Matthew Panzarino:

By a huge margin, the number one request by these developers was for Apple to allow them to respond directly to reviews on the App Store.

I agree.

Doug Pasnak, Cruftbox (via Harry C Marks, Curious Rat):

To ask that every piece of modern electronics is designed to allow the tiny fraction of hackers to upgrade is the height of hubris, unreasonable, and a huge imposition on everyone else that has no desire to ever crack the case. All that ‘upgradability’ ends up making the product cost more and be more susceptible to failure. Catering to the fringe is not the way to make good products. Making the best product you can for a low price is the way to make good products, even if it means eliminating upgradability and home repair.

This goes further than Doug’s point about the Retina Display-equipped MacBook Pro, which has been criticized for its lack of upgradability. It also speaks to the criticism of iOS (and, to an increasing extent, OS X) by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Cory Doctrow and others, who tell us that big, bad Apple is dumbing down the computing experience for us by abstracting us from things like file systems.

Clearly many consumers are happy with the tradeoff, which makes for easier use from a wider swath of people who don’t want to be concerned with the myriad fussy intricacies of computer use. It’s not Apple’s fault that the vast majority of consumers who want iPads don’t give a damn about hacking it. Apple’s simply responding to a market need.

MG Siegler, Massive Greatness:

I get it. I really do. What I don’t get is why no one calls them on this? Their stances are often nonsensical bullshit with no basis in reality. The Microsoft Surface just made the MacBook Air and the iPad look obsolete? Really? It would be an insane thing to say that an un-launched product with no release date, no price, no real app support, and which Microsoft was clearly afraid to let journalists actually play with, would harm one of those Apple products. Gizmodo is saying it will render both obsolete.

Uh, plenty of us call them on their bullshit, MG. Jim did it here on the Loop right after Jesus Diaz posted his ridiculously sycophantic garbage. And heck, taking Gizmodo to task for lousy analysis is almost a weekly sport on my Angry Mac Bastards podcast. But good on you for calling it like it is. Welcome to the club.

I don’t think we should discount the Surface – if there’s one company out there with the wherewithal to take on Apple in the tablet space, it’s Microsoft. But Gizmodo’s early crowing about Microsoft as the new winner is utterly foolish.

TabToolkit now includes a Tab Store right inside the app, with instant access to hundreds of officially licensed, full-score transcriptions with complete notation for each guitar, bass, drum, and keyboard part, as well as vocal tracks with lyrics.

I’ve been using TabToolkit since it was first released. Love this app.

This is so cool. Check out the video.

My latest Techpinions column looking at Microsoft’s Surface strategy compared to Apple’s:

From what I’ve seen, it seems to me that Microsoft is trying to do a similar type of dance with the Surface that it did with previous tablets. The company is trying to convince consumers that this device can be a computer and a tablet at the same time. Based on the sales of the iPad, I’m not sure that’s what consumers really want.

Macworld:

Smile on Thursday released TextExpander 4, the latest incarnation of its typing shortcut utility. Among the new features are additional options for “fill-in-the-blank” snippets, fill-ins for multi-line text fields, dropdown menus for multiple choices, and optional text blocks that you can trigger as needed when expanding a text snippet.But because TextExpander 4 can’t adhere to Apple’s recently-enforced sandboxing guidelines, the new version of the app isn’t available in the Mac App Store.

TextExpander is an indispensable piece of software for me.

Trevor Johns, on Google’s Android Developers blog:

User reviews on Google Play are great for helping people discover quality apps and give feedback to developers and other potential app users. But what about when developers want to give feedback to their users? Sometimes a user just needs a helping hand, or perhaps a new feature has been added and the developer wants to share the good news.

That’s why we’re adding the ability for Google Play developers to respond to reviews from the Google Play Android Developer Console. Developers can gather additional information, provide guidance, and — perhaps most importantly — let users know when their feature requests have been implemented.

This is something iOS app developers have hoped, dreamed and prayed for since the day the App Store launched. It’ll be interesting to see how many Android developers end up creating problems for themselves with less-than-diplomatic responses or all out flamewars with testy app buyers.

Darren Pauli:

The app, dubbed paycardreader, will skim card numbers and expiry dates, along with transactions and merchant IDs, and was successfully tested against a German PayPass Mastercard.

I haven’t used Drobo since the first version, but this looks really nice.

Nick Bilton for The New York Times:

The iPad, for all its glory, suffers from one very distinct flaw: It’s very difficult to use for creation. The keyboard on the screen, although pretty to look at, is abysmal for typing anything over 140 characters. There isn’t a built-in pen for note-taking, either. Of course all of this is intentional by Apple. Although there are hundreds of third party products available, Apple doesn’t seem to want the iPad to be a creator, but more of a consumer.

Really Nick, you can’t create things on the iPad? What about the musicians who record songs and albums, the artists that make amazing digital paintings, the authors who write books, or the millions of consumers who create memories with movies and photographs.

You lost some credibility with that one Nick.

Ben Brooks:

Today, Ballmer is bailing water out of the ship. I don’t know if he can bail fast enough to right the ship, but I do know that I am willing to give him a chance to do that.

Steven Musil for CNet:

Larry Ellison has closed a deal to buy most the Hawaiian island of Lanai for an undisclosed sum.

The Oracle chief executive has agreed to purchase 98 percent of the 141-square-mile island, Hawaii’s sixth-largest by acreage, according to a statement issued today by the Hawaii governor’s office. Current landowner Castle & Cooke filed a transfer application with the Public Utilities Commission.

There’s rich, and there’s superrich. When you can afford to buy your own Hawaiian island, I definitely think you’re in the latter group. Let’s hope Larry Ellison uses his powers for good, not for evil.

AmpliTube 2.5 is a major update that offers the newly released AmpliTube Slash gear model integration, MIDI and digital audio support, a redesigned recorder and mixer section, audio copy/paste, Retina display graphic updates and much more.

I downloaded it, but haven’t had a chance to try it out yet.

Wired:

A team of engineers and two crazy drivers are preparing for a history-making challenge drawn from the daydreams of every child who’s ever crisscrossed his parents’ living room with plastic race tracks: building, and racing on, a human-scale Hot Wheels double loop track, just like the one you had when you were a kid. The “Hot Wheels Double Loop Dare” is set to take place at this month’s Summer X-Games in Los Angeles.Drivers Tanner Foust and Greg Tracey will attempt to race through a 60-foot vertical loop modeled after the new Double Dare Snare Hot Wheels toy, in what would be the first time in history two cars mounted a vertical loop at once.

I have found memories of playing with this track as a kid so I’m looking forward to this stunt. But, just like the Niagara Falls tightrope walker, they’ve had to remove some of the element of danger by using a safety net in case the cars can’t complete the loop. Chickens.

GM Authority:

Last week, Apple announced a host of planned updates to the Siri personal assistant service found in company’s iPhone smartphone and iPad tablet (Siri integration is coming to iPad in the fall). One of those updates, called “eyes-free”, allows an iPhone or iPad user to use Siri without picking up or looking at the device to initiate the feature, which can be used to schedule a meeting, send a text message, add a reminder, find a local restaurant, check sports scores, and perform a myriad of other tasks — all using natural-language voice commands.Today, GM Authority has learned that The General will soon introduce Siri eyes-free integration in its vehicles and the first ones to get the integration will be the Chevrolet Spark and Sonic. While the automaker’s media representatives didn’t provide specific timing details, we were told that we should expect an announcement within the next 12 months.

Wired:

If you’re a diehard Apple fan who desperately wants to run a buggy alpha version of iOS 6 right now, your only legal option is to shell out the $99 to join the iOS Developer Program. Affordable for a developer, the barrier to entry is high enough to keep out casual fans from accidentally bricking their phones and cluttering up the Genius Bar.But over the last couple years, a cottage industry’s popped up around illicit UDID activations — startups exploiting Apple’s Developer Program to sell access to pre-release iOS software, usually for less than $10 per device. The craziest thing? Apple doesn’t seem to care.

Jim and Dan continue their conversation about the new MacBook Pro with Retina Display. They also offer perspective on Microsoft’s Surface announcement, purchasing music, page views, proper attribution, guitars, and more.

Sponsored by Harvest, and Squarespace.

Amazing.

Mike H. at Other World Computing (OWC):

Including the built-in Retina display, the new 2012 MacBook Pro 15″ can run four displays at their native resolution…

Moving images and media didn’t create any lag and we were able to play video on all four displays simultaneously.

The blog shows a Retina Display-equipped MacBook Pro driving two Thunderbolt-equipped iMacs being used as external displays, and an LG-branded display connected via HDMI.

That’s a LOT of screen real estate powered by a single laptop.

Rose Simone:

RIM spokesperson Tenille Kennedy confirmed on Tuesday that RIM has reduced some positions as part of its cutback program, “and may continue to do so as the company methodically works through a review of the business.”

I hate seeing people lose their jobs because executives mismanaged the company.

Anthony Doesburg:

Diegel is an exponent of 3D printing. His zany guitar bodies are created using computer-aided design (CAD) software, output in one piece on an EOS 3D printer. This is the new world of additive manufacturing.

Part of a guitars tone comes from the woods used in the guitar. I’m not sure how this would sound.

Julianne Pepitone for CNN Money:

The original Microsoft Surface, unveiled in 2007, was a 30-inch touchscreen tabletop. That device popped up in hotels and bars, and it let users interact with both digital items and physical objects through the use of infrared cameras.

With the Monday debut of the Surface tablet, though, the original tabletop product has been renamed “PixelSense.” That was already Microsoft’s name for the underlying technology that helps power the tabletop product.

I’m not sure why Microsoft thought it was better to recycle the “Surface” brand as the name for the new tablet instead of creating a new brand out of whole cloth. But that’s Microsoft for you.

David Lowery at The Trichordist aims to educate Emily White, an NPR intern who admits to buying only 15 CDs in her life, but has 11,000 songs in her library. Lowery says he doesn’t want to embarrass or shame her, but I think she should be horrified at what she’s done.