Linked List: August 13, 2008

Wednesday, 13 August 2008

When Apple’s Reach Exceeds Its Grasp ★

I hate to pick nits in an otherwise insightful article, but I think Jason Snell overemphasizes the importance of Apple’s “size” in this piece.

When the iPhone first shipped, developers immediately began clamoring for a system that would allow them to write programs for it. Apple had no doubt been planning for such a system from the earliest days of iPhone development. But the company didn’t unveil it until March 2008.

I don’t think being bigger, whether in terms of employee head count or in terms of cash on hand, could have made the iPhone SDK appear significantly sooner. Most companies that are bigger than Apple tend to move slower, not faster. I don’t think the lesson to be learned from July 11 is that Apple needs to get bigger, but rather that they need to ease off slightly on the accelerator.

Although when you do compare employee head counts between Microsoft (91,000) and Apple (21,000), it’s essential to note that at least half of Apple’s employees work in its retail stores. (And, also — who am I kidding? — I love to pick nits in otherwise insightful articles.)

Apple’s Market Cap Passes Google’s ★

Still $100 billion short of the big one, though.

On the Intertwinement of Design and Engineering ★

Jack Shedd, “The Great Divide”:

The idea of there being these two separate things has to be forced away from our thinking. They are one team, which produce one product.

Mac OS X Tip: Text Field Auto-Completion ★

This is one of those great tips that I suspect many Mac users don’t know about. The unmodified Esc key works in most contexts, too.

The History of Predictive Text Swearing ★

Perhaps this explains why the iPhone OS 2.0 now auto-corrects “fucking” to “ducking”.

The Curious Job of Kevin Cornell ★

Kevin Cornell on his work as the illustrator for a graphic novel adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Looks gorgeous. The hardcover is available now for pre-order through Amazon.

Rolling Stone Switching to a Smaller, Rack-Friendly Size ★

Understandable, but a bit sad nonetheless. The large format is definitely part of Rolling Stone’s brand. But don’t give me this bunk about the new size being “advertiser-friendly” — this is about printing and shipping costs, the same reason why newspapers have gotten so small.