Linked List: April 24, 2013

Wednesday, 24 April 2013

Apple’s New Pitch to Investors 

Felix Salmon:

Apple is trading at an astonishingly low valuation, with a p/e ratio in single digits, because it has now become that animal investors like least: a slow-growing tech stock. Either one is fine on its own, and both slow-growing stocks and fast-growing tech stocks can support much higher multiples than Apple is seeing right now. But conservative investors, who like slow-growing stocks with high dividends, are constitutionally uncomfortable with the volatility inherent in the tech world. And technology investors, who are happy taking that kind of risk, want to see substantial growth. Apple, notwithstanding the fact that it’s one of the most valuable companies in the world, is falling through the capital-markets cracks.

The New US $100 Bill 

I find it depressing how our currency keeps getting uglier and uglier.

Charity Auction: Coffee With Tim Cook at Apple Headquarters 

$28,500 and counting. Proceeds benefit The RFK Center for Justice and Human Rights. Update: A few hours later and it’s up to $160,000. (!)

Nintendo Makes Second Consecutive Annual Loss as Wii U Misses Expectations 

Now this is a bad earnings report. Really hope Nintendo figures a way to pull itself out of this spiral.

BlackBerry Q10 

Andrew Cunningham reviews the new Q10, the first BlackBerry 10 device with a hardware keyboard. I don’t fault BlackBerry one bit for making this device — if anyone has a die-hard base of hardware keyboard-addicted users, it’s them. But serious question: if there remains serious demand for a phone like this, why are there no top tier Android devices in this form factor? The Android phones I see suggest that hardware keyboards are on the cusp of extinction.

WWDC 2013 Announced: June 10-14 

Apple:

“We look forward to gathering at WWDC 2013 with the incredible community of iOS and OS X developers,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. “Our developers have had the most prolific and profitable year ever, and we’re excited to show them the latest advances in software technologies and developer tools to help them create innovative new apps. We can’t wait to get new versions of iOS and OS X into their hands at WWDC.”

Tickets don’t go on sale until tomorrow at 10 am PDT. In previous years, tickets went on sale immediately after the dates were announced. Two years ago it sold out in 12 hours. Last year it sold out in 2 hours. Tomorrow’s going to be something.

(By the way, you should follow me on App.net. You’d have known about this a few days ago if you did.)

The Verge’s Galaxy S4 Review 

David Pierce:

I don’t like holding this phone, and I can’t overstate how much that informs the experience of using it. It makes an awful first impression, slippery and slimy and simply unpleasant in your hand. My white review unit is completely smooth and glossy, with a subtle checkered pattern that looks textured but is neither grippy nor textured anywhere on its body. Even the silver band around the sides, which is obviously supposed to look like metal, is plastic. Everyone I showed the GS4 to frowned and wrinkled their nose as if it smelled bad, before rubbing their fingers on the back of the phone and then handing it back to me — that’s the opposite of the standard reaction to HTC’s One, which everyone wants to ogle and hold.

Sounds great.

Includes a 10/10 rating for the display, despite this description:

The GS4’s 5-inch, 1920 × 1080 display is big, beautiful, and seriously eye-catching. The latter is partially a bad thing: the S4 uses a Super AMOLED panel like many of Samsung’s phones, and like many of Samsung’s phones it displays overly contrasted and vibrant colors. Those colors may not be accurate — reds and oranges absolutely explode off the screen, whether they should or not — but they certainly catch your eye.

This Really Says It All 

From Joanna Stern’s review of the Samsung Galaxy S4:

Many people will find the phone’s sheer number of features to be overwhelming and hard to find. For instance, I really like the multitasking feature that lets you stack apps one on top of another — i.e. e-mail on the top of the screen and a browser on the bottom — but it isn’t obvious how you actually can set that up. For real smartphone beginners, Samsung has added an Easy Mode, which simplifies the entire phone, with a stripped-down homescreen and settings menu.

The iPhone has an easy mode too. It’s called “Using the iPhone”.