Lee approaches a heavy-set man standing outside the red awning of a Carl’s Jr. burger restaurant. The man wears glasses and a black pinstripe suit. He inspects the iPhone and offers $100. Lee takes the cash, hands over the phone and gives the signal. Four officers swoop in and place the man in handcuffs, notching another arrest in the intensifying cat-and-mouse game playing out here and in other major American cities between law enforcement and criminals looking to profit from the burgeoning trade in stolen mobile devices.

Interesting look at how people on the street are buying and selling stolen iPhones, and how the cops are trying to stop them.

Notness is a modern, fast and easy to use Multiple Sclerosis diary App for iPhone and iPod Touch. Noteness is tailored to the requirements of a MS-Diary and goes without unnecessary gimmicks.

The app was written by Martin Hartl, a 21-year-old from Germany, who suffers from MS.

Gotta love The Macalope.

These people are pathetic.

[Via Matt Richman]

With Google Reader closing down, it’s nice to see Reeder adding support for some new services. I have a Feedbin account and tried it out earlier today — it worked great.

I’d like to thank the fine folks at AskingPoint for sponsoring The Loop’s RSS feed this week.

AskingPoint includes “Rating Booster,” the smart rating widget that uses your analytics to ask only your best users to rate your Apps. Proven to increase sales dramatically!

By Developers for Developers.

All you need is Heineken.

A really funny post about Google Glass.

That is the classy thing to do. Good move by Apple.

Marco Arment:

I’m happy to announce that I’ve sold a majority stake in Instapaper to Betaworks. We’ve structured the deal with Instapaper’s health and longevity as the top priority, with incentives to keep it going well into the future. I will continue advising the project indefinitely, while Betaworks will take over its operations, expand its staff, and develop it further.

Wow.

Daniel Jalkut offers some tips on how Apple can improve WWDC so it benefits all developers. While I don’t disagree with the premise, I still think holding the conference is important for developers and Apple.

This looks very interesting. The possibilities go far beyond controlling guitar software.

Experiment: text your parents “got 2 grams for $40” then right after “Sorry ignore that txt. Not for you” Then tweet pic of their response.

Holy shit, I giggled my ass off.

AltWWDC is an alternative conference for Apple developers and designers, held alongside Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference in San Francisco, California. This free 5-day event takes place June 10-14, 2013 and includes talks, lunch, and co-working space, available first-come, first-serve every day. Confirmed speakers are Mike Lee, Victor Agreda, Jr., Brett Terpstra, Brent Simmons, Saul Mora, and Steve “Scotty” Scott.

You have to love developers and the things they do for the community.

I refreshed the page and they were already sold out. It couldn’t have been any more than two or three minutes.

I saw Bill Gurley say that you can only make money by being right about something that most people think is wrong. His logic was that you can’t make money by being wrong. And you can’t make money by being right about something everyone else knows. So you have to be right about something that most people think is wrong.

Sounds a lot like what Apple does.

Horace Dediu takes a look at Apple’s gross margins back to 2005.

That has to hurt.

It’s been a few years since I recorded my last solo album, “Notes On a Dream”. The inspiration has been flowing ever since and I’m now ready to set forth in recording my orchestral piece, Explorations, as well as my solo piano album, Explores. You know that I am not one to sit back and drive on the traditional path so we are going to explore some cutting edge technology options.

I’ve known Jordan for a number of years and besides being a great guy, he is one of the most talented musicians I’ve come across. Jordan continues to push the boundaries of music, which is a great thing for us all. Check out his new project.

Why would they be worried about construction costs?

Tickets are on sale for this developer conference that takes place September 17-18, 2013 in Germany.

iPhone was 57% of smartphone activations and 49% of ALL contract phone sales.

Not bad at all for a company that analysts keep bashing.

Jim and Dan discuss the Úll conference, Apple’s Q2 earnings, secret new products, the iWatch, the Mac Pro, the iMac’s missed opportunity, the WWDC announcement (and the hidden meanings in the image), how to attend WWDC, the state of Windows, and more.

According to a Charitybuzz release today, Apple CEO Tim Cook is holding a charity auction (the listing says ‘donated by Tim Cook’) for ‘coffee’ with him at the company’s headquarters. The auction benefits the RFK Center for Justice and Human Rights and just went live this morning.

This is great. And a percentage of each sale will be donated to help fund Alzheimer’s research.

As it works to build all types of connected devices, that leaves a natural next step: a television set-top box. The e-commerce giant is planning to introduce a device this fall dedicated to streaming video over the Internet and into its customers’ living rooms.

This makes a lot of sense for Amazon and it would certainly be a bigger competitor than Google.

I can’t ruin the surprise, I’ll let Gruber tell you.