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Could the Location Data Thing be About a Future Apple Cellular Network?

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Earlier today, Apple released a big Q&A going over the ins and outs of the location data present on iPhones.

This tidbit is interesting:

What other location data is Apple collecting from the iPhone besides crowd-sourced Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data?

Apple is now collecting anonymous traffic data to build a crowd-sourced traffic database with the goal of providing iPhone users an improved traffic service in the next couple of years.

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The Last Word

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I just finished my final paper for my undergraduate degree (that I started back in 2004). All I have left between me and graduation is a final exam that should be a breeze.

While I thought I would feel overjoyed, I feel … nothing.

Is this normal?

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Magic

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Chairmen Gruber, in a conversation on Tweetbot:

In a sense, then, perhaps there is something droid-like about the Android user experience. Not in the artistic, warm, humanist way that the Tapbots aesthetic is bot-like, but in the cool, rational, science-not-art, thinking-as-opposed-to-feeling sense of artificial intelligence. The difference between iOS and Android, design-wise, can be summed in a single word: magic. iOS aims for it. Android doesn’t want it.

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On Dropbox and Security

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Here’s a snippet from Dropbox’s FAQ page on security:

Like most online services, we have a small number of employees who must be able to access user data for the reasons stated in our privacy policy (e.g., when legally required to do so). But that’s the rare exception, not the rule. We have strict policy and technical access controls that prohibit employee access except in these rare circumstances. In addition, we employ a number of physical and electronic security measures to protect user information from unauthorized access.

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This is my Next ... iPhone?

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Joshua Topolsky:

In a sketch supplied to us by a source, the home button is doing double duty as a gesture area; this falls in line with testing we’ve seen for gestures on the iPad, and our sources say that gestures are definitely coming in a future version of iOS. The home button will likely be enlarged, but not scrapped altogether. Furthermore, we’re hearing that the screen on the device will occupy the entire (or near to it) front of the phone, meaning almost no bezel. Our source says the company is doing very “interesting things” with bonded glass technology, and has been exploring designs where the earpiece and sensors are somehow behind the screen itself, making for a device where the display is actually edge-to-edge. Regardless, the sketch we’ve seen suggests the screen will go up to 3.7-inches while keeping the current resolution, and at that size, pixel density goes from 326 to 312 (a drop of 13ppi). That means that Apple can still tout Retina Display technology (the claim is that anything above 300ppi means the pixels aren’t distinguishable at 12 inches). Rumors have been suggesting that the size would bump up to 4 inches, but at that size with the current resolution, pixel density drops to 288, making it harder for Apple to use the RD branding.

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On Apple, Samsung and ‘Look and Feel’

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Go read Nilay Patel’s coverage of the new Apple v. Samsung lawsuit. I’ll wait for you to come back.

Ok. Welcome back. Crazy stuff right? To me, its pretty clear that Samsung intentionally ripped off the look and feel of iOS and Apple’s hardware design when making its phones and Android UI, TouchWiz.

This is about Samsung’s design choices. And while Patel is careful not to draw parallels between this suit and the one Apple had against Microsoft in the mid–1990s.

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