Linked List: June 29, 2012

Friday, 29 June 2012

Tapstream for iOS, Mac, and Android ★

My thanks to Tapstream for sponsoring this week’s DF RSS feed. Tapstream is a new tool for iOS, Mac, and Android developers that lets you understand how users are finding your app, and measure which social networks, websites, and marketing campaigns are driving traffic. It’s super-easy to implement: just add a snippet of JavaScript to your website and add their SDK to your app. That’s it. This week only, DF readers who install Tapstream’s SDK get a lifetime Pro account for free (regular price: $40 per month).

My favorite part: Tapstream was built by app developers for app developers, and one of the ways they tested it was to measure the effectiveness of a Daring Fireball RSS feed sponsorship. The result: they booked two more DF sponsorships.

World’s Longest Corner ★

Andru Edwards, back in February 2008, “Flash on iPhone Is Just Around the Corner”:

Well, we’ve just got word from a reliable source that Flash support is on its way to the iPhone, and it should be coming very, very soon.

Called it.

Apple Granted Preliminary Sales Ban of Galaxy Nexus ★

Chris Davies, writing for Slashgear:

Apple has been granted a preliminary sales injunction against the Samsung Galaxy Nexus in the US, with the Cupertino company now required to stump up a $96m bond in order to secure the ban. The decision was tweeted by Reuters’ Dan Levine, and follows a win earlier this week for Apple against the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, with the US court granting a preliminary injunction against the Android tablet in the US.

What does this mean for the Nexus 7?

Don’t Annoy Users ★

Virtual Pants:

It’s easy to figure out why Apple doesn’t want default third-party apps. It would cede control of the iOS experience to third-parties. Imagine a Google user with an iPhone replacing most of the core apps with Google counterparts. An iPhone home screen with Chrome, Gmail, Drive, Docs, Calendar, Contacts, Music, Maps, Listen, Now, and Google+ is Apple’s worst nightmare. Unhappy iPhone users who would like to use Google services in a more integrated manner and can’t are also Apple’s worst nightmare.

No, Apple’s worst nightmare is someone buying an Android phone instead of an iPhone. If you buy an iPhone, Apple wins, that’s all there is to it. Every iOS user who chooses to use a third-party app as their preferred client for web browsing, email, calendaring, etc. is annoyed every single time they click a web/email/event URL and are taken to an iOS system app that they don’t want to use.

“Don’t annoy users” is a good rule of thumb, and the inability to specify third-party apps as default handlers for these things is annoying.

If Apple does not want iOS users to use Chrome (to name one example), they should not have allowed it into the App Store. If they allowed it into the App Store, then they should allow it to be specified as the default browser.

On the Lack of User-Choosable Default Apps in iOS ★

Conrad MacIntyre:

I suspect the reason is because of the deep system integration of things like Safari, Mail, Contacts, and the like. Take Mail, for example, if you could set Sparrow as your default client on iOS you’d still have to configure Mail because any email sent from other apps uses the Mail API. Then rely on IMAP to sync those things up. Inelegant and un-Apple.

That’s a good point about email, but it doesn’t apply to web browsing. There is no “Safari” sheet in iOS. And even for email, the answer is that iOS should allow third-party apps — like Sparrow — to provide their own system-wide sharing sheets.

The iPhone’s Effect on the Phone Industry ★

Greg Gretsch, on Twitter:

Since release of iPhone 5 years ago, market caps of companies most affected: $AAPL +376%; $GOOG +9%; $RIMM -85%; $NOK -89%

I’ll add two more:

Microsoft +0.6%
Samsung +36%

WSJ: ‘Research in Motion Says Its New BlackBerry 10 Smartphone Won’t Be Released Until First-Quarter 2013’ ★

What’s the over/under that RIM is still an independent company in Q1 2013?

‘Hot Ladies in Movies’ ★

This week’s episode of The Talk Show, with two special guests: John August and Adam Lisagor. Topics include Google’s announcements at I/O, Apple’s new Podcasts app, creating apps to solve your own problems, and a whole bunch of talk about movies and filmmaking.

Brought to you by two great sponsors that go great together: Olloclip, a three-in-one camera lens accessory for the iPhone 4/4S; and Camera Plus Pro, a killer camera/photo filtering app for iPhone.

Bertrand Serlet’s Stealth Startup: Upthere ★

Speaking of Apple executives who went out on top, Seth Flegerman at Business Insider has a wee bit of a scoop on what Bertrand Serlet is up to. I heard a whiff about this at WWDC; he’s definitely got some A-list UI designers on board.

Update: Upthere’s simple job-listing page.

Bob Mansfield, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Hardware Engineering, to Retire ★

Apple PR:

“Bob has been an instrumental part of our executive team, leading the hardware engineering organization and overseeing the team that has delivered dozens of breakthrough products over the years,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “We are very sad to have him leave and hope he enjoys every day of his retirement.” […]

As senior vice president of Hardware Engineering, Mansfield has led Mac hardware engineering since 2005, iPhone and iPod hardware engineering since 2010, and iPad hardware engineering since its inception. Mansfield joined Apple in 1999 when Apple acquired Raycer Graphics, where he was vice president of Engineering. Mansfield earned a BSEE degree from the University of Texas at Austin in 1982.

It’s a high-pressure job. Tim Bucher cracked and got fired from it in 2004, and it was ugly. Mark Papermaster was shown the door in 2010 after Antennagate.

Mansfield, to my knowledge, is going out on top.

Microsoft’s New Home Page ★

No idea why this is a “Preview” — they should just ship it. Really nice design work.

Adobe Confirms It Won’t Support Flash on Android 4.1, Stops New Flash Installs From Google Play on August 15 ★

Good thing no one ever thought the lack of Flash Player support on the iPhone was a problem, otherwise I’d have to look it all up and I’d be cooking claim chowder all day.

Tim Bray Now Working on Identity at Google ★

Tim Bray:

I’ve become fascinated by the tech and policy and developer issues around OAuth, and two things seem obvious to me:

Usernames and passwords generally suck and obviously don’t scale to the Internet, so we need to do away with ’em soonest.

The new technology coming down the pipe, OAuth 2 and friends, is way too hard for developers; there need to be better tools and services if we’re going to make this whole Internet thing smoother and safer.

No doubt in my mind that this is one of the big problems to be solved for the industry over the next decade, and Bray’s two-point bullet list is exactly right: the username/password solution is bad for users in numerous ways, but whatever eventually replaces it needs to be easy for developers.

RIM Chiefs Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie’s Best Quotes ★

Charles Arthur:

Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie were the co-chief executives and co-chairmen of Research In Motion from its inception in the 1990s through to their resignation from the position in January 2012. Along the way, the company grew to a behemoth by exploiting its unique combination of secure email and keyboard-driven handset — but they also missed some key technology changes that are now sweeping RIM away.

They pretty much got everything wrong for the last six years.

Vintage Five-Year iPhone Claim Chowder ★

Tasty.

Five Years Ago: iPhone ★

Yours truly, five years ago:

I’m just blown away by how nice it is — very thoughtful UI design and outstanding engineering. It is very fun.

I love that I considered the screen “high resolution”.