Linked List: April 28, 2010

Wednesday, 28 April 2010

Update on Flash Installer Asking Chris Messina to Force Quit the Finder ★

Kudos to the Adobe Flash installer team — they looked into it, found how it happened, and wrote it up in a comment on Messina’s Flickr entry.

Who Wrote Shakespeare? ★

William Shakespeare.

Lots-o’-Huggin’ Bear ★

Absolutely pitch-perfect viral campaign from Pixar for Toy Story 3. Are there more of these?

It’s the Theft and Purchase of the Unit, Not the Publication of Photos and Information ★

Really dumb piece by Tim Wu at Slate on the Gizmodo/iPhone saga. Wu writes:

Apple has indicated it believes a serious felony was committed. The company appears to regard Gizmodo’s acts as larceny, or misappropriation of trade secrets, or both. Here is where the case gets serious: If we accept that journalists can be punished severely for publishing information gained by others in unsavory ways, that’s a bad thing for journalism. Nearly every truly big story, from the al-Qaida photos on down, involves a leaker of some kind, often one who has broken some law. If the publishers of such materials—as opposed to the leakers—are treated as criminals, journalism will suffer.

If you agree with that, read the following sentence slowly, so it sinks in. Gizmodo isn’t being “punished severely for publishing information gained by others in unsavory ways”; they are being investigated by law enforcement for committing a felony themselves.

Note that Engadget “published information gained by others in unsavory ways” — they ran a photograph and a description of the phone (including revealing the front-facing camera) two days before Gizmodo. The photo and description came from the sources who took the phone from the bar and eventually sold it to Gizmodo. Yet Engadget is not in any trouble at all.

Gizmodo isn’t in trouble for spoiling Apple’s secret; they’re in trouble for breaking the law.

Wu writes:

But Gizmodo, for one thing, says it wants to give the telephone back, and so it may lack any intent to possess the phone permanently. That matters, legally speaking.

No, it doesn’t matter, legally speaking. When you borrow someone else’s property without permission, that’s called theft. (Also, Gizmodo gave the phone back to Apple on April 20, the day after this. Hello, Slate?)

AT&T Continues Not to Offer iPhone Tethering; Generalissimo Francisco Franco Still Dead ★

Engadget’s Chris Ziegler got an answer out of AT&T:

“iPhone tethering has the potential to exponentially increase traffic, and we need to ensure that we’re able to deliver excellent performance for the feature — over and above the increases in data traffic we’re already seeing — before we will offer the feature.”

Keep in mind that iPhone users on other carriers around the world, including our friends in Canada, have been using tethering for close to a year now.

Apple Acquires Siri ★

Timothy Hay:

Apple Inc. has acquired Siri Inc. just a few months after the start-up’s voice-activated personal-assistant program launched in the App Store, an investor in San Jose-based Siri told VentureWire.

Doubling Down ★

MG Siegler, interviewing HP senior VP Brian Humphries:

“This is a great opportunity to take two Silicon Valley idols and put them together,” Humphries noted. That’s an obvious statement, but he quickly moved on to the meat. “WebOS is the best-in-class mobile operating system. Our intent is to double down on WebOS.”

I really do think this is a great move for HP. I don’t know that it’s going to work, but it certainly gives them better opportunities in the mobile space than they would have had otherwise. They should announce that the Windows 7 “slate” they pre-announced a few months ago has been canned, to be replaced by a version running WebOS. Just saying they’re “doubling down” doesn’t mean squat if they don’t act on it. The easiest way HP could screw this up is by not committing fully to WebOS for all mobile devices — phones, handhelds, tablets.

The App Cubby Jr. Sale ★

David Barnard:

Mrs. App Cubby (Elizabeth) and I are expecting baby #2!

These kids don’t feed, clothe, and shelter themselves you know, so we’ve decided to hold an “App Cubby Jr” sale. This week only, you can buy any App Cubby app for twice the normal price! 100% of proceeds go toward diapers, food, our insurance deductible, and other baby related expenses.

I love it.

2015 Claim Chowder ★

Noted:

The death of the iPhone is being foretold and the outlook for the PC and laptop aren’t much better. Influential security company CEO Eugene Kaspersky told PC Advisor at InfoSec Tuesday that both are set to be consigned to history.

The iconic Apple iPhone will either not exist or occupy a very small niche satisfying the needs of committed Mac fans around five years from now, predicts Kaspersky.

HP to Acquire Palm for $1.2 Billion ★

HP:

HP and Palm, Inc. today announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement under which HP will purchase Palm, a provider of smartphones powered by the Palm webOS mobile operating system, at a price of $5.70 per share of Palm common stock in cash or an enterprise value of approximately $1.2 billion. The transaction has been approved by the HP and Palm boards of directors.

And:

Palm’s current chairman and CEO, Jon Rubinstein, is expected to remain with the company.

Strikes me as a great move for both companies. Palm gets some muscle, and HP gets out from under the thumb of licensing OSes from Microsoft. HP is not going to make the same mistake in the mobile market that they made in the PC market, by not owning and controlling their own OS.

TouchScroll, a Scrolling Layer for WebKit Mobile ★

David Aurelio:

Here it is: TouchScroll, our scrolling layer for WebKit Mobile. It is JavaScript/CSS 3 based and allows for fixed elements like headers and toolbars on web pages when viewed on the iPhone or on Android. It works on the iPad, too. Check out the demo (short URL: http://u.nu/8uvg8) to see it in action — it works in Desktop Safari (at least kind of) or WebKit Nightly (very good), but I recommend you have a look at it on your iPhone, iPad, or Android based device.

Very impressive. Feels like native Cocoa Touch scrolling. (Performance is acceptable, but not great, on Android.)

Code Names ★

Daniel Ionescu:

Google’s Andy Rubin, the lead engineer behind the Android OS, said that “full support” for Flash is coming in Froyo, the code-name for version 2.2 of Android.

The code name for the release of iPhone OS with support for Flash is “Get Bent”.

Google I/O 2010 Session Schedule ★

Speaking of developer conferences, Google has posted the schedule for I/O, coming in mid-May. I feel like there’s a great story on the differences between Google and Apple — cultural, strategic, technical — just based on the differences between I/O and WWDC. I mean, just look at the design of the I/O session schedule.

Ze Frank’s Chillout Song ★

Sweet.

Jason Chen Retains Criminal Defense Lawyer ★

First smart move he’s made in this saga. (If Brian Lam is smart, he’ll lawyer up too.)

Apple IIe Twitter Terminal ★

Regarding the iPhone- and iPad-only Apple Design Awards this year, I quipped on Twitter that the Mac was with the Apple II as a platform that wasn’t eligible this year. That doesn’t mean I think the Mac is going away. Apple is selling more Macs than ever; it’s an extremely profitable business. You can’t create iPhone apps without a Mac.

But despite the fact that Apple’s Mac business has never been bigger, it’s already been eclipsed by the iPhone OS business — iPhones, iPod Touches, and iPads. If you pause and close your eyes, you can feel it — the tectonic plates are shifting underfoot. The long-term trend is inevitable.

That said, though, what’s funny is that we could have had an Apple II ADA winner — this guy turned an Apple IIe into a Twitter terminal.

WWDC 2010: June 7-11 ★

Apple finally announces WWDC dates. Note that last year’s WWDC was held the same week (June 8-12), but was announced on March 26. The ticket price has gone up from $1295 to $1599, and airfare prices are significantly higher with so few weeks notice.

The focus is heavily iPhone OS centric. There are some Mac OS X developer sessions and labs, but not many. (Translation: Mac OS X 10.7 is not going to be announced this year.) The IT track appears to be gone. Looking at the session list, one could argue that this year’s WWDC is an iPhone OS developers conference, not an Apple developers conference. Look no further than this year’s Apple Design Awards, which will only honor iPhone and iPad apps — no category for Mac apps.

Good Luck Feigning Ignorance ★

Nick Bilton surveys legal opinion on the Gizmodo case:

In contrast to Mr. Zimmerman’s views, David Sugden, a California lawyer who specializes in intellectual property litigation, said the state shield law might not apply, if stolen property were involved. [...]

Mr. Sugden cited an example with celebrity images that are often bought by gossip sites like TMZ.com or Us Weekly. He said, “When TMZ takes photos of a celebrity, it’s in plain view, which is legal,” but cautioned, “TMZ would be in trouble if the reporters were breaking into houses to take those photos of people.”

Mr. Sugden said Gizmodo’s best defense would be to argue that it didn’t know the phone was Apple’s property when it was shown to them.

Good luck to the editors of a web site that specializes in mobile gadgetry — owned by the same publisher that received this warning from Apple just two months prior — arguing that they didn’t know that a heretofore unseen iPhone prototype, for which they were willing to pay $5000, belonged to Apple. And that’s their best defense.

The EFF Disputes the Validity of the Gizmodo Warrant ★

Matt Zimmerman, EFF:

Under California and federal law, this warrant should never have issued.

By his interpretation of these laws, journalists in California cannot be subject to search warrants no matter what they do — no matter what laws they may break — to obtain the material and information for their reporting. That would certainly be quite a precedent.

Steve Jobs to Appear Onstage at D8 Conference ★

Kara Swisher:

Apple CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs will appear at the eighth D: All Things Digital, in an interview on the opening night, kicking off our tech and media conference that will also include famed Hollywood director James Cameron, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, among others.

June 1 in Los Angeles.