Linked List: November 25, 2011

Friday, 25 November 2011

RipIt 

My thanks to The Little App Factory for again sponsoring the DF RSS feed to promote RipIt, their award-winning DVD ripping app for the Mac. RipIt is my go-to app for DVD ripping, and a great way to get movies from DVDs onto an iPad or into iTunes for use with Home Sharing.

Even better: use coupon code “DARINGHOLIDAY2012” to buy RipIt and save 20 percent.

DF T-Shirts 

Another reminder that Daring Fireball t-shirts are currently available, but only for a limited time. We’ll take orders through the end of the weekend or so, and then do a print run to fulfill those orders.

Fortunes Change Quickly in Mobile 

Tim Culpan, reporting for Bloomberg two days ago:

HTC Corp., the largest seller of smartphones in the U.S., cut revenue forecast as much as 23 percent as the global economic crisis and rising competition from Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co. dent demand. […]

“Wow, it finally happened, the sales growth streak has come to an end,” said Bonnie Chang, who rates HTC “hold” at Yuanta Securities Co. in Taipei and may amend her recommendation after the forecast cut. “HTC doesn’t have the same sparkle, lacking both the design and marketing of Samsung, while they’ve declined to go into the low-end phones which are popular in China.”

Here’s Paul R. La Monica, writing for CNN Money, just five months ago:

But even Apple hasn’t had that great of year. The stock is up only about 4%. That leads me to the best-performing smartphone maker, one that you may not be as familiar with because it doesn’t trade in the United States: HTC. […]

According to a consensus of analysts that follow HTC’s Taiwan shares, earnings are expected to increase at an average of nearly 30% a year over the next few years. Compare that to Apple, whose profits are expected to grow at a clip of 21% annually.

TellMe vs. Siri 

Brutal.

Here’s what Microsoft executive Craig Mundie told Forbes about Siri:

People are infatuated with Apple announcing it. It’s good marketing, but at least as the technological capability you could argue that Microsoft has had a similar capability in Windows Phones for more than a year, since Windows Phone 7 was introduced.

“Good marketing.”