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Linked List: November 25, 2008

Tuesday, 25 November 2008

Pomegranate NS08 ★

This might be the first mobile phone genuinely worth calling an “iPhone killer”. No word regarding an SDK, though.

Also, it’s unclear to me how you keep beard trimmings from getting into the coffee you brew with it.

Dumbing Down the Cloud ★

Rands in Repose:

Dropbox is not dumb. In fact, Dropbox is quite smart because it lets me be dumb.

Better Dead Than Red, I Say ★

Speaking of BlackBerry Storm reviews, this is a strange passage from Rosemary Hattersley and Mark Hattersley’s BlackBerry Storm review for Macworld:

And while we’re on the subject of welcome features that users are clamoring for, let’s not overlook (cue fanfare) cut-and-paste. BlackBerry has shown Apple how it’s done, by using the same multi-touch technology used in the iPhone 3G. Here’s how it works: you put one finger at the start of what you want to copy, and one finger at the end to highlight text; then press the Menu button to select ‘cut’ or ‘copy’. Now, this is a feature that we haven’t really felt the need for but the Macworld readership has being quite vocal about the lack of cut-and-paste on the iPhone. RIM’s solution doesn’t work well enough for us because it is fiddly beyond belief (“using this would drive you mad,” said one of our testers). But in the absence of anything better from Apple this is an area where RIM scores a point, just.

How exactly is a crap UI that “will drive you mad” showing Apple how it’s done? Would the iPhone be better with more — but poorly-designed — features? I’m sure some people agree, but it seems an odd sentiment for Mac users.

Harry McCracken’s Roundup of BlackBerry Storm Reviews ★

Consensus seems a bit negative, especially with regard to the Storm’s “sometime you just tap it, but sometimes you have to press harder and make it actually click” touch screen.

A Few Additional Remarks Regarding the New iPhone Safari Toolbar ★

While I’m linking to myself: I added a few additional comments to the end of my piece yesterday regarding the new iPhone Safari toolbar.

The Faster CPU in the New iPod Touch ★

After I linked to a report suggesting that the new second-generation iPod Touch has a faster CPU than the iPhone or previous Touch, Craig Hockenberry suggested on Twitter that new-Touch-owning developers could run his hardware info code, based on the Unix sysctl() call, to see what it reports. A few DF readers did just that, and indeed, it reports a faster CPU and bus.

The iPhone, iPhone 3G, and original iPod Touch all report a 400 MHz CPU and 100 MHz bus. The new iPod Touch reports a 532 MHz CPU and 133 MHz bus. Physical memory remains the same across all hardware, at about 117 MB (which Hockenberry interprets, I think correctly, as meaning 128 MB of RAM with 11 MB being used for video).

Script Debugger 4.5 ★

Nice update to Late Night Software’s amazing AppleScript editor and debugger. I don’t know that I’d ever bother writing AppleScripts without it.

Asa Dotzler on Mozilla’s Relationship With Google ★

Asa Dotzler, responding to Joe Wilcox’s piece arguing that Chrome spells trouble for Mozilla:

Mozilla isn’t dependent on Google search revenue. Mozilla is, (and it’s a bit concerning, but not terribly so,) dependent on the search advertising marketplace that most of the web is dependent upon.

Any search provider would, (and others besides Google do) pay for traffic that Firefox generates for them. Google is the lion’s share of Mozilla’s revenue not because they pay more to Mozilla for searches than the other providers, but because there are a whole lot more searches to pay for.

That’s because Google is the default. If, for example, Yahoo was the default, it would be the lion’s share of Mozilla’s revenue.

It’s undoubtedly true that Yahoo might be willing to pay top dollar today to replace Google as the default Firefox search engine. But will Yahoo be in a position to do this, say, five years from now? Who else other than Yahoo would pay as much as Google? Microsoft could, but would they?

Dan Lyons Stops Blogging After Calling Yahoo PR Reps ‘Lying Sacks of Shit’ ★

More details here. Not quite sure what Newsweek thought they were getting — it’s not like what he wrote wasn’t true.

Ned Batchelder: ‘My Oldest Code Still Running’ ★

There’s a good rule of thumb here:

When waiting for your print job, any pages you don’t want will seem too slow.

Inside Safari 3.2’s Anti-Phishing Features ★

Macworld is carrying MacJournals’s excellent analysis of the security and privacy implications of Safari 3.2’s new anti-phishing features. You won’t find more details on how it works and what it’s doing anywhere else. (Well, other than MDJ or MWJ.)

It Died ★

New site from Glenn Fleishman, tracking web sites, services, and companies that are no longer available. I have a feeling it’s going to be a busy year.

Twitter Hires Rael Dornfest; Stikkit and I Want Sandy to Close December 8 ★

Dornfest has had a hand in a bunch of simple, focused web apps over the years. I thought Blosxom, his minimalist weblog engine, was a gem. I’m sure glad I never got into using I Want Sandy or Stikkit, though.