Linked List: July 8, 2008

Tuesday, 8 July 2008

Everyone else is still under NDA, but David Pogue’s, Walt Mossberg’s, and Ed Baig’s reviews of the iPhone 3G and iPhone OS X 2.0 are out. Such are the benefits of writing for the three highest-circulation newspapers in the country.

The consensus is clear: the iPhone 3G is a nice hardware update, but most of what’s new is in the software, which will be available to all original iPhone owners. If you have an original iPhone and are considering upgrading, you should wait until you install the OS update.

Microsoft Admits Windows Vista Mistakes, Criticizes Apple Ads ★

J. Nicholas Hoover, reporting for InformationWeek:

In the coming weeks and months, Microsoft will launch a huge advertising campaign that’s been reported to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

“We’ve got a pretty noisy competitor out there,” Brooks said of Apple whose “I’m a Mac… and I’m a PC,” commercials criticize Windows Vista. “You know it. I know it. It’s caused some impact. We’re going to start countering it. They tell us it’s the iWay or the highway. We think that’s a sad message. Software out there is made to be compatible with your whole life.”

I’m not sure whether to make fun of the “It’s caused some impact” or the “They tell us it’s the iWay or the highway”. Update: Several readers point to the last sentence: “Software out there is made to be compatible with your whole life”. What does that even mean? That’s just gibberish.

Bembo’s Zoo ★

Clever, beautiful children’s book by Roberto de Vicq de Cumptich: animals from A-Z, illustrated using only letterforms and punctuation from Bembo. Buy it at Amazon. (Thanks to DF reader YellowBirdMan.)

Cornerstone vs. Versions ★

Jade Ohlhauser’s comparison and review of the two new Subversion clients for Mac OS X, Cornerstone and Versions.

Handwritten Typographers ★

Cameron Adams asks:

Do typographers exert some extraordinary control of the pen that laypersons don’t? Does a typographer’s handwriting influence the typefaces they produce?

And answers with handwriting examples from leading type designers. (Via Jason Santa Maria.)

Apple Expects 15-Minute In-Store Setup Process for New iPhone 3G ★

Bloomberg:

“Our expectation is that in 10 to 15 minutes, you’ll be set up and ready to go,” Ron Johnson, Apple’s retail chief, said today in an interview. Apple’s more than 185 retail stores in the U.S. each aim to handle about 100 customers an hour, he said.

(Via MacDailyNews.)

What to Bring When Buying an iPhone 3G ★

Instructions from Apple for those of you buying an iPhone 3G this Friday.

This Supposed Apple-Rogers ‘Spat’ Smells Like Bullshit to Me ★

AppleInsider:

Apple, disgusted with Rogers Wireless for dumping egregious service plans on would-be iPhone 3G buyers, has decided that its Canadian retail stores will have no part in helping the carrier market the new handset to customers, AppleInsider has learned.

The Rogers iPhone plans do seem terrible, but the idea that this has caused friction between Apple and Rogers implies that Apple had no idea what Rogers’s iPhone plans would look like when they signed the contract. Highly unlikely. Apple executives may well agree that the Rogers plans stink, but I don’t buy that they were surprised by them.

And as Scott McNulty reports:

Looks like this is just a tempest in a teapot. After looking at the iPhone pages for countries where Apple has retails stores (UK, Japan, Italy, and Australia) it looks like you won’t be able to buy an iPhone in any non-US Apple Stores. Everyone can stop freaking out now.

If You’re Open to Growth, You Tend to Grow ★

An interesting story in the Times regarding the importance of looking for a “growth mindset” in potential employees:

After reading her book, Scott Forstall, senior vice president of Apple in charge of iPhone software, contacted Ms. Dweck to talk about his experience putting together the iPhone development team. Mr. Forstall told her that he identified a number of superstars within various departments at Apple and asked them in for a chat.

At the beginning of each interview, he warned the recruit that he couldn’t reveal details of the project he was working on. But he promised the opportunity, Ms. Dweck says, “to make mistakes and struggle, but eventually we may do something that we’ll remember the rest of our lives.”

Only people who immediately jumped at the challenge ended up on the team. “It was his intuition that he wanted people who valued stretching themselves over being king of their particular hill,” she says.

(Thanks to DF reader Michael Amend.)

Southwest Airlines’ Seven Secrets for Success ★

Joe Brancatelli:

By some estimates, the country’s major carriers have consumed perhaps $100 billion in capital during the past decade, but Southwest Airlines continues to be profitable. It’s been in the black for 33 consecutive years and, last week, for the 127th consecutive quarter, it paid a modest dividend. Its balance sheet, with about $3 billion in cash on hand and $600 million in available credit, is the envy of an otherwise fuel-price-ravaged industry.

Southwest isn’t just my favorite airline (they have great service out of Philly, and I fly them whenever possible), but is one of my favorite companies in the world, period.

Second-Generation Drobo Adds FireWire 800 ★

The biggest gripe about the original Drobo was that it only supported USB 2.0. The new model, released today, adds FireWire 800, a fast processor (which should make even USB I/O faster), and purportedly runs quieter. The price remains the same: $499. (Via Dan Benjamin.)

Making It Up on Volume ★

From The New York Times, in February 2007:

If his Olevia line of televisions was ever going to get any attention from consumers, Vincent F. Sollitto Jr. would have to do something big, splashy and, in economic terms, just plain crazy. On the day after Thanksgiving, Mr. Sollitto, the chairman and chief executive of Syntax-Brillian, had 32-inch Olevia liquid-crystal display TV sets selling at Circuit City for $475, almost half its regular price.

Syntax almost certainly lost money on the TVs. The flat screen that makes up about half the cost of an L.C.D. TV is about $350 on its own. But Mr. Sollitto could not have been more pleased. The Olevias outsold Sony and other brands while they lasted. That forced the premium brands to lower prices throughout the holiday season and take notice of the upstart from Tempe, Ariz.

Today:

U.S. television set and digital camera maker Syntax-Brillian Corp. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Monday after a year of weak sales, litigation, executive changes, accounting problems and liquidity concerns.

Perhaps instead of “just plain crazy”, selling your product at a steep loss is “just plain stupid”.

Marko Karppinen: ‘Apple Just Gave Out My Apple ID Password Because Someone Asked’ ★

Marko Karppinen:

I tried to log in to Apple Developer Connection this morning to find out that my password had been changed and the email associated with my account was now a yahoo.com address that wasn’t mine. Luckily, my “security question” was still the same, so I was able to reset the password and email address back.

Based on the emails that have appeared in my .Mac mailbox, this was accomplished by sending this classy one-liner to Apple:

am forget my password of mac,did you give me password on new email marko.[redacted]@yahoo.com

This is crazy.

iPhone U.K. Web Sites Swamped Before Friday Launch ★

Reuters:

Apple’s new iPhone sold out online in Britain ahead of its Friday launch, defying general consumer gloom as the country’s economy threatened to tip over into its first recession in more than a decade.

Carrier O2 said on Tuesday its website had been unable to cope with demand, which peaked at 13,000 per second. It later said it had sold out. Carphone Warehouse said the level of interest was 10 times that for the original iPhone last year.