Sometimes the best innovation is the simplest—that’s the case with Straptight. I’ve seen the inventor swing a guitar over his head with these on his strap and they didn’t pop off. Yet, you just twist it and it comes off when you want it to. They’re endorsed by Joe Satriani and are really inexpensive too.

In an open letter to Apple shareholders, Icahn expressed disappointment that proxy advisory firm Institutional Shareholder Services recommended that Apple shareholders vote against the $50B buyback and will drop his proposal.

Dear Fellow Apple Shareholders,

While we are disappointed that last night ISS recommended against our proposal, we do not altogether disagree with their assessment and recommendation in light of recent actions taken by the company to aggressively repurchase shares in the market.

In their recommendation, ISS points out, and we agree, that “on the spectrum of options for allocating capital, the board appears to have been sluggish only in returning excess cash to shareholders,” and even though the company has in place “one of the largest buybacks in history” we agree with ISS that this effort seems “like bailing with a leaky bucket” when “given the scale of the company’s cash reserves.”

That being said, we also agree with ISS’s observation, taking into account that the company recently repurchased in “two weeks alone” $14 billion worth in shares, that “for fiscal 2014, it appears on track to repurchase at least $32 billion in shares.” Our proposal, as ISS points out, “thus effectively only asks the board to spend another $18 billion on repurchases in the current year.”

As Tim Cook describes them, these recent actions taken by the company to repurchase shares have been both “opportunistic” and “aggressive” and we are supportive. In light of these actions, and ISS’s recommendation, we see no reason to persist with our non-binding proposal, especially when the company is already so close to fulfilling our requested repurchase target.

Furthermore, in light of Tim Cook’s confirmed plan to launch new products in new categories this year (in addition to an exciting product roadmap with respect to new products in existing categories), we are extremely excited about Apple’s future. Additionally, we are pleased that Tim and the board have exhibited the “opportunistic” and “aggressive” approach to share repurchases that we hoped to instill with our proposal. It is our expectation that Tim and the board continue to exhibit this behavior as fiduciaries to the shareholders since they clearly seem to agree that our company continues to be extremely undervalued, and we all share a common optimism with respect to the company’s bright long term future.

Sincerely yours,

Carl C. Icahn

Earlier today, Apple celebrated the 50th anniversary of The Beatles’ appearance on the The Ed Sullivan Show by adding a new Beatles Apple TV channel.

It was 50 years ago Sunday, on Feb. 9, 1964, that 60 percent of American TVs tuned in to watch The Beatles make their U.S. television debut on “Sullivan.” That event is considered a milestone in American culture, bringing about the “Beatlemania” craze that swept the nation.

Last night, US TV network CBS ran a special honoring the 50th anniversary, featuring some terrific covers of the Beatles, along with a reunion of sorts with Sir Paul McCartney and Ringo Star singing along and together. My favorite was Joe Walsh, Dave Grohl and Gary Clark Jr. taking on While My Guitar Gently Weeps. Eric Clapton created some pretty large guitar shoes to fill, but Walsh and Clark did an admirable job.

Follow this link for various clips on the CBS site.

Apple filed public comments with the Federal Trade Commission, making their case for change. From their letter:

No firm has been targeted by PAEs more than Apple. Apple has litigated against PAEs 92 times in the past three years alone, and has received many more demands. Its experience confirms what many others have documented: although PAE activity is not necessarily harmful in theory, far too many PAEs exist only to extract undeserved royalties. As both a market leader and the PAEs’ favorite target, Apple has a special interest in policies that discourage this behavior. Apple thanks the Commission for undertaking this important study, and respectfully submits these comments on the Commission’s proposal.

The linked article brings up an upcoming Supreme Court case over when fees should be awarded in patent cases. In an amicus brief for that case, Apple says:

Apple’s success sometimes leads it to the courtroom to litigate patent disputes. Apple has seen these disputes from both sides — one day taking on a copycat and the next defending itself against a patent holder alleging infringement. Apple therefore has a strong interest in the U.S. patent system and the balance that it strives to strike between promoting innovation and fostering competition.

Recent phenomena, most importantly the meteoric rise of the patent assertion entity (“PAE”), have disrupted that balance. PAEs do not invent, manufacture, or sell any product. Many of them do nothing more than acquire vague patents, and then use litigation or the threat of litigation to negotiate royalties that are far larger than what the patents warrant. The patent assertion industry has exploded over the past decade.

Apple is the firm most targeted by PAEs. Over the last three years alone, Apple has faced a PAE’s allegations of patent infringement in 92 separate matters. 57 of these cases have been resolved. Apple has rarely lost on the merits. But victory figures as small consolation, because in every one of these cases, Apple has been forced to bear its legal fees. This reality is the lifeblood of the patent assertion industry, because the threat of fees often forces an undeserved settlement. Indeed, the opening line of many negotiations is some form of, “What we’re asking for is less than it will cost you to litigate this case to judgment.” It should come as no surprise, then, that despite its success in litigating the merits, for business purposes Apple has agreed to a settlement in 51 of the 57 closed cases. The remaining 6 cases are either outright victories or instances in which the plaintiff voluntarily walked away from its suit before judgment. Each of these cases involved a significant investment of fees and effort by Apple.

Really hoping Apple has some success here. We need to fix this system.

Baxter is a fascinating step in the evolution of industrial robots. Baxter is relatively inexpensive (far cheaper than the previous generation) and is easy to train to do most physical things a human can do. Targeted at smaller companies who need to do small mechanical assembly line runs, Baxter is to assembly line robotics what the 3D printer is to large die-cut manufacturing.

Follow the headline link for a terrific writeup and check out the video below for a warm and fuzzy, but definitely informative, Baxter promotional piece.

I’m a self-professed comedy nerd and I grew up with Saturday Night Live. The creative people who wrote and produced each week’s show and the actors who brought those memorable characters to life made the after and after-after parties the stuff of legend. Great read.

Dong Nguyen, the developer of Flappy Bird, the viral hit that remains at the top of the App Store rankings, has promised on Twitter to remove the app from the App Store because the sheer amount of attention the app has drawn is something he isn’t interested in dealing with.

Amazing to watch this unfold. Early last week, the cracks started to show. A Newsweek reported contacted Nguyen, asking for an interview. Nguyen’s reply:

Hi Joe, I think press should give my game some peace. Its success is really overrate! I’m sorry, I refuse to answer questions.

And then, a few minutes later:

Press people are overrating the success of my games. It is something I never want. Please give me peace.

And finally, yesterday afternoon:

I am sorry ‘Flappy Bird’ users, 22 hours from now, I will take ‘Flappy Bird’ down. I cannot take this anymore.

As a reminder, up to this point, Flappy Bird has been an incredible success story. My guess is that some cynics will see this as a PR move, an attempt to build momentum. Personally, I think this is a developer whose life has been taken over by something he never intended, who is feeling overwhelmed by his success. It happens.

If I was Dong Nguyen’s friend (I don’t know him), I would advise him to hold off a few days before taking the app down. That is a big decision with, no doubt, unforeseen consequences. I’m guessing a takedown will make a lot of people unhappy. If the money is not an issue, perhaps you can release the app to the public domain so others can learn from your hard work or gift the whole thing to an organization like NSCoderNight or CocoaHeads.

Best of luck.

Punch:

A white-jacketed bartender steps up to the long wooden bar at the Buena Vista Café and lines up a dozen tulip-shaped glasses. Into each go two white sugar cubes pulled from a bulk box. Then comes hot black coffee in a continuous steaming stream from a diner-style pot. Next: Irish whiskey, delivered in a dramatic long pour all along the line of waiting glassware. Last comes the cream—aged for half a week and then lightly whipped in a milkshake blender—ladled gently from a metal pint glass like a fluffy floe.

The pattern will continue all day long—filling anywhere from 2,000 to 3,500 glasses—until the bartender’s white jacket sleeves are spattered with coffee and the century-old tavern shutters at 2 a.m.

Whenever I go to San Francisco, I always stop in at the Buena Vista Café for four to seven Irish Coffees.

io9:

Add this to the list of things we never knew existed but now desperately need: The Evolution Door, a “flip-panel” invention by Austrian designer Klemens Torggler.

We’ve all opened a thousand doors but I bet you’ve never opened a door like this.

Many thanks to BiteMyApple.co for sponsoring The Loop’s RSS feed this week. Online retailer BiteMyApple.co has an impressive lineup of more than 60 successful Kickstarter products currently on sale. The retail site offers a wide range of accessories for the iPad, iPhone and other Apple devices.

Vine is now a year old, give or take a few weeks. I’ve never posted a Vine video, and I generally ignore them. But the linked post had me laughing.

Vine collected their best and funniest posts since inception and posted them. Hard to pick a favorite, but if I had to, it’d be the one I embedded below. Click the little speaker in the upper-left corner to turn on sound and let it play its way back to the beginning. Heh.

UPDATE: Deleted the embedded vine video code. It was generating errors for some folks. Follow the headline link. My favorite is the very first one.

I love the Olympics.

There are new high-tech, customized, composite fabrics, precisely engineered bobsled bodies and runners, low-energy impact absorbing helmets, and snowless virtual ski trainers.

It’s amazing to me the subtle advances in technology, all designed to shave a millisecond off an athletes time in an event.

This bill was introduced by George Gascón, San Francisco’s district attorney. Gascón, long a fan of Apple and iPhone, has been pushing for antitheft legislation since last year’s introduction of Find My iPhone and activation lock.

The legislation is being opposed by CTIA (Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association), the wireless trade association.

Senator Leno’s legislation will almost certainly face resistance from CTIA, the industry trade group that represents the cellphone carriers like AT&T, Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile US. Last year, CTIA said in a filing to the Federal Communications Commission that “a kill switch isn’t the answer.”

CTIA said that a kill switch would pose risks, because hackers who took control of the feature could disable phones for customers, including the phones used by officials in the Department of Defense and in law enforcement.

Has this ever happened, even once? I think this is a baseless argument.

The group also argues that if a phone were deactivated and the owner later retrieved it, the owner could not reactivate it. But in the case of Apple’s new antitheft feature, Activation Lock, a customer can disable a phone that has been lost as well as reactivate it with the correct user name and password after the device has been found.

I think the CTIA objects to the potential cost and is masking their argument. If it’s cost, say that, and work out a path to solving that problem. This bill is good for consumers and, I believe, has been shown to lower phone theft rates.

I really enjoyed Tim’s interview. What I took from the interview is that Apple still cares about the things it always cared about: Design, building great products, and being the best. I’m glad to see that hasn’t changed. Here are a couple of points I picked out:

There will be new categories and we’re working on some great stuff. We’re not ready to talk about it. We’re really working on some really great stuff. I think no one reasonable would say they’re not a new category.

That seems like a warning that some analysts might consider the new products as being in an existing product category. If that’s the case, I have to think Apple would innovate that existing category similar to what it did with the iPod, iPad and iPhone.

We’re still spending an enormous amount on really great talent and people on the Macs of the future.

That’s great to hear. iPad is an amazing product, but not everyone is ready to make that jump yet.

But what we’re not going to do is we’re not going to make junk. We’re not going to put Apple’s brand on something someone else designed.

This is key for Apple. They aren’t worried about throwing out as many products as they can into the market, but rather, making the best products and releasing them when they are ready.

Some good tips from Peter Cohen.

If you are a fan of app design, spend a few minutes going through this dissection of the interface niceties of Facebook Paper. Some beautiful design going on here. Yum. [Via iosdevweekly]

As the video below shows, there’s a bug in iOS 7.0.4 that allows anyone with access to your iPhone to disable Find My iPhone. Obviously, this disables the ability to track your iPhone if it is stolen.

According to the linked article, looks like Apple has a fix in the works for the next release of iOS. Bugs like this show the importance of keeping up with the latest iOS release.

PetaPixel:

In 50 seconds and one uninterrupted flowing video shot, UK directing duo US and advertising agency Grey pay tribute to six completely unique, culturally iconic images by expertly recreating one after the other.

If that sentence made no sense, it’s because it’s hard to describe what you’re about to see.

Rodin, Forest Gump, Mad Men, Michelangelo, Reservoir Dogs and Daft Punk all in one shot. Make sure you watch the behind the scenes video.

The New York Times has a “firehose” of live stream photos from the Sochi 2014 Olympics. It’s cool to watch but lacks context.

Ever come across an M3U file when downloading music? From the M3U Wikipedia page:

M3U is a computer file format that stores multimedia playlists. It is supported by many applications, including media players such as Windows Media Player, iTunes, Winamp, Audacious, foobar2000, Totem, JuK and VLC media player on Windows PC’s and Astro Player, N7Player, Cubed on Android OS devices. M3U’s can also point a media player to an online streaming audio source.

Follow the headline link and learn what’s in an M3U file, how to play it in iTunes, and how to get the songs referenced by the M3U file onto your Mac. Good stuff.

Ed Bott uses corporate quarterly reports to build pie charts that show where each company gets its revenue.

The best way to understand the differences between these three publicly traded companies is to look at the detailed reports each is required to file every quarter. I did this two years ago, but since then the landscape has shifted. Google tried to diversify into hardware with its acquisition of Motorola Mobility, and Microsoft announced that its goal was to focus on “devices and services.”

How much have the three companies changed in the past two years? For the answer, I looked at the sources of revenue each one reported in their quarterly reports for the second half of 2013. Here’s the breakdown, using the segments that each company uses to define how its business is organized.

Follow the headline link for three quite easy to read pie charts that lay everything out. Google is accelerating its non-advertising revenue:

Two years ago, Google was a one-trick pony, with its revenues coming almost entirely from advertising. According to its 2011 annual report, “Advertising revenues made up 97 percent of our revenues in 2009 and 96 percent of our revenues in 2010 and 2011.” That picture changed slightly with Google’s attempt to move into hardware manufacturing via its acquisition of Motorola Mobility, as you can see in this chart. But the pending sale of Motorola Mobility to Lenovo will shift things back to nearly the way they were. The “Other” category, which includes digital content and non-Motorola hardware products, is still a tiny fraction of the company’s revenues. After the Lenovo transaction closes, Google’s advertising revenues will go back to being more than 90 percent of its total.

Most of the world uses an embedded chip, pin based credit card system. The US does not. That is going to change next year.

The Wall Street Journal interviewed MasterCard’s Carolyn Balfany to discuss the particulars.

Interesting reading. Of particular note, on the question of why the rest of world went one way and the US another:

There’s a historical view to this. In the past, other markets migrated for two reasons. First, there were higher fraud rates in some other markets, and they wanted to make this move to combat fraud. Second, this system can operate in offline mode – the card and the terminal can authorize a transaction independent of communication with the bank’s systems. In some other markets they struggled with robust telephony networks, so this offline capacity was attractive.

Both those factors were not driving factors here in America. Fraud was more prominent in some other markets, but what has happened since then is that as other markets migrated to EMV and became more secure, fraudsters migrated their activity to markets with less security. We saw fraudsters move over to the US market – they are looking for the path of least resistance.

There were also some more specific challenges to US migration to the new system. Because the US is one of the largest and most complex markets, the business cases for the costs had to be established. And there were requirements of the Durbin amendment, mandating all us debit transactions are able to go across at least two networks, which took some time for the industry to sort out.