Linked List: September 18, 2012

Tuesday, 18 September 2012

Still Swinging That Club 

Regarding the Google/Acer/Alibaba saga, remember this?

Android phones must adhere to a “compatibility” standard determined by Google. In an e-mail on Aug. 6, 2010, Dan Morrill, a manager in the Android group, noted in passing that it was obvious to the phone makers that “we are using compatibility as a club to make them do things we want.”

Speaking of Developing for Android First, Some Really Are 

Robert Scoble:

Maluuba isn’t the only company that has told me that iOS is behind. Glympse’s CEO, Bryan Trussel, told me his team develops its contextual mapping app on Android first, then moves it to iPhone.

Why is this? A few reasons:

  1. Android lets developers have access to the dialer so that app developers can watch who calls you and who you call.
  2. Android lets developers look at the wifi and bluetooth radios on the phone so app developers can build better systems to track where you are, who you are near, and whether you are near things like your car.
  3. Android lets developers ship and test without waiting up to three weeks to have their apps approved.

No surprise that two out of three of those are creepy.

Updated Netflix App for iPhone 

Netflix:

The new Netflix experience is available for iPhone and iPod Touch devices using iOS v5.0 and above. Download the new Netflix iPhone experience today in the App Store.

We will soon release an optimized version of this new experience for iPhone 5 to take advantage of the larger screen.

I do like the new UI, but not supporting the 16:9 iPhone 5 display is weak sauce. If anything, video-playing apps are the ones that will most benefit from the new display.

For our members on Android phones, please stay tuned. We will be releasing a new Netflix experience for Android phones soon!

So I guess Fred Wilson isn’t an investor in Netflix?

Jonathan Ive to Design a Single Uber-Limited Edition Leica M 

Michael Zhang, writing for PetaPixel:

At Leica’s special event last night, after the new Leica M was announced, company owner Dr. Andreas Kaufmann revealed that they’ve got a very special limited edition version of the camera planned — one that’s designed by legendary Apple designer Sir Jonathan Ive.

This camera will be the mother of all limited editions based on one simple fact: only a single unit of the camera will ever be produced.

I hope I get a review unit.

Interesting Background on the Apple-Designed A6 CPU 

Linley Gwennap:

At this point, Apple has spent about $400 million to buy PA Semi and Intrinsity, tens of millions for a license to design its own ARM CPUs, and probably north of $100 million to support its CPU design efforts over the past four years. It appears that the end result will be that Apple ships a Cortex-A15-class CPU about three months before arch-enemy Samsung does. These three months happen to come during the big holiday buying season, during which the iPhone 5 could generate $25 billion in revenue. So that half billion dollars could be money well spent.

As I wrote after the introduction of the original iPad in 2010, Apple is to the post-PC era what Microsoft and Intel combined were in the PC era.

Updated Twitter for iPhone, Too 

No mention of support for the new iPhone 5 display size in the release notes or this blog post.

Update: Looks like I’d have won that bet. David Smith:

It definitely doesn’t support 16:9. The bundle lacks the necessary Default-568h@2×.png file needed to avoid letterboxing.

New Twitter for iPad 

They threw away Loren Brichter’s groundbreaking UI and replaced it with a timeline where you can’t tap anything — URLs, usernames, hash tags, images. Instead, you have to tap to “open” the tweet first. I can’t remember the last time I saw a Twitter client in which you couldn’t tap URLs from the timeline.

Update: Was this designed to make it easy to have a “consistent” tablet experience with Twitter for Android?

Josh Topolsky:

I mean let me be perfectly clear: the previous Twitter for iPad was one of the apps you used to show off the iPad. It was awesome.

Dustin Curtis:

The new Twitter for iPad is a design disaster. It perfectly showcases the wrong way to pursue cross-platform consistency.

Om Malik:

Question to all @twitter employees: how many of you will secretly use @Tweetbot iPad app instead of this pig of an update on Twitter iPad?

Apple Avoids the Temptation of Jetpack Design 

Fuck Jet Packs:

As product designers, we could learn a thing or two from the way Apple ships “boring”, “passé”, “me-too” features once a year, like clockwork, and “makes them look pretty”.

Internet Archive Amasses All TV News Since 2009 

Bill Carter, reporting for the NYT:

Inspired by a pillar of antiquity, the Library of Alexandria, Brewster Kahle has a grand vision for the Internet Archive, the giant aggregator and digitizer of data, which he founded and leads. “We want to collect all the books, music and video that has ever been produced by humans,” Mr. Kahle said.

As of Tuesday, the archive’s online collection will include every morsel of news produced in the last three years by 20 different channels, encompassing more than 1,000 news series that have generated more than 350,000 separate programs devoted to news.

The Internet Archive is an amazing resource.

USA Today Redesigns 

I agree (as usual) with Armin Vit — this is a very well-done redesign. Not sure about the apostrophes and commas in Futura Today (their custom version of Futura), though.

More on Google’s Nik Software Acquisition 

Trey Ratcliff:

Most of the silicon-valley-bubble-press probably does not know much about Nik Software, and doesn’t realize that this is a company built by and for professional photographers. Even though their software is designed for “pros”, I’m confident in saying that 90% of their customers are amateurs who are using these same tools to make them look like pros! Nik makes amazing tools, and I am really looking forward to seeing them bleed into my daily life of using Google+.

Looks like Google might be getting serious about photography.

‘Mixed Response’ 

Kim Yoo-chul, reporting for The Korea Times (seizure warning on the blinking ads):

Samsung Electronics plans to unveil the latest in its Galaxy line, the S4, at a European technology exhibition in February, according to company officials and local parts suppliers for the technology giant.

The timetable was released just three days after rival Apple introduced the iPhone 5, which has received a mixed response from industry experts and consumers as it is seemingly lacking in innovative features.

Two million pre-orders in 24 hours doesn’t seem like a mixed response from consumers to me. Wonder how mixed the response will be outside Apple Stores Friday morning?

James Rivington on Apple’s New EarPods 

James Rivington:

There is no doubt that the EarPods are an improvement over Apple’s original bundled earphones. […]

But for anyone thinking of buying these things separately for £25/$30 — forget it. That price is utterly ludicrous. For that money you could bag yourself a decent pair of Sennheisers — low end ones admittedly — but they would still be head and shoulders better than the Apple EarPods. In fact, we challenge you to find a pair of £25 earphones on Amazon that sound worse than this — you won’t be able to.

Via Ryan McBride, who poked me on Twitter last night with the following:

There’s a bunch of terrible reviews out for Apple’s EarPods. Not sure why @gruber published the only two positive ones.

If even the “terrible” reviews declare that the new EarPods are a clear improvement over Apple’s previous earphones, I think that’s pretty good. Are they worth $29 on their own? That’s a good question, and Rivington, for one, clearly thinks not.

Update: Via Brian Behrend on Twitter, the cheapest Sennheisers on Amazon with volume controls and a microphone cost $40. EarPods do more than just play audio.

Microsoft: ‘Microsoft Signs Licensing Agreement With Research in Motion’ 

For the exFAT file system.

This deal solves all of Microsoft’s and RIM’s problems in the mobile space. All set now.