Mint-Condition Geniuses

post from Daring Fireball on 02 August 2010 10:04:33 PM. © Daring Fireball

In case you missed it over the weekend, I took a few photos and a video at the opening of the new Apple Store on Walnut Street here in Philadelphia.

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Read The Full Article:
http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/07/31/new-apple-store

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MisinformationWeek

post from Daring Fireball on 02 August 2010 09:04:29 PM. © Daring Fireball

From page 3 of Eric Zeman’s comparison of the iPhone 4 and Droid X:

The iPhone 4 won’t support applications built in-house by businesses. All iPhone apps must be approved by Apple and are only distributed through the iPhone App Store. Enterprise app writers can develop for Android handsets, which support non-market applications to be installed. This gives the Droid X a slight advantage when it comes to apps.

Yes, if only the iPhone supported an enterprise development system that didn’t route through the App Store, that’d be a heck of a feature. I bet it’d be successful, too.

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Read The Full Article:
http://www.informationweek.com/news/hardware/handheld/showArticle.jhtml?articleID
=226200268&pgno=3&queryText=

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Bizness Apps launches iPhone App Creator for
Small Businesses

post from on 02 August 2010 07:10:00 PM. ©

Bizness Apps is a start-up company that will provides high-end, affordable iPhone applications to[...]

Read The Full Article:
http://prmac.com/release-id-15070.htm

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PDF Security Exploit Allows JailbreakMe Website
to Jailbreak iPhones and iPad Over the Web

post from Daring Fireball on 02 August 2010 07:04:54 PM. © Daring Fireball

Jim Dalrymple:

Unlike some jailbreaking apps, JailbreakMe.com does not require a third-party app. All you have to do is visit the JailbreakMe.com on your iPhone and follow the onscreen instructions. When it?s done, your phone will be jailbroken.

Yikes. It’s odd how the press is mostly covering this as “jailbreaking now more convenient” rather than “remote code exploit now in the wild”.

Here’s an analysis by Ching-Lan Huang suggesting that it’s using a PDF heap overflow to execute code. But Huang is wrong — Apple has its own PDF rendering engine, it doesn’t use Adobe’s, and the heap overflow bug Huang points to is in the Acrobat PDF renderer. Charlie Miller says it’s exploiting a PDF font bug, and says:

Starting to get a handle on jailbreakme.com exploit. Very beautiful work. Scary how it totally defeats Apple’s security architecture.

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Read The Full Article:
http://www.loopinsight.com/2010/08/01/jailbreakme-returns-offers-jailbreak-for-ip
hone-4-and-ipad/

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Global Smartphone Market Share

post from Daring Fireball on 02 August 2010 07:04:54 PM. © Daring Fireball

Graphs by Horace Dediu, based on data from Canalys.

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Read The Full Article:
http://www.asymco.com/2010/08/02/android-global-share-rises-to-16-of-smartphones-
in-q1/

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Halo 2600

post from Daring Fireball on 02 August 2010 06:05:08 PM. © Daring Fireball

New Atari 2600 game by Ed Fries; here’s a great write-up on how and why he made it. (Via Andy Baio.)

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Read The Full Article:
http://members.shaw.ca/jeffv/halo2600.html

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Chris Glasss Photographs of Graceland

post from Daring Fireball on 02 August 2010 06:05:07 PM. © Daring Fireball

Just great.

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Read The Full Article:
http://chrisglass.com/album/2010/07/13/graceland/

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Report: Apple to Take Top Spot in Portable
Computing Market Share

post from TheAppleBlog on 02 August 2010 05:04:54 PM. © TheAppleBlog

A new report suggests the iPad is behind Apple’s unprecedented growth in portable computers, defined as notebooks, netbooks, and tablets. Apple took third place in worldwide market share for the second quarter of 2010, and is on a trajectory to become number one as soon as the end of the year.

Philip Elmer-DeWitt at Apple 2.0 reports on the disruptive numbers from Deutsche Bank analyst Chris Whitmore. By adding the 2.47 million Mac portables and 3.27 million iPads sold last quarter, Whitmore found that “Apple leapt over Asus, Lenovo, Toshiba and Dell in terms of global unit share.” Moving from seventh to third place, that puts Apple behind only HP and netbook king Asus, but there is magical trouble for Asus and other netbook makers.

According to Whitmore, while every one of the top five computer manufacturers saw growth slow year over year, “Apple’s traditional MacBook business posted accelerated unit growth on a year-over-year basis in Q2 despite the launch of the iPad.” Mac portables saw 33 percent growth year-over-year, compared to an industry average of 24 percent as reported by IDC.

While Mac portables making big gains with the iPad might seem counter-intuitive, we’ve been here before. Like the iPod and the iPhone, the iPad requires a computer for synchronization, and if you like the iPad–and who doesn’t?–maybe you would like the Mac. This might also answer the question, “Why Do You Need a Computer to Use an iPad?” for Apple to make big coin.

Even better, Mac portables may finally be getting a foot in the door of business. According to Forrester Research, the iPhone, once disdained by IT departments as “unserious, insecure, trendy and suitable only for customers,” is now supported by “29% of North American and European enterprises.” That growing acceptance is expected to be extended to the iPad, though the “BlackBerry still rules the roost.” Maybe not for long.

According to web metrics firm Net Applications, “the iPhone posted its largest single-month usage gain ever in July,” going from 0.59 percent to 0.7 percent of overall OS market share. That is by far the single largest jump since the iPhone was introduced. So much for “Antennagate,” and at least for now the iPhone is growing faster than Android again, at twice the pace.

As for RIM and BlackBerry, the last available data is for June, and at .07 percent it was a tenth that of the iPhone, but that’s as measured by web browsing. It should be noted that the BlackBerry still outsells the iPhone, 11.2 million to 8.4 million for the most recent quarter. However, if one includes other iOS devices, the iPod touch and iPad, Apple sold somewhere around 15 million devices last quarter.

Either way, Apple appears set to takeover the mobile world, and I, for one, welcome our new iOSverlords.

Read The Full Article:
http://theappleblog.com/2010/08/02/report-apple-to-take-top-spot-in-portable-comp
uting-market-share/

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Washington Post Co. Sells Newsweek to Sidney
Harman for $1

Less than the cost of a single newsstand issue. Of course, that’s because the magazine comes with $70 million in debt. (Harman is the co-founder of Harman Kardon.)

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Read The Full Article:
http://paidcontent.org/article/419-wapo-sells-newsweek-to-harman-announcement-com
ing-this-afternoon/

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MGSplitViewController for iPad

Offers more layout options than the system’s built-in iPad splitview controller — like showing the left-side source list as a real source list rather than a popover when in portrait orientation. (Apple’s WWDC 2010 app used this style of layout in portrait; the standard behavior is like Mail, where you can only get a popover in portrait.)

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Read The Full Article:
http://mattgemmell.com/2010/07/31/mgsplitviewcontroller-for-ipad

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