July 24, 2013
EA’s biggest games seller is now Apple ∞
Wow, that’s huge.
Misleading sales ∞
I think we’ve all suspected this happens at some stores, but not doubling the price. At least I didn’t think they went that far.
July 23, 2013
Fender releases Modern Player Series guitars and basses ∞
You have to love these instruments. Take a look at the strat for $560—incredible.
Apple reports third quarter profit of $6.9 billion
Apple on Tuesday reported a profit of $6.9 billion for its fiscal third quarter. Revenue for the quarter was $35.3 billion, according to Apple. These results compare to revenue of $35 billion and net profit of $8.8 billion in the year-ago quarter.
Apple said it sold 31.2 million iPhones, a record for the June quarter, compared to 26 million in the year-ago quarter. The company also sold 14.6 million iPads during the quarter, compared to 17 million in the year-ago quarter. The Company sold 3.8 million Macs, compared to 4 million in the year-ago quarter.
The company’s Board of Directors declared a cash dividend of $3.05 per share of the Apple’s common stock. The dividend is payable on August 15, 2013, to shareholders of record as of the close of business on August 12, 2013.
“We are really excited about the upcoming releases of iOS 7 and OS X Mavericks, and we are laser-focused and working hard on some amazing new products that we will introduce in the fall and across 2014,” said Apple CEO Tim Cook.
Amazon’s very first customer ∞
Very cool that he still has the packing slip.
Buying property in Detroit ∞
This is really sad.
Gibson Slash Signature Rosso Corsa Les Paul ∞
Very nice looking Les Paul. I still want one of the Slash Appetite Les Pauls.
Final Cut X and Logic Pro X working together ∞
Ben Balser shows you three ways that Apple’s two professional apps work together.
iPad hits a new high in Web share usage; Samsung hits a new low
A new report from Chitika on Tuesday shows that Apple’s iPad is still growing its Web share usage. The iPad is now at 84.3%, its highest mark since the beginning of 2013.
The iPad grew by almost two percentage points from 82.4% to reach its new high, according to Chitika. This marks the second straight month of gains for Apple.
Following in second and third place are the Amazon Kindle Fire and the Samsung Galaxy family of products, respectively.
The Kindle has dropped its share for the past few months going from 7.4% down to 5.7% for the most recent report. Samsung hasn’t done any better. It dropped from 4.7% to 4.2% in the most recent report.
I ask the same question every time I see reports like this—What are people doing with those other tablets? Clearly, they are not going online.
Poppy: A 3D camera for iPhone ∞
These guys already got funded, but there’s still a couple of days to get in on it.
July 22, 2013
App unlocks iPhone’s potential for the vision-impaired ∞
Another great story on how the iPhone and Apple developers are helping those with accessibility needs.
Apple celebrates 1 billion podcast subscriptions ∞
Holy shit, that’s just incredible. Thanks to everyone that subscribes to Amplified with me and Dan Benjamin—we appreciate it.
Apple posts featurette interview with director of “Only God Forgives” ∞
Ryan Gosling and director Nicolas Winding Refn (DRIVE) are back with this visionary Bangkok-set thriller. Kingpin Julian (Gosling) avenges his brother’s killer, while a mysterious, unhinged policeman follows his every move.
I love it when Apple posts exclusive content like this.
Supshot: photo sharing and licensing in one app ∞
We’ve established that I’m not much of a photographer, but this seems like a good idea to me. The app is free to download on the App Store.
Fission Means Simple & Lossless Audio Editing [Sponsor] ∞
Fission makes audio editing easy.
Crop and trim audio, paste in or join files, or just rapidly split one long file into many. Fission is streamlined for fast editing. Plus, it works without the quality loss caused by other editors, so you can get perfect quality audio even when editing MP3 and AAC files.
If you need to convert formats, Fission can do that too! You can rapidly export or batch convert files to the MP3, AAC, Apple Lossless, FLAC, AIFF, and WAV formats.
Download a free trial of Fission, then buy it in the App Store or directly through our store.
A matter of personal choice ∞
I agree with a lot of what Shaun McGill says in this article. We have come a long way from the days of Palm and using a device as a PDA. Now we have a computer in our pocket and your computer is a matter of personal choice.
U2 in 1978
They’re just babies.
Did you know Twitter will send you an archive of all your tweets?
Dave Mark sent this to me. This could be useful for a lot of people.
3D printing to explode in 2014 ∞
Here’s what’s holding back 3D printing, the technology that’s supposed to revolutionize manufacturing and countless other industries: patents. In February 2014, key patents that currently prevent competition in the market for the most advanced and functional 3D printers will expire, says Duann Scott, design evangelist at 3D printing company Shapeways.
It will be interesting to see where this goes in the next couple of years.
Playing music after 20, 40, 60 or 80 beers
This is great. Just click on the number of beers at the top of the video and everything instantly changes.
Security researcher claims responsibility for Apple hack ∞
Security researcher Ibrahim Balic said he meant no harm and reported the security hole to Apple. Nick Arnott also has a good story about this on iMore.
July 21, 2013
Apple comments on developer site hack
I spoke with Apple tonight about news that its developer portal was hacked last Thursday by someone attempting to gain access to personal information about the company’s developers. While the company admitted already that the site was breached, there are some important details that you should know.
First of all, this does not affect iTunes customer accounts—this is a different system and all iTunes customer information is completely safe, Apple told me.
It’s also important to note that the hacker did not get access to any app code or even the servers where the app information was stored. The hacker also did not get access to any credit card information.
The only thing that the hacker could have gotten access to was the names, email addresses and mailing addresses of the developers. At this point, Apple doesn’t know if the hacker even managed to see that information. Worst case, that is all the information they would have seen, according to Apple.
Apple has taken the developer site offline and is working to get the site secured before re-launching it. The company had no timetable for when that might happen.
Apple developer Web site hacked ∞
Apple Developer Website Update:
Last Thursday, an intruder attempted to secure personal information of our registered developers from our developer website. Sensitive personal information was encrypted and cannot be accessed, however, we have not been able to rule out the possibility that some developers’ names, mailing addresses, and/or email addresses may have been accessed. In the spirit of transparency, we want to inform you of the issue. We took the site down immediately on Thursday and have been working around the clock since then.
In order to prevent a security threat like this from happening again, we’re completely overhauling our developer systems, updating our server software, and rebuilding our entire database. We apologize for the significant inconvenience that our downtime has caused you and we expect to have the developer website up again soon.
Oh shit.
Bruins prevent Bieber from stepping on logo ∞
Canada’s Worst Villain played the TD Garden Saturday. After the Chicago Blackhawks fiasco, the Bruins were taking no chances that he might desecrate their logo.
PDFpen ∞
Many thanks to PDFpen for sponsoring The Loop’s RSS feed this week. PDFpen is the all-purpose PDF editor. Version 6 now includes Microsoft Word export, an editing bar for faster workflow, Retina graphics, and more.
If you work with PDFs, you need PDFpen, the multi-purpose PDF editor. PDFpen can make changes, fix typos, resize images, fill and save forms. It can perform OCR (optical character recognition) to digitize scanned documents as part of a paperless workflow. It can even redact sensitive information by removing it permanently and completely from a PDF.
Jim’s note: PDFpen saved me in the past, so I am a loyal user.
A cool Eddie Van Halen story ∞
Someday, I hope this happens to me.
July 19, 2013
More about the “Grandma Drummer”
By now a lot of you have watched the video of the grandma drummer rockin’ out that we posted to the site earlier today (and if you haven’t, check it out – it’s a hoot). Now we have a bit more info about her, thanks to News8000.com. Turns out she’s been coming in every few days and jamming out to a new tune.
The owners of the Coalition Drum Shop in La Crosse, Wisc. don’t know too much about her except that her name is Mary.
I’m sure this isn’t the last time we’ll see her.
[Thanks, John Daniel]
Gibson Les Paul LPX ∞
I’ll be honest with you, as the owner of several Les Paul guitars, I’m not quite sure what to think about this guitar.