Linked List: April 5, 2011

Tuesday, 5 April 2011

Farming vs. Mining 

Wil Shipley on farming vs. mining as a metaphor for running a software company:

In the mining model of software companies, the charismatic, flighty founders and their investors stand to make a lot of money. Their workers, their customers, and their secondary investors all get boned, because these companies and their products tend to suck.

Epic’s Tim Sweeney on Mobile Gaming 

Matt Buchanan interviews Epic’s Tim Sweeney:

Speaking of Android, you’re probably wondering why there’s no showstopper like Infinity Blade for the platform. Well, wonder no more. Says Sweeney, “When a consumer gets the phone and they wanna play a game that uses our technology, it’s got to be a consistent experience, and we can’t guarantee that [on Android]. That’s what held us off of Android.” The problem with Android is consistency. “If you took the underlying NGP hardware and shipped Android on it, you’d find far far less performance on Android. Let’s say you took an NGP phone and made four versions of it. Each one would give you a different amount of memory and performance based on the crap [the carriers] put on their phone.” Bottom line, for Epic to do the kinds of things they do on iOS, “Google needs to be a little more evil. They need to be far more controlling.” Even so, the main reason Epic has focused on iOS? “It’s really the best place to make money.”

Sweeney just needs to talk to Fred Wilson.

So Much for Toyota’s Jailbroken iPhone Ad Campaign 

Kyle Matthews, owner of ModMyi:

I received a call from our contact at Velti this evening as well as an email asking me to please take the theme out of Cydia. On the phone, he explained Apple had contacted Toyota and requested they remove the theme and stop the advertising campaign. They (Velti) in turn contacted me relaying the message. The reason Velti listed for the removal request of the theme emailed through our dev portal was “Toyota’s making us take it down…” Toyota had agreed to do so to “maintain their good relationship with Apple,” our Velti contact told me on the phone.

Who at Toyota thought this was a good idea?

iPhone 5 Will Not Launch in June 

Jim Dalrymple:

My sources said today that rumors of an iPhone 5 release at the end of June were completely false.

What kind of sense would it make for Apple to release or announce a new iPhone in June and not do it at WWDC? Do people even think before they publish stuff like this?

David Friedman Proposes a New ‘Save’ Icon 

I love baseball and I’ve been complaining about the use of floppy disk icons for “Save” buttons for years, but even I don’t think a home plate icon works — too U.S.-centric. It’s a tricky design problem.

As Marco Arment notes, iOS has solved this not by coming up with a new icon, but by eliminating the need for users to explicitly save anything or to deal with the file system directly. So maybe it’s somehow right that the universal icon for “Save” is a relic from a bygone era of computing.

Xoom Uptake 

Two observations from Google’s Android OS usage numbers:

  • Over 65 percent of Android devices are on 2.2 or better. That’s not bad at all.
  • Only 0.2 percent are on 3.0. I don’t think the Motorola Xoom is selling very well.
World of Goo’s iPad Launch Numbers 

2D Boy:

In the first month of sales on the iPad App Store, World of Goo sold 125K copies (thanks to being prominently featured by Apple). In comparison, World of Goo’s best 31 day period on WiiWare was 68K copies (thanks to a mass mailing by Nintendo), and on Steam it was 97K copies (thanks to two promotions at discounted prices). So far, the iPad version is by far the fastest selling version of the game, both in terms of number of units sold and in revenue generated.

What makes this even more amazing is that this is a two year old game released on a platform that is less than a year old. The iPad doesn’t have the benefit of an install base built up over several years.

This is what makes iOS different than Android.

The Problem With 4G in a Nut 

Jonathan Geller, reviewing the HTC Thunderbolt for BGR:

How does the Verizon Wireless’ first 4G LTE smartphone do in the real world? Well, not that great to be honest — especially with a 1400 mAh battery. Over 3G, the ThunderBolt can easily power through a normal workday. On 4G, however, I couldn’t get more than around 4.5 hours of usage at best… a figure that is not at all acceptable to me.

What makes matters worse is the fact that 4G can’t be switched on and off by the user. There is no widget to disable LTE and there’s not even a menu setting you can check on and off to enable or disable 4G.

4.5 hours of battery life.

Stanley Kubrick’s Chicago, 1949 

Speaking of Kubrick, this one’s worth a re-link:

Before he started making movies, Stanley Kubrick was a star photojournalist. In the summer of 1949, Look magazine sent him to Chicago to shoot pictures for a story called “Chicago City of Contrasts”.