Linked List: July 19, 2011

Tuesday, 19 July 2011

Transcript of Tim Cook’s Comments During Today’s Analyst Call 

Tim Cook, as quoted by Macworld:

I think the Android activation number is a difficult one to get our hands around. Because unlike our numbers, which you can kind of go to our data sheet, and add the iPhones and iPads, and make a reasonable approximation of the iPod touch—which we said is over half of our iPod sales—you can quickly see that in June quarter we sold over 33 million iOS devices. And across time… we’re now over 222 million cumulative iOS devices. So we think this is incredible. So our numbers are very straightforward, they’re transparent, and they’re reported quarterly.

Translation: “We don’t think Google’s ‘activation’ numbers translate directly to ‘devices sold’.”

And if you read between the lines in Cook’s comments on the prepaid market, he seems to be hinting strongly that Apple is going to soon pursue the unlocked market with a lower-priced no-contract iPhone. Maybe the iPod Touch goes away, replaced by a $249 or $299 no-contract iPhone?

FBI Arrests College Students, Cashiers, and a Landscaper for ‘Anonymous’ Hacks 

Ryan J. Reilly:

A total of 16 people with ties to the “hacktivist” group “Anonymous” were arrested by the FBI on Monday. Fourteen of them were charged in connection with an attack on PayPal, which was targeted by “Anonymous” because the website suspended the account of WikiLeaks after it released classified State Department cables. […]

Many of those arrested individuals form a motley crew of cashiers and college students, according to their Facebook profiles and frequent appearances on online message boards. Scott Arciszewski, arrested today in Florida, was a Sears sales associate who quickly took his website offline because his “parents don’t need the harassment.”

Sears Mistakenly Advertises iPad 2 for $69 

John Cox, Network World:

No, you can’t buy an iPad 2 for $69, or even $179. But the mistaken, wildly low prices by a third-party reseller on Sears’ website has triggered an acrimonious debate on the retailer’s Facebook page, with nearly 400 customers weighing in. […]

The critics insist that Sears and GSM On Sale should honor the ad pricing even though it was a mistake. “your company should’ve honored their word and sold those IPads for $69 and stop being so greedy!! Think about the consumer who keeps you in business instead of always looking for ways to make a profit!” was posted by Kellee Whipple.

I don’t think Sears is the greedy one here.

Apple’s Revenue by Product Line Since 2005 

The slope on the cumulative revenue line is astounding. And note that the iPad, in just five quarters, has passed the Mac. (Thanks to Jason Snell; see Macworld’s coverage for more graphs.)

I Still Believe in Murphy’s Law 

An oldie but goodie from the DF archives four years ago: my recommendations for installing major Mac OS X software updates:

So, in short:

  1. Do a complete backup clone to an external FireWire drive.
  2. Test that the backup is indeed bootable and up to date.
  3. Unplug the backup drive.
  4. Pop in the installer DVD and launch the “Install Mac OS X” app.

Step 4 has been obviated by the App Store, of course, but steps 1-3 still stand. Do not assume that going from 10.6 to 10.7 will be an easy or seamless transition. If you really want to be prepared, check out Joe Kissell’s $10 e-book, Take Control of Upgrading to Lion.

MacRumors on Apple’s Quarterly Results 

Look at the slope on that first graph.

Ryan Singel on the Feds’ Case Against Aaron Swartz 

Ryan Singel:

But the feds clearly think they have a substantial hacking case on their hands, even though Swartz used guest accounts to access the network and is not accused of finding a security hole to slip through or using stolen credentials, as hacking is typically defined.

In essence, Swartz is accused of felony hacking for violating MIT and JSTOR’s terms of service.

That’s terrifying.

Mac OS X Lion Will Launch Tomorrow 

Serenity Caldwell:

The cat’s out of the bag: During Apple’s third-quarter financial earnings call Tuesday, chief financial officer Peter Oppenheimer announced that Lion would debut Wednesday on the Mac App Store.

If I had to guess, I’d say early in the morning, like, say, 5:30a PT / 8:30a ET.

Maybe Next Quarter 

Eric Raymond, 89 days ago:

The question is no longer whether Android can be stopped, but when Apple’s market share will fall off a cliff. I think that could easily happen as soon as the next 90 days; one of the patterns in technology disruptions is that collapse often follows the victim’s best quarter ever.

Apple, today:

The Company sold 20.34 million iPhones in the quarter, representing 142 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter.

Apple Third Quarter Results: Revenue Up 82 Percent, Profits Up 125 Percent 

Apple PR:

The Company sold 20.34 million iPhones in the quarter, representing 142 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter. Apple sold 9.25 million iPads during the quarter, a 183 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. The Company sold 3.95 million Macs during the quarter, a 14 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. Apple sold 7.54 million iPods, a 20 percent unit decline from the year-ago quarter.

20 million iPhones in the quarter, 142 percent year-over-year growth. For a product that, just four years ago, many doubted that Apple would be able to sell 10 million of per year. Note too that even the iPod Touch can’t halt the collapse of the iPod. On the analyst call, Peter Oppenheimer stated that the iPod Touch account for “over half” of iPod sales. The iPhone is the iPod killer.

These are blowout numbers even by Apple’s standards. The stock is up to over $400 (6 percent gain) in after-hours trading.

Wall Street Journal Publishes Story on Apple CEO Succession 

Yukari Iwatani Kane, Joann S. Lublin, and Nick Wingfield, reporting for the WSJ:

Since Steve Jobs went on medical leave this winter, some members of Apple Inc.’s board have discussed CEO succession with executive recruiters and at least one head of a high-profile technology company, according to people familiar with the matter.

The conversations weren’t explicitly aimed at recruiting a new chief executive and were more of an informal exploration of the company’s options, said these people. The directors don’t appear to have been acting on behalf of the full board, some of these people said. Apple has seven directors, including Mr. Jobs.

It is also unclear whether Mr. Jobs was aware. In response to questions from The Wall Street Journal about the discussions, Mr. Jobs said Monday in an email, “I think it’s hogwash.”

To say that the timing of this story — published 24 minutes before Apple announces its quarterly results — is suspicious is an understatement.

Bringing in an outsider to replace Jobs would be catastrophic. If Jobs steps down any time soon, his successor will be, or at least should be, Tim Cook. The only other names that make sense are all on this page — and none of them are in the middle row.

Value Thresholds 

David Gelles, reporting for The Financial Times on Eric Schmidt’s criticism of Apple, Microsoft, and RIM for (in Gelles’s words) “spending richly on patents rather than innovating”:

Google opened the bidding for the more than 6,000 Nortel patents in April with an offer of $900m. After a bidding war ensued, the search group was eventually outgunned by the consortium, which together paid $4.5bn. “The price exceeded our value threshold,” Mr Schmidt said.

Apparently Google had a different “value threshold” when they sought to buy Groupon:

Google’s much-rumored acquisition of Groupon is off, we’ve confirmed with a source with knowledge of the deal. The news was reported earlier by Chicago Breaking Business, and we’ve verified that the deal is indeed off.

The two companies have been in serious negotiations for at least the last week, with reports stating that Google was bidding as much as $6 billion for the red-hot local deals company.

Back to Gelles’s story on Schmidt and Google:

“We chose not to bid at that level. I presume people spent $4.5bn to do something with them,” he said of the group that bought the bankrupt communication equipment maker’s patents. “They didn’t just wake up and say ‘oh, we’d like to have this patent portfolio’. I don’t know what their intent is, but we, as a company, worry that this is an attempt to use patents rather than to innovate.”

Translation: Google, as a company, is worried that Android violates one or more of the Nortel patents.

BBEdit 10 

Huge update to my favorite app of all time. Available for a limited time for just $40. I’ve been beta-testing 10 for months and at this point I couldn’t bear to go back to version 9.

Aaron Swartz Indicted, Charged With Data Theft 

Nick Bilton, writing for the NYT Bits blog:

Aaron Swartz, a 24-year-old programmer and online political activist, was indicted Tuesday in Boston on charges that he stole over four million documents from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and JSTOR, an archive of scientific journals and academic papers.

The charges were filed by the United States Attorney for the District of Massachusetts, Carmen M. Ortiz, and could result in up to 35 years in prison and a $1 million fine.

In a press release, Ms. Ortiz’s office said that Mr. Swartz broke into a restricted area of M.I.T. and entered a computer wiring closet. Mr. Swartz apparently then accessed the M.I.T. computer network and stole millions of documents from JSTOR.

Demand Progress, the political activism group Swartz founded, has a response:

“This makes no sense,” said Demand Progress Executive Director David Segal; “it’s like trying to put someone in jail for allegedly checking too many books out of the library.”

“It’s even more strange because the alleged victim has settled any claims against Aaron, explained they’ve suffered no loss or damage, and asked the government not to prosecute,” Segal added.

They don’t address the charge that Swartz “broke into a restricted area of M.I.T. and entered a computer wiring closet”, but the fact that MIT/JSTOR apparently asked the government not to prosecute seems compelling.

Update: Via Jason Levine, here’s a copy of the indictment. The damning bit:

On January 4, 2011, Aaron Swartz was observed entering the restricted basement network wiring closet to replace an external hard drive attached to his computer. On January 6, 2011, Swartz returned to the wiring closet to remove his computer equipment. This time he attempted to evade identification at the entrance to the restricted area. As Swartz entered the wiring closet, he held his bicycle helmet like a mask to shield his face, looking through ventilation holes in the helmet. Swartz then removed his computer equipment from the closet, put it in his backpack, and left, again masking his face with the bicycle helmet before peering through a crack in the double doors and cautiously stepping out.

Google+ iPhone App Hits App Store 

An interesting app for a service I do not enjoy. It does not solve my fundamental problem with Google+, which is that it feels like work to use.

Google’s iOS mobile team has developed their own UI idioms for their iOS apps. Part of that is their own visual aesthetic, but there’s more to it than how it looks. It’s certainly not Android-like, but it’s not iOS-like either. For example, this Google+ app uses left-right swiping to change views in your “Stream”. I see three: Incoming, Circles, and Nearby. The idiomatic iOS design for this would be a tab controller at the bottom with three tabs, one for each view. Google+ has a thin header at the top of the view, showing all three, with the current view in the middle, in a slightly larger font size. To switch from, say, Circles to Nearby, you swipe left. But you can keep swiping left, left, left to cycle around, like a carousel.

I’m not going to argue that this sort of UI experimentation is wrong. It’s just that in this case, I don’t like it personally. Compare and contrast with, say, apps like Twitterrific and Tweetbot. Both those apps use custom controls and sound effects, but their customization is mostly aesthetic. At a wireframe level, both Twitterrific and Tapbots follow common iOS design patterns: you tap to change views, you swipe to move content within the current view.

The Google+ app feels like it was designed by people who don’t like the standard iPhone design idioms. And stuff like the button order here is just plain awful. Update: Bizarrely, the app doesn’t work on the iPod Touch; only iPhone 3G, 3GS, and 4.