Linked List: July 29, 2011

Friday, 29 July 2011

My thanks to TripCase for sponsoring this week’s DF RSS feed. TripCase is an iPhone app and web service for helping organize and manage travel plans. TripCase organizes all your travel information in one place, no matter where or how you booked. It monitors your trip and offers alerts for things like flight delays and gate changes. The TripCase app also has a great interface for making changes, like, say, comparing flight schedules and choosing an alternate flight.

TripCase is accessible via the web (including a great mobile web interface), and native apps for iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry, and all of this is free. Get started by downloading the app or visiting TripCase.com.

The iPhone’s First Full Quarter on Verizon ★

Jenna Wortham, reporting for the NYT last week:

On Friday, while reporting its quarterly earnings results, Verizon said it activated 2.3 million iPhones during the company’s second quarter. That is a hefty figure, because the device has been available on Verizon for only a few months, but it paled in comparison to AT&T’s iPhone activations for the same quarter. On Thursday, AT&T reported that it had activated 3.6 million iPhones on its network, and that nearly a quarter of them were for new customers to AT&T.

Wortham’s story is about Verizon, so it makes sense to focus first on the fact that the iPhone continues to sell better on AT&T. But what I find interesting is how much better it’s selling than Android phones:

Although Verizon continued to achieve sales from its catalog of Android and 4G devices, the company sold far fewer of those devices than they did iPhones. For the quarter, the company reported sales of 1.2 million LTE and Android devices, which includes tablets, smartphones and wireless modems.

~~So Verizon sold twice as many iPhones as all Droids combined.~~

[Update: What the NYT reports above is not what Verizon reported. On page 9 of Verizon’s report (PDF from a PowerPoint deck), they report: “2.3 million iPhone 4 units activated” and “1.2 million 4G LTE device sales”. So that 1.2 million number does not include 3G Droid phones. Neither “Android” nor “Droid” appears anywhere in their report. They simply don’t report the total number of Droid phones sold (nor total smartphones).]

Perhaps Verizon’s iPhone sales were temporarily inflated last quarter because they only just started carrying it. But on the other hand, maybe there are a lot of would-be Verizon iPhone customers who are waiting for the iPhone 5 in September. And keep in mind that Verizon, for now, only has the premium-priced iPhone 4; AT&T has the 3GS, which they sell for just $49 subsidized. I expect Verizon to eventually match AT&T in iPhone sales.

Sandvine: Netflix Rising (PDF) ★

From a new market research report from Sandvine:

Assuming there are 81 million broadband-connected households in the United States and 8 million in Canada, then Netflix’ reported numbers for March 2011 suggest roughly 28% market penetration in the U.S. and 11% in Canada. Both of these calculated market shares closely match what Sandvine observes on networks in each country.

How are people streaming Netflix?

The top 4 devices (Playstation 3, Xbox 360, PC and Wii) account for more than 85% of total Netflix traffic.

Fascinating how Netflix has effectively built its streaming service on the big three console gaming platforms.

Skating to Where the Puck Was ★

Darren Murph on the new Mac Mini:

I made crystal clear in my Mac mini review just how awful a decision it was to nix the [optical drive] in the consumer version of the machine, particularly with Apple making no efforts whatsoever to shrink the chassis in the drive’s absence. My primary beef is the removal of an optical drive on a desktop. Is Apple seriously so naive that it thinks all Mac mini users will be perfectly fine taking to the wild, wild web to find whatever content and software they’d like to enjoy, including new-release films and 1080p content? And what, may I ask, comes next?

Murph, back in February 2010, on the iPad:

The iPad is, in my mind, one of Apple’s biggest misses. […]

I can’t begin to explain how disappointing this device is in the sense of being a usable computer. There’s a 1GHz CPU in there that can’t even be used for multitasking. There’s no camera for video chatting. There’s no way to watch a Flash video and chat within an IRC client at the same time. There’s not even a way to connect a USB device to this without paying Apple extra for an adapter. The iPad is remarkably limited in scope and functionality, and for no good reason. A netbook can run circles around this in terms of actually getting work done, and if I want to enjoy multimedia, I’ll carry around something that can fit in my pocket.

Restore Safari 5.0.3’s Tab Opening Behavior ★

Dan Moren points to OpenAtEnd, a small Safari extension that restores the old tab opening behavior in Safari 5.1. Me, I love the new tab opening behavior in 5.1.

The Talk Show, Episode 53 ★

One year to the day that we rebooted the franchise.

Brought to you by three excellent sponsors: Sourcebits, Campaign Monitor, and Wx from Hunter Research Technology.

Nintendo Slashes Price of Slow-Selling 3DS ★

Larry Frum, CNN:

Competition from the new PlayStation handheld Vita device, expected later this year, may also be spurring the price move. Vita is expected to hit the marketplace at $249, with more than 80 titles.

Yes, I’m sure it’s the unreleased Vita that concerns Nintendo most in handheld gaming.

From the DF Archive: Full Metal Jacket ★

Yours truly, reviewing my then-new 15-inch PowerBook in 2005:

The other major feature of the 15-inch (and 17-inch) PowerBook keyboard is that it offers illumination, which illumination can be triggered automatically by ambient light sensors located under the speaker grille. The sensor works great, and the illumination is genuinely handy in low-light situations. I expect this feature to eventually find its way into every Apple laptop.

We’re there.

Apple Holding More Cash Than U.S. Federal Government ★

The BBC:

Latest figures from the US Treasury Department show that the country has an operating cash balance of $73.7bn (£45.3bn). Apple’s most recent financial results put its reserves at $76.4bn (£46.9bn).