Apple lawyer Orin Snyder questioning Thomas Turvey, Google’s director of strategic partnerships in the e-book trial:

Things went downhill from there. Under Snyder’s questioning, Turvey acknowledged that he couldn’t remember a single name of any of the publishing executives who had told him Apple was the reason the publishers were switching their business model. He conceded that the publisher’s move to the agency system was important to Google’s own business, yet Turvey couldn’t remember any details about the conversations with publishers. By the end of the interview Turvey had gone from saying the publishers had told him directly, to saying they had merely told people on his team, to finally saying the publishers had “likely” told someone on his team.

Oh Google.

It’s interesting when you use something that’s really well designed—it just becomes part of what you’re doing. However, use something that’s poorly designed and all you notice is the poorly designed tool. It takes away from the experience.

Hi, Mayors – today we are announcing that we are moving the release date of the Mac version of SimCity to August. We have made this tough decision because we do not believe it is ready for primetime yet. We want to ensure the Mac is a great experience for our players and that is why we are taking more time.

“As a culture we have moved into a realm where the consumption of news is a near-constant process,” says Richard Gingras, Senior Director, News & Social Products at Google. “Users with smartphones and tablets are consuming news in bits and bites throughout the course of the day — replacing the old standard behaviors of news consumption over breakfast along with a leisurely read at the end of the day.”

So Google moved to the more creepy Google Now and Google Plus. No thanks.

Great article by John Kirk that looks beyond market share numbers.

In this issue, actor Matthew Modine talks about his short movies, Luis Pérez highlights the importance of accessibility, Eva Giselle looks at the future of design, Dave Addey goes outside his comfort zone and Harry C. Marks investigates his heritage.

You can download The Loop Magazine on the App Store and get a seven-day free trial when you subscribe.

Vesper is a simple and elegant tool for collecting notes, ideas, things to do — anything you want to remember. Use tags to group related items into playlist-like collections. Vesper imposes no system; organize and curate your notes whatever way comes naturally to you. Eschewing complications, Vesper’s focus is on how it feels to use it.

Great looking app from John Gruber, Brent Simmons and Dave Wiskus.

Dan and Jim discuss what could be announced at Apple’s 2013 Worldwide Developers Conference next week in San Francisco. Later they discuss the risk of malicious, hacking iPhone chargers, the importance of an external power source for your phone at events like WWDC, Apple and Samsung’s US market rivalry, The White House’s war on patent trolls, and more.

Sponsored by Hover (use code DANSENTME for 10% off), Shutterstock (use code DANSENTME6 for 30% off), and Squarespace (use code DANSENTME6 for 10% off).

According to VCs, without VCs we wouldn’t have Silicon Valley.

Venture capital is the lifeblood of our industry; the jet fuel in our Gulfstream; the saliva in our 23andme test. If it weren’t for free and easy capital, Instagram and Tumblr and {insert your employer’s name here, you unit-test-skipping, standup-meeting-lying bullshit artist} would have had to come up with a pesky business model.

He’s at it again—and it’s funny.

Eddie Van Halen is absolutely amazing. Having the tracks isolated, you can really hear him play.

• Less than a tenth of Android users care that it’s open

• The number of people who care that Android is open is about the same as the number of people who run Linux

This was a fascinating read.

I remember all of these.

[Via Shawn Blanc]

The Washington Post will phase in a paid online subscription model for Web content starting June 12, charging some readers $9.99 a month for access to more than 20 articles a month on desktop and mobile devices.

For $14.99 a month, readers can get a premium package that includes access to all of The Post’s custom apps.

It will be interesting to see how they do with this strategy.

The U.S. International Trade Commission today reached a decision [PDF] in the ongoing Apple vs. Samsung case, ruling that Apple infringed on Samsung Patent No. 7,706,348, titled “Apparatus and method for encoding/decoding transport format combination indicator in CDMA mobile communication system.”

It’s important to note that any sales ban that comes from this ruling will only affect older iPhone models. The iPhone 4S, iPhone 5 and future models will not be held up with this decision.

OS X has been updated with lots of fixes. The download is available in the Mac App Store — just check for updates.

The White House announced a set of executive actions and policy recommendations Tuesday aimed at preventing certain patent-holding firms, known as “patent trolls” to their detractors, from abusing the patent system.

The Obama administration’s actions are intended to target firms that have forced technology companies, financial institutions and others into costly litigation to protect their products. These patent-holding firms amass portfolios of patents and focus on pursuing licensing fees rather than using the patents to build new products.

Good.

One of the biggest parts to making a song sound good is having an experienced engineer to mix and master your work. It’s great to see professionals get together and give indie artists an affordable way to have their songs sound top notch.

Until now reading aids for the visually impaired and the blind have been cumbersome devices that recognize text in restricted environments, or, more recently, have been software applications on smartphones that have limited capabilities.

In contrast, the OrCam device is a small camera worn in the style of Google Glass, connected by a thin cable to a portable computer designed to fit in the wearer’s pocket. The system clips on to the wearer’s glasses with a small magnet and uses a bone-conduction speaker to offer clear speech as it reads aloud the words or object pointed to by the user.

I’ve been testing out Byword’s new blog features on The Loop and it works like a charm. This is great update. The Mac version is available on the Mac App Store.

Apple posted this PDF today showing the economic impact its current and future facilities have on Cupertino.

App Camp for Girls wants to address the gender imbalance among software developers by giving girls the chance to learn how to build apps, to be inspired by women instructors, and to get exposure to software development as a career. Our goal is to grow our non-profit organization into a national force, with programs in multiple cities, helping thousands of girls.

Much respect to Jean MacDonald.

Fraser Speirs uses his experience in education to give some suggestions for iOS 7.

This is a great list. The more I mix a song, the worse it seems to get because after a while you just keep tweaking until there is nothing left to the original magic of the song. That’s when I usually walk away for a few days and come back refreshed.

According to WBZ sports reporter Dan Roche, the pilot on his JetBlue flight from the Steel City back to Boston did a little gloating himself.

It’s way too early to say the Boston Bruins have won the series, but this is classic.