Linked List: July 13, 2012

Friday, 13 July 2012

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Apple’s Brilliant Boondoggle: MacBook Pro Retina Display ★

Antone Gonzalves, writing for ReadWriteWeb:

Only Apple could get away with charging a $400 premium for a feature that no one needs, few people will notice, doesn’t work with most apps, and was not on anyone’s wish list until the company announced it last month.

Apple’s ultra high-resolution Retina display may be a valuable innovation on the iPhone and iPad - but it’s a solution in search of a problem on the MacBook Pro. Until Apple unveiled the new machine at its World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC) in June, no one thought the resolution on current MacBook Pros was insufficient.

Is this a prank? I’m being pranked here, aren’t I?

Hövding Invisible Bicycle Helmet ★

Ingenious. Seems too good to be true.

‘Command Versus Splat’ ★

This week’s episode of The Talk Show, featuring special guest star Dan “Rhymes with Homer” Frommer. Topics include the future of Twitter (and third-party Twitter client apps), the purportedly imminent iPad Mini and the tablet market in general, and the state of technology media. (R.I.P. “America’s Favorite Two-Star Podcast” slogan — the show is now rated three-stars.)

Brought to you by two excellent sponsors: The Adventures of Alex: Electricity, a smart, beautiful iPad app; and Boom, a simple system-wide volume booster and equalizer for the Mac.

Hacker Exploits iOS Flaw for Free In-App Purchases ★

Lex Friedman:

A hack that lets iOS users trick the App Store into giving them in-app purchases for free has gone public, potentially costing app makers revenue and causing Apple a major headache. […]

Alexey V. Borodin of Russia built the in-app purchase hack, which requires several steps — including installing bogus certificates on your device, and using a specially-crafted DNS server. Those ingredients combine to fool apps into believing that they’re communicating with the App Store, when they’re actually going to a Web server that pretends to the App Store instead. Borodin told Macworld that his exploit works in part by faking — or “spoofing” — the code receipts that Apple issues for in-app purchases which developers use for validation, with the iOS device configured to mistakenly believe that those receipts are coming directly from Apple.

Dalrymple has a short “we’re on the case” statement from Apple PR. Friedman has a good interview with Borodin, worth reading through to the end. Be sure not to have anything in your mouth when you get to the closing paragraph.

Abuse Scandal Inquiry Damns Paterno and Penn State ★

Ken Belson, reporting for the NYT:

Louis J. Freeh, the former federal judge and director of the F.B.I. who spent the last seven months examining the Sandusky scandal at Penn State, issued a damning conclusion Thursday:

“The most senior officials at Penn State had shown a “total and consistent disregard” for the welfare of children, had worked together to actively conceal Mr. Sandusky’s assaults, and had done so for one central reason: fear of bad publicity. That publicity, Mr. Freeh said Thursday, would have hurt the nationally ranked football program, Mr. Paterno’s reputation as a coach of high principles, the Penn State “brand” and the university’s ability to raise money as one of the most respected public institutions in the country.

It breaks my heart knowing so much of what happened not only could have been prevented, but should have. The NCAA should shut down Penn State’s football program, and the surviving leaders of the university should be charged with crimes.

Why MacBook Airs and the New MacBook Pro With Retina Display Don’t Have Built-In Ethernet Ports ★

The photo atop Engadget’s review of the Lenovo IdeaPad U310 says it all.

How Many Lumia Phones Were Sold in the US? ★

Still speaking of those Nielsen smartphone numbers, Horace Dediu notes that they paint a gloomy picture for Nokia:

If we then use comScore’s figure for total smartphone users (110 million) then the data would suggest that there are 330K Lumias in use in the US. This would have been accumulated over a sales period of about four months.

If you look at the data (charted accurately, as it is on Asymco) it paints a damning picture of Windows Phone as a whole, not just for Nokia. Windows Phone 7 has less than half the share of the long-since-abandoned Windows Mobile — 1.3 to 2.9 percent, respectively.

Nielsen’s numbers are for “subscribers”, which I take to mean “smartphones in active use this quarter”, not “new smartphones sold this quarter”. So there are more people still holding on to years-old Windows Mobile phones than there are using new Windows Phone 7 phones.

Apple’s U.S. Smartphone Handset Share ★

Speaking of those Nielsen numbers, Jim Dalrymple notes that Apple’s share (34 percent) is double that of its nearest competitor (Samsung, 17 percent).

Crime Against Accurate Charts and Graphics of the Day ★

Élyse Betters at 9to5Mac flags a horrendously inaccurate chart from Nielsen, purporting to show U.S. smartphone market share broken down both by OS and handset maker. Nielsen shamelessly under-emphasized the areas for Android and iOS and over-emphasized the areas for every other platform.

A Letter From Bob Mansfield ★

Bob Mansfield, Apple’s senior vice president of hardware engineering:

We’ve recently heard from many loyal Apple customers who were disappointed to learn that we had removed our products from the EPEAT rating system. I recognize that this was a mistake. Starting today, all eligible Apple products are back on EPEAT.

That’s how you correct a mistake.

Update: Interesting, though, now that I think about it, that Mansfield — who is set to retire from the company — took responsibility for this in the first-person singular.