Shawn Blanc’s list of three criteria on whether you should continue using a product or not. I like his list.

Through the program, Yahoo employees will have a choice of phones: iPhone 5, Samsung Galaxy S3, HTC One X, HTC EVO 4G LTE, or Nokia Lumia 920.Yahoo is also going to pay its employees data and phone bills.

Marissa Mayer is making a lot of good moves to make her staff happy.

I think Samsung forgot one:

“Stolen from Apple.”

Google’s Andy Rubin talking to Aliyun OS’s John Spelich:

So there’s really no disputing that Aliyun is based on the Android platform and takes advantage of all the hard work that’s gone into that platform by the OHA.

You mean like how you stole iOS and built Android? Never good when that happens Andy.

[Via Electronista]

Philip Elmer-DeWitt for Fortune:

In the popular imagination — and in Samsung TV ads — the people willing to wait in line for days to buy the newest Apple (AAPL) gewgaw are hopeless fanboys and fangirls who need to get a life. That attitude is so 2007.

Elmer-DeWitt notices an interesting trend in the folks who camp out the earliest – at least in some cases, they’re doing it either in a craven attempt at self-promotion or to raise awareness of a charity or cause they’re supporting.

Fileperms:

WhatsApp, the extremely popular instant messaging service for smartphones that delivers more than ~1billion messages per day has some serious security problems. I will try to give a detailed analysis on some of the issues.

I’m not smart enough to be able to tell if this article is correct so it’s passed along for your information.

Many thanks to SonicPics for sponsoring The Loop this week.

SonicPics is a fun and engaging digital storytelling app for iOS. Turn your photographs into narrated movies to share with your family and friends!

Check out SonicPics today on the app store.

Gizmodo:

Nothing screams more “forever alone” than an unboxing video. There are no more surprises. I’ll tell you what’s going to be inside the iPhone 5 box: an iPhone 5.

I rarely agree with Gizmodo but in this case, they’re right. Gadget unboxing pictures and videos are beyond lame. Now, a motorcycle unboxing – that’s cool!

I’ve always been fascinated glassblowers and love watching them work.

TIME:

The fact that yesterday’s bash wasn’t full of startling twists presumably helps explain why it prompted lots of stories declaring the event, and even the iPhone 5 itself, to be a disappointment. Product rollouts aren’t action movies. Surprises are nice, but they aren’t the ultimate goal — at least if the idea is to sell lots and lots of gadgets and make lots and lots of money. Surprise has no inherent relation to quality or popularity.

It will be interesting to see if this “lack of secrecy” regarding the details of the iPhone 5 are an anomaly or the new standard operating procedure for Apple.

My latest article on Techpinions talks about how the iPhone naysayers are just plain wrong.

John Gruber on Dan Lyons’ latest article. The simple truth is, Lyons is not relevant so he posted stupid articles to get pageviews. Higher traffic doesn’t make you relevant, you still sound stupid.

Wow, that’s impressive.

Jeremy C. Owens for Mercurynews.com:

Hewlett-Packard is working on a new smartphone as its core personal computers and printer businesses faces growing challenges, CEO Meg Whitman said in an interview Friday morning.

Of course, it wasn’t too long before Whitman stepped into the CEO role at HP that the company killed off its Palm division, which was making a smartphone.

Whitman stopped short of offering details; Owens opines that the “new Windows Mobile” is a possibility, or maybe Android. What, no webOS?

iLounge:

But we’d strongly suggest that you take this one step further. The right thing for Apple to do is to give every iPhone 5 customer a Lightning to 30-pin Adapter. Ditto for new iPod nano and touch customers.

Give me a fucking break.

Rainer Brockerhoff’s Solipsism Gradient blog:

People keep asking why Apple didn’t opt for the micro-USB connector. The answer is simple: that connector isn’t smart enough. It has only 5 pins: +5V, Ground, 2 digital data pins, and a sense pin, so most of the dock connector functions wouldn’t work – only charging and syncing would. Also, the pins are so small that no current plug/connector manufacturer allows the 2A needed for iPad charging.

Many people have also pointed out another advantage of Lightning – it’s reversible. Micro USB is tiny and easily damaged if you try to force it in the wrong way (I know from personal experience).

Brockerhoff also posits a plausible reason for why the Lightning to 30-pin dock connector is so expensive. Read on for details.

(Thanks to Nick Farina on Twitter for linking me to this.)

Brian X Chen for New York Times:

An Apple spokeswoman, Natalie Kerris, said: “iPhone 5 supports simultaneous voice and data on GSM-based 3G and LTE networks. It is not yet possible to do simultaneous voice and data on networks that use CDMA for voice and LTE for data in a single radio design.”

Much has been made today about reports that the iPhone 5 won’t support simultaneous voice and data transmissions over Verizon and Sprint LTE networks.

It is a competitive shortcoming of the phone compared to contenders like Samsung’s Galaxy S III, and it’s because the iPhone 5 doesn’t sport a separate antenna (and radio) to handle voice transmissions like the Samsung phone does. According to Chen’s report, carriers should fix the problem at some point in the future.

Technical sophisticates like bloggers and smartphone enthusiasts are making a big deal of the problem, but it remains to be seen if it’ll have any impact on actual iPhone 5 sales. Muggles are not always interested in the same things that tech weenies care about.

Alibaba said that Acer “was notified by Google that if the product runs Aliyun OS, Google will terminate its Android- related cooperation and other technology licensing with our partner….We regret Google’s action.”

Stay classy Google.

The Verge:

The Verge has confirmed with Verizon Wireless that the iPhone 5 won’t support the feature when it’s on the carrier’s cellular network, even if it is connected to LTE. Since Apple says that Sprint and Verizon will be offering the same version of the iPhone 5, it’s safe to say that simultaneous voice and data will not be available on Sprint’s network either.

Well, that sucks and might be a dealbreaker for some folks looking to switch from AT&T.

TIME:

On Wednesday, 18 workers were arrested for stealing the miniatures from LSG Sky Chefs, the company that provides food and beverages for American Airlines, CNN reports. The majority of those accused were LSG employees, but three were airport security guards. The arrests culminate a nine-month investigation known as “Operation Last Call” carried out by the Port Authority’s Office of Inspector General.Here’s how the whole scheme went down. At the end of every American Airlines flight, workers are supposed to return any unused bottles to a storage facility. Instead, workers began stashing the bottles to sell them to local liquor stores and bodegas.

I love those little tiny bottles of booze.

TechCrunch:

Apple took something ordinary, a phone, did some extraordinary things to it, and then made it re-appear in grandiose fashion. It’s a great trick. It’s so good, in fact, that I think it’s fair to call it true magic.The problem, if you want to call it that, is that Apple has now been doing this trick since 2007. Granted, they have other solid tricks too (they are far from the one-trick pony claims that several of their competitors face). But the iPhone is the best trick in their bag. And in the last few years, some people have gotten sick of seeing it.But it’s important to remember that just because you’ve seen a show before, it doesn’t make actually make it any less magical. It’s a perception issue.

Interesting way of looking at the discussion surrounding yesterday’s iPhone 5 launch.

Rob Fahey for Gamesindustry.biz:

Dear People On The Internet – you’re utterly irrelevant, out of touch, and seemingly possessed of absolutely terrible memories to complement your weakened powers of deduction. Remember when you passed precisely the same judgment on the iPhone 4S? Remember when it then went on to become the fastest-selling and most profitable phone handset of all time? Remember that? Tell me, oh wise Internet People, what is it about your logic that’s different this time around?

Fahey’s responding to early criticism from some tech pundits and bloggers that the iPhone 5 failed to live up to their unrealistic expectations.

There’s been so much douchebaggery posted about the iPhone 5 since yesterday, I barely know where to start. The old canard about opinions being like assholes is true: Everyone has them and they all stink.

Fahey makes a great point that depsite Android’s inroads and its massive success at moving large quantities of handsets from different manufacturers, iOS still rules for content, and content is king.

Regardless, though, we – meaning both consumers and content creators – live in an iOS dominated world. The oft-touted Android activation figures and handset sales are almost irrelevant, since they cover such a wide variety of devices – many of which are bargain basement handsets that are unlikely ever to be used to make purchases from any app store. All the Android devices in the world don’t matter to a game creator if few people are using them to buy stuff – whereas Apple’s effective cornering of most of the high end of the market, along with its deeply integrated App Store infrastructure, means its consumers tend to be big spenders.

Ina Fried for All Things D:

In an interview, Apple Senior VP Phil Schiller said that Passbook alone does what most customers want and works without existing merchant payment systems. It’s not clear that NFC is the solution to any current problem, Schiller said. “Passbook does the kinds of things customers need today.”

Near Field Communication, or NFC, has been promoted as The Next Big Thing in smartphones – technology that will make it easier to buy products and exchange data using smartphones and other devices.

Some pundits and tech bloggers had thought the iPhone 5 would have NFC built-in, but it doesn’t. Passbook, a new feature of iOS 6, enables users to keep track of boarding passes, movie tickets, loyalty reward programs and other services.

And by virtue of it being built into the operating system, not the device, Passbook will have a much larger potential installed base right off the bat, when iOS 6 is released next Wednesday.