I like the Sunset Metallic and 3-Color Sunburst, but I’d take any of them.

A massive 10-page review from Rene. Great job.

The ruling came a week after what would have been the May 4 start of a criminal trial in Manhattan federal court of Ceglia, a 41-year-old wood pellet salesman from Wellsville, New York.

Instead, Ceglia removed his electronic ankle bracelet in early March and disappeared, along with his wife, two children and a dog. His whereabouts remain unknown.

Paul Ceglia forged documents and claimed Mark Zuckerberg owed him half of Facebook. Ceglia is now a fugitive and Facebook is suing the lawyers. I think it’s great.

The Washington Post compiled some of the best quotes from the new book written about Elon Musk.

Serenity Caldwell, writing for iMore, talks about taking her Apple Watch into an extremely active lifestyle. And it doesn’t get much more active (and fraught with more Apple Watch peril) than roller derby.

Great, detailed read.

From Money’s recap of the Apple Pay CurrentC battle:

Now, seven months after Apple Pay debuted, the retailers are still struggling to hold the line. MCX member BestBuy recently announced it would start accepting Apple Pay, and Dekkers Davidson, the group’s chief executive, resigned one day later “to pursue other opportunities.” But the internal strife distracts from MCX’s biggest failure: The collective has thus far proved unable to get its app into the marketplace. CurrentC remains months away from reaching most consumers. A limited test in a “mid-sized market” is planned for sometime this summer, with a wider launch scheduled for later in the year.

A remarkable lack of execution.

Experts say retailers face two major obstacles in their efforts to create their own alternative payments solution. First, it may simply be too difficult to corral enough competing merchants into a coherent, cooperative group—especially when one of those merchants, Walmart, poses an existential threat to the others.

And my favorite line from the whole piece:

Apple Pay has the edge in the one feature that matters most: it actually exists.

Verizon snaps up that elusive dial-up expertise. Snarkiness aside, this is about automated advertising technology:

The acquisition would give Verizon, which has set its sights on entering the crowded online video marketplace, access to advanced technology AOL has developed for selling ads and delivering high-quality Web video.

And:

The U.S. wireless business has matured in recent years, leaving carriers like Verizon, AT&T Inc. and Sprint Corp. increasingly fighting to steal market share from one another. Offering digital video over wireless connections represents a growth avenue in coming years for Verizon, which last year brought in $127 billion in revenue and profit of $12 billion.

Verizon has said it plans to launch a video service focused on mobile devices this summer. The company has offered few details, but last month Chief Financial Officer Fran Shammo said the service will offer a mix of paid, free and ad-supported content and won’t try to replicate traditional TV.

And:

Under the leadership of Tim Armstrong, a former Google Inc. executive who took over as chief executive of AOL in 2009, the company has invested heavily in ad technology—including an automated, or “programmatic” platform that allows marketers to bid for inventory electronically. In 2013 AOL purchased Adap.tv, an “exchange” that connects buyers and sellers of online video advertising.

AOL also built a stable of content including online news sites such as Huffington Post, TechCrunch and Engadget. And it has even produced original Web series. It recently launched “Connected,” a documentary-style series in which the subjects film themselves.

AOL has made some shrewd investments, made themselves relevant again.

DC Rainmaker:

This past week I’ve been slowly plotting a series of tests to batter the Apple Watch and see exactly how well it’d hold up to a variety of aquatic adventures. No doubt I’ve been showering with it twice-daily since it arrived…but that’s kinda lame in the grand scheme of waterproof tests. So while a few people have casually doggy-paddled around their backyard pool with the watch, I wanted to kick it up a notch…or, rather, a lot of notches.

Interesting that Apple seems to have seriously under promised on the waterproofing of the Apple Watch.

A new book on Elon by Ashlee Vance. I’m thinking this is going to be a great read.

Hard to believe all of those things are related, but they are.

Wow! One of my all-time favorite apps will now be available on all of my devices.

Apple today announced an expansion of its renewable energy and environmental protection initiatives in China, including a new multi-year project with World Wildlife Fund to significantly increase responsibly managed forests across China. The new forestland program aims to protect as much as 1 million acres of responsibly managed working forests which provide fiber for pulp, paper and wood products.

Apple is doing so much more than just releasing products.

With regard to Apple’s Cook, he said: “He’s interested in Apple’s intervention in the car, that’s his role.” Marchionne was not more specific about Apple.

Apple is one of the few companies with the money and resources to come up with something interesting in the automobile space.

Still one of the most famous goals in hockey.

AV Club:

In 1980, a trio of gentlemen from Wisconsin – Jim Abrahams and brothers David and Jerry Zucker – took a cast of predominantly non-comedic actors, put a parodic spin on the disaster-film genre, and created a film which not only made moviegoers howl with laughter but also earned critical acclaim.

While it may not be the greatest movie ever made, it probably ranks in the top five of the silliest movies ever made. I loved it as a kid and love it even more as adult. Every time you watch it, you see and hear more gags and funny bits. To this day, if I ever hear someone say, “Surely, you can’t be…” I immediately flashback to the line in the movie.

Petapixel:

Today Flickr launched a number of new improvements to their service. In my mind, the most significant change is that Flickr is introducing the ability for you to bulk download your photos from their site.

Now you can fill up that free 1 terabyte (or unlimited terabytes if you’ve got a grandfathered Pro account) with confidence knowing that if you ever want/need those photos back from Flickr you’ll be able to get them back much more easily.

One of my knocks on Flickr (a site I’ve used for years) is now moot with this new feature. Really good news for those of us who want additional backups of our photos.

Mobile Forward:

The Apple Watch is out, and we’re seeing the first analyst estimates of some of its key costs. The variation in these early estimate is huge. It’s so big that, even if some estimates aren’t perfect, others are, to use a Tim Cook phrase, “in another universe”.

From my experience working with product and cost experts at a well-known mobile device company, I can tell you: Apple Watch does not cost $84 in hardware and manufacturing. It costs meaningfully more. Probably more than 2X that. And I’ll tell you why. Maybe I’ll even give you my estimate.

Every time one of these “this is what Product X actually costs to make!” articles comes out, I get pissed at the tech media for being so stupid as to believe and parrot the numbers without having any grounds to do so. This article, spelling/grammar issues aside, does a good job of explaining why these estimates aren’t worth the time it takes to type them out.

My thanks to Designer News for sponsoring The Loop this week. A new and exciting website has recently been launched for web designers and developers.

You likely spend hours every morning browsing through hundreds of posts on your RSS feeds, hoping to stumble across relevant stories. Designer News was built to provide web designers and developers with a single location to discover the latest and most significant stories on the Web.

They search through hundreds of posts on blogs, social media, and news channels, to deliver the most essential stories of the day. The content covers quality news, fresh tools and apps, case studies, code demos, inspiration posts, videos and more.

With frequent updates throughout the day, you’ll always find something interesting and fun to read.

Click here to visit the Designer News website and subscribe to the newsletter for the latest stories of the day.

Great article from Tim Bajarin on the mistakes, and lack of understanding, Google had with glass.

Uber has submitted a bid for Here, the main competitor to Google Maps, for as much as $3 billion, according to three people with knowledge of the offer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Here is owned by Nokia, the Finnish telecom giant, which announced last month that it was considering selling the business.

Makes sense for Uber, but there’s stiff competition to purchase the mapping service.

Jim and Dan talk about Beats Music’s relaunch might hurt Spotify more than others, the new Apple TV remote’s probable touch pad redesign, Microsoft’s emoji additions, the Reserve Strap, Apple’s launch of the ‘Made for Apple Watch’ third-party band program, and more.

Learn about Applebot, the web crawler for Apple.

Interesting.

Among many other things, David Morgenstern was a long time Mac journalist. He was also a friend. Rest in Peace, David.

Tony made the iPod and worked on several versions of the iPhone before leaving Apple. This is when he founded Nest. I have a ton of respect for Tony and his thoughts on products. Note that this interview was done before the Apple Watch came out.

The New York Times:

Once an indulgence reserved for special occasions, manicures have become a grooming staple for women across the economic spectrum. There are now more than 17,000 nail salons in the United States, according to census data. The number of salons in New York City alone has more than tripled over a decade and a half to nearly 2,000 in 2012. Professional nail technicians will use various BIAB infill techniques to ensure that manicures will last longer.But largely overlooked is the rampant exploitation of those who toil in the industry. The New York Times interviewed more than 150 nail salon workers and owners, in four languages, and found that a vast majority of workers are paid below minimum wage; sometimes they are not even paid. Workers endure all manner of humiliation, including having their tips docked as punishment for minor transgressions, constant video monitoring by owners, even physical abuse. Employers are rarely punished for labor and other violations.

Awful story of the treatment of these women. Pass this along to anyone you know who is “going to get my nails done”.

This is nothing new, but given my earlier post about the dearth of Mac App Store sales, I thought this might be interesting.

The site AppReviewTimes offers a running average of app review times (in days) for both the iOS and Mac App Store.

For example, today, the average review time for an iOS app is 9 days and for a Mac app is 6 days. More interestingly, look at the number of reviews that go into each calculation. The iOS number was based on 756 reviews and the Mac number was based on only 54 reviews.

Here’s where these numbers come from:

This is not official Apple data. It is based only on anecdotal data gathered from people posting their latest review times on Twitter and App.net using the #macreviewtime or #iosreviewtime hash tags. For people that would prefer to remain anonymous when submitting their review we also allow direct submissions of review times.

And:

The averages on this site are based only on the data gathered from the community which are a very small subset of the total number of apps which go through review each day. However in our experience it does give a reasonable indication of how review times are changing over time.

My take: Even though this is anecdotal data, it is a non-trivial sample size and does give some sense of the relative activity in the iOS and Mac App Stores.

This is not news, more a sign of the times.