Linked List: February 24, 2012

Friday, 24 February 2012

Clever little app for keeping track of scores in board games. Available for iPhone, iPad, and, believe it or not, PlayBook.

So Why Do iPhone 4S Users Consume More Data? ★

Marco Arment, on why iPhone 4S users purportedly consume more data than iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS users:

The camera, of course. Every iPhone after the 3G has shipped with a higher-resolution camera than its predecessor. People capture and share a lot of photos on their iPhones, so a very likely culprit for higher data usage, controlling for OS version and tethering abilities, is that the photos are simply much larger with each new iPhone.

Bigger pictures consume more data, but I think the real explanation is demographics. The type of people who consume higher-than-average amounts of data on their iPhones are exactly the sort of people who upgraded to the iPhone 4S as soon as it came out. I’d bet these numbers wouldn’t look much different even if the 4S had the same camera as the 4.

Like Exchange ★

Chambers Daily:

I look at Office for iPad like I look at Exchange support for Mac, iPhone, and iPad. Apple would prefer that it didn’t have to build support for it, but the Exchange environment is so huge in business that its hard to ignore.

Good way to put it. I remember being skeptical (and wrong) about Apple supporting Exchange in iOS, but that wound up being a huge reason for its success in the enterprise.

Juniper Networks: Android Malware Up 3,325 Percent in 2011 ★

Could be worse; could be 4,000 percent.

iSuppli Claim Chowder ★

iSuppli, back in April 2010:

Chief in realizing this upside potential is Apple’s ability to address the lack of Flash support in the iPad. Some have called the long-term viability of the iPad into question because of its nonsupport of Adobe Flash — the multimedia platform from Adobe Systems Inc.

“Until Apple addresses this issue one way or another, its decision not to support Flash — communicated earlier on by Apple CEO Steve Jobs — will have a limiting effect on the iPad’s sales potential,” said Francis Sideco, principal analyst, wireless communications. “This is because one of the key use cases of the device, as marketed by Apple, relates to web browsing or consumption of online content. Absent Flash, iPad users will not be able to enjoy Flash-driven content, which is used in a considerable amount of websites as well as web-based games and videos.”

They predicted 14.4 million iPads would be sold in all of 2011, and 20 million in 2012. Apple sold over 15 million last quarter alone.

Apple Confronts the Law of Large Numbers ★

James B. Stewart, writing for the NYT:

If Apple’s share price grew even 20 percent a year for the next decade, which is far below its current blistering pace, its $500 billion market capitalization would be more than $3 trillion by 2022. That is bigger than the 2011 gross domestic product of France or Brazil.

Put another way, to increase its revenue by 20 percent, Apple has to generate additional sales of more than $9 billion in its next fourth quarter. A company with only $1 billion in sales has to come up with just another $200 million.

Clear’s UI, Replicated in HTML5 (Best Viewed on Your iPhone) ★

Very clever replication of Clear’s UI in HTML5, by Evan You. And it’s a perfect example of why I said “Good luck with that” regarding the aforelinked mobile web app store from Mozilla. This demo only works properly in Mobile Safari on iOS. Parts of it work in Android’s standard Browser app, but it’s flickery as hell. It works better in Chrome for Android (no flickering for example), but it doesn’t work completely (no pull-to-create-a-new-item for example) — and Chrome is only available on Android 4, which means it’s only available on about 1 percent of Android handsets in use. The demo doesn’t even render at all in IE on Windows Phone 7.5.

Mozilla to Open Mobile Web App Marketplace ★

Mike Swift, reporting for the San Jose Mercury News:

Mozilla is expected Wednesday to announce plans for its own app store, to be called the Mozilla Marketplace, offering mobile apps that could run equally well on an iPhone, an Android phone or a Windows Phone device. Mozilla is also working to develop a smartphone that would not be locked into the “walled gardens” of apps, operating systems and devices that are now controlled by Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon and a few others.

Good luck with that.

How Bad Reporting Is Ruining The Washington Post ★

This piece by Paul Farhi in The Washington Post is a month old, but I missed it when it was new (I blame Macworld/iWorld Expo). Headline, “How Siri Is Ruining Your Cellphone Service”:

Siri’s dirty little secret is that she’s a bandwidth guzzler, the digital equivalent of a 10-miles-per-gallon Hummer H1.

To make your wish her command, Siri floods your cell network with a stream of data; her responses require a similarly large flow in return. A study published this month by Arieso, an Atlanta firm that specializes in mobile networks, found that the Siri-equipped iPhone 4S uses twice as much data as does the plain old iPhone 4 and nearly three times as much as does the iPhone 3G.

It doesn’t take a genius to spot the logical error here. Assuming Arieso’s data is correct, that iPhone 4S users consume more data, they offer no proof that Siri has anything to do with it. In fact, the word “Siri” doesn’t even appear in Arieso’s report. (Here’s another story from three weeks earlier, also in The Washington Post, making the same claim based on the same report: “Apple’s Siri Uses Three Times More Data Than Earlier iPhones”.)

Here’s some real reporting on how much data Siri actually consumes, from Jacqui Cheng at Ars Technica:

If you use Siri 2-3 times per day at an average of 63KB per instance, you might expect to use 126KB to 189KB per day, or 3.7 to 5.5MB per month. For 4-6 times a day, that might come out to 252KB to 378KB per day, or 7.4 to 11MB per month. If you use it 10-15 times per day, you might end up using 630KB to 945KB per day, or 18.5 to 27.7MB per month.

I.e., not much.

iMore: Apple Getting Ready to Ditch the Traditional Dock Connector ★

Rene Ritchie:

We’ve heard that Apple is getting ready to ditch the dock connector as it’s currently sized and implemented on iPods, iPhones, and iPads. The reason isn’t anything political, like a new desire to conform to an outdated micro-USB standard, but typically Apple: to save space inside the iPhone 5 for what are now more important components.

I’ve heard nothing about this, but I’m surprised it’s taken this long. The 30-pin dock connector is big, relatively speaking, and it isn’t very elegant. Why not switch to wireless charging? And if not wireless, surely Apple can come up with something smaller.

More Thinking About Microsoft Office Getting a Spot on Stage at the iPad 3 Introduction ★

Jim Dalrymple:

Apple likes to highlight cool software for the device it’s introducing, so why not Office? It would be more beneficial for Microsoft than Apple, but still I think Apple would give them a place at the keynote.

Having given this more thought, I think it comes down to short-term vs. long-term strategy. Short-term, highlighting Office for the iPad would clearly be in Apple’s interest. The iWork suite is an alternative to Office, but not a feature-for-feature replacement. Surely there is some number of people who aren’t buying iPads who would if it did have Office, and that number is, I’d bet, significant.

Long-term, though, giving Microsoft a spot onstage, however brief, would only serve to reinforce the notion that serious computing platforms need Microsoft Office. The iPad has, to date, been sending the opposite message: that you don’t need Office. Another long-term strategic angle: does Apple want to lend credence to the notion that Microsoft can write first-class touchscreen tablet apps, when Microsoft is set to ship its own tablet-savvy version of Windows later this year?

But it’s best not to overthink this. Office for iPad would sell a lot of iPads. That’s the bottom line.