Linked List: June 16, 2009

Tuesday, 16 June 2009

My pal and fellow Yankees fan Mike Monteiro started it with this, and the whole thing took off from there. Not sure what to say other than a sincere thanks to everyone; I feel honored. A bunch of these are fucking hilarious, but if you only watch one, let it be this one.

Chris Messina on Opera Unite ★

This is the first piece I’ve seen that helped me understand just what the hell Opera Unite actually is.

Apple Issues Support Entry Regarding iTunes Syncing With ‘Unsupported Third-Party Digital Media Players’ ★

Warning shot:

Apple is aware that some third-parties claim that their digital media players are able to sync with Apple software. However, Apple does not provide support for, or test for compatibility with, non-Apple digital media players and, because software changes over time, newer versions of Apple’s iTunes software may no longer provide syncing functionality with non-Apple digital media players.

Translation: “Nice iTunes syncing you’ve got, Palm. Be a shame if something happened to it.”

Surprise, Surprise ★

Lukas Mathis on Goo Gun, his just-released first game for the iPhone:

Turns out the person who had the crash had a jailbroken phone that hadn’t been restarted in a while. Restarting solved the problem, but the other issue is the jailbreak. Jailbroken iPhones tend to have less available memory, probably mainly due to background processes that some non-Apple-approved apps can create.

Any iPhone developer who offers customer support for jailbreak users is nuts. But the flip side, of course, is that jailbreak users expect everything to magically just work and will blame legit apps, rather than the hacks they’re running, for crashes.

Is AT&T Afraid of iPhone Users, MMS and Tethering? ★

Jim Dalrymple (on his new web site, The Loop):

The answer seems quite simple: AT&T is afraid of what will happen to its network once millions of iPhone users start sending MMS and connecting their computer to the network.

Exactly. AT&T has long sold other phones with MMS and tethering. They’re just not prepared for millions of their customers to actually use them. I think it’s like those cheap web hosting providers who advertise “unlimited bandwidth” but then shut off your account if you actually use a lot of bandwidth.

Update: Link works again.

Aaron Barnhart on the Letterman-Palin Imbroglio ★

Aaron Barnhart on Dave’s show last night:

The one thing I hadn’t counted on was joke after joke after joke in the monologue about how much people hated him — Letterman compared himself to Bernie Madoff, Mrs. Bernie Madoff AND the president of Iran. Carson used to do that, too, especially when he was going through a divorce … but I don’t think he ever told six divorce jokes in a row.

I watched last night, and the monologue did feel Carson-esque. I couldn’t put my finger on why, but I think Barnhart’s nailed it.

Peter Belanger’s Time-Lapse Video of the WWDC App Store Icon Display ★

Not once during the entire week did I see fewer than 15 or 20 people staring at it.

It was a work of art.

HTML 5: Could It Kill Flash and Silverlight? ★

Yes.

PCalc for iPhone 1.6 ★

James Thomson’s excellent $10 iPhone calculator and its free sibling, PCalc Lite, now offer full support for iPhone OS 3.0, including copy/paste.

Let’s Hope This Is the Start of a Trend ★

An iPhone developer gets a call from Apple regarding his app:

They had a minor issue that was blocking its approval. Thankfully they weren’t blocking it for any silly reason, there was a valid point. I don’t necessarily agree, but it wasn’t worth quibbling over.

So to counterbalance all of the negative press that the Apple App Store guys have been getting, I gotta be honest with my experience: they called me, they explained the issue, and personally requested that I get a new binary their way ASAP. First class.

Miso ★

Excellent free typeface:

“MISO by Mårten Nettelbladt is a heavy duty typeface for the construction industry.

(Via Jeffrey Zeldman.)