Linked List: April 4, 2011

Monday, 4 April 2011

‘Barry Lyndon’ Coming to Blu-Ray May 31 ★

One of my favorites, finally available on Blu-ray. Just $14 at Amazon.

Update: If you’re just starting your Kubrick Blu-ray collection, get the boxed set for just $105.

Google Bids to Buy Nortel Patent Portfolio for $900 Million ★

Not a bad first day on the job for Google CEO Larry Page.

On the Argument That Android Is Taking Over ★

Nice piece by Jon-Erik Storm on Henry Blodget’s and Fred Wilson’s arguments that Android is the new Windows:

Really? I can come up with three counterexamples. One, gaming consoles. There are three: XBox, Playstation, and Wii. There has almost always been more than one important gaming console. Two, there are several web browsers that people use. If IE were still the only one, standards like HTML5 and CSS wouldn’t matter. Three, is Facebook really the only social platform? What is Twitter then? Maybe iTunes would have been a better example, eh? And as for PCs, Apple seems content with it being the #1 laptop and #2 PC maker with its approximately 8% marketshare, but yet reaping more profits. But the point is these examples are unscientific and don’t explain why technology platforms stabilize that way (if they do) and why that will apply to smartphones.

That’s the question of the decade. Is mobile going to work out like the console market, with a handful of competing and roughly equal major platforms? Or is it going to work out like the PC, where a lower-cost inferior licensed OS grows to an overwhelmingly dominant monopoly position? (And, as Storm points out, Apple’s penalty for “losing” the PC war is that it is now the world’s most profitable PC maker.)

(Also worth noting about the console market: the lead has changed hands several times: Atari, Nintendo, Sony, Nintendo. And second-place has changed numerous times as well. It’s long been a healthy competitive market.)

Reuters: ‘FT Won’t Give Up Subscriber Relationship to Apple’ ★

Georgina Prodhan, reporting for Reuters:

The Financial Times wants to keep selling subscriptions for its digital news directly to readers rather than surrender control of new customers who sign up via Apple’s iPad, the managing director of FT.com said.

Not a word of complaint about the 70/30 revenue split. Their complaint is solely about access to customer information, which they profit by selling. And remember: it’s not Apple that controls that information with App Store subscriptions: it’s us, the users. What the FT is arguing here is that they don’t want their subscribers to have any control over their customer privacy.

Toyota Advertising on Jailbroken iPhones ★

Curious:

Car manufacturer Toyota is reportedly running adverts in the Cydia store to promote their iPhone user interface theme, also distributed through the store. The adverts and the theme are part of Toyota’s advertising campaign for the 2011 Scion tC vehicle.

Jailbreaking goes mainstream?

Technology Is Not Enough ★

“This is what we believe: technology alone is not enough.”

Perfect new iPad 2 spot from Apple. Here it is on YouTube.

ShopSavvy Android vs. iPhone Numbers ★

Alexander Muse, ShopSavvy:

For every ShopSavvy user with an iPhone there are four who have an Android phone. Our downloads per platform are maintaining this disparity. We assumed we were just popular on Android, but there is something much bigger going on. Consumers are flocking to Android in droves!

Interesting numbers, but even ComScore is only reporting a 33-25 percent U.S. market share lead for Android vs. the iPhone. 4-to-1 is off the charts. Maybe it’s that there are so many more competing apps for iOS? Maybe it’s that Android users are more interesting in bargain-hunting?

Update: The user-contributed reviews for ShopSavvy in the App Store are pretty mixed; many of them describe its bar-code scanning as slow and inaccurate, and suggest using Red Laser instead. So maybe it’s just an inferior app.

Peter Kafka Interviews MLB.com CEO Bob Bowman ★

Peter Kafka:

MLB.com boasts one of the most successful subscription businesses in digital media; last year, the company reported 1.5 million subscribers, and expects that number to hit 2 million this year. So it’s worth listening to Bowman’s take on Apple vs. Android, his company’s recent Facebook experiment, and why mobile advertising is taking off. […]

Kafka: Why do you think an Android owner behaves differently than an iPhone owner?

Bowman: The iPhone and iPad user is interested in buying content — that’s one of the reasons they bought the device. The Android buyer is different.

I.e., Android users are cheap.

Kafka: So you’re selling via Apple’s new in-app subscription rules. But you’ve decided you can live with them?

Bowman: We’ve been living by them since March 1st. We don’t view them as a dramatic change from where they’ve been in the past. We’re hopeful that over time, the margin will fall from 30 percent, but we don’t know if it will.

But make no mistake about it, Apple’s been a great partner. Last I checked, they created the iPhone and the iPad.

Comparison Between iOS, Android and Windows Phone Sales ★

Lee Armstrong:

For a few months now we have had our “Plane Finder” app available for the major 3 platforms largely due to demand from the user base. I have put together a graph of sales from the 3 platforms without actual numbers so you can compare side by side how they fare!

His iOS numbers exclude the iPad, just to keep it fair.

The Engadget Staff Jumps Ship to SB Nation ★

Joshua Topolsky and the rest of the Engadget staff that’s quit AOL in recent weeks are starting a new tech site for SB Nation.