The Daring Fireball Linked List

Tuesday, 29 May 2012

Macworld’s Live Coverage of Tim Cook at Some Conference ★

Live coverage from The Verge and MacRumors, too.

Best line from Cook: “We’re going to double down on secrecy on products.”

David Pierce Reviews Samsung’s New Chrome OS Devices for The Verge ★

I still think the same thing about Chrome OS as I did a year ago: “Chrome feels so much more Google-y than Android. Chrome feels like Google’s natural platform — all web, only the web. Android feels like an independent Google subsidiary.”

Decoding Share Prices: Amazon, Apple, and Facebook ★

Jean-Louis Gassée analyzes the stock prices of Apple and Amazon (and Facebook):

Why do they think Apple has so much less room to grow than Amazon?

First, a big difference: Apple’s founder is no longer with us while Bezos is very much in command. This is no criticism of Tim Cook, Apple’s new CEO. A long-time Jobs lieutenant, the architect of Apple’s supremely effective Supply Chain, a soberly determined man, well liked, respected and healthily feared inside the company, Tim Cook is eminently credible. But traders are cautious; they want to see if the Cook regime will be as innovative, as uncompromisingly focused on style and substance as before.

I agree that investors are taking a wait-and-see approach to Tim Cook as CEO, but, I think overall, the Jobs-to-Cook succession has been a good thing for Apple’s share price. Investors dislike uncertainty and Steve Jobs’s health had been a source of uncertainty for years. Steve Jobs’s value had been drained from Apple’s share price years ago. Apple has reported great numbers so far under Cook, but they’re not that different than the numbers Apple has been reporting quarter-after-quarter for years now. I think one of the biggest reasons Apple’s share price has gone up under Cook is that there were so many investors who truly worried that Apple would fall apart without Steve Jobs.

‘Clearly This Stuff Isn’t Selling’ ★

Hugo Miller reports for Bloomberg that RIM faces another huge writedown for unsold inventory:

The value of RIM’s in-house supplies grew 18 percent last quarter alone, a faster rate than at any other company in the industry, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. And that doesn’t include the BlackBerrys gathering dust at RIM’s carriers and retail partners. Apple Inc., meanwhile, saw its inventory decline 11 percent in the period from the previous three months.

Sunday, 27 May 2012

Latest Identity Theft Scam: Fake Tax Returns ★: Clever and insidious.

Friday, 25 May 2012

DF T-Shirts, Order While They’re Hot ★

I’m still taking orders for this round of DF T-shirts through the end of the weekend, including the popular new “black helmet” model:

They won’t be available again until the end of the year. Thanks to everyone who’s ordered already.

Bronson Watermarker ★

My thanks to Quote-Unquote Apps for sponsoring this week’s DF RSS feed to promote Bronson Watermarker, their terrifically simple Mac utility for creating personalized PDFs and images. Easy one-click interface. Only $10 in the Mac App Store. And they have a free demo.

Tim Cook Gives Up $75 Million in Dividend Income ★

Poornima Gupta, reporting for Reuters:

Apple Inc. Chief Executive Tim Cook will not be earning dividend income on the more than 1 million shares to which he is entitled, which will cost him about $75 million. Apple said in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday that Cook had asked to be excluded from a recently instituted company program through which employees can accumulate dividends on their restricted stock units that are still vesting.

Asked why Cook was doing this, Apple declined to comment beyond the filing.

One can only presume he did this to avoid any suggestion that he instituted the dividend to enrich himself personally.

Fortune’s Schlocky Tim Cook Cover ★

Speaking of the Tim Cook story by Adam Lashinsky — Fortune’s cover “photo” is just embarrassingly bad. I put “photo” in quotes because it’s so Photoshopped it’s more illustration than photograph. Neither Apple nor Cook himself participated in Lashinsky’s article, and if Cook didn’t even talk to him, then he certainly wasn’t going to pose for a cover shoot. I sympathize with the dilemma this posed for Fortune’s editors. But they should have commissioned an actual illustration or used a photo of Cook on stage at a recent product announcement.

What they came up with — cropping Cook’s head from the photo on his bio page at Apple.com, and putting it on someone else’s body in a contrived pose — isn’t just goofy-looking, but I’d say downright disingenuous. To the casual observer, it looks like a cover photo that Cook posed for, when in fact he didn’t participate in any aspect of the story.

Adam Lashinsky: ‘How Tim Cook Is Changing Apple’ ★

Cover story for the new issue of Fortune magazine. Good piece in many ways, backed by what was obviously a lot of reporting on Lashinsky’s part. But he’s straining to emphasize differences that just aren’t there. The more different he paints Apple under Cook, the more sensational the story. I’m certainly not arguing that nothing has changed at Apple, but the big picture is very little has changed. This is the closest Lashinsky gets to actual evidence that things have changed significantly:

If anything, Apple under Tim Cook will embrace efficiency to an even greater degree, especially as the company grows bigger and more complex — to the dismay of those who think techies should rule the roost. “It looks like it has become a more conservative execution engine rather than a pushing-the-envelope engineering engine,” says Max Paley, a former engineering vice president who worked at Apple for 14 years until late 2011. “I’ve been told that any meeting of significance is now always populated by project management and global-supply management,” he says. “When I was there, engineering decided what we wanted, and it was the job of product management and supply management to go get it. It shows a shift in priority.”

It might also simply be the result of the shift in scale at which Apple is operating today. They sold 35 million iPhones and 12 million iPads last quarter. Is it not inevitable that global-supply management would grow in importance and influence with numbers like that? The question to ask is whether these changes are because of the differences between Tim Cook and Steve, or the differences in the size and scope of Apple’s business a decade ago versus today.

I don’t think any of the changes Lashinsky describes would be any different if Steve Jobs were still alive and at the helm (with the possible exception of the stock dividend and buy-back, which don’t pertain to the company’s culture and processes).

Apple’s Legal Response to DOJ E-Book Case (PDF) ★

Apple:

The Government sides with monopoly, rather than competition, in bringing this case. The Government starts from the false premise that an eBooks “market” was characterized by “robust price competition” prior to Apple’s entry. This ignores a simple and incontrovertible fact: before 2010, there was no real competition, there was only Amazon. At the time Apple entered the market, Amazon sold nearly nine out of every ten eBooks, and its power over price and product selection was nearly absolute. Apple’s entry spurred tremendous growth in eBook titles, range and variety of offerings, sales, and improved quality of the eBook reading experience. This is evidence of a dynamic, competitive market. These inconvenient facts are ignored in the Complaint. Instead, the Government focuses on increased prices for a handful of titles. The Complaint does not allege that all eBook prices, or even most eBook prices, increased after Apple entered the market.

As usual from Apple, plain straightforward language, and few minced words. (Via Jacqui Cheng at Ars Technica.)

Computers as Trucks ★

John Lilly:

I picked up a phrase some time ago that I think applies: “The next big thing is always beneath contempt.” Implication being that it is, of course, until it isn’t. Until it’s too big to ignore. This has happened over and over again in our society. In the middle ages, people assumed that no serious discussion could happen in anything but Latin — the so-called “vulgar” languages had no merit. And writers assumed that nothing interesting or lasting would come from this new medium of television. And, I think, people assume right now that nothing important will be created from a 10-inch touch screen without a keyboard (let alone a tiny 3.5-inch screen).

(Via MG Siegler.)

Facebook Camera vs. Instagram ★

What I think happened: It was clear soon after Instagram launched that it was a hit, and Facebook was savvy enough to realize that an integral part of Instagram’s appeal was that it came in the form of a well-designed, well-engineered native iPhone app. Not just Instagram, either — I think Zuckerberg saw that for mobile, the HTML/CSS/JavaScript web is not enough. Native apps are essential, thus the talent acquisitions of superstar outfits like Sofa and Push Pop Press. I bet Facebook has more native mobile apps on the way.

So the Sofa team got to Facebook a little under a year ago, and I’m guessing, soon started work on Facebook Camera. A year ago, building a Facebook version of Instagram sounded like a good plan. “We should have an app like Instagram for taking and sharing photos on our social network”, more or less. But after another year of growth, I think Mark Zuckerberg saw that an app was not enough. Instagram’s own fast-growing social network was a threat. That their own well-made, well-designed Instagram-like app was on the cusp of release made no difference.

Yahoo had a chance to buy Google in 2001 but then-CEO Terry Semel didn’t pull the trigger. I don’t think Instagram is the next Google, but Zuckerberg sure as shit doesn’t want Facebook to be the next Yahoo.

‘Dare I Say, Kubrick?’ ★

This week’s episode of The Talk Show:

Special guest Adam Lisagor joins John Gruber to discuss the whole thing with the show leaving 5by5, spitball ideas Apple might add to iOS 6 and iCloud, and gush over the trailer for Paul Thomas Anderson’s upcoming film, The Master.

Brought to you by Bare Bones Software’s BBEdit 10, the professional HTML and text editor for the Mac; and Red Sweater Software’s MarsEdit, the premier desktop blog editor for the Mac.

Jim Dalrymple on the 7-Inch iPad ★

Jim Dalrymple:

Analysts and media types insist that Apple needs to bring a smaller tablet to market to ward off the threat from Amazon.

There are a couple of things to consider with this argument. First, people that use that as the basis for the release of a 7-inch iPad are full of shit. Second, using that argument shows they don’t understand Apple and how the company works.

Three Things That Should Trouble Apple ★

Guy English:

I believe that many Apple observers have been too invested in picking off the low hanging fruit of obviously out-of-touch commentators, columnists, and analysts. Apple is winning. It’s fun to pick on the idiots, and we do tune in for the affirmation that engenders, but that’s not insight. It’s a tag team wedgie patrol. It takes a clever intellect to dismantle bullshit but, ultimately, it often just ends up with pantsing the dumb guy. Rather than doing that let’s aim to pants the A-grade quarterback.

Here are the top three problems I believe Apple faces in the near term.

Great piece, with much to ponder. I wish I’d written this first. Perhaps I would have if I weren’t guilty as charged, spending too much time dismantling bullshit.

I Can’t Believe I’m Putting the Word ‘Phablet’ on DF, Even if Only in a Blockquote ★

ABI Research:

More than 208 million phablets, a hybrid device that is larger than a smartphone but smaller than a tablet, like the Samsung Galaxy Note, will be shipped globally in 2015.

I prefer the term “big-ass phones”. Anyway, noted for future claim chowder.

AirFloat ★

Another iOS app that acted as an AirPlay receiver, and, like Airfoil Speakers Touch, it was removed from the App Store recently.

‘Inexpensive’ ★

Al Jigong Billings, regarding my short piece earlier on Woz’s 1977 description of the Apple II:

I think @gruber misunderstands “inexpensive” since MacBooks cost double [those of its] competition.

Let’s put aside arguments about whether Macs are, today, price competitive against similarly-equipped PCs. I’ll just point out that it’s no coincidence that Apple’s Mac business has thrived financially as the prices have gone lower. You can get a MacBook Air for $999 — that’s pretty amazing in the context of historical MacBook/PowerBook pricing.

Woz wrote, “To me, a personal computer should be small, reliable, convenient to use and inexpensive.” He wrote that in 1977 about a very different machine, but that’s a perfect description of the iPad.

The Verge: HP’s WebOS Enyo Team Is Going to Google ★

Nice scoop by Chris Ziegler at The Verge:

The HP team responsible for Enyo — webOS’s HTML5-based application framework that debuted on the TouchPad — will be leaving the company and starting at Google shortly, The Verge has learned. What this means for the future of Open webOS is unclear; Enyo and the developers supporting it are central to HP’s open source strategy for the operating system going forward, and it’s hard to say whether this move will have any effect on the planned late 2012 release for version 1.0.

Thursday, 24 May 2012

Woz’s 1977 Description of the Apple II for Byte Magazine ★

Woz:

To me, a personal computer should be small, reliable, convenient to use and inexpensive.

Talk about a company that has stayed true to its roots.

Update: Don’t miss the PDF scan of the original magazine article.

‘Life’ ★

Speaking of those celebrities-using-Siri ads, Apple just posted two new ones, both starring John Malkovich. (Via TUAW.)

‘Put Tickets Botulinum’ ★

Speaking of Paul Kafasis, he decided to try to duplicate Sam Jackson’s “remind me to put the gazpacho on ice in an hour” Siri directive:

If you’ve used Siri yourself, however, you know the disclaimer of “Sequences shortened” is more than an understatement. They’ve edited out the inevitable “No.…NO.…NO!” as well as significant quantities of exasperated sighs. After hearing Jackson say the word “hotspacho” for the umpteenth time, I decided to run a little test.

App Store Removal of the Week ★

Rogue Amoeba’s Paul Kafasis:

Last month, we introduced Airfoil Speakers Touch 3, which added the ability to receive audio directly from other iOS devices, as well as iTunes. Users and reviewers alike have loved Airfoil Speakers Touch, particularly the new version. For our part, we’ve been thrilled to be able to provide this much-desired functionality.

Today, we’ve been informed that Apple has removed Airfoil Speakers Touch from the iOS App Store. We first heard from Apple about this decision two days ago, and we’ve been discussing the pending removal with them since then. However, we still do not yet have a clear answer on why Apple has chosen to remove Airfoil Speakers Touch. Needless to say, we’re quite disappointed with their decision, and we’re working hard to once again make the application available for you, our users.

As far as we can tell, Airfoil Speakers Touch is in full compliance with Apple’s posted rules and developer agreements.

However cruddy it is to have an app rejected during the review process, it’s worse to have it yanked from the store after it had been approved. Rogue Amoeba’s been promoting this new version to users for a month now.

I can’t imagine what Apple would object to with this app, or why they wouldn’t provide Rogue Amoeba with a precise explanation before removing the app.

Update: I just posted a brief follow-up after some interesting back-and-forth with a few informed sources. In short: I think this is not as mysterious or capricious as I first thought.

Wednesday, 23 May 2012

Microsoft to Bake Flash Player Into IE 10? ★

Windows 8 Secrets:

Two years ago, Microsoft declared that the future of video on the web would be powered by HTML 5. Today, however, a lot of web video content is still delivered via Adobe Flash technology. So, in a somewhat surprising move, Microsoft is integrating Flash directly into Internet Explorer 10 on Windows 8 and doing so in a way that does not undermine the safety and reliability of the Metro environment.

Skating to where the puck is now, rather than where it’s going to be.

Seagate to Buy LaCie ★

Seems like a good pairing — I’ve purchased an awful lot of LaCie enclosures with Seagate hard drives over the years. But it occurs to me that I don’t think or worry about storage devices anywhere near as much as I used to. (Via Peter Cohen.)

Tuesday, 22 May 2012

Ford Gets Its Logo Out of Hock ★

Speaking of logos:

In 2006, Ford pledged its famous logo, along with virtually all of its U.S. assets, as collateral to secure a $23.5 billion loan to restructure its ailing business. At the time, Ford was criticized for betting the company, including all its factories and other trademarks like Mustang and F-150, to take on more debt, but the loan ended up being Ford’s savior, providing an important cushion that allowed it to escape bankruptcy a few years later, unlike General Motors and Chrysler Group.

Under terms of the loan, all collateral would be released when two of the three major credit rating agencies restored Ford’s debt rating to investment grade. Standard & Poor’s upped its rating on Ford a few weeks ago. Today, Moody’s did the same, raising Ford’s senior unsecured ratings to Baa3 from Ba2 and Ford Credit to Baa3 from Ba1.

Sure hope I never have to hock #4a525a.

The Upside Down Apple Logo ★

Former Apple employee Joe Moreno, on the switched orientation of the Apple logo on Mac laptops a dozen years ago:

Opening a laptop from the wrong end is a self-correcting problem that only lasts for a few seconds. However, viewing the upside logo is a problem that lasts indefinitely.

I remember this change being surprisingly controversial. It wasn’t about being confused how to open the laptop, but about to whom the Apple logo should look “right” — you, the user and owner of the machine, or everyone else while you’re using it. Today, this seems to be a settled debate. Does any laptop maker still orient their logo the other way?

Update: Lenovo ThinkPads, for one, still orient the logos the other way. As for which way is “right”, Daniel Jalkut has a good analogy.

This Week, in Ketchup-Bottle Technology News ★

Austin Carr, writing for Fast Company:

The result? LiquiGlide, a “super slippery” coating made up of nontoxic materials that can be applied to all sorts of food packaging — though ketchup and mayonnaise bottles might just be the substance’s first targets. Condiments may sound like a narrow focus for a group of MIT engineers, but not when you consider the impact it could have on food waste and the packaging industry. “It’s funny: Everyone is always like, ‘Why bottles? What’s the big deal?’ But then you tell them the market for bottles — just the sauces alone is a $17 billion market,” Smith says. “And if all those bottles had our coating, we estimate that we could save about one million tons of food from being thrown out every year.”

Really is a little freaky.

Jury Flummoxed Over Google-Oracle Patent Fight ★

Caleb Garling, reporting for Wired:

Basically, the ’104 patent covers a way of improving the software compilation — the process of translating programming code into an executable application. The method described uses “symbolic references” to identify data during compilation rather than numeric memory locations. Oracle argues that Dalvik uses symbolic references, but Google says it doesn’t.

The jury has been deliberating over the claims for a week now, and on Tuesday, it had two more questions for the court, and both were related to the nuances of “symbolic references” and how they apply to data retrieval.

How could a randomly-selected jury possibly decide this? No knock intended against the jurors themselves — and it sounds like they’re doing their best to make an informed decision. But there’s a difference between a jury of your citizen peers and a jury of your technical peers.

‘Alternative Mobile Computing Devices’ ★

Dell CFO Brian Gladden, after the company reported another disappointing quarter:

Our notebook business contracted 10% as we saw a more aggressive competitive environment particularly in the entry level and emerging markets. We believe some of the tougher competitive environment can be attributed to channel inventory rebuilding, following the hard disk issues of the past two quarters. In addition, we are seeing more consumer spending diverted to alternative mobile computing devices.

Dell’s market cap closed today at $26+ billion.

Hard to believe this was just six years ago.

New Google Doodle Uses Web Audio API ★

Web audio: the post-Flash web frontier. I can’t stop playing with this thing, so fun.

Andy Baio’s XOXO Festival ★

Looks like a great event. I’m fascinated to see how Kickstarter does for pre-selling conference tickets. In my mind, Kickstarter feels ideally suited for this — but Kickstarter often surprises me.

Why Dan Ackerman Thinks a Retina Display on a MacBook Could Be a Bad Idea ★

Speaking of Apple and retina displays, Dan Ackerman:

For example, today I could easily tell someone shopping for a laptop that a good sweet spot to look for in a premium 13-inch laptop is a screen resolution of 1600 × 900 pixels. In the future, would I have to suggest 1600 × 900 if a laptop is from one list of PC makers with one type of DPI technology, and a second set of recommended resolutions for brands that use different DPI settings? Good luck fitting all that on the shelf tag at a brick-and-mortar retailer.

I can’t tell if this is a joke, parodying the antiquated specs-driven process of buying a Wintel PC, or if Ackerman really has zero clue about how Apple works, and why people buy Apple products.

Here’s how Apple will sell retina display MacBooks: by telling us and showing us that they’re jaw-droppingly beautiful. That’s it.

THX1136 ★

Big scoop by 9to5 Mac:

Both of these phones sport a new, larger display that is 3.95 inches diagonally. Apple will not just increase the size of the display and leave the current resolution, but will actually be adding pixels to the display. The new iPhone display resolution will be 640 × 1136. That’s an extra 176 pixels longer of a display. The screen will be the same 1.94 inches wide, but will grow to 3.45 inches tall. This new resolution is very close to a 16:9 screen ratio, so this means that 16:9 videos can play full screen at their native aspect ratio.

We’ve also heard that Apple will be taking full advantage of their new pixels. Apple is currently testing builds of iOS 6 that are custom-built to the new iPhone’s display. These builds include a tweaked home screen with a fifth row of icons (besides the stationary app dock) and extended application user interfaces that offer views of more content. Apple is able to pull this off with the same sharpness as the current iPhone Retina Display because of the additional pixels.

What I’ve heard from a couple of little birdies is only that Apple has been noodling with increasing the height of the display, keeping the width and pixel density exactly the same as on the iPhone 4 and 4S. I had not heard an exact pixel number for the new height. 1152 made some sense, but doing some math after reading Weintraub’s report, 1136 makes a lot of sense.

First, at 1136 × 640, you get a diagonal of 1,303.877 pixels after applying the Pythagorean theorem. There are no such thing as fractional pixels, but what I’m talking about here are pixels as a unit of length, equal to 1/326 inch. Divide 1,303.877 by 326 and you get 3.9996 inches. Boom, a “4-inch” display. I’m sure if Apple instead went to 1152 pixels in height — which works out to 4.042 inches — they’d still just call it a “4-inch” display, for the sake of neatness, but it’s at least somewhat interesting that 1136 is the closest they could get to precisely 4.0 inches.

Second, aspect ratio. With a 640-pixel width — which everything I have heard and seen reported suggests is set in stone — there is no way get to precisely 16:9:

(16/9) × 640 = 1,137.777…

You can’t cut seven-ninths of a pixel. 1138 × 640 would be a tad closer to 16:9, but 1136 × 640 is within five-thousandths of an inch of exactly 16:9. So I think Apple would be safe to bill an 1136 × 640 display as sporting a 16:9 aspect ratio.

Update: 1136 × 639 would be exactly 16:9. One pixel away.

‘Pete Rose: Here Now’ ★

Heartbreaking 8-minute short film on Pete Rose’s day to day life, selling autographs and baseball memorabilia. Directed by Eric Drath and produced by ESPN Films.

Monday, 21 May 2012

Oh Yeah, Coda 2 Is Shipping Later This Week, Too ★

Really curious how these new visual, resizable, scrollable tabs play out. I would love to see how they worked in Safari, for one thing. My money says Panic just redefined the de facto standard UI for tabbed documents on the Mac.

But maybe I’m underestimating how garish or cluttered these thumbnail-style tabs would look in a web browser?

Update: A few readers have pointed to OmniWeb’s visual/thumbnail tabs as a good example of prior art. OmniWeb’s are in a drawer, arranged vertically, but much of what I like about Coda’s new tabs are the same things I have long liked about OmniWeb’s — you can identify them by what they look like. Can’t wait to see if this design takes root.

Diet Coda ★

Blockbuster new iPad app from Panic:

Diet Coda takes everything we’ve ever learned about world-class web code editing, and wraps it up to-go. It’s packed with features, bathed in fun, ready to work.

I’ve been beta-testing Diet Coda for a while, and it’s a hell of an app. I’m retiring the old “iPad is only for consumption” sarcastic schtick because at this point, it’s such utter nonsense. But forget the features and capabilities and touch-based UI design for the moment, and let’s just celebrate what, to me, is the best name for an iPad app ever.

Creating the Windows 8 User Experience ★

At over 11,000 words, it’s more like a small book than an article, but there’s fascinating insight into Microsoft’s design thinking in this piece by Jensen Harris, their lead UI designer.

Their top two design goals are, I think, shared with Apple:

“#1 Fast and Fluid”

Fast and fluid represents a few core things to us. It means that the UI is responsive, performant, beautiful, and animated. That every piece of UI comes in from somewhere and goes somewhere when it exits the screen. It means that the most essential scenarios are efficient, and can be accomplished without extra questions or prompts. It means that things you don’t need are out of the way.

Followed by, at #2, “Long Battery Life”. But clearly, they also see something very differently:

Windows 8 imagines the convergence of two kinds of devices: a laptop and a tablet. Instead of carrying around three devices (a phone, a tablet, and a laptop) you carry around just a phone and a Windows PC. A PC that is the best tablet or laptop you have ever used, but with the capabilities of the familiar Windows desktop if you need it. You may choose to carry a tablet, or you may choose a laptop/convertible, but you do not need to carry around both along with your phone. You never think about a choice, or fret over your choice of what to carry. Things just work without compromise.

Overall, Windows 8 continues to strike me as ambitious, different, and carefully considered. Microsoft clearly sees why the iPad has been so successful, and they’re being smart: they’re learning from iOS and adapting, not copying.

Sturm und Drang ★

Germans have the best words.

iPhone Charger Teardown ★

Ken Shirriff:

Disassembling Apple’s diminutive inch-cube iPhone charger reveals a technologically advanced flyback switching power supply that goes beyond the typical charger. It simply takes AC input (anything between 100 and 240 volts) and produce 5 watts of smooth 5 volt power, but the circuit to do this is surprisingly complex and innovative.

‘Skyfall’ Teaser ★

“Some men are coming to kill us. We’re going to kill them first.”

Saturday, 19 May 2012

‘Why Wasn’t I Consulted?’ ★

Paul Ford:

A surprising portion of the writing about the web is actually about WWIC, about the question of who controls what territory. Here are a few random examples of how this plays out, from my WWIC folder: Michael Arrington’s “Digg’s Biggest Problem Is Its Users And Their Constant Opinions On Things.” Or the way that digital groupies claim ownership of their heroes online.

Via my pal Jim Ray.

Behind a Press Release ★

I’ve never seen Community, but I really enjoyed this refreshingly honest entry by Dan Harmon on his getting fired from the show.

Friday, 18 May 2012

Daring Fireball T-Shirts ★

Available now, through the end of next week: DF t-shirts. Order while they’re hot.

Zeldman’s Web Design Manifesto 2012 ★

Zeldman:

This is my personal site. There are many like it, but this one is mine.

The Mule Radio iPhone App ★

Speaking of Mule Radio Syndicate and The Talk Show, our mutual friends at Black Pixel have just launched the brand-new Mule Radio iPhone app. The interface is simple and beautiful. Free download on the App Store.

The Talk Show ★

I am, uncharacteristically, genuinely excited to announce that my Oscar-, Emmy-, and Grammy-winning podcast, The Talk Show is now on Mule Radio Syndicate. This week, I’m joined by special guest John Moltz, who was recently released from prison and is writing at his brand-new Very Nice Web Site. Topics include Mozilla’s antitrust concerns regarding Windows for ARM’s iOS-like restrictions on third-party apps, new reports that the next iPhone will sport a 4-inch display, Android device fragmentation, and dreamboat actor Ashton Kutcher.

Brought to you by Rogue Amoeba’s Piezo, the charmingly simple audio recording app for Mac; and by the all-new Basecamp from 37signals, the world’s most popular web-based project management app.

VoodooPad 5.0 ★

Major update to Flying Meat’s personal wiki app for the Mac. Chock full of great new features, but my favorite is this:

VoodooPad 5 includes a new Markdown page type with syntax aware editing and preview. And when you export for the Web, ePub, or even PDF, VoodooPad will render your page into rich text for display.

VoodooPad is one of those rare apps that’s in a category by itself. There’s nothing else like it.

Taking Apart the Fuji X100 ★

Crazy how invasive salt water is to gadgetry.