Linked List: January 8, 2010

Friday, 8 January 2010

Guy English:

Over the week covering this past Christmas Day a piece of software I had contributed to was downloaded two million times.

Neven Mrgan on Whether Apple Will Get Into the Publishing Business ★

Interesting piece from Neven Mrgan, disagreeing with Andy Ihnatko’s guess that Apple, rather than get into the business of publishing e-books and periodical content, will simply let publishers make their own apps for distributing said content. Neven hopes Andy is wrong, so that it is easier for writers and other non-developers to publish. I do too.

Here’s my other thought: the old-growth print industry — books, magazines, and newspapers — have shown zero aptitude to date to produce compelling designs and business models for digital content. Left to themselves, they’d botch this too. And who wants a dozen different apps for accessing e-books? As Craig Hockenberry tweeted, “It’s like asking bands to release an app for each album. We need MP3 for words.”

Bruce Schneier:

The Underwear Bomber is precisely the sort of story we humans tend to overreact to. Our brains aren’t very good at probability and risk analysis, especially when it comes to rare events. Our brains are much better at processing the simple risks we’ve had to deal with throughout most of our species’ existence, and much poorer at evaluating the complex risks modern society forces us to face. We exaggerate spectacular rare events, and downplay familiar and common ones.

Lose It or Lose It ★

My thanks to Lose It or Lose It for sponsoring this week’s DF RSS feed. Lose It or Lose It is a novel community site for those trying to lose weight. Their trick is that you motivate yourself by putting money up front; fall behind in your goals, and you lose a portion of your money. Sort of reminds me of a kinder, gentler version of the outfit in the excellent Stephen King short story, “Quitters Inc.”

Andy Ihnatko on the Rumored Apple Tablet ★

Months like this are why I got into this racket. So much fun. Ihnatko’s predictions/assumptions are, unsurprisingly, damn good. Love this bit:

It’s not so much the quality of the latest “Apple will unveil their long-rumored tablet” scuttlebutt that convinced me to make the gamble… it’s the velocity. It’s hard to codify but as the debut of an under-wraps Apple device becomes imminent, Apple begins to collectively sigh with relief. The noise leaks out through the weatherstripping of the company’s legendary Storm Door Of Silence and though it doesn’t say anything as helpful as “10.2-inch OLED touchscreen, $699, mobile broadband contract is optional” it does say “Andy, book yourself a trip to San Francisco.”

Poor AT&T Coverage at CES ★

Shocking.

Apple at CES 2010 Claim Chowder ★

“Prince McLean” at AppleInsider, one year ago:

On the heels of announcing its plans to bail on Macworld Expo next year, Apple will be instead attending the more generic Consumer Electronics Show in 2010, according to sources familiar with the matter. […]

Sources close to the company have indicated to AppleInsider that the move is a done deal, a remarkable turn of events given that CES has long been dominated by Microsoft’s product announcements issued in keynotes delivered by Bill Gates and now by CEO Steve Ballmer.

I haven’t seen any pictures of Apple’s booth at CES yet. Did they announce any new products?

Kottke Rates NFL Pundits’ Preseason Predictions ★

For the record, I’m picking the Dallas Cowboys to win the Super Bowl.

Palm’s Verizon WebOS Phones Will Feature Built-In Tethering ★

Not just tethering, but tethering for up to five clients — pretty much like having a built-in Mi-Fi. Must be nice to be on Verizon.

Meanwhile, over in AT&T’s shantytown, still no iPhone tethering at all.

Craig Ferguson on the Leno/Conan/NBC Rumors ★

Ha-ha.

Jim Dalrymple’s Tablet Prognostications ★

Another good (and interesting) set of predictions. I hadn’t really thought about it much, but Dalrymple is calling for two tablet models, exactly like the iPhone and iPod Touch — same rough specs except one of them will have 3G and the other will be Wi-Fi only. That raises the question of which carrier(s). I’ll go out on a limb and say “not AT&T”.

Dalrymple also predicts that the tablets will run a next-gen release of iPhone OS, will support existing iPhone OS apps, and will work with Bluetooth keyboards. OK, but then:

Existing iPhone apps could be made to run on a 10-inch display, either by scaling them or by running them as small on-screen widgets that only take up a quarter of the display. But that doesn’t work both ways: any app designed to use the full 10-inch display could never run on a 3.5-inch display.
And, as for keyboards, that’d be welcome, but if the tablets are running “the exact same operating system that is used in the iPhone” wouldn’t that mean that Bluetooth keyboard support is coming to iPhones and iPod Touches too?