Linked List: April 20, 2012

Friday, 20 April 2012

Printopia 

My thanks to Ecamm Network for sponsoring this week’s DF RSS feed to promote Printopia. Printopia is a terrific Mac utility that makes any printer connected to your Mac available to apps on the iPhone and iPad. In short, it brings AirPrint to all printers. Plus it lets you send files to your Mac instead of printing them. See Dan Frakes’s five-mouse Macworld review of Printopia, and download the free demo.

Amazon’s Knock-Off Problem 

Stephen Gandel, reporting for Fortune:

There are a number of books on Amazon with similar titles to much more popular ones. Fifty Shades of Grey, the steamy romance novel that has created buzz around the world, is the No. 1 selling book on Amazon. Also available on Amazon: Thirty-Five Shades of Grey. Both books are written by authors with two first initials — E. L. James and J. D. Lyte — and both are the first in a trilogy about a young girl who falls for an older, successful man with a taste for domineering sex. The publisher of the bestseller Fifty says the book is “a tale that will obsess you, possess you, and stay with you forever.” The author and publisher of Thirty-Five, which came out in early April, apparently believe that description fits their book as well, word-for-word. Also selling on Amazon is I am the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Twilight New Moon. Neither is the book you are likely looking for.

Classy.

Forbes: ‘What Apple CEO Tim Cook’s Visit to Valve Means’ 

Uh, it means you don’t believe unsubstantiated crap from Apple Insider.

Valve Co-Founder Gabe Newell Says Meeting With Tim Cook Never Happened 

Kate Cox, quoting Newell from a podcast interview:

We actually, we all sent mail to each other, going, “Who’s Tim Cook meeting with? Is he meeting with you? I’m not meeting with Tim Cook.” So we’re… it’s one of those rumors that was stated so factually that we were actually confused.

No one here was meeting with Tim Cook or with anybody at Apple that day. I wish we were! We have a long list of things we’d love to see Apple do to support games and gaming better. But no, we didn’t meet with Tim Cook. He seems like a smart guy, but I’ve never actually met him.

I am shocked — shocked! — that Apple Insider would publish complete bullshit.

Oracle v. Google: The Show So Far 

Andrew Orlowski:

“Please don’t demonstrate to any Sun employees or lawyers,” Rubin warned an engineer in 2008, as he prepared to take Android on the road.

Insert “Android is open” joke here.

Apple Airs New iPhone Commercials Featuring Samuel L. Jackson and Zooey Deschanel 

I’ve been thinking about these two spots all week, and something about them doesn’t sit quite right with me. It says something that there was speculation at first that they were AT&T-produced spots, but they’re not — they’re from Apple.

I think the point is to elevate Siri to celebrity status, to make sure everyone knows what (who) she is. But I think they play more like run-of-the-mill celebrity ads — more like just, Hey, Sam Jackson has an iPhone.