Linked List: April 8, 2013

Monday, 8 April 2013

Ron Johnson Out at JC Penney 

I’m with Moltz and Panzarino; they shouldn’t have hired him if they weren’t going to give him more time to turn it around.

Regular Audio Human 

Michael Lopp reviews some headphones.

Stockpiling the Nuclear Weapons of Design War 

This week’s episode of my podcast, The Talk Show, with special guest Om Malik. We talk about Facebook Home and the potential for an eventual Facebook mobile OS, Andy Rubin’s ouster as leader of Android, Apple’s challenges with iCloud, and more.

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Don Melton on Debug 

Best podcast episode I’ve heard in a while is this interview with Don Melton by Guy English and Rene Ritchie. Some great insight into the history of Safari and WebKit, and a lot of other Apple history too. (E.g., Melton reveals that Scott Forstall was the champion of the Carbon strategy, and sold the idea up the chain to Bertrand Serlet, Avie Tevanian, and Steve Jobs. I did not know that.)

On Being There First 

Frank X. Shaw, Microsoft VP of corporate communications:

I tuned into the coverage of the Facebook Home event yesterday and actually had to check my calendar a few times.

Not to see if it was still April Fools Day, but to see if it was somehow still 2011.

Because the content of the presentation was remarkably similar to the launch event we did for Windows Phone two years ago.

C:\ONGRTLNS.W95

Commercial for Facebook Home 

Seems to emphasize the intrusiveness of Facebook Home, but maybe that’s just me.

NPD: Wii U Sales in Trouble 

Gamasutra:

We’re told by someone with access to the NPD’s data that sales for January were “well under” 100,000 units. By our estimates, sales were somewhere between 45,000 and 59,000 units for the month, which is lower than any of the three previous-generation home consoles sold in their worst months, with the possible exception of a recent performance by the original Wii.

Apple Removes AppGratis From App Store 

John Paczkowski:

Apple declined further comment on AppGratis’s ouster, framing the move as a standard response to guideline violations. But sources close to the company say it was more than a little troubled that AppGratis was pushing a business model that appeared to favor developers with the financial means to pay for exposure. “The App Store is intended as a meritocracy,” a source familiar with Apple’s thinking told AllThingsD.

In other words, app-discovery platforms built on paid recommendations aren’t going to fly with Apple.

Matt Drance on Facebook Home 

You hear that crumpling sound? That’s me throwing out the notes for the column I was going to write on Facebook Home. Just read Drance’s take instead.