Linked List: May 3, 2010

Monday, 3 May 2010

Speaking of MacRuby, the first few chapters of Matt Aimonetti’s in-progress book about it are available for free online.

MacRuby 0.6 ★

Laurent Sansonetti:

Since 0.5’s release, we have worked closely with a number of early-adopter developers in finding and fixing a great number of bugs, as well as improving the overall process of creating Cocoa apps in MacRuby. We believe that MacRuby is now stable enough to permit the creation of complete and functional Cocoa applications that have access to the full suite of Cocoa APIs.

If the TSA Were Running New York ★

James Fallows:

All vans or SUVs headed into Midtown Manhattan would have to stop and have their contents inspected. If any vehicle seemed for any reason to have escaped inspection, Midtown in its entirety would be evacuated.

And:

The point of terrorism is not to “destroy.” It is to terrify. And for eight and a half years now, the dominant federal government response to terrorist threats and attacks has been to magnify their harm by increasing a mood of fear and intimidation.

iPad Case Finder ★

Comprehensive listing of iPad cases and carrying bags.

Fraser Speirs Is Back In ★

Fraser Speirs:

iPhone OS is the first mass-market operating system where consumers are no longer afraid to install software on their computers (I’m not counting read-only media software platforms like games consoles here). In a conversation recently, a friend recounted a scene that he passed by in an airport. Four fifty-something women were sitting at a cafe table discussing the latest apps they had downloaded on their iPod touches. New software can’t break your iPhone OS device and, if you don’t like it, total removal is only a couple of taps away.

Why not count the game consoles, though? That’s the best way to think of iPhone OS devices: app consoles.

Very Personal Computing ★

Jean-Louis Gassée:

The center of financial gravity in the computing world—the Center of Money—has shifted. No longer directed at the PC, the money pump now gushes full blast at the smartphones market.

He backs this up with a striking financial comparison: Apple makes six times the profit from iPhone OS device sales than HP makes from PC sales — despite the fact that by unit sales, HP is the world’s leading PC maker, and Apple is not the leading smartphone maker.

HP’s purchase of Palm shows that they understand this opportunity.

Follow Up on HTML5 Video in IE9 ★

Microsoft’s Dean Hachamovitch:

Several comments speculated about Microsoft’s financial interest in the codec. (Microsoft participates in MPEG-LA with many other companies.) Microsoft pays into MPEG-LA about twice as much as it receives back for rights to H.264. Much of what Microsoft pays in royalties is so that people who buy Windows (on a new PC from an OEM or as a packaged product) can just play H.264 video or DVD movies. Microsoft receives back from MPEG-LA less than half the amount for the patent rights that it contributes because there are many other companies that provide the licensed functionality in content and products that sell in high volume. Microsoft pledged its patent rights to this neutral organization in order to make its rights broadly available under clear terms, not because it thought this might be a good revenue stream. We do not foresee this patent pool ever producing a material revenue stream, and revenue plays no part in our decision here.

Michael Gartenberg on the iPad’s Early Success ★

Michael Gartenberg:

The reason Apple was successful was they optimized for the form factor. Sure, iPad looks a lot like a large iPod touch but in practice it’s much more than that. Vendors building on Windows 7 need to think how that will play in the market. Windows, like OS X, for better or for worse was designed for large screens, mice and keyboards. Likewise, Android in current format works best for phones. It will be interesting what Google has to say about tablets at I/O.

Specifically, I’ve been wondering whether Google’s answer for tablets is going to be Android or Chrome OS. (My guess: “Both!” — which would not be good.)

Ed Bott on the FSF’s Campaign for Ogg ★

Ed Bott:

Microsoft began using the MP3 format in Windows Media Player in 1998. Alcatel-Lucent filed its lawsuit in 2000. The FSF says “they would have been safe” if they had chosen Ogg Vorbis. That overlooks the inconvenient fact that the first stable version of the Ogg Vorbis reference software (version 1.0) was not released until July 2002. It’s hard to imagine how Microsoft could have chosen the “safe” open-source option when it didn’t exist yet.

Encoding.com Reports H.264 Is Now Used to Encode 66 Percent of Web Videos ★

Keep in mind that H.264 is an encoding format, not a video player, and that the most popular player for H.264-encoded video is Flash. But, once your video is encoded using H.264, it’s a lot easier to use HTML5 video as an alternative to Flash for the player.

Communal Computing ★

Craig Hockenberry on the need for something like a guest account on the iPad.

Twitter Launches Official Android Client ★

Interesting that it doesn’t look anything at all like Tweetie — the official Twitter clients for iPhone and Android thus don’t look anything alike. (Unless they plan to remake Tweetie to look like this Android app, which would only happen over Loren Brichter’s dead body.)

Also interesting: the Android app requires OS 2.1, which, according to Google’s own numbers, is only installed on 27 percent of actively-used Android handsets.

Google Acquires BumpTop ★

Interesting; over-the-top UI gimmickry seems un-Google-like. Here’s what I wrote when BumpTop for Mac shipped.

Night and Day ★

Apple has already sold 1 million iPads. A decade ago, during the entire five-year lifespan of the Newton, they sold a grand total of 200,000 units.

Peter Hartlaub on ‘Toy Story 3’ Director Lee Unkrich ★

Nice profile:

“When I was around 12 or so, I saw ‘The Shining,’ ” he remembers. “I just remember that being a turning point for me, where I started to think about the fact that there was a hand behind the film. That it wasn’t just this magical story being told — there were actual people crafting these films, and they were works of art. … I started to become fascinated with making movies.”

iPhone OS 4.0b2 SDK Breaks File Sharing With iPad ★

I noticed a few days ago that the file sharing feature between iTunes and my iPad was no longer working. When I tether my iPad to my Mac via USB, I can neither add files from my Mac to iPad apps nor see any of the files already on my iPad. Ends up this is a bug in the iPhone OS 4.0b2 SDK. For more information, see this thread on Apple’s developer program forum.

(I’m just going to wait until beta 3 arrives.)

Who Drinks? ★

Interesting demographics on alcohol consumption — including a very strong correlation between those who drink and those who score well on the Wordsum vocabulary test.

New York Post Reports Apple May Face Antitrust Inquiry ★

Josh Kosman, reporting for The New York Post:

According to a person familiar with the matter, the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission are locked in negotiations over which of the watchdogs will begin an antitrust inquiry into Apple’s new policy of requiring software developers who devise applications for devices such as the iPhone and iPad to use only Apple’s programming tools.

Regulators, this person said, are days away from making a decision about which agency will launch the inquiry. It will focus on whether the policy, which took effect last month, kills competition by forcing programmers to choose between developing apps that can run only on Apple gizmos or come up with apps that are platform neutral, and can be used on a variety of operating systems, such as those from rivals Google, Microsoft and Research In Motion.

It’s the Post, so take it with a grain of salt and file it under “Claim Chowder” for now.

Apple Sells One Millionth iPad ★

Apple PR:

Apple today announced that it sold its one millionth iPad™ on Friday, just 28 days after its introduction on April 3. iPad users have already downloaded over 12 million apps from the App Store and over 1.5 million ebooks from the new iBookstore.

“One million iPads in 28 days — that’s less than half of the 74 days it took to achieve this milestone with iPhone,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “Demand continues to exceed supply and we’re working hard to get this magical product into the hands of even more customers.”

User Interface of the Week: STAT E&M Coder ★

It’s the pleather background that seals the deal.