By John Gruber

• Archive
• Projects
• Contact
• Colophon
• RSS Feed
• Sponsorship

How Yahoo Botched Its Acquisition of Flickr ★

Lengthy, detailed treatise by Mat Honan for Gizmodo:

There’s a difference between a missed opportunity and a complete fuck-up. When Yahoo failed to capitalize on Flickr’s social potential, that was a missed opportunity. But if you want to see where it completely fucked up, where it just butchered Flickr with dull knives and duller wit, turn on your phone and launch the Flickr app. Oh, what’s that, you don’t have one? Exactly.

Flickr could have — should have — been to mobile photography what Instagram has become.

Baidu Cloud Smartphone ★

Kaiser Kuo, writing for Baidu Beat:

Chief among the Cloud-based services that Baidu Cloud offers, Baidu will provide every purchaser of the handset with 100 gigs of free personal storage through Baidu Netdrive. This will allow users to capture multimedia content and upload it instantly to the Cloud. In addition, the handset will include Baidu Music, Baidu Map, Baidu Mobile IME (input method editor) and other mainstream applications. It will also include the Baidu Cloud Store, with access to a huge range of applications. Additionally, the Baidu Cloud Smart Terminal platform provides mobile data monitoring, pre-pay credit recharge, and many other convenient services.

So it’s an Android-based phone, with every Google app replaced with an equivalent “Baidu” app. Plus 100 GB of cloud storage. I don’t know if it’s any good, but it’s interesting.

Lenovo Drops Classic Keyboard on New ThinkPad Laptops ★

The end of era.

Bullish Cross Initiates Rare Buy Rating on Apple ★

Andy Zaky:

Now here are the reasons why we believe its time to buy Apple and why we feel the valuation is incredibly attractive today. At $533.52 a share, Apple trades at 13x last year’s earnings and at only 10.56x our expect October earnings. Those are incredibly low valuations even for Apple. At the November 25, 2011 lows, Apple traded at a 13.13 P/E ratio. So today, Apple is trading at a lower valuation than it was at the November lows. At the June 2011 lows, Apple was trading near a 15 P/E trailing P/E ratio.

This is only the fifth time Zaky has issued a buy on Apple. He’s four-for-four.

Rene Ritchie on the Ramifications of a 4-Inch iPhone Display ★

There are numerous ways Apple could change the physical size of the iPhone, but none of them are painless or easy fragmentation-wise. Rene Ritchie does a good job here analyzing Apple’s options.

My money remains on changing the aspect ratio and keeping the pixel density the same. Going from the current 3:2 aspect ratio 960 × 640 display to something like a 9:5 1152 × 640 display. Yes, this would introduce a new headache for developers, but iPhone apps are already supposed to be somewhat flexible vertically, to account for the double-height status bar when there’s an active phone call or audio recording.

And don’t forget the operations angle. My understanding is that these displays aren’t manufactured at their finished sizes — they’re manufactured in big sheets that are then cut to size. So instead of ramping up manufacturing of an entirely new display, Apple would simply be cutting slightly larger displays out of the same “iPhone retina display” sheets they’ve been producing ever since the iPhone 4 hit production.

Lastly, the above is only my conjecture if Apple were to switch to a larger iPhone display. If Apple changes the iPhone display size, this is how I think they’ll do it. I still think that’s a big if, though, and wouldn’t be surprised in the least if this year’s iPhone ships with a good old-fashioned 3.5-inch 960 × 640 display.

Nielsen on U.S. Smartphone and Mobile App Growth ★

Nielsen:

Roughly a year ago when we summarized the state of smartphones at the Appnation conference, less than 40 percent of mobile subscribers in the U.S. had smartphones. Today, one in two mobile subscribers has a smartphone and that figure is moving steadily upwards.

In other words, there is a lot of headroom remaining. It’s a growth market.

By most measures, it has been the year of the App once again, driven mostly by the rise of Android and iOS users who have more than doubled in a year and account for 88 percent of those who have downloaded an app in the past 30 days. In just a year, the average number of apps per smartphone has jumped 28 percent, from 32 apps to 41. Not only is the 2012 smartphone owner downloading more apps, they are increasingly spending more time using them vs. using the mobile web — about 10 percent more than last year.

Hence the agitation of web-centric companies like Facebook and Google.

JustNotes ★

Back in 2009 I wrote about a then-new iPhone notes app called Simplenote. It’s still my favorite today, with a spot on my first home screen. Simplenote uses its own cloud-based syncing service, and offers an API for other developers, and there are a bunch of notes app for the Mac that offer Simplenote syncing.

A new one, JustNotes, is now my favorite for syncing with Simplenote from Mac OS X. Simple and obvious. Ben Brooks wrote a full review of JustNotes, and I pretty much agree with every word of it.

Update: Cody Fink at MacStories has a review of it, too.

The Worst Phones You Can Buy ★

Sam Biddle surveys the bottom end of the cell phone market.

Wednesday, 16 May 2012

The OS X Naming Problem ★

Pretty convincing argument that Mountain Lion will be the last of the big-cat names for major OS X releases.

‘High Fives All Around’ ★

Arik Hesseldahl, reporting on a document drop by Oracle in its ongoing Itanium lawsuit with HP:

In the emails, Intel, for its part, certainly looks like it wants out of the business of making the chip, but is willing to accept HP’s money to keep churning them out. Asked at one point what would happen if HP didn’t pay a certain amount to Intel, Intel would — in the words of Martin Fink, then-head of HP’s Business Critical Server business — shut down the teams producing certain chips that were in the process of being designed, and slap “high fives all around.”

Samsung Loses $10 Billion in Market Value After DigiTimes Reports Apple Is Ordering DRAM From a Competitor ★

Reuters:

Shares in Samsung Electronics Co slumped more than 6 percent on Wednesday, wiping $10 billion off the electronics giant’s market value, on a report that Apple placed huge chip orders with troubled Japanese chip rival Elpida.

Taiwan’s DigiTimes, an online trade news site, reported that Apple recently placed large mobile dynamic random access memory (DRAM) orders with Elpida’s 12-inch plant in Hiroshima, Japan, securing around half the facilities total chip production. It cited unnamed industry sources in its report, which hit shares of major chip suppliers to Apple.

This highlights the bizarre relationship between Apple and Samsung, where in the consumer space they’re direct competitors (arguably even arch rivals — they’re the only two companies turning a significant profit in the handset industry), but behind the scenes in Samsung’s component supplier business, Apple is their most important customer. I suspect this is what investors are reacting to. It’s not about one order of DRAM; it’s about concern that Samsung is going to lose Apple as a component customer across the board.

Funny, too, that this would happen the day after Harry McCracken’s epic DigiTimes fact-checking piece. I question anything DigiTimes reports. I’d double-check if they told me today is Wednesday. But regardless of whether the report is actually true, it is true that Samsung’s stock price took a dive because of it.

Android Fragmentation: One Developer Encounters 3,997 Devices ★

Casey Johnston, reporting for Ars Technica:

One developer can do business with nearly 4,000 distinct Android ROMs, according to data posted by the creators of OpenSignalMaps on Tuesday. […]

The developers logged 3,997 distinct devices, the most popular of which was the Samsung Galaxy S II. This figure was inflated quite a bit by custom ROMs, which overwrite the android.build.MODEL variable and cause those phones to be logged as separate devices. 1,363 types were logged only once, and while some were custom ROMs bucking the numbers, a good few were just massively unpopular devices — for example, the Hungarian 10.1-inch Concorde Tab.

The Hungarian 10.1-Inch Concorde Tab is my new favorite Android device name.

Walt Mossberg on Microsoft’s ‘Signature’ PCs ★

Mossberg:

Microsoft also offers a program that, for $99, will turn users’ Windows 7 PCs into Signature versions, if the owner brings the computer into one of its 16 stores, due to grow to 21 outlets in coming months.

In other words, you pay $100 to get the crap removed from your new computer. Nice.

WSJ Says Apple Is Switching to 4-Inch iPhone Displays ★

Lorraine Luk and Juro Osawa, reporting for the WSJ from Hong Kong:

The new iPhone that Apple Inc. is expected to unveil this year is likely to have a larger display than its current models have, with the company ordering bigger screens from its Asian suppliers, people familiar with the matter said.

The new screens measure at least 4 inches diagonally, the people said, compared with 3.5 inches on Apple’s latest model, the iPhone 4S. Production is set to begin next month, the people said. Analysts have predicted that the next iPhone will come out in the fall.

Not much to add, other than that next month strikes me as early for production to start if it isn’t launching until fall.

Ashton Kutcher Dressed Like Steve Jobs ★

Now it’s come to this: I’m linking to TMZ.

Google Green ★

Nicely done package from Google explaining and illustrating their environmental strategies. Impressive and never-before-seen look inside some of their data centers. And their “Story of Send” is Google at its whimsical best.

Tuesday, 15 May 2012

Glassboard 2.0 ★

Brent Simmons:

We at Sepia Labs just released Glassboard 2.0 for iPhone and Android. There’s even a new web app — in beta (still suffers from cats). (All three apps are free.)

Two things.

First, Brent is a friend and someone whose work I’ve long admired. When Brent does something new, it’s a sure thing I’m going to check it out. I did that with Glassboard, and, I must admit, I didn’t get it at first. Just didn’t see how I’d use it. But then I went to a weekend-long conference where a dozen or so of my friends set up a board on Glassboard. We shared notes, jokes, links, and things like where we were going to eat and drink. All of it private, with instant SMS-like notification of new messages and comments. Now I don’t know what I’d do without Glassboard.

Second, the user interface in version 2.0 is so much improved over 1.0, I’m not even sure where to start. It’s a great update to what was already a great app and service.

Analyst Says Google Chrome Is Coming to iOS ★

Jay Yarow, regarding a report by analyst Ben Schacter claiming that a version of Chrome for iOS is imminent:

Google is currently paying Apple an estimated 50%-60% revenue share for searches done through the Safari search box, says Schacter. So, if there is $1 billion in gross search revenue from iPads, iPhones, and iPod Touches, Apple gets $600 million, Google only gets $400 million. By cutting out Safari, and owning all the searches, Google gets to keep all of the revenue it generates.

I wonder if this is true. I know that Apple gets money from Google for searches conducted through Safari’s search field, but is it feasible for it to be a revenue share? How would Apple verify the prices paid by the advertisers?

The catch for Google is that Apple doesn’t allow third-party applications like Chrome to act as defaults. So, if you click on a link in an email it will take you mobile Safari by default instead of Chrome.

The other catch is that the App Store rules don’t allow third-party software runtimes. Yes, Chrome for the desktop is based on WebKit, but it’s Google’s own fork of WebKit, and Google’s own JavaScript engine. Chrome for iOS would have to use iOS’s system standard WebKit, and the slower non-Nitro JavaScript engine.

Update: To be clear, I’m not saying these limitations would prevent Google from making a good version of Chrome for iOS. They could compete on features alone — bookmark and tab syncing with desktop Chrome, for example — and build a compelling Safari rival.

However, as Schacter says, this could be the second wave of browser wars. Microsoft was hammered in the late nineties by the government for making IE the default browser on Windows, and thus marginalizing the then dominant Netscape browser. If Apple is going to follow the same playbook, the government too might follow the same playbook and come after Apple. And don’t forget, Google has been active in D.C. making friends, while Apple has has largely given D.C. a cold shoulder.

There are good security reasons for Apple’s ban on third-party runtimes and disallowing marking memory as executable (which is why App Store apps don’t get the Nitro JavaScript engine). But I can’t think of a good reason why iOS users can’t specify third-party apps to be their default web browser (or email client, or calendar).

How to Use a Paper Towel ★

Seriously, this is a terrific presentation.

Airport Security News of the Day ★

David Porter, reporting for the AP:

More details are emerging in the case of a Newark Liberty Airport security supervisor who allegedly has been using the identity of a dead man for the last 20 years.

Law enforcement authorities involved in the investigation say Nigerian Bimbo Oyewole began using the identity of Queens, N.Y., resident Jerry Thomas three weeks before Thomas was shot and killed in 1992.

God forbid a passenger gets to the security line holding a cup of coffee, though.

Fact-Checking DigiTimes ★

Harry McCracken:

But the thing is, Digitimes isn’t just wrong some of the time. When it comes to the big Apple stories, it’s wrong most of the time. Sometimes wildly so. It’s reported that its sources had said that Apple was going to release MacBooks with AMD processors, iMacs with touch screens, iPhones with built-in projectors and iPads with OLED displays. Those products, and others mentioned in Digitimes articles, never showed up.

DigiTimes is the tech news equivalent of a supermarket tabloid. The difference is that everyone knows that supermarket tabloids are full of shit, whereas DigiTimes continues to be treated as a reputable news source.

‘Sabotage’ Re-Imagined ★

Hilarious pitch-perfect tribute to Adam Yauch.

What Eduardo Saverin Owes America ★

Farhad Manjoo on Facebook cofounder Eduardo Saverin’s utterly shameless renunciation of his U.S. citizenship to avoid post-IPO capital gains taxes.

Monday, 14 May 2012

From the DF Archive: Translation From PR-Speak to English of Selected Portions of Macrovision CEO Fred Amoroso’s Response to Steve Jobs’s ‘Thoughts on Music’ ★

Keep in mind while re-reading this piece from 2007 that this clown — who in response to Steve Jobs’s seminal (and in hindsight, remarkably prescient) “Thoughts on Music” argued that Jobs was wrong and that the answer was more DRM — is the new chairman of the board at Yahoo.

‘Reblog’ Regurgitation Dirtbaggery From The Next Web ★

Joshua Gross:

Not only did they not credit my content in the original post, but the second sentence of the first paragraph is taken nearly word-for-word, as is most of the second paragraph.

(Gross’s story that The Next Web ripped off, “The $144,146,165 Button”, is worth a read. Small details can make a big difference.)

The Discrepancy in Android Web Browser Usage Numbers ★

Peter Bright at Ars Technica, on mobile web browser market share across the whole web (as reported by Net Market Share):

In mobile, iOS users continue to outnumber Android users, with the surprising implication that Android users don’t actually use the Web very much on their smartphones.

Net Market Share’s current numbers for mobile (including tablets): 63 percent for iOS, 19 percent for Android. But, looking at Ars Technica’s own traffic, Android comes out ahead of Mobile Safari, 37 to 32 percent. (Although I wonder how much of their “Mozilla compatible” mobile traffic originates from iOS.)

This nicely illustrates the dichotomy between Android usage in the nerd world vs. the world at large.

Glenn Britt, CEO of Time Warner Cable: ‘I’m Not Sure I Know What AirPlay Is’ ★

Brian X. Chen, writing for the NYT Bits blog:

AirPlay, a software tool included with Apple’s iPads and iPhones, is widely viewed as being potentially disruptive to the cable industry, because it makes it easy for people to view a broad variety of Internet content on a television. Time Warner Cable’s leader, however, hasn’t heard of it.

Zero surprise.

Update: Anyone else thinking what I’m thinking? Glenn Britt, next CEO of Yahoo.

Anatomy of an iTV Rumor ★

Philip Elmer-DeWitt debunks the latest round of “confirmation” of an Apple-branded TV set:

What none of these reporters mentioned (or apparently bothered to consider) is that Gou — whose factories assemble 40% of the world’s electronic devices — is one of the industry’s most secretive executives. He is privy to the future product plans of the most valuable electronics brands — not just Apple, but also Sony, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard and the rest. He is trusted by his business partners because he never leaks their secrets.

Given how jealously Apple guards its own secrets, and how relentlessly it pursues those who spill them, what are the chances that Gou would say anything — ever — about an unannounced Apple product, real or imagined?

I’d say, nil.

Exactly. Too many people don’t even think before regurgitating this stuff.

HP Restarts Tablet Manufacturing ★

Suchit Leesa-nguansuk, reporting for The Bangkok Post:

Hewlett-Packard has announced it will resume production of consumer tablets but says it will run them on Microsoft’s new Windows 8 operating system. The world’s largest technology firm suspended its TouchPad WebOS tablet production line last year on poor sales.

Restarting production is a strategic move aimed at capitalising on the extraordinary growth in tablet sales, chief executive Meg Whitman said yesterday at the Global Influencer Summit 2012.

Extraordinary growth in tablet sales, or extraordinary growth in iPad sales?

Gina Trapani on ‘Brogrammer’ Culture ★

Gina Trapani:

That’s one small way brogrammer culture is actually useful. It’s a red flag for women engineers, product developers, designers, project managers, marketers, business development and PR specialists. It says: This is a company that you’d want to avoid.

Agree completely, but I’d go further and say it’s a red flag for anyone, regardless of their gender or job.

Drawing Bad Conclusions ★

Peter Kafka, reporting on some video-watching numbers from Freewheel, an online video ad company:

More evidence that Microsoft is increasing its lead in the digital living room race: Data that shows its Xbox gaming console is the most popular non-PC device to watch Web video. That is, more people are watching Web stuff on Microsoft’s machine than on the iPad, iPhone or any Android machine, anywhere. And when it comes to home viewing, competitors like Apple TV, Google TV and Roku are so far behind they’re not even competitors.

That Xbox is proving to be a popular — and growing — platform for video is interesting. But there’s no use comparing it to Apple TV based on Freewheel’s data, because, as Kafka himself points out in his next paragraph:

Now the asterisks: Freewheel is only measuring “professional content” that runs with ads, because that’s how it makes its living. So that means it’s counting stuff from companies like NBC, CBS, ESPN and Vevo, but not YouTube cat videos. It’s also not measuring Netflix usage. On the other hand, this isn’t a poll or sample, but data compiled by the company’s own ad servers.

So the reason Apple TV doesn’t show up in Freewheel’s data is because it doesn’t show any ad-backed video. Freewheel’s data isn’t about online video watching — it’s specifically about ad-backed online video watching. It may well be that Xbox is used for more aggregate video watching than Apple TV, but you can’t make such a comparison using Freewheel’s data.

And it shows you how much ground Google will need to make up as it gets ready to relaunch its Google TV. Ditto for Apple, if and when it ever gets serious about transforming Apple TV into something other than a “hobby.”

Again, Apple TV is irrelevant to any discussion based on Freewheel’s data. And as for making up ground, iOS devices account for 57 percent of Freewheel’s reported usage — double Xbox’s share.

Assuming Freewheel’s data is both accurate and relevant, the conclusion we should draw from it is that iPhone/iPad/iPod iOS devices dominate post-PC ad-based video watching, Xbox is second with half iOS’s share, and Android is a distant third with half-again Xbox’s share. Kafka somehow draws the conclusion that Xbox is winning and Apple TV is way out in crickets-chirping territory.

They Did Say It Was a ‘Dude’ Who Was Getting a Dell ★

Christiane Vejlø, on a Dell-hosted conference in Denmark:

Dell’s moderator continues talking about his two Rolex watches and he then presents the next speaker from Intel. After the break Mads Christensen shares with us his whole “show” about the bitchy women who want to steal the power in politics, boards and the home. “Science” he calls it and mentions that all the great inventions come from men. “We can thank women for the rolling pin,” he adds. And then the moderator of the day finishes of by asking all (men) in the room to promise him that they will go home and say, “shut up bitch!”.

Update: Faruk Ates tweets, summarizing this comment thread on Boing Boing:

Nutshell: some say Mads Christensen is like Stephen Colbert, and that the joke is lost on non-Danish people. But, I don’t buy it.

Why I don’t buy it: Christensen has a history of making extremely tasteless, offensive remarks that go far beyond Colbert-style humor.

I guess that’s the question. Is this Christensen a Colbert-style parodist (which may well translate poorly internationally), or a Rush Limbaugh-style shit-stirrer?

Businessweek on Apple’s Dominance in Hollywood Product Placement ★

You can’t fake cool.

Update: I’m not sure what Businessweek’s headline means, though: “Apple, the Other Cult in Hollywood”. I think they’re comparing Apple to Scientology, but who the hell knows.

Adobe Will Release Security Patches for CS 5 Apps ★

They caused a bit of an uproar when they initially decided not to patch these apps, but they’ve changed their mind.

Facebook, Another Service Helping to Kill Text Messaging ★

It’s hard to think of a technology that more deserves to die than SMS.

Nokia’s Last Stand ★

Peter Kirwan profiles Nokia’s executive leadership for Wired. The bottom line seems simple and obvious: Nokia’s fate is tied to that of Windows Phone.

Sunday, 13 May 2012

Scott Thompson Who? ★

Kara Swisher, on Yahoo’s ever-deepening ignominy:

Yahoo’s embattled CEO Scott Thompson is set to step down from his job at the Silicon Valley Internet giant, in what will be dramatic end to a controversy over a fake computer science degree that he had on his bio, according to multiple sources close to the situation.

The company will apparently say he is leaving for “personal reasons.”

Saturday, 12 May 2012

Harvest ★

My thanks to Harvest for sponsoring this week’s DF RSS feed. Harvest is a time-tracking system for the web, Mac, and iPhone — designed for creative professionals, with an emphasis on ease-of-use and productivity. The new Mac desktop client has a great-looking interface and provides a slew of conveniences, including hotkeys to start timers and automatic idle time detection.

Watch the demo, then give Harvest a spin with a free 30-day trial.

---

---

Friday, 11 May 2012

John Paczkowski Confirms New iOS Maps App ★

John Paczkowski:

We’ve independently confirmed that this is indeed the case. Sources describe the new Maps app as a forthcoming tent-pole feature of iOS that will, in the words of one, “blow your head off.” I’m not quite sure what that means, and the source in question declined to elaborate, but it’s likely a reference to the photorealistic 3-D mapping tech Apple acquired when it purchased C3 Technologies.

iOS 6 Maps ★

Speaking of Mark Gurman, he had a piece today on a major update to the Maps app in iOS 6:

According to trusted sources, Apple has an incredible headline feature in development for iOS 6: a completely in-house maps application. Apple will drop the Google Maps program running on iOS since 2007 in favor for a new Maps app with an Apple backend. The application design is said to be fairly similar to the current Google Maps program on the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch, but it is described as a much cleaner, faster, and more reliable experience.

No surprise to anyone even vaguely paying attention to the cold war between Apple and Google. Jason Snell, responding on Twitter:

Does 9to5 Mac not know that the iOS maps app has always been called Maps, not Google Maps? […]

Maybe it’s the Apple Kremlinologist in me, but the genericness of Maps.app has made me always feel Google would be dumped eventually.

The Maps app has always been Apple’s. It’s only the back-end data they got from Google. (Gurman says much the same later in the article, but the lead I quoted above suggests otherwise.)

---

---

---