Linked List: June 28, 2012

Thursday, 28 June 2012

Facebook Plans to Speed Up Its iPhone App 

Nick Bilton:

In fact, I’d venture to say that Facebook’s iPhone application is slower than almost any of the other 499,999 apps available for the iPhone. Thankfully that’s all going to change next month. According to two Facebook engineers who asked not be named because they are not authorized to speak about unreleased products, Facebook has completely rebuilt its iOS application to optimize for one thing: speed.

Here’s how:

One of the Facebook engineers said the new application has been built primarily using Objective-C, the programming language used to build applications for iOS. Many of the components of the current version of the Facebook app are built using HTML5, the Web-based markup language.

Yours truly, a month ago, regarding Facebook’s new camera app:

I think Zuckerberg saw that for mobile, the HTML/CSS/JavaScript web is not enough. Native apps are essential, thus the talent acquisitions of superstar outfits like Sofa and Push Pop Press. I bet Facebook has more native mobile apps on the way.

Google’s Nexus Q Is Made in the U.S. 

Admirable and interesting, but the $299 price tag sure doesn’t seem like a “yeah, this can work” argument. And how many are they going to sell? I bet they gave away more of these to I/O attendees than they’ll sell to actual customers.

They’re not making the Nexus 7 — a device with a very competitive price and obvious appeal, and which thus should sell in significant quantities — here in the U.S.

Chitika: Google Chromebooks Account for 0.02 Percent of Desktop Web Traffic 

Frederic Lardinois, writing for AOL/TechCrunch two weeks ago:

Across Chitika’s network, just 0.019% of all traffic comes from ChromeOS. To put this into perspective, Sony’s PlayStation, which isn’t exactly a web browsing powerhouse, easily beats ChromeOS with a usage share of 0.042%.

I’m sure whatever Chromebook-related news Google announced today at I/O will turn this around.

Google Nexus Q Home Media Streamer 

$299 living room component that has no interface of its own (other than a volume knob), and requires an Android phone or tablet to control. All it does is play music and video from the Google Play store. And judging by The Verge’s video review, it doesn’t even play video acceptably. Sure, it has a 25-watt amp, but how can this thing cost three times as much as an Apple TV?

I’m calling this thing a soon-to-be-forgotten turd.

Source Filmmaker 

Valve:

The Source Filmmaker (SFM) is the movie-making tool built and used by us here at Valve to make movies inside the Source game engine. Because the SFM uses the same assets as the game, anything that exists in the game can be used in the movie, and vice versa. By utilizing the hardware rendering power of a modern gaming PC, the SFM allows storytellers to work in a what-you-see-is-what-you-get environment so they can iterate in the context of what it will feel like for the final audience.

In other words: it’s a tool built upon Valve’s game engine to make seriously good-looking animated movies.

New Firefox for Android 

Speaking of alternative browsers for mobile OSes, here’s Jared Newman on the all-new Firefox for Android:

On my Samsung Galaxy S II, the new Firefox glides smoothly through any web page, whether it’s optimized for mobile browsing or not. The sidebar menus are gone, so when you want to switch tabs or open a new one, you tap a little “plus” icon in the top-right corner, and a list of thumbnail images drops down from the top of the screen. When you tap on the address bar, up pops a list of your most-visited sites, bookmarks and browsing history. Overall, text looks more modern, and pages are easier to read.

I’ve tried it on a Galaxy Nexus, and it’s a vast improvement. Rendering, scaling, and scrolling are all pretty good — and none of those things were acceptable in the previous mobile version of Firefox. They’ve got a long way to go, though:

If you think of the new Firefox for Android as version 1.0 — technically, it’s not — some of its omissions are understandable. At the moment you can’t select text on a page, find text within a page or get search suggestions as you type in the address bar. All those features are coming soon, Nightingale said, along with a “readability mode” that renders text and images cleanly on the page. Mozilla’s also working on a new tablet-optimized version of Firefox for Android.

And they’re up against Chrome for Android, which is really good — arguably in the same class as Mobile Safari.

Google Announces Chrome for iPhone and iPad, Available Today 

Laura June:

The app will be for iOS 4.3 and higher devices, and will be available today. The app will also support Chrome sync, and looks like it’s just as full-featured as the browser which many of us know and love.

It’s not the Chrome rendering or JavaScript engines — the App Store rules forbid that. It’s the iOS system version of WebKit wrapped in Google’s own browser UI. The pressure for Apple to allow users to specify a third-party app as their default browser is going to increase significantly after this. (As I type this, it’s not yet in the App Store.)

I see the security and control angles on not allowing third-party runtimes, which in turn disallows third-party rendering and JavaScript engines. But I can’t see the angle behind not allowing a third-party app from the App Store to be specified as your preferred default over Mobile Safari. (Same goes for email.)

Tom Hanks on Nora Ephron 

Nice remembrance.

Supreme Court Lets Health Law Largely Stand 

Put aside the politics, whether you believe this decision was right or wrong, and consider simply that no one expected a 5-4 decision with Chief Justice Roberts siding with the four liberal justices. No one. The U.S. Supreme Court does not leak.

Update: Well, OK, not no one. Someone pay Julio Garcia $300. And TPM’s Brian Beutler astutely took note of Roberts’s taxation angle when the case was argued in front of the court in March. But my point is that seemingly nothing about this decision leaked from the court itself.

‘There’s No Margin’ 

Ina Fried, reporting for some website:

On the hardware side, Shih and Rubin feel they have something that can serve as a full-fledged tablet computer while competing on price with the Kindle Fire. Despite its bargain-basement price, Shih notes that the device packs a high-end laminated display, quad-core chip and other high-end features.

One way the companies managed that is through razor-thin margins. Google is selling the device through its Google Play store, essentially at cost, and also absorbing the marketing costs associated with the device.

“When it gets sold through the Play store, there’s no margin,” Rubin said. “It just basically gets (sold) through.”

That must be music to the ears of Sony, Samsung, Acer, HTC, and anyone else trying to sell Android tablets for, you know, a profit. Where by “music to the ears” I mean “a shit sandwich”.

And I’m sure Google’s wholly-owned Motorola division is delighted to hear that Andy Rubin doesn’t think they were capable of building this device.