Linked List: October 20, 2010

Wednesday, 20 October 2010

Marco Arment on the New MacBook Airs ★

Good analysis. I think what he’s missing about the smaller 11.6-inch model is that it might appeal to frequent air travelers (and anyone else who works in a cramped space).

Verizon to Sell Galaxy Tab Starting November 11 for $599.99 ★

At this price, who buys one of these instead of an iPad — especially considering that the iPad will be right there next to it in Verizon stores?

The New MacBook Air ★

I don’t think Jobs was exaggerating when he said this is the direction in which all MacBooks are heading. Thinner, lighter, longer battery life — in large part due to the use of flash storage. The only thing holding up moving to flash storage across the line is the price. As soon as it becomes relatively cheap to include 256 GB of Flash storage (and relatively reasonable to put in 512 GB), hard disks will disappear from MacBooks.

Optical drives are on the way out, too. Note, for example, that Apple is shipping the OS restore disk as a USB flash drive with the new Airs.

From the DF Archive: ‘How Should Mac Apps Be Distributed?’ ★

We don’t know much about the Mac App Store yet, but solving the distribution problems I wrote about a year ago is one reason why I think it’s going to be a hit for users.

FaceTime for Mac ★

Beta version is available for download now. It’s a standalone app, not a part of iChat, as many expected. It’s just an app that does FaceTime. And there’s no Windows version. (My worry is that Apple was going to stick FaceTime into iTunes, so as to have it available on both Mac and Windows.)

Live Stream of Today’s Apple Event ★

Announced just a short while ago. I’ll be writing some notes and initial impressions over on the @daringfireball Twitter account.

Shawn Blanc on Apple and the Cloud ★

Shawn Blanc has a very thoughtful piece on Apple and cloud-based data syncing:

At the moment there are more than 65 apps for iOS which sync via Dropbox. How many iOS apps use iDisk to sync data? I only know of one: OmniFocus. And even then, MobileMe is just one of several syncing options the Omni Group offers.

Dropbox is flinging wide the door for syncing and sharing of data across multiple computers and devices. It seems to me that Apple should be the ones owning this service.

I’ve heard rumors of a “Dropbox-killer” service from Apple, possibly a part of Mac OS X 10.7. I don’t know if it made the cut, but we’ll find out in a few hours.

The problem, of course, is what about Windows? I’m not sure how an Apple cloud syncing solution could be tied to a new version of Mac OS X.

Businessweek Feature on RIM and the BlackBerry ★

Diane Brady and Hugo Miller, writing for Businessweek about RIM:

Balsillie thinks the world is wrong about apps. Many are just glorified bookmarks, he argues, that aren’t necessary if you can connect customers to the Web. “I’m not going to bring developers to the Web. I’m going to make mobility Web-friendly,” he says. “Why do you need a YouTube app if you play YouTube? Why do you need an app to follow the Tour de France if you can just follow the Tour de France?”

Balsillie has a point — or he would if the consumer universe operated logically.

No, he doesn’t have a point. The iPhone has a great browser — I say the best mobile browser, and certainly better than any BlackBerry’s. And people still prefer using native apps. The original 1.0 iPhone didn’t have an App Store. You know what people wanted? Native apps. This gets back to my talk at Web 2.0 Expo last month. Many native iOS apps are web clients — they’re just written using CocoaTouch instead of HTML/CSS/JavaScript. The results, in terms of user experience, speak for themselves.

And BlackBerry’s browser’s rendering engine? WebKit. From Apple. Do they think Flash is going to give them a competitive edge in mobile user experience?

And check this out:

There certainly appears to be a geographic divide in how RIM is viewed. More than 90 percent of Canadian analysts rate RIM a “buy,” while only half of their U.S. counterparts do.

Angry Birds Developer Announces 2 Million Android Downloads ★

There is no paid version, only a free one with ads.

Does Microsoft Still Think the iPhone 4 Is Apple’s Vista? ★

MG Siegler has some tasty claim chowder:

“It looks like the iPhone 4 might be their Vista, and I’m okay with that.”

That was Microsoft COO Kevin Turner during his keynote speech this past July at the company’s Worldwide Partner Conference in Washington. To be exact, he gave that speech on July 14, two days before Apple’s “Antennagate” press conference. At that point, talk about the iPhone 4’s antenna was at a fever pitch. And there were plenty who (foolishly) believed Apple would have to do a recall.