Linked List: November 11, 2011

Friday, 11 November 2011

My thanks to Tapfolio for sponsoring this week’s DF RSS feed. Tapfolio is a new animated, interactive stock market app for the iPad, with a great native UI and feel. Tapfolio’s graphs allow you to swipe and pinch-to-zoom your portfolio and visualize gains/losses instantly with real-time overlays. Compare up to five stocks over any arbitrary time period with a tap, and follow stock indexes or the price of gold with another tap.

Bottom line: Tapfolio is not an iPad-wrapper around an existing web-based stocks app. It’s a written-from-the-ground-up iPad stocks app. It’s really good. On sale now for just $2.99 on the App Store.

Luma Labs Jammed By a Crummy Patent ★

This is angering for so many reasons. The LumaLoop is a great product, and Duncan Davidson is a friend. But the main thing is that it’s just so clearly unfair.

Logitech CEO Says Company Lost $100 Million on Google TV ★

But it was an open $100 million, so they’ve got that.

More on the Sprint iPhone 4S International Roaming Situation ★

Jason Snell:

It’s unclear about Sprint iPhone 4S models purchased before November 11. They may remain SIM-unlocked forever, though it’s possible Sprint will be able to issue some sort of update that locks them.

So, if you’re a savvy international traveler who wants the option of using a foreign micro-SIM in your Sprint or Verizon iPhone 4S, now you know the deal: Keep paying your bills, and after 60 days (for Verizon) or 90 days (for Sprint), you can call and request that the carrier unlock your micro-SIM slot. Then you can buy pre-paid cards to your heart’s content.

Why make you wait for this at all? This is a huge advantage both carriers have over AT&T (which won’t unlock your GSM SIM, period, no matter what).

Sprint to Begin Locking iPhone 4S GSM SIMs Today ★

Mark Hearn, writing for SprintFeed:

An internal Sprint memo states that starting on 11/11/11 “all iPhone 4S devices will have the SIM locked.” The memo also goes on to state that “the locking occurs during the activation process and is invisible to the customer.” Such statements suggest that Sprint’s iPhone 4S variant does, or should we say did ship with an unlocked SIM. But all is not lost for you early adopters, it is clearly noted that this SIM lock update will not impact any iPhone 4S activated prior to 11/11/11.

I can verify that the Sprint iPhone 4S review unit I tested from Apple was not SIM-locked. When I was in Canada for the Çingleton Symposium conference last month, I popped in a GSM SIM from a native Canadian and it worked just fine. (Popping in an AT&T SIM while in the U.S. had no effect.) Not sure what Sprint’s thinking here, but they’re removing a very useful feature that should be a great selling point for frequent international travelers.

(Via MacRumors.)

Holding Sway ★

Glenn Fleishman, concluding his piece for The Economist on the demise of Flash for the mobile web:

One consequence of Adobe’s move might be to spur on HTML5. As our columnist recently discussed, the up-and-coming web standard — partially implemented in many current releases of web browsers — incorporates a number of Flash components. Browsers are becoming more sophisticated in handling animation (for games and charting), audio and video as a result. Widespread adoption of the new standard is likely to make it impossible for any one company to hold sway over online interaction. It may be too soon for Apple to gloat.

I was nodding in agreement with Fleishman until this paragraph. I just don’t get this. Remember Jobs’s “Thoughts on Music”? Jobs wrote:

Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat. If the big four music companies would license Apple their music without the requirement that it be protected with a DRM, we would switch to selling only DRM-free music on our iTunes store. Every iPod ever made will play this DRM-free music.

Critics called bullshit on this, arguing that Apple liked its DRM wrapper for music, because that’s what kept users locked into iTunes, and that Jobs claimed Apple would embrace no-DRM music only because he knew the major music labels would never agree to it. But when the music labels did, in fact, agree to drop DRM, Apple did exactly what Jobs said it would: embraced it. And iTunes’s success continued unabated.

I don’t see how Apple could be any more clear in its actions or words that it supports and encourages the growth of a truly open web. Apple’s goal is simply to provide the best experience, period, both with native apps (closed) and the web (open).

iCloud and Four-Letter Words ★

I was a guest this week on MacBreak Weekly, with host Andy Ihnatko and fellow guests Chris Breen and Tonya Engst:

We complain a little about iCloud, predict a little about 2012, ask Siri what’s up with that, and more.