Linked List: September 5, 2012

Wednesday, 5 September 2012

Windows Phone’s Canary in the Coal Mine 

Charlie Kindel, writing for Geekwire yesterday:

A human salesperson, acting 1:1 with a customer is an extremely powerful force. In the mobile phone space, particularly in the US, phones are purchased from carriers. It is the retail sales people (RSPs in industry jargon) in the carriers’ stores who interact with the people who wish to buy a new phone. More often than not, the final decision on what phone to buy is made based on what the RSP is pushing.

It does not matter how good a product is; if it is not marketed, assorted, and SOLD, consumers will not buy it. They WILL buy the alternative they’ve heard more about, is highlighted in the store, and is being pushed on them by a salesperson.

Apple countered this in a few ways. First, when the iPhone shipped in 2007, Apple had already developed a legion of fans from the iPod and Mac — fans who would have lined up to buy it on day one no matter what the salespeople at AT&T had to say about the thing. But second, they had a symbiotic relations with AT&T — Apple needed a major U.S. carrier partner, and AT&T needed a competitive advantage against Verizon. Both got what they wanted.

Nokia has no such fan base and not much to offer the carriers.

(Via this thread on Branch, where the consensus seems unanimous that the lack of pricing and the fact that the software is unfinished bode poorly for the readiness of Nokia and Microsoft.)

Nokia Caught Faking Video Footage From ‘PureView’ Lumia Camera 

Great catch from The Verge: a video purportedly shot with the Lumia 920 by an actor riding a bicycle was actually shot by a cameraman riding in a van with a professional camera rig and lighting setup. In an update:

We spoke with a Nokia spokesperson who agrees that the PureView ad is misleading. They stressed that it was “never the company’s intention to deceive anyone,” but only to demonstrate the benefits of optical image stabilization.

Bullshit. It’s clear that this was meant to demonstrate footage shot using the Lumia itself.

Nokia’s New Lumia 920 and Lumia 820 With Windows Phone 8 

The 920 looks good, but seems physically a bit large for my tastes. But the display seems gorgeous, the camera looks excellent, and I was really impressed with the build quality of last year’s Lumia 800. I really do think these are the most compelling alternatives to the iPhone. But I thought the same thing last year, and they didn’t sell. What makes this year different?

And: no ship date. Windows Phone 8 isn’t out yet, so who knows when you’ll actually be able to buy one of these things? What’s the advantage to announcing these phones ahead of the iPhone 5 if they aren’t also going to sell them ahead of the iPhone 5?

Motorola Announces Droid Razr HD, Razr Maxx HD, and Droid Razr M 

My first thought: why do the Razr HD and Razr HD Maxx both exist? The M I get — it’s smaller and cheaper. But the HD and HD Maxx seem like two versions of the same phone, one with a bigger battery. Dieter Bohn at The Verge, having seen them both, writes:

In fact, just looking at the phones it’d almost difficult to distinguish them — they’re easiest to tell apart by weight.

Design is making decisions.

‘Why Don’t You Walk Around With a Helmet on Too?’ 

Jerry Seinfeld shares my feeling on iPhone cases.

Michael Lewis in Vanity Fair: How Obama Made the Decision on Libya 

Really looking forward to the whole article. The term “unprecedented access” is often used a bit flippantly, but in this case it seems truly apt.

De-Anonymizing Apple UDIDs With OpenFeint 

One example of how UDID device IDs can be de-anonymized. Since this was originally published back in May 2011, OpenFeint has closed the more egregious privacy holes (GPS location, for example), but it still returns information that can be used to identify you. (Via Marco Arment.)

Apple Denies Giving FBI Any Device IDs 

John Paczkowski:

“The FBI has not requested this information from Apple, nor have we provided it to the FBI or any organization. Additionally, with iOS 6 we introduced a new set of APIs meant to replace the use of the UDID and will soon be banning the use of UDID,” Apple spokeswoman Natalie Kerris told AllThingsD.

So it’s looking less and less like the total clusterfuck I thought at first. But still: where’d they come from?

(I’ve looked at the file with the UDIDs and device names, and it doesn’t seem to contain any of my devices. There are two listings for “John Gruber’s iPad”, but neither of those are mine. Of course, that doesn’t mean the original file doesn’t contain my devices — the AntiSec hacker group that released this file claimed it represented only 10 percent of the original.)

WordPress.com Serving Retina-Quality Images 

Matt Mullenweg:

All of your blog posts will now serve high-resolution images for users that can see them, at least the images that we host. Since we create all images dynamically on the fly, what we do is if you’ve uploaded a higher resolution photo and sized it down, we’ll serve a double-size so it looks super sharp to those visitors — they’ll think you’re ahead of the game.

Cool feature, available for self-hosted WordPress sites too. Soon enough, we’re going to stop thinking that websites that serve retina-quality images are ahead of the game, and instead think that websites that don’t are behind the times.

The Apple Tax 

Jean-Louis Gassée:

There seems to be a moral aspect, here, as if Apple should be held to a higher standard. Last year, Apple and Nokia settled an IP “misunderstanding” that also resulted in a “Tax”…but it was Nokia that played the T-Man role: Apple paid Nokia more than $600M plus an estimated $11.50 per iPhone sold. Where were the handwringers who now accuse Apple of abusing the patent system when the Nokia settlement took place? Where was the outrage against the “evil”, if hapless, Finnish company? (Amusingly, observers speculate that Nokia has made more money from these IP arrangements than from selling its own Lumia smartphones.)

Windows RT and Office 2013 RT Video Demo 

The Verge got some hands-on time with a Samsung tablet running the release version of Windows RT. Pretty much the entire video is spent showing how touch-unfriendly it is. Wait until you see how you rotate the screen. I’m truly surprised — and disappointed — at how much even the RT (ARM) version of Windows 8 depends on the classic desktop mode.

Embrace the Remix 

Kirby Ferguson’s “Everything Is a Remix” TED talk. Thought-provoking, as always.

Roof Kerning in Amsterdam 

Large-scale pixel art.

FBI: Statement on Alleged Compromise of FBI Laptop 

Official statement from the FBI:

The FBI is aware of published reports alleging that an FBI laptop was compromised and private data regarding Apple UDIDs was exposed. At this time, there is no evidence indicating that an FBI laptop was compromised or that the FBI either sought or obtained this data.

That’s interesting, because the FBI doesn’t usually comment like this.