Jim and Dan talk about the Apple event including the iPad Air, iPad retina mini, new MacBook Pro’s, Mavericks, and more.

Sponsored by Mailchimp, Shutterstock (use code DANSENTME1013 for 25% off), and Squarespace (use code DANSENTME10 for 10% off).

I’d like to thank IK Multimedia for sponsoring The Loop’s RSS feed this week with the iRig BlueBoard.

iRig BlueBoard is the first wireless MIDI pedalboard for iOS and Mac that allows you to control your music apps and more from the floor. Now control parameters of your MIDI-compatible apps like AmpliTube wirelessly from the floor. Switch between presets, change patches, turn effects on and off and control effects like volume wah pedals all from the stage floor without worrying about tripping over wires. Setup is as simple as turning the iRig BlueBoard on and telling it what you want to control. iRig BlueBoard features four backlit soft-touch pads housed in a sturdy, stage-worthy chassis, two TRS expansion jacks for connecting additional MIDI controllers like expression pedals, and is powered by four standard AAA batteries.

IK Multimedia’s iRig BlueBoard allows guitarists, vocalists and keyboard players wireless control of Core-MIDI-compatible music-making apps running on an iPhone (4s or later), iPad 4, iPod touch (5th gen) or Mac (models from June 2012). The pedalboard has four backlit pads up top, which can each be assigned controls to switch between presets and banks, tweak parameters or change patches on the fly. Expression, volume or wah pedals can also be connected to the two 0.25-in jacks on the side of the device for control of onscreen dials and knobs.

Sad.

New to Lou Reed? Here’s a link to his Wikipedia page and, below, an embed of Rock and Roll Heart, the Lou Reed episode of the American Masters series.

Sounds like a good number of features will require this patch from the get-go. Which means a real test of Sony’s servers on day one. And, I suspect, on Christmas Day.

Everything you ever wanted to know about working with ringtones in iOS 7. Good stuff.

The new MacBook Pro could easily be mistaken for its predecessor. That said, there are definitely some significant differences.

Like the Airs, the Retina MacBook Pro has given up its wired Ethernet port, but it comes with a few others to help earn it that “Pro” label. In addition to two USB 3.0 ports, an SD card reader, and a combination headphone/input jack, it includes a full-size HDMI port and two Thunderbolt ports that power users can count on to get their wired Ethernet and FireWire ports back if they really need them.

These are the first Macs shipping with Thunderbolt 2 ports. Great if you plan on buying a 4K display.

Those two ports have been upgraded to Thunderbolt 2 courtesy of Intel’s DSL5520 controller, and this is the first shipping Mac that uses the new version of the high-speed interface. The controller includes four Thunderbolt channels, which can provide data bandwidth of up to 20Gbps to each port (or 10Gbps per channel).

The original Thunderbolt used four 10Gbps channels too, but they were separated differently—the controllers provided two sets of 10Gbps channels, and the new ones provide one set of 20Gbps channels. Thunderbolt 2 additionally adds support for the DisplayPort 1.2 spec, which is necessary to support 4K output, though according to Apple’s spec sheet each Thunderbolt port can only support a single 2560×1600 display at once (for a total of three displays, including the laptop’s). The Retina MacBook Pro provides 4K video output through HDMI—that port supports 3840×2160 displays at 30Hz and 4096×2160 displays at 24Hz.

The biggest issue is the Retina display. Most of the mainstream apps support retina graphics, but outside that core, there are many that do not. Most web sites fit that latter category as well.

The biggest problem at this point is actually the Web itself. Having Chrome, Firefox, and Safari Retina-optimized means that text looks smooth and sharp regardless of the browser you’re using, but most sites still use lower-resolution images that look soft and vaguely blurry on a Retina screen. This situation should continue to improve now that high-density displays are proliferating in Windows laptops and Web standards are catching up, but for now browsing is still the least consistent thing about using a Retina Mac.

Lots more good stuff in this review.

If you are considering the highest-end Retina MacBook Pro, you might want to take a read of this review from The Verge.

io9:

In the span of just a few minutes, short films can offer up spine-tingling chills, nightmarish monsters, and plenty of grim humor. Here are a few of our favorite horror shorts that we’ve featured in the past year, ready to deliver a quick hit of Halloween horror.

Proof that horror doesn’t have to take long to scare the bejesus out of you.

An email went out to Buffer customers at about 4pm ET today informing customers that Buffer, the popular Twitter scheduling service, was hacked:

I wanted to get in touch to apologize for the awful experience we’ve caused many of you on your weekend. Buffer was hacked around 1 hour ago, and many of you may have experienced spam posts sent from you via Buffer. I can only understand how angry and disappointed you must be right now.

Not everyone who has signed up for Buffer has been affected, but you may want to check on your accounts. We’re working hard to fix this problem right now and we’re expecting to have everything back to normal shortly.

This banner was added to the Buffer home page:

Sorry – Buffer was hacked and some scam posts were sent. We’re working hard to investigate. Stay updated via Twitter (@buffer).

Follow the headline link for the latest from Buffer.

Wired:

Fearful of relegating TV to remaining “dumb,” consumer electronics manufacturers look to the success of Apple’s iPhone/iPad/iTunes, Google/Android, or Amazon ecosystems as examples of what could happen with smart TV.

But do consumer electronics companies really think they can monetize the new feature of accessing the web with smart TVs? Even with an industry standard for smart TVs, it’s not likely that those companies could start charging Netflix, Amazon, Pandora, and others for access to their screens. And conversely, by not controlling the device, these service providers operate at the whim of the smart TV.

I’m one of those people that think, Gene Munster’s “predictions” notwithstanding, that Apple has no intention of releasing an actual television set but instead will develop the present Apple TV into a fuller featured set-top box.

Bored Panda:

To celebrate this wonderful and colorful season, we’ve got a beautiful collection of photos of autumn landscapes that highlight the last explosion of rich, vivid color before the coming winter.

I feel sorry for those in tropical places that never get to experience Fall. That is, until the snows/rains come and then I’m just envious of them.

Here ya go…

A survey article on the state-of-the-market in bringing TV to digital and digital to TV.

Good to see some benchmark numbers. Worth noting that all the new MacBook Pros use Iris integrated graphics, with the exception of the high end 15″ model. I’m looking forward to seeing the benchmarks for that high end model, which uses Nvidia’s GeForce GT 750m with 2GB of dedicated video memory instead of the integrated Iris solution.

The Artery:

The Boston and St. Louis symphony orchestras are home to some of the country’s most talented musicians, but neither is above some good old-fashioned smack talk ahead of the World Series.

Trash talking band geeks prove that band geeks can’t trash talk.

Doug Field worked for Jony Ive and will now be VP of Vehicle Programs for Tesla.

If you use Mail to access Gmail, you’ll definitely want to read this article. The rules have changed.

Hundreds of fake reviews of BBM.

BlackBerry’s BBM app was downloaded 10 million times within 24 hours, but at least on Android, some of its many positive reviews seem to come from a less than savory source. Writer Matt Baxter-Reynolds noted yesterday that a huge number of reviews contained the exact same praise for BBM:

Thank you so much blackberry team. I was waiting this app. Its really great user friendly and smooth Blogger Terence Eden looked through more reviews and found more evidence that somebody was astroturfing the Play Store. In addition to the sheer numbers he found, at least one person seemed to have accidentally copied and pasted more of the text than intended: “Dear Mr Ahmed, please post the following comment on the new BlackBerry Messenger APP…” Fake reviews are a frequent issue across many sites, and a September crackdown resulted in fines for 19 companies. More recently, Samsung was fined for hiring commenters to talk up its own products online and leave negative comments about those of its competitors (allegedly HTC.)

Who would do this? Blackberry? Someone looking to harm Blackberry’s rep? Definitely an unneeded black eye.

Spend some time with Activity Monitor to get a sense of the energy usage of your particular installation.

Apple’s new suite of energy saving settings, App Nap — not to be confused with Power Nap — doesn’t really have an interface. Which is fine! The whole idea behind App Nap is that it runs in the background, looking for apps that fit certain criteria like whether they’re maximized or currently downloading or playing media.

That doesn’t mean App Nap can’t benefit from some occasional monitoring. The venerable app, Activity Monitor, has a new tab labeled “Energy” that lets you do just that. It lists your currently running programs and daemons, their energy usage, and whether the application is App Nappin’. If you see an app that has a disproportionate energy impact, kill it, and consider uninstalling it.

Good article. Pass it along.

This is bad news. Bad for Microsoft and bad for our planet.

The result is a tablet that is practically unrepairable and is therefore, in essence, disposable. The Reg has criticized Microsoft before for adding to the pile of discarded tech in the world’s landfills, and we’re disappointed to report that the Surface Pro 2 does nothing to slow this trend.

The original Surface tablet got the same score. Was hoping the Surface 2 would show some advancement in that department. To be fair, the 4th generation iPad did not do much better, scoring a 2 out of 10. We’ve got to do better than this.

Vitali Klitschko and his brother Wladimir are world championship boxers and, together, one of the greatest sports stories ever told. If you are at all a sports fan, watch the documentary Klitschko. You’ll see what I mean.

Both brothers made their professional debut on November 6, 1996 in Hamburg. Since then both have been heavyweight world champions in boxing. They have stated they will never fight each other.

There is a lot to admire about both brothers. Vitali made his fortune as a boxer, then went on to get his PhD and serve as a member of the Ukrainian Parliament. And now Vitali is running for president of his native Ukraine. Fascinating story.

Great review by Peter.

A special free issue, celebrating the Loop Magazine’s re-design. Including an exclusive piece by Matthew Modine: “What I learned from Stanley Kubrick”; “Who would buy an iPhone 5c?” asks Daniel Eran Dilger; “Based On A True Story” – Matt Dusenbury is talking about movies; Chris Domico is wondering “Where Is The Music Pendulum Now?”; and Jim Dalrymple’s “Thoughts on Apple’s iPad and Mac event”

Download the app and the issue free for iPhone and iPad.

I feel compelled to add to John Gruber’s take on Frank Shaw’s blog post. I think John is being too charitable.

Frank starts with some twisty little prose, criticizing Apple for giving away iWork with all new iOS devices:

Surface and Surface 2 both include Office, the world’s most popular, most powerful productivity software for free and are priced below both the iPad 2 and iPad Air respectively. Making Apple’s decision to build the price of their less popular and less powerful iWork into their tablets not a very big (or very good) deal.

I am not a fan of snark, and this was snarky. Frank didn’t say, “throw in the iWork apps for free”, which is what happened. Instead, he implies that Apple raised the price of the iPad so that us hapless customers have no choice but to pay for something we don’t want. That might be considered true if the price of the iPad went up, even one penny. But the iPad Air added a bunch of new features, found a way to slim down significantly, and kept the price the same. Oh, and, we’ll throw in our productivity apps, too.

There was no decision to build the price into their tablets. That’s just snark.

And so it’s not surprising that we see other folks now talking about how much “work” you can get done on their devices. Adding watered down productivity apps. Bolting on aftermarket input devices. All in an effort to convince people that their entertainment devices are really work machines.

In that spirit, Apple announced yesterday that they were dropping their fees on their “iWork” suite of apps. Now, since iWork has never gotten much traction, and was already priced like an afterthought, it’s hardly that surprising or significant a move. And it doesn’t change the fact that it’s much harder to get work done on a device that lacks precision input and a desktop for true side-by-side multitasking.

Really Frank? How many tablets in the world have Word on them? How many have Pages? I would wager that any iPad productivity app will have more “traction” than any comparable Surface app.

And I use my iPad every single day, all without a single bolted on aftermarket input device, just the ones I was born with.

As to precision, I would love to see a side by side comparison of the iPad and Surface touch precision. I can’t imagine the Surface even coming close. Yeesh.

As they did with the recent iPhone launch, Apple plans on opening their retail stores at 8 a.m. on launch day, November 1, to begin selling the iPad Air. The iPad mini with Retina display is coming later in the month.

This text is from the Apple iPad retail site:

Buy iPad Air at your favorite Apple Retail Store beginning at 8:00 a.m. on November 1. We’ll set it up just the way you like.* iPad mini with Retina display coming to stores later in November.

* Supplies may be limited and are available on a first-come, first-served basis.

Last month, I wrote about LADEE, NASA’s experiment in laser communication from the earth to the moon and back, replacing traditional radio communications.

Though there were a few glitches along the way, the experiment now works flawlessly and it looks like we have a much faster way to communicate with spacecraft near the Earth and, most importantly for potential Mars explorers, far from Earth as well.

“We could send 30 channels of HD video down from the spacecraft,” said Cornwell. “For example, you could do telepresence with this. Future missions to the moon or asteroids will have astronauts. They may need to see a doctor or need instructions on how to fix something and they could do it in HD video.”

A very important step for further space missions.