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St. Jude Shirts For Pre-Order
Dear Readers —
Several of you have reached out with support for my family since we discovered our son Josiah has brain cancer. He continues to do well at St. Jude, but we wanted to do something to give back.
So we partnered with a very talented local designer and are now selling t-shirts. These shirts are the official “Go J Go” St. Jude marathon team shirts, but we have plenty for sale to the public. All the proceeds go to St. Jude in Josiah’s honor. You can read more, see the artwork and order by clicking here. Thanks again.
The Memphis Flyer Looks Back
The Flyer — Memphis’ top alternative newspaper — turns 20 this week. Editor Tim Sampson looks back at a lost age of journalism:
It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. It was the freakin’ weirdest of times. They were fun times and they were stressful times. It was two decades ago, and we were starting this strange little newspaper called the Memphis Flyer. I was the first editor and in my 20s (for a very short time) and weighed about 50 pounds less than I do now. We didn’t have e-mail, the World Wide Web, spell-check, blogs, Facebook, Twitter, or even cell phones, but, by damn, we could — and did — smoke at our desks, and sometimes it was more than mere tobacco. We were out to change the world or, at least, Memphis. All two-and-a-half of us on the editorial staff who were putting the paper out each week. And we were nuts. Not as nuts, though, as many of the people who took to our little paper and thought that they had finally found the Holy Grail of alternative news reporting and opinion. But more about that later.
Intel to Settle in Antitrust Case
Trying to resolve a longstanding legal case, the chip maker Intel agreed on Thursday to pay its rival, Advanced Micro Devices, $1.25 billion to settle antitrust and patent disputes.
The settlement will resolve a case pending in Federal District Court in Delaware and two in Japan. In addition, A.M.D. said it will withdraw all of its regulatory complaints worldwide.
In the antitrust complaint filed in 2005 in Delaware, A.M.D. contended that Intel had bullied dozens of computer makers, retailers and distributors by threatening to retaliate against them if they did business with A.M.D. The complaint also accused Intel of using improper tactics, like discriminatory rebates and subsidies to win and keep customers.
‘Great Overall Package’
Prince McLean at AppleInsider:
The latest iMacs deliver a significant performance boost, better specs overall and much greater RAM expansion. Along with its capability to act as a DisplayPort monitor, the new model and its incredible widescreen display delivers a great overall package at a new lower price. It’s also great to see Apple offering RAM upgrades at prices that aren’t simply absurdly unreasonable.
The iMac’s glossy screen will not appeal to some users, but the display looks amazing, and is a significant jump up in quality compared to last year’s iMacs. If you’re in the market for a new iMac, the new model makes a great, well rounded upgrade. If you’re considering a new large display, you might even be tempted to get the iMac just for that, and leave it running in the background as a server or distributed processing node. The only possible downside might be if the noises we heard are typical and not something that can be addressed by AppleCare or a software update.
Writing as a Transaction
When you understand that nobody wants to read your shit, your mind becomes powerfully concentrated. You begin to understand that writing/reading is, above all, a transaction. The reader donates his time and attention, which are supremely valuable commodities. In return, you the writer, must give him something worthy of his gift to you.
In a world where we all carry Internet-connected phones in our pockets, this is even more true.
Prominent iPhone Developer Leaves the Platform
Joe Hewitt — one of the lead guys on Facebook’s iPhone app — in a letter to Tech Crunch:
My decision to stop iPhone development has had everything to do with Apple’s policies. I respect their right to manage their platform however they want, however I am philosophically opposed to the existence of their review process. I am very concerned that they are setting a horrible precedent for other software platforms, and soon gatekeepers will start infesting the lives of every software developer.
On the Bottom Line
While the press and rivals obsess over market share, Apple quietly comes in and makes an insane amount of money. It’s the same in the computer industry. Small market share, huge amount of money. The most important thing for all of these are companies is the bottom line. Apple wins that battle.
According to the report, Apple made $1.6 billion in operating profit off of the iPhone in Q3. Nokia, meanwhile, made $1.1 billion. Let’s put this in perspective. Recent numbers suggest Nokia controls roughly 35% of the worldwide handset market. Apple? About 2.5%.
Bing Gets Wolfram Alpha into Bed
On perhaps the more complex end, users can type in complicated math equations or even ask Bing to display a graph plotting an equation and get results.
More practical applications perhaps for a wider audience include answers to questions like which fruit, an orange or a kiwi, has more vitamins. Searching for a food item on Bing will return a nutrition facts label, much like the one attached to most food products, that summarizes the information.
Snow Leopard Update Kills Atom Support
It shouldn’t be long before some clever hacker figures out a workaround and releases a patched kernel to the world, re-enabling the OS on Atom based computers. But that’s not the story. The bigger message is that Apple has finally stopped ignoring the incessant buzz of the hobby-hacking, Mac netbook scene and instead pulled out a fly-swat and dealt it a whack. The war is officially on.
And ironically, this will only hit the hobbyists and tinkerers. Psystar, that other flea in Apple’s ear, is unaffected, as the fake Macs it sells do not use the Atom chip.
Wired Reviews the 13-inch MacBook Pro
The littlest MacBook Pro finally gets all the features of its larger brethren, making it pound for pound one of the most impressive laptops on the market today. For starters, the aluminum unibody construction is solid to an extreme: There’s no wiggle or shimmy when you lift up this laptop. It’s a high-tech brick that, if you gathered enough of, you could probably pave your driveway with.
I couldn’t agree more. From my review of the machine back in August:
100,000 Droids Sold?
More than 100,000 Droid phones were sold in the first weekend since the device’s launch, estimates Mark McKechnie, an analyst with Broadpoint AmTech. That’s about half of the initial stock made available to Verizon and Best Buy stores nationwide.
“Demand seems brisk,” says McKechnie. “While we heard of no stores that were completely sold out, the majority reported that more than half of the initial stock was sold, and some said they had just a few remaining.”