Linked List: April 30, 2010

Friday, 30 April 2010

Jay Yarow on Microsoft’s Tablet Problem ★

Microsoft is still months away from getting back into the phone game, and they seemingly have nothing in the pipeline for tablets.

‘What the Old Timers Used to Call Cabin Fever’ ★

The evolution of Jack Torrance, by Max Brown.

Guess How Many Different Mobile Phone Models Motorola Currently Sells ★

117.

Motorola, Then and Now ★

Peter Svensson, reporting for Forbes:

Motorola Inc. posted an unexpected profit in the first quarter, as sales of its new phones outdid its own forecasts. It also gave an outlook that was brighter than Wall Street was predicting, and its shares jumped in premarket trading.

However, it has lost its position as the largest U.S. maker of phones to Apple Inc. Motorola sold a total of 8.5 million phones in the quarter, while Apple sold 8.8 million iPhones. Four years ago, when the Razr was still popular, Motorola sold 46.1 million phones in the first quarter.

David Chartier Reviews Five iPad Bags and Packs ★

This is the sort of thing Macworld does better than anyone — cross-comparison of a pile of competing products. Chartier’s favorite: the Tom Bihn Ristretto for iPads and Netbooks.

IE 9 Will Support Only H.264 for HTML5 Video ★

Dean Hachamovitch:

The future of the web is HTML5. Microsoft is deeply engaged in the HTML5 process with the W3C. HTML5 will be very important in advancing rich, interactive web applications and site design. The HTML5 specification describes video support without specifying a particular video format. We think H.264 is an excellent format. In its HTML5 support, IE9 will support playback of H.264 video only.

Charlie Stross on Apple’s Long-Term Strategy ★

I don’t agree with all of it, but Charlie Stross’s analysis of Apple’s long-term strategy is just great overall. This is spot-on:

I’ve got a theory, and it’s this: Steve Jobs believes he’s gambling Apple’s future — the future of a corporation with a market cap well over US $200Bn — on an all-or-nothing push into a new market. HP have woken up and smelled the forest fire, two or three years late; Microsoft are mired in a tar pit, unable to grasp that the inferno heading towards them is going to burn down the entire ecosystem in which they exist.

Apple’s decision to ban apps made using Adobe’s Flash cross-compiler isn’t about the present. It’s about making decisions now — exerting control while they have it — to shape the landscape of the entire industry a decade from now. And count me in with Stross — HP’s decision to buy Palm is a sign that HP understands Apple’s strategy and they want in.

Here’s where I disagree with Stross:

And [Steve Jobs] really does not want cross-platform apps that might divert attention and energy away from his application ecosystem. The long term goal is to support the long-term migration of Apple from being a hardware company with a software arm into being a cloud computing company with a hardware subsidiary — almost like Google, if you squint at the Google Nexus One in the right light. The alternative is to join the PC industry in a long death spiral into irrelevance.

Apple needs to add a strong cloud computing infrastructure to its core competencies, yes. But hardware is more important to Apple’s business now than ever. I think it’s Apple’s goal to produce both software and hardware that its competitors cannot compete with. From a design perspective, Apple creates an experience. From a financial perspective, though, Apple sells hardware.

Thoughts on Horses ★

Another open letter from a CEO.

Irony ★

Me, using my iPad to watch a video from the WSJ of Adobe’s CEO talking about how essential Flash is to publications like the WSJ.

What Would Nick Denton Pay for These Things I Found in a Bar? ★

Don’t forget to hit Refresh a few times.

Paint It Black ★

Drill, baby, drill.