Linked List: May 26, 2010

Wednesday, 26 May 2010

This Is the Craziest Thing I’ve Read in a While 

Eric Savitz, Barron’s Tech Trader Daily:

Trip Chowdhry, an analyst with tiny Global Equities Research, contends that 7 minutes of the June 7 keynote by Apple CEO Steve Jobs has been blocked off for a presentation by Microsoft to talk about Visual Studio 2010, the company’s suite of development tools. Chowdhry says the new version of VS will allow developers to write native applications for the iPhone, iPad and Mac OS. And here’s the kicker: he thinks Microsoft’s presentation could be given by none other than Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.

That’d be something.

(Via Aaron Swindell.)

iPad Claim Chowder for Retrevo 

Retrevo, “the ultimate electronics marketplace”, on the iPad’s prospects back in February:

A follow-up Retrevo Pulse study looking at consumer interest in buying the new Apple iPad indicates a failure to convince any new buyers to consider the iPad. Not only did Apple fail to convince new buyers, it may have lost many potential buyers who now say they don’t think they need an Apple tablet computer. […]

Whether this device becomes a big hit is anyone’s guess but based on this study it sure looks doubtful.

The Big Caption 

“A complement to The Big Picture, wherein jokes and statements are made using typography.”

Love it.

Neven Mrgan on the Wired iPad App 

Neven Mrgan:

The Wired app looks great but holy effin christ, I forgot just how many ads magazines have these days. How much would an ad-free issue cost?

The inordinate number of ads added to the feeling that I was swiping rather than reading for much of the issue. I agree with this, too.

Jim Dalrymple’s Predictions for WWDC 

Jim Dalrymple:

I don’t expect to see a Verizon-compatible iPhone until early 2011 and that’s assuming everything remains equal. Changes to development could push that timeframe back even further.

Sounds about right to me too. I don’t know anyone who thinks a Verizon announcement is coming at WWDC, but I do know there are many people who are hoping for (or even expecting) a Verizon iPhone HD this fall, announced at Apple’s annual fall iPod event, but I don’t think that’s going to happen.

‘Spirit of Good Fun’ 

Electronista:

Google engineering VP Vic Gundotra softened his approach to Apple today in a chat at the TCDisrupt conference (video below). He now claims that the warnings of a dystopic future and other clear references to Apple weren’t attacks. The statements on openness and choice were conducted only in a “spirit of good fun,” Gundotra said.

Not quite as jovial as Andy Rubin’s comparison of Apple to North Korea, though.

Wired’s Flash-Free App Lands on the iPad 

Peter Kafka:

Meanwhile, Condé says that the real point of the exercise–to build a platform that lets them create a digital version of the magazine with the same tools they use to build the print edition–has been a success. Adobe’s (ADBE) idea was to create a single version that would run on all platforms, but Apple’s anti-Flash stance has made that a no-go. Instead, Condé will build an iPad-specific app, and one that works everywhere else–assuming people want to read this anywhere else.

So what exactly is the basis for Adobe’s antitrust complaint against Apple? They originally planned to use a Flash/AIR app for this. Because of Apple’s ban on such apps, Adobe wrote an application shell specifically for the iPad. Seems like a total win for iPad users — a better experience than if Apple had maintained an “anything goes” policy.

As for the Wired app itself. It’s big — over 500 MB, and it costs $4.99. That seems high to me. Psychologically, I think digital-only content needs to cost a little less than the physical version. It feels good, and the navigation design is thoughtful and interesting. They’re using both axes for pagination — you flip left-to-right to go between stories, and you go up-and-down to go through the pages of a story. One problem is that in many cases, especially with multi-page ads, there’s no visual clue to tell you when there are more pages underneath the current one.

I enjoyed the feature-length cover story on Pixar and Toy Story 3, but the first two-thirds or so of the issue — with all the nugget-length content — made me feel more like I was swiping than reading. Bottom line: I give it a thumbs up. It feels like a true peer to the print version of Wired, not an afterthought or by-product.

BP’s Brands 

BP:

Each of our brands has its own heritage and personality, but they all have one thing in common. They all symbolize, embody or provide tremendous energy.

One more thing they have in common: I’ll never buy gas from any of them again.

Google Dictionary Chrome Extension 

This Chrome extension is a perfect example of why I don’t think I’ll ever like using Chrome as my primary web browser. The feature it adds — inline dictionary definitions that hover over any selected word in a web page — is one that is built into Mac OS X. Mac OS X’s built-in dictionary lookup feature works the same way in every well-written Mac app. It looks the same in every app, and is invoked the same way — either by a keystroke or via the right-click contextual menu. It works in Safari web pages, it works in TextEdit text files, it works in Preview PDFs. But it doesn’t work in Chrome. Chrome’s implementation (via this extension) looks ugly and is invoked differently.

I like Chrome much better than Firefox, but fundamentally it’s the same idea as Firefox — a web browser written and designed for another platform, ported to the Mac, missing all sorts of little things that make for good Mac software.

Update: Chrome’s lack of support for Mac OS X’s system-wide dictionary is a known issue.

Doug Bowman on the New Icon for Twitter for iPhone (Née Tweetie) 

Twitter lead designer Doug Bowman, responding on Dribbble to a proposed more-Tweetie-like icon for the newly rebranded Twitter for iPhone:

The best version used more blue for the bird, but retained the exact same silver color of Tweetie’s icon. I thought it was the best choice of everything we had. For several reasons I won’t go into, we opted for the version the app uses now.

Everyone loves to kibitz about app icons. Any app that ever changes its icon is going to generate complaints, no matter what. It’s the one part of the app that every (sighted) user is guaranteed to see and notice.

My biggest complaint about the new Twitter for iPhone icon is that the little birdie icon they’re using is the same icon Twitter displays for users who haven’t set a custom avatar. Which users, in turn, are generally utterly uninteresting to me. Go through Twitter’s trending lists to read tweets from random users, and notice how the ones with the generic Twitter bird avatar are generally just full of hashtag gibberish. More often, I run into it as the avatar representing spambot accounts. So I’ve come to associate this icon with something mildly unpleasant, sort of like the “missing image” icon in a web browser. If this is a logo mark Twitter wants to associate with the company, they should stop associating it with their worst users. (The Twitter for Android app uses the “t” logo mark for its icon — a mark that I more strongly associate with Twitter as a company.)

Apple Passes Microsoft in Market Cap; Second Only to Exxon-Mobil 

Called it. Google Finance has live numbers, so you can watch them fluctuate. An interesting way to compare the two companies’ market caps historically is via Wolfram Alpha. Wolfram’s data isn’t live (they’re using closing prices from yesterday), but it shows the long-term trend.

NYT: Justice Department Investigating iTunes Music Tactics 

Brad Stone, reporting for the NYT:

In March, Billboard magazine reported that Amazon was asking music labels to give it the exclusive right to sell certain forthcoming songs for one day before they went on sale more widely. In exchange, Amazon promised to include those songs in a promotion called the “MP3 Daily Deal” on its Web site.

The magazine reported that representatives of Apple’s iTunes music service were asking the labels not to participate in Amazon’s promotion, adding that Apple punished those that did by withdrawing marketing support for those songs on iTunes.

“Withdrawing marketing support” for songs which were given exclusive marketing deals to Amazon — Apple’s biggest rival — seems like weak sauce. It’s not like Apple was saying they wouldn’t sell the songs. They just didn’t promote them.