Marco della Cava, writing for USA Today:

One month after unveiling its new streaming music service, Apple has locked in 11 million trial members, company executives tell USA TODAY.

“We’re thrilled with the numbers so far,” says Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet software and services, adding that of that sum 2 million have opted for the more lucrative family plan at $14.99 a month for up to six people.

Note that these are unpaid subscribers, folks dipping their toes in the Apple Music water. But that said, a solid start. And 2M of the 11M, or 18%, are family plan members.

Reports in Digital Music News and other outlets that monitor streaming music have indicated Apple’s intent to dominate streaming music – with a goal of 100 million subscribers, or double the total of all current services combined – despite its late entry into the field. This fall, Apple will unveil Apple Music for Android users in beta, part of CEO Tim Cook’s pledge to be platform agnostic with the service.

100 million paying subscribers? Here’s some math (please correct me if I get this wrong):

(82% * $9.99) + (18% * $14.99) = $10.89

That’s the average price per user, given 2M of 11M sign up for the Family Plan.

$10.89 x $100M = $1.09 billion per month, which is $13.07 billion in annual revenue. Not too shabby for a startup business, if they can reach that goal.

Update: Fixed a typo and the math that went along with it.

Zack Whittaker, writing for ZDNet:

The attack, which was confirmed on the HTC One Max and Samsung’s Galaxy S5, allows a hacker to stealthily acquire a fingerprint image from an affected device because device makers don’t fully lock down the sensor.

Making matters worse, the sensor on some devices is only guarded by the “system” privilege instead of root, making it easier to target. (In other words: rooting or jailbreaking your phone can leave you at a greater risk.) Once the attack is in place, the fingerprint sensor can continue to quietly collect fingerprint data on anyone who uses the sensor.

“In this attack, victims’ fingerprint data directly fall into attacker’s hand. For the rest of the victim’s life, the attacker can keep using the fingerprint data to do other malicious things,” Zhang said. And that’s a big problem. Fingerprints might be commonplace in mobile payments and unlocking devices, but they have been used more in the past five years also for identity, immigration, and for criminal records.

Sigh. If this is true, let’s hope the manufacturers are paying attention.

It’s easy enough to view a list of sites that have cookies in Safari, but if you want to actually see the cookie and parameters used by a particular site, you’ll need to dive a bit deeper into the interface.

In a nutshell:

• Navigate to a web site.
• Select Show Web Inspector from the Develop menu (follow the headline link for instructions on turning on that menu if it doesn’t appear for you).
• Click the Storage tab in the web pane that appears.
• Click the Cookies item on the left side.

Worth taking a minute to give this a try. Kind of fascinating.

Matt Taylor, via Google Plus:

Why am I a Mac user? Because it should not take 6 hours to wipe and update a computer. My daughter asked me to completely wipe this Acer laptop, running windows 8.1, and set it back to factory default, install windows 10 and set it up for her. I have forgotten how horrible the user experience is on a windows machine. I am not inept with computers, or even windows, but I could have accomplished this task on my MacBook Pro in a fraction of the time with no headaches, no failures, and it would be completely bug free. But not with this machine, oh no. Windows won’t even accept its own updates. This. This is why I switched, and this is why I will never switch back. I don’t need to tinker. I just want my machine to do what I need it to, when I need it. /rant

Yup.

Very cool.

Astrophysicist Dr. Brian May is recognized during a July 17, 2015 New Horizons science briefing at NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C. May spent a long birthday weekend with the science team, attending two morning science plenaries, a meeting with the Student Dust Counter group, and working on stereo images of Pluto with the Geology, Geophysics and Imaging (GGI) team.

I’ve had the opportunity to meet and speak with Brian at some length during one of Queen’s European tours. He is not only smart and a fantastic guitarist, he’s also very humble.

The Washington Post:

At 8:15 a.m. on Aug. 6, 1945, the first bomb exploded over Hiroshima killing, by some estimates, 140,000 people, and destroying 90 percent of the city. But near its hypocenter only one building was left standing.

Seventy years later, the Genbaku Dome — now known as the Hiroshima Peace Memorial — is part of a very different city that’s home to 1.2 million residents and filled with skyscrapers, apartment buildings and streetcars.

Armed with archival photographs, Reuters photographer Issei Kato revisited some of the same locations destroyed 70 years ago in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

On such a sombre day, it’s good to not only look back and remember what happened but also to look forward and see how the city has endured and prospered. The before and after pictures are truly heartening.

There’s been a number of these types of articles written, but this one has a couple of new tips.

I’ve been around for each version of iTunes, but strangely, I don’t remember it changing so much.

[Via MacStories]

When he got to the hospital, Robson told staff that he had been tracking his heart rate on the watch, and had two weeks of back data. “Going in with the data certainly reduced my stay by a couple of days,” he told MedCity News. It also assured that he could have the operation nearly immediately.

Because the hospital could check his Apple Watch data, Robson did not have to wear a heart monitor for a week before the medical team at Scripps Mercy could confirm the diagnosis of sick sinus syndrome.

These are the types of things that Apple Watch can do. It is truly amazing how this device has changed people’s lives.

More than 100 IBM employees occupy Apple’s Cupertino, Calif., campus helping build iPhone and iPad apps for IBM customers such as Citigroup Inc., Sprint Corp. and Japan Post Holdings Co.

Things are looking different inside IBM, too. Once a company of blue suits, Wintel PCs and BlackBerrys, Big Blue is on track to become the world’s largest corporate user of MacBooks. On Wednesday, the company will apply lessons it has learned to introduce a new service intended to help other companies adopt Macs.

This is an important relationship for both companies. It’s really bizarre how things change so dramatically over time though.

CNET:

Apple’s latest mobile OS is now on 85 percent of all iOS devices, according to Apple’s App Store Distribution page. That figure refers specifically to all iPhones, iPads and iPod Touches that visited Apple’s App Store on Monday, August 3.

And what about iOS rival Android? The latest flavor, namely Android Lollipop, is on just 18 percent of all devices running Google’s mobile OS, according to the latest Android Developers Dashboard.

I feel less smug about these adoption numbers than I feel sorry for the mess adoption is for Android users.

Not just any leather, but the luxury full grain leather used to craft all of Pad & Quill’s handmade goods. So we turned to Victorio, a 4th generation Italian leather tannery artisan. His tannery uses legendary soft-tumbled method to transform full grain American steer hides into a luxury leather watch band that will hug your wrist with pliable comfort, while being as rugged and durable as your active life demands.

I just love the quality of Pad & Quill products. I own a couple of their bags and they are top notch.

WIRED:

Motorcycles are not made for surfing. They do not float. They are not waterproof. All of which explains the biggest problem Robbie Maddison had when he tried to use one as a surfboard.

“We sank the motorcycle over a hundred times,” he says.

None of that stopped the Aussie stunt rider from combining his adult profession with his childhood passion to create Pipe Dream, a short video in which Maddison rides the wicked waves of Teahupo’o on a modified KTM 300 motocross machine.

First time I saw stills from the video, I thought it was pretty good photoshop work. Then I started watching the video and thought, that looks like fun. Then I saw him surf the waves of Teahupo’o and thought he was a crazy person.

See that speck in the middle of the moon? That’s the International Space Station, in shadow against the brilliant background of the moon. The photo is cool, and was taken a few days ago.

Also cool is this video from 2007 showing the ISS making a similar transit. The video is only a few seconds long and the ISS is a tiny speck that speeds across the screen about halfway through.

Three months ago, Dan Price, chief of Gravity Payments, raised the annual salary floor for his employees to $70,000. He knocked his own salary down to $70K as well.

This follow-up article takes a look at how this is working out for Price, for his employees, and for the company. A risky move, with some obvious (at least in retrospect) consequences. [Via Stu Mark]

[WARNING: Contains an autoplay video. Normally, autoplay is enough to disqualify a post, but thought this was interesting enough to make an exception]

Jean-Louis Gassée, writing for Monday Note:

Losing trust is bad for the bottom line – no economy can function well without it. When you lose the consumer’s trust, you’re condemned to a chase for the next wave of suckers. Even sites that get us to pay for access to their content play questionable advertising and tracking games.

Publishers who rise to condemn new (and still unproven) ad-blocking features on iOS and OS X ought to ask themselves one question: Who needs whom the most?

Apple’s move answers the question. No need to think it’s building ad-blocking technology to monopolize the field to the benefit of its iAd platform whose revenue can’t “move the needle” for a company where revenue and profits mostly come from hardware (see the last 10-Q report page 25). Apple’s “ulterior” motive is making everyday use of its products more pleasant, resulting in more sales: the usual ecosystem play.

It’s all about the ecosystem. Make every product better, make every product contribute to the overall experience, make the ecosystem a better place to be.

Terrific read.

Pricy, but some exquisite craftwork. The pictures are here, the Made Worn website is here.

I’ve heard of this happening with other people when they lose credit cards. Apple Pay is updated automatically—brilliant.

Releasing classic albums on reel-to-reel, duplicated from the original master tapes. You would expect these tapes to sound good of course, and you should expect they would sound better than the LP and digital sources. But you will be shocked at just how much better they do sound.

This is just outstanding. They are having an event at the California Audio Show to meet Jacqui Naylor, and listen to a full-playback of a new Tape Project release from Jerry Garcia and David Grisman.

Such a great post by Jeffrey Zeldman, and one we can all relate to in one way or another.

For ten years, Macminicolo has been hosting thousands of Mac minis in a high end data center. The minis are used for all sorts of services. The Mac mini “has become Apple’s most popular server system.”

Readers of The Loop can signup for a twelve month trial for just $10/mo. Come see what a Mac mini can do. Signup here.

The Wall Street Journal:

We don’t love paying through the nose for the ink, and the arrangement means that at the first sign of printer trouble, many of us just dump the thing and buy a new one.

Epson’s new move is a sly one. Rather than compete on price, the printer maker is dropping the cartridge issue entirely.

When you buy an EcoTank printer — for instance, the ET-2550 — you fill up its four-chambered reservoir with ink from plastic containers included with the printer. There’s a satisfying feeling of dumping all of that ink into the tubs. You then let the printer prime itself and your ink worries are over.

Fast forward two very print-productive years. You and your family have churned out more than 35 black-and-white and 60 color pages every week. Finally, you need more ink. Epson will sell you a whole set of replacement canisters for $52. That same amount of Epson ink, in XL cartridges, would cost more than 10 times as much.

I’m a big fan of my Epson R2000 photo printer but I dread using it knowing how much I’m going to be spending on ink. I don’t know if higher upfront costs will be a game changer but it’s good to see Epson (and undoubtedly other manufacturers) stepping up to change the economics of printing.

South Coast Office Supply offers the best printers for your business needs, check out office printer leasing offers they offer at their website.

Cool little utility from the folks at Many Tricks.

“The writing has long been on the wall for any premium Android maker: as soon as low end hardware became ‘good enough,’ there would be no reason to buy a premium brand,” said Ben Thompson, an analyst at Stratechery.com in Taipei.

That’s a great quote from Ben, and so true.

“We have not discussed nor do we have any plans to launch an MVNO,” said an Apple spokeswoman in a statement on Tuesday.

Being a mobile carrier seems like a shit show to me.

TidBITS:

Wired has reported on new research being presented at this week’s Black Hat security conference on a proof-of-concept Mac worm that could spread through the Mac’s firmware, rather than software. While Wired’s piece makes this sound like a super worm capable of leaping through air gaps and infecting the world’s Macs, the reality is more mundane. The research itself is excellent and fascinating work from Trammell Hudson and Xeno Kovah, and as always we hope Apple patches all the flaws quickly, but this isn’t something most Apple users need to lose any sleep over.

Here are the answers to your most pertinent questions about this vulnerability.

As always, Rich Mogull is the guy I trust the most for any Mac security issues. Rich’s level headed expertise is why I know the vast majority of the Tech Media’s reporting on these issues is always blown completely out of proportion to the threat. I’d encourage all of you to follow Rich on Twitter so that the next time this happens (and, because it’s the Tech Media, it will happen again), you’ll be able to confidently ignore the Chicken Little’s.

Vanity Fair:

Taylor Swift’s recent missive to Apple—the one that caused the tech behemoth to reverse course, once again demonstrating her world-beating pop power—came after some late-night soul searching, the singer tells Vanity Fair writer Josh Duboff, in the magazine’s September cover story.

“I wrote the letter at around four A.M.,” Swift says. “The contracts had just gone out to my friends, and one of them sent me a screenshot of one of them. I read the term ‘zero percent compensation to rights holders.’ Sometimes I’ll wake up in the middle of the night and I’ll write a song and I can’t sleep until I finish it, and it was like that with the letter.”

As whiny as I find her music, this story shows a very self-aware young woman who knows what she wants.