Linked List: August 1, 2011

Monday, 1 August 2011

Apple Outlines iCloud Storage Pricing ★

Jim Dalrymple:

According to Apple, three storage plans are available: 10 GB will cost $20 per year; 20 GB will cost $40 per year; and 50GB will cost $100 per year.

That’s if you go over the 5 GB you start with for free.

iCloud Web Beta ★

Told you so.

‘Sometimes There’s a Man’ ★

Five-song rock opera by Merlin Mann, commissioned by MailChimp. Nice web design, too.

Penny Arcade on the Problem Facing Nintendo’s 3DS ★

More fun indeed.

John Paczkowski: New iPhone in October, Not September ★

John Paczkowski:

So those rumors claiming the iPhone 5 will debut in late September? They’re wrong.

Instead, it’s going to be an October surprise — the month in which Apple plans to launch its next-gen iPhone.

That’s a scoop. All signs pointed to September, prior to this report from Paczkowski.

Forbes Profiles Nicholas Allegra, a.k.a. Comex, Jailbreak Hacker Extraordinaire ★

Andy Greenberg unmasks Comex, the heretofore pseudonymous hacker behind JailBreakMe:

Dino Dai Zovi, co-author of the Mac Hacker’s Handbook, says JailbreakMe’s sophistication is on par with that of Stuxnet, a worm thought to have been designed by the Israeli or U.S. government to infect Iran’s nuclear facilities. He compares Allegra’s skills to the state-sponsored intruders that plague corporations and governments, what the cybersecurity industry calls “advanced-persistent threat” hackers: “He’s probably five years ahead of them,” says Dai Zovi.

Why Ben Duchac’s Mom Bought an Android, Returned It, and Got an iPhone ★

Of course I’m going to link to this, a story from an Android fan (and happy user of an HTC Incredible) who helped his mom buy a new Samsung Charge from Verizon, and, well, it didn’t go well at all:

Seeing the basically useless state of the phone on initial boot, I told my mother that I’d take the phone for an hour or so and give it back to her “cleaned up.” I deleted apps. I configured notifications. I set up accounts. None of it was easy, and every step of the way I ran into really bizarre problems. The elegant Google widgets that come with stock Android were stripped out of the phone. The camera app, besides looking like it had been designed in 1995, just wouldn’t rotate when I turned the phone on its side. Apps that worked on my Droid Incredible crashed as soon as I opened them on the Charge. After about an hour of poking and prodding the battery had dropped from 95% to 50%. Completely frustrated, I turned to the internet, where confused users were posting questions with titles like “Should my battery last more than 6 hours?” and “I think my phone is broken…”

(Duchac, by the way, is a talented photographer.)

Facebook Mobile Usage ★

Re: today’s aforelinked piece on Gogo inflight Wi-Fi usage, which showed Android being dwarfed by iOS, here are some real-world usage numbers where Android has nearly drawn even with iOS: Facebook mobile usage. One difference between Facebook and Gogo Wi-Fi: Facebook is free.

Apple TV Adds Support for Cloud-Based Storage of Purchased TV Shows ★

I just ran software update on my Apple TV 2 and got a new update that adds support for a major new feature: purchased TV shows. You can buy — not just rent but buy — new episodes directly from your Apple TV, and access and stream any TV show episodes you’ve previously purchased using your iTunes account. (I’m not quite sure if it has all episodes — but it’s showing me all the TV shows I can remember buying from iTunes.)

TV shows are also now listed in the “Purchased” section of the iTunes Store on your computer, iPhone, and iPad. In other words, Apple just rolled out a cloud-based storage locker for TV shows. Next up (I hope): movies.

The update also adds support for Vimeo.

Update: Might be U.S.-only, alas.

Update 2: It’s definitely not available for all shows, or, if it is, Apple hasn’t finished rolling it out yet — I’ve purchased all four seasons of Mad Men via iTunes and none of them appear in my account.

Update 3: Looks like it’s just a rollout thing. Three seasons of Mad Men are now in my Purchased list.

Gogo Inflight Wi-Fi Usage Numbers ★

Ina Fried, writing for some website:

Android may be gaining market share on the ground, but when it comes to market share at 10,000 feet and above, it’s still an Apple world.

Gogo tells AllThingsD that iPhones make up nearly two-thirds of the mobile devices using its inflight Wi-Fi service. Android devices make up just 12 percent, trailing even the iPod touch, which accounts for 20 percent of handheld connections.

Another data point that highlights the discrepancy between the incredible device activation numbers claimed by Google and actual real-world usage of mobile devices. Example: Flickr’s stats on popular camera phones. Where are these Android phones? How many of them are used for little more than phone calls and texting?

And:

Tablets like the iPad were not included in these mobile numbers as such devices are counted with computers (and also pay the higher PC rates). But the iPad is a popular frequent flier as well, accounting for more than a third of large screens using Gogo in June. All versions of Windows totaled 41 percent with Mac OS machines making up just under 20 percent.

So the iPad alone has almost caught up to Windows, and Apple devices — iPads and MacBooks combined — account for a majority of large-screen Gogo usage.

Steve Jobs on Reporting Sales Numbers ★

Still thinking about Samsung’s decision to stop reporting sales numbers for phones and tablets. Here’s Steve Jobs in an interview with David Pogue two years ago:

He said that Apple doesn’t see e-books as a big market at this point, and pointed out that Amazon.com, for example, doesn’t ever say how many Kindles it sells. “Usually, if they sell a lot of something, you want to tell everybody.”

This is true for Apple, as well. I’m pretty sure the only time they’ve mentioned sales numbers for Apple TV is when it crossed the million-units-sold mark last December. They don’t put Apple TV numbers in their quarterly results.

Adobe Edge Preview ★

Adobe:

Adobe Edge is a new web motion and interaction design tool that allows designers to bring animated content to websites, using web standards like HTML5, JavaScript, and CSS3.

They have some good examples here.

Jon Whipple’s ‘Scroll Compass’ Idea for Lion ★

An interesting idea and design, but, if Apple were concerned about the problems this idea solves, they would simply have left the Lion scrollers visible at all times. An abstract indicator — no matter how small and unobtrusive — is still another layer of abstraction. Apple is trying, aggressively, to remove abstractions from the Mac UI.