Linked List: February 14, 2011

Monday, 14 February 2011

Jim Dalrymple on This New MobileMe Service 

Jim Dalrymple:

Instead of trying to provide everyone with cloud storage, I believe Apple will use MobileMe as the brain of the cloud service. The actual storage will be on our individual machines. In effect, in the cloud.

If it goes like this, though, it’ll require the machine with your full iTunes library to be online in order to access it. What if the machine with your iTunes library is asleep, or powered down, and you want to access music or movies from your iOS device? This sounds like a good feature, but it doesn’t sound like a replacement or alternative to true cloud-based storage.

Apple’s Supplier Responsibility Report 

Includes an entire section regarding the suicides at Foxconn in China.

Obama’s 2012 Budget Proposal: How $3.7 Trillion Is Spent 

Interesting treemap data visualization from The New York Times. Looks like one of those apps that shows you how all the space on your hard drive is used.

Update on Qt 

Aron Kozak, Nokia:

Unequivocally, Qt is not dead. This morning we heard top Nokia executives like CTO Rich Green talk about Qt and the future. Qt will continue to live on through Symbian, MeeGo and the non-mobile Qt industries and platforms.

Translation: Qt is dead.

Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 Hands-On 

Charlie Sorrel:

Honeycomb turns out to be pretty sweet, and as far away from Apple’s iOS as you could imagine. In fact, its closer to something like Windows XP in terms of the look and feel, albeit with a very responsive, finger-friendly touch interface.

Yeah, sounds real sweet.

From the front, then, the Tab 10.1 is easily the equal of the iPad. Then things start to go wrong. It’s very clear that a $500 tablet is impossible for anyone but Apple to build without cutting corners. The Tab not only has a plastic back, but the metal-looking bezel is in fact silvered plastic, and looks as tacky as the dime-store toy-tablets that will surely flood stores soon. This does make the Tab 10.1 light (600g vs. 730g for the 3G iPad), but it also makes it feel cheap. And while overall the Tab 10.1 is thinner than the iPad (10.9mm vs. 13.4mm), the iPad feels thinner thanks to its tapered edges.

What Future for the Macintosh? 

Jean-Louis Gassée:

We’ll start in September 2010. The older MacBook Air is relegated to a low-traffic area of the store. It’s not “moving.”

Now look at the same store today. The Science of Shopping says the “high-value” area must be the first table on the left, because, statistically, that’s how we navigate stores. There we see six MacBook Airs: four 11-inch models and two 13-inch configurations.

Why the change? The attractive price is part of the answer: The base 11-inch model sells for $999, low by Apple standards. But performance is the more important factor.