Linked List: May 27, 2010

Thursday, 27 May 2010

A better keyhole design, by Junjie Zhang.

Microsoft’s Stated Goal: 30 Million Windows Phone 7 Devices Sold by the End of 2011 ★

Filed away for future claim chowder.

Foxconn Suicide Rate Significantly Lower Than Chinese Average ★

Perhaps the problem isn’t Foxconn but China. Update: Ends up even China’s reported per-capita suicide rate isn’t all that high.

Are there other Chinese factories of comparable size to Foxconn? If so, are the employee suicide rates significantly different than Foxconn’s?

Sachin Agarwal Says Apple Should Make MobileMe Free ★

Apple doesn’t do “loss leaders”, so I can’t see them making MobileMe free for everyone. But I could see them including free MobileMe service when you purchase any Mac or iPhone OS device. MobileMe calendar, contact, and bookmark syncing work great, but how many iPhone and iPad customers are missing out because they don’t want to pay $99 a year for it?

But this bit from Agarwal isn’t pragmatic:

So picture it: you buy an iPad, iPhone, or a new Macbook Pro. You turn it on and login with your MobileMe account. You already have one since it’s free. Instantly that device has all your media and other data. There’s no more USB syncing.

Like Agarwal, I’ve complained about the “tether this device to a Mac or PC” out-of-the-box experience. But wireless sync — especially over cellular networks, but also including Wi-Fi — can’t serve as a replacement for USB syncing and backup until network speeds get much, much faster. Most iPhone/iPod/iPad users have tens of gigabytes of music and video. We’re years away from being able to sync and restore 64 GB of data over the air. This is one area where Apple offers a far better solution today than Google.

Free (or cheaper, or whatever) MobileMe would be great for email, calendar, contacts, and bookmark syncing. But it wouldn’t help with music and video syncing, which is a huge part of the iPhone OS experience.

Update: A suggestion from a friend: “They should just merge MobileMe into iTunes accounts and give the basics away for free and charge for upgrades.” Brilliant. Single sign-in for everything.

Lukas Mathis on Non-Obvious Gestures ★

Outstanding piece on some of the fundamental UI problems faced by touchscreen gesture UIs, compared to Mac-style GUIs.

Iron Baby ★

Well-done parody.

Justin Williams on Android and the Nexus One ★

Excellent “Nexus One from the perspective of a long-time iPhone user” review. I pretty much agree with every word.

Apple’s Secret Weapon: Consumer Education ★

Michael Gartenberg on the iPad’s fast start:

The answer is, it took a decade of education and teaching. The key to Apple’s success is that the company often takes the time to explain things to the consumer that no other vendor bothers to do. By keeping a laser focus on key features and introducing them one at a time over a period of years, Apple taught and evangelized everything the consumer needed to know to understand the iPad from day one. Without that foundation, it’s not likely the product would have been nearly the success it has been.

Agreed.

Proposal From Brent Simmons for Ad Hoc iPhone OS Inter-App Callbacks ★

An interesting idea, given the built-in constraints of the iPhone SDK. But I sincerely hope that Apple has far richer inter-application communication ideas on the drawing board.

David Chartier on the Plastic Bullet iPhone App ★

I’m a sucker for these gimmicky “toy camera” iPhone apps. Plastic Bullet is a good one — the interface is optimized for finding an effect that looks good, rather than slavishly mimicking real-world retro camera hardware.

BP’s Photo Blockade of the Gulf Oil Spill ★

Newsweek:

Photographers who have traveled to the Gulf commonly say they believe that BP has exerted more control over coverage of the spill with the cooperation of the federal government and local law enforcement. “It’s a running joke among the journalists covering the story that the words ‘Coast Guard’ affixed to any vehicle, vessel, or plane should be prefixed with ‘BP,’ ” says Charlie Varley, a Louisiana-based photographer. “It would be funny if it were not so serious.”

The problem, as many members of the press see it, is that even when access is granted, it’s done so under the strict oversight of BP and Coast Guard personnel. Reporters and photographers are escorted by BP officials on BP-contracted boats and aircraft. So the company is able to determine what reporters see and when they see it.

Told You It Was Crazy Talk ★

Microsoft’s official Twitter feed:

Steve Ballmer not speaking at Apple Dev Conf. Nor appearing on Dancing with the Stars. Nor riding in the Belmont. Just FYI.

It never ceases to amaze me the sort of crazy speculative bullshit people will take at face value if it’s attributed to someone whose job title is “analyst”. After following this stuff for so many years, I find that information from “analysts” is generally less credible than average.

Joe Posnanski on Cold-Weather Super Bowls ★

Joe Posnanski nails it:

Basically here is the thing I haven’t liked: Pro football, for the most part, has lost the weather. And that’s terrible. I’m not saying football is a cold-weather sport … I’m saying it’s an all-weather sport. And they have more or less legislated snow and rain and ice and mud out of the game. Oh, it’s still there in places — in Green Bay and Chicago and Boston and Kansas City and so on — but these days it’s not just possible but quite likely that at least one team will make it to the Super Bowl without facing the weather at all. Last year, Indianapolis and New Orleans made it to the Super Bowl without playing outdoors once in the playoffs … and then they played the game itself in a Miami suburb.

Steve Ballmer on Apple’s Surpassing Microsoft in Market Cap ★

AFP:

“It is a long game. We have good competitors but we too are very good competitors,” he said. “I will make more profit and certainly there is no technology company on the planet that is as profitable as we are.”

True. But curious use of the first-person singular.

Nice Analysis From Daniel Jalkut on Android as a Worthy Arch-Rival to the iPhone ★

Daniel Jalkut:

My fear is these botched decisions are hurting Apple, but they aren’t feeling it. Pain is a gift: the signal that prevents a burned finger tip from becoming a body engulfed in flames. Apple is numb from success, and I hope the emerging competition from Google and others will re-sensitize them to the threat of failure.

Mary Jo Foley Thinks Silverlight Is Coming to the iPhone ★

You could pretty much substitute “Silverlight” for “Flash” in Steve Jobs’s “Thoughts on Flash” — especially the sixth and, in Jobs’s words, “the most important reason”:

We know from painful experience that letting a third party layer of software come between the platform and the developer ultimately results in sub-standard apps and hinders the enhancement and progress of the platform. If developers grow dependent on third party development libraries and tools, they can only take advantage of platform enhancements if and when the third party chooses to adopt the new features. We cannot be at the mercy of a third party deciding if and when they will make our enhancements available to our developers.

So I’d say no way in hell. What sense would it make for Steve Jobs to publish that in April and then announce Silverlight for iPhone in June? Think.

As for Visual Studio compiling native iPhone OS apps, that’s not quite as preposterous as Silverlight for iPhone, but it’s pretty close. One misinformed analyst does not a story make. Getting Microsoft involved with iPhone software development, in any way, is utterly contrary to everything Apple has stated regarding its plans for the platform.

Duncan Davidson on Android’s Virtual Machine Performance as a Competitive Factor Against the iPhone ★

Duncan Davidson, who knows a thing or two about Java, responding to this argument by Java developer Sam Pullara that Android’s Dalvik VM puts the iPhone at a significant competitive disadvantage, for performance reasons:

A faster VM will certainly help things out. But Android’s eventual fate will have little to do with how fast the VM is or how long method dispatches take on the iPhone. Instead, it’ll have to do with harder things like user experience, service plans, interoperability, and excellent applications.

I don’t think anyone would argue that Dalvik isn’t a high-performance VM, especially starting with Android 2.2. And there are absolutely some interesting debates about VMs versus native compilation — but those are developer debates, and no concern whatsoever to actual users.

But Pullara’s argument that Objective-C is inherently slow ignores the real-world results that show that it isn’t — based not on simple “how many million strings can you create per second?” benchmarks, but on the performance of actual iPhone software. (And for technical information about the performance of objc_msgSend(), the specific thing Pullara argues is crippling iPhone performance, you can’t beat Bill Bumgarner’s four-part series on how objc_msgSend() works.)

Or, you could save yourself a lot of time and just read this tweet from Guy English.

Matias Duarte Worked Under Andy Rubin at Danger ★

Seth Weintraub:

Matias Duarte was Director of Design at Danger from 2000-2005 under then CEO Andy Rubin.

Silly Bandz Bracelet Craze ★

My son’s kindergarten class is fanatical about these things.

John Paczkowski: ‘Palm WebOS Designer Matias Duarte Joining Google’ ★

John Paczkowski:

Mobile user interface master Matias Duarte has left Palm and evidently hired on at the most obvious of places: Google.

Duarte, who led development of Palm’s webOS UI as the company’s senior director of human interface and user experience, has jumped ship, Palm confirms. And while the company refuses to tell me where he’s going, multiple sources say it’s Google, where he’ll presumably be working on Android, the company’s open-source platform for mobile devices — noncompete clauses permitting, of course.

If true, Google may be serious about taking the ugly stick out of the Android development process. This is a seriously big hire.

NYT: ‘Google Balks at Turning Over Data Collected From Home Wi-Fi Networks to Regulators’ ★

This data collection thing is turning into a real problem for Google. I’d like to see a better explanation for how you “inadvertently” collect and store data from private Wi-Fi networks.

Adobe on Wired’s iPad App ★

Dave Dickson:

During summer 2010, watch for new publishing technology on Adobe Labs that helps publishers to transform InDesign CS5 layouts into compelling applications like the Wired Reader.

That Wired’s staff gets to produce this using InDesign is fascinating. The technology is impressive. I’ll repeat myself here: the iPad version truly looks and feels like a peer to the print edition.