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.

Reuters:

Staffers for Senator Charles Schumer, a Democrat from New York, met with Google officials on Monday to discuss privacy issues related to the camera-equipped planes. They plan to meet with Apple on Friday.

This is a very cool trick to creating pre-done tracks in Pro Tools.

Parislemon:

I’m just now catching up on the news about the new Microsoft Surface. Reactions seem mixed, tilting slightly positive or at least hopeful. People seem to want to believe Microsoft can pull this off and that’s understandable — competition is good, and right now, the iPad has no competition. My hunch is that whatever tablet Google announces shortly will be more of a Kindle Fire competitor than an iPad competitor. This Surface is a full-on iPad competitor.On the surface — see what I did there? — the thing seems compelling. It’s a tablet that runs Windows, and Office, and has a keyboard. There’s no denying that the keyboard/cover hybrid is a smart thing to try.Two years ago, I think this thing would have been pretty competitive. Today? Color me very skeptical.

Everyone, especially the tech media, should be skeptical about this tablet. Microsoft? Shut up and ship.

AJ for OSXDaily:

The MacBook Air 2012 is a screamer, and though the CPU-based benchmarks show about a 15-20% improvement over the MacBook Air 2011 models, by far the biggest performance boost comes from the new flash memory (SSD) that Apple is using for storage on the 2012 models. In our tests, the disk used in the newest MacBook Air models is up to 217% faster than the previous model years drives.

iFixit’s breakdown shows that the new MacBook Air employs an SSD made by Toshiba, with a different connector than last year’s model – and a SandForce controller.

MG Siegler:

Most are stories written with little or no research done. They’re written as quickly as possible. The faster the better. Most are just rehashing information that spread by some other means. But that’s great, it means stories can be written without any burden beyond the writer having to read a little bit and type words fast. Many are written without the writer even having to think.

I am glad that I don’t make my money based on pageviews. I say what I want, when I want because I believe it to be true. That’s it.

Justin Watt, via Daring Fireball:

Integrating iOS and thinking of mobile development in parallel with desktop software development for this many users isn’t an easy or quick task and for that reason the Surface may succeed very well in the enterprise. It’s more of the same.

This really goes to the heart of where Microsoft’s strength may be with Surface: It’s running Windows. And while it’s a new version, it’s essentially the same operating system (and ecosystem) that IT people around the world have depended on since the early 1990s. That’s why Watt entitled his post “Goliath Wants David’s Market,” and there’s a big grain of truth there.

This time with CNN’s “5 ways Microsoft’s Surface may be better than an iPad.” It’s like they are searching for things to write about today.

io9:

Check out this elegant infographic by Invader Xan, molecular astrophysicist and master of ceremonies at astronomy blog Supernova Condensate. Here, silhouetted in colors that correspond to their present state of operation, you’ll find twenty iconic spaceships and space stations situated beneath the only fictional spacecraft of the bunch: the U.S.S. Enterprise.What’s great about this image is that all the spacecraft have been drawn to scale. This gives you a real sense of perspective.

I love that he has listed the Starship Enterprise as “in development”.

Jesus Diaz for Gizmodo:

That weapon is Microsoft Surface. And it is beautiful. Beautiful and functional and simple and honest. Surface just bumped the MacBook Air and the iPad to the back seat…

Really? Remember this morning I said that New York Times article was really stupid — Jesus just took the stupid to a whole new level.

Then again, Giz seemed to like the PlayBook too.

Dermot Daly on the differences between Microsoft’s and Apple’s strategy of announcing products:

People’s reactions are then about sprinting to their local Apple store, or reaching for their credit card.

He’s right. Apple creates a furor around its products and people race to buy it. It shows a real lack of planning and knowledge when you don’t even know how much it’s going to cost.