Linked List: December 6, 2012

Thursday, 6 December 2012

T-Mobile to Abandon Phone Subsidies ★

Kevin Fitchard, writing for GigaOM:

T-Mobile USA CEO John Legere confirmed that the iPhone will be among the Apple products that T-Mobile sells next year, but he said that T-Mo will sell it in a far different way than other carriers. T-Mobile is eliminating all device subsidies in 2013, requiring new customers to pay full price for their phones up front, buy it on installment or bring their own unlocked devices, Legere said speaking at corporate parent Deutsche Telekom’s Capital Markets Day in Bonn. […]

T-Mobile will have to explain to customers that they will actually save money over the length of a two-year contract by paying a lower value plan rate. And while there would be truth in T-Mo’s claims, it’s still a hard sell to many consumers, especially with the iPhone’s huge price tag dangling in front of them.

Could be a huge change to the U.S. phone market if it works.

‘Made in the USA’ Is Back, Baby ★

Jason Kottke:

Earlier this morning in a post about Apple manufacturing their products in the US, I wrote “look for this “made in the USA” thing to turn into a trend”. Well, Made in the USA is already emerging as a trend in the media.

Reed Hastings and His Facebook Posts ★

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, on Facebook:

In early July, I publicly posted on Facebook to the over 200,000 of you who subscribe to me that our members had enjoyed over 1 billion hours in June, highlighting how strong our content was. There was press coverage as there are many reporters and bloggers among you, my public followers. Some of you re-posted my post. Again, we did not also issue a press release or file an 8-K about this.

SEC staff informed us yesterday that they are recommending that the SEC bring a civil action against us for my July 1 billion hour public post, asserting we violated “Reg FD”. This rule is designed to ensure that individual investors have equal access to information as large institutional investors, by prohibiting selective disclosure of material information. The SEC staff believes that I gave you all “material” investor information in my post and that we needed to instead release the June viewing fact “publicly” with an 8-K filing or press release.

This seems bogus, no? Is not a public Facebook posting the modern equivalent of a press release?

Update: Next time he should post on Google Plus — that way no one would notice.

Update 2: Based on my email, it seems like a lot of people are confused about the public nature of these posts from Hastings. These aren’t things that are only visible to other Facebook users, or to people who follow Hastings on Facebook. They’re public posts, visible to anyone who visits the URL, just like blog entries. The best argument I’ve seen against Hastings actions is not about the public/private distinction, but that this was his personal account, not the company’s account.

Behind the App: Twitterrific 5 ★

Craig Hockenberry:

I’ve always loved shows that take you behind the scenes of creative efforts: Project Runway and Classic Albums being two of my favorites. Here’s one about the development of Twitterrific 5.

Google Releases Snapseed 1.5, Now Free ★

Glad to see Google continuing to develop Snapseed.

Extensive Tim Cook Interview With Businessweek Editor Josh Tyrangiel ★

Tim Cook:

“So just to be clear, I wouldn’t call that a process. Creativity and innovation are something you can’t flowchart out. Some things you can, and we do, and we’re very disciplined in those areas. But creativity isn’t one of those. A lot of companies have innovation departments, and this is always a sign that something is wrong when you have a VP of innovation or something. You know, put a for-sale sign on the door.”

This is an interesting perspective:

“Think about it. We changed the vast majority of our iPhone in a day. We didn’t kind of — you know, change a little bit here or there. iPad, we changed the entire lineup in a day. The most successful product in consumer electronics history, and we change it all in a day and go with an iPad mini and a fourth- generation iPad. Who else is doing this? 80 percent of our revenues are from products that didn’t exist 60 days ago. Is there any other company that would do that?”

(You can read the same interview on Businessweek’s website, broken across 11 (!) web pages, or read it all on a single page on Bloomberg’s site.)

Tim Cook Announces Plans to Manufacture Macs in U.S. ★

Excerpt from a longer interview with Brian Williams airing tonight on NBC’s “Rock Center”. And maybe I could have held my breath: the New York Times is giving the news decent coverage.

Philip Greenspun: ‘Christmas Gift for Someone You Hate: Windows 8’ ★

Philip Greenspun:

Microsoft has had since October 2008 to study Android. It has had since June 2007 to study iPhone. It seems as though they did not figure out what is good about the standard tablet operating systems.

This, from a guy who’s so anti-Apple that he gives credit for the desktop interface to the Xerox Alto, not the Mac.

T-Mobile to Carry Apple Products in U.S. Next Year ★

The last of the four major U.S. carriers.

马上着手开发 iOS 应用程序：介绍 ★

Apple has released a Chinese translation of “Start Developing iOS Apps Today”.

Twitterrific 5 for iOS ★

Delightful update to the granddaddy of iOS Twitter clients. Total overhaul of the UI — very flat, very light, a slew of very nice little touches. You have to see it.