Linked List: September 6, 2011

Tuesday, 6 September 2011

Kara Swisher Reports That Carol Bartz Is Out at Yahoo ★

Name one great thing Yahoo has done in the last five years.

Update: Confirmation from Bartz herself, including that she was fired over the phone.

Vlad Savov, grading the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7 on a curve:

Even the very latest version of Android (Honeycomb, v3.2) isn’t quite up to the standard of iOS in terms of responsiveness and utility-enhancing applications, and I did manage to spot the familiar lag when dragging onscreen items around the Android interface. That’s a software shortcoming that will get better with time, mind you, and having the almost-standard 1280 × 800 Android tablet resolution should stand this Galaxy Tab in great stead to receive the Ice Cream Sandwich upgrade. Samsung says it’ll do its utmost to provide users with the best possible software, but wouldn’t commit on whether or not the 7.7 will get ICS.

So the responsiveness is poor compared to iOS, but it “will get better with time” because of an OS update the device might get. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.

Google’s Customers ★

Why do people complain that Google doesn’t offer customer support via the phone? Of course they do. For their actual customers: advertisers.

From the DF Claim Chowder Archive: Tomi Ahonen on iPhone Sales ★

Former Nokia executive Tomi Ahonen, predicting market share drop-off for the iPhone back in April 2010:

The Apple iPhone sales pattern differs from all other major smartphone makers because Apple only releases one new model per year. So the sales take off strongly and then decline as the rivals keep releasing newer phones.

The first of those two sentences is a fact. The second is not — it’s conventional wisdom. Conflating conventional wisdom with fact is a problem for many of Apple’s competitors. Remember, for example, how often it was treated as a fact that the iPhone’s lack of a user-removable battery was a “con”?

Analyst: iPhone 4 Remains Top-Selling US Smartphone Despite Growing iPhone 5 Hype ★

Neil Hughes at AppleInsider:

Analyst T. Michael Walkley with Canaccord Genuity revealed in a note to investors on Tuesday that checks with U.S. carriers indicate that sales of the iPhone 4 remain on top ahead of the iPhone 5 debut, despite the fact that the iPhone 4 is more than a year old.

“Our checks indicated strong sales of the iPhone 4, as it remained the top selling smartphone at AT&T and Verizon despite increasing consumer expectations for the iPhone 5 launch,” he wrote.

The first few years of the iPhone, sales would drop precipitously in the April/May/June quarter preceding the release of a widely expected new model. That doesn’t happen any more, because the iPhone is no longer a tech-nerd product. I’m sure sales of iPhones to tech nerds have dropped recently, but the iPhone is now a mass-market product.

Also worth remembering: the iPhone 4 has been on the market as the top-of-the-line iPhone far longer than any previous iPhone.

Oh, and the second-best-selling handset at AT&T for the last three months, according to the same analyst? The iPhone 3GS.

Sprint and the iPhone ★

Nilay Patel flagged this passage in Sprint’s lawsuit against AT&T’s proposed acquisition of T-Mobile:

The iPhone and the Storm are classic examples of the existing scale advantage of the two largest national wireless carriers. Apple launched the iPhone with AT&T under an exclusive arrangement in 2007. In early 2011, Apple then gave Verizon a time-to-market advantage for the iPhone, most likely because Verizon had the largest subscriber base in the United States. Sprint has had to compete without access to the iPhone for nearly five years. The Twin Bells have had a tremendous time-to-market advantage with the iPhone, and have been able to lock many customers into two-year contracts with the iconic device.

Patel reads this as a hint that Sprint might be getting the iPhone 5. I don’t see that. (I think it makes sense that Apple would continue to expand the list of iPhone carriers, both in the U.S. and around the world, so Sprint may well be getting the iPhone 5. I’m just saying I don’t see what Sprint wrote in the above-quoted lawsuit as being any different whether they were getting the iPhone soon or not.)

What I find interesting is the tacit admission from Sprint that it is at a competitive disadvantage without the iPhone. Seems obvious to me, of course, and probably to most regular DF readers. But how do the Android supporters who insist that Android is “winning” square that belief with this?

Apple’s Storefront Symmetry ★

Even the sidewalk is part of the design.

Fireballed: Cached here.

Shorter Mike Arrington: ‘I Sold My Company (to a Bunch of Idiots) and Expected to Still Maintain Control Over It.’ ★

Mike Arrington at AOL/TechCrunch seems to have a little seller’s remorse:

We’ve proposed two options to Aol.

1. Reaffirmation of the editorial independence promised at the time of acquisition. Given the current circumstances, that means autonomy from Huffington Post, unfettered editorial independence and a blanket right to editorial self determination. To put it simply, TechCrunch would stay with Aol but would be independent of the Huffington Post.

or

2. Sell TechCrunch back to the original shareholders.

If Aol cannot accept either of these options, and no other creative solution can be found, I cannot be a part of TechCrunch going forward.

Anyone else running low on popcorn watching this saga unfold?

HP Kills More Business Units, Relocates to Sunnyvale Strip Mall ★

Ken Segall at Scoopertino:

HP Enterprise Business: gone. HP Software: gone. Only HP Imaging and Printing will survive — though you’ll have to go hunting to find it.

HP will sell all the group’s assets except six DeskJet printers, and relocate the business to a Sunnyvale strip mall under the name HP Invent … and Print! Apotheker sees HP becoming a major player in Sunnyvale’s red-hot document duplication market.

HP Splitting WebOS Hardware and Software ★

Derek Kessler, reporting for PreCentral:

We’ve received two memos sent to employees of HP’s webOS Global Business Unit that tell the story of how HP is splitting the former Palm, Inc. into two separate units that will report to separate divisions of HP. The hardware division will stay under the Personal Systems Group and continue to report to Stephen DeWitt. The software side — the side that HP’s still interested in — is to be split off and moved over to HP’s Office of Strategy and Technology, where they’ll report to EVP Shane Robinson.

What strikes me about this are the stupid names of these internal divisions. “Personal Systems Group”, “Office of Strategy and Technology”. What a bunch of crap. Arbitrary bureaucratic internal divisions like this are the antithesis of what I mean when I say that Apple, as an institution, is itself Apple-like. In the way that Apple products aren’t junked-up with extra buttons, logos, stickers, legacy ports, or needless ornamentation, Apple as an organization isn’t saddled with a confusing internal bureaucracy that doesn’t map directly onto the company’s products and services.

The Supply-Side Virus ★

Paul Krugman, writing for Slate all the way back in 1996, on the durability of supply-side economics in the face of evidence that it doesn’t work. 15 years later, this stands up remarkably well.

The Limping Middle Class ★

Robert Reich:

Look back over the last hundred years and you’ll see the pattern. During periods when the very rich took home a much smaller proportion of total income — as in the Great Prosperity between 1947 and 1977 — the nation as a whole grew faster and median wages surged. We created a virtuous cycle in which an ever growing middle class had the ability to consume more goods and services, which created more and better jobs, thereby stoking demand. The rising tide did in fact lift all boats.

I.e., the evidence overwhelmingly shows that “trickle-down economics” has it exactly backwards. The infographic that accompanies Reich’s article is just terrific.

Objective-C Hits #6 in the TIOBE Programming Community Index ★

Look at the slope of this graph.