“We are deeply saddened to learn of this tragic incident and offer our condolences to the Ma family. We will fully investigate and cooperate with authorities in this matter,” Apple said in an e-mail.

It’s unfortunate, but Joel is absolutely right.

I can only hope American artists will soon address our growing chrome dinosaur skeleton gap with Europe.

This is a classic song.

If you’re going to get someone to list their favorite Punk albums of all-time, Rollins is a solid choice.

This was well done.

Bose Corporation may be a perennial favorite target of derision among audiophiles, but there’s no question that their products have had a profound effect on the consumer and pro audio business. You can hardly go on a airplane flight without seeing at least a few of your fellow passengers wearing Bose noise-cancelling headsets (they’re also standard equipment for tank crews and Air Force pilots), and Bose speakers are common sights in homes and commercial installations alike. The company’s innovations have also had a profound effect on the development of automobile suspensions.

The U.S. International Trade Commission in Washington issued the import ban in May 2012 after deciding that Motorola Mobility devices infringed a Microsoft patent for a way mobile phones synchronize calendar events with other computers. Microsoft’s lawsuit, filed yesterday in Washington, says that order isn’t being enforced.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection, after having secret meetings with Google, continued to let the Motorola Mobility mobile phones enter the country even though Google has done nothing to remove the feature at the heart of the ITC case, Microsoft said in the complaint.

Apogee’s Symphony 64 | ThunderBridge enables Apogee’s flagship audio interface, Symphony I/O, to connect to any Thunderbolt equipped Mac for true Thunderbolt compatibility and performance. Capable of up to 64 channels of input and output at sample rates up to 192kHz, Symphony 64 | ThunderBridge delivers impressive channel counts at unprecedented speeds for a latency and hassle free recording experience that meets the requirements of the most demanding professional audio I/O applications.

Apogee’s gear is some of the best in the industry, trusted by studios and engineers. It’s great to see a solution that allows the Symphony I/O to be connected to Thunderbolt equipped Macs.

Taylor Guitars continues to celebrate its newest body shape, the Grand Orchestra, with the addition of two new rosewood/spruce models, the 718e and 818e.

My Taylor acoustic is one of the most amazing guitars I’ve ever heard.

I’d like to thank MoneyWell for sponsoring The Loop’s RSS feed this week. MoneyWell is personal finance software that increases your wealth while reducing your debt using the tried-and-true envelope-budgeting method.

A man smashed a case in a Springfield wireless store and escaped with several iPhones, but the scheme was foiled by one glaring oversight: The robber, police say, left his own Samsung Galaxy at the scene of the crime.

LOL.

It’s dropping the prices on the Surface RT tablets by $150. So, I guess having Office on a tablet wasn’t as big as Microsoft thought.

In an email to employees Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer explained how the company is realigning. It damn near put me to sleep.

An oldie but goodie from Angry Mac Bastards’ patron saint (and my literary hero), Harlan Ellison.

So now, friends, to today’s Startup 101 class. The subject is decency and the thesis is painfully simple:

Dont Be An Asshole.

This is truly not a deep philosophical argument about individual freedom, nor is it about what a company can legally do given their terms of licensure. It’s about doing the right thing.

Uber is the alternative to cabs that’s popping up in cities all over the place. I tried them for the first time last month when I was in San Francisco for WWDC – a city that’s notoriously hard to get a cab in that isn’t either driven by a complete fucking idiot who doesn’t know where he’s going, smells like shit, piss, puke or the ass of an incense merchant, or has a credit card machine that’s mysteriously not working that day.

I have to say, I was really impressed. The service is prompt, the app works great, the cars are clean and the drivers are polite.

But the first time they try to gouge me on price? My response would be, “Fuck you right in the neck.”

This officially makes NHL 14 the MOST AWESOME NHL CONSOLE GAME EVER.

A team of researchers at the University of Southampton have demonstrated a way to record and retrieve as much as 360 terabytes of digital data onto a single disk of quartz glass in a way that can withstand temperatures of up to 1000 C and should keep the data stable and readable for up to a million years.

Will Connors for WSJ:

As part of its restructuring, the company is planning to cut more jobs across middle management in the sales and support divisions, say people familiar with the matter, on top of the 5,000 layoffs last fiscal year.

Part of the latest cuts included Richard Piasentin, the company’s vice president for sales in the U.S., who was fired last month, these people said.

At some point there will be no more fat to cut from the company. I doubt it’s the sales teams fault—it sounds more like people just don’t want the product.

Adam Engst takes a look at the Apple’s ebook trial and answers some of the questions everyone has asked over the past few months.

Because of slower-than-expected sales, Verizon now must double its iPhone sales of last year. If it falls short, the company could be on the hook for as much as $14 billion, Moffett Research said in a report released this week.

That’s an incredible amount of money to pay because you didn’t sell as many iPhones as expected. However, I don’t know of any other carrier in the world that hasn’t met sales expectations.

BGR had some time with the new Nokia Lumia.

Google Latitude will be retired on August 9th, 2013. Products being retired include Google Latitude in Google Maps for Android, Latitude for iPhone, the Latitude API, the public badge, the iGoogle Gadget, and the Latitude website at maps.google.com/latitude.

If you could have shown me the web in 1983, or even 1993, I would have cheerfully traded an infinite number of computer magazines for the chance to read an endless, endlessly diverse quantity of information about tech products, updated not once a month but all day, every day, for free.

I would have too. But I would have thought twice if I realized just how much shit would be posted too.

Yeah, magazines are old tech and they’re on the way out. But journalism is still very much an industry in transition. I’m not sure that we’ve replaced what was there with something that is, on the whole, better.

Sascha Segan:

So you see the self-serving nature of this study: Adeven is trying to boost its business by making app developers worry they won’t make any money without Adeven. In the meantime, the company promotes a half-blind idea of what Apple’s App Store is. That’s why I’m not actually linking to the study here.

When are the mainstream media going to get off their asses and realize that the “research” from these companies are designed to help those companies sell their products. Nothing else. The BBC, CNBC and the others are just assholes for falling for this type of marketing.

Alex Vollmer is an incredible guitarist and he put out the first in a series of lessons on how to play some of the greatest guitar solos ever written. The first is for Cream’s “Sunshine of Your Love.”

I haven’t had a chance to try this one out yet, but I really like the Pod family of products. This is on the high-end of the product spectrum, so it’ll most likely be a hot item.