Linked List: November 30, 2009

Monday, 30 November 2009

Atebits support FAQ on Twitter’s new-style retweets and Tweetie’s support for them.

“I do not have power of attorney over first graders.”

Dave Winer Says Stewart Alsop Is Right About the Droid ★

And I agree with Winer about the iPhone: call quality sucks. It doesn’t matter if it’s technically AT&T’s fault or Apple’s, since we don’t have a choice.

But the overall iPhone experience definitely does not suck.

CrunchPad Saga Ends Bizarrely ★

According to Mike Arrington, they got screwed by their hardware manufacturing partner at the last moment.

No word from Popular Mechanics yet on whether they get to keep their product of the year award.

Claim Chowder: Stewart Alsop in 1997 on Apple’s Acquisition of NeXT ★

Stewart Alsop in February 1997:

Let’s get this straight right away: Apple Computer did the wrong thing. On December 20, Apple announced that it would spend $400 million to purchase Steve Jobs’s company, Next Software. The company said it would adopt Next’s NextStep operating system for future versions of the Macintosh computer. Most of the commentary I’ve seen about this decision is off the mark, especially the talk about Jobs coming back to save Apple. That is sheer nonsense. He won’t be anywhere near the company.

Maybe the best claim chowder ever? (Thanks to DF reader Charles Bouldin.)

Curious Headline: “Microsoft ‘Worked With Apple’ for Silverlight on iPhone” ★

Where by “Silverlight” they mean “streaming video from a Silverlight server”, and by “worked with Apple” they mean “implemented the non-proprietary H.264 and HTML5 standards that the iPhone already supports”. This has nothing at all to do with the iPhone running code for the Silverlight runtime. (Adobe, take note.)

But if Microsoft is willing to serve H.264 video via HTML5 for MobileSafari users, why not do it for desktop Safari and Chrome users on Mac OS X too?

Microsoft’s Latest Security Updates for Windows Lead to ‘Black Screen of Death’ ★

Jeremy King:

Microsoft’s latest round of security patches appears to be causing some PCs to seize up and display a black screen, rending the computer useless.

The problem affects Microsoft products including Windows 7, Vista and XP operating systems, said Mel Morris , the CEO and CTO for the U.K. security company Prevx.

Sounds like a major conflict with third-party antivirus software.

Update: Ends up this story is bogus.

Stewart Alsop Trashes the Droid ★

He blames the OS, not the hardware, and complains that the UI is frequently not responsive. It’s always interesting to see reviews after a device has been out for a month, but I haven’t (yet) seen any others like this about the Droid.

(Via Michael Gartenberg.)

Dave Winer Wants a Programmable Twitter Client ★

Dave Winer:

Unix had a shell language. DOS had a batch language. Lotus 1-2-3 had its macro language. Emacs is a programming tool as much as it is a text editor. We have gotten out of the habit of making programmable end-user products, but they are still just as important today as they were a couple of decades ago.

Chuck Shotton has a good follow-up.