Linked List: September 10, 2007

Monday, 10 September 2007

MobileSafari-Optimized UI for MT 4 ★

Great work from Brad Choate and Walt Dickinson at Six Apart. I’m upgrading to MT 4 just for this.

Coda Toolbar and the Three Pixel Conundrum ★

Great story by Cabel Sasser on the custom toolbar Panic came up with for Coda.

The takeaway is this: Mac developers shouldn’t merely copy Apple’s UI trends from head to toe. If you can devise something better than what Apple is doing, Apple might copy you, and you’ll be the one setting the trend.

Dan Frommer Says 1 Million iPhones in 74 Days Is Not a Good Number ★

Dan Frommer:

Jobs has announced plans to sell 10 million iPhones by the end of 2008 — a year and a half after launch. But a million iPhones in 74 days works out to a little less than 5 million iPhones per year — if you’re selling them at a consistent rate.

Pointing out that iPhones aren’t yet selling at a pace to reach 10 million by the end of 2008 is like pointing out that a car that just pulled out of a parking spot isn’t yet going 65 MPH. Sales curves bend.

It’s so obvious I can’t believe everyone doesn’t see it. Apple is going to push the price down as fast as they can. At $599, the iPhone was better but more expensive than its competitors. At $399 it’s better and cost-competitive. Next year Apple will have iPhone models that are better and cheaper than its competitors.

Apple sold 270,000 machines in the first two frenzied days it was on sale, which means it took 72 more days to sell another 700,000 phones.

It’s absolutely true that Apple’s “million iPhones in 74 days” number is severely distorted by the unprecedented opening weekend demand. But 700,000 phones over the remaining 72 days is great. Did any other smartphone sell better in that period?

Anyone who wants to bet me that Apple won’t sell 10 million by the end of 2008, let me know. And before you place your bet with me, recall that the iPhone still isn’t on sale anywhere other than the U.S.

Bloxorz ★

Boy, this is a fun game.

Styling File Inputs with CSS and the DOM ★

Nifty CSS and JavaScript library from Shaun Inman for styling file inputs in web forms.

Engadget: iPhoneSIMfree Unlocking Video ★

I would have wagered that this was a scam, but it looks like I would have lost that bet. Still, though, $100 for a service that Apple seems likely to disable with the next iPhone software update, and which you’ll have to pay for again if they do?

Fix the Leopard Folders (FTLF or FTFLF) ★

Brandon Walkin examines the crummy new folder icons in Leopard. Unfortunately, from what I’ve heard, you-know-who likes them.

Adam Engst on Eudora 8.0.0b1 ★

Adam Engst:

But realistically, Eudora 8.0.0b1 is by no means ready for normal users yet.

Introducing TypePad for iPhone and iPod Touch ★

Very nice MobileSafari-optimized interface for TypePad. I bet we see something similar for Movable Type 4.

RegexKit ★

Open source Cocoa framework wrapper for my favorite regex library, PCRE. If you’re a Cocoa developer adding regex support to your app, I beseech you to consider RegexKit. (Via Michael Tsai, who notes that RegexKit’s documentation is exceptional.)

Should Apple Burn Its Economics Textbooks? ★

Perfect analysis on the iPhone price cut from Steven Levitt:

By starting high, you get as much money as you can from those who really want the product, then expand the market at the lower price point.

Hmm … that sounds exactly like what Apple just did with the iPhone. They brought it out at $599, sold one million iPhones, and then dropped the price to $399 after two months, in the hopes of selling nine million more this year.

So why did this strategy blow up in Apple’s face, leading them to offer a $100 coupon to the early adopters, many of whom remain irate despite the rebate?

What economists (and Apple too, I guess) ignore is that consumers hate it when companies follow practices that look like they are designed to maximize profits.

Creating iPhone Ringtones With Fission ★

Paul Kafasis:

Using Fission, you can crop audio down to your desired snippet, fade the ends in and out, and save, all in just a few clicks.

Growl Global Positioning System ★

Growl project leader Chris Forsythe on the new two-years-in-the-making “global positioning system” in Growl 1.1.

Ringles ★

Sony BMG and Universal Music Group plan to begin selling $7 “ringles”: CDs that contain a popular single, a remix, and a ringtone. On CD. For $7 each. What a great combination: inconvenient and expensive. Hard to believe they’re actually this stupid.

Jobs Offers Apple Lisa Early Adopters Store Credit ★

BBSpot:

Apple released the Lisa in January of 1983 for $9,995, and the similar Macintosh was released a year later for $2,495.

“I’ve felt bad about people who bought the Lisa for a long time. Anybody who bought one of the first Apple Lisas really got screwed,” said Jobs. “Now that we’ve got some cash, I think it’s about time we made it right.”

Scott Moritz: ‘Apple Faces Cold Christmas’ ★

You have got to be kidding me. Moritz is selling AAPL short, right? I’m sure there are people holding out for future iPhones with faster 3G wireless networking, but no one — no one — ever expected them in the U.S. this year. Moritz just makes shit up, then references his own previous bullshit reports to back up his new ones.

No Way to Add New Calendar Events on iPod Touch? ★

If true, this is really lame.

It’s even lame as a marketing differentiator (going on the assumption that Apple has done this to further establish the iPod Touch as being less than the iPhone). Leaving out entire apps makes it easy to compare the iPod Touch and iPhone just by looking at their home screens, but if some of the apps on the iPod Touch are crippled like this, it’s unnecessarily complicated to compare the two.

Flying Meat: Acorn 1.0 ★

Brand-new $40 image-editing app from Flying Meat’s Gus Mueller. Highlights include terrific layer support, tablet support for pressure strokes, GPU-powered for performance, vector shapes and text layers, full-screen mode, Photoshop-style single-character tool selection shortcuts, and a plugin API that not only supports compiled Objective-C extensions, but also single-file scripts written in Python.

What sets Acorn apart, though, is the simplicity of the UI. Acorn’s main ploy in this regard is that rather than spewing multiple palettes across your display, it shows just one, which changes contextually based on the tool you’re using. I’ve been beta-testing Acorn for months, and it’s sweet.

Apple Sells One Millionth iPhone ★

Sure, last week’s price cut accelerated this, but given that it was only five days ago and Apple’s announcing this on the 10th, it seems pretty clearly they really were on pace to sell the millionth iPhone this month. So can we please stop arguing about whether the price cut was a response to poor sales? Note to certain other iPhone doubters who’ve emailed me: Take note that the PR claims they’ve sold the millionth iPhone, not just shipped it.