512 Pixels

Ben Brooks, on why the iPad 2 probably won’t have an iPhone 4-level rear camera.

The WSJ:

In a conference call, Mr. Schmidt said the three had been making decisions together, but it was a slow process. The new organization is expected to streamline things by “elevating me and having Larry running things day to day,” Mr. Schmidt said.

Google has had an unbelievable run under Schmidt, but the company’s services and products feel more and more fragmented and half-baked. Hopefully, this change will be a good one. I think it will be.

Gawker has published a lengthy look at Apple’s COO titled “Meet Apple’s New Boss, The Most Powerful Gay Man in Silicon Valley.”

Apple Insider linked to it yesterday, quoting large chunks of the original story.

Personally, I don’t give a shit about Tim Cook’s orientation. What I do care about is privacy and respect. This time around, the Internet seems to be okay not prying too far into Steve Jobs’ health, so Tim Cook seems to be the target of choice.

Yes, having a gay man as the number two executive at a major corporation could help gay rights, but only if Cook is actually gay, and if he decides to be political about it. Right now, the former is a rumor and the latter is pure fiction.

I’d expect such garbage from Gawker, but AppleInsider, you disappoint me. I understand that reporting rumors is a big, cut-throat industry, but keep some dignity about you.

Rory Reid at CNET UK back in 2009:

The Newton may be old and dusty, but it still shows the young pretenders a thing or too. The iPhone is a superior device in many ways, we’ll admit, but when it comes to sheer innovation, the Apple Newton MessagePad is a true pioneer. Long live the king.

I’ve been a huge fan of the Newton since I bought one in 2004 to use at college. While I had to sell my 2100 to pay off my wife’s engagement ring, I still dust off my eMate 300 pretty often to play with it.

Rands recent post on managing nerds is great. I’ve got a copy printed in the hanging folder where I keep my staff’s HR paperwork.

The lengthy interview between John Sculley and Leander Kahney is a must-read for anyone who cares about Apple’s history.

Ian P. Hines:

This evening I watched “Helvetica: A Documentary Film by Gary Hus­twit.” I was, admittedly, rather skeptical about whether I would enjoy a film about a type face; truth be told, I didn’t think it would be particularly interesting. On the contrary, it was one of the best films I’ve seen in some time.

I too loved the film, but I foolishly tried making my wife watch it with me. She got up and went to bed about 15 minutes after it started.

Ben Brooks, back over the summer:

At the D8 conference Steve Jobs remarked that perhaps the news industry needs an iTunes type model for news. He went on to say that we need news outlets so that we don’t become a “nation of bloggers”. Agreed.

The question then is does Jobs mean that we really need an iNews, or was he simply using that to illustrate the point that news is lost and needs a common strategy that they can band around? I of course think that Jobs meant the latter: news outlets need to band together to create a common and standardized system by which they will make money off of their content.

For years, there have been rumors and speculation from the “nation of bloggers” about this very thing. Sadly, print journalism still doesn’t know what to do with this new-fangled technology named “the Internet.”

Shawn Blanc:

The “you should backup regularly” argument needs little coaxing. Everybody “knows” they should backup the problem is they don’t. A backup plan is only as good as its followthrough – which is why Time Machine is so epic. It backs up every hour for you. You don’t even know it’s running but you hear the hard drive spinning, and watch your system slow down for a few minutes.

Once people jump on the backup regularly bandwagon, the sinkhole that many fall into is to stress the details: the absurd fear that some day there will be some file that they will absolutely have to have. And when that day does come they will discover that they have deleted the file – or overwritten it, or something else catastrophic – and thus, by not having that one file at the theoretical moment of truth they will not impress their fellow nerds in a, “Look what I kept for all these years. What do you mean, “so what?”” moment of glory.

A great post on the strengths and weaknesses of Time Machine. Like Shawn, I use both Time Machine and SuperDuper, but in different ways.

This is from my 5th post ever here at ForkBombr, in which I discussed a challenge from a friend to find the oldest existing article on Apple’s support site:

An interesting challenge, but an easy one at the end of the day. I found article 116 which explains how “to use Apple Writer with the Paymar Lower Case Adapter.” The oldest article I found was number 3, which reads:

The Apple II and IIe power supply is a switching power supply. It is designed to accept 107 to 135 volts from DC to 60 Hz.

It will also work at up to 400 Hz but this endangers a circuit which protects the supply from shorting to the point that the protecting circuit will not work.

Glad I know that. Next time I plug an Apple IIe in, I’ll keep it in mind.

From the company’s FAQ page on cloud sync:

We will be doing a large scale test with quantifiable data to estimate server and bandwidth costs. It is not yet clear whether or not it will be necessary to pass any of those costs to the user base. This should not be taken as indication that there will, or will not, be any cost. A final decision will be made later based on the aforementioned testing.

They need to offer a cloud service for free. Its like they don’t understand how unhappy many of their customers (and former customers) are.

The company also doesn’t understand the concept of ‘if you don’t have anything to say, keep your mouth shut.’

[via Federico Viticci]