Linked List: October 12, 2011

Wednesday, 12 October 2011

The Last Time I Saw Steve Jobs ★

One of my favorite stories heard this week. So great.

R.I.P. Dennis Ritchie ★

Creator of the C programming language, co-creator of Unix. A true titan of computer science.

iTunes Movie Trailers App ★

File under “the shift from websites to apps”. (Via MacStories.)

AirPort Utility for iPhone and iPad ★

In the future, you don’t need a Mac or Windows PC, and the future is getting near.

Apple Releases Find My Friends ★

Sporting soft Corinthian leather upholstery.

One Downside of iCloud Replacing MobileMe: Third-Party Mac App Uncertainty ★

Bare Bones Software’s Yojimbo FAQ:

Q: Can I use Yojimbo with iCloud?

A: All existing versions of Yojimbo require MobileMe to perform Mac-to-Mac syncing; they will not work with iCloud.

Thus, if you wish to continue syncing Yojimbo, you should not convert your account to use iCloud at this time. (Apple will continue to offer MobileMe service through June 30, 2012.)

We do intend to support iCloud in a future version of Yojimbo (well before the MobileMe sunset date). However, since we are still investigating related technical issues, we don’t yet have a concrete answer; as soon as we do, we’ll post info on our website.

The loss of MobileMe syncing in Yojimbo is the only sore spot I’ve run into after switching my MobileMe account to iCloud. MobileMe syncing in Yojimbo worked great; now, because I’ve moved to iCloud, it’s gone.

Now, long-term, this might prove to be a boon for Mac developers like Bare Bones, because iCloud is free, and MobileMe is not, so, eventually, when Yojimbo supports iCloud for syncing, far more users should be willing and able to take advantage of that. But iCloud storage for Mac developers, though promising, is still a bag of question marks.

Here’s a big one: will iCloud storage for Mac apps be restricted to App Store apps? That’s been a question since WWDC in June and Apple has yet to answer it. My gut feeling/semi-informed hunch is that yes, it will be restricted to App Store apps, so that Apple can approve all iCloud storage use cases in advance, and easily pull the plug on any app that proves to be abusive in the wild. Put another way, my bet is that if your app isn’t signed by Apple, it won’t be able to write to an iCloud container. But no one outside Apple knows yet.

Drama on the Sprint International Unlocking Front ★

Some confusion here. First Sprint tells Engadget:

Our SIM does not come out of the device - I believe the same is true of Verizon’s iPhone but you would need to confirm that with them. Customers can sign up for one of our international rate plans and use this phone all over the world.

But then, in an update, Sprint changes its tune, saying “the SIM is removable and is not affixed to the device”.

I can confirm that the SIM card pops out of the Sprint iPhone 4S, but I don’t know what the deal is with international roaming and prepaid SIMs. I’ll have the phone with me in Montreal this weekend, so I should be able to find out then.

Windows Phone, One Year In ★

Horace Dediu:

During the last quarter for which we have data (ending June) I have an estimate that Windows Phone sold only 1.4 million units (Gartner’s sell-through analysis suggests 1.7 million). That gives Microsoft a 1.3% share of units sold (Gartner 1.6%), a new low.

In other words, for that entire quarter, they sold about as many total Windows Phones as Apple sold iPhone 4S preorders last weekend. This must be frustrating for Microsoft — Windows Phone 7 is better than Android from what I’ve seen. And even if you disagree with that assessment, I don’t see how anyone could say its quality and appeal are proportionate to its sales figures. Getting traction in the market is hard.

(Anyone at Microsoft: I’d welcome a Mango phone to review. Get in touch if you can make that happen.)

Getting Started With iCloud ★

Nice overview by Serenity Caldwell at Macworld.

How Gizmodo Escaped Indictment in Last Year’s iPhone Prototype Theft ★

Greg Sandoval and Declan McCullagh, reporting for CNet:

“What we were looking at was possession of stolen property and whether the evidence supported extortion,” Wagstaffe said. “You can say we were looking at whether their actions supported that they participated in the theft of the phone. We didn’t think it supported either.”

Wagstaffe said, however, that his office’s review of the computers seized from Chen’s home showed the correspondence between Gizmodo editors was “juvenile.”

“It was obvious that they were angry with the company about not being invited to some press conference or some big Apple event. We expected to see a certain amount of professionalism — this is like 15-year-old children talking,” Wagstaffe said. “There was so much animosity, and they were very critical of Apple. They talked about having Apple right where they wanted them and they were really going to show them.”

Shocking.

RAM vs. Energy Consumption ★

So why didn’t the iPhone 4S go from 512 MB to 1 GB of RAM? Only Apple knows for sure, but I found this blog post from Microsoft’s Steven Sinofsky interesting:

Something that might not be obvious is that minimizing memory usage on low-power platforms can prolong battery life. Huh? In any PC, RAM is constantly consuming power. If an OS uses a lot of memory, it can force device manufacturers to include more physical RAM. The more RAM you have on board, the more power it uses, the less battery life you get. Having additional RAM on a tablet device can, in some instances, shave days off the amount of time the tablet can sit on your coffee table looking off but staying fresh and up to date.

I’d always thought that the trade-off with more RAM was simply a matter of price. More RAM costs more money. I’d never thought of it as a factor in battery life.

How International Is the iPhone 4S ‘World Phone?’ ★

Jason Snell:

But there’s a new wrinkle that potentially makes the international-roaming experience better on Sprint and Verizon iPhones than it is on AT&T. Sprint plans to sell the iPhone 4S with its micro-SIM slot unlocked; Verizon’s will be initially locked, but if you’ve been a customer in good standing for 60 days, you can call Verizon and ask for an “international unlock.” […]

So if you’re a Sprint or Verizon iPhone 4S customer traveling internationally, you can buy a pre-paid micro-SIM card with dramatically cheaper rates for data and voice calling, rather than pay for international roaming offered by U.S. carriers to their existing customers.

Very cool. And keep in mind that while your phone number changes with a pre-paid SIM, your iCloud ID doesn’t, so you can use iMessage to send and receive messages from other iOS users.