Linked List: September 12, 2013

Thursday, 12 September 2013

Intermission 

If I told you there was a cool new Mac app for pausing and rewinding live Internet audio streams — think TiVo for radio — I bet you’d say, “That sounds like something Rogue Amoeba would make.” Well, you’d be right.

Why the iPhone’s Fingerprint Sensor Is Better Than the Ones on Older Laptops 

Mary Branscombe, writing for CITEworld:

With the new sensors you don’t have to move your finger, just press it against the reader. And like the sensor in the iPhone 5S, the sensors that will be in laptops and keyboards and other phones can detect the ridge and valley pattern of your fingerprint not from the layer of dead skin on the outside of your finger (which a fake finger can easily replicate), but from the living layer of skin under the surface of your finger, using an RF signal. That only works on a live finger; not one that’s been severed from your body.

This will protect you from thieves trying to chop off your finger when they mug you for your phone (assuming they’re tech-literate thieves, of course), as well as from people with fake fingers using the fingerprint they lifted from your phone screen.

Good to know.

Apple and Photography 

Justin Williams:

I don’t know what to attribute Apple’s camera magic to. Whether it’s hardware, software, or just that they care more than any other manufacturer I’m not sure. All I know is that for everything that Android and Google are getting right these days, they still haven’t gotten close to touching Apple in the area that is of utmost importance to me: photo quality.

I think it’s all three: software, hardware, and caring more. And also that they control the whole thing, hardware and software.

The 64-Bit Question 

John Paczkowski:

J.K. Shin, Samsung’s mobile chief, said on Wednesday that his company also has 64-bit devices in the pipeline. “Not in the shortest time, but yes, our next smartphones will have 64-bit processing functionality,” Shin told the Korea Times.

Apple has gone through a 32-64 bit transition before, with Mac OS X, and it was fairly seamless for users and developers alike. Will be interesting to see how Android fares.

Indeed, there’s little to be gained from slapping a 64-bit chip into today’s smartphones, aside from being the first to say you’ve done so.

“Adding 64-bit processor capabilities adds nothing to the user experience today, as it would requires over four gigabytes of memory,” Patrick Moorhead of Moor Insights and Strategy, and a former executive at AMD, told AllThingsD. “Most phones today only have one to two gigabytes of memory, and it will be years before the norm is four.”

That’s nonsense. There are serious performance gains by going 64-bit. Addressing more than 4 GB of memory is not the only advantage.

Derek Jeter Shut Down for Remainder of Season 

This is going to make the Yankees’ sneak-into-the-wildcard-go-on-to-win-it-all World Series victory this year bittersweet. Love this guy.