Linked List: April 27, 2011

Wednesday, 27 April 2011

Ben Brooks Surveys the iPhone Weather App Market ★

His top choice is the same as mine: My-Cast. It’s a really crowded market but it’s largely filled with junk. See also: Marco Arment.

Jobs, Schiller, and Forstall Talk to Mobilized About Location Data and the White iPhone 4 ★

Nice scoop by Ina Fried: a phone interview with Steve Jobs, Phil Schiller, and Scott Forstall.

Fried: A bunch of folks on the regulatory side, both in the U.S. and elsewhere, said they are going to look into this. Do you guys plan on testifying before Congress? How active do you personally and does Apple want to be?

Jobs: I think Apple will be testifying. They have asked us to come and we will honor their request, of course. I think it is great that they are investigating this and I think it will be interesting to see how aggressive or lazy the press is on this in terms of investigating the rest of the participants in the industry and finding out what they do. Some of them don’t do what we do. That’s for sure.

In a separate article, she talks to Phil Schiller about the long-awaited white iPhone 4.

‘It’s Going to Take A While’ ★

Ira Glass:

All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this.

From a brief transcript of this video.

‘Invention Is in Our DNA and Technology Is the Fundamental Tool We Wield to Evolve and Improve Every Aspect of the Experience We Provide Our Customers.’ ★

Jeff Bezos, in his annual letter to Amazon shareholders:

State management is the heart of any system that needs to grow to very large size. Many years ago, Amazon’s requirements reached a point where many of our systems could no longer be served by any commercial solution: our key data services store many petabytes of data and handle millions of requests per second. To meet these demanding and unusual requirements, we’ve developed several alternative, purpose-built persistence solutions, including our own key-value store and single table store.

I.e., if Amazon weren’t a serious technology company capable of inventing what it needed, if Amazon were “just a store”, its growth would have been limited by technology.

Nokia to Cut 7,000 Jobs ★

Diana ben-Aaron, reporting for Bloomberg:

Nokia Oyj, which was overtaken by Apple Inc. as the largest maker of mobile phones last quarter, will eliminate 7,000 jobs and transfer its Symbian software development to Accenture Plc in the Finnish company’s biggest reorganization in two decades.

This is why they brought in an outsider as the new CEO: to wield the hatchet.

YouTube Founders Acquire Delicious From Yahoo ★

Yahoo:

Today, we’re pleased to announce that Delicious has been acquired by the founders of YouTube, Chad Hurley and Steve Chen. As creators of the largest online video platform, they have firsthand experience enabling millions of users to share their experiences with the world. They are committed to running and improving Delicious going forward.

Interesting.

(Doesn’t seem like a permalink URL, though. The actual Delicious Blog is here. Guess that’s what happens when you fire all the people who know the password to post to the company weblog.)

Apple’s Cash ★

Horace Dediu:

If Apple had no revenues, the current cash would sustain operations (SG&A and R&D) for over 7 years or until the middle of 2018.

How big can it grow? $100 billion? $200?

From the DF Archive: An Anthropomorphized White iPhone 4 Was Confronted Regarding Its Inability to Be Shipped ★

Looks like maybe he’s finally got his act together.

Apple Q&A on Location Data ★

Apple:

6. People have identified up to a year’s worth of location data being stored on the iPhone. Why does my iPhone need so much data in order to assist it in finding my location today?

This data is not the iPhone’s location data — it is a subset (cache) of the crowd-sourced Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower database which is downloaded from Apple into the iPhone to assist the iPhone in rapidly and accurately calculating location. The reason the iPhone stores so much data is a bug we uncovered and plan to fix shortly (see Software Update section below). We don’t think the iPhone needs to store more than seven days of this data.

A good response to the location-logging controversy. A cogent description of what data Apple is collecting and why, and what data your iPhone is caching and why. The petulant your-questions-are-based-on-stupid-assumptions tone of the first few questions has Steve Jobs written all over it, though.

White iPhone Arrives Tomorrow ★

Ten months late; a rare and strange misstep for Apple.