&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://twitter.com/wilshipley/status/9363515820"&gt;Wil Shipley on Twitter&lt;/a&gt;, presumably in response to &lt;a href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/19/coldeway"&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; (and where by &amp;#8220;other platforms&amp;#8221;, Shipley apparently means &amp;#8220;Microsoft Windows&amp;#8221;):&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Hmm, @gruber ignores that Flash on other platforms can and does use hardware H.264 decoding, but Apple won’t give Adobe access.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;I didn&amp;#8217;t mention the issue yesterday, no, but I wrote &lt;a href="http://daringfireball.net/2010/01/apple_adobe_flash#performance"&gt;a whole section about it in this piece&lt;/a&gt; a few weeks ago, and I specifically linked to Adobe&amp;#8217;s own &lt;a href="http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer10/#FAQ"&gt;FAQ&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href="http://theflashblog.com/?p=1641"&gt;weblog entry&lt;/a&gt; on the issue.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;I think the issue is a red herring, spin from Adobe intended to share the blame for Flash&amp;#8217;s Mac OS X performance with Apple. First, Flash performance gripes are not limited to H.264 video playback. &lt;em&gt;Everything&lt;/em&gt; Flash Player does is slower on Mac OS X than Windows. What&amp;#8217;s Adobe&amp;#8217;s excuse for Flash&amp;#8217;s performance on non-H.264 video?&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Second, even Apple&amp;#8217;s own &lt;a href="http://www.apple.com/macosx/specs.html"&gt;QuickTime on Snow Leopard&lt;/a&gt; only &lt;a href="http://www.macrumors.com/2009/06/10/snow-leopard-h-264-hardware-acceleration-and-opencl-requirements/"&gt;makes use of H.264 hardware acceleration with a single graphics card&lt;/a&gt;: the Nvidia 9400M. If you don&amp;#8217;t have that graphics card in your Mac, you don&amp;#8217;t get H.264 hardware acceleration, period. That card is used across the board in current MacBooks and Mac Minis, but there are an awful lot of older Macs in use &amp;#8212; a majority I&amp;#8217;d wager &amp;#8212; which don&amp;#8217;t have that card. It&amp;#8217;s also not present in current brand-new Mac Pros and most iMacs.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Third, no one is complaining about the lack of hardware acceleration for other video playback software on Mac OS X, like &lt;a href="http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-macosx.html"&gt;VLC&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href="http://code.google.com/p/movist/"&gt;Movist&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href="http://perian.org/"&gt;Perian&lt;/a&gt;, or even (as mentioned in the previous paragraph) QuickTime itself on machines without the Nvidia 9400M. Even if we concede the point that Flash Player&amp;#8217;s lack of access to H.264 hardware acceleration on Mac OS X inherently blocks it from matching its H.264 playback performance on Windows, I fail to understand how that blocks it from matching the performance of other video playback software on Mac OS X itself.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt; Fourth, hardware accelerated H.264 support is &lt;a href="http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer10/releasenotes.pdf"&gt;a new feature in the as-yet-unreleased Flash Player 10.1&lt;/a&gt;. It in no way explains the performance difference in Flash Player 10.0 on Mac OS X and Windows.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Lastly, does anyone really think it would be a good idea for web content plugins to have direct access to graphics card hardware? Is it absurd to think that it&amp;#8217;s a reasonable OS design to limit &lt;em&gt;plugins&lt;/em&gt; to higher-level APIs? Should Flash Player be a kernel extension, so that it can ensure it gets plenty of CPU cycles and have direct access to whatever hardware it wants?&lt;/p&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://macworldexpo.com/"&gt;Macworld Expo&lt;/a&gt; 2010 kicks off tomorrow in San Francisco. Is it going to fly without Apple? I don&amp;#8217;t know. I don&amp;#8217;t think anyone does yet. Apple&amp;#8217;s traditional presence at Macworld was so large, both figuratively (with the attention paid to their keynote address) and literally (with their massive booth on the show floor), that their absence has effectively rendered Macworld a new event. I think it&amp;#8217;s smart that IDG moved the date back a month; anything they could do to emphasize that it&amp;#8217;s going to be new and different this year can only help. (I have no idea if it was feasible, but if it had been, I&amp;#8217;d have advised moving the show across the street to Moscone West, just to make it &lt;em&gt;look&lt;/em&gt; different, too.)&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Apple&amp;#8217;s absence will be felt in two ways. First, the lack of an Apple keynote address has significantly diminished the amount of media attention. That was inevitable. But it wasn&amp;#8217;t really Macworld Expo, the trade show and conference, that was garnering that attention. It was Apple itself. Apple&amp;#8217;s keynotes really didn&amp;#8217;t have much at all to do with the exhibit floor or conference sessions. I suppose there were some number of attendees who considered attending the keynote as a major reason to buy a conference pass, but percentage-wise only a small number of attendees could ever see the keynotes in person. It&amp;#8217;s not like Apple hasn&amp;#8217;t given us much to talk about recently &amp;#8212; hello, iPad &amp;#8212; it just wasn&amp;#8217;t announced at Macworld itself.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The more worrisome factor for me is Apple&amp;#8217;s absence from the show floor. They had a huge booth in a prominent spot and they drew people in. The role they played on the show floor is very much analogous, I think, to the role played by a big department store like Macy&amp;#8217;s or Nordstrom at a shopping mall.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;To me, though, the reason to walk the show floor has always been about the small companies &amp;#8212; often the &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; small ones. The ones where the employees manning the booth are the engineers and designers who made the product they&amp;#8217;re promoting. I&amp;#8217;ve been to a bunch of Macworld Expos and I never once failed to discover at least one fascinating product by walking the show floor. &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;In terms of what&amp;#8217;s going on other than the trade show, I&amp;#8217;ve long thought that the inordinate amount of front-loaded attention paid to Apple&amp;#8217;s keynote address drew attention away from the fact that Macworld has turned into a large and successful conference, with tracks spanning everything from programming to graphic design.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Nothing could replace a Steve Jobs keynote address, so, wisely, they&amp;#8217;re not trying. Instead, Macworld has scheduled a &lt;a href="http://macworldexpo.com/fp"&gt;bunch of featured speakers&lt;/a&gt; throughout the week, including David Pogue, Kevin Smith (yes, &lt;a href="http://www.viewaskew.com/"&gt;that Kevin Smith&lt;/a&gt;), Leo Laporte, and, yours truly. &lt;a href="http://macworldexpo.com/sessions?s=QSHOWA0005AZ"&gt;I&amp;#8217;ll be speaking Friday at 4:30pm&lt;/a&gt;, where I&amp;#8217;ll share the secret recipes for my award-winning cupcakes and melt-in-your-mouth croissants.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;(DF readers: you can register for the show using the discount code &amp;#8220;GRUBER&amp;#8221; to get a &lt;em&gt;free&lt;/em&gt; expo pass that will get you into my talk (and the show floor, and the other feature presentations). That code is also good for a 20 percent discount on any of the conferences. Just keep in mind that with that code, it&amp;#8217;s &lt;em&gt;totally free&lt;/em&gt; to come see my talk and the other feature presentations.)&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The bottom line for me is that the potential is there for Macworld to remain a great show. Imagine if there&amp;#8217;d never been a Macworld Expo before, and that this was the first year. It wouldn&amp;#8217;t be surprising that Apple declined to participate. But is there demand for a days-long nerdfest for Mac and iPhone professionals and aficionados? I say yes.&lt;/p&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Some good questions &lt;a href="http://www.scripting.com/stories/2010/01/31/whatIfFlashWereAnOpenStand.html"&gt;from Dave Winer regarding Apple, Adobe, and Flash&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;What if Apple were trying to erase something that&amp;#8217;s not company-owned? Either a formal or de facto standard? Further, what if their alternative were something that was locked-down and owned by a company? Further, what if the company was Apple?&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;I&amp;#8217;d say that&amp;#8217;d be a different ball of wax entirely. It would depend, for one thing, on the specific open / de facto standard technology.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;But as for open &lt;em&gt;web&lt;/em&gt; standards, the evidence &amp;#8212; actions and shipping code, not just words &amp;#8212; strongly indicate that Apple is a major proponent of them. Apple didn&amp;#8217;t have to release WebKit as an open source project &amp;#8212; they could have kept their extensions atop the LGPL-licensed WebCore private.&lt;sup id="fnr1-2010-02-01"&gt;&lt;a href="#fn1-2010-02-01"&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt; They&amp;#8217;ve re-written WebKit&amp;#8217;s JavaScript engine from scratch at least twice, and released it all as open source. (Apple has also been aggressive about releasing its advanced non-web developer technology, &lt;a href="http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/DOCUMENTATION/Cocoa/Conceptual/Blocks/Articles/00_Introduction.html"&gt;like blocks and LLVM&lt;/a&gt;, as liberally-licensed open source.) All of Apple&amp;#8217;s top competitors in the mobile space have either already adopted WebKit or soon will: Android, WebOS, even BlackBerry. Members of Apple&amp;#8217;s WebKit team have been helping drive HTML5 since its inception. In short, I&amp;#8217;d say Apple likes its technology open and its products closed.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;E.g., it makes all the difference in the world that Apple is pushing H.264 rather than, say, QuickTime as the way forward for embedded web video.&lt;sup id="fnr2-2010-02-01"&gt;&lt;a href="#fn2-2010-02-01"&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;I do understand &lt;a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/jan/31/ipad-review-comments-naughton"&gt;the fear&lt;/a&gt;. It&amp;#8217;s indisputable that Apple seeks large amounts of control over its products. So it&amp;#8217;s a reasonable question to ask whether Apple sees the web itself, which they have no control over, as a problem. I don&amp;#8217;t think that&amp;#8217;s the case at all, though. The web, as a whole, is arguably the single most entrenched computer technology ever created. So where Apple seeks control with regard to the web is in the technology to render it &amp;#8212; HTML, CSS, JavaScript. No one can tell them what to do with WebKit; they wait for no one to shape and bend WebKit to suit their needs.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;My feeling is not that Apple seeks total control over all content and software in iPhone OS. I&amp;#8217;d say it&amp;#8217;s more like they&amp;#8217;re providing two well-defined, nice, neat, easily-understood extremes: the totally controlled native Cocoa Touch, and the totally open web.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Winer ends with a suggestion for Adobe:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Adobe might want to consider, right now, very quickly, giving Flash to the public domain. Disclaim all patents, open source all code, etc etc. That would throw the ball squarely back into Apple&amp;#8217;s court and would frame the question right now in its most stark terms.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;That&amp;#8217;d be an interesting move, and it would certainly shake things up. But what if the source code to Flash Player is &amp;#8212; as many would wager &amp;#8212; a huge steaming pile of convoluted C++ horseshit? It&amp;#8217;s sort of like what if Microsoft open-sourced the Internet Explorer rendering engine. It&amp;#8217;s not like anyone who is now using WebKit or Gecko would switch to that just because it was opened &amp;#8212; or that WebKit, Mozilla, and Opera would suddenly be obligated to or even interested in adopting IE-specific web features.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The problem for Flash is just like the problem for IE &amp;#8212; the web has already moved on.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div class="footnotes"&gt; &lt;hr /&gt; &lt;ol&gt; &lt;li id="fn1-2010-02-01"&gt; &lt;p&gt;An earlier version of this article stated that the entirety of WebKit is BSD-licensed. That&amp;#8217;s wrong; the &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KHTML"&gt;KHTML library&lt;/a&gt; that Apple started with is LGPL-licensed, and so therefore is the WebCore component in WebKit. We regret the error.&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href="#fnr1-2010-02-01" class="footnoteBackLink" title="Jump back to footnote 1 in the text."&gt;&amp;#8617;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/li&gt; &lt;li id="fn2-2010-02-01"&gt; &lt;p&gt;H.264 is an open standard, but admittedly and unfortunately &lt;a href="http://shaver.off.net/diary/2010/01/23/html5-video-and-codecs/"&gt;not a free standard&lt;/a&gt;, hence Mozilla&amp;#8217;s opposition to it. My point here is simply that H.264 is not owned by Apple or any other single company.&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href="#fnr2-2010-02-01" class="footnoteBackLink" title="Jump back to footnote 2 in the text."&gt;&amp;#8617;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ol&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;The guys who made the video demonstration of the Flash Player 10.1 beta argue that battery performance isn&amp;#8217;t a problem:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Our own tests show that video can be played for well over 3 hours over Wi-Fi from YouTube in H.264 (Baseline 1.2).&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;If you think that sounds good, note that the Nexus One is &lt;a href="http://www.google.com/googlephone/m/hardware_complete_specs.html"&gt;rated for 7 hours of video playback time&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Flash Player 10.1 Battery Performance on the Android Nexus One’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/24/flash-battery"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Ashlee Vance, reporting for the NYT on HP&amp;#8217;s failure in the mobile market:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Sales of HP&amp;#8217;s hand-held products, including its iPaq smartphone, dropped to $25 million in the quarter, down from $57 million in the same period last year. Apple, by contrast, had sales of $5.6 billion for iPhones and related products during its most recent quarter.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;HP’s anemic performance in the smartphone market has left analysts perplexed.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;There&amp;#8217;s nothing perplexing about it. HP doesn&amp;#8217;t have their own mobile OS. Instead they banked on Windows Mobile, and Windows Mobile stinks.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘HP&amp;#8217;s Failure in Mobile Phones’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/24/hp-mobile"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Now that the whole thing has been posted to YouTube, you can watch from Flash-less devices such as your iPhone or Apple TV, or even sans Flash on your Mac if you&amp;#8217;ve signed up for &lt;a href="http://www.youtube.com/html5"&gt;YouTube&amp;#8217;s HTML5 beta&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘YouTube Version of Your Humble Narrator&amp;#8217;s Macworld Feature Presentation’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/24/youtube-mwsf-2010"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;&amp;#8220;Exhibition&amp;#8221; or not, this was a great match. I particularly loved the cohesive branding they established.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Khoi Vinh and Nicholas Felton Comment on Their Layer Tennis Match Last Week’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/25/vinh-felton"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Four months after debuting as the top-of-the-line Android handset, the Droid is now selling on Amazon for just $50 (with a Verizon contract). Still can&amp;#8217;t upgrade it to Android OS 2.1, either. (&lt;a href="http://twitter.com/counternotions/status/9610547225"&gt;Via Kontra&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Motorola Droid Now Just $50 at Amazon’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/25/droid-amazon"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Pure web app e-book reader for iPhone and Android. Install it on your iPhone home screen and it acts like a regular app, including the use of local storage for your saved books.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Ibis Reader’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/25/ibis"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#8217;s not in the store yet, but there&amp;#8217;s a new &amp;#8220;Explicit&amp;#8221; category in the form developers use when submitting apps.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt; Oops, maybe not. &lt;a href="http://gizmodo.com/5479497/apple-removes-explicit-option-from-itunes"&gt;Gizmodo is reporting&lt;/a&gt; that the &amp;#8220;Explicit&amp;#8221; category has been removed.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘ Apple May Be Adding ‘Explicit’ Section to App Store’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/24/explicit"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Reuters:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Sirius XM Radio Inc. posted its first quarterly profit since its merger and said it expected to add 500,000 new subscribers in 2010 as the recovery in the car market boosts demand for satellite radio.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Looks like they&amp;#8217;re going to make it.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Sirius Posts Profit, Sees Big Subscriber Growth’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/25/sirius"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Obviously, this is the pessimistic take on the &amp;#8220;What happens to Apple post-Jobs?&amp;#8221; question:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Palm is basically Apple, Jr. And if a bunch of Apple geniuses can&amp;#8217;t kick butt on their own at Palm, how are they going to kick butt without Steve at Apple?&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;He has a point, insofar as that Palm &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; staffed with many former Apple employees, and, in terms of design and feel and concept, WebOS is the most Apple-like, by far, of any other software platform in the world. But Frommer&amp;#8217;s logical presumption that Palm&amp;#8217;s former Apple employees are interchangeable with those who are at Apple today is headache-inducing.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Worse, with regard to mobile, today&amp;#8217;s Palm &amp;#8212; the Rubinstein-led, stocked with former Apple people, WebOS Palm &amp;#8212; only came into existence &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; the iPhone debuted. For the sake of argument we can concede that the team at Palm today is just as talented as the team under Jobs at Apple and it still might not be enough to dig the new Palm out of the hole it started in.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;As I stated in my talk at Macworld this month, what Apple will be like post-Jobs is simply unknowable. &lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Dan Frommer Says Palm&amp;#8217;s Decline &amp;#8216;Shows That Apple Is Screwed Without Steve Jobs&amp;#8217;’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/25/steve-jobs"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Pushing the limits of per-post art (and code) direction. Geoffrey Grosenbach explains in detail how it works.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘About PeepCode&amp;#8217;s Blog’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/25/peepcode-blog"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Smart stuff. (&lt;a href="http://www.macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/apple_posts_webcast_of_their_presentation_at_the_goldman_sachs_tech_conf/"&gt;Via MacDailyNews&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Apple Posts Audio From Tim Cook&amp;#8217;s Q&amp;amp;A Session at Goldman Sachs Conference’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/25/cook-audio"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Very odd, since (a) there doesn&amp;#8217;t seem to be anything even vaguely &amp;#8220;objectionable&amp;#8221; anywhere on the company&amp;#8217;s weblog, and (b) even if there were, what business is it of Citibank&amp;#8217;s?&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Fabulis describes itself as a &amp;#8220;network that connects gay men with amazing experiences down the block and around the world&amp;#8221;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Citibank Blocks Bank Account of Startup Fabulis, Citing &amp;#8216;Objectionable Content&amp;#8217; on Company Weblog’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/25/fabulis"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Not good.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Palm Slashes Guidance, Stock Tanks’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/25/palm"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;So with this whole thing where &lt;a href="http://news.google.com/archivesearch?q=apple+sexy+apps&amp;amp;scoring=a&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;ned=us&amp;amp;um=1&amp;amp;sa=N&amp;amp;sugg=d&amp;amp;as_ldate=2010/01&amp;amp;as_hdate=2010/01&amp;amp;lnav=hist0"&gt;Apple has removed and banned&lt;/a&gt; like 5,000 &amp;#8220;sexy apps&amp;#8221; from the App Store, I think I&amp;#8217;ve figured out the reason why, including why they&amp;#8217;re &lt;a href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/23/app-store-sexy-apps"&gt;granting exceptions&lt;/a&gt; to established names like Sports Illustrated, Playboy, and Victoria&amp;#8217;s Secret. It&amp;#8217;s about branding. Let me just state right here up front that I don&amp;#8217;t agree with or like how they&amp;#8217;re doing this. I&amp;#8217;m just trying to make sense of it.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;It&amp;#8217;s easier, though, to first run through what this is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; about.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;I&amp;#8217;ve seen a lot of speculation that the exceptions are about money. I.e. that Apple wanted to ban the sexy apps but left the big-name ones in because they don&amp;#8217;t want to lose their 30 percent cut of the money these apps generate. That doesn&amp;#8217;t hold water, though &amp;#8212; a slew of apps that &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; been banned were top sellers, established brand names or not. If it were just about revenue, Apple would have left them all in the store.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/henry-blodget-apples-absurd-double-standard-boobs-skin-and-sex-apps-are-fine-when-big-media-makes-them-2010-2"&gt;Henry Blodget speculates&lt;/a&gt; that the established brand-name exceptions are about setting up deals for iPad apps from the companies behind them. But that&amp;#8217;s just a variation on the &amp;#8220;it&amp;#8217;s about the money&amp;#8221; argument. Again, if Apple&amp;#8217;s interest here was about money, they wouldn&amp;#8217;t be banning any of these apps in the first place. Apple is not going to be hard up for iPad apps and content. If anything, I suspect the problem with iPad apps will be just like that with iPhone apps &amp;#8212; too many of them, not too few.&lt;sup id="fnr1-2010-02-25"&gt;&lt;a href="#fn1-2010-02-25"&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Another iPad-related theory &amp;#8212; suggested by several DF readers via email &amp;#8212; is that it&amp;#8217;s about the education market. The idea being that Apple wants to sell iPads to schools and therefore wants anything even remotely objectionable out of the App Store. But institutional iPads will be managed devices, just like &amp;#8220;enterprise&amp;#8221; iPhones are today. Students using a school-owned iPad won&amp;#8217;t be able to install apps from the App Store, so it doesn&amp;#8217;t really matter which apps are for sale.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Lastly, if you think about it, it&amp;#8217;s clearly &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; about banning porno and bikini-clad-semi-porno from the iPhone entirely. &lt;a href="http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/23/apple-iphone-pornography-ban/"&gt;MG Siegler writes&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Apple is going through all this trouble of removing these apps, and creating more work in scanning for the next sexy apps to reject, when built into every iPhone and iPod touch is not one, but two huge entry points for explicit material &amp;#8212; and both are apps made by Apple themselves. The first, I alluded to above: iTunes. There are no shortage of films and TV shows with nudity and sexual content (along with violence and everything else) that are available on iTunes for purchase on the device. The same is true for explicit music.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;But the second app is far worse: Safari. Each iPhone and iPod touch has a web browser that is more than capable of accessing any site on the web with a few clicks. This includes sites with hardcore pornography, or anything else a teenage kid can dream up. Apple is going through all this trouble to block sexy apps (which have never contained nudity, by the way, just sexy pictures), when they offer one of their own that makes it much easier to find far more sinister content.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Siegler is correct that MobileSafari is completely open to anything and everything published on the web. But he draws the wrong conclusion. Apple isn&amp;#8217;t futilely trying to ban this sort of content from the iPhone. They&amp;#8217;re just removing it from the App Store. Think about a physical world analogy to the retail Apple Stores. There&amp;#8217;s all sorts of software (and hardware) you can buy and install for Macs that Apple would never sell in their stores.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The purest representation of the Apple brand is Apple&amp;#8217;s own &lt;a href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/23/cook-goldman"&gt;remarkably small&lt;/a&gt; (for a company of its size) lineup of products. Retail Apple Stores (and Apple&amp;#8217;s &lt;a href="http://store.apple.com/"&gt;web store&lt;/a&gt;) are a slightly expanded representation of its brand &amp;#8212; they sell many third-party products, but they are carefully selected by Apple itself.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The App Store is looser. The vast majority of the 150,000+ available titles would not be there if Apple were managing the App Store the way they manage their retail stores. It&amp;#8217;s &lt;em&gt;good&lt;/em&gt; that it&amp;#8217;s looser. It almost has to be. (It&amp;#8217;s pretty hard to find people complaining that Apple allows too &lt;em&gt;many&lt;/em&gt; titles into the App Store.)&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;But, still, Apple sees the App Store as an extension of the Apple brand. That&amp;#8217;s why flat-out pornography has never been and never will be allowed. You can walk into a Barnes and Noble and buy a copy of Maxim, but you won&amp;#8217;t find a copy of Hustler. Not because Hustler wouldn&amp;#8217;t sell, but because selling pornography goes against the Barnes and Noble brand.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;I think what Apple was getting squeamish about wasn&amp;#8217;t the sexy apps themselves, but the cheesiness that the sexy apps (and their prominence in best selling lists) was bestowing upon the general feel and vibe of the App Store. One thing I wasn&amp;#8217;t aware of before the recent crackdown was the degree to which these apps were seeping into various non-entertainment categories. E.g., like half the &amp;#8220;new&amp;#8221; apps in the &amp;#8220;productivity&amp;#8221; category featured imagery of large-breasted bikini-clad women.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The App Store is never going to be like Apple&amp;#8217;s retail stores, and Apple knows it. Apple&amp;#8217;s retail stores, branding-wise, convey an image sort of like between the Gap and Banana Republic &amp;#8212; friendly premium. The App Store is more Old Navy, or maybe even Target. But these sexy apps were casting the App Store into something junkier, bordering on the skeevy.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;What iPhone users choose to access through MobileSafari doesn&amp;#8217;t reflect on Apple. But what is listed in the App Store &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; reflect on Apple. What you see when you peruse the App Store effectively &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; the App Store.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;So what I see as hypocritical about Apple&amp;#8217;s decision here is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; about the fact that you can access the same sort of content via MobileSafari, but rather about the exceptions granted to Sports Illustrated, etc. I see &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt;: Sports Illustrated, Victoria&amp;#8217;s Secret, and Playboy are not just strong brands but also &lt;em&gt;quality&lt;/em&gt; brands. But who&amp;#8217;s to say some new brand couldn&amp;#8217;t be just as good? The best apps in all sorts of categories across the board in the App Store are frequently from new companies, building new brands. It&amp;#8217;s no more fair for the &amp;#8220;hot chicks in bikinis&amp;#8221; category to be occupied solely by existing major brands like Sports Illustrated/Victoria&amp;#8217;s Secret/Playboy than it would be if the, say, photo manipulation category were occupied solely by Adobe and Corel, or if games were only allowed from companies like EA.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;If Apple&amp;#8217;s going to allow any of these apps, they ought to allow all of them. They should be evaluated by content, not by the names submitting them. If Apple doesn&amp;#8217;t want these apps boogering up the best-seller lists in various categories across the App Store, they should assign them all to a single category. (Tough job: finding a name for that category.)&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The other thing that bothers me, and ought to bother Apple, is the obvious capriciousness with which these apps were removed. These apps were allowed for about a year and a half. Some developers were prospering by them. And then, boom, they were gone. The reason Apple ought to be concerned about this is that it unsettles &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; developers &amp;#8212; even those whose apps and &lt;em&gt;ideas for future apps&lt;/em&gt; were nowhere along the lines of girls-in-bikinis. What developers see here isn&amp;#8217;t Apple managing its own brand. What developers see is that the App Store is a shaky foundation upon which to build a business. One day you&amp;#8217;re prospering, the next day your app is gone. There are awesome iPhone OS apps that aren&amp;#8217;t being built because developers don&amp;#8217;t trust Apple not to yank the carpet out from underneath them.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Apple sees the App Store as an aspect of its brand. Developers see the App Store as the entirety of the Cocoa Touch platform. This is a significant conflict. Developers, if rejected from the App Store, can freely deliver whatever content they choose through MobileSafari &amp;#8212; but you can&amp;#8217;t reuse compiled Cocoa Touch apps that way. The work invested in a native app can only be recouped through the App Store.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;It&amp;#8217;s entrepreneurism to be willing to take your chances in the market. It&amp;#8217;s healthy skepticism to worry about being locked out of the market after you&amp;#8217;ve already invested heavily in building your product.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div class="footnotes"&gt; &lt;hr /&gt; &lt;ol&gt; &lt;li id="fn1-2010-02-25"&gt; &lt;p&gt;The cynical take on these exceptions, if you don&amp;#8217;t buy my branding argument, is that Apple might have decided not to antagonize those companies with large, talented, corporate legal departments.&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href="#fnr1-2010-02-25" class="footnoteBackLink" title="Jump back to footnote 1 in the text."&gt;&amp;#8617;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ol&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Dan Frakes:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;As usual, there were also a number of off-beat comments and questions, ranging from suggestions that Apple invest in Tesla Motors (Jobs: “We were thinking of a toga party, actually”) [&amp;#8230;]&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Dan Frakes on Apple&amp;#8217;s Shareholders Meeting’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/25/frakes-shareholders"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Great story.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘&amp;#8216;Find My iPhone&amp;#8217; Rescues Two Stolen Phones at Busch Gardens’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/25/find-my-iphone"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Philip Elmer-DeWitt, relaying information from unnamed attendees at today&amp;#8217;s Apple shareholders meeting:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Another shareholder then asked a longwinded Q about what Apple/Jobs fears. &amp;#8220;What keeps you awake at night?&amp;#8221; … Jobs deadpans: &amp;#8220;Shareholders meetings.&amp;#8221; Audience erupts in laughter.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Inside Apple&amp;#8217;s Shareholders Meeting’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/25/jobs-shareholders"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Tim Berners-Lee:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;I agree with the WG chairs that these items &amp;#8212; data and canvas &amp;#8212; are reasonable areas of work for the group. It is appropriate for the group to publish documents in this area.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Tim Berners-Lee Rejects Adobe&amp;#8217;s HTML5 Procedural Arguments’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/25/tbl"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Including great families like DIN and Meta. Even better, they &lt;a href="http://blog.typekit.com/2010/02/23/buy-fonts-at-fontshop-host-them-on-typekit/"&gt;work with Typekit&lt;/a&gt; for cross-browser compatibility and ease-of-use.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘FontShop Now Licensing Web Fonts’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/25/fontshop-web"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;The Macalope:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;So far, 2010 has been dominated by non-stop iPad speculation and Macworld Expo, but it’s time to get back to basics: jerks!&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘They&amp;#8217;re All Out of You’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/28/macalope-jerks"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Brent Simmons:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;This isn’t about being a hardcore low-level developer or some crap like that.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://inessential.com/2010/02/26/core_data_post_follow-up_notes"&gt;Good follow-up&lt;/a&gt; too.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Brent Simmons on Switching Away From Core Data to Direct SQLite’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/26/brent-sqlite"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;My thanks to The Little App Factory for sponsoring this week&amp;#8217;s DF RSS feed to promote Rivet. Rivet lets you stream your movies, photos, and music from your Mac to your Xbox 360 or PS3. It integrates with iTunes and iPhoto (and Aperture); changes and additions on your Mac are instantly visible on your console.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;This week only, DF readers can save 25 percent with coupon code &amp;#8220;DARINGFIRE2010&amp;#8221;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Rivet’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/26/rivet"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;I love this whole unfolding future-of-Flash saga because it&amp;#8217;s a wonderful mix of politics and technology. It&amp;#8217;s complex and multivariate, but not &lt;em&gt;too&lt;/em&gt; complex to get a handle on the basic gist. It occurred to me this week, after both reading and writing quite a bit regarding Flash Player&amp;#8217;s performance issues, that the whole performance angle is a distraction from the fundamental issues at hand.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;I &lt;a href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/01/z"&gt;linked&lt;/a&gt; to &lt;a href="http://www.zeldman.com/2010/02/01/flash-ipad-standards/"&gt;this piece by Jeffrey Zeldman&lt;/a&gt; three weeks ago, but it&amp;#8217;s worth a re-link. His first paragraph nails it:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Lack of Flash in the iPad (and before that, in the iPhone) is a win for accessible, standards-based design. Not because Flash is bad, but because the increasing popularity of devices that don’t support Flash is going to force recalcitrant web developers to &lt;em&gt;build the semantic HTML layer first&lt;/em&gt;. Additional &lt;a href="http://www.alistapart.com/articles/semanticflash/"&gt;layers of Flash UX&lt;/a&gt; can then be optionally added in, just as, in proper, accessible, standards-based development, &lt;a href="http://www.alistapart.com/articles/behavioralseparation"&gt;JavaScript UX enhancements&lt;/a&gt; are added only after we verify that the site works without them.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;I.e. if you think people using iPhone OS devices are an important segment of your intended audience, you can no longer build a Flash-dependent web site. (And if you &lt;em&gt;don&amp;#8217;t&lt;/em&gt; think people using iPhone OS devices are an important segment of your intended audience, you&amp;#8217;re probably wrong.)&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Flash&amp;#8217;s performance problems on Mac OS X and mobile devices are very much real. (As of today, note that there still is no shipping version of the full Flash Player for any major mobile platform.) And I do think these performance issues are a factor in Apple&amp;#8217;s decision not to include it in iPhone OS. But I believe the larger issue goes beyond performance. Apple sees the web as a platform based on open standards. Flash isn&amp;#8217;t part of that.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;So at the moment, Flash&amp;#8217;s performance issues provide Apple with a good apolitical explanation for why Flash Player isn&amp;#8217;t included with iPhone OS. It&amp;#8217;s a way for Apple to argue that they &lt;em&gt;can&amp;#8217;t&lt;/em&gt; rather than that they &lt;em&gt;won&amp;#8217;t&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Yes, I&amp;#8217;m skeptical about how Flash Player is going to perform on Android and WebOS devices. I hope I&amp;#8217;m wrong though. If Adobe&amp;#8217;s able to squeeze acceptable performance out of Flash Player 10.1 on these (relatively) low-power ARM devices, then it&amp;#8217;s very likely that Flash Player 10.1 for Mac OS X is going to be much improved as well. (In the same way the constraints imposed on iPhone OS have been great for Mac OS X &amp;#8212; performance tweaks to components like WebKit (and especially JavaScriptCore) made to get MobileSafari running as fast as possible on low-power iPhones have resulted in fantastic performance improvements to WebKit on high-power Macs.)&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Here&amp;#8217;s what I mean about Flash Player&amp;#8217;s performance being a distraction from the underlying story: Even if Adobe solves Flash&amp;#8217;s performance problems, I still doubt Apple will want to include it in iPhone OS.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;It boils down to control. I&amp;#8217;ve written several times that I believe Apple controls the entire source code to iPhone OS. (No one has disputed that.) There&amp;#8217;s no bug Apple can&amp;#8217;t try to fix on their own. No performance problem they can&amp;#8217;t try to tackle. No one they need to wait for. That&amp;#8217;s just not true for Mac OS X, where a component like Flash Player is controlled by Adobe.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;I know there are some people who see Apple taking a stand against Flash and &lt;a href="http://twitter.com/davewiner/status/9664056169"&gt;worry&lt;/a&gt; that Apple may someday take a stand against the web itself. One thing that everyone who&amp;#8217;s paying attention can agree on is that Apple greatly values control. That&amp;#8217;s indisputable, regardless whether you consider it a virtue or vice. So I think the worriers see that the web is beyond anyone&amp;#8217;s control and conclude that Apple sees it as a threat.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;I say what Apple cares about controlling is the &lt;em&gt;implementation&lt;/em&gt;. That&amp;#8217;s why they started the WebKit project. That&amp;#8217;s why Apple employees from the WebKit team are leaders and major contributors of the HTML5 standards drive. The bottom line for Apple, at the executive level, is selling devices. It may well be true that Steve Jobs doesn&amp;#8217;t really give a shit about the web in and of itself. It&amp;#8217;s just good business for Apple to control a best-of-breed web rendering engine. If Apple controls its own implementation, then no matter how popular the web gets as a platform, Apple will prosper so long as its implementation is superior. (Needless to say, Apple is &lt;a href="http://www.apple.com/ipad/"&gt;quite confident&lt;/a&gt; in this regard.)&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The weird thing about a completely open platform based on open standards is that while no single vendor, such as Apple, can control the content or the standards, it &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; control its implementation. (And it can &lt;em&gt;influence&lt;/em&gt; the content and the standards.) That&amp;#8217;s all they need.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Likewise with Google&amp;#8217;s interest in the open web and HTML5. It&amp;#8217;s reasonable to be cynical and believe that Google is concerned only with making money, not with the open web simply for virtue&amp;#8217;s sake. So long as the web is open, Google&amp;#8217;s success rests within its own control. And in the same way Apple is confident in its ability to deliver devices with best-of-breed browsing experiences, Google is confident in its ability to provide best-of-breed search results and relevant ads. In short, Google and Apple have found different ways to bet &lt;em&gt;with&lt;/em&gt; the web, rather than &lt;em&gt;against&lt;/em&gt; the web.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The best counter-argument is perhaps that, given Apple&amp;#8217;s desire for control, they&amp;#8217;re always going to prefer their wholly owned proprietary platforms &amp;#8212; native iPhone and Mac apps &amp;#8212; over the web, and will eventually come to see the web as a threat. I don&amp;#8217;t think Apple sees it that way, though. There is always going to be a lowest common denominator platform. That used to be Windows. Now it&amp;#8217;s the web. Apple doesn&amp;#8217;t build lowest common denominator platforms. Before, when Windows was the LCD, Apple was in a hard place because they were locked out of that platform: their platform was at odds with it. Now, with the web as the LCD, Apple has it both ways: their platforms gracefully coexist with it. Apple isn&amp;#8217;t a web company, but the web might be the best thing that ever happened to them.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;From Apple&amp;#8217;s perspective, when it comes to software platforms, &lt;em&gt;theirs&lt;/em&gt; is best (Cocoa/Cocoa Touch), because they have complete control. &lt;em&gt;Everyone&amp;#8217;s&lt;/em&gt; is good (the web), because Apple has control over their own implementation and can influence the future direction of the standards. What Apple doesn&amp;#8217;t want is &lt;em&gt;someone else&amp;#8217;s&lt;/em&gt; proprietary platform, where they have no control at all. That&amp;#8217;s what Flash is.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;I&amp;#8217;ve said this &lt;a href="http://daringfireball.net/2008/02/flash_iphone_calculus"&gt;before&lt;/a&gt; and will say it again. There&amp;#8217;s only one path for Flash Player to make its way to iPhone OS:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;ol&gt; &lt;li&gt;It appears first on other competing mobile platforms.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;It works well on those platforms.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;Its presence and popularity on those competing platforms shifts consumer demand and adversely affects iPhone OS device sales.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ol&gt; &lt;p&gt;#1 will happen. Regarding #2, I&amp;#8217;m skeptical, but Adobe has smart engineers and their back is to the wall. #3, though, would require a major shift in momentum.&lt;/p&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;An animated appraisal from Steven Heller.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Olympic Pictograms Through the Ages’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/26/pictograms"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Terrific interview with Jim Reekes, creator of the Mac startup sound. Starts out in Dutch, but the interview is in English. (&lt;a href="http://www.uiandus.com/blog/2010/2/12/creator-of-the-mac-startup-sound.html"&gt;Via Keith Lang&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt; One More Thing&amp;#8217;s &lt;a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkTwNerh1G8"&gt;complete one-hour interview with Reekes&lt;/a&gt; is now on YouTube.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘&amp;#8216;Let It Beep&amp;#8217;’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/26/reekes"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;I was there the week after Macworld Expo. Crystals (the high-end shopping mall) is a disaster inside; it feels like a maze. Aria is nice; its casino has an intriguing modern decor. Vdara seemed like a billion-dollar empty tower. CityCenter as a whole strikes me as a fundamentally bad idea &amp;#8212; a massive complex in Vegas that doesn&amp;#8217;t feel one bit like Vegas.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Lamster, attending the grand opening for architecture critics:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;The absurdity of CityCenter’s urban gesture of separating its buildings now becomes apparent. The PR team has arranged for SUVs to take journalists from the Aria to the Mandarin Oriental for a cocktail party. The buildings are maybe 150 feet from each other.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;(&lt;a href="http://kottke.org/10/02/post-metaphor-las-vegas"&gt;Via Kottke&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Mark Lamster on Las Vegas&amp;#8217;s CityCenter’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/26/lamster-citycenter"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Jeff LaMarche on the Nexus One:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;To make matters worse, the sensors on the Nexus One for the four hardware buttons are not exactly aligned with the silkscreened icons. You have to tap noticeably above the button to get it to register. That was very frustrating for me until someone (from Google nonetheless) pointed out the mis-alignment. Up until then, I consistently had to hit the buttons three or four times to get it to register.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;But even worse than that, the home button on the Nexus One is &lt;em&gt;right below the fracking space bar on the portrait keyboard&lt;/em&gt;. Combine that with the not-completely-precise touch screen, and you have a UX disaster. I can&amp;#8217;t tell you how many times I&amp;#8217;ve been typing and ended up leaving my application due to accidentally hitting the home button. Leaving an application mid-sentence is hardly a good user experience.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;He&amp;#8217;s got lots of other observations I agree with, but the above one is, without question, the biggest WTF on the Nexus One. It&amp;#8217;s just bizarre.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Nexus One From an iPhone Developer&amp;#8217;s Perspective’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/26/nexus-one"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;He had me until the triple-bang to end the thing.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘ Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein&amp;#8217;s Letter to Employees’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/26/rubinstein"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Dr. Strangelove&lt;/em&gt; is out on Blu-ray and it&amp;#8217;s magnificent. (Buy it from Amazon and I&amp;#8217;ll get a kickback.)&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘‘Mandrake, Have You Ever Seen a Commie Drink a Glass of Water? Vodka, That’s What They Drink. Never Water.’’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/25/strangelove"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Rafat Ali, writing for Paid Content:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Five of the leading publishers &amp;#8212; Time Inc., Hearst, Condé Nast, Wenner Media, and Meredith &amp;#8212; have banded together for this “power of print” campaign, reminiscent of a similar campaign by newspaper publishers a few years ago, when the world was slightly rosier. [&amp;#8230;] One ad says: “The Internet is fleeting. Magazines are immersive.”&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Sure, that&amp;#8217;ll do it. Also, I did not know this:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;And of course who else but the troglodyte Jann Wenner to “orchestrate” this campaign, the guy whose magazine Rolling Stone &lt;a href="http://blogs.villagevoice.com/music/archives/2010/02/rolling_stone_d.php"&gt;can’t figure out&lt;/a&gt; how to keep a domain name up; and oh wait, who outsources the running of the mag website to RealNetworks, until late last year. That Wenner. Good luck, the other four.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Sure enough, look at this &lt;a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/signup"&gt;&amp;#8220;sign up for our newsletter&amp;#8221; page&lt;/a&gt; on Rolling Stone&amp;#8217;s web site:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;This site is operated by RealNetworks, Inc. (&amp;#8220;Operator&amp;#8221;) in partnership with Rolling Stone L.L.C.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Magazines Double Down on Print’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/03/01/magazines"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Jon Stokes:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;But it turns out that the A4 is a 1GHz custom SoC with a single Cortex A8 core and a PowerVR SGX GPU. The fact that A4 uses a single A8 core hasn&amp;#8217;t been made public, but I&amp;#8217;ve heard from multiple sources who are certain for different reasons that this is indeed the case. (I wish I could be more specific, but I can&amp;#8217;t.)&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Jon Stokes on the Apple A4’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/03/01/stokes-a4"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Clifford Stoll, writing for Newsweek, did not foresee a bright future for the Web in 1995:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Yet Nicholas Negroponte, director of the MIT Media Lab, predicts that we&amp;#8217;ll soon buy books and newspapers straight over the Internet. Uh, sure.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt; It&amp;#8217;s not that the problems Stoll pointed out weren&amp;#8217;t very real in 1995. It&amp;#8217;s that he saw them as unsurmountable rather than as opportunities. They&amp;#8217;ve mostly all been solved.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Clifford Stoll Pooh-Poohs the Web in 1995’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/03/01/stoll"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;The Mac Sale is again running a great bundle, $500 worth of applications for $49.99. The Mac Sale is a collaboration of The Escapers and MacZOT along with other Mac luminaries. This time the bundle includes, amongst others, MacGourmet Deluxe, VideoConverter Pro, Supercard, Shovebox and MiniOne Racing. This is the 3rd bundle by The Mac Sale, which was founded by The Escapers, makers of the critically acclaimed &lt;a href="http://www.theescapers.com/"&gt;Flux&lt;/a&gt; web design package.&lt;/p&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Merlin Mann:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;This reeks of the same bush-league decision-making that hobbled Hulu, gets music fans sued, and keeps high-quality content locked in a tower like an aging virgin &amp;#8212; too special to be manhandled by the riff-raff who are reluctant to pony up the lavish dowry that was the fashion fifty years earlier.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;The good news: &lt;a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2010/02/yes-we-know-that-the-rss-feeds-are-broken/36782/"&gt;it&amp;#8217;s a bug in The Atlantic&amp;#8217;s updated CMS&lt;/a&gt; &amp;#8212; full-content feeds are coming back. But so while Merlin&amp;#8217;s arguments don&amp;#8217;t apply to The Atlantic in particular, they stand as a fine essay on the turning point traditional paper-and-ink publications are facing.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Merlin Mann on The Atlantic&amp;#8217;s Dropping of Full-Content RSS Feeds’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/28/merlin-atlantic"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;I question whether the survey group is representative of the platforms as a whole, but some of the numbers are striking. Android skews heavily male, for one thing. But by far the most striking stat in these results is the number for 17-and-under users:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;iPhone: 13%&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;iPod Touch: 65%&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;Android: 7%&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;WebOS: 2%&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt; &lt;p&gt;For the phones, 17-or-younger is the smallest demographic. For the iPod Touch, on the other hand, it is by far the largest. More evidence that the iPod Touch is the strongest competitive asset for iPhone OS. &lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘iPhone, Android, and WebOS Demographics Via AdMob Survey’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/28/demographics"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Thank goodness AppleInsider is here to bring me wisdom such as this, from analyst Kathryn Huberty:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;&amp;#8220;We expect Apple to launch new iPhones in June that offer both a lower total cost of ownership and new functionality, potentially including gesture-based technology.&amp;#8221;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Huberty, of course, is the analyst &lt;a href="http://blog.asymco.com/2010/02/26/kathryn-huberty-predicts-apple-performance/"&gt;who 10 months ago set a target for Apple&amp;#8217;s April 2010 stock price at $105&lt;/a&gt;. As of Friday, it was over $204. I&amp;#8217;m sure investors who listened to her advice then have a certain gesture for her.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Deep Insight Into Apple From Morgan Stanley Analyst Kathryn Huberty’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/28/huberty"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;h2&gt;They Stopped Digging&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;Good for Microsoft for starting over with a truly new UI and new &lt;a href="http://www.fiercedeveloper.com/story/windows-phone-7-offer-both-silverlight-and-xna-development/2010-02-21"&gt;developer APIs&lt;/a&gt;. There&amp;#8217;s an old saying that when you find yourself in a hole, stop digging. Microsoft found themselves in a hole the day Apple unveiled the iPhone, but continued digging for three more years. Better late than never, though.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;h2&gt;The Zune UI&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;Just about any new UI would be better than the existing Windows Mobile UI. But basing the new Windows Phone 7 UI on the Zune raises the question of why they think it&amp;#8217;s going to fare any better than, well, the Zune.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;h2&gt;The &amp;#8216;Phone&amp;#8217; in the Name&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;Renaming the platform from &amp;#8220;Windows Mobile&amp;#8221; to &amp;#8220;Windows Phone 7 Series&amp;#8221; makes it even less applicable than ever to non-phone mobiles, like the iPod Touch. I think the iPod Touch is the single greatest strength of the iPhone OS platform. You can argue that phones like the Nexus One and Pre Plus are worthy rivals to the iPhone 3GS, but &lt;a href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/28/demographics"&gt;there is no rival to the iPod Touch&lt;/a&gt;. Now, admittedly, Apple&amp;#8217;s mobile OS has &amp;#8220;phone&amp;#8221; in its name too, so I suppose there&amp;#8217;s no reason why someone might not make a non-phone device running the &amp;#8220;Windows Phone&amp;#8221; OS, but it seems shortsighted to me. The only logical explanation I can think of is that Microsoft only plans to license the OS for use on actual &lt;em&gt;phones&lt;/em&gt;, and they&amp;#8217;re going to pull an Apple with non-phone devices for this platform with their Zune brand.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;h2&gt;The &amp;#8216;Windows&amp;#8217; in the Name&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;The bigger naming question: Why name it “Windows” anything? If Microsoft is &lt;a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/01/technology/01soft.html"&gt;going for a clean break&lt;/a&gt;, why not a new non-&amp;#8220;Windows&amp;#8221; name? I think it shows just how perverse Microsoft’s obsession with &amp;#8220;Windows&amp;#8221; is. There’s no good way to leverage their Windows PC OS monopoly to extend it to mobile, other than the name, so they&amp;#8217;re sticking with it. It doesn&amp;#8217;t even make literal sense. The whole point of the &amp;#8220;Windows&amp;#8221; name is that it was for a system whose UI revolved around the concept of on-screen &lt;em&gt;windows&lt;/em&gt;. There are no windows in the Windows Phone 7 interface.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;A new non-Windows name would have let Microsoft use a 1.0 version number. I think the &amp;#8220;7&amp;#8221; in &amp;#8220;Windows Phone 7 Series&amp;#8221; is a detriment to their message that this is a clean break from Windows Mobile 6 and earlier. The 7 implies &amp;#8220;new version of the old thing&amp;#8221;, which isn&amp;#8217;t what they want at all because the old thing is unloved and unpopular. A new 1.0 thing would have also dampened uncomfortable questions about why phones available today &lt;a href="http://www.downloadsquad.com/2010/03/01/windows-mobile-6-x-users-wont-get-windows-phone-7-upgrade/"&gt;won&amp;#8217;t be upgradeable to the new system when it ships&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;h2&gt;The Osborne Effect&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;That (a) Windows Phone 7 units aren&amp;#8217;t expected until late this year (and think about what happens if the schedule slips); and (b) current Windows Mobile 6.5 phones will not be upgradeable suggests that Windows Mobile phones &lt;a href="http://gizmodo.com/5482641/every-windows-mobile-phone-out-now-is-officially-at-the-evolutionary-dead-end"&gt;aren&amp;#8217;t going to have a good year&lt;/a&gt;, sales-wise. Windows Mobile sales and market share were already in steep decline; the &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_effect"&gt;Osborne Effect&lt;/a&gt; isn&amp;#8217;t going to help.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Perhaps in the long run it doesn&amp;#8217;t matter just how badly Windows Mobile handsets sell between now and the debut of Windows Phone 7 handsets. But on the other hand, the last thing Microsoft needs in the weeks and months leading up to the new handsets debuting is bad press about tanking &amp;#8220;Windows Mobile&amp;#8221; sales. (Another reason why it would have been a good idea to use a new brand name.)&lt;/p&gt; &lt;h2&gt;Triumph of the iPhone Form Factor&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;When the iPhone debuted, there were no popular phones based primarily on a large touchscreen. Now, nearly all new smartphones share the same basic form: a roughly 3.5-inch touchscreen. (Non-touchscreen BlackBerries are the biggest exception.) Many include a hardware keyboard, but the touchscreen is the starting point. The Windows Phone 7 software doesn&amp;#8217;t look like the iPhone&amp;#8217;s much at all. But the hardware is pretty much an iPhone with two extra buttons (Back and Search). One advantage Windows Phone 7 may have over Android is that WP7 was designed with this form factor &amp;#8212; the large touchscreen &amp;#8212; as a baseline assumption. All major Android phones on the market have this form factor too, but the Android OS itself was designed to be abstract enough &lt;a href="http://www.slashgear.com/android-firmware-10-apparently-running-on-qualcomm-handset-video-demos-1316112/"&gt;not to require a touchscreen at all&lt;/a&gt;. That&amp;#8217;s handicapped Android in terms of things like text editing, which requires the use of a trackball or direction pad instead of a pure touch interface.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;h2&gt;Who&amp;#8217;s the Competition?&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;The big three mobile platforms right now are iPhone, BlackBerry, and Android. (Feel free to add Nokia as a fourth.) I think Windows Phone 7 is most competitive with Android, because that&amp;#8217;s the one with the same business model: licensing the OS to OEM hardware makers. They&amp;#8217;re even competing for attention from the very same hardware makers, especially HTC. Google&amp;#8217;s been undercutting Microsoft with free (or nearly free) services for a few years now: Google Docs against Office, &lt;a href="http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/gmail.html"&gt;Gmail for Business&lt;/a&gt; against Exchange, and soon, Chrome OS against Windows. But this one, Android vs. Windows Mobile, is the first one where Google seems poised to take the lead. Windows Phone 7 doesn&amp;#8217;t just have to be better than Android, it has to be better enough to convince handset makers that it&amp;#8217;s worth the licensing fees.&lt;/p&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Patrick Seybold, PlayStation Blog:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;We hope to resolve this problem within the next 24 hours. In the meantime, if you have a model other than the new slim PS3, we advise that you do not use your PS3 system, as doing so may result in errors in some functionality, such as recording obtained trophies, and not being able to restore certain data.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘PS3s Unable to Access PlayStation Network Due to Clock Bug’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/03/01/ps3-clock"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Great idea, clever interface. $1 well-spent. (&lt;a href="http://beautifulpixels.com/iphone/attic-rediscover-your-albums/"&gt;Via Beautiful Pixels&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Attic: iPhone App for Forgotten Albums in Your Library’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/03/01/attic"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Kontra:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;It’s one thing for an app on the iPhone to query the web, talk to its own or others’ servers, but something entirely different for Opera Mini to &lt;em&gt;proxy the entire web&lt;/em&gt; through its own proprietary servers. Yes, you read it right. Opera gets in between you and &lt;em&gt;every single&lt;/em&gt; URL out there, from your bank to your school to your doctor’s office. You never communicate with any site directly, only through Opera proxy servers that first go to that URL, get a page, recompile it into its own markup language, compress and send it back to the mobile client that alone can understand it.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Here&amp;#8217;s the pertinent entry &lt;a href="http://www.opera.com/mini/help/faq/#security"&gt;from Opera&amp;#8217;s FAQ&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Q: Is there any end-to-end security between my handset and &amp;#8212; for example &amp;#8212; paypal.com or my bank?&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;A: No. If you need full end-to-end encryption, you should use a full Web browser such as Opera Mobile.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;I think it&amp;#8217;d be better if Opera Mini simply refused to handle HTTPS requests on its own.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Kontra&amp;#8217;s Case Against Opera Mini on the iPhone’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/03/01/kontra-opera-mini"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#8217;ll believe it when I see it.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘AT&amp;amp;T Says Its Network Will Be Ready for SXSW This Year’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/03/01/att-sxsw"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Andrew Sullivan:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;I understand that advertisers like &amp;#8220;verticals&amp;#8221; to pitch certain kinds of products, and are allegedly leery of individual bloggers with style. I also know in this media climate how vital advertising is, and how our survival online is critical to our endurance in print. I am not a businessman. And I deeply believe in the Atlantic, as readers well know. If this keeps us afloat, that sure is better than going under. If there is business genius here, congrats to all involved.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;But treating blogs as a series of headlines, designed to maximize pageviews, is a deep misunderstanding of blogs, their reader communities and their integrity.  I hope they get restored to their previous coherence, and these amorphous &amp;#8220;channels&amp;#8221; gain some editorial identity. I hope writers like Fallows and Goldberg aren&amp;#8217;t treated as random fodder &amp;#8212; anchors! &amp;#8212; for &amp;#8220;channels&amp;#8221;. I believe in the Atlantic as a place for &lt;em&gt;writing&lt;/em&gt;. The redesign seems to me to ooze casual indifference to that and to the respect that individual writers deserve.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;If you&amp;#8217;re not a regular reader of The Atlantic&amp;#8217;s online content (if you&amp;#8217;re interested at all in politics and national affairs, I recommend it highly), prior to their new redesign, they hosted about half a dozen individual writers&amp;#8217; weblogs. They looked and felt like separate blogs under The Atlantic&amp;#8217;s parent umbrella. The redesign throws all but Sullivan&amp;#8217;s together into a hash.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Count me in with Sullivan that this is, from a reader&amp;#8217;s perspective, a change much for the worse.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;(Noteworthy: Sullivan states that his Daily Dish accounts for 55-60 percent of The Atlantic&amp;#8217;s online traffic; hence the exception.)&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Andrew Sullivan on The Atlantic&amp;#8217;s Redesign’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/03/01/sullivan-atlantic"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Shawn Blanc on the state of iPhone feed reading apps. In short, there are a bunch that are pretty good, but not one that&amp;#8217;s great. (I&amp;#8217;m still using NetNewsWire, but I keep trying all the others when they release new versions.)&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘iPhone’s Missing Feed Reader’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/03/01/feed-readers-blanc"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;From the days when Apple&amp;#8217;s about boxes gave credit to developers.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Larry, John, Steve, and Bruce’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/03/01/larry-john-steve-bruce"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

<img align='left' src='http://photos.macnn.com/news/1003/pioneervsx-820-k.jpg' border='0' width='176' height='120' />Pioneer on Monday put out a pair of new AV receivers highlighted most by their tight link with Apple's handhelds. At the top of the mix, the VSK-820-K has the iPhone-approved USB connection but expands on it with an iPhone Control button: where the receiver's own controls normally take over, the button can force the receiver to hand back control and let the listener pick from the touchscreen of an iPhone or iPod touch....

<img align='left' src='http://photos.macnn.com/news/1003/picnik.jpg' border='0' width='176' height='120' />Google this afternoon said it has bought Picnik, a web-based image editing site. Neither company has unveiled the terms of the deal or their immediate plans, though Google has said the deal will help it "improve the online photo editing experience." Picnik as a service is expected to remain as-is for the near future....

<img align='left' src='http://photos.macnn.com/news/1002/imagearclight.jpg' border='0' width='176' height='120' />Blue Room has launched a new edition of ImageArchiver, also its first aimed at Adobe's Lightroom photo workflow software. While Lightroom includes its own backup functions, ImageArchiver for Lightroom 1.0 operates as a plugin and generates disk images or compressed file archives. Mac and Windows versions for Lightroom 2.x are available....

Filed under: iPhone, App Store, iPod touch

Just in time for the Academy Awards on Sunday, March 7th (when you should be participating in the TUAW Talkcast...), E! Entertainment has relaunched the popular E! Online mobile app.

When we say popular, we mean it -- there are apparently over 1.4 million iPhone and Android users who enjoy their celebrity and entertainment news direct from the free app. The new version of the app includes the "E! Talk Box," which gives users a chance to record their own video commentary for possible inclusion on E! and/or E! Online. While your chances of getting your video snippet on the air are probably slim, at least you can finally talk back to the TV.

Part of the app update includes a new carousel navigation menu above the news section (see photo at right) that highlights coverage during the award season with special videos and a "Live from the Red Carpet" section.

You no longer need to tear yourself away from your iPhone or iPod touch to watch E! shows. The app, for better or for worse, lets you watch complete episodes of such favorites as Keeping Up with the Kardashians and The Soup.

If all you want is the scoop on your favorite celebs, you can also create a custom celeb list and get the news delivered directly to your iPhone or iPod touch.

The free app is available in the iTunes Store now. Be sure to let TUAW know if your iPhone submission to the E! Talk Box gets on the air.

TUAWLive from the Red Carpet: E! Online mobile app relaunched for Oscars originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 01 Mar 2010 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

<img align='left' src='http://photos.macnn.com/news/1003/googlechrome-macextensions.jpg' border='0' width='176' height='120' />Google's Chrome was the only significant web browser to gain market share last month, Net Applications found today. The WebKit browser jumped almost four tenths in February to get 5.61 percent of web use where every other large browser dropped. Internet Explorer fell once again to a record low of 61.58 percent, but Firefox and Safari also declined to 24.23 percent and 4.45 percent each....

<img align='left' src='http://photos.macnn.com/news/0909/appleretail.jpg' border='0' width='176' height='120' />Apple is attempting to trademark a concept called "Joint Venture," filings reveal. A victory would net Apple rights under four different International Classes. The first, 035, covers "retail store services featuring computers, computer software, computer peripherals, and consumer electronic devices," while 037 involves "maintenance, installation and repair of computer hardware, computer peripherals, computer networks, and consumer electronic devices" as well as related "information, advisory and consultancy services."...

Filed under: Hardware, Multimedia, Rumors, Apple, Mac mini

TUAWRumor: Apple prepping HDMI Macs originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 01 Mar 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

<img align='left' src='http://photos.macnn.com/news/1003/amazonkindle2-2sm.jpg' border='0' width='176' height='120' />Freescale used CeBIT to unveil a new processor that it hopes will up-end the e-book reader business. The i.MX508 is the first chip tailor-made for the e-paper devices and cuts out features that aren't needed for the usually grayscale, non-video devices and also builds in its own E Ink controller. Without the unneeded overhead, an e-book reader should cost about $30 less on average and could drop to a total price as low as $150....

<img align='left' src='http://photos.macnn.com/news/1002/thumbplay.jpg' border='0' width='176' height='120' />The director of technology for MobileMe, Pablo Calamera, has left Apple to become the CTO of Thumbplay, reports say. Calamera will start work at Thumbplay on March 8th, ending a 10-year stint with Apple. The executive also has experience with Danger and WebTV, companies which were ultimately bought by Microsoft. At Thumbplay he will be in charge of all of the company's tech efforts....

Filed under: Accessories, iPhone

So, you don't think that the OtterBox 2600 PDA case will provide enough protection for your iPhone? What you need is something like those incredible cases that roadies use to protect instruments and gear.

TUAW reader Stuart tipped us off to such a case, designed and built by a friend who creates cases for bands. While this isn't the most practical iPhone case, it certainly provides a huge amount of protection. It'll also show a certain amount of panache to carry one of these Brady Cases around, flipping open the latches whenever you need an iPhone fix.

If you're interested in ordering a similar case for your iPhone, you can use this contact form to see if Brady Cases will build a custom one for you. Note that this case is not currently listed on the company's web site as a product offered for sale.

TUAWRoadie-approved iPhone case provides ultimate protection originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 01 Mar 2010 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

<img align='left' src='http://photos.macnn.com/news/1002/dvrsml.jpg' border='0' width='176' height='120' />Comcast has announced that its iPhone app now allows users to remotely control their DVR systems directly from the handset interface. myDVR Manager mimics the on-screen programming guide of a typical set-top box, with content arranged by channel or category. Subscribers can modify existing schedules, cancel recordings, or add new items....

<img align='left' src='http://photos.macnn.com/news/1003/iphone3g-3sm.jpg' border='0' width='176' height='120' />AT&T today explained how it plans to upgrade its Austin network to avoid the crush of data use that plagued the South by Southwest festival last year. The carrier in the past few weeks has added a distributed antenna system that provides roughly eight cell sites' worth of network load in and around the Austin Convention Center. Also, AT&T told GigaOM that it will roll out three temporary sites that will not only provide cellular connections but also Wi-Fi, which the iPhone and other AT&T smartphones can access for free....

Filed under: Humor, Steve Jobs

Saturday Night Live (SNL) has done a great job of satirizing Steve Jobs and Apple over the years, and the tradition continued last week. "Undercover Boss" is a TV show in the states that has big business CEOs perform their company's entry-level jobs. SNL expanded the idea to Undercover Celebrity Boss, and featured Steve Jobs as the first target.

In the clip after the break, watch "Steve" explain to an employee that the trash can he's filling, which he calls the iTrash, "...holds over 35 gallons of trash, and plays music."

There are other "celebrity bosses" in the clip (Martha Stewart is especially funny), but it's Steve that got our attention. Good job, SNL! You can watch the video after the break.

[Via iPhone Savior]

TUAWFound Footage: SNL parodies Steve Jobs again originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 01 Mar 2010 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments