Year: 2012

Seven Inches

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Jim Dalrymple:

Then Apple came out with the iPod mini, which later became the iPod nano, capturing another segment of the market. That release was followed up by the iPod shuffle, again capturing another segment of the market.

It was changes in technologies that allowed these products to be released, but I believe Apple had planned the releases all along.

When you look at a 7-inch iPad, or any other Apple product, don’t look at how it affects its competitors, but rather how it fits into Apple’s product strategy. Doing that will make things a lot clearer.

Sounds to me like the iPad family is going to grow by getting smaller.

Writing Vs. Coding

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Rands:

Writing appears more forgiving because there is no compiler or interpreter catching your its/it’s issues or reminding you of the rules regarding that or which. Here’s the rub: there is a compiler and it’s fucking brutal. It’s your readers. Your readers are far more critical than the Python interpreter. Not only do they care about syntax, but they also want to learn something, and, perhaps, be entertained while all this learning is going down. Success means they keep coming back – failure is a lonely silence. Python is looking pretty sweet now, right?

WebOS Enyo Team Heading to Google

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Chris Ziegler at The Verge:

The HP team responsible for Enyo — webOS’s HTML5-based application framework that debuted on the TouchPad — will be leaving the company and starting at Google shortly, The Verge has learned. What this means for the future of Open webOS is unclear; Enyo and the developers supporting it are central to HP’s open source strategy for the operating system going forward, and it’s hard to say whether this move will have any effect on the planned late 2012 release for version 1.0.

This, coupled with the Motorola purchase means Google could do some really great stuff with Android. Sadly, I don’t have enough faith in the company to get my hopes up, though.

The Phantom Vibrate

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Patrick Thibodeau at Computerworld:

It turns out that the phantom cellphone vibration syndrome is fairly common. Ask around. See if you can find someone who believed the smartphone in their pocket was vibrating but found when they checked, there was nothing new. No call. No text.

There’s a growing body of research on phantom vibrations and many of the other problems associated with technology obsession, all of which is explored by Larry Rosen, a professor of psychology at California State University, Dominguez Hills, in his new book, iDisorder.

NOLA Paper Drops Daily

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Cain Burdeau at the AP:

The Times-Picayune, one of the nation’s oldest newspapers, is dropping its daily circulation after 175 years and plans to issue three printed editions a week starting in the fall. With the change, the newspaper would become the largest metro newspaper in the nation to drop daily circulation in this digital age.

Viticci Gets His Strong, Smooth Italian Hands All Over Diet Coda

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His Handsomeness:

I can’t review Diet Coda — as I said, I wouldn’t be able to fully understand its functionalities and judge its (possible) shortcomings when compared to the (also coming today) Coda 2. But I can recognize software crafted with care and attention to detail. Diet Coda immediately stands out as one of those apps where pixels aren’t just there to fill the screen — they’re the epitome of design enhanced for function.

I can’t wait. This app has the potential to fill a large gap in my mobile workflow.

HP To Lay Off 27,000

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Megan Geuss at Ars:

Earlier last week, rumors hinted that the HP would lay off 10,000 to 15,000 employees, but today the company revealed that 27,000 of HP’s 349,600 employees will be cut by the end of 2014. According to Bloomberg, Hewlett-Packard CFO Cathie Lesjak said no unit of the company will be spared cuts, but the enterprise services group will take the hardest hit.

It’s a post-PC world…

Oh, Digitimes…

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Harry Mccracken got an email from Digitimes’ deputy managing editor, after criticizing the publication last week. In it, the editor (Joseph Chen) writes:

Digitimes has indeed reported much on Apple, and many of the products that we said would be launched have never been launched, or have had their launches delayed. But that does not mean that we were crying wolf or passing along gossip. In fact, Apple have a lot of its R&D projects and ideas tried out at its supply chain partners in Asia. Many of the prototypes created by the supply chain partners will never make it to the market after Apple’s assessments. This is one of the major reasons why a lot of the information we have disclosed has been seen by others as inaccurate, but is still valuable to our reader base in the supply chain. We understand the risks behind the kind of reporting we have been doing.

So, Digitimes seems to operate under the “throw it all at the wall and see what sticks” mentality.

Sadly, too many Mac bloggers don’t understand that, and treat whatever the publication writes as reputable. Which, you know, leads to excellent content.[1]

  1. Well, at least shit tons of page views.  ↩