Linked List: June 8, 2010

Tuesday, 8 June 2010

An Android User’s Take on Yesterday’s iPhone News ★

Interesting piece from Jason Kincaid at TechCrunch:

I don’t mean to say I found the iPhone 4 to be disappointing — it will be incredibly successful, and many of my friends are champing at the bit to get one. But I expected to walk out of San Francisco’s Moscone Center yesterday longing for the next iPhone despite my current allegiance to Android. That didn’t happen.

One thing that I’ve been thinking about today is that yesterday’s announcements really showed how different Apple’s priorities are from Google’s. What Apple has focused on is making the iPhone feel and look better. It’s about how it feels in your hand, about how amazing the new Retina Display looks. It’s about even better battery life.

People who prefer Android over the iPhone value different things. I’ll bet Android users were more likely to expect that Apple would announce a new UI for notifications, for example. I think Apple probably will create a richer UI for notifications in iOS at some point — but their immediate priorities lie elsewhere.

Put another way, I think there are Android users like Kincaid who hoped to see Apple play catch-up to Android in certain areas, but I don’t think Apple sees any areas where they need to make iOS more Android-like at all.

Thomas Hawk on Lightroom 3.0 ★

Thomas Hawk:

Quite simply Lightroom 3 represents the single most significant advancement in photographic noise reduction I’ve ever seen. I’m blown away. Thousands of photos that were previously unworkable for me, now have suddenly become available to process. High iso low light shots with tons of noise can be salvaged, saved and turned into beautiful images. What’s more, pushed to it’s extremes, this new noise reduction technology gives photographs an almost painterly quality, allowing new potential for artistic representation of photographs.

His examples are truly amazing. I love Lightroom so much.

Pulse Back in the App Store ★

MG Siegler:

Pulse has already made a triumphant return to the store, their Twitter account confirms. So what happened? Did Jobs himself step into the fray and get the NYT to ease up? […] When asked how the app returned so quickly, co-creator Akshay Kothari wrote back: “We’re trying to figure that out ourselves. Keep you posted.”

Safari Extensions ★

Some very cool stuff already. Not bad for a day.

Khoi Vinh on Apple’s Typographical Shortcomings ★

Khoi Vinh:

Creating a beautiful display and patting yourself on the back for having good typography is disingenuous, I think. It’s a little like saying a high-definition television set makes for better television shows; an absurd claim at best.

U.S. Intelligence Analyst Arrested in Wikileaks Video Probe ★

Kevin Paulsen and Kim Zitter:

Manning had access to two classified networks from two separate secured laptops: SIPRNET, the Secret-level network used by the Department of Defense and the State Department, and the Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System which serves both agencies at the Top Secret/SCI level.

The networks, he said, were both “air gapped” from unclassified networks, but the environment at the base made it easy to smuggle data out. “I would come in with music on a CD-RW labeled with something like ‘Lady Gaga,’ erase the music then write a compressed split file,” he wrote. “No one suspected a thing and, odds are, they never will.”

New York Times Gets Pulse Removed From App Store ★

Very weird: the Times objected to a feed reader — which had just been mentioned by Jobs during the keynote as an example of a great iPad app — including the Times’s RSS feeds in its default subscriptions.

It must have been a mistake on the part of a Times lawyer, though, because the app is back in the store already.

The End of ‘:hover’ ★

Andy Croll:

I know that I’ll certainly be considering ‘tap to toggle’ as a user interface choice ahead of hover in the future. The iPhone-ification of interaction online continues.

Gina Trapani on Apple’s Advertising ★

Gina Trapani:

That’s the thing about Apple marketing. They don’t talk about how many gigabytes of memory or how many CPU cycles or how many apps (much). They aim for your heart, and show you how technology can make your life better during its most important moments.

Fortune Rounds Up the Analysts’ Takes on iPhone 4 ★

Thomas Weisel’s Doug Reid: Overall iPhone 4 meets but does not exceed our expectations for the device going into the event.

Doug Reid is the same genius who, back on January 28, thought Apple would sell only 1.1 million iPads this year.

Coda Notes ★

My favorite demo from the Safari State of the Union. Fun and clever.