Linked List: February 2, 2010

Tuesday, 2 February 2010

Intriguing theory from Kevin Fox, regarding the built-in system apps from the iPhone that aren’t included — or haven’t yet been included — on the iPad. The glaring omissions are Weather, Stocks, Clock, and Calculator. Fox’s theory:

These apps are missing from the launchpad because they’re no longer apps. They’re dashboard widgets.

I’ve been thinking about the missing apps since Wednesday — I mean, the thing has fewer apps than the 1.0 iPhone. And Weather and Stocks seem like no-brainers. One thought I had was that they were just not finished yet, and would be there in March. Another thought was that they’d left these things off for third parties. But that doesn’t sound like Apple.

Widgets are an interesting explanation, and it never occurred to me that the missing ones were mostly widget-izable. In fact, until April 2007, the iPhone 1.0 Weather, Stocks, and Calculator apps were Dashboard-style HTML/JavaScript widgets. Jobs called them “widgets” on stage at the MWSF iPhone debut, and I later verified it with informed sources. (The iPhone OS 1.0 jailbreakers even found an empty /Library/Widgets/ folder.) Apple scrapped them and reimplemented them as native apps late in the game because the performance just wasn’t there — they all felt sluggish.

One thing that strikes me as off about Fox’s hypothesis is the Mac OS X Dashboard-style mode. No, I think they’d just live right on the Home screen. And then that might also explain why the home screen is so sparse. And maybe on the lock screen too? I like this idea.

Can You Get by With 250 MB of Data Per Month? ★

Glenn Fleishman:

This prompted me to check my usage, which you can do in the Settings app by tapping General → Usage, and then scrolling down to the Cellular Network Data section and adding the two numbers there. As far as I can tell, I haven’t reset the phone’s usage statistics: I’ve used a combined total of 1.9 GB over 7 months or about 270 MB per month, just over the limit. I checked my AT&T account to see how much I used in January, a month in which I traveled with the iPhone and no laptop - just 150 MB total.

Free Speech for People ★

“This campaign seeks to restore the First Amendment to its original purpose: to protect people, not corporations.”

Apple Demands Removal of USB Sharing Feature in Stanza iPhone App ★

Robin Wauters:

I’m sure Apple has good reasons to prevent people from being able to transfer files to iPhone and iPod Touch devices using a USB cable, and I believe this isn’t the first time they’ve asked developers of apps with this or similar features to remove them for new users. That said, I’m not 100% certain which rules were broken here, and since Apple requested Lexcycle not to discuss specifics we’re left guessing why Cupertino had an issue with the USB syncing features.

There are no public APIs in iPhone OS 3.1 that allow apps to sync via USB. This is a private API violation, not an e-book competition thing.

Update: More details, from David Sarno at the LA Times.

MG Siegler: ‘Apple Has Another Tablet in the Works. More Like a Mac Than an iPhone.’ ★

I’m going to go way out on a limb here and tell you that this is total bullshit.

Nexus One Update Brings Multitouch Pinch-to-Zoom to Browser, Maps, Photo Gallery ★

One cool difference the Nexus One offers over the iPhone is that it can download and install its own system updates. The downside: you have to wait your turn. Still no update for the one I have here.

Facebook Introduces HipHop, PHP to C++ Cross-Compiler ★

Haiping Zhao of Facebook:

With HipHop we’ve reduced the CPU usage on our Web servers on average by about fifty percent, depending on the page.

Anthony Calzadilla’s Pure CSS3 AT-AT Walker ★

Needless to say, works great on the iPhone, too.

Notational Velocity Adds Simplenote Syncing ★

Been using it for two days; the syncing has worked like a charm so far.

On iPads, Grandmas and Game-Changing ★

Rob Foster:

I told him about the new iPad and his eyes grew wide. He blurted out “Wait, are you talking about an iPhone but with a bigger screen? A regular sized computer THIS easy to use? $15 a month for internet anywhere? When can I buy one?”

Milind Alvares on iPhone OS Multitasking ★

Milind Alvares:

The iPad (and the iPhone) supports background processes. It supports multiple processes, and it can do this without any adverse effects on your battery life. This capability however, is reserved for built-in applications, and not for third-party applications.

One small clarification: rather than “third-party”, I’d say “App Store applications”. Apple’s built-in iPhone OS system apps do all sorts of things the SDK doesn’t allow, but Apple’s iPhone apps distributed through the App Store all seem to play by the App Store rules. It’s system vs. App Store, not Apple vs. third-party.

New York Times Re-Runs ReadWriteWeb’s Comparison of iPad to Pie-in-the-Sky Chrome OS Tablet Concept Video ★

Why in the world would The New York Times re-run this tripe? The iPad is “closed” because it has a web browser and the App Store, and Chrome OS is “open” because it has a web browser and no native apps whatsoever? And why compare the actual, real, soon-to-ship iPad to a not-at-all-like-the-Chrome-OS-we’ve-seen concept video rather than to the actual, real, soon-to-ship Chrome OS? And it’s premised on glaring factual mistakes, like that the iPad doesn’t support YouTube.

Marco Arment on When the iPad App Store Will Open ★

Marco Arment:

Either I’m missing something, the initial iPad apps are going to suck, or we haven’t yet been told that iPad-native apps won’t be available for some period of time after the iPad’s launch. [...] The problem, of course, is that before day one, we won’t have iPads ourselves for development and testing. This wasn’t a problem for iPhone development: by the time the SDK was released, we had all been using iPhones for many months. We knew how iPhone apps should look and behave, and we could test our apps on our iPhones during development for three months before anyone could sell apps to customers.

Good question. I didn’t really think about this in detail, but I just sort of assumed that iPad-specific App Store apps wouldn’t be available until a few weeks after it ships. The simulator developer tool is great, but not enough — setting aside technical differences, it just isn’t a valid way to test how it really feels to use. And even worse, the iPad simulator in this first OS 3.2 SDK beta only contains two apps: Contacts and Settings. So developers can’t poke around the UI and get a good feel for how the system apps are designed.

John Nack: Adobe Isn’t in the Flash Business ★

John Nack gets it:

It isn’t in the Photoshop business, or the Acrobat business, or the [take-your-pick product name] business, either.

It’s in the helping people communicate business.

We’d all do well to remember that, because it means that the company’s fortunes are tied to building great tools for solving problems.

I hound Adobe because I care. Adobe is the greatest design software company there’s ever been. They’ve lost their way and we need them to find their way back.

The iPad Isn’t a Third Device, but a Third Revolution ★

Dan Moren:

The iPad won’t kill the computer any more than the graphical user interface did away with the command line (it’s still there, remember?), but it is Apple saying once again that there’s a better way.

Typing on the iPad ★

Dan Provost on the iPad’s software keyboard in portrait mode:

In this case the iPhone style keyboard doesn’t scale very gracefully. It sits in an unfortunately middle ground: way too cramped to type with both hands, but too large to be able to comfortably “thumb type”.

Having tried it last week, I agree. With years of experience now, I actually type way faster on my iPhone in portrait than landscape, because my thumbs have less far to move. On the iPad, it really felt like I had to very slowly peck to thumb-type.

Engadget Copies DF’s Patented Reader Comments Format ★

Wonder if it had anything to do with this tweet?

Apple Releases Second Fix for 27-Inch iMac Display Issues ★

Hope this one does the trick — this is probably my next Mac.

Translation From PR-Speak to English of Selected Portions of Sony Director of Hardware Marketing John Koller’s Remarks Regarding the iPad ★

About right.