By John Gruber
WorkOS launches auth.md — an open protocol for agent registration.
Linked List: January 19, 2007
Friday, 19 January 2007
- Prototype Javascript Library ★
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New web site for the Prototype JavaScript library that ships with Ruby on Rails. (Via David Heinemeier Hansson, who just announced Rails 1.2.)
- Universal and Sony Prohibit Zune Sharing for Certain Artists ★
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Engadget:
In a non-scientific sampling of popular artists by Zunerama and Zune Thoughts, it looks like it’s roughly 40-50 percent of artist that fall under this prohibited banner, and the worst news is that there’s no warning that a song might be unsharable until you actually try to send it and fail.
Welcome to the social.
What kind of moron looks at the Zune’s restrictive “three days, three listens” DRM sharing policy and thinks, “That’s just too liberal?”
- George Ou Receives Apple Community Wedgie ★
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Crazy Apple Rumors:
Ou may have had the last laugh, however, as he said shortly after the wedgie-ing that he liked a “snug fit” anyway and did not intend to make any “adjustments.”
“I’m good,” Ou said, running a hand across his waistband.
- Feeder 1.4 ★
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Update to Steve Harris’s $30 tool for creating RSS feeds, with specific support for podcasts, appcasts, and more. Might prove useful to anyone who hand-edits RSS feeds.
- EDGE vs. EVDO Download Speed Comparison ★
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This is why people are bitching about the iPhone’s support for EDGE. Uploading looks even worse. (Thanks to Dunstan Orchard.)
- Net@Nite Podcast Episode 10 ★
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As part of my recent podcast saturation bombing campaign, I appeared as a guest on this week’s episode of Leo Laporte and Amber MacArthur’s Net@Nite podcast. Dan Dorato of Uneasysilence was the other guest. We mostly talked about, what else?, the iPhone.
Dorato seems particularly down on the iPhone — among other things, he said, “I am certainly not going to buy one” and “It’s another Newton” — but most of his complaints seem to be that he doesn’t believe it’s going to be as good as Apple claims. I.e., he thinks Apple’s 5-hour battery life claim is wildly optimistic.
- The ‘Mac’ Name Was Also Trademarked by Another Company ★
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Leander Kahney:
According to the biography of former Apple CEO John Sculley, Odyssey: Pepsi to Apple, Jobs launched the Mac in 1984 even though the “Mac” trademark belonged to another company.
“Knowing we would face trademark challenges over Steve’s decision to launch Macintosh under its original codename, Al (Eisenstat, Apple’s general counsel) had argued at full volume that Steve should pick another name for the computer,” Sculley writes on page 208.
(Thanks to Dan “Yet Another Redesign” Benjamin.)
- Steve Ballmer Laughs at iPhone’s Price ★
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Video interview with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, where he’s asked for his initial reaction to the iPhone:
“$500! Fully subsidized! With a plan! I said that is the most expensive phone in the world. And it doesn’t appeal to business customers because it doesn’t have a keyboard which makes it not a very good email machine.”
Here’s how it’s going to go. Starting now, Microsoft will mock the iPhone. They will mock the price, they will mock the closed software platform, and they will say that phone users demand and crave the wide variety of products in the Windows Mobile market.
But behind the scenes, they’ve already started working on a Zune clone of the iPhone. Remember their old party line on music players?
- AppleInsider and iSuppli’s Bullshit iPhone Gross Margin Numbers ★
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No one outside Apple has seen the inside of an iPhone, so most of this is just speculation. But even if we concede for the sake of argument that these part costs are accurate, that doesn’t mean the margins would be 50 percent. The cost to produce an iPhone is greater than the cost of its components. It’s not like they’re shipping kits of tiny pieces you have to solder yourself.
If they’re really arguing that someone could produce something with the same features and display as the iPhone and sell it for a profit for just $300 or $350, then how come no one is?
- AppleInsider’s OS X for Consumer Electronics Scoop ★
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I rag on the rumor sites when they’re wrong, so it’s only fair to point out when they hit a home run. This story from a month ago on AppleInsider pretty much nailed the “OS X at the heart of Apple’s consumer electronics” strategy announced last week at Macworld Expo.
- Andy Ihnatko on the iPhone ★
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Andy Ihnatko, who spent 45 minutes using a prototype last week:
And there are no lags, no pauses, no waiting for the slickly animated UI to catch up with you, even when you’re scrolling through a stack of album art that’s flopping past your finger in 3D: It’s liquid.
- Free Quicksilver User Guide ★
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Howard Melman’s free PDF book is the most comprehensive Quicksilver reference I’ve seen.