Linked List: July 4, 2012

Wednesday, 4 July 2012

Long story short, there’s still one open sponsorship spot for this week’s The Talk Show, recording tomorrow (which may well be today by the time you read this) and airing Friday. If you’ve got a product or service you’d like to promote to the best podcast audience in the world, get in touch.

Update: OK, this week’s open spot is sold, but there are still a few openings for the remaining shows in July.

iPad Mini and Supply Chain Leaks ★

Marco Arment:

If Apple were to launch a $200–300 7.8-inch iPad, they’d probably sell a ton of them for the holiday season — which means they’d need to start ramping up production pretty soon, if not already. If they were doing that, we’d probably see legitimate-looking parts leaked from the supply chain by now, but as far as I know, we haven’t.

Actually, I’ve seen at least one purported leak: a month ago at a site called ZooGue. No idea if it’s legitimate, but I like it. It hearkens back to the original iPhone with its flat back and round sides.

Update: ZooGue link is fireballed, but Google has it cached.

Update 2: I’m hearing it’s a fake, so take it with at least a few extra grains of salt.

The Dismantling of the Windows Hegemony ★

This piece by Horace Dediu explains — perfectly — what I was talking about this week with my iPhone disruption piece. Except what Dediu shows is that the disruption started in 2004, three years before the iPhone shipped. But the introduction of iOS accelerated this disruption dramatically.

Bottom line: In 1984, DOS PCs outsold the Mac 6-to-1. By 2004, the ratio of Windows PCs to Macs sold peaked at 56-to-1. Today it’s under 20-to-1 and still dropping — but if you include iOS devices, it’s down to 2-to-1. Staggering.

Dediu’s graphs are the best illustration I’ve ever seen of the waxing and waning of Microsoft’s Windows hegemony.

No Flash, No Problem ★

Ed Baig, listing the pros and cons in his Nexus 7 review:

Pro. Thin and light at sweet price. Jelly Bean. Excellent screen. Fast, fluid. Includes $25 spending credit.

Con. No cellular connectivity. No rear camera. Fewer tablet-specific apps. Limited storage.

Three months ago, here’s Baig listing the pros and cons for the iPad 3 (emphasis added):

Pro. Stunning screen, 4G speeds (on certain models), decent dictation and improved camera optics. Strong battery. Apps galore.

Con. Shooting with camera can be awkward. No Adobe Flash. No camera flash. No expanded storage.

Baig called out the iPad 3’s lack of Flash Player support in the article itself, too. No mention of Flash whatsoever in the Nexus 7 review. Funny how the lack of Flash Player support was only a problem with Apple devices.

U.K. Nexus 7 Won’t Feature Music, Magazines, or TV Shows ★

Carly Page, The Inquirer:

Speaking with The Inquirer, a Google spokesperson confirmed that the Nexus 7 won’t feature these three categories, which will remain an exclusive in US for the time being. They said, “The UK version will feature all of the options currently available in the UK Play store”, which means users of the Nexus 7 will be limited in their choices movies, apps, games and books.

I wonder if the iPad Mini will have music, magazines, and TV shows in the U.K.?

Why Apple Would Release a 7-Inch iPad ★

Rene Ritchie:

If Apple can make a 9.7 inch iPad for the same price Apple’s competitors can make a 7 inch tablet, how much would it cost Apple to make a 7 inch tablet?

It’s hard to imagine a $200 7 inch iPad having huge margins, but it was hard to imagine a $500 9.7 inch iPad having huge margins in 2010. Now the entry-level 9.7 inch iPad 2 sells for $400.

I bet Apple could make a $199 iPad Mini and turn a profit on it — especially with a $249 version sitting next to it with double the storage. It’s that simple. If Apple thinks people would buy a smaller cheaper iPad and that they can turn a profit making them, they’ll do it. No reason to overthink it.

Keep in mind too that Amazon still only sells the Kindle Fire in the U.S., and Google is only selling the Nexus 7 in three countries — and outside the U.S. it won’t have music, magazines, or TV shows. Even if this iPad Mini doesn’t ship until October, Apple will likely beat Amazon and Google to market in much of the world.

Bloomberg, Too, Says iPad Mini Is Coming ★

Peter Burrows and Adam Satariano, reporting for Bloomberg:

Apple Inc. plans to debut a smaller, cheaper iPad by year-end, two people with knowledge of the plans said, to help maintain dominance of the tablet market as Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp. prepare competing handheld devices.

The new model will have a screen that’s 7 inches to 8 inches diagonally, less than the current 9.7-inch version, said the people, who asked not to be identified because Apple hasn’t made its plans public. The product, which Apple may announce by October, won’t have the high-definition screen featured on the iPad that was released in March, one of the people said.

Here’s the logic behind such a display. Displays aren’t manufactured at their finished size; rather, they’re made on big sheets, and then cut to size. I believe the iPad Mini (or whatever it’s going to be called) uses the same display as the iPhone 3GS. So instead of cutting these sheets into 3.5-inch 480 × 320 displays for the iPhone 3GS, they’ll cut them into 7.85-inch 1024 × 768 displays for the smaller iPad. Same exact display technology, though — display technology that Apple has been producing at scale ever since the original iPhone five years ago. These are displays Apple knows they can produce efficiently and in enormous quantities. All they have to do is cut them into bigger pieces.

And then for developers, the iPad Mini acts just like an iPad 1 or 2: same number of pixels, just a little smaller physically. It’s not a new target.

WSJ: Apple Starting Production of Smaller iPad ★

Lorraine Luk, reporting for the WSJ (Google link to circumvent paywall):

Apple Inc.’s component suppliers in Asia are preparing for mass production in September of a tablet computer with a smaller screen than the iPad, people familiar with the situation said, suggesting a launch for the device is near. Two of the people said that the tablet’s screen will likely be smaller than eight inches. The iPad’s screen measures 9.7 inches, unchanged since the first model was released in 2010.

Officials at the component suppliers, who declined to be named, said this week that Apple has told them to prepare for mass production of the smaller tablet.

If true, it should be a 7.85-inch, 1024 × 768 display.

CERN Physicists May Have Discovered Higgs Boson Particle ★

A great day for science; not so much for typography.