512 Pixels

Apple PR:

The 128GB iPad with Wi-Fi and iPad with Wi-Fi + Cellular models provide twice the storage capacity of the 64GB models to hold even more valuable content including photos, documents, projects, presentations, books, movies, TV shows, music and apps.

“With more than 120 million iPads sold, it’s clear that customers around the world love their iPads, and everyday they are finding more great reasons to work, learn and play on their iPads rather than their old PCs,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. “With twice the storage capacity and an unparalleled selection of over 300,000 native iPad apps, enterprises, educators and artists have even more reasons to use iPad for all their business and personal needs.”

Cool, but man, I can barely fill my 32GB iPad.

Eric Slivka:

The new 5.2 software update includes a number of enhancements including direct iTunes in the Cloud music streaming, Bluetooth keyboard support, Up Next support, and more.

I have 28 Apple TVs in my office ready to be installed around our campus. At least it looks like this update is well worth the time it will take to run it.

Nilay Patel:

After using the Pebble for a few days, I realized that I was daydreaming about it: I wanted it to do more. That’s unusual — I rarely trust new products to work correctly, especially new products from unproven companies. But the Pebble’s charming simplicity and fundamental competence inspires confidence. It’s so good at what it does now that it’s easy to imagine all other things it might do in the future. There’s no reason it can’t replace a Fitbit or Nike Fuelband, for example, and I’d love to be able to send replies to emails and text directly from the device. And Pebble’s promised app support means we’ll eventually see even more uses for it.

Seems like “potential” is the key word here. The hardware seems nice, but the software and connectivity seem limited by iOS.

Jeff Sonderman at Poynter:

Think of the impact Twitter has made so far on real-time reporting — making everyone, everywhere, a potential instant eyewitness who can share text or a photo with the world. Now think of how that effect is amplified when the public can easily start sharing videos of the same events.

[…]

This may raise new ethical questions for journalists about how and when to use some citizen-generated videos in their reporting.

At the same time, it gives journalists fewer options for balancing ethical concerns. For instance, with a news photo you can quickly crop or blur specific areas the public shouldn’t see. When dealing with a video, that’s much harder to do.

In a world where journalists get tied in knots about six seconds of video, I’m sad all the time.

MG Siegler, about people staying at CNET as writers:

There are some good arguments in the comment section as to why people are sticking around — mainly it has to do with not walking away from a paycheck when they have families to support. But that still rings a bit hollow. There are no shortage of other tech sites/blogs that are trying to hire writers right now, including TechCrunch.

CNET has turned from an afterthought into a complete fucking joke. Sure, if you have no other options, I guess you work for a joke. A paycheck is a paycheck in a tough economic environment. But there sure seems to be other options.

Rene Ritchie at iMore:

Skeuomorphism – the use of real world design in a digital context – has been a target lately. At the extreme, it’s held up as an example of iOS being boring, outdated, and bereft of innovation. In more reasonably terms, it’s looked at as something that can be useful, but has perhaps been overused. I’ve gone on record as saying I think there are far more important things Apple needs to do in iOS 7 than wiping the world clean of skeuomorphism, both here on the site and in a podcast rant. But let’s imagine for a moment it is on the agenda. That Apple’s new head of all design, hardware and software, Jony Ive, was set to impose a new, unified, Aluminium theme. That, just like the Scarlet Witch in House of M, he whispered “No more Skeuomorphs.”

Instead of arguing in the abstract about how much better or worse it would be, let’s mock it up and see what could that look like…

The silver UI in Rene’s post can be found in iOS’s built-in Music and Maps app now. While I’m all for Apple getting rid of stitched leather and linen, remember what happened before Apple unified an OS so tightly?

Oh God.

As I’m sure you remember, a few weeks ago, CNET ran into some issues with its parent company, CBS. In short, CBS forbid CNET to review the Dish Hopper with Sling or give it any awards at CES. Here was the statement from the company:

The Dish Hopper with Sling was removed from consideration due to active litigation involving our parent company CBS Corp. We will no longer be reviewing products manufactured by companies with which we are in litigation with respect to such product.

Now, just two weeks later, the second sentence in that statement has come true.

John Falcone’s story on Aereo has this statement in a gray box, right in the middle of the story:

Disclosure: CBS, the parent corporation of CNET, is currently in active litigation with Aereo as to the legality of its service. As a result of that conflict of interest, CNET cannot review that service going forward.

The story is about a TV-over-Internet startup that CBS is currently tangled up with in court. That fact is called out in Falcone’s story, right in the body copy:

Aereo has raised the hackles of the broadcast networks – ABC, NBC, Fox, and CBS are all suing the startup – because it streams their signals without permission. (CNET is a subsidiary of CBS – see the full disclosure above regarding our updated coverage rules.)

Jim Romenesko is reporting that CBS’ new policy is sending morale plummeting throughout the news organization.

It’s not surprising. CBS is slowly strangling CNET.

Here’s John Biggs at TechCrunch:

I wish we didn’t have to write about CNET this way. Whatever is going on inside CBS/CNET, it’s making the tech reviewing juggernaut look like an absolute joke. It gives sites like Amazon amazing respectability and essentially makes the entire business of tech writing suspect and reduces the amount of valuable information available to readers. It hurts us all.

After the original Dish Hopper thing, CNET editor Lindsey Turrentine wrote:

The one thing I want to clearly communicate to my team and to everyone at CNET and beyond is this: CNET does excellent work. Its family of writers is unbiased, focused, bright, and true. CNET will continue to do excellent good work. Of that I am certain. Going forward, I will do everything within my power to prevent this situation from happening again.

Even though I gave her the benefit of the doubt,, it’s clear that Turrentine is unable to prevent this censorship from occurring.

It’s a damn shame.

Turns out everybody’s favorite creepy actor guy doesn’t carry a cellphone or own a computer.

Scott McNulty for Macworld:

Who doesn’t love going to the Apple Store?

Well, me, for one.

Sure, I’ve waited in line at an Apple Store opening—I got a t-shirt!—and I’ve also waited in line for the special holiday sale at an Apple Store—I got Mac-themed magnetic poetry!—but instead, I now just wait for the urge to visit an Apple Store to pass. I’m still a fan of what Apple makes, but the retail experience has become less akin to shopping at a high-end boutique and more like going to Walmart (albeit, a well-designed Walmart).

Today I feel like a jilted lover stalking their ex. I continue to check the developer discussion board and see many repeat complaints about bad syncing and data corruption. If you want to get a feel for how well a service is doing, Twitter searches are a great way to do it. Because I miss the halcyon days of great Simplenote syncing, I search Twitter for “simplenote” regularly. I see a lot of people leaving Simplenote because of corrupted data. That has the smell of rot and makes me sad.

Now Automattic has a chance to throw some money at solving Simplenote’s problems. My hope is that money is the easy solution. The Simperium team have good ideas about how plain text syncing should work. I’ll eagerly read about every improvement in the future. I’ll continue to check the developer discussion boards and search Twitter. It will take a lot to bring me back in to the fold though. Dropbox syncing is almost flawless and that’s a pretty high bar. While tags and fast full-text searching are wonderful features of Simplenote, in the end data integrity wins the day.

Apple:

For the past seven years, Apple has been publishing reports on the audits we perform in our supply chain. We do this because we believe in honestly sharing our findings — the good and the bad. We’re fixing problems and tackling issues that our entire industry faces, such as excessive work hours and underage labor. We’re going deeper into the supply chain than any other company we know of, and we’re reporting at a level of detail that is unparalleled in our industry.

To end the practice of excessive overtime, we now track weekly work hours for 1 million workers across our supply chain and publish the results on our website every month. And we share our work-hour strategy and tools with others inside and outside our industry. Although underage labor is rare in our supply chain, we report all incidents we find, as well as the actions taken to correct problems and prevent future occurrences. We also give our suppliers the names of labor agents known to recruit underage workers. In addition, we are publishing the names and addresses of our top 200 production suppliers.

I really respect Apple for releasing these things. While there is always more to be done to protect workers and their rights, the company is leading the way with these reports.

While bringing back this guy would be hilarious, I’m not sure anything could save Apple Dell at this point.