The Pentagon is planning to open its network for the first time to Apple iPhones and devices running Google’s Android operating system, a threat to BlackBerry maker Research in Motion.

A threat? No, that’s devastating for RIM.

Om Malik may have the best line of the day on Scott Forstall being fired.

Apple today announced executive management changes that will encourage even more collaboration between the Company’s world-class hardware, software and services teams. As part of these changes, Jony Ive, Bob Mansfield, Eddy Cue and Craig Federighi will add more responsibilities to their roles. Apple also announced that Scott Forstall will be leaving Apple next year and will serve as an advisor to CEO Tim Cook in the interim.Additionally, John Browett is leaving Apple. A search for a new head of Retail is underway and in the interim, the Retail team will report directly to Tim Cook.

Wow.

MG Siegler on Google’s reasons for shipping the Nexus 4 without LTE.

My buddy Bill Lonero and his band are heading out on a 25 city tour across the United States with original Iron Maiden vocalist Paul Di’Anno starting on December 21st and ending January 20th. Bill set up a page at Indiegogo to help raise some money for the tour. Help him out if you can.

Looking for the best listening experience for your iTunes Library? Look no further than LouderLogic – the Advanced Audio Player, featuring audio enhancement technology, crossfading, a 4-band parametric EQ, Spectrum Animation Mode, and dynamic Play Queues for interacting with your iTunes library on the fly.

LouderLogic brings the fullness you crave out of every song, using patent pending Audio Level eXtension (ALX) technology by McDSP. With the push of one button, LouderLogic minimizes volume fluctuations between songs while maximizing all the musical details the artist intended you to enjoy. Simply put, you’ll get more from your music!

The phone survey of nearly 1,200 adults in the U.S. found 52 percent hadn’t even heard of Windows 8 leading up to Friday’s release of the redesigned software.Among the people who knew something about the new operating system, 61 percent had little or no interest in buying a new laptop or desktop computer running on Windows 8, according to the poll. And only about a third of people who’ve heard about the new system believe it will be an improvement (35 percent).

So most people have never heard of it and the ones that did don’t want it. This is a firecracker release for sure.

This is what their canceled press conference was all about.

Other companies could only wish for this kind of success.

Rene Ritchie copyedited Amazon’s Kindle ad comparing it to the iPad mini.

BroBible:

There’s a lot of really cool webcams on which to watch the impending doom of Sandy. Quartz found around 30, and we’ve highlighted 10 that we think will be worth watching tonight and tomorrow. Consider these your chance to watch a massive, historic storm roll in without having to see Anderson Cooper bravely squint in a camera while rain whips around him.

The Coney Island cam looks like it will provide some dramatic images.

Gizmodo:

If you had any doubts about the scale of frankenstorm Sandy, check out NASA’s latest image to see its size compared to the entire planet. It was taken by NOAA’s GOES-13 satellite this morning, October 28 at 9:02AM EDT.

Hoping everyone on the east coast of both the USA and Canada stay safe during this incredible storm.

The Guardian:

It is one of the world’s largest hedge funds, with $121bn under management, but its name is virtually unknown in financial circles. Braeburn Capital is not operated from the top floor of a Manhattan skyscraper or a plush Mayfair townhouse. It is located in a quiet suburb of Nevada’s capital, Reno, and it belongs to Apple.Much of Apple’s money is trapped overseas, sheltered from the US taxman, who would demand a 35% cut were the money to be repatriated. But it can be invested at home. Apple’s financial reports show it holds $21bn of US government debt – a vast sum for a single private investor. Foreign governments like investing in US securities, but Apple owns more than the $19bn held by Malaysia, and just $4bn less than Spain.

“Problem”? We should all have such problems.

Divvy is an entirely new way of managing your workspace. It allows you to quickly and efficiently “divvy up” your screen into exact portions.

This looks cool. Watch the video to see how it can be used.

Exactly.

I’m typing this with gritted teeth. My 24 hours with the half-baked Surface have been a frustrating challenge, a mix of love and hate. I want want want this to work, but one problem after another have led me to come to the conclusion – a temporary one at least – that this thing just isn’t ready to ship.

Why do I get the feeling this will be happening quite a bit.

He can’t.

Many thanks to Daedalus Touch for sponsoring The Loop’s RSS feed this week.

The text editor that suits your iPad! No file lists, no folders, no documents in the classic sense — just paper stacks and an infinite amount of sheets. Edit and navigate by standard gestures, all perfectly mapped to the tasks at hand. Interacting with digital texts never felt so natural.

Plus: Dropbox, Box.com and WebDAV Sync, ePub export, RTF creation, Markdown support, and then some. Grab it this week at The Loop Special price of just $2.99!

Wired:

The Nexus is particularly important to Google because it is the company’s flagship smartphone…Google, and every other tech company, desperately wants to keep these sorts of details secret for competitive reasons until they’re ready to announce them.But, on the night of Sept. 20, Google wasn’t fighting the internet. It was up against a bartender, and Brian Katz, global investigations and intelligence manager at Google (according to his LinkedIn profile — “Google does not discuss the actions of its security team,” a representative says) was headed to the 500 Club.

Sounds ridiculously familiar. Google can’t help but copy Apple, can they?

Much respect granny.

Rachel Weber for Gamesindustry.biz:

Neil Young has departed from his role as CEO of DeNA’s ngmoco, and will be replaced by Clive Downie. Co-founder and CCO Bob Stevenson has also stepped down.

Both Young and Stevenson are co-founders at Ngmoco. The casual game publisher was a breakout star of the App Store and acquired long-time Apple developer Freeverse, which also made a splash in the App Store. In August, Freeverse co-founders Ian and Colin Lynch Smith left the company, which suffered layoffs shortly thereafter.

Ngmoco is owned by Japanese mobile software publisher DeNA.

Philip Elmer-DeWitt has a good rundown of what analysts are saying after Apple’s Q4 earnings report.

Love ’em or hate ’em, analysts’ reports have a direct bearing on Apple’s stock performance and the perception of how the company is doing with Wall Street investors, so it’s worth paying attention to.

John Biggs for TechCrunch:

In the great, wide world of journalism, games journalism is a weird animal. Those who “practice” – and practice it well – face a barrage of PR perks, free trips, and angry houses. Access is given and taken away by marketing folks on a whim. There are a few great news sources (Polygon is one as is Rock, Paper, Shotgun), a few silly ones, and a few horrible ones. But on the whole, not many folks think much about the business of writing about games. Yet, if we’re culturally current, we consume quite a bit of games writing and, sadly, that writing is often compromised by the broken PR system. This came to a head, sadly, when Rab Florence, a writer with Eurogamer, resigned after calling out the industry, including presenter and journalist Geoff Keighley (see him here), a writer who posed himself next to a pile of Doritos and a garish Xbox display.

I don’t really disagree with anything Biggs has written here, but there’s a delicious irony in TechCrunch, of all publications, calling out games journalists for shitty ethics.

Arnold Kim for MacRumors:

As instructed by a UK court, Apple has posted a small link in the footer of Apple.com/uk. The notice acknowledges the judgement that Samsung had not infringed on the iPad design with their Galaxy Tab.

When the judge ruled that Apple hadn’t infringed on Apple’s patents, he noted that Samsung designs are “not as cool” as Apple’s. Apple decided to quote his exact words in its statement.