Linked List: September 17, 2010

Friday, 17 September 2010

My thanks to The Little App Factory for sponsoring this week’s DF RSS feed to promote Ringtones, their excellent $12.95 ringtone-maker app for Mac OS X. It works with any DRM-free song or audio file in your iTunes music library, the editing interface is easy (and looks great), and it sends your ringtones right back to iTunes for syncing with your iPhone.

DF readers can save 20 percent using the coupon “DF2010RING”. And, for a limited time, you can use that same coupon to save 12 percent off the TLAF Software Passport — a discounted bundle that includes every App Factory product.

Bloomberg: Apple Negotiating With Publishers Over Digital Newsstand ★

Bloomberg:

Apple Inc. is developing a digital newsstand for publishers that would let them sell magazines and newspapers to consumers for use on Apple devices, said two people familiar with the matter.

The newsstand, designed particularly for the iPad, would be similar to Apple’s iBook store for electronic books, said the people, who declined to be identified because the negotiations are private. The newsstand would be separate from Apple’s App Store, where people can buy some publications now, they said.

Pixel-Art 2010 MLB Uniforms ★

Interesting fact I gleaned from this: there are only four teams remaining with just two uniforms, home and away: the Yankees, Tigers, Cardinals, and Dodgers.

Update: And, as per Kevin Crossman, the Yankees and Dodgers are the only two teams with just two uniforms and a single cap style.

iPad Light Painting ★

Very cool stop-motion animation technique.

Commodore 64 Emulator for iOS Now Has BASIC ★

Proof that Apple really has relaxed its rules on interpreters in iOS apps: Manomio’s Commodore 64 emulator now has a BASIC mode.

Peter-Paul Koch on Nokia ★

Peter-Paul Koch:

Why on earth wouldn’t Nokia be able to maintain two operating systems?

Apple does it: Mac OS and iOS. Google does it: Android and ChromeOS. Microsoft does it, 7, Vista, XP, and maybe even older versions. And Windows Phone 7, of course. And I’m sure HP has a few OS skeletons in the contractual closet.

This is at least partly in response to my argument that “Nokia needs to settle on one software platform for mobile devices, very soon.” I shouldn’t have written “mobile devices”; I should have written “smartphones”.

Is Symbian fine for low-end “feature” phones? Sure. I’d say it’s sort of equivalent to the Pixo OS that Apple uses in iPods. The point is that Apple has no confusion about which of its OSes to use in which products. Is it a PC? Mac OS X. Touchscreen mobile computer? iOS. Media player handheld? Pixo. I’m saying a big part of Nokia’s problem is that they have no single answer regarding what their OS is for smartphones.

Koch goes on to argue that Nokia has made this decision, and it’s MeeGo — their problem is simply that they’re too slow to execute it.

(Also: the Android-or-Chrome OS question may well prove to be a problem for Google. Which is their OS to compete against the iPad? From what I hear, the Android team says Android, and the Chrome team says Chrome.)

Nilay Patel on Skyhook-Google ★

Nilay Patel:

Now, this is Skyhook’s side of the story and we’re sure Google will make a persuasive argument of its own, but let’s just back up for a moment here and point out the obvious: Google’s never, ever come out and clearly said what’s required for devices to gain access to Android Market and the branded apps like Gmail — even though we’ve been directly asking about those requirements since Android first launched.

AirPlay as Apple’s Backdoor Strategy for Apple TV Content ★

Seth Weintraub:

AppleTV is an AirPlay-compatible device, meaning it can stream video/sound from other Apple devices. We found out last night that it isn’t just iTunes content that it will be able to broadcast. Any H.264 content from the web can be broadcast over AirPlay to your HD TV.

That includes any video that can play on your iOS 4.2 device, like: Facebook, YouTube, Netflix, Videos, BBC News, MLB and really anything else you can watch on your iOS device. That also includes videos built into Apps and magazine subscriptions too. Everything can all be beamed to your AppleTV via AirPlay.

I noticed this in iOS 4.2, too. E.g. the MLB At Bat app for the iPad — it now has an AirPlay button. Presumably, once I get the new Apple TV, I’ll be able to use it as the playback destination for any video on the iPad or iPhone. This is exactly what I was wondering about after the Apple TV 2 announcement: maybe we don’t need Apple TV apps, but instead just AirPlay and existing iOS apps.

It’s unclear to me, though, whether developers will have any control over this. Can a developer make a video app for the iPad that purposely doesn’t support AirPlay? Hulu, for example, has notoriously blocked efforts to make it work on devices connected to a TV. What if there is no opt-out?

Update: From a friend:

Apps using the built-in media controller views get AirPlay out for free. Apps that don’t (like Hulu) need to roll their own using AVFoundation.

So any iOS app that uses the built-in media playback views is going to be an AirPlay source.

Jim Ray on the New Twitter.com ★

Jim Ray:

More than anything, the site really seems to underscore that Twitter is a platform, not a site. That’s certainly been their M.O. for years now but it finally feels that way.

LG Sacks CEO After Record Mobile-Phone Losses ★

Jun Yang, reporting for Bloomberg:

LG Electronics Inc., the world’s third-largest mobile-phone maker, replaced its chief executive officer after a record loss at the flagship handset business, prompting the stock’s biggest gain in about six months.

“Third-largest” by unit sales, I presume, but using unit sales as a metric is what led companies like LG and Nokia into their current state. Apple is now the world’s biggest phone maker, measured by profit — and that’s why these other CEOs are getting canned.

Dave Winer on Unread Counts ★

Dave Winer:

Why does Twitter work better for news than Google Reader? Simple, Twitter gives you what’s new now. You don’t have to hunt around to find the newest stuff. And it doesn’t waste your time by telling you how many unread items you have. Who cares. (It’s like asking how many NYT articles you haven’t read. It would be gargantuan. I don’t bother you with the number of Scripting News posts you haven’t read, so why does Google?)

Update: Good point from Anil Dash:

Unread counts have always sucked, @davewiner is right. But sadly, on iOS devices they’re the only thing you can add to an icon.

Morgan Stanley Analyst Katy Huberty: ‘Tablet Cannibalization’ Slowing Growth of Laptop PC Sales ★

Philip Elmer-DeWitt on a report by Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty, suggesting that “tablet cannibalization” has slowed the growth of PC laptop sales:

NPD data showing that after six months of decelerating growth, U.S. retail notebook unit growth fell 4% year over year in August, marking the first time those numbers had actually gone negative.

Similar data for the first week of September showing that units fell 4% year over year again.

BestBuy CEO Brian Dunn’s widely repeated remarks in the Wall Street Journal that “internal estimates showed that the iPad had cannibalized sales from laptop PCs by as much as 50 percent.”

Two observations:

There’s been no sign that Mac laptop sales have slowed. We only have one quarter of results for the iPad era, but Mac sales were up 33 percent year-over-year. If it’s true that “laptop” sales overall are slowing, it’s coming entirely at the expense of Apple’s competitors. My theory is that it’s simply about price points. Apple’s MacBooks start at $999. The iPad isn’t competing against MacBooks — it’s competing against $500-900 computers.
Calling this “tablet cannibalization” is bullshit. There’s only one tablet on the market so far.

The Talk Show, Episode 8 ★

Topics this week include the iOS 4.2 beta for the iPad (which is great), the new Twitter.com, and a bunch of other crap — but who cares about the topics because what makes this episode better than usual is our special guest star, Adam Lisagor.

This week’s episode is sponsored by MailChimp, who’ve got a spiffy new web page about their better-than-ever free services.

Best Buy CEO: iPad Is Cannibalizing Laptop Sales by 50 Percent ★

Your “holy shit” statement of the day.