512 Pixels

What if Luke Skywalker had help from inside the Empire?

Pat Dryburgh at the now-oddly-named Brooks Review:

Today, Mailbox holds little appeal to me. This is because I don’t need a new front-end for my email. I need a new back-end.

Pat’s suggestion of marrying Mailbox’s UI to Dropbox’s powerful file management system is genius, and after reading it, so incredibly obvious that Dropbox would be foolish not to do this.

Apple:

What makes an iPhone unlike anything else? Maybe it’s that it lets you do so many things. Or that it lets you do so many things so easily. Those are two reasons iPhone owners say they love their iPhone. But there are many others as well.

Reading over this page felt weird. Apple’s always pimped its products as hard as it can, using over-the-top language. On this page, the company explains the numerous hardware benefits of the iPhone, and what makes the hardware special: iOS. But this is an Apple that’s defensive. Check out this shot at Google:

iPhone comes with something unique: support from real people.

The war we thought was coming is here. Buckle up.

The Macalope, on the churning shitstorm the media has created around Apple:

People like stories. Even—and sometimes especially—if they’re not true.

Anand Lal Shimpi:

The latest Apple TV doesn’t change functionality, nor does it appear to be a step back in performance. The A1469 model really helps Apple reduce costs, both through better engineering and through a physically smaller A5 SoC.

While the implication of this smaller A5 chipset isn’t immediately clear, it’s always fun when Apple tinkers in public.

John Neff at Autoblog:

Unveiled yesterday by Ferrari drivers Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa in Australia ahead of the season-opening Melbourne Grand Prix, this 1:1 scale model of the team’s 2011 Ferrari F150 Italia car is a highly accurate recreation of the real thing. While Ferrari hasn’t released too many details about it (a brick count would be nice), we do know that the car has real Pirelli race tires and a seat that can actually accommodate a driver. Once buckled in, though, everything within arms reach is made of Lego, including the complicated F1 steering wheel.

Really sounds like the left hand at Google has no idea what the right one is doing. Shocking.

Somewhere in there, the company announced a phone.

I think.

Here are the goods:

• The ability to redeem iTunes gift cards in the Mac App Store using your Mac’s built-in camera
• Boot Camp support for installing Windows 8
• Boot Camp support for Macs with a 3 TB hard drive
• A fix for an issue that could cause a file URL to quit apps unexpectedly
• A fix for an issue that may cause Logic Pro to become unresponsive when using certain plug-ins
• A fix for an issue that may cause audio to stutter on 2011 iMacs
• A fix for an issue in Contacts that may cause cards to print out of order
• A fix for an issue that may cause the desktop picture to change after logging out or restarting
• A fix for an issue in Messages that may cause messages to appear out of order after waking from sleep
• A fix for an issue that may cause the screen to display incorrectly after waking from sleep
• Improves compatibility with IMAP servers in the Notes app
• Allows the Slideshow screen saver to display photos located in a subfolder
• A fix for an issue in Contacts that may cause addresses to print in the wrong location
• Reliability improvements when using a Microsoft Exchange account in Mail
• Xsan reliability improvements
• A fix for an issue that could cause Active Directory accounts to be locked out after accessing the Security & Privacy pane in System Preferences
• A fix for an issue that could cause link aggregation to not complete after a restart
• A fix for an issue that could cause delays when logging into an Active Directory account on high latency networks

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For $40 more than the standard price, Apple will ship you an iMac without a foot, but with a VESA mounting plate on the back.

Earlier today, Google announced that Reader is going away on July 1.

This is a big deal, and just about everyone has something to say about it. Most nerds I follow are upset.

Marco Arment has an interesting take:

It may suck in the interim before great alternatives mature and become widely supported, but in the long run, trust me: this is excellent news.

As Shawn Blanc points out, there are several alternatives already in the works, and hopefully Marco’s vision of what will happen plays out.

But what if no great alternatives come to light?

Many people already use Twitter as their RSS replacement. In fact, I can’t help but think that Twitter’s rise in popularity had a direct impact on Google Reader’s decline. For my part, however, I hate using Twitter like this. RSS is nice because everything comes in flooding in, but stops, waiting on me to hit “Mark All As Read.” On the other hand, tweets stream by, endlessly, without regard to what I — as the user — am doing. If something goes by, it’s gone, unless I sync my timeline or read back until the point I left off.

Google would want us all to follow sites in Google+, and while that has similar issues as Twitter, Google+ lacks anything near a critical mass to be a decent RSS replacement.

It will be interesting to see if developers jump to action to fill the hole Google is creating in the workflow of lots of people, or if people settle on using Twitter feeds.

I sure hope it’s the former that plays out.