Linked List: May 25, 2010

Tuesday, 25 May 2010

Horace Dediu on Why Robbie Bach Was Fired ★

Horace Dediu:

No, the reason I believe Bach lost his head is that HP bought Palm.

Bach lost a key account; in fact, he could be responsible for having lost the biggest account that Microsoft ever had. Ballmer is a sales guy and he knows the importance of these relationships. A customer like HP must be managed carefully and their strategy must be steered to fit with yours. If HP felt they needed to go somewhere else for their mobile OS, it’s a slap in the face, but if they buy the asset and IP and internalize a competing platform, then that is a dagger to the heart for Ballmer.

Hard to argue with the timing or the logic. Remember too, that it was an “HP Slate” set to run Windows 7 that Ballmer held up on stage at CES as Microsoft’s flagship new product for 2010.

Lance Ulanoff: ‘The Dell Streak Is Not a Tablet’ ★

Count me in with Ulanoff — seems more like a big phone than a small tablet. And where’s Dell’s answer to the iPod Touch? Why not sell a Wi-Fi-only version?

LittleDog Robot ★

Amazing work from USC.

MSNBC’s New Photoblog ★

Subscribed.

Kathryn Koegel of AdAge Is Shocked, Shocked, That Apple Won’t Answer Her Questions About iAds ★

Apple doesn’t answer questions about upcoming products, period, even when they’ve been pre-announced. The rest of her piece is oddly defensive:

Martin Nisenholtz, the executive in charge of The New York Times website, stood with Steve at the iPad launch to proudly show off his free ad-supported app. Is Martin going to say to Steve: “Yeah Steve, sell the New York Times in your network. I don’t need to have any say in what ads show up and let us take 40% of the revenue.” It seems unlikely the Times and other “branded” content sites will agree to Steve’s terms.

If anyone doesn’t want to use iAds, then they won’t use iAds. It’s very simple. It’s not like Apple is saying that iAds is the only allowable way to show ads in apps.

‘This Is a Nightmare’ ★

Philippe Cousteau Jr. and Sam Champion on what’s going on under the surface of the Gulf.

Meadowlands Awarded 2014 Super Bowl ★

Finally, a cold-weather outdoor Super Bowl. (I love how they say a game that will be played in New Jersey was awarded to “New York”.)

Apple, Google, and the Map Wars ★

Another smart piece from Kontra, looking at Apple’s relationship with Google Maps:

Digital maps, once a wondrous novelty that started with Google Maps on the desktop, are no longer a mere destination app on mobile devices. Mapping frameworks are beginning to be tightly integrated at the OS level and maps are becoming primary UI conduits to ever more sophisticated location-based services.

Apple’s rivalry with Google is asymmetric. As I noted a few weeks ago, Apple has products that use Google services (search, maps, YouTube); Google has no products that use services from Apple. Android and Chrome OS could “lose” to the iPhone and iPad and Google could still win, so long as iPhone and iPad users continue making heavy use of Google services like web search, Google Maps, and YouTube. Whereas if Android and/or Chrome OS “win”, Apple gets bupkis.

On the other hand, if Apple starts dropping services like Google Maps and Google search, and the iPhone OS proves to be a long-term market winner, Google will lose traffic they would have otherwise won.

Matt Drance on Verizon ★

There are a lot of reasons not to hold your breath waiting for a Verizon iPhone, and Matt Drance does a good job running them down here. The Apple Store angle is one that hasn’t gotten much attention.

But: I think it has to happen eventually. It’s just a matter of when.

Bach, Allard Leaving Microsoft ★

Todd Bishop:

Robbie Bach and J Allard, founding fathers of Microsoft’s Entertainment & Devices Division, are leaving the company as part of a broader restructuring that will give CEO Steve Ballmer more direct oversight of consumer businesses including Microsoft’s struggling mobile unit.

I’m sure Ballmer can fix it.

Google Chrome for Mac and Linux Is Out of Beta ★

I’ve been running WebKit nightly builds of Safari as my daily browser, but Chrome is good. I’m going to give it another go.

Safari really needs an option to automatically reopen pages that were left open. It’s crazy that Safari still defaults to the same poorly-chosen behavior of Mosaic from 1993 — where quitting the app implies closing and forgetting all open browser windows. I know about (and make daily use of) the “Reopen All Windows from Last Session” command in Safari’s History menu, but there should be an option to make it automatic, and in my opinion, it should be the default behavior. Closing windows and quitting the browser should not be related tasks. Update: Safari also still lacks a “Reopen Last Closed Tab” command.

The other big thing that’s missing (compared to both Chrome and Firefox) is a proper extension API. If only Apple had an imminent developer conference where they could unveil such a thing.

Steam for Mac Lags Windows Version in Performance, but More Stable ★

Chris Foresman:

The Steam for Mac client has been in the hands of gamers for a week now and Valve is collecting some useful data about Mac users. Among the statistics the company has gathered so far: two-thirds of Steam for Mac users run on laptops, and after one week, 11 percent of all Steam purchases are for Mac. One surprising result, however, is that the same version of Portal is five times more stable on Mac OS X than on Windows.

Ben Kuchera on Super Mario Galaxy 2 ★

Ben Kuchera:

Saying this is Nintendo at its platforming best is an understatement. This is the equivalent of a baseball player hitting nothing but home runs for an entire four-game series, calling his shots Babe-Ruth-style before each swing.

Oil Reaches Louisiana Shores ★

A catastrophe that could have and should have been avoided.