Bloomberg: Sprint Said to Plan Unlimited Data
With IPhone 5

post from Daring Fireball on 09 September 2011 10:03:27 PM. © Daring Fireball

Olga Kharif, reporting for Bloomberg:

Sprint Nextel Corp. will offer Apple Inc.?s iPhone next monthwith unlimited data service plans to distinguish itself fromrivals AT&T Inc. and Verizon Wireless, according to peoplefamiliar with the matter.

Might be a tough decision for AT&T refugees planning to switch.

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Read The Full Article:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-09-09/sprint-is-said-to-plan-unlimited-data-wi
th-iphone-5-to-stand-out-from-pack.html

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The New Apple Advantage

post from Daring Fireball on 09 September 2011 09:03:33 PM. © Daring Fireball

Peter Bright wrote a good piece earlier this week at Ars Technica, documenting his attempt to buy a MacBook Air-like Windows laptop (he doesn’t want an Air running Windows using Boot Camp because he doesn’t like Apple’s U.K. keyboard) and finds the experience confusing (too many models to choose from) and expensive (comparatively-spec’d machines from Dell, HP, and Lenovo cost considerably more than an equivalent MacBook Air).

E.g., here’s Bright on shopping from Dell:

It’s even worse if I just browse without searching. The options Iget are just… meaningless. Yes, I want “Everyday Computing,” soI want an Inspiron. But hang on, I also want “Design &Performance,” so I want an XPS. Wait a second, I want “Thin &Powerful,” too. So maybe I want a Z Series? But the only line thatapparently matches my broad search criteria — lightweight,11-14" — I wouldn’t even consider because I don’t want a“gaming” laptop, and so I’m never going to click Alienware!

From HP:

The same odd labels cover everything — I know I don’t want“Mini/Netbook,” but I want both “Everyday Computing” (that termagain) and “High performance” (because I don’t want it to be slow,do I?). And who knows what “Envy” means? When I tick my screensize and weight boxes, I get back a crop of lousy netbooks thatare almost the complete opposite of what I want.

And Lenovo:

It starts off with the same stupid classifications that must makesense to some guy in marketing — “Powered for productivity” and“Optimized for entertainment” and “No-nonsense features built forversatility”.

Here’s what I wrote back in July, linking to Cory Doctorow’s review of the Samsung Galaxy Tab Some-Size-or-Another:

Cory Doctorow calls the new Samsung Galaxy Tab ?meh?:

Ever since the iPad shipped, I?ve been waiting impatiently for acomparable Android device to emerge — something of like shape,size and capacity, but from a more open ecosystem than the oneApple offers.
I love these sort of reviews. I want an Apple-quality productwithout the Apple, and I?m sure I?ll get one soon.

And don’t forget the Apple-like prices, which is where Bright’s laptop hunt faltered. But so why the dearth of Apple-caliber products from companies other than Apple?

Bright’s analysis regarding why the top PC makers seemingly — if not outright admittedly — can’t compete with the MacBook Air strikes me as pretty good:

The problem is that the PC industry, particularly the largeOEMs, just aren’t set up to produce this kind of machine. ThePC industry is built around an idea of almost infinitevariation: different Wi-Fi adaptors, different Ethernetchipsets, different GPUs, different USB3 controllers. Thisvariety is then reflected in the systems available frommanufacturers — and more importantly, it’s reflected in theway the systems are actually built.

Design is largely about making choices. The PC hardware market has historically focused on three factors: low prices, tech specs, and configurability. Configurability is another way of saying that you, the buyer, get a bigger say in the design of your computer. (Bright points out, for example, that Lenovo gives you the option of choosing which Wi-Fi adaptor goes into your laptop.) Apple offers far fewer configurations. Thus MacBooks are, to most minds, subjectively better-designed — but objectively, they’re more designed. Apple makes more of the choices than do PC makers.

This isn’t new. And traditionally, the benefit from Apple’s lesser degree of configurability has been the “it just works” factor — better integration of software and hardware. That with support for fewer components, like, say video cards, the Mac OS needs fewer drivers, and the drivers it does have are less likely to result in unusual conflicts.

But now that Apple’s products are more popular, we’re beginning to see another benefit to Apple’s lesser degree of configurability: greater scalability. Apple needs larger quantities of fewer different components to manufacture the same number of computers as other companies. It’s not just the economies of scale that all companies get when they sell 3 or 4 million laptops in a quarter — it’s greater, because Apple’s 3 or 4 million laptops sold share a larger number of the exact same components.

This advantage is more pronounced with iOS devices. In four years, Apple has gone from not being in the phone business to reaping a majority of the handset industry’s worldwide profits. Yet they make only two phones — the iPhone 4 and 3GS.

Likewise with the iPad. Your only choices:

White or black
GSM, CDMA, Wi-Fi-only
16/32/64 GB of storage

The iPad is the best-selling portable computer in the world and those are the only configurable options. One CPU, one display, one amount of RAM.

The new MacBook Airs are iPad-like. I’ve called my 11-inch Air an “iPad Pro”, and the more I use it, the more that feels true.¹ Apple is selling more MacBooks than ever before, but their range of models is shrinking, not expanding. As SSD prices fall, I expect Apple to drop the “Air” and “Pro” distinctions and simply offer four Air-like MacBooks: 11, 13, 15, and 17 inches.

So let’s be lazy for a second here, and attribute all of Apple’s success over the past 15 years to two men: Steve Jobs and Tim Cook. We’ll give Jobs the credit for the adjectives beautiful, elegant, innovative, and fun. We’ll give Cook the credit for the adjectives affordable, reliable, available, and profitable. Jobs designs them, Cook makes them and sells them.

It’s the Jobs side of the equation that Apple’s rivals — phone, tablet, laptop, whatever — are able to copy. Thus the patents and the lawsuits. Design is copyable. But the Cook side of things — Apple’s economy of scale advantage — cannot be copied by any company with a complex product lineup. How could Dell, for example, possibly copy Apple’s operations when they currently classify ?Design & Performance? and ?Thin & Powerful” as separate laptop categories?

This realization sort of snuck up on me. I’ve always been interested in Apple’s products because of their superior design; the business side of the company was never of as much interest. But at this point, it seems clear to me that however superior Apple’s design is, it’s their business and operations strength — the Cook side of the equation — that is furthest ahead of their competition, and the more sustainable advantage. It cannot be copied without going through the same sort of decade-long process that Apple went through.

Which is not to say we won’t get a real iPad “pro” next year when the iPad expands into a family of two or even three devices, good/better- or good/better/best-style. ↩

Read The Full Article:
http://daringfireball.net/2011/09/new_apple_advantage

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Other Designs Are Possible

post from Daring Fireball on 09 September 2011 08:03:10 PM. © Daring Fireball

Tom Reestman on Apple’s win over Samsung in German court:

It gets old seeing companies copy Apple so fully, and then claimthey had no choice because there’s no other way to make whateverit is they’re making.

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Read The Full Article:
http://thesmallwave.com/the-best-thing-about-apples-win-today-in-germ

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Flash Media Server 4.5

post from Daring Fireball on 09 September 2011 08:03:10 PM. © Daring Fireball

Worst headline of the day has to be this one at BGR: “Adobe Finally Brings Flash to iPhone and iPad”. That’s completely backwards. What Adobe announced:

With Adobe Flash Media Server 4.5, media publishers now have asingle, simple workflow for delivering content using the samestream to Flash-enabled devices or to the Apple iPhone andiPad,? Adobe said in a statement. Flash Media Server 4.5 allowspublishers to stream Flash content to iOS devices, which meanssupport within the iOS Safari browser is not required. Instead ofrelying on a device?s processor to render the stream, whichoften degrades battery life and slows a device down, Adobe?sFlash Media Server 4.5 does all the legwork.

Translation: FMS 4.5 will send HTML5 video to iOS devices, and send Flash Player-wrapped video to other devices. This is Adobe blinking, acknowledging that iOS will never support Flash Player, and is too big a market for video publishers to ignore.

This is the wrong approach for video publishers to take, though. They should be sending HTML5/H.264 video to any user agent that supports it, and only fall back to Flash Player for user agents that don’t support HTML5 and H.264. E.g., a factory-fresh Mac running Safari could be supported the same way iOS devices are, but instead, FMS will insist on using Flash Player, and instead of being shown video, the user will be told to go install Flash Player.

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Read The Full Article:
http://www.bgr.com/2011/09/09/adobe-finally-brings-flash-to-iphone-and-ipad/

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jQuery More Popular Than Flash

post from Daring Fireball on 09 September 2011 06:04:20 PM. © Daring Fireball

AppendTo:

AppendTo, the company dedicated to jQuery, the world?s mostpopular JavaScript Library, released data today showing that thepercentage of websites that have jQuery deployed has officiallysurpassed the percentage of websites that have Adobe Flashdeployed. Statistics compiled by HTTP Archive(http://httparchive.org/), which analyze the world?s top17,000 websites, show that 48 percent of the sites use jQuery,while 47 percent use Flash.

Not really an apples-to-oranges comparison, but it’s an interesting snapshot: one technology waxing, one waning.

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Read The Full Article:
http://appendto.com/jquery-overtakes-flash

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Olé

post from Daring Fireball on 09 September 2011 06:04:20 PM. © Daring Fireball

Kick-ass new single from Pearl Jam, free from their website. Here they are killing it on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon last night.

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Read The Full Article:
http://www.pj20.com/countdown/

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iCheats - Playstation 3 Edition (Cheats for PS3
Games) Releases for iOS

post from prMac on 09 September 2011 06:00:00 PM. © prMac

Calgary based OMGmode Software Inc. today introduces iCheats - Playstation 3 Edition (Cheats for PS3 Games) for iOS devices. This app is a revolutionary new all-in-one game cheat guide app that covers all the most popular PS3 sgames. Hand picked and found from genuine gamers, iCheats aims to help gamers get through every story and annihilate every foe. Cheats for the games can include: cheat codes, glitches, unlockables, walkthroughs, multiplayer guides, unlock codes, trophy guides and more.

Read The Full Article:
http://prmac.com/release-id-30633.htm

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Social Security: A Monstrous Truth

The Economist on Texas governor Rick Perry’s crackpot claim that Social Security “is a Ponzi scheme”:

No Ponzi scheme in the history of the world has ever lasted 75 years.

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Read The Full Article:
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2011/09/social-security-0?fsrc=
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Heck of a Job, RIM

BlackBerry App World:

This web page uses ActiveX controls that work only in MicrosoftInternet Explorer. To ensure that BlackBerry App World iscorrectly downloaded to your BlackBerry, this site is not designedto work with any other Internet browsers. If you cannot useInternet Explorer, you may be able to download the softwaredirectly to your BlackBerry smartphone.

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Read The Full Article:
http://mobileapps.blackberry.com/devicesoftware/entry.do?code=appworld

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Air Force Pilot Heather Penney, 9/11 Hero

Steve Hendrix, reporting for the Washington Post:

Late in the morning of the Tuesday that changed everything, Lt.Heather ?Lucky? Penney was on a runway at Andrews Air ForceBase and ready to fly. She had her hand on the throttle of an F-16and she had her orders: Bring down United Airlines Flight 93. Theday?s fourth hijacked airliner seemed to be hurtling towardWashington. Penney, one of the first two combat pilots in the airthat morning, was told to stop it.
The one thing she didn?t have as she roared into the crystallinesky was live ammunition. Or missiles. Or anything at all to throwat a hostile aircraft.
Except her own plane. So that was the plan.

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Read The Full Article:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/f-16-pilot-was-ready-to-give-her-life-on-sept
-11/2011/09/06/gIQAMpcODK_story.html?sub=AR

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