Linked List: November 14, 2012

Wednesday, 14 November 2012

Horace Dediu on Samsung’s booming profits:

All this plus an overall growth in volumes from 64 million to over 100 million per quarter has meant that the company is raking in enormous profits. Not only did it overtake Nokia, the market share leader for 14 years, but is making more profits than Nokia ever did.

So much profit in fact that it has overtaken Google’s decisively.

The reason I point this out is that Samsung’s success is dependent on having ridden on the back of Android. Samsung’s ascent can be precisely timed to their adoption of Android.

So Google is deep in the hole on Android but Samsung is making billions off it. Where does this wind up?

U.K. Court Sanctions Apple, Hopes ‘Lack of Integrity’ in Notice Incident Is Not ‘Typical’ ★

Apple really botched it with that snarky notice on their website about Samsung having been found not guilty in the U.K. of copying the iPad. Good copywriting, I still say, but bad lawyering. Should have just sucked it up and played it straight.

(In other Apple-Samsung legal news, Samsung seems to have a decent argument that the jury foreman in their big U.S. case was guilty of misconduct for failing to disclose his previous legal entanglement with Seagate.)

Is Siri Really Apple’s Future? ★

Kontra has been on fire lately.

‘He Was a Very Affectionate Dad, Who Could Solve All Your Problems, and When He Died Our Protective Umbrella Was Gone.’ ★

Stanley Kubrick’s daughter Katharina Kubrick and grandson Joe, interviewed on Reddit.

David Petraeus Affair Photos ★

“Everything you need to know about the CIA Director David Petraeus sex scandal. All photos and headlines are real.”

(Coincidentally, this site “fixes” WebKit font smoothing.)

Please Stop ‘Fixing’ Font Smoothing ★

Dmitry Fadeyev:

So here is yet another plea for designers to stop “fixing” WebKit font smoothing by disabling subpixel rendering. Feel free to use it on light text on dark backgrounds, feel free to use it to fix custom font rendering on Windows or to style specific bits of text on the page to make it look more slender, but for main portions of text where readability is paramount please leave the default setting alone and let the operating system handle the smoothing.

Hear, hear. While you’re there, Fadeyev’s entire UsabilityPost is well worth checking out. (Thanks to Joe Clark.)