Linked List: August 10, 2012

Friday, 10 August 2012

The Martini FAQ 

A splendid and delightfully well-written resource from Brad Gadberry. I’ve never seen anyone so deftly navigate the gin/vodka divide.

(Thanks to Ryan Irelan.)

‘Down to the Mac Nerd Guys’ 

On this week’s episode of The Talk Show, special guest star John Siracusa joins yours truly for a quick two-hour twenty-minute chat about Mat Honan’s Apple ID account hacking, App.net and Twitter, Mountain Lion and Siracusa’s review thereof, and the origins and future of iOS.

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How Many Tablets Samsung Has Sold in the U.S. 

Philip Elmer-DeWitt:

The discrepancy in the estimates of independent market researchers is even greater. According to an IDC press release issued just last week, Samsung sold 2,391,000 tablet computers worldwide in Q2 2012, up 117.6% from the same quarter last year. According to Samsung’s court filing, it sold a total of 37,000 tablets in the U.S. last quarter, down 86% year over year.

While its possible that Samsung’s overseas sales made up the difference, it’s extremely unlikely. According to court documents Apple (AAPL) filed Thursday, revealing for the first time its domestic iPhone and iPad sales figures, the U.S. represented an average of 42% of its worldwide tablet unit sales over the past nine quarters. The U.S. share of iPad sales was never lower than 26%.

If Samsung really sold 2.4 million tablets last quarter, as IDC estimates, 1.5% were sold in the U.S. and 98.5% overseas. That’s pretty hard to believe.

IDC has some explaining to do.

Microsoft’s New Name for Metro: ‘Windows 8’ 

Mary Jo Foley:

Here’s the official guidance, my sources say: Anything currently/formerly known as a “Metro-Style application” (with or without a hyphen) will now be known officially as a “Windows 8 application.” References to the “Metro user interface” will now be replaced by “Windows 8 user interface.” And instead of saying “Metro design,” the Softies and those adhering to their official guidelines will be using the words “Windows 8 design.”

Among numerous other problems posed by this change, how’s this going to work when Windows 9 ships?

Update: The Verge reports that Microsoft may instead refer to Metro-style UI as “Modern UI”. That’s better, but a little generic, to say the least.

The Effect of Typefaces on Credibility 

Interesting experiment by filmmaker Errol Morris. (Via Kottke.)

Update: Several keen-eyed readers spotted something I missed. The graphs that accompany the article (for example, this one and this one) are highly misleading, insofar as they omit the first 10,000 responses from the bottom of the chart, so as to exaggerate the results. That’s not to say the effect does not exist, but it far more subtle than these graphs suggest.