The Daring Fireball Linked List

Thursday, 18 Mar 2010

Paul Thurrott’s Curiously Shifting Thoughts on Copy-and-Paste ★

Delightful catch by Chris Grande. Here’s Paul Thurrott in July 2007, regarding the iPhone:

And what’s up with the lack of cut/copy and paste? This is a basic OS feature that Apple included in the first Mac OS almost 25 years ago. It’s inexplicably missing from the iPhone, unavailable in any application or the wider system itself. Unreal.

And here’s Paul Thurrott two days ago, in a post titled “I Love Windows Phone”:

The multitasking is limited. Users will only be able to get apps from the Marketplace, and not from third parties. Gasp! Is it true that there’s no copy and paste?

No matter. Windows Phone combines those very few things that were right about Windows Mobile — primarily some business functionality — with a much wider set of new functionality that is exciting in both scope and possibility.

Unreal, indeed.

Amazon Playing Hardball With Book Publishers Over Kindle Pricing ★

Quoting a report in the subscriber-only Publishers Marketplace:

At least one independent publisher of scale was told categorically by Amazon in a recent phone call initiated by the etailer that Amazon would not negotiate agency selling terms with any other publishers outside of the five initial Apple partners. This publisher was told that if they switched to an agency model for ebooks, Amazon would stop selling their entire list, in print and digital form. In conversation, Amazon is said to have reiterated that as matter of policy they are declining to negotiate an agency model with any publisher outside of the five who have already announced agreements with Apple’s iBookstore.

“Agency model” is apparently industry jargon for publishers setting their own prices per title, rather than accepting a flat selling price set by Amazon.

I’ll echo Paul Constant’s question in response to this tactic:

So my question is this: How long is Amazon going to dick around publishers before customers start to think of their inventory as unreliable?

Web Sites That Demand Money for iPhone App ‘Reviews’ ★

Brian X. Chen:

The two sites that were most frequently mentioned by programmers who contacted Wired.com were TheiPhoneAppReview.com and AppCraver.com. Both sites appear in the top four Google search results for the search term “iPhone app review.”

Wikipedia Uses Ogg ★

Wikipedia’s media format policy:

The preferred formats are JPEG for photographic images, SVG for drawings and line-art illustration, PNG for non-vector graphic iconic images, Ogg Vorbis for sound and Ogg Theora for video.

So, there’s one major site that uses Ogg. But, I can’t say I recall ever watching video from Wikipedia, so while they’re clearly a major web site, I’m not sure it’s fair to call them a major video publisher.

Google Alleges That Viacom ‘Secretly Uploaded Its Content to YouTube, Even While Publicly Complaining About Its Presence There’ ★

Zahavah Levine, chief counsel for YouTube in its litigation with Viacom:

For years, Viacom continuously and secretly uploaded its content to YouTube, even while publicly complaining about its presence there. It hired no fewer than 18 different marketing agencies to upload its content to the site. It deliberately “roughed up” the videos to make them look stolen or leaked. It opened YouTube accounts using phony email addresses. It even sent employees to Kinko’s to upload clips from computers that couldn’t be traced to Viacom. […]

Viacom’s efforts to disguise its promotional use of YouTube worked so well that even its own employees could not keep track of everything it was posting or leaving up on the site. As a result, on countless occasions Viacom demanded the removal of clips that it had uploaded to YouTube, only to return later to sheepishly ask for their reinstatement. In fact, some of the very clips that Viacom is suing us over were actually uploaded by Viacom itself.

Astounding hypocrisy.

‘No Dashes or Spaces’ Hall of Shame ★

Calling out sites that force you to enter, say, credit card numbers, in a precise format, even though removing things like spaces and dashes is programmatically trivial. (Via Sarah Harrison.)

Dial Zero ★

Free iPhone app (also available for Android and BlackBerry) that, like the aforelinked web site, offers a database of instructions for getting a human customer service representative from a list of over 600 companies.

Storing Your Yojimbo Library on Dropbox ★

In my piece on backups earlier this week, I mentioned that I wasn’t storing my Yojimbo library on Dropbox. A bunch of Yojimbo users emailed me to tell me you can do it, and you can even use it for syncing a shared Yojimbo library between multiple Macs — if you’re careful never to run Yojimbo from more than a single Mac at a time. I don’t like having to be careful, so, personally, I wouldn’t use Dropbox with Yojimbo for syncing — but it’s worth noting that Yojimbo attempts to detect this situation, where you’ve left it running on machine A and launched it on machine B, and warns you accordingly.

However, in my case, I only ever access Yojimbo from one machine. I want to use Dropbox to store my database for off-site storage and backup. And, indeed, it seems to work just fine. You move your ~/Library/Application Support/Yojimbo/ folder inside your Dropbox folder, then create a symlink in ~/Library/Application Support/ pointing to the new location. (You have to use a symlink; an alias won’t work.)

Kindle for Mac ★

Nice to be able to read Kindle e-books on another class of machine, but this is a very un-Mac-like Mac app. Look at these dialog boxes here and here, for example. The icon is, to my eyes, the exact same as the iPhone Kindle app. The name of the app is “Kindle for Mac”, rather than just “Kindle”.

The reading experience isn’t too bad, but the type rendering is smudgy (it’s certainly not using Mac OS X’s built-in type rendering) and you can’t select text. Even worse: you can’t search. You’d be better off with scanned images of the print versions of books, because at least then you’d get high quality typesetting. In short, this is better than no Mac Kindle client at all, but it feels very junky. If Apple comes out with a Mac iBooks client, it’s going to blow this away.

Apple Homepage Tribute to Jerry York ★

Nice gesture.

Sebastiaan de With’s New Interarchy Icons ★

Looking good.

Apple Director Jerry York Dies at 71 ★

Apple:

“Jerry joined Apple’s Board in 1997 when most doubted the company’s future. He has been a pillar of financial and business expertise and insight on our Board for over a dozen years,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “It’s been a privilege to know and work with Jerry, and I’m going to miss him a lot.”

He was reportedly hospitalized for a stroke yesterday.

In Defense of Deficits ★

James K. Galbraith, writing in The Nation:

And this, in the simplest terms, explains the deficit phobia of Wall Street, the corporate media and the right-wing economists. Bankers don’t like budget deficits because they compete with bank loans as a source of growth.

(Via Aaron Swartz.)

‘Chat Roulette’ ★

A movie by Casey Neistat.

CapSee 1.2 ★

Free Mac utility that pops up an on-screen notification bezel when you invoke Caps Lock.

Dave Pell’s Head Is in the Cloud ★

Dave Pell:

Before heading to the emergency room, I climbed into the back of the ambulance where I asked her if she wanted me to call her boyfriend. She said she did, but she didn’t know his telephone number. It was lost along with her now obliterated cell phone, and she had never committed the number to memory.

GetHuman ★

How to get a real human on the phone from big companies. (Via Craig Mod.)

MoviePeg ★

Clever iPhone stand, perfect for propping up an iPhone to watch video. Got one at SXSW (black, of course) from Brendan Dawes of MagneticNorth; it has a great feel to it. (Currently shipping from the U.K., so you might want to order a couple for friends if you’re shipping to the U.S. to make it worthwhile.)

Wednesday, 17 Mar 2010

Windows Phone 7 to Ship Without Copy and Paste ★

Chris Ziegler:

Microsoft just mentioned in a Q&A session here at MIX10 in no uncertain terms that clipboard operations won’t be supported on Windows Phone 7 Series.

Catching up is hard. And based on what I’m hearing about iPhone OS 4.0, it seems likely that Windows Phone 7 is going to fall further behind before it even gets a chance to ship.

The Movie Studios’ Big 3D Scam ★

Excellent critique from Alexander Murphy (pseudonymous Hollywood visual effects supervisor) explaining what’s wrong about all the recent 3D live action films other than Avatar — they were made “3D” in post-production rather than being shot in true 3D with dual cameras. I didn’t even like Up in 3D, which wasn’t live action. The one and only 3D theatrical film I’ve ever seen where the 3D made the experience better rather than worse was Avatar. (Some of the 3D attractions at Disney World are good, too.)

Another Backup Lecture ★

Great tip from Merlin Mann on off-site rotation:

Peg your off-site rotation to a date-certain (like how you probably changed the 9-volt in your smoke alarm for Daylight Savings Time yesterday). I do my rotations within the first five days of each new month. So, yes, do automate the creation of backups, but then also do the physical rotation like you’d pay your mortgage. On time and without fail.

If there’s a weakness in my own system, it’s that I don’t do this often enough. I like the idea of doing it on the first of the month.

Respectfully Yours, Clint Eastwood ★

Speaking of Clint Eastwood, Letters of Note has a letter he wrote to Billy Wilder in 1954.

‘Evening Walk’ ★

Speaking of The New Yorker, this week’s issue sports another cover painting by Jorge Colombo, made on his iPhone using Brushes. I wonder whether this will be the last one he makes on an iPhone rather than an iPad.

The Movies of Clint Eastwood ★

Fascinating New Yorker essay by David Denby on the career of Clint Eastwood.

iLounge: Apple Removes Protective Screen Film From Its Retail and Online Stores ★

iLounge:

In communications with vendors that have been ongoing for “some time now,” according to one company, Apple has said that it will remove both film-only solutions from its stores, as well as any case or other accessory that includes film protection as part of its package, such as cases that include film screen protectors.

Odd.

Update: Here’s an interesting comment on the iLounge piece:

I’m an Apple Retail employee who has applied roughly a million of these films. A couple months ago, it became our policy not to help apply them, because they’re so difficult to get perfect and it became a liability issue (“There’s a speck of dust, give me a new one free.”). Unless you’re in a vacuum, there’s a chance of picking up dust between opening the package and putting the film down.

Thinking about this some more, I think it’s about avoiding the suggestion that you should use such a film/protector thing. I.e. that if Apple is selling them, some number of iPhone/iPod buyers assume they ought to buy one. Whereas I think the iPhone is very much designed to be used as-is — no case, no film. The 3GS oleophobic-coated screen feels just perfect.

Microsoft Promises HTML5 Video Support in IE9 ★

HTML5 marches ever forward:

The presence of MP3 and AAC audio support in the browser preview, and the promise of MPEG-4 and H.264 video support in the final version of IE9, raise the question of what role Flash and Silverlight, which are commonly used to handle these functions, will play in IE9. Hachamovitch did not comment on this, but pointed out that with IE9’s video, audio and SVG capabilities, “you have an HTML 5 browser that does audio and video without plugins”.

No canvas support in IE9, though. (Yet?) And, if you’re keeping score on codec support in major browsers, IE joins Safari and Chrome in supporting H.264 for video; Firefox, Opera, and Chrome support Ogg Theora.

I wonder whether Adobe expected Microsoft to support HTML5 video in IE9.

Articles — Wikipedia iPhone App From Sophiestication ★

There are a bunch of dedicated Wikipedia iPhone apps, and there are several I like. But I like Articles, a brand new $3 app by Sophia Teutschler, best. It’s fast, it looks great (including the formatting of articles), and it has a very clever MobileSafari-inspired UI.

John Cassidy on the Lehman Report ★

John Cassidy:

Until now, my answer to the first question has been that while much of what the bankers did was reprehensible, it was perfectly legal. I still think this is the case—in finance, it is often the case that the biggest scandal is what you can get away with within the law—but the Valukas report raises the possibility that I was wrong, and that the big Wall Street firms were engaged in Enron-style accounting fraud.

Tuesday, 16 Mar 2010

Canon Announces ‘.canon’ Top-Level Domain Name ★

I wonder how many other companies are going to do this.

The Interarchy Fire Sale ★

Speaking of Nolobe, they’re holding a “fire sale” on their excellent file transfer app Interarchy — through Monday it’s on sale for just $20, including a free upgrade to the upcoming Interarchy 10. And a slew of other indie Mac developers — Flying Meat, Red Sweater, Atebits, Stairways, and The Little App Factory — are participating with a 20 percent discount code (“FIRESALE10”).

Iris Is Dead; Long Live Acorn ★

Matthew Drayton of Nolobe:

Back in 2007 when we started on work on Iris there were no easy-to-use, reasonably priced image editors available for the Mac. If you wanted to edit images you had to get Photoshop, an expensive and confusing proposition for the average user.

Fast forward to today and there are 4 reasonably priced image editors available. They are all pretty good. One in particular, Acorn by Flying Meat Software, is excellent. Simply put if Acorn had existed back in 2007 we would never have started work on Iris.

The bad news: Nolobe is suspending development of Iris. The good news: existing Nolobe users get a free upgrade to Acorn. Very cool.

The Truth About Karl Rove’s ‘Courage and Consequence: My Life as a Conservative in the Fight’ ★

Pitch-perfect parody of the political attack ad, from 37signals and Steve Delahoyde at Coudal Partners.

AT&T’s Success at SXSW This Year ★

I said I’d believe when I saw it, and I’m delighted to report that AT&T’s 3G network was simply stellar at SXSW all weekend long — this, in contrast to last year, when it was pretty much worthless all weekend long. It’s worth noting, too, that SXSW Interactive attendance was way up once again this year, and, as far as I could tell, just about every single attendee was using an iPhone 3G or 3GS. Kudos to AT&T.

Apple Delays Ship Dates for Some iPad Accessories ★

The keyboard dock is now slated to ship in May, and the case is shipping in “mid-April”. I think this is for new orders, though — when I checked my account just now at Apple’s web site, the case I ordered on Friday is still slated to be delivered on April 3.

Day 74 Sales: Apple iPhone vs. Google Nexus One vs. Motorola Droid ★

Flurry — a mobile app analytics company — has published a comparison showing estimated sales over the first 74 days they were on sale:

Inspecting the graph, it’s immediately clear that Nexus One sales continue to pale in comparison to iPhone 1G and Motorola Droid, with each besting Nexus One sales by roughly 8 times over the same time period.

At the same time, an interesting side-story is that the Motorola Droid edged out iPhone 1G over the first 74 days, coming in at just over one million sold through, by our calculations. This was surprising enough that we re-ran our estimates several times and still came up with the same results.

I don’t think Google ever intended the Nexus One to be a high-selling device; it’s pretty clear from Apple’s experiments with iPhone pricing that subsidized pricing drives sales. But still: if they’ve only sold 135K to date, that means they’ve sold fewer over 74 days than Apple has sold iPad pre-orders over the weekend.

As for the surprise of the Droid outselling the original iPhone over their first 74 days, keep in mind that the iPhone was effectively unavailable for 21 of its first 74 days on sale. Still, though, it goes to show how important Verizon is.

Estimated iPad Pre-Orders Over the Weekend: 150,000 ★

Daniel Tello, a.k.a. “Deagol”, built a model to estimate iPad pre-orders based on order numbers submitted by volunteers throughout the weekend. It’s inexact, of course, but my money says these numbers are solid. And it’s worth emphasizing that these numbers do not include iPads that have been reserved for pickup at a retail Apple Store.

Keep in mind too, that this is for a machine that almost no one has seen, let alone used, in person.

WSJ: Ten Percent of Microsoft Employees Use an iPhone ★

Nick Wingfield, reporting for the WSJ:

Nearly 10,000 iPhone users were accessing the Microsoft employee email system last year, say two people who heard the estimates from senior Microsoft executives. That figure equals about 10% of the company’s global work force.

Employees at Apple, in contrast, appear to be more devoted to the company’s own mobile phone. Several people who work at the company or deal regularly with employees there say they can’t recall seeing Apple workers with mobile phones other than the iPhone in recent memory. […]

One Microsoft worker said he knows several colleagues who try to disguise their iPhones with cases that make them look more like generic handsets. “Maybe once a year I’m in a meeting with Steve Ballmer,” said this employee. “It doesn’t matter who’s calling, I’m not answering my phone.”

It’s a schadenfreude-alicious nugget of information, sure. But it’s a telling indication of just how strong the iPhone is versus Windows Mobile. (Via Eric Slivka.)

Google Announces Nexus One With AT&T-Flavored 3G ★

Google:

Starting today, an additional version of the Nexus One is available from the Google web store that is compatible with AT&T’s 3G network. This new model can be purchased as an unlocked device without a service plan. In addition to AT&T’s 3G network, this device will also run on Rogers Wireless in Canada. And like the first version of the Nexus One, it can be used with most GSM operators globally.

Jeffrey Zeldman on IE9 and Microsoft’s ‘Enforced Bragging’ ★

Astute as always, especially with regard to the what-if scenario of Microsoft switching to WebKit.

Monday, 15 Mar 2010

Paul Kafasis Reviews the My.SXSW iPhone App ★

“To put it delicately, the app has some issues.”

Curious Word Choice ★

From a big piece in the New York Times by Brad Stone and Miguel Helft:

One of these employees said Mr. Jobs returned to the topic of Google several times in the session and even disparaged its slogan “Don’t be evil” with an expletive, which drew thunderous applause from his underlings.

“Underlings”?

Microsoft’s App Store Will Be the Only Way to Get Apps on Windows Phone 7 ★

Least surprising announcement ever.

Tim Bray Joins Google ★

Tim Bray, on joining Google as a “developer advocate”, specifically relishing the competition between Android and iPhone:

The iPhone vision of the mobile Internet’s future omits controversy, sex, and freedom, but includes strict limits on who can know what and who can say what. It’s a sterile Disney-fied walled garden surrounded by sharp-toothed lawyers. The people who create the apps serve at the landlord’s pleasure and fear his anger.

I hate it.

This is, indeed, the core difference between Android and iPhone: Apple’s tight control over native apps. I think it’s incorrect to call it Apple’s “vision of the mobile Internet’s future”, though. Native apps are not the Internet.

Later on, Bray writes:

I’m going to have to get savvier about HTML5-based applications, because a lot of smart people think the future’s there, that the “native app” notion will soon seem quaint.

What’s interesting here is that the iPhone is a better system for HTML5 mobile apps than Android. For all the attention Apple is getting regarding the tight control it maintains over native iPhone apps, I think what they’ve done to enable native-like mobile web apps — with no control — is mostly ignored.

Google’s Trademark Application for ‘Nexus One’ Refused ★

Huh:

The refusal has been issued on the grounds that the mark could conflict with an existing NEXUS trademark (3554195) granted on December 30, 2008 to Integra Telecom under the same class with a description which includes the provision of telecommunication services and the transmission of voice and data.

New Phones Still Sold With Old Versions of Android ★

Priya Ganapati:

At the store, Roark had never been told that his HTC Eris has Android 1.5, nicknamed “Cupcake.” Until told by a reporter, he had no idea what features he’s missing as a result. For instance, free turn-by-turn navigation is available in the latest version, Android 2.1 (”Eclair”), but is only available to Cupcake users for $10 a month from Verizon.

Saturday, 13 Mar 2010

Oh, James ★: Classic and new James Bond posters.
Sourcebits ★: My thanks to Sourcebits for sponsoring this week’s DF RSS feed. Sourcebits is a contract developer specializing in iPhone, mobile, Mac, and Web software. Their iPhone apps have been downloaded over 4.5 million times from the App Store, and they have a growing list of Android and BlackBerry apps, too. If you’re looking for software development services, check out Sourcebits’s web site for examples of their work, such as DailyDeeds, a new iPhone app they just launched this week.

Friday, 12 Mar 2010

Overdoing the Interface Metaphor ★

Chris Clark:

iPad apps have a high visual fidelity to real-world objects but retain the sensible interaction design one would expect from Apple. iBooks doesn’t force you to swipe its pages side-to-side; you tap on a page to advance to the next one, and the page-turning animation is done in a fraction of a second.

That’s in response to this fine post from Marco Arment, which makes some strong points regarding the design of calculator apps. Marco is in love with Soulver, a $19 Mac calculator I don’t recall seeing before, which indeed looks quite clever.

Andy Ihnatko’s Morning Purchases ★

Andy Ihnatko:

Between the hours of 8:30 and 8:45 this morning, I bought two things:

Breakfast, consisting of a wheat bagel and a Diet Coke. Purchase price: $1.74.

An iPad. Which cost me more than the breakfast.

New Information From Apple on iPad 3G Usage ★