Linked List: December 4, 2012

Tuesday, 4 December 2012

‘It’s Funny, I’ve Actually Only Been to New Jersey a Couple of Times’ 

Op-ed in The Onion by Bruce Springsteen:

For the record: No, I don’t know the best place to eat in Asbury Park. I only named my first album after that city because I liked the way it sounded. No, I don’t know how the Devils are doing this season. No, I don’t know the fastest way to get from Long Branch to the Parkway.

Frankly, I don’t even know what the Parkway is.

Foldify 

This is why we still have printers. (Via Scott Stevenson.)

iTunes Store Now in Russia, Turkey, India, South Africa, and 52 Additional Countries 

119 countries in total.

BBEdit 10.5 

Among a slew of other new features, BBEdit is now retina-ready:

“BBEdit looks really sharp on a Retina display,” said Rich Siegel, founder and CEO of Bare Bones Software, Inc. “While any customer with a Retina Mac will appreciate this, we also took the opportunity to add a number of new features, so that we could release a robust update that offered something useful for everyone. If there isn’t something in 10.5 that excites you, check your pulse.”

See the usual copiously documented release notes for the rest. My favorite new feature: Preview Filters.

Gmail 2.0 for iOS 

Multiple account support, finally, among a bunch of other improvements to what I consider the only serious alternative to Apple Mail. (At least now that Sparrow is end-of-life. Speaking of which, no idea whether this Gmail update includes work from the Sparrow team.) Update: MG Siegler tweets: “And no, Sparrow team had nothing to do with it, I hear.”

It’s nice to have a built-in webview for previewing links without leaving the app. Apple Mail feels out of date in this regard — always jumping you over to Safari to open links made sense in 2007. It feels outdated in the App Store world of today, where everyone is used to web pages opening in an in-app webview in just about every app that contains links.

I like how the iPad version keeps the sidebar visible, even in portrait. I do not understand why the iPhone version seemingly has no way to go to the next or previous message without going all the way back to the message list. The use of Helvetica Neue Light renders text terribly on the iPad Mini; the use of Arial for a few elements is simply inexcusable (but unsurprising).

Damn, Was Steve Jobs Prescient or What? 

Re: the aforementioned slide 24 from Mary Meeker’s 2012 Internet Trends deck, I’m reminded of this quote from Steve Jobs in his interview with Wired in 1996:

The desktop computer industry is dead. Innovation has virtually ceased. Microsoft dominates with very little innovation. That’s over. Apple lost. The desktop market has entered the dark ages, and it’s going to be in the dark ages for the next 10 years, or certainly for the rest of this decade.

“10 years” pretty much coincides with Wintel’s breaking point on Meeker’s chart.

There’s also this quote, from the mid-’80s, presumably while Jobs was still at Apple:

If, for some reason, we make some big mistake and IBM wins, my personal feeling is that we are going to enter a computer Dark Ages for about twenty years.

His only mistake was ignoring the threat posed by Microsoft, worrying only about IBM instead.

Mary Meeker’s 2012 Internet Trends 

Speaking of Microsoft’s nightmare scenario, slides 9 and 22 seem apt. Slide 24 is probably the best, though — tells the history of both Apple and Microsoft.

Update: He’s credited under the chart, but the data for slide 24 (and a better version of the same chart) come from — who else? — Horace Dediu.

Steve Ballmer’s Nightmare Is Coming True 

Jay Yarow lays out the case against Microsoft:

Last year, we concluded by saying, “Fortunately for Microsoft, none of this is going to happen. Windows 8 will reassert the dominance of the Windows PC. Office and other business products will remain corporate necessities, and developers will never be able to ignore Microsoft. Windows Phone will become a viable third mobile platform, the Xbox will continue to dominate the living room, and new products will surprise the pundits who thought Microsoft couldn’t innovate. Even Bing will finally make a profit someday.”

This year, it’s a lot harder to say much of that. Windows 8 doesn’t seem to be reasserting the dominance of the PC. Windows Phone is not a viable third platform. Bing is still burning money. The Microsoft nightmare scenario is actually becoming a reality.

In a nut, Microsoft is losing relevance. That’s deadly.