Linked List: May 5, 2010

Wednesday, 5 May 2010

Om Malik: ‘Why Intel Will Be a Mobile Loser’ ★

Om Malik on why Intel is in such a weak position in the competitive (and lucrative) mobile CPU market. Smart analysis.

Claim Chowder: ‘Why the iPad Will Fail and Help Windows 7 to Succeed’ ★

Mike Halsey, on January 28:

All this will have come about because Apple have done the R&D and released a product that’s been instantly derided as ugly and not what people want. If I were Steve Ballmer today, I’d be splashing out on an extra skiing holiday.

Mike Halsey, on April 29:

The simple fact is that neither Android nor Windows 7 are finger-friendly tablet-oriented operating systems. Android treats every device it’s on as though it has a big desktop and is, essentially just a computer, and Windows 7 is far from finger-friendly.

Apple’s iPad has proven what you should do to make a tablet device friendly and Microsoft’s own Courier concept device has been widely hailed as the way these devices really should be.

Courier, of course, was publicly canceled by Microsoft later that day.

Scribd Switching From Flash to HTML5 ★

Erick Schonfeld at TechCrunch:

Scribd co-founder and chief technology officer Jared Friedman tells me: “We are scrapping three years of Flash development and betting the company on HTML5 because we believe HTML5 is a dramatically better reading experience than Flash. Now any document can become a Web page.”

New Features in iPhone OS 4.0 Beta 3 ★

iPad-style file sharing through iTunes, and media playback controls in the app-switching strip.

DF RSS Feed Sponsorship Openings ★

A heads-up to anyone considering sponsoring the DF RSS feed: July is almost sold out, but August remains wide open. If you have a product or service you’d like to promote to the smart, good-looking, affluent DF audience, get in touch.

Mac Rumors: Next iPhone to Record 1280 × 720 HD Video? ★

Mobile phones are obviating the Flip class of pocket video cameras.

Google Redesigns Search Results Page ★

Looks good, including the cleaned-up, brightened Google logo. Update: They redesigned their mobile search results interface, too.

Adobe Shows Prototype Android Tablets Running Flash and AIR at Web 2.0 Expo ★

I especially like this video, showing the Android browser playing YouTube videos using Flash, where the guy narrating the video says “Good thing I didn’t buy an iPad, because this one does Flash”, and at that moment, the browser crashes.

Sure would be great if iPads could play YouTube video, though.

Second IE9 Platform Preview ★

Microsoft is taking HTML5 seriously, and they’re competing for real to make IE9 a good, modern browser. This is good news.

‘iPhone App Development: The Missing Manual’, by Craig Hockenberry ★

Speaking of new books, Craig Hockenberry’s iPhone App Development: The Missing Manual is out. Hockenberry describes it thus:

In short, there’s more to learn than just how to code, so I wrote about it.

Of course, I cover topics like Objective-C and Cocoa Touch in detail, but that’s not the overall focus. As the header on this website states: This book walks you through the entire iPhone app development process from start to finish.

Announcing A Book Apart ★

Speaking of that new publisher, here’s Jason Santa Maria on the debut of A Book Apart:

I’m very pleased to present A Book Apart, a new publisher of brief books for people who make websites, founded by Jeffrey Zeldman, Mandy Brown, and myself.

Great design work.

‘HTML5 for Web Designers’, by Jeremy Keith ★

New book from a new publisher:

The HTML5 spec is 900 pages and hard to read. HTML5 for Web Designers is 85 pages and fun to read. Easy choice.

Ships in June, pre-orders available now for $18. I’ve got a PDF preview version of it, and it’s terrific — well-written, smart, and gorgeously designed.

Washington Post Co. to Sell Newsweek ★

Newsweek reports:

The Washington Post Co. announced today that it has retained Allen & Company to explore the possible sale of Newsweek magazine. The Newsweekly was launched in 1933 and purchased by The Washington Post Co. in 1961.

“The losses at Newsweek in 2007-2009 are a matter of record. Despite heroic efforts on the part of Newsweek’s management and staff, we expect it to still lose money in 2010. We are exploring all options to fix that problem,” said Donald E. Graham, chairman of The Washington Post Co.

Ellen DeGeneres Apologizes for Mock iPhone Commercial ★

Whoever at Apple complained about this needs to relax. It’s a funny spoof.

Update: Think of it this way. It says something about the iPhone’s brand strength and consumer awareness that Ellen could even make this spoof and that her audience got it. Would Apple prefer that she’d made the spoof about an Android phone instead? I don’t think she could have, not today, because Android doesn’t have the iPhone’s mainstream consumer awareness. BlackBerry does, but the joke was about touchscreens. This is the sort of thing Apple should be happy about.

Stuart Green on Gizmodo and the iPhone Prototype ★

Stuart Green, in an op-ed for the Christian Science Monitor:

So what explains this apparent sympathy for Hogan and Chen, and hostility toward Apple and the San Mateo police? One possibility is a basic confusion about the fact that finding and failing to return lost property is a crime, a confusion that may be a vestige of the common, but legally mistaken, schoolyard adage, “finders keepers, losers weepers.”

You will be very surprised to know that I agree with him.

Robert Reich: ‘Apple Isn’t the Problem; Wall Street’s Big Banks Are the Problem’ ★

Robert Reich:

Why is the Federal Trade Commission threatening Apple with a possible lawsuit for abusing its economic power, but not even raising an eyebrow about the huge and growing economic (and political) muscle of JP Morgan Chase or any of the other four remaining giant banks on Wall Street?

You will be very surprised to know that I agree with him.

Engadget Reviews the Microsoft Kin One and Two ★

Joshua Topolsky:

While using the One and Two we found ourselves consistently confused or surprised by how many bad little interface problems there are. Not only does the phone make it hard to do simple tasks — and not only are the social networking features poorly implemented — but the handsets are often sluggish, hiccupy, and downright crash-prone.

Why do these products even exist?