Linked List: October 19, 2010

Tuesday, 19 October 2010

RIM Co-CEO Jim Balsillie Responds to Steve Jobs Comments Made During Apple Earnings Call 

Weak sauce, I say. RIM’s pinning a lot of their tablet hopes on Flash support.

Yojimbo for iPad 

Bare Bones Software has shipped its first iOS app:

Yojimbo for iPad is a companion app that syncs effortlessly over WiFi with Yojimbo 3 for Mac OS X (required; sold separately), letting you take all of your Yojimbo data anywhere. Yojimbo for iPad even handles your encrypted entries.

I’ve been beta-testing it for a while. It’s great.

60 Percent of Apple’s Sales Are From Products That Did Not Exist Three Years Ago 

As Horace Dediu writes, the chart speaks for itself.

Android Chief Andy Rubin Responds to Steve Jobs With Tweet 

Andy Rubin:

the definition of open: “mkdir android ; cd android ; repo init -u git://android.git.kernel.org/platform/manifest.git ; repo sync ; make”

That’s a compelling argument for about 0.01 percent of the population. (Via MG Siegler.)

2001 Monolith Action Figure 

The Kenner-esque logo at the bottom of the package puts it over the top. (Via Merlin Mann.)

Judge Rules Against ‘Edge’ Trademark Troll Tim Langdell 

Remember this jerk? Looks like EA is cleaning his clock in court:

Tim “Edge Games” Langdell has lost a round in court with EA over the use of his “Edge” trademarks. In refusing his request for a preliminary injunction, judge William Alsup described Edge Games as ‘trolling’ and suggested that it could face criminal charges.

“Given the suspect nature of Dr. Langdell’s representations to both the USPTO and the Court concerning plaintiff’s current and future sales and business activities, it is an open question whether plaintiff’s business activities legitimately extend beyond trolling various gaming-related industries for licensing opportunities,” wrote the judge.

HP WebOS 2.0 Promo Site 

Branding-wise, they’re calling the new phone the “Palm Pre 2”, but the updated OS gets the HP name. The demo videos are Flash — so not only can you not watch them from most competing mobile devices, but you can’t watch them from current WebOS ones.

HP Announces Palm Pre 2, WebOS 2.0 

Sounds like a great software update. Hard to judge the hardware by the press release. But there’s no U.S. release date for the new phone. And why announce this major news — the first major Palm news since the HP acquisition — with a press release? Why not a media event?

Steve Jobs, Yesterday on Apple’s Quarterly Analyst Conference Call 

The boss made a rare appearance on Apple’s analyst call, and he was en fuego. Macworld has a full transcript, and it’s chock full of good stuff. Highlights, paraphrased:

  • Upcoming iPad competitors are going with 7-inch screens as a cost-cutting measure, because they can’t compete with Apple on price. Apple has tried 7-inch screens and deems them too small for iPad-caliber apps — squeeze everything down and tap targets get too small and too close to each other. He pretty much squashed rumors that Apple is building a 7-inch iPad.

  • Apple passed RIM in smartphone sales this quarter, and Jobs doesn’t “see them catching up with us in the foreseeable future”. RIM is in trouble, because the industry is moving toward software platforms, and that’s outside their expertise.

  • Waiting for numbers from Gartner to see whether the iPhone outsold Android this quarter. Jobs is using total iOS device activations for comparison — not just iPhones — and says Apple averaged about 275,000 per day over the last month.

  • Google’s argument is “open vs. closed”. Apple sees it as “fragmented vs. integrated”. The iPhone model is better for users, and better for developers.

Ray Ozzie Leaving Post as Microsoft’s Chief Software Architect 

Sounds like a “don’t let the door hit you on the way out” departure. Everything he’s done at Microsoft has been a dud.