Linked List: April 15, 2011

Friday, 15 April 2011

Jin Kim on the Demise of The Flip 

Like Pogue, he makes a strong case that The Flip wasn’t killed by camera-enabled smartphones. Really seems like Cisco had no idea what to do in the consumer market.

Claim Chowder Pairs Well With Kool-Aid 

Paul Thurrott, back in May last year:

And IDC is now forecasting that “mininotebook” (i.e. netbooks and sub-12-inch machines) will sell 45.6 million units in 2011 and 60.3 million in 2013. If I remember the numbers from 2009, they were 10 percent of all PCs, or about 30 million units. Explain again how the iPad will beat that. Please. Even the craziest iPad sales predictions are a small percentage of that. […]

Pass the Kool-Aid.

Neil Hughes, AppleInsider, yesterday:

Analyst Brian White with Ticonderoga Securities is on day 6 of his tech trip to China and Taiwan. In his meetings with component suppliers, sources have revealed expectations that Apple will sell between 40 million and 45 million iPads in 2011.

White said he heard those same figures in a separate visit to Asia last fall, but “at the time, this number was difficult for many investors and some in the media to get their heads around.”

Pass the Kool-Aid indeed.

That’s Quite a Chart 

Horace Dediu, on what happens if you count the iPad as a computer:

The bottom line is that Windows-only computer units are down 2.0% while OSX-based computer units are up 272% (this excludes both the iPhone and iPod touch).

The Mac has been beating the overall PC industry in terms of growth for 18 consecutive quarters. But if you count the iPad too, the difference is just astounding.

The Sound of 1,700 Jaws Dropping 

Larry Jordan on Final Cut Pro X:

I can’t think of any other company that could so totally redefine what a non-linear video editor is than Apple. Since the release of Final Cut Pro 1, each version of FCP has contained incremental improvements. This is a complete restatement at every possible level.

As Phil Schiller, senior VP for world-wide marketing for Apple told me after the presentation, “This is a total rethinking of how we tell stories visually.”

Looking at the high-res screenshots, I see that the UI font for the app is Helvetica, not Lucida Grande.