsung promo site:

For just one dollar, you can try one of our latest Samsung phones for 30 days with no obligation. Your test drive kit will come with the phone of your choice, an activated sim card, and a step-by-step guide to help you start your test drive. After 30 days, if you buy a qualifying Samsung device, there’s even more love in store for you.

Clever? Desperate? Maybe both.

Yesterday, I mentioned Serenity Caldwell’s Apple Music, the Ultimate Guide. Reminded me of another Apple Music related eBook, Kirk McElhearn’s Take Control of iTunes 12: The FAQ.

Turns out Take Control Books is having a back to school sale, 50% off all their books through August 24th. Just saying. Click here.

Serenity Caldwell and the iMore team have pulled together a pretty massive eBook, a complete guide to Apple Music. I’ve been reading it on my iPhone and it’s just what you’d expect. Serenity knows her stuff, there’s a lot of detail on setup and troubleshooting, it looks great, and it’s only $4.99.

On the iMore promo page, the eBook is said to be 150 pages. But on my iPhone, it weighs in at 450 pages. Obviously, page count depends on your device, your mileage truly may vary.

It’s a list, so there will be much arguing, teeth gnashing, and hand wringing.

But don’t get too wrapped up in all that. All the usual suspects are there. Who cares who’s on top?

It’s the bottom and middle of the list that I really found interesting. There’s Otis Blackwell, who wrote a string of hits for Elvis, including the great Don’t Be Cruel. There’s Felice and Boudreaux Bryant, who wrote Love Hurts. There’s Barry Mann and Cynthia Weill, Sam Cooke, Nicholas Ashford and Valerie Simpson, Curtis Mayfield.

This is about songwriting, not performing. Dig through the list. You may discover some new musical gems.

Jennifer Booton, writing for MarketWatch:

Kansas City Royals manager Ned Yost may have been ejected from his team’s game against the Cincinnati Reds on Tuesday, but it wasn’t because he was wearing his Apple Watch.

After concerns were raised during the game about whether Yost wearing an Apple Watch in the dugout gave his team an unfair advantage over its less-connected adversaries, Major League Baseball told MarketWatch it is not banning smartwatches during games.

The MLB staffers managing on-field operations did call Yost to make sure he wasn’t using the data on his watch, which was, ironically, given to Yost by the MLB a month ago as a gift for his participation in the All-Star Game, an MLB spokesman said. But it was just a routine call.

And:

The MLB does have official rules in place that ban other Internet-connected mobile devices from the dugout, bullpen and field during ballgames. Uniformed personnel, clubhouse staff and equipment staff are prohibited from using cellphones, including any type of portable or mobile phone, laptop, texting device or “similar portable equipment” once batting practice has begun. The use of these devices is also prohibited in the clubhouse within 30 minutes of the start of the game.

I wonder what will happen when watchOS 2 is officially released and apps can run on the watch without a connected phone. I can’t imagine Major League Baseball will ban smart phones in the dugout and not extend that ban to the Apple Watch. Interesting.

Gartner’s hype cycle tracks a technology through five stages:

• Innovation Trigger
• Peak of Inflated Expectations
• Trough of Disillusionment
• Slope of Enlightenment
• Plateau of Productivity

Take a look at the linked chart to see various technologies and where they fit on this curve. As an example, Augmented Reality is deep into the Slope of Disillusionment.

Interesting read, definitely clicks for me.

Kirk McElhearn, writing for Macworld:

Sometimes the little things matter.

I’ve bought a number of Apple products in recent months: an Apple Watch, an iPod touch, an iPod shuffle, and a MacBook. Each time I’ve unboxed one of these devices, I have been reminded how unobtrusive Apple’s packing is. It’s designed to protect your new devices, but not make it hard to start using them. And the attention to detail in Apple’s product packaging bears witness to Steve Jobs’ belief that products should be beautiful inside and out.

Amen.

This is a pretty original idea.

Sharks Laguana, writing for Medium:

Click fraud is rarely discussed in the context of streaming music, but it’s fairly simple for a fraudster to generate more in royalties than they pay in subscription fees. All a fraudster has to do is set up a fake artist account with fake music, and then they can use bots to generate clicks for their pretend artist. If each stream is worth $0.007 a click, the fraudster only needs 1,429 streams to make their $10 subscription fee back, at which point additional clicks are pure profit.

And:

Click fraud is not the only way to cheat the system. One band made an album of completely silent tracks and told their “fans” to play the blank album on repeat while they slept. If a subscriber did as instructed the band earned $195 in royalties from that single subscriber in just one month. But if each subscriber only pays $10 in subscription fees, then where did the other $185 come from?

It came from people like you.

Fascinating read. Really dig into that last part, understand who pays for this fraud. It is not Apple Music, not Spotify. It comes out of the pool of money paid in by subscribers and out of artists’ pockets.