Linked List: May 16, 2012

Wednesday, 16 May 2012

Pretty convincing argument that Mountain Lion will be the last of the big-cat names for major OS X releases.

Arik Hesseldahl, reporting on a document drop by Oracle in its ongoing Itanium lawsuit with HP:

In the emails, Intel, for its part, certainly looks like it wants out of the business of making the chip, but is willing to accept HP’s money to keep churning them out. Asked at one point what would happen if HP didn’t pay a certain amount to Intel, Intel would — in the words of Martin Fink, then-head of HP’s Business Critical Server business — shut down the teams producing certain chips that were in the process of being designed, and slap “high fives all around.”

Samsung Loses $10 Billion in Market Value After DigiTimes Reports Apple Is Ordering DRAM From a Competitor ★

Reuters:

Shares in Samsung Electronics Co slumped more than 6 percent on Wednesday, wiping $10 billion off the electronics giant’s market value, on a report that Apple placed huge chip orders with troubled Japanese chip rival Elpida.

Taiwan’s DigiTimes, an online trade news site, reported that Apple recently placed large mobile dynamic random access memory (DRAM) orders with Elpida’s 12-inch plant in Hiroshima, Japan, securing around half the facilities total chip production. It cited unnamed industry sources in its report, which hit shares of major chip suppliers to Apple.

This highlights the bizarre relationship between Apple and Samsung, where in the consumer space they’re direct competitors (arguably even arch rivals — they’re the only two companies turning a significant profit in the handset industry), but behind the scenes in Samsung’s component supplier business, Apple is their most important customer. I suspect this is what investors are reacting to. It’s not about one order of DRAM; it’s about concern that Samsung is going to lose Apple as a component customer across the board.

Funny, too, that this would happen the day after Harry McCracken’s epic DigiTimes fact-checking piece. I question anything DigiTimes reports. I’d double-check if they told me today is Wednesday. But regardless of whether the report is actually true, it is true that Samsung’s stock price took a dive because of it.

Android Fragmentation: One Developer Encounters 3,997 Devices ★

Casey Johnston, reporting for Ars Technica:

One developer can do business with nearly 4,000 distinct Android ROMs, according to data posted by the creators of OpenSignalMaps on Tuesday. […]

The developers logged 3,997 distinct devices, the most popular of which was the Samsung Galaxy S II. This figure was inflated quite a bit by custom ROMs, which overwrite the android.build.MODEL variable and cause those phones to be logged as separate devices. 1,363 types were logged only once, and while some were custom ROMs bucking the numbers, a good few were just massively unpopular devices — for example, the Hungarian 10.1-inch Concorde Tab.

The Hungarian 10.1-Inch Concorde Tab is my new favorite Android device name.

Walt Mossberg on Microsoft’s ‘Signature’ PCs ★

Mossberg:

Microsoft also offers a program that, for $99, will turn users’ Windows 7 PCs into Signature versions, if the owner brings the computer into one of its 16 stores, due to grow to 21 outlets in coming months.

In other words, you pay $100 to get the crap removed from your new computer. Nice.

WSJ Says Apple Is Switching to 4-Inch iPhone Displays ★

Lorraine Luk and Juro Osawa, reporting for the WSJ from Hong Kong:

The new iPhone that Apple Inc. is expected to unveil this year is likely to have a larger display than its current models have, with the company ordering bigger screens from its Asian suppliers, people familiar with the matter said.

The new screens measure at least 4 inches diagonally, the people said, compared with 3.5 inches on Apple’s latest model, the iPhone 4S. Production is set to begin next month, the people said. Analysts have predicted that the next iPhone will come out in the fall.

Not much to add, other than that next month strikes me as early for production to start if it isn’t launching until fall.

Ashton Kutcher Dressed Like Steve Jobs ★

Now it’s come to this: I’m linking to TMZ.

Google Green ★

Nicely done package from Google explaining and illustrating their environmental strategies. Impressive and never-before-seen look inside some of their data centers. And their “Story of Send” is Google at its whimsical best.