Linked List: August 8, 2013

Thursday, 8 August 2013

Daring Fireball RSS Feed Sponsorship Openings ★

The next few weeks are open on the DF RSS feed sponsorship calendar. If you have a product or service that you’d like to promote to Daring Fireball’s audience of smart, good-looking readers, please do get in touch.

Update: Down to just one open week through the end of September.

Update 2: And sold. Next open week is at the start of October.

Restoring Orson Welles’s ‘Too Much Johnson’ ★

Short video of Eastman House film preservationists regarding the restoration of Orson Welles’s 1938 film Too Much Johnson — which for decades was thought to be utterly lost. Tremendously exciting find for movie lovers.

Update: More information in Eastman House’s press release.

Acer to Expand Android, Chromebook Offerings ★

Eva Dou and Aries Poon, reporting for the WSJ:

Taiwanese personal computer maker Acer Inc. said it plans to offer fewer Microsoft Inc. products and more Chromebooks and Android-based mobile devices, after it posted a surprise second-quarter loss on lower sales and rising expenses.

“We are trying to grow our non-Windows business as soon as possible,” President Jim Wang told investors in a conference call. “Android is very popular in smartphones and dominant in tablets… I also see a new market there for Chromebooks.”

Speaking of red flags, there’s one for Microsoft — partners trying to move away from Windows “as soon as possible”. The collapse of Windows is going to happen faster than you think.

T-Mobile Gained Nearly 700,000 Postpaid Customers Last Quarter ★

WSJ Digits:

It was first time in more than four years that T-Mobile hadn’t lost so-called postpaid customers.

Wow. I wonder how they turned it around?

The fourth-largest U.S. carrier had long been a source of customers for its rivals, but has become a more formidable competitor after landing the iPhone in April, investing in a new high-speed network and rolling out plans that don’t tie subscribers to contracts.

I’ll bet it was the high-speed network and the new plans.

Apple Still Sells More Computers Than Anybody Else, but Lenovo Is Closing In ★

Matt Rosoff, CITEworld, on what happens to PC market share numbers if you count tablets as PCs:

Apple sells more client computing devices than any other hardware vendor. That’s been the case, on and off, since early 2012. (It’s still true if you include smartphones, which I did not in this chart.)

The more interesting note is that Lenovo has surpassed HP as number two. It’s not only the top PC maker in the world, but it also fits in at number four in pure tablet sales, according to IDC — that’s new since last quarter, when it was not in the top five.

Also interesting is the mix of tablets-to-PCs for HP and Dell. Huge red flag.

Amazon Founder Says He Clicked on Washington Post by Mistake ★

Andy Borowitz:

“I guess I was just kind of browsing through their website and not paying close attention to what I was doing,” he said. “No way did I intend to buy anything.”

Mr. Bezos said he had been oblivious to his online shopping error until earlier today, when he saw an unusual charge for two hundred and fifty million dollars on his American Express statement.

Amazon’s Profits ★

Great piece by Benedict Evans:

Equally, the problem with saying ‘we can’t tell from outside how Amazon is really doing, but it will become profitable, just wait and see’ is that you could be waiting for ever without ever knowing if you’re wrong.

Like I said, Amazon’s massive profitability is like a will-o’-the-wisp.

The Numbers Game ★

Fan-made response to Microsoft’s campaign of Surface/iPad comparison commercials. It’s a silly thing for me to flag, but I think this guy has it all wrong. His response is all about the iPad’s quantitative advantages — that it outsells the Surface, has more apps in its app store, has more peripherals (cases/covers/keyboards) available, and so forth.

As I’ve argued before, this is the wrong mindset. The point is to buy the best stuff. I use the iPad because I think it’s the best tablet, not because it’s the best-selling tablet. I prefer the iOS App Store not because it has the most apps, but because it has the best apps. Breadth matters — an app store with only a handful of titles, all of them high quality, would be a failure — but depth matters more. Otherwise we’d all be using Windows.

Update: As Michael Mulvey points out, the actual spots from Microsoft’s campaign don’t even need to be parodied.

Google Maps Mobile Apps, Now With Ads ★

Finally, some good news for Apple Maps.

Lavabit, Email Service Edward Snowden Reportedly Used, Abruptly Shuts Down ★

Ladar Levison, owner/operator:

I have been forced to make a difficult decision: to become complicit in crimes against the American people or walk away from nearly ten years of hard work by shutting down Lavabit. After significant soul searching, I have decided to suspend operations. I wish that I could legally share with you the events that led to my decision. I cannot. […]

This experience has taught me one very important lesson: without congressional action or a strong judicial precedent, I would strongly recommend against anyone trusting their private data to a company with physical ties to the United States.

Deeply concerning, to say the least.

One Small Win Against Lodsys, One of Nathan Myhrvold’s Patent Troll Shell Companies ★

Todd Moore:

Lodsys has dismissed the patent infringement lawsuit it filed against my company TMSOFT. The dismissal is with prejudice which means they can never sue my company again for infringing its patents. I did not have to pay any money to Lodsys or sign a license agreement. I also did not sign a confidentially agreement so I’m free to talk about this matter.

What was the secret to Moore’s successful defense? $200,000 in pro-bono expert legal counsel.

Via Marco Arment, who writes:

This isn’t a “victory” against Lodsys that’s meaningful to anyone else, because it’s not repeatable. The defendant says himself that he was only able to settle this suit because two patent lawyers donated nearly $200,000 worth of their time to fight pro bono on his behalf, and that figure could have easily surpassed $1 million if it went to trial. Patent trolls usually sue small companies that can’t afford to defend themselves, so as long as defending against a patent suit is this expensive, the extortion scheme will continue to work.