&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;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;&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;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;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;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;So funny.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Adam Lisagor Responds to The iPhone App Review&amp;#8217;s Shakedown Attempt’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/03/02/lisagor"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;From the Dept. of It&amp;#8217;s Funny Because It&amp;#8217;s True. (&lt;a href="https://twitter.com/siracusa/status/9882059403"&gt;Via John Siracusa&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Why DRM Doesn’t Work, Or: How to Download an Audio Book From the Cleveland Public Library’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/03/02/drm"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Edward Tufte:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;The panorama sequence appears to be an interface for an interface, a distancing from the core activities of users, who just want to get on with what they want to do. My view is to let the user&amp;#8217;s eyes do more on a screen-image rich with opportunities rather than having to move through a sequence of thin decorative screens in order to find the desired action.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Edward Tufte&amp;#8217;s Initial Thoughts on the Windows Phone 7 Series Interface Design’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/03/02/tufte-wp7"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Nilay Patel, Esq. has a rundown of the patents at Engadget. Some of these sound like the worst sort of software patent bullshit, like &amp;#8220;Unlocking A Device By Performing Gestures On An Unlock Image&amp;#8221;, but others are hard to judge from the name alone. And despite Apple&amp;#8217;s PR saying there are 20 patents at issue, they seem to have only listed 10.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Summary of the iPhone Patents Apple Is Suing HTC for Infringing’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/03/02/patel"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;John Paczkowski has PDFs of Apple&amp;#8217;s two filings. (Click the orange down-arrow button to download the PDFs rather than read them in the inline Flash dingus.)&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Apple’s Suits Against HTC’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/03/02/apple-htc-docs"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Apple PR:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Apple today filed a lawsuit against HTC for infringing on 20 Apple patents related to the iPhone’s user interface, underlying architecture and hardware. The lawsuit was filed concurrently with the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) and in U.S. District Court in Delaware.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;“We can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions, or we can do something about it. We’ve decided to do something about it,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours.”&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Off the top of my head, this is the first time I can recall Apple filing a patent lawsuit against a competitor except as a counter-suit (e.g. &lt;a href="http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2009/12/11countersue.html"&gt;against Nokia&lt;/a&gt;). I can&amp;#8217;t speak to the hardware and &amp;#8220;architecture&amp;#8221; issues, but I despise the idea of &amp;#8220;user interface&amp;#8221; patents.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Apple Sues HTC for Patent Infringement’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/03/02/apple-htc"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Y Combinator:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Most people think the important thing about the iPad is its form factor: that it&amp;#8217;s fundamentally a tablet computer. We think Apple has bigger ambitions. We think the iPad is meant to be a Windows killer. Or more precisely, a Windows transcender. We think Apple foresees a future in which the iPad is the default way people do what they now do with computers (and some other new things).&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Y Combinator Looking for iPad Startups’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/03/01/yc"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Imagine sweating every single detail like this. That&amp;#8217;s what it&amp;#8217;s like to develop great iPhone apps.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Scrollback in Instapaper Pro 2.2’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/03/01/scrollback-instapaper"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;From an interview with Charlie Miller, winner of the Pwn2Own contest two years running:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Q: In your opinion, which is the safer combination OS + browser to use?&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;That’s a good question. Chrome or IE8 on Windows 7 with no Flash installed. There probably isn’t enough difference between the browsers to get worked up about. The main thing is not to install Flash!&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Pwn2Own 2010: Interview With Charlie Miller’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/03/01/charlie-miller-flash"&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;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt; Fireballed, but &lt;a href="http://www.storiesofapple.net.nyud.net/larry-john-steve-and-bruce.html"&gt;cached here&lt;/a&gt;.&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>

&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. (There&amp;#8217;s also no Start menu in the WP7 UI; that was the linchpin of UI similarity between Windows (for PCs) and Windows Mobile.)&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;The second film in the series (after &lt;em&gt;Dr. No&lt;/em&gt;), I watched this again last night for the first time in a long while. So, so good. Low on the cockamamie; high on style and lovely details, including beautiful on-location footage of early-60s Istanbul. The plot revolves around a Russian code machine and a possible defector (who is, of course, a hot chick), not a preposterous plot to destroy the Earth or all of Western civilization.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Quintessential James Bond &amp;#8212; funny, not corny, a spy movie, not an action movie.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘&amp;#8216;From Russia With Love&amp;#8217;’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/03/02/from-russia-with-love"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;The Register:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Start-up airline Virgin America has decided HTML is &amp;#8220;good enough&amp;#8221; for animating online content on its brand-new website, which went live Monday, dumping Flash. [&amp;#8230;] Virgin picked HTML to give users of iPhones and other mobiles the option in the future of checking in through their phone.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Virgin America Drops Flash From Web Site’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/03/02/virgin"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Amusing that the negative feedback dialog for Office 2010 is called &amp;#8220;Send a Frown&amp;#8221;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Microsoft Visio 2010 Includes Ripped Off Version of Panic&amp;#8217;s Transmit Icon’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/03/02/visio-transmit-rip"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Clip from Ebert&amp;#8217;s appearance on Oprah this week, previewing his new custom-made text-to-speech voice made using audio he had previously recorded before losing his ability to talk.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;I&amp;#8217;m tearing up.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Roger Ebert&amp;#8217;s New Voice’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/03/02/ebert-voice"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Joy.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Dogs Catching Snacks at 1,000 Frames Per Second Super Slo-Mo’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/03/02/dogs-slo-mo"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Edward Kim&amp;#8217;s &amp;#8220;Car Locator&amp;#8221; Android app is generating over $10,000 a month in revenue. Good to know it&amp;#8217;s possible to make meaningful dough from the Android Market.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘An Android Success Story’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/03/02/android-success"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Your humble narrator, back in October when Nokia filed a patent suit against Apple:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;If you can’t beat ’em, sue ’em.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;I feel this suit against HTC is a terrible mistake.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘I Stand By This Quip From October’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/03/02/stand-by-this"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;The &amp;#8220;Any&amp;#8221; key, however, is still safe.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Microsoft Warns Windows XP Users Not to Press F1 Key’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/03/02/microsoft"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;The look-and-feel &amp;#8212; and in some cases, like the task killer and file manager, entire purpose &amp;#8212; of these apps is as good a summary as any of the differences between Android and iPhone OS. (&lt;a href="http://slidescreenhome.com/"&gt;SlideScreen&lt;/a&gt; being the notable exception.)&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Lifehacker&amp;#8217;s Top 10 Android Apps’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/03/02/lifehacker"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

Filed under: Odds and ends, Surveys and Polls, iPhone

Years ago, when the Blackberry started gaining traction among business users, people found themselves using the device so much that the nickname "Crackberry" was invented to describe how addicting the device was. According to a recent survey of 200 Stanford University students, the iPhone is just as addictive as the Blackberry, if not more so. Nearly a third of Stanford students surveyed worried about becoming addicted to their iPhones, while more than a third had heard complaints they were using the devices too much.

The survey gives some insight into why students found their iPhones so addicting: 74 percent of students surveyed said they 'felt cool" when they got an iPhone, but more importantly, a quarter of surveyed students said their iPhones felt like "an extension of their brain or their being."

I can definitely vouch for the addictive nature of the iPhone. I use my iPhone for almost everything these days, and it's fundamentally changed the way I do a lot of things. When I'm out and about and have a question about some bit of trivia, Wikipedia is only a few taps away. When I'm comparison shopping in a store, Amazon's product reviews can tell me in a few seconds whether what I'm looking at is a worthwhile purchase. And I've definitely gotten complaints that I use my iPhone too much from both my wife and a couple of my friends.

Funnily enough, though, the friend who was most apt to complain about my iPhone usage stopped complaining about it altogether once she got an iPhone of her own -- within a few days of using her iPhone, she admitted that she finally understood why I used mine so much.

How about you? Do you find the iPhone as addicting as the Stanford students? Let us know in the poll below or in the comments.

[Via Ars Technica]

TUAWForget the "Crackberry": Stanford students are addicted to their iPhones originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 02 Mar 2010 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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<img align='left' src='http://photos.macnn.com/news/1003/vpntracker6.jpg' border='0' width='176' height='120' />equinux has released v6.2 of VPN Tracker, a Mac VPN client. The title attempts to simplify VPN use through the concept of the Secure Desktop, and by working to maintain a constant connection. The v6.2 update adds support for Cisco ASA 5500-series hardware, and speeds up connectivity for other Cisco devices....

Filed under: Apple, Developer, iPhone, App Store

Since the early days of the App Store, it's been a virtual Wild West out there -- people can release apps that do whatever they can imagine, from a virtual cowbell to a mirror, silly as the functionality may be. Still, there has always been a (very low) hurdle for the least an app can do; once again, Apple has rejected an app for the reason of "minimal user functionality." To be clear, despite what you may be reading elsewhere, this is not a new rule, but one developer thought that his rejection under a long-standing reviewer's option was a reason to raise a little heck.

The creator of the just-rejected app (which, for the record, shows a picture of a duck and makes the iPhone quack like a duck) emailed TechCrunch looking for a little justice, and all he got from them was sarcasm. We don't have anything he'll want to hear, either: with hundreds of thousands of applications in the store, Apple is entitled to use its veto power on the non-functional apps. And so far, that's a good thing for consumers like us.

Deleting apps for sexual content is one thing, but deleting apps for lacking all redeeming value is another. Of course, the standards are just as sticky (what if someone really does need a quacking sound?), but at least someone at Apple does have a standard somewhere in terms of making an app serve a purpose. I don't mind the sex apps (and I think an Explicit category is the right way to go), but I would appreciate Apple stepping up the line on quality, especially now that the store is full of great apps already.

TUAWDeveloper quacks about 'minimal user functionality,' but it's not a new rule originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 02 Mar 2010 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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<img align='left' src='http://photos.macnn.com/news/1003/randallstephenson-sm.jpg' border='0' width='176' height='120' />The iPhone will still be an important part of AT&T's life for "quite some time," company chief Randall Stephenson said today at a Morgan Stanley technology conference today. When prompted about rumors of exclusivity ending, the CEO stopped short of explaining the deal but did say that Apple's phone was both an important part of the company's recent experience and that he didn't expect this to change anytime soon. Stephenson underscored the value of the phone by arguing that it has defined mobile broadband by being easy to use and claimed other devices are "piggybac...

Filed under: Deals

All Dr. Seuss apps, such as The Cat in the Hat, are just $.99 today in honor of the good Doctor's birthday and Read Across America Day. Enjoy!

Note: Deal of the Day is brought to you by our friends at DealNews.

TUAWDeal of the Day: Dr. Seuss apps on sale originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 02 Mar 2010 16:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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<img align='left' src='http://photos.macnn.com/news/1003/briefly0203.jpg' border='0' width='176' height='120' />Skooba Design has announced the release of two new products, the Cable Stable DLX and SkoobaWraps. The Cable Stable DLX features a grid of elastics in different sizes and orientations, allowing users to organize a variety of cables and accessories. Altogether the cable/accessory organizer provides about 18 different spaces for storage in the size of a traditional day planner. The SkoobaWraps is a portable padding that can be wrapped around nearly any object. Several sizes have been made available, allowing users to protect anything from a small camera up to a laptop....

<img align='left' src='http://photos.macnn.com/news/0911/l4d2.jpg' border='0' width='176' height='120' />CodeWeavers has released CrossOver 9, a major update of its Mac virtualization software. Users can run Windows programs inside Mac OS X without having to own their own copy of Windows. The upgrade implements a new user interface, meant to simplify the installation of Windows titles. In "many cases," CodeWeavers claims, installation should now only require a single click....

<img align='left' src='http://photos.macnn.com/news/1003/steelseries6gv2in.jpg' border='0' width='176' height='120' />PC gaming peripherals maker SteelSeries on Tuesday introduced the new 6Gv2 mechanical gaming keyboard and 7H gaming headset at the CeBIT show in Germany. The 6Gv2 has 18-karat gold-plated mechanical switches for quicker response times than conventional keyboards as well as added durability. A buffer system is also built-in for supporting as many simultaneous key presses as there are keys....

Filed under: Video, Internet Tools, iPhone, iPad

Today's movies-in-motion tidbit comes courtesy of Mike over at the Hacking Netflix blog, who let us know that some of his readers are receiving the popup survey above. It inquires as to the reader's interest in a form of Netflix streaming (Wi-Fi only, unsuprisingly) for the iPhone. That's the same streaming for iPhone/iPad that Netflix CEO Reed Hastings called "not a priority" and "not near-term" as recently as last month.

While it's tempting to see this survey as a sign of an imminent iPhone or iPad app full of streaming movie delights -- assuming such an app would make it into the App Store through Apple's "user confusion" gauntlet, which is by no means a sure bet -- don't throw away your iTunes gift cards just yet. The first hints of Netflix's upcoming Wii streaming capability, which is due to launch sometime this spring, also appeared in a survey on the company's site... back in March of 2009, almost 10 months before the announcement of the Wii feature. While such a feature would be quite popular (all of the game consoles have some streaming functionality already, and two-thirds of subscribers have used the service), it seems like we may have a while to wait.

Read on to see the full survey text.

[H/T 9to5Mac]Netflix survey copy:

Imagine that Netflix offers its subscribers the ability to instantly watch movies & TV episodes on their iPhone. The selection availability to instantly watch includes some new releases, lots of classics and TV episodes. There are no advertisements or trailers, and movies start in as little as 30 seconds. You can fast-forward, rewind, and pause or watch again. The movies & TV episodes you instantly watch are included in your Netflix membership for no additional fee.

Whenever you want to instantly watch content on your iPhone, your iPhone must be connected to a Wi-Fi network (such as one you might have at home or at work, or in public places like coffee shops, book stores, hotels, airports, etc.)

If this functionality were available, how likely would you or someone in your household be to instantly watch movies & TV episodes on your iPhone via a Wi-Fi network?

TUAWNetflix survey inquires about iPhone streaming, even though CEO says 'not coming soon' originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 02 Mar 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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<img align='left' src='http://photos.macnn.com/news/1001/iphone3gs-apps.jpg' border='0' width='176' height='120' />Apple's Cupertino headquarters is now hiring for a new position, that of an iPhone advertising SDK manager. The person winning the job will be expected to manage a team "working on the frameworks included in the iPhone SDK" as it relates to supporting "next generation mobile advertising." Among the criteria for the position is experience in online advertising, along with knowledge of Mac OS X, Cocoa, Unix and/or variants of C....

Filed under: Retail, Software, Internet, iPad

John Siracusa drew my attention to an article by Macmillan CEO John Sargent on the agency model, availability and price, in which he says that the company actually plans to keep their hardcover/paperback separation even while selling ebooks. While new hardcover ebooks will sell for $14.99 and $12.99 ("a tremendous discount from the price of the printed hardcover books"), the company will aim to sell "ebook editions of paperback new releases" for as low as $6.99. As Siracusa goes on to say, "now let us all sit back and ponder the concept of 'paperback' and 'hardcover' ebooks."

Macmillan is sticking with an old pricing scheme even in a brand new marketplace. Just what exactly makes the difference between a "hardcover ebook" and a "paperback ebook"? Read on to find out.

The first question is: "Why would someone buy a hardcover book?" I can only think of three reasons (Are there other reasons? There may be, I just can't think of any):

1. You're a big fan of {insert author's name here} and want to read his/her newest book as soon as it comes out.

2. You're a collector and prefer the perceived increased "value" of a hardcover.

3. You like the slightly bigger print/additional whitespace that you often get with a hardcover compared to a paperback.

Second question: Which of those reasons also apply to ebooks?

Certainly #1 applies. There's no faster way to get a book than to download it (assuming both are available on the same day, something else that Macmillan says they will be doing from now on).

On the other hand, #2 certainly does not apply. There's no perceived value of a "first edition" ebook. You're not going to display it on your bookshelf and of course you can't bring it to a book signing. You also can't loan it to your friend or donate it to the library.

What about #3? I assume all ebook readers offer variable font sizing, it seems like one of the most obvious features they could offer. In fact, you can probably make the print larger than the printed hardcover. #3 seems like a reason to prefer an ebook instead of a hardcover.

Third question: When was the last time you paid "list price" for a book? Macmillan says "printed hardcover books...generally range from $28.00 to $24.00." That's what I mean by "list price." I bet very few people ever pay that price. Brick & mortar bookstores have traditionally sold them for much less. It seems like Borders/Barnes & Noble have a "25% off" sticker for every new book that comes out.

I'll tell you when the last time I paid "list price": I wanted to get a signed copy of the latest Hodgman book, and the only way to do that was to order it from Politics & Prose who were only too happy to sell me a signed copy for the full list price, plus shipping. I think I paid about $30 for a book I could have ordered from Amazon for about $12-15.

I'm going to guess you haven't paid "list price" for many books since you first found out about Amazon.com.

Macmillan seems to have done to Amazon what the music industry eventually did to Apple and the iTunes store. Apple created the iTunes store and sold songs for 99¢, doing the most to effect music sales since Napster was first released. Over 10 billion songs have been downloaded legally since (not to mention all those sold through Amazon, etc.).

The music industry absolutely loved it... and wanted to change more per song. They eventually leveraged Amazon.com's MP3 store against Apple to force Apple to allow for variable pricing. $1.29 for "popular", 99¢ for "less popular" and 69¢ for some mythical level of songs, presumably ones no one wants to buy at all, i.e. "Let the Eagle Soar" by John Ashcroft.

(Aside: Almost 5 years later "Price as Signal" by Joel Spolsky remains the smartest thing I've read about what variable pricing means to the music business and why they wanted it.)

The music industry eventually got its way. They are now selling songs for $1.29 on iTunes, and guess what?! Higher prices mean slower sales. I know! Who would have guessed?!

Amazon created the Kindle and sold books for $9.99. The book industry absolutely loved it... and wanted to charge more per book. Publishers also didn't want the Kindle to be able to read books aloud because, well, obviously that was going to hurt audiobook sales, and where's the fun in not being able to charge someone multiple times for the same content?! Do you think they've learned nothing from George Lucas? Ironically, Amazon was leveraged by the announcement of Apple's iPad (turnabout is fair play). Apple, which fought long and hard for standardized pricing for music, easily accepted variable pricing for books.

Is this really all that different than Apple releasing the iPhone for $600 and then dropping the price to $400?

Yes and no.

Obviously Apple realized that it could profit by selling iPhones for more initially and then could boost sales by dropping the price after the early adopters had spent their money. In that sense it's much like someone who is going to buy the new Christopher Moore book the day that it comes out.

One difference is that book publishers are dangling by a hairy financial thread, whereas Apple has enough money to buy Canada and turn it into Steve Jobs' summer house.

Apple was also the only company in the world selling the iPhone, and even $600 was a "competitive" price. Those who bought when it came out were able to use it on a daily basis for two months before the price dropped to $400. Those who buy an ebook when it first comes out get to read it once and then, well, keep it in case they ever decide to read it again. While book publishers are the only ones selling particular books by particular authors, there are scads of other publishers, a seemingly endless supply of writers, and this thing called "the Interwebnet" which is offering people plenty to read, for free.

When you are buying a hardcover book, you're getting something which is clearly different than a paperback. It's also easy to argue that you are getting something better than a paperback (despite the fact that some people might prefer paperbacks to hardcover). That's why a hardcover is worth more than a paperback.

Why is an ebook worth more than the same ebook, months later? It isn't.

The most logical thing for ebook users to do is put a note in their calendars to remind them to buy the book in six months instead of when it comes out. It's not as if they will have trouble finding anything to read in the meantime.

The nearest comparison that I can make is to apps that I've purchased from the App Store. I've purchased several which later dropped their price significantly, e.g. $10 to $4, $5 to $3, etc. The "actual dollar amount" may not seem like that much, but percentage-wise, it's a big cut. The effect that it has had on me is pretty simple: I now wait before buying a new app. Not only do I get to hear other people review it (since there are still no "demo" versions available) but I also get to see if the price drops. Net result? Fewer impulse buys, and almost certainly fewer purchases overall.

It seems to me that is exactly what book publishers don't want to do: give people a reason to wait longer to buy books and a reason to resist impulse purchases. I'm sure publishing executives are worried about ebook sales cannibalizing more profitable hardcover sales, but I wonder if these aren't two separate markets. People who want to buy ebooks have made a conscious decision to not purchase physical books.

Macmillan seems to want to go about business using the same rules and models that have been in place: "buy early, pay more." But part of that equation has always been "buy early, pay more, get something better." Charging more for the same ebook completely misses the third part of that equation.

TUAWMacmillan trying to sell readers 'hardcover' ebooks originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 02 Mar 2010 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Hardware, Apple, Apple TV, App Store, iPad

Michael Pachter is probably the most visible gaming industry analyst out there -- while he's not always right about his predictions and insight on the video game industry, he does usually know what he's talking about, and he's definitely got the ear of a lot of investors. And so when he says that Apple is planning to turn the Apple TV into a game console, people listen.

In fact, that's exactly what he said on his online show last week -- he says that "by accident," Apple has "become a serious gaming company." Steve Jobs never really was interested in gaming, and yet, because the iPod touch has really jumped into gaming with the App Store (and the iPad will follow), Apple will go for games more and more as a way to sell their hardware. He also says the Apple TV will get hooked up to the App Store sooner or later, and that it probably won't be sold as a straight game console, but will eventually succeed as a "multi-use, multi-purpose device" that plays games.

Hardly an original idea, of course, but the rub here is that while lots of people have suggested Apple make a jump like this, the company itself hasn't been interested in doing so. Despite the App Store's success, Jobs still doesn't seem interested in games (the iPad is getting new iWork apps on day one, but all it gets officially for games is upscaling), and Apple has echoed the original idea of the TV as a "hobby." Hooking up the Apple TV to the App Store would be an interesting move, but I'm not convinced it's one Apple wants to make quite yet. Pachter says it'll happen as soon as 2012 -- we'll see.

TUAWPachter: Apple will have a game console soon originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 02 Mar 2010 13:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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