Linked List: October 24, 2012

Wednesday, 24 October 2012

Dave Hamilton, writing at The Mac Observer:

In a nutshell, Fusion Drive combines TWO drives, a solid state drive (SSD) and a mechanical drive. Apple’s initial incarnation puts a 128GB SSD in with either a 1TB or a 3TB mechanical drive. This is not a simple RAID, however, as 100% of the “magic” is done within OS X itself. What Fusion Drive does is it watches what files and applications you run most regularly and it moves them to the SSD. It will also take stuff that you aren’t using all that often and moves it to the mechanical drive.

See also this new support document from Apple: About Fusion Drive.

Ken Segall on the iPad Mini’s Pricing ★

Ken Segall:

Reaction to the $329 starting price has been swift and negative. It’s true that in consumers’ minds, $299 is worlds apart from $300. But any Apple analyst who gets upset over this should be ashamed for failing to understand one of Apple’s core philosophies. The company does not compete on price, it competes on quality. Apple does not sell to “everybody” — it sells to those who appreciate a premium product, and who are willing to pay a premium for it.

“Better but costs more” is a gamble. “Better and costs the same or less” is a sure thing. And the iPad is hard to compare to any previous Apple product other than the iPod. The iPod and iPad didn’t enter mature markets — they entered nascent markets with no strong competitors and established themselves as unquestioned market leaders. The iPad Mini’s $329 starting point leaves a price umbrella in tablets that Apple never left for MP3 player competitors.

You can argue the iPod wasn’t targeted at “everybody”, but it was (and remains to this day) targeted at almost everybody. I’m not saying Apple is doing the wrong thing here. I’m just saying it wouldn’t have been unprecedented for Apple to focus more on price.

‘Probably’ ★

From Damon Poeter’s roundup of iPad Mini commentary for PC Magazine:

Like this “key takeaway” from Apple’s iPad mini unveiling, courtesy of Trip Chowdhry, managing director of Equity Research: “Innovation at Apple is over … [it’s] just incremental improvements, nothing ground breaking, the best is over for Apple. The iPad mini is playing catch up to Google Android and probably will have a mediocre customer adoption.”

Would be interesting to see if Chowdhry would accept a wager on whether the iPad Mini will outsell the Nexus 7 in the holiday quarter — but alas, that would require Google to release sales numbers for Nexus devices, which they don’t.

The original, unaltered period photo into which Jack Nicholson was composited to create the iconic photograph seen in the final shots of ‘The Shining’ ★

If you only read one blog, it ought to be Lee Unkrich’s The Overlook Hotel.

‘No Reason Other Than Form Factor’ ★

Vincent Messina, Cult of Android:

Instead of going for the jugular, Apple jumped into shark infested waters with a 7.9-inch, 1024 × 768, 16GB tablet priced at $329. Sure, it’s Apple, but it’s almost $100 more than the 32GB Nexus 7, it’s over $100 more expensive than the Kindle Fire HD, $29 more expensive than the Fire HD 8.9, and not to mention only $70 less than its cousin the iPad 2 (with whom it shares similar specs).

For Apple consumers, there’s simply no reason other than form factor to choose the Mini over any of the other iPads Apple has to offer.

We shall see. But remember the iPod Mini, which debuted to similar reactions in January 2004 — it was deemed too expensive compared to the better-spec’d regular iPod that cost just $50 more. The only thing the iPod Mini had going for it was its smaller thinner form factor. It went on to become the best-selling iPod.

Letterpress ★

Loren Brichter’s Atebits returns, with a very clever and fun two-player word game. I’ve been beta testing it for a few weeks, and it’s a damn good game. It’s the first game that’s made my iPhone’s first home screen in years. It’s a cross between a word game like Scrabble or Boggle and a real estate strategy game like Risk or Go. It’s addictive. (Letterpress is to Game Center what The Magazine is to Newsstand — my first reason to use it.)

Free to try, and for a buck you can unlock the full version, which allows multiple simultaneous games and a few other features. Trust me, Letterpress is going to be a sensation.

AnandTech: Microsoft Surface Review ★

Anand Lal Shimpi:

After using Microsoft’s Surface for the past week I can say that I honestly get it. This isn’t an iPad competitor, nor is it an Android tablet competitor. It truly is something different. A unique perspective, not necessarily the right one, but a different one that will definitely resonate well with some (not all) users.