In just three months on the market, Apple’s iPad has come to represent 0.17 percent of all Web browser traffic tracked by Net Applications. The iPad’s June total managed to exceed Android, which represented 0.14 percent of all Web browsing traffic.
Behind both of them was another iOS-powered device from Apple, the iPod touch. In June, the iPod touch took 0.12 percent of the Web browser share, according to Net Applications.
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The Death of the Kin
To get anywhere, a project inside Microsoft needs an executive sponsor, and for Pink, Allard had been that guy from day one. It was his baby. Of course, Allard was a visionary, an idea man; Lees – like most Microsoft execs – is a no-nonsense numbers guy, and to put it bluntly, he didn’t like that Pink existed. To quote our sources, Lees was “jealous,” and he was likely concerned that Kin was pulling mindshare (and presumably resources) from Windows Mobile’s roadmap. With enough pressure, Lees ended up getting his way; Pink fell under his charge and Allard was forced into the background.
Gruber Translates Aforementioned Apple PR Piece
iPhones Showing Too Many Bars?
The Apple PR Machine, on the iPhone 4 signal dropping thing:
We have discovered the cause of this dramatic drop in bars, and it is both simple and surprising.
Upon investigation, we were stunned to find that the formula we use to calculate how many bars of signal strength to display is totally wrong. Our formula, in many instances, mistakenly displays 2 more bars than it should for a given signal strength. For example, we sometimes display 4 bars when we should be displaying as few as 2 bars. Users observing a drop of several bars when they grip their iPhone in a certain way are most likely in an area with very weak signal strength, but they don’t know it because we are erroneously displaying 4 or 5 bars. Their big drop in bars is because their high bars were never real in the first place.
Android and the F Word
Android developer Derek James:
As far as development, I know the Android team doesn’t like the “F” word, but fragmentation is a very real issue. There’s the increasing number of hardware configurations. There’s vertical firmware fragmentation in the sense that there’s a spectrum of versions in the ecosystem ranging from 1.5 to 2.2. And then there’s horizontal firmware fragmentation in the customized variants by the manufacturers, like Sense UI and MOTOBLUR. This rapidly expanding diversity is great in terms of expanding the user base, but it increasingly makes development and testing a pain. The Android team has done a great job of trying to mitigate these issues. The development tools associated with Android are very nice. But it will become more and more difficult to develop apps and games that run on more and more configurations if the gap between the oldest and newest firmware version continues to grow and manufacturers continue to release their own versions.
iPhone Customer Gets Stranger’s Data
Maria Avila had an old iPhone. It was time to give it some of that new 4.0 flavor. So she went to her local Apple store in Modesto, Calif., to have the iOS 4 software installed and came back with an installation she hadn’t quite expected. Yes, a slide show of strange photos, 110 of them.
Thumbing through her new pictures, Avila told CBS13 in Stockton, Calif.: “I don’t know these people.”
HP and Palm Become One
HP:
HP today announced it has completed its acquisition of Palm Inc. at a price of $5.70 per share of Palm common stock in cash.
The combination gives HP significant headway into one of technology’s fastest-growth segments with Palm’s innovative webOS platform and family of smartphones, plus a rich portfolio of intellectual property from the smartphone pioneer.
I really hope they can release some killer WebOS devices. It’s a great mobile OS, but Palm’s hardware sucks.
Amazon Buys Woot
Woot announced the deal in what may be the best CEO-written letter ever.
Apple’s ‘Refine Over Redesign’ Philosphy
Gruber hit on something in his iPhone 4 review that made me stop and think before I could get past it:
Apple seems very confident about the precise size and dimensions of the iPhone display: 3.5 inches, with a 3:2 aspect ratio. Not 3 inches. Not 4 inches. In fact, Apple seems very confident regarding everything it decided for the original 2007 iPhone. There are no new buttons, or even moved buttons. The Retina Display is emblematic of the iPhone 4 as a whole, both hardware and software: the same fundamental idea as the original iPhone, but clarified. It hasn’t really changed so much as improved — like the same picture in increasingly sharper focus.
New Elvis Photos Found
Graceland archivist Angie Marchese was cataloging receipts and other paperwork from Vernon Presley’s Graceland office about two weeks ago when she found a manila envelope with three photo negatives.
“Just when you think you’ve seen everything, all of a sudden there’s something new,” said Marchese.
Even though I’m a native Memphian, I’m not an Elvis fan, nor have I ever been to Graceland. Regardless, this is still pretty cool.
Gruber Reviews the iPhone 4
From yet another thoughtful, near-obsessive piece by our Chairman:
The overall build quality seems impossibly good. The iPhone 4 is beautiful to behold and feels like a valuable artifact. It’s like a love letter to Dieter Rams.
‘It Is a Fact of Life’
Apple’s internal support documents regarding the iPhone 4 antenna issue have been leaked, and it looks like the company regards it as a non-issue.