Macworld:

The price of buying an iMac just went down. But is a 15 percent lower price worth a 50 percent lower performance rating?

The new $1099 iMac was slower across the board, and 54 percent slower overall, than the $1299 21.5-inch system.

This is definitely the iMac for the (very) casual user but I don’t know about “value for the money”. The specs make it seem awfully anemic.

John Gruber has a nice post talking about Bloomberg’s recent “Big iPhone” story, but the part that really got me was this:

Most people keep presenting this as a “bigger is better” situation, and that Apple has thus been caught flat-footed and behind, and now with the introduction of bigger-display iPhones they’re catching up.

He’s absolutely right. The media would have you believe that Apple is playing catchup in screen size, but that’s a ridiculous assumption. Apple could have put out a larger screen iPhone any time they wanted, but they chose functionality instead of adding enormous screen for the sake of adding an enormous screen. If anything, the competitors are playing catchup in usability.

Quartz:

Although the watch—designed in Paris and made in Switzerland—resembles its analog ancestors, it contains all the technology of a fitness tracker. It monitors distance covered (walking, running, or swimming), calories burned, and quantity and quality of sleep, all of which will sync with Withing’s existing Health Mate app. The watch, called Activité, can also tell time. It will automatically adjust to changing time zones, and its battery will last a year.

The watch will be available for $390 this autumn, in two unisex color options.

It certainly is a nice looking watch. Not my “personal style” but simple and elegant looking – which I’m not.

WSJ:

Nest Labs is set to share some user information with corporate parent Google for the first time since its February acquisition.

Matt Rogers, a co-founder of the smart-thermostat maker, said in an interview that Google will connect some of its apps to Nest, allowing Google to know when Nest users are at home or not.

And so it begins.

Update: This is an opt-in program. JD

This weekend, Microsoft Stores launched a trade-in program to encourage sales of the new Surface Pro 3, but the trade-in promotion named only a single device: the MacBook Air, at a value of “up to $650” toward any Surface Pro 3 purchase. At the lowest specification, that trade-in amount would let buyers walk out of a Microsoft Store with an Intel i3 Surface Pro 3 for as little as $150.

My reaction when reading this:

A while back, we posted about drones hacking into your phones.

This linked article digs into a different sort of attack, by way of a device called an IMSI catcher.

> Call it the “IMSI catcher” war, with the acronym standing for International Mobile Subscriber Identity. Every device that communicates with a cell tower—mobile phone, smartphone or tablet—has one. What StingRay (manufactured by Florida-based Harris Corp.) and its competitors do is act like a cellphone tower, drawing the unique IMSI signals into their grasp. Properly negotiated mobile tower lease agreements help maintain positive relationships between property owners and telecommunication companies. Once the device is locked onto a signal, the quarry’s data is ripe for the plucking. Major targets include people working for U.S. national security agencies, defense contractors and officials, including members of such congressional panels as the armed services and intelligence committees.

The technology was originally demonstrated several years ago. It’s now become part of the mainstream, much like ATM card sniffers.

> Mike Janke, a former Navy SEAL and co-founder of Silent Circle, a company that sells state-of-the-art encryption software, says, “Defense firms in the Washington, D.C. area have found IMSI catchers attached to the light poles in their parking lots. In February, one or two were found in the parking lot of a defense contractor near Washington.” > > He adds, “They’ve also been found in Palo Alto,” the capital of Silicon Valley. “The FBI has been called in, but you can’t track who has made it.”

Hard to tell if this is a real problem, or a problem invented to get people to buy encryption solutions, but certainly an interesting read.

Quartz:

There are 32 countries that Google Maps won’t draw borders around. While the so-called geo-highlighting feature—which Google uses to show a searched area’s borders—is unaffected by the locale of the person looking at them, the borders drawn on Google’s base map will look different depending on where in the world you are.

For example, look at the borders of Arunachal Pradesh—an area administered by India but claimed as a section of Tibet by China (which also claims Tibet). The region is shown as part of India when viewed in India; as part of China when viewed in China; and as distinct from both countries when viewed in the US.

The article includes several animated GIFs showing country borders as seen from within the US counterpointed with a view from with the country itself. Fascinating.

9to5mac:

A court has fined lawyers Quinn Emanuel and Samsung a total of $2M for misusing confidential details of a patent deal struck between Apple and Nokia.

The documents were supplied by Apple to Samsung’s lawyers purely so that it could see that Apple was telling the truth about its patent deals with other companies. The documents were marked “for attorney’s eyes only” and were not to be revealed to Samsung executives.

Typical.

Last September, Nest announced their Nest Developer Program. In preparation for tomorrow’s Google I/O conference, the Nest Developer Program is now active.

If you watch the video embedded below, you’ll get a sense of Nest’s vision for the home. Clearly, this is in direct competition with Apple’s HomeKit, part of an already crowded smart home space.

Startups like SmartThings and Revolv sell smart hubs, usually for around a couple hundred dollars, that act as wireless command centers for Internet-connected gadgets around the home, like light bulbs, wall switches and motion sensors.

New York-based Quirky has partnered with General Electric on a brand-new, smart-home focused arm called Wink. Honeywell, which in 2012 filed a patent-infringement lawsuit against Nest Labs, recently released a Wi-Fi-connected thermostat called the Lyric that has a sleek new design and promises convenience and energy savings.

Perhaps the biggest elephant in the room is Apple, which announced plans for a home automation software kit during its developers conference in early June.

Apple started its pursuit of developers at WWDC a few weeks ago. Presumably, Google will do the same at Google I/O, starting tomorrow. Though the space is, indeed, crowded, Apple and Google have the largest developer communities of any other players.

Seems logical that Samsung will covet this market. Not sure how they’ll get there, though. They can copy and create, as they did in the phone and tablet space, but they rode on the Android coattails for developers, for apps. Not clear they’ll be able to do that in this case, given their commitment to the Tizen OS.

Microsoft also has a large developer community and has long pursued the smart home holy grail with their HomeOS.

The players are all lining up and the home automation space seems ripe for evolution. Going to be interesting to watch this all play out.

AdWeek:

In an odd bit of on-stage irony, Bono gave broad praise to an audience of strangers and reserved his most pointed criticism for the old friend seated nearby: Apple design guru Jony Ive.

“One of the reasons it’s such a credit to have Jony Ive on the stage,” Bono told panel moderator and Vice CEO Shane Smith, “is because Apple is so fucking annoyingly quiet about the fact they’ve raised $75 million. Nobody knows!”

Bono went so far as to stand up, pull out an official (Red) iPad cover and remove the device, illustrating to the audience that the only actual nod to the nonprofit was inside the cover and therefore always obscured by the tablet.

“Where’s the (Red) branding?” he asked Ive. “Nobody can see that. This is modesty run amok. This is the Apple way. They’re like a religious cult.”

Great to see Bono calling Apple out on their “understated” approach to this issue. But you’ll see that change within six months.

Angela Ahrendts:

Last month, as you might have heard, I started a new job. At some point in your career, maybe you too have made the life-altering decision to start anew. If so, you know firsthand how exciting, challenging and sometimes disorienting the first 30, 60, 90 days can be. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately myself.

I am by no means an expert at these transitions, but I’ve always tried to be consistent in how I run, exit and begin in a new business. I thought I would share a few professional and personal insights which are helping me adapt to a new sector, culture and country.

Very interesting to see this – an Apple executive blogging could be fascinating, even if always vetted by the PR Machine.

It’s so much fun seeing what people are doing these days.

John Moltz wrote a great article on how important the experience is for Apple’s customer satisfaction ratings. When you first turn on an iOS device, your first experience is very positive. It’s easy to setup and get going within minutes. That’s important.

I’ve never seen anything like the fights that go on over the Oxford comma.

Eager to seize this promotional opportunity, Samsung Mobile Arabia’s verified Twitter account decided to tweet its best wishes for two stars of the company’s Galaxy 11 campaign, Cristiano Ronaldo and Landon Donovan, and their teams to its 106,000 followers. The only problem, of course, is that Landon Donovan was left off of the U.S.’s World Cup squad a month ago.

Come on Samsung, seriously?

Great article by Dan Frommer. People seem to forget that Apple did not create the iPhone and iPad in a few days or even years, for that matter. Apple is methodical in perfecting its new ideas to make sure they measure up to its demanding standards. That’s what Tim Cook is doing. The company is profitable beyond belief and Tim is well respected by shareholders, consumers and the industry. Apple’s future is in good hands.

I use my iPhone as my only camera and it does quite well for me. Om Malik recently tried a new app that specializes in black & white photos and has posted some samples as well. I do like the simplicity of the app, but I think I may just use the iPhone camera for the same results.

Winclone is a great way to make a complete backup of your Boot Camp partition so that you can quickly restore back to Windows in Boot Camp. Boot Runner provides an easy way to switch between OS X and Windows on dual boot Macs. Works great for both individuals and dual boot labs.

When you get a new Mac or have issues with your Windows installation in Boot Camp, re-installing Windows is time consuming and difficult. Winclone makes it easy to make a complete copy of the Boot Camp partition, and restores it back to the exact same state on your existing or new Mac. Winclone supports migration of Boot Camp partitions between Macs, moving your Boot Camp partition to an external drive to free up space, and more. It works great for mass deployment. Boot Camp can be deployed as an OS X installer package and you can also use it with existing Windows tools such as SCCM and Sys Prep for easy mass deployment.

If you manage lots of dual boot Macs, Boot Runner provides a great way to manage the OS selection. You decide which OS by selecting OS X or Windows prior to logging in. It works great in labs. Administrators can fully customize and manage the selection screen, and can remotely select the OS through network policy. Boot Runner includes a scheduling feature to make sure that the Mac is booted into Windows for important system and virus updates. Check out the intro video to learn more.

Winclone and Boot Runner are available for purchase and download today at twocanoes.com and both have full phone and online support options.

First things first, have you seen Apple’s “Strength” commercial? If not, watch this:

The catchy song is called “Chicken Fat”. The singer is Robert Preston, perhaps best known as the star of the movie The Music Man.

Turns out, the original Chicken Fat song was created as exercise background music for school kids. Here’s the complete version of the original. Dismissed!

UPDATE: Apparently, the singer in the ad is not Robert Preston. According to the New York Times, a new version of the song was recorded for the commercial. [Hat tip to Steven Fisher]

Have a web site? The time it takes for your page to load can vary widely, depending on the DNS lookup speed of your hosting service.

SolveDNS collects lookup speeds for a variety of hosts, built an easy to read chart. Amazing how big a range there is in lookup time.

Apple loves to disrupt things. The iPod and iTunes disrupted the music industry. The iPhone disrupted the telecommunications industry. And so on.

Apple identifies inefficiencies in a market and rolls out a vastly improved model. Obviously, this strategy has paid off time and again.

HealthKit is just the beginning of what could be a major disruption. Jared Sinclair was a registered nurse, before switching gears and dedicating himself to iOS development. From his blog:

Until relatively recently, the vast majority of medical records in the US have been recorded on paper. From routine doctor visits to lengthy stays in critical care, every piece of data – lab results, medication orders, progress notes, etc. – were written or typed on paper and stored in massive warehouses. It wasn’t until the 1990s that electronic health records (EHRs) started to gain widespread traction. Doctors and hospitals were under no legal obligation to use EHRs, so the only providers to use them did so for organizational efficiency.

There are competing formats for electronic health records. Each format maintains its own silo, with no interoperability between competing formats.

It’s disappointing but unsurprising that EHR vendors would keep medical data trapped inside their silos. If medical data were distributed via a shared database, their products would be reduced to either dumb pipes or thin client apps. Being a dumb pipe is bad for business.

Is HealthKit the solution?

The first problem with HealthKit is that it can only model a tiny fraction of the spectrum of medical data. There is a very long list of things it can’t do: track medication doses, doctor’s orders, procedural notes, etc. But let’s assume for sake of argument that HealthKit eventually ships with model classes for every conceivable type of medical data. It still wouldn’t be able to bring about EHR interoperability.

I think the post is worth reading, though I think it is way too early to judge HealthKit as a medical solution and way too early to predict where Apple will be taking HealthKit. I think the future is wide open and I would definitely not bet against Apple disrupting the electronic medical records model.

Big news for Star Wars fans:

Rian Johnson, the director of Brick and Looper, is going to write and direct the next two Star Wars movies.

Johnson wrote and directed Brick, The Brothers Bloom, and Looper. He also directed three episodes of Breaking Bad (early episode where there’s a fly loose in the lab, episode centering around Walt’s 51st birthday, and one of the final episodes where there’s a shootout in the desert).

Johnson is among the least successful directors to take on a franchise of such magnitude. His last three films—Brick, The Brothers Bloom, and Looper—have made a total of $72 million, according to Box Office Mojo. The last Star Wars film, Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, alone made $380 million worldwide. But taking a creative risk can pay off, as with Christopher Nolan’s direction of the Batman franchise.

Disney bought Marvel for $4 billion, turned it into a cash cow. Disney bought Lucasfilm for $4 billion a year later, looks to have the same plans in mind.

New York Times:

For several months, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has been investigating a wave of so-called denial-of-service, or DDoS attacks, against web start-ups. In each case, attackers knock their victims offline using a flood of traffic and refuse to stop until victims pay their ransom in Bitcoins.

Among the businesses targeted in the initial wave of attacks were Vimeo, the video-sharing company; Meetup, a company that connects groups offline; Basecamp, a project management software company; Bit.ly, the link-shortening service; Shutterstock, the stock photography agency, and MailChimp, the email marketing provider. In nearly every case, the amount demanded was typically low, in the $300 range. And in some cases, one security consultant said, the victims paid the ransom.

Startups are becoming the go-to targets in this wave:

Tech start-ups are a ripe target because they often lack the sophisticated security architecture of a larger company, and because they depend on around-the-clock Internet access for their livelihood. That is the reason some say an alarming number of start-ups have paid the ransom, in hopes it would just go away.

If you are in the DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) fighting business, business is flourishing. Problem is, there does not yet appear to be a reliable counteragent to a tenacious DDoS attack.

At Moz, Anthony Skinner, the company’s chief technology officer, said in an interview that initially the hacker — or a group of hackers who use the same email address — asked for $200 to stop attacks on their system. When the company refused to pay, Mr. Skinner said, the ransom demand increased to $2,000. Moz has since signed up with services like CloudFlare, a company that helps mitigate DDoS attacks by spreading traffic among systems around the world, but Mr. Skinner said the attacker has found new ways to attack their systems.

Google has added a “parental status” item to its AdWords dashboard. Is this one step too far? Was this inevitable?

My thanks to Many Tricks for sponsoring this week’s RSS feed on The Loop. Moom is Many Tricks’ window moving and zooming app. If you find the behavior of the green zoom button mysterious and thus avoid using it, you’ll love Moom—hover over the green button, and a pop-up palette appears, letting you quickly choose from five built-in size/location options. But you can also create custom commands that will move windows to other displays, size and position them exactly as you wish, or perform many other actions, including centering. Finally, if you use one display at one location, but multiple displays elsewhere, Moom can memorize your open windows for both setups, and automatically switch to the saved layout when the display setup changes. Check it out at Many Tricks.