Linked List: January 12, 2012

Thursday, 12 January 2012

‘Jiminy Cricket, He Flew the Coop’ ★

Trailer for Wes Anderson’s new movie, Moonrise Kingdom.

I’ll bet even Samsung’s photocopiers are rip-offs of some other company’s photocopiers.

Microsoft’s ‘Smoked by a Windows Phone’ $100 Challenge ★

Even in the one where Microsoft’s Ben Randolph loses, Windows Phone comes off looking good. It really excels at these sorts of sharing tasks.

Samsung Blade ★

An even better example of Samsung ripping off the design and aping the product name of a best-selling competitor. It’s like coming out with a new diet cola named Kiet Doke.

Update: Here’s another side-by-side comparison, from Engadget.

Microsoft Says PCs May Have Missed Fourth-Quarter Estimates ★

Dina Bass, reporting for Bloomberg:

Microsoft Corp. said industrywide sales of personal computers will probably be lower than analysts had projected in the fourth quarter because supply was hurt by flooding in Thailand.

Analysts have estimated that total PC shipments fell about 1 percent in the quarter, Tami Reller, chief financial officer of Microsoft’s Windows unit, said at an investment conference. The actual number is probably lower, she said. Bill Koefoed, Microsoft’s general manager of investor relations, echoed those remarks at a separate event.

This spin is a little too cute for my tastes. It seems like what Microsoft is trying to argue is that “PC sales” are down, and therefore Windows licensing sales are down, too. But sales of the Mac and iPad are up, not down, for the same quarter. It’s not “PC sales” that are down in the abstract, but Windows PC sales specifically.

This Week’s Edition of ‘Stupid Stuff Analysts Say About Apple’ ★

Guggenheim Securities analyst Shing Yin:

We believe Apple may have decided not to release an LTE iPhone last year in part because it did not want to cede any leverage to Verizon, which had the clear lead in LTE deployment. We think Apple preferred to see AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint all offer essentially the same iPhone, so that it maximizes the role of the device (rather than the network) in consumers’ purchasing decisions.

This is not how Apple works. Apple will release an LTE iPhone when they can make one that meets Apple’s own standards for performance, battery life, price, and manufacturing scalability. It’s that simple. Tim Cook explained this a year ago, when the Verizon iPhone 4 was introduced.

The other thing that Yin’s analysis seemingly ignores is the rest of the world. Apple sells the same iPhone 4S everywhere. Verizon and AT&T do dominate the U.S. carrier market, but from a global perspective, they’re just two big carriers among dozens.

Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory ★

Speaking of Foxconn, Ira Glass’s This American Life included an excerpt of Mike Daisey performing his one-man show “The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs”, about his own research and findings into Apple’s factory conditions in China.

Hundreds Threaten Suicide at Foxconn Factory ★

William McGuinness, reporting for CBS Seattle:

Some 300 Chinese Foxconn employees who manufacture X-box 360 machines said they would throw themselves from their Wuhan, China, plant if demands for lost wages were not met.

Should The New York Times Be a Truth Vigilante? ★

New York Times public editor Arthur S. Brisbane:

I’m looking for reader input on whether and when New York Times news reporters should challenge “facts” that are asserted by newsmakers they write about.

That The Times, along with all other major US newspapers, doesn’t already do this is probably a surprise to most readers — those who haven’t really thought about how modern journalism works.

I’m glad to see Brisbane writing about this in public. But to me, once you spell it out as Brisbane has here, the answer is obvious: of course The Times should do this.

The Samsung BlackJack ★

Speaking of The Talk Show, one of the topics this week was about Samsung’s design rip-offs. I mentioned that Samsung has a history of ripping off market leaders that predates the iPhone. Their 2007 BlackJack is a perfect example — even the name was shameless.

Don’t Hide the Apple Monkeys ★

This week’s episode of America’s favorite do-it-yourself home improvement podcast. Topics include CES, Apple’s army of camera-wielding monkeys, some predictions for 2012, and a bit of speculation regarding next week’s education Apple event.

Brought to you by the fine folks at Rackspace and Harvest.

Gartner: Apple Maintains Third Place Ranking With 11.6 Percent of U.S. PC Shipments ★

Eric Slivka, reporting for MacRumors:

With year-over-year unit growth of over 20%, Apple was the only one of the top five U.S. vendors to see an increase in shipments in an overall market that shrank by nearly 6%.

Keep in mind, this is without counting the iPad as a PC. Not sure how they’re going to justify that later this year if iPad-esque Windows 8 tablets hit the market on schedule.

And I Had Such High Hopes for the Naxa NID-7001 ★

Alexis Madrigal, “Why You Can Ignore CES”:

Well, here’s a test case. Let’s say you paid close attention last year to the tablets that were hyped at the show. How important have they turned out to be, one year on?

We broke down the trajectories of 17 tablets from CES 2011. In the final tally, I think you could say one is a qualified success (the Asus Eee Pad Transformer), one did OK (the Motorola XOOM), and several flopped (Dell Streak, RIM Playbook) or made no impact (Coby Kyrus, Cydle M7 Multipad, Naxa NID-7001). Nine never were heard from again.

Where by “qualified” he apparently means in the “non-iPad” category.

Forecasting Next Week’s Apple Education Event ★

Astute speculation from Dan Moren and Lex Friedman.