512 Pixels

Stephanie Lyn Flosi at comScore:

53.4 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones during the three months ending in July, up 11 percent from the corresponding April period. RIM was the leading mobile smartphone platform in the U.S. with 39.3 percent share of U.S. smartphone subscribers, followed by Apple with 23.8 percent share. Google saw significant growth during the period, rising 5.0 percentage points to capture 17.0 percent of smartphone subscribers. Microsoft accounted for 11.8 percent of Smartphone subscribers, while Palm rounded out the top five with 4.9 percent. Despite losing share to Google Android, most smartphone platforms continue to gain subscribers as the smartphone market overall continues to grow.

What’s the most impressive here is the nearly 5% market share Palm has — that hasn’t changed in the last several months.

Applidium:

After 2 weeks of review, VLC for the iPad is eventually available on the AppStore! The release date is set to Tuesday, Sept. 21, so depending on your timezone, it should be available pretty soon.

Yet another example of Apple’s relaxed App Store rules in action. This is great.

[ via Mac Rumors]

David Pogue:

When you buy a new Windows PC, as you probably know, it comes festooned with little (or not so little) stickers on the palm rests. There’s one for Windows, one for Skype, one for Intel, one for the laptop company, maybe an Energy Star sticker and so on.

[…]

A.M.D.’s research shows that consumers hate the stickers (duh). But they’re not going away, for one simple reason: There’s big money involved. Intel, Microsoft, Skype and whoever else is represented by the stickers actually pay the computer companies for the billboard space. That’s why H.P., for example, would tolerate gumming up its laptops’ good looks with crass ads. (Apple refuses to put Intel stickers on its computers, even though there’s Intel inside. In doing so, it leaves millions of dollars a year on the table.)

I’ve always seen these stickers as a sort of benchmark for computer manufacturers.

Historically, only Apple has refused to give in to the temptation to pad its bottom line with sticky advertisements on its products. It isn’t surprising, given the company’s obsessive focus on design. It is also not surprising the companies that ship sticker-covered laptops are the same companies that dump loads of crapware on their Windows boxes.

In short, products with stickers are made by companies that care more about money than product design. Makes perfect sense.

Michael Gartenberg, discussing items that are so far below our radar, we forget we carry them:

Invisible devices like watches are the digital equivalent of undeveloped beachfront property.

Greg Kumparak:

Google Voice applications have had a pretty tumultuous history in the App Store. At first, Apple approved them, and the people rejoiced. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, they were pulled, with “duplicating features that the iPhone comes with (Dialer, SMS, etc).” cited as the reasoning. The people were, understandably, pretty friggin’ mad.

Over the past few days, the developers of at least two such applications have been indicating that they’d been hearing good news from Apple, suggesting that the Apps would be making an Apple-approved, no-jailbreak-required return. Sure enough, they’ve just started popping up in the App Store.

I guess Apple was serious about their recently-posted App Store rules. This is a huge milestone, and makes my iPad the largest mobile VOIP device I can think of.

[ via 9 to 5 Mac]

Update: The more popular (and better-looking) GV Mobile + is out now as well.

Excuse me, I need to go change my pants.

Microsoft, on the history of the Internet Explorer logo:

The IE logo is well known as the way to the web. Internet cafés around the world use the IE logo on their signage to invite people in. Some of our teammates have snapped photos while passing cafés during their travels. The IE logo is right on the front of the buildings! It’s always fun to see that to many people, the blue e means the Internet.

[ via Sebastiaan de With]

Joanna Stern:

Samsung’s gotten all four of the major US carriers in its court — and just as we’d heard, the 7-inch Galaxy Tab will be heading to Verizon, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile sometime during the October / November timeframe.

Sounds like Samsung has gone where the Nexus One couldn’t — to every major US carrier. Additionally, they will be offering a no-contract Wi-Fi only version.

The big issue is that Android hasn’t really been on a major tablet yet, and Google itself has said the OS isn’t ready for such devices. While Samsung’s TouchWiz interface may be able to patch things up, the truth is that Android hasn’t been made to scale as smoothly as iOS does.

Wired’s Leander Kahney:

Jobs resigned as chairman of Apple Computer on Sept. 16, 1985, after losing a boardroom battle for control of the company with then-CEO John Sculley.

[…]

On Sept. 16, 1997, Apple announced that Jobs had officially been named interim CEO, or — as the company cleverly put it — iCEO.

If you want a good look into Apple leading up to Jobs’ ousting, I would recommend you read West of Eden by Frank Rose. Fascinating stuff.

Shawn Blanc:

Inbox Zero means I care more about the outbox than the inbox. It means I choose to focus my time, energy, and attention on creating something worthwhile instead of feeding some unhealthy addiction to constantly check my inboxes. Pressing the Get New Mail button or refreshing my Twitter stream is like pulling the crank on a slot machine. Did I win? No. Did I win? No.

John Gruber:

Nokia’s problem — and I’ve heard this same story from at least half a dozen former and present Nokia employees who read DF — is that their handset business is fundamentally based around hardware teams. When they decide to make a phone, they put together a hardware team for that model, and that team makes all decisions. That’s why they have no cohesive software strategy. Nokia sees software as one component in a hardware-based view of the industry.

Trey Heath:

There’s a point in any Mac junkie’s life when you have to stop and admit you have a problem.

For some people, it’s photo editing apps. They switch from Aperture to LightRoom back to Aperture and then to something I probably have never heard of because it’s open source and all the cool kids are doing it.

For others it’s GTD apps where the quest to streamline their work flow and to get more done generally ends in disaster when they spend eight hours trying to figure out what context and application to put “walk the dog” in.

It’s a problem all loyal OS X users have. We download an app, like it, buy it, use it and then three days later there’s another one out that does the same damn thing but we are right there repeating the cycle.

On my Macbook right now, I have six photo editing apps, four Twitter applications, four FTP clients, four GTD applications, five DVD rippers and five e-mail applications.