There was once a time when the launch of a new Windows operating system was a huge deal for the technology departments in many businesses. Not anymore. Microsoft Corp’s release of Windows 8 on Friday is likely to be a non-event for most companies — and some experts say many may never adopt it.

Microsoft has lost the confidence of its customers — business and personal. You can’t release as much shit as they have over the last decade and expect your customers to keep forgiving you.

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!

Android applications downloaded by as many as 185 million users can expose end users’ online banking and social networking credentials, e-mail and instant-messaging contents because the programs use inadequate encryption protections, computer scientists have found.

Of course, iOS doesn’t have this problem, so all of you Android owners that want to switch from the malware infested, security sucking Android can make the move any time.

I didn’t know this story.

I’d like to thank djay for sponsoring The Loop’s RSS feed this week.

The Apple Design Award winning app, djay, transforms your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad into a complete and portable DJ system, letting you mix your music library on a hyper-realistic turntable interface. Perform live, record mixes on-the-go, or enable Automix mode and let djay mix your favorite playlist automatically. With unprecedented ease-of-use and innovative multi-touch mixing features, djay breaks barriers in DJ technology and offers a unique experience for beginners and professionals alike.

djay now supports the iPhone 5 and takes full advantage of the gorgeous 4-inch screen. djay for iPhone and iPod is on sale for only $.99 and djay for iPad is on sale for only $9.99! Get it now and become the DJ you’ve always wanted to be.

Yahoo! Homes:

In what world does a two-bedroom apartment cost $50 million?Why, Midtown Manhattan, of course.Naturally, this apartment at 50 Central Park South is no ordinary two-bedroom apartment. For one thing, it’s bigger than you might imagine for a two-bedroom. But it’s also smaller than you might imagine for $50 million, at 4,500 square feet. Even by Manhattan luxury standards, we’d say that’s worthy of a double-take, or at least a surprised blink: $11,000 per square foot.Apartment 33 occupies a full floor at the Ritz-Carlton New York, Central Park, one of just a dozen residences at the Central Park Ritz.

Hard to imagine an “apartment” being worth that kind of money but then again, like the old saying goes, “The rich are different from you and I.”

CNN:

WHEREAS, the respective Parties, the Apple Fanboys (also known as “Apple Fanbois,” “Fanb0yz,” “iPhoners” or simply “The Mac Faithful,” among many other names) and the Samsung Fanboys (also known as “Apple H4terz,” “Galaxians” or “Androiders”) seek a lasting peace, both online and off, and…WHEREAS, online forums, queues for new products and technology blogs have become polluted with smack talk, useless feature comparisons and Photoshopped ads meant to deride and belittle each other’s device preference, and…WHEREAS both sets of Parties recognize that a competitive market is both critical and necessary for continued technological innovation to benefit all, especially early adopters…NOW, THEREFORE, the Parties agree to abide by the agreements herein, enumerated in the terms of the articles set forth below.

This is actually pretty darn funny.

Glenn Fleishman for Boing Boing:

If you have access to this quaint thing called “broadcast television,” whether over the air or through cable or satellite receivers, you might have seen me win $15,199 last night by ultimately correctly recalling Karl Marx’s name in the nick of time. That was a squeaker. I’ll be on again this evening, and you’ll see how I perform this time around.

Glenn Fleishman will be familiar to many readers for his work at Macworld and elsewhere. He’s wicked smart, so it’s no surprise to me at all that he was on Jeopardy, and that he did well.

Goldfinch helps you keep up with the best articles, photos and videos shared by your friends and followers on Twitter and Facebook.

Looks interesting if you are very active on both social networking platforms.

Some great stuff here.

From the Comic Sans Project.

Who’s in worse shape?

Brendan Sinclair for Gamesindustry.biz:

Audience management firm Playnomics has released a report on user engagement for social games it tracks, and the findings show that players aren’t exactly patient in giving free-to-play titles time to hook them. The group found that from July through September, roughly 85 percent of new players in the US never went back to their games after the first day. And of those who joined in the first part of that stretch, 95 percent had become inactive by the end of September.

Unfortunately, most of the time with free-to-play games, you get what you pay for.

Will Oremus for Slate:

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that the state has decided to crack down on free education, notifying California-based startup Coursera that it is not allowed to offer its online courses to the state’s residents. Coursera, founded by Stanford computer science professors Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng, partners with top-tier universities around the world to offer certain classes online for free to anyone who wants to take them. You know, unless they happen to be from Minnesota. A policy analyst for the state’s Office of Higher Education told The Chronicle that Minnesota is simply enforcing a longstanding state law requiring colleges to get the government’s permission to offer instruction within its borders. She couldn’t say whether other online education startups like edX and Udacity were also told to stay out.

Someone ought to warn Apple that iTunes U is apparently illegal in Minnesota.

This is one of the stupidest things I’ve heard of. The state’s position is completely unenforceable. Time for the bureaucrats running the Office of Higher Education to get their heads out of their asses and recognize it’s 2012. Unless they’re going to shut down the Internet in Minnesota, I highly doubt they’re going to be able to stop people from learning stuff online there.

Friend of The Loop Julio Ojeda-Zapata follows up in a piece published in Pioneer Press. Apparently the state is easing restrictions on online schools:

Hey, all you colleges and universities not in Minnesota: Want to offer a free, online, not-for-credit course to people living here, no questions asked? This is your lucky day. The State of Minnesota has stopped enforcing a 20-year-old statute requiring such institutions to go through a lengthy registration process before they could offer no-cost Internet coursework.

Nokia CEO Stephen Elop:

“I think you’re going to see a trend where operators, starting in the West, begin to say, ‘We need a third ecosystem to really begin to happen. We really need to double down on it. We need to cause it to happen.’”

The company’s strategy is to wait until carriers are tired of selling millions of iPhones and Android devices and force Nokia products on us. Yeah, that’ll work.

Eric Mack for CNet:

According to a translation of a Russian news report that’s been kicking around the Web, some conservative believers see the image of the bitten apple as a symbol of Adam and Eve’s original sin in the Bible. Some have gone so far as to cover up the logo and replace it with an image of a cross. Apparently no one has clued these folks in to the fact that Apple’s name and logo were actually inspired by the legendary piece of fruit that fell on the head of mathematician and astronomer Isaac Newton.

Some great new gear in AmpliTube 3.9.

Stephen Shankland for CNet:

If the Chromebook Series 5 550 drew inspiration from a MacBook Pro, the new Chromebook did so from a MacBook Air. It’s cheaper, thinner, has a smaller 11.6-inch screen, and at under 2.5 pounds weighs less. Google plans to promote the new Chromebook more aggressively in stores and advertising.

No question that Samsung continues to display a breathtaking lack of imagination in industrial design.

Good info herein from Shankland on what’s under the hood and what Google is trying to accomplish here, and what sort of limitations the little beastie has too.

The US firm had previously been ordered to place a notice to that effect – with a link to the original judgement – on its website and place other adverts in the Daily Mail, Financial Times, T3 Magazine and other publications to “correct the damaging impression” that Samsung was a copycat.The appeal judges decided not to overturn the decision on the basis that a related Apple design-rights battle in the German courts risked causing confusion in consumers’ minds.

Taylor is looking for your story and the company set up a Web page for you tell it. Taylor is my favorite acoustic guitar and has been for many years.

We are announcing this morning an important development at Newsweek and The Daily Beast. Newsweek will transition to an all-digital format in early 2013. As part of this transition, the last print edition in the United States will be our Dec. 31 issue.

It is widely speculated that the Mountain View-based company will announce new Nexus smartphones and an updated version of its Android operating system.

Most companies don’t use the current version of Android, how will an updated version help?

This sums it up perfectly.

The New York Times has suspended Andrew Goldman for four weeks, according to the New York Observer, after the freelancer writer tweeted offensive comments in response to criticism of a piece he wrote. Phil Corbett, associate managing editor for standards at The New York Times, also reminded staff today that they should treat Twitter and Facebook as “public activities,” and that their behavior on social networking sites should be “appropriate for a Times journalist.”

I would just never last. Never.

That’s just classic.

Wineanorak:

It all starts in the forest. Cork oaks are harvested every nine years, once they reach maturity. It doesn’t harm the tree, and the cork bark regrows. Most cork forests are in Portugal and Spain.

Cork is one of those things you never think about but, when it comes up and you read a story like this, you discover it’s actually kind of fascinating. For example, it never occurred to me that cork was actually tree bark.