After four years of my serving as Tumblr’s lead developer, Tumblr’s technical management needs have evolved to require types of experience that I don’t have, and my independent career has offered a lot of opportunities that I haven’t had the time to take full advantage of.
Bad for Tumblr, great for Instapaper.
The Apple II was a revolution. It took the computer out of the hands of the corporations and the goverment and gave it to the people.
The Macintosh was a revolution. It turned computers from mysterious boxes waiting on text-based commands to GUI-powered appliances.
The iPod was a revolution. It made portable music easy and fun.
But what about the Apple IIc? The Macintosh SE? The iPod mini? All of these devices — while important in their own ways — aren’t considered as important to the history of computing as the revolutionary products from which they evolved.
So here’s my suggestion to you: find a system that works for you; don’t place yourself into someone else’s system. If you find your brain works better while you doodle with a pen in a notebook, embrace it. Write your ToDos by hand instead of using a computer or an iPad. This is the system that works best for me, and I don’t expect it to work best for you.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.