Linked List: November 19, 2009

Thursday, 19 November 2009

Check Out This Photo From a Microsoft-Hosted Event ★

Notice anything about most of the laptops?

Paul Graham on How the App Store Has Damaged Apple’s Reputation With Developers ★

The hard part about criticizing the App Store is that it doesn’t fit into a black-and-white narrative. It’s not bad or good. It’s both. In fact, it’s more extreme than that — it’s both amazingly good and horribly bad. And, frustratingly, many of us see how the bad parts could be made better without sacrificing the good parts.

This piece by Paul Graham addresses this dichotomy, and tries to make sense of Apple’s seeming blindness to the App Store’s severe problems:

Actually I suppose Apple has a third misconception: that all the complaints about App Store approvals are not a serious problem. They must hear developers complaining. But partners and suppliers are always complaining. It would be a bad sign if they weren’t; it would mean you were being too easy on them. Meanwhile the iPhone is selling better than ever. So why do they need to fix anything?

Later on, Graham captures what it is that gives me The Fear:

An organization that wins by exercising power starts to lose the ability to win by doing better work.

I wish I’d written that sentence.

Michael Gartenberg on Apple’s Retail Stores ★

Michael Gartenberg:

I used to postulate that Apple had become the Nordstrom for technology retail. Ever shop at Nordstrom’s? If you haven’t, you should just for the experience. In fact, if you run a support organization, you should go to Nordstrom’s and shop for training purposes.

I don’t think Apple is the Nordstrom of technology any more. I just think they’re the new Nordstrom as defined by level of service.

Yeah, but do they dance?

Birdfeed 1.2 ★

Lots of new stuff in Buzz Andersen’s excellent iPhone Twitter app, including support for Flickr for uploading image attachments and excellent integration of Twitter’s just-released geolocation API.

Chrome OS Will Not Support Hard Disk Drives ★

Lucas Mearian:

Google Inc. said today that the upcoming release of its new Google Chrome operating system will not support products hard disk drives in favor of solid state drives (SSD).

This is smart. First, Chrome doesn’t need large amounts of local storage. Second, going SSD-only lets Google use a file system that is designed from the ground up for random access drives. If you can count on the drive being solid state, you can make all sorts of performance optimizations. They’re building for the future.

Alex Payne on Chrome OS ★

Smartest thing I’ve seen so far about Chrome OS is this tweet by Alex Payne:

I have no opinion about Chrome OS. All I know is that cheap hardware feels cheap. It’s less “cloud computing” than “disposable computing”.

Microsoft Files Patent Claim for Edward Tufte’s Sparklines ★

Ridiculous. It seems as though they’re not trying to patent sparklines in general, but rather the specific idea of sparklines embedded in a spreadsheet grid, but still.

Here’s Microsoft’s write-up on the feature. Looks great. Excel has always been my favorite app from Microsoft.

Chromium OS User Experience ★

Lots of information here about what Chrome OS is going to look like and how it’s going to work. In a nut, it’s an OS that boots in under 10 seconds and gives you a WebKit browser. It does more than a browser, like by recognizing when USB mass storage devices (cameras, Android phones, etc.) are plugged in, but you don’t do things like deal with a local file system or install applications. You turn it on, you use the Web.

(Just like with Chrome the browser, with Chrome OS, “Chromium” designates the open source branch.)

Live Stream of Google Chrome OS Webcast ★

The only options are RealPlayer and Windows Media. In Google’s defense, though, Apple hasn’t bothered to even try live-streaming an event for years.

Mark Pilgrim is killing it with his live-tweet coverage.

Update: VLC-friendly streaming URL.

Olympus BioScapes Competition Winners ★

Nice microscopic imagery.

DigiTimes’s Odd Tablet Rumor ★

So the big news so far today is this report in DigiTimes stating that Apple has delayed its tablet from March until “the second half of 2010” because of significant changes to the display components. Keep in mind that Apple has never publicly said a damn thing, not a word, about any new tablet computer, let alone ever stated that it was due in March. This is one of those stories where what they really mean is that Apple has missed a rumored deadline.

But the details of DigiTimes’s report strike me as very odd:

The sources also indicated that in addition to Foxconn Electronics (Hon Hai Precision Industry), Quanta Computer and Pegatron Technology are expected to be manufacturing partners for Apple’s two tablet PC models — one of which will have a 10.6-inch TFT LCD panel while the other will have a 9.7-inch OLED panel.

This makes no sense to me. Why would Apple have two tablet models with entirely different displays that are only one inch different in size? We’re into the third year of the iPhone and there’s still just one single display type and form factor. Apple may well have placed orders for both these types of displays, but I say no way are both for tablet computers.

Amazon.com Has the Palm Pre Phone for $80 ★

Requires a two-year contract with Sprint, but still, that’s a big discount off Sprint’s regular price of $150. And, they’ve got the Pixi for just $25.

12,000-Faceted Diamond ★

The NYT:

By the time the Yankees rushed the field to celebrate their 27th World Series victory, Robert Caplin had photographed the action — 12,000 times. The result is a romantic and captivating time-lapse presentation.

Captivating.