Linked List: June 4, 2012

Monday, 4 June 2012

The Blind Shooting the Blind 

Stephen van Egmond:

Eventually a common theme became apparent: Apple’s applications — Calendar, Messages, Mail, iPhoto, even Maps and most surprisingly Camera — are completely usable by blind people. These applications aren’t using any kind of secret API sauce. They’re using the same UIAccessibility framework you and I have access to.

Instapaper for Android 

Not quite feature-complete compared to the iOS version, but good enough to scratch Instapaper off my “iOS apps I desperately miss while carrying an Android phone around” list. We’re going to have a good time later this week enjoying this morsel of Eric Schmidt claim chowder, but while developers aren’t going Android-first, fewer are going iOS-only.

Ice Cream Sandwich: 7.1 Percent Uptake in 7 Months 

MG Siegler:

Google will announce the next version of their OS before 10% of their users are on the last version. Think about how insane that is for a second.

Kevin Fox’s WWDC Predictions 

Pretty good set of predictions overall, but this observation caught my eye:

Presumably once Apple stops using Google Maps tiles for their Maps app Google will be free to submit their own maps app for iOS and Apple would be hard-pressed to stop them, given the government scrutiny they underwent when stalling on the approval of Google Voice and other Google apps for iOS a few years ago.

Hadn’t thought about that before, but I agree. If Google wants iOS users to be able to use Google Maps after iOS 6 ships, they’re going to need to write their own app.

Update: I disagree with this bit, though:

Mountain Lion is almost done and will probably be required for the Retina MBPs, so the unveiling will probably be partnered with a sale date in early July, along with the release of Mountain Lion for regular consumers.

I don’t think retina display Macs necessarily need wait for Mountain Lion — there’s an awful lot of double-resolution (a.k.a. HiDPI) artwork in 10.7.4, and Apple has been steadily increasing the amount of retina-ready apps since 10.7. I think retina Macs could roll out running 10.7.4 or a 10.7.5 update. Further, I don’t think Mountain Lion is that close to shipping. Mountain Lion as we know it may seem stable and near-shipping, but I wouldn’t be surprised if some of those To-Be-Announced WWDC sessions are for as-yet-unannounced new stuff in Mountain Lion.

ABI Research on Tablet Shipments 

ABI Research:

Apple’s 11.8 million iPad shipments were spurred by the launch of a third-generation lineup and price reduction on iPad 2 models, while Samsung’s 1.1 million shipments returned the vendor to the number two spot after Amazon’s Kindle Fire shipments fizzled entering 2012.

No idea why they call them “media tablets” rather than just “tablets”. The whole appeal of the iPad is that people are using them for anything and everything.

Anyway, I wouldn’t count Amazon out. The Kindle 2 was a huge improvement over the original Kindle, and I expect the same from this year’s Kindle Fire.

Classy, Asus, Classy 

Asus’s official Twitter account cracks joke about one of their booth babes’ rear end.

Android Growth Slowing in the U.S.? 

Horace Dediu:

It’s perhaps too early to suggest that we’re seeing a slowdown in the US for Android. Perhaps there will be a return to growth in the fall. The concern has to be that rather than seeing the net adds growing — as they have for two years with only two contiguous months of decline — Android net adds have been falling for four months.

Moltz on Windows 8 

John Moltz, writing for Macworld:

Like a number of Apple fans, I think Metro — Microsoft’s tile interface that originated on Windows Phone 7 and is now the default in Windows 8 — is quite nice. And you know the primary reason we think that, right? Because it’s a complete departure from Windows as we used to know it.

Which is good, right? Because it turns out it really was the Windows interface we didn’t like. We’re not just irrational Microsoft haters under the thrall of Cupertino’s Reality Distortion Field.

Danny Sullivan on Google and ‘Paid Inclusion’ 

Danny Sullivan:

Back when Google was an upstart search engine, one way it distinguished itself was to fight against a pay-to-play business model called “paid inclusion.” Indeed, paid inclusion was one of the original sins Google listed as part of its “Don’t Be Evil” creed. But these days, Google seems comfortable with paid inclusion, raising potential concerns for publishers and searchers alike.

Steve Jobs, purportedly, back in January 2010: “This ‘don’t be evil’ mantra, it’s bullshit.”

Glenn Fleishman on Do Not Track 

Glenn Fleishman, writing for The Economist’s Babbage:

But the FTC seems firmly resolved, and privacy advocates are pushing hard for a tight definition of what “not tracking” means. Mr Soghoian notes that DNT went from being called ridiculous and naive to impossible to par for the course in three years. He believes that even without advertising and tracking networks’ full acquiescence, the FTC would have the teeth to pursue enforcement.

What Would a Siri API Look Like? 

Samuel Iglesias:

If I were to speculate about what Apple’s big WWDC TBA session is (some have guessed television), I would guess Apple is going to teach its multitude of developers the basics of natural language processing and how exactly it plans to let them integrate with Siri.