Linked List: September 25, 2012

Tuesday, 25 September 2012

Instagram Phasing Out Live Filters ★

The good news: Instagram (“finally”) shipped an update today to support the iPhone 5 display size. The bad news, from Matthew Panzarino:

Instagram has posted a notice on its ‘known issues’ site (as pointed out to us by Mark Wilkins) that details the reason live filters aren’t on the iPhone 5:

As of the current release (v3.1), Instagram does not support live filters on the iPhone 5. Going forward, live filters will be phased out as we work to improve the Instagram experience for all users.

So, for whatever reason, Instagram feels that live filters aren’t a part of the best experience it can provide. And it appears that they’ll be ‘phased out’ in future versions of the app

Sounds like a pile of horseshit from Instagram, considering that the whole reason they gave for replacing their original not-live but aesthetically superior filters with the current crop was that live filters were an important feature. If they bring back the old filters, I’ll say hip-hip-hooray. If they stick with the current meh filters and remove live previewing, I say boo-hiss.

Remember the Gotham filter?

I hope I’m wrong, but this reeks to me of pandering to the lowest common denominator as Instagram expands to more Android phones and other non-iOS platforms.

Duet With Siri ★

Jonathan Mann wishes Siri a happy birthday.

RIM CEO Thorsten Heins: ‘We Have a Clear Shot at Being Number Three’ ★

Aim high, RIM.

Microsoft Holds Another Hands-Off With Surface Tablets ★

When are people going to get to try these things — let alone buy them?

Video of That 2007 ‘Intel Inside’ Sticker Question ★

Steve Jobs at his extemporaneous best. Dumb question but such a great answer. (Phil Schiller got a good jab in too.)

Update: Changed the link from an audio recording to this YouTube clip.

iPhone 5 Display vs. iPhone 4 Display ★

Retinal neuroscientist Bryan Jones compares the iPhone 5 and 4S displays under a stereomicroscope:

It turns out that the pixels in the iPhone 5 are precisely the same size as the iPhone 4 pixels, but the iPhone 5 pixels have better color saturation with more contrast, seen particularly in the blue pixels. I did not calculate the difference in color saturation between the two iPhones, but it is pretty clear to the eye which is which. Apple claims 44% increase in color saturation and from these images, I believe them.

‘Devs, BlackBerry Is Going to Keep on Loving You’ ★

The band is playing in front of everyone in the world who is actually waiting for BlackBerry 10.

Measuring iPhone Demand ★

Horace Dediu:

Instead of doubling its performance for the launch weekend the company only sold 25% more units. How can there be this discrepancy? Is this a sign that demand is not growing at the rate we’ve become accustomed to? Is it a sign that there are shortages of components or labor or other production problems?

No, probably none of the above.

Major Samsung Galaxy TouchWiz Exploit Hard Resets a Device by Just Visiting a Website ★

I’m sure this will get just as much attention as it would if it were the iPhone. How long will it take for a software update to reach all affected devices?

New PCs Have Been Covered With Ads Since the ’90s ★

So with the Amazon Kindle Fire HD “special offer” ads and Canonical putting Amazon shopping links in the latest release of Ubuntu — I can’t help but wonder how many of the people up in arms in protest over these things are using PC laptops covered with those stickers from Intel and Microsoft. Ads in the software get people riled up, but ads stuck all over the hardware don’t. I don’t get it.

(Remember in 2007 when reporter Bob Keefe asked Steve Jobs during a rare post-event Q&A why Apple doesn’t put “Intel Inside” stickers on Macs?)

Detailed Technical Analysis of the Lightning Connector ★

Rainer Brockerhoff:

I’ll be seriously surprised if even one of those points is not verified when the specs come out. And this is what is meant by “future-proof”. Re-using USB and micro-USB (or any existing standard) could never do any of that.