Linked List: March 12, 2013

Tuesday, 12 March 2013

Quartz: Apple Stock Buyback or More Dividends Likely Coming This Spring ★

Gina Chon, reporting for Quartz:

Apple’s zeroing in on a dividend or buyback was in the works before Einhorn made his complaints public in February, although some of the sources say Apple increased the size of its plan after Einhorn’s comments. And although Apple CEO Tim Cook publicly called Einhorn’s lawsuit a “silly sideshow,” the company found his idea of preferred shares “interesting,” sources said. If it decides against a share buyback, Apple could either raise its existing dividend, which the company started paying this year, or issue a special dividend.

Interesting story for Quartz to get the scoop on — I’d have expected this to leak to the WSJ or Businessweek first.

IDC Tablet Share Projections ★

Reuters put a “this is bad news for Apple” spin on their story about these projected numbers, but isn’t the real story about how bad these numbers look for Microsoft? If tablets are the future of personal computing and IDC’s projections are even vaguely accurate — big ifs, admittedly — Microsoft is going to be out of the game.

Nicholas Carlson: ‘Android Owners Aren’t Real Smartphone Owners’ ★

The headline is extreme, as mandated by Business Insider’s house style — intended to provoke Android enthusiasts who are real smartphone users — but the gist of his theory is what I’ve thought all along about the seemingly odd discrepancy between Android’s market share and Android’s usage share.

App Store Approval of the Week: HiddenApps ★

Christian Zibreg, writing for iDownloadBlog:

HiddenApps by David Goelzhaeuser, a 15-year-old German iOS developer, is one such example. The whole point of this free application is to let you hide Apple’s stock apps from your Home screen, like Passbook, Newsstand or Stocks – no jailbreak required.

It can also disable Apple’s iAds altogether and give you access to a Field Test mode which gives you precise readings of your cellular signal strength. You better download as it’s going down in 5, 4, 3, 2…

It’s already gone from the App Store, of course, but what a great story. I don’t know what’s funnier: that someone at Apple approved this, or that Goelzhaeuser submitted it to the App Store in the first place.