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March 07, 2010

Daring Fireball

★ Yet More on the Unfolding Future-of-Flash-and-the-Web Saga

I love this whole unfolding future-of-Flash saga because it&#8217;s a wonderful mix of politics and technology. It&#8217;s complex and multivariate, but not too 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&#8217;s performance issues, that the whole performance angle is a distraction from the fundamental issues at hand. I <a href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/01/z">linked</a> to <a href="http://www.zeldman.com/2010/02/01/flash-ipad-standards/">this piece by Jeffrey Zeldman</a> three weeks ago, but it&#8217;s worth a re-link. His first paragraph nails it: <blockquote> 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 build the semantic HTML layer first. Additional <a href="http://www.alistapart.com/articles/semanticflash/">layers of Flash UX</a> can then be optionally added in, just as, in proper, accessible, standards-based development, <a href="http://www.alistapart.com/articles/behavioralseparation">JavaScript UX enhancements</a> are added only after we verify that the site works without them. </blockquote> 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 don&#8217;t think people using iPhone OS devices are an important segment of your intended audience, you&#8217;re probably wrong.) Flash&#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&#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&#8217;t part of that. So at the moment, Flash&#8217;s performance issues provide Apple with a good apolitical explanation for why Flash Player isn&#8217;t included with iPhone OS. It&#8217;s a way for Apple to argue that they can&#8217;t rather than that they won&#8217;t. Yes, I&#8217;m skeptical about how Flash Player is going to perform on Android and WebOS devices. I hope I&#8217;m wrong though. If Adobe&#8217;s able to squeeze acceptable performance out of Flash Player 10.1 on these (relatively) low-power ARM devices, then it&#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 &#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.) Here&#8217;s what I mean about Flash Player&#8217;s performance being a distraction from the underlying story: Even if Adobe solves Flash&#8217;s performance problems, I still doubt Apple will want to include it in iPhone OS. It boils down to control. I&#8217;ve written several times that I believe Apple controls the entire source code to iPhone OS. (No one has disputed that.) There&#8217;s no bug Apple can&#8217;t try to fix on their own. No performance problem they can&#8217;t try to tackle. No one they need to wait for. That&#8217;s just not true for Mac OS X, where a component like Flash Player is controlled by Adobe. I know there are some people who see Apple taking a stand against Flash and <a href="http://twitter.com/davewiner/status/9664056169">worry</a> that Apple may someday take a stand against the web itself. One thing that everyone who&#8217;s paying attention can agree on is that Apple greatly values control. That&#8217;s indisputable, regardless whether you consider it a virtue or vice. So I think the worriers see that the web is beyond anyone&#8217;s control and conclude that Apple sees it as a threat. I say what Apple cares about controlling is the implementation. That&#8217;s why they started the WebKit project. That&#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&#8217;t really give a shit about the web in and of itself. It&#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 <a href="http://www.apple.com/ipad/">quite confident</a> in this regard.) 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 can control its implementation. (And it can influence the content and the standards.) That&#8217;s all they need. Likewise with Google&#8217;s interest in the open web and HTML5. It&#8217;s reasonable to be cynical and believe that Google is concerned only with making money, not with the open web simply for virtue&#8217;s sake. So long as the web is open, Google&#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 with the web, rather than against the web. The best counter-argument is perhaps that, given Apple&#8217;s desire for control, they&#8217;re always going to prefer their wholly owned proprietary platforms &#8212; native iPhone and Mac apps &#8212; over the web, and will eventually come to see the web as a threat. I don&#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&#8217;s the web. Apple doesn&#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&#8217;t a web company, but the web might be the best thing that ever happened to them. From Apple&#8217;s perspective, when it comes to software platforms, theirs is best (Cocoa/Cocoa Touch), because they have complete control. Everyone&#8217;s is good (the web), because Apple has control over their own implementation and can influence the future direction of the standards. What Apple doesn&#8217;t want is someone else&#8217;s proprietary platform, where they have no control at all. That&#8217;s what Flash is. I&#8217;ve said this <a href="http://daringfireball.net/2008/02/flash_iphone_calculus">before</a> and will say it again. There&#8217;s only one path for Flash Player to make its way to iPhone OS: <ol> <li>It appears first on other competing mobile platforms.</li> <li>It works well on those platforms.</li> <li>Its presence and popularity on those competing platforms shifts consumer demand and adversely affects iPhone OS device sales.</li> </ol> #1 will happen. Regarding #2, I&#8217;m skeptical, but Adobe has smart engineers and their back is to the wall. #3, though, would require a major shift in momentum. </content>

by John Gruber at March 07, 2010 11:03 PM | Bookmark with del.icio.us

★ Tits and Apps

So with this whole thing where <a href="http://news.google.com/archivesearch?q=apple+sexy+apps&amp;scoring=a&amp;hl=en&amp;ned=us&amp;um=1&amp;sa=N&amp;sugg=d&amp;as_ldate=2010/01&amp;as_hdate=2010/01&amp;lnav=hist0">Apple has removed and banned</a> like 5,000 &#8220;sexy apps&#8221; from the App Store, I think I&#8217;ve figured out the reason why, including why they&#8217;re <a href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/23/app-store-sexy-apps">granting exceptions</a> to established names like Sports Illustrated, Playboy, and Victoria&#8217;s Secret. It&#8217;s about branding. Let me just state right here up front that I don&#8217;t agree with or like how they&#8217;re doing this. I&#8217;m just trying to make sense of it. It&#8217;s easier, though, to first run through what this is not about. I&#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&#8217;t want to lose their 30 percent cut of the money these apps generate. That doesn&#8217;t hold water, though &#8212; a slew of apps that have 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. <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">Henry Blodget speculates</a> that the established brand-name exceptions are about setting up deals for iPad apps from the companies behind them. But that&#8217;s just a variation on the &#8220;it&#8217;s about the money&#8221; argument. Again, if Apple&#8217;s interest here was about money, they wouldn&#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 &#8212; too many of them, not too few.<a href="#fn1-2010-02-25">1</a> Another iPad-related theory &#8212; suggested by several DF readers via email &#8212; is that it&#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 &#8220;enterprise&#8221; iPhones are today. Students using a school-owned iPad won&#8217;t be able to install apps from the App Store, so it doesn&#8217;t really matter which apps are for sale. Lastly, if you think about it, it&#8217;s clearly not about banning porno and bikini-clad-semi-porno from the iPhone entirely. <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/23/apple-iphone-pornography-ban/">MG Siegler writes</a>: <blockquote> 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 &#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. 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. </blockquote> Siegler is correct that MobileSafari is completely open to anything and everything published on the web. But he draws the wrong conclusion. Apple isn&#8217;t futilely trying to ban this sort of content from the iPhone. They&#8217;re just removing it from the App Store. Think about a physical world analogy to the retail Apple Stores. There&#8217;s all sorts of software (and hardware) you can buy and install for Macs that Apple would never sell in their stores. The purest representation of the Apple brand is Apple&#8217;s own <a href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/23/cook-goldman">remarkably small</a> (for a company of its size) lineup of products. Retail Apple Stores (and Apple&#8217;s <a href="http://store.apple.com/">web store</a>) are a slightly expanded representation of its brand &#8212; they sell many third-party products, but they are carefully selected by Apple itself. 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&#8217;s good that it&#8217;s looser. It almost has to be. (It&#8217;s pretty hard to find people complaining that Apple allows too many titles into the App Store.) But, still, Apple sees the App Store as an extension of the Apple brand. That&#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&#8217;t find a copy of Hustler. Not because Hustler wouldn&#8217;t sell, but because selling pornography goes against the Barnes and Noble brand. I think what Apple was getting squeamish about wasn&#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&#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 &#8220;new&#8221; apps in the &#8220;productivity&#8221; category featured imagery of large-breasted bikini-clad women. The App Store is never going to be like Apple&#8217;s retail stores, and Apple knows it. Apple&#8217;s retail stores, branding-wise, convey an image sort of like between the Gap and Banana Republic &#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. What iPhone users choose to access through MobileSafari doesn&#8217;t reflect on Apple. But what is listed in the App Store does reflect on Apple. What you see when you peruse the App Store effectively is the App Store. So what I see as hypocritical about Apple&#8217;s decision here is not 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 why: Sports Illustrated, Victoria&#8217;s Secret, and Playboy are not just strong brands but also quality brands. But who&#8217;s to say some new brand couldn&#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&#8217;s no more fair for the &#8220;hot chicks in bikinis&#8221; category to be occupied solely by existing major brands like Sports Illustrated/Victoria&#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. If Apple&#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&#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.) 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 all developers &#8212; even those whose apps and ideas for future apps were nowhere along the lines of girls-in-bikinis. What developers see here isn&#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&#8217;re prospering, the next day your app is gone. There are awesome iPhone OS apps that aren&#8217;t being built because developers don&#8217;t trust Apple not to yank the carpet out from underneath them. 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 &#8212; but you can&#8217;t reuse compiled Cocoa Touch apps that way. The work invested in a native app can only be recouped through the App Store. It&#8217;s entrepreneurism to be willing to take your chances in the market. It&#8217;s healthy skepticism to worry about being locked out of the market after you&#8217;ve already invested heavily in building your product. <div class="footnotes"> <hr /> <ol> <li id="fn1-2010-02-25"> The cynical take on these exceptions, if you don&#8217;t buy my branding argument, is that Apple might have decided not to antagonize those companies with large, talented, corporate legal departments.&nbsp;<a href="#fnr1-2010-02-25" class="footnoteBackLink" title="Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.">&#8617;</a> </li> </ol> </div> </content>

by John Gruber at March 07, 2010 11:03 PM | Bookmark with del.icio.us

Adam Lisagor Responds to The iPhone App Review’s Shakedown Attempt

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

by John Gruber at March 07, 2010 11:03 PM | Bookmark with del.icio.us

Why DRM Doesn’t Work, Or: How to Download an Audio Book From the Cleveland Public Library

From the Dept. of It&#8217;s Funny Because It&#8217;s True. (<a href="https://twitter.com/siracusa/status/9882059403">Via John Siracusa</a>.) <div> <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">&nbsp;★&nbsp;</a> </div> </content>

by John Gruber at March 07, 2010 11:03 PM | Bookmark with del.icio.us

Edward Tufte’s Initial Thoughts on the Windows Phone 7 Series Interface Design

Edward Tufte: <blockquote> 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&#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. </blockquote> <div> <a title="Permanent link to ‘Edward Tufte&#8217;s Initial Thoughts on the Windows Phone 7 Series Interface Design’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/03/02/tufte-wp7">&nbsp;★&nbsp;</a> </div> </content>

by John Gruber at March 07, 2010 11:03 PM | Bookmark with del.icio.us

Summary of the iPhone Patents Apple Is Suing HTC for Infringing

Nilay Patel, Esq. has a rundown of the patents at Engadget. Some of these sound like the worst sort of software patent bullshit, like &#8220;Unlocking A Device By Performing Gestures On An Unlock Image&#8221;, but others are hard to judge from the name alone. And despite Apple&#8217;s PR saying there are 20 patents at issue, they seem to have only listed 10. <div> <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">&nbsp;★&nbsp;</a> </div> </content>

by John Gruber at March 07, 2010 11:03 PM | Bookmark with del.icio.us

★ Assorted Brief Observations and Thoughts Regarding Windows Phone 7

<h2>They Stopped Digging</h2> Good for Microsoft for starting over with a truly new UI and new <a href="http://www.fiercedeveloper.com/story/windows-phone-7-offer-both-silverlight-and-xna-development/2010-02-21">developer APIs</a>. There&#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. <h2>The Zune UI</h2> 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&#8217;s going to fare any better than, well, the Zune. <h2>The &#8216;Phone&#8217; in the Name</h2> Renaming the platform from &#8220;Windows Mobile&#8221; to &#8220;Windows Phone 7 Series&#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 <a href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/28/demographics">there is no rival to the iPod Touch</a>. Now, admittedly, Apple&#8217;s mobile OS has &#8220;phone&#8221; in its name too, so I suppose there&#8217;s no reason why someone might not make a non-phone device running the &#8220;Windows Phone&#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 phones, and they&#8217;re going to pull an Apple with non-phone devices for this platform with their Zune brand. <h2>The &#8216;Windows&#8217; in the Name</h2> The bigger naming question: Why name it “Windows” anything? If Microsoft is <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/01/technology/01soft.html">going for a clean break</a>, why not a new non-&#8220;Windows&#8221; name? I think it shows just how perverse Microsoft’s obsession with &#8220;Windows&#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&#8217;re sticking with it. It doesn&#8217;t even make literal sense. The whole point of the &#8220;Windows&#8221; name is that it was for a system whose UI revolved around the concept of on-screen windows. There are no windows in the Windows Phone 7 interface. (There&#8217;s also no Start menu in the WP7 UI; that was the linchpin of UI similarity between Windows (for PCs) and Windows Mobile.) A new non-Windows name would have let Microsoft use a 1.0 version number. I think the &#8220;7&#8221; in &#8220;Windows Phone 7 Series&#8221; is a detriment to their message that this is a clean break from Windows Mobile 6 and earlier. The 7 implies &#8220;new version of the old thing&#8221;, which isn&#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 <a href="http://www.downloadsquad.com/2010/03/01/windows-mobile-6-x-users-wont-get-windows-phone-7-upgrade/">won&#8217;t be upgradeable to the new system when it ships</a>. <h2>The Osborne Effect</h2> That (a) Windows Phone 7 units aren&#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 <a href="http://gizmodo.com/5482641/every-windows-mobile-phone-out-now-is-officially-at-the-evolutionary-dead-end">aren&#8217;t going to have a good year</a>, sales-wise. Windows Mobile sales and market share were already in steep decline; the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_effect">Osborne Effect</a> isn&#8217;t going to help. Perhaps in the long run it doesn&#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 &#8220;Windows Mobile&#8221; sales. (Another reason why it would have been a good idea to use a new brand name.) <h2>Triumph of the iPhone Form Factor</h2> 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&#8217;t look like the iPhone&#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 &#8212; the large touchscreen &#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 <a href="http://www.slashgear.com/android-firmware-10-apparently-running-on-qualcomm-handset-video-demos-1316112/">not to require a touchscreen at all</a>. That&#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. <h2>Who&#8217;s the Competition?</h2> 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&#8217;s the one with the same business model: licensing the OS to OEM hardware makers. They&#8217;re even competing for attention from the very same hardware makers, especially HTC. Google&#8217;s been undercutting Microsoft with free (or nearly free) services for a few years now: Google Docs against Office, <a href="http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/gmail.html">Gmail for Business</a> 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&#8217;t just have to be better than Android, it has to be better enough to convince handset makers that it&#8217;s worth the licensing fees. </content>

by John Gruber at March 07, 2010 11:03 PM | Bookmark with del.icio.us

[Sponsor] The Mac Sale Bundle

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 <a href="http://www.theescapers.com/">Flux</a> web design package. </content>

by Daring Fireball Department of Commerce at March 07, 2010 11:03 PM | Bookmark with del.icio.us

Dogs Catching Snacks at 1,000 Frames Per Second Super Slo-Mo

Joy. <div> <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">&nbsp;★&nbsp;</a> </div> </content>

by John Gruber at March 07, 2010 11:03 PM | Bookmark with del.icio.us

An Android Success Story

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

by John Gruber at March 07, 2010 11:03 PM | Bookmark with del.icio.us

I Stand By This Quip From October

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

by John Gruber at March 07, 2010 11:03 PM | Bookmark with del.icio.us

Microsoft Warns Windows XP Users Not to Press F1 Key

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

by John Gruber at March 07, 2010 11:03 PM | Bookmark with del.icio.us

Lifehacker’s Top 10 Android Apps

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

by John Gruber at March 07, 2010 11:03 PM | Bookmark with del.icio.us

Virgin America Drops Flash From Web Site

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

by John Gruber at March 07, 2010 11:03 PM | Bookmark with del.icio.us

Microsoft Visio 2010 Includes Ripped Off Version of Panic’s Transmit Icon

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

by John Gruber at March 07, 2010 11:03 PM | Bookmark with del.icio.us

Roger Ebert’s New Voice

Clip from Ebert&#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. I&#8217;m tearing up. <div> <a title="Permanent link to ‘Roger Ebert&#8217;s New Voice’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/03/02/ebert-voice">&nbsp;★&nbsp;</a> </div> </content>

by John Gruber at March 07, 2010 11:03 PM | Bookmark with del.icio.us

Not a Good Move, Perception-Wise

Dan Frommer makes a good point: <blockquote> But in terms of perception, it&#8217;s really the latest sign from Apple that it is terrified of Google, whose Android operating system is becoming a formidable rival in the smartphone industry. </blockquote> Whether it&#8217;s true or not doesn&#8217;t matter. This is how it looks. <div> <a title="Permanent link to ‘Not a Good Move, Perception-Wise’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/03/03/dan-frommer-perception">&nbsp;★&nbsp;</a> </div> </content>

by John Gruber at March 07, 2010 11:03 PM | Bookmark with del.icio.us

The U.S. Patent System vs. Innovation

Eric Von Hippel, professor of technological innovation at MIT, in an interview with The New York Times: <blockquote> “It’s a bad scene right now. The social value of patents was supposed to be to encourage innovation &#8212; that’s what society gets out of it. The net effect is that they decrease innovation, and in the end, the public loses out.” </blockquote> Yes, the patent system is supposed to reward the innovators themselves, but it is also supposed to benefit the public interest. <div> <a title="Permanent link to ‘The U.S. Patent System vs. Innovation’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/03/03/hippel">&nbsp;★&nbsp;</a> </div> </content>

by John Gruber at March 07, 2010 11:03 PM | Bookmark with del.icio.us

London Sperm Bank’s New Brand

There&#8217;s nothing Futura can&#8217;t do. (Thanks to DF reader Tom Davis.) <div> <a title="Permanent link to ‘London Sperm Bank&#8217;s New Brand’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/03/03/logos">&nbsp;★&nbsp;</a> </div> </content>

by John Gruber at March 07, 2010 11:03 PM | Bookmark with del.icio.us

Nilay Patel’s Apple vs. HTC Patent Breakdown

Patent-by-patent overview of all 20 patents upon which Apple claims HTC is infringing. <div> <a title="Permanent link to ‘Nilay Patel&#8217;s Apple vs. HTC Patent Breakdown’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/03/03/patent-breakdown">&nbsp;★&nbsp;</a> </div> </content>

by John Gruber at March 07, 2010 11:03 PM | Bookmark with del.icio.us

AT&T’s First Android Phone Replaces Google With Yahoo as Default Search Engine

The phone is the Motorola Backflip. I presume Motorola and/or AT&amp;T did this because they worked out a deal with Yahoo where they get paid for making them the default search engine. Interesting proof of just how much freedom Android&#8217;s open source licensing model offers to handset makers and carriers. What are the odds that AT&amp;T and Motorola will be able to make a Windows Phone 7 handset with, say, Google as the default search engine? <div> <a title="Permanent link to ‘AT&amp;T&#8217;s First Android Phone Replaces Google With Yahoo as Default Search Engine’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/03/02/att-android">&nbsp;★&nbsp;</a> </div> </content>

by John Gruber at March 07, 2010 11:03 PM | Bookmark with del.icio.us

‘From Russia With Love’

The second film in the series (after Dr. No). I watched it 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. Not just quintessential James Bond, but maybe the best Bond &#8212; funny, not corny, a spy movie, not an action movie. <div> <a title="Permanent link to ‘&#8216;From Russia With Love&#8217;’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/03/02/from-russia-with-love">&nbsp;★&nbsp;</a> </div> </content>

by John Gruber at March 07, 2010 11:03 PM | Bookmark with del.icio.us

Apple Tops Fortune’s 2010 List of World’s Most Admired Companies

Fortune: <blockquote> As BMW CEO Norbert Reithofer puts it, &#8220;The whole world held its breath before the iPad was announced. That&#8217;s brand management at its very best.&#8221; </blockquote> Google, Berkshire Hathaway, Johnson &amp; Johnson, and Amazon round out the top five. <div> <a title="Permanent link to ‘Apple Tops Fortune&#8217;s 2010 List of World&#8217;s Most Admired Companies’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/03/04/apple-fortune">&nbsp;★&nbsp;</a> </div> </content>

by John Gruber at March 07, 2010 11:03 PM | Bookmark with del.icio.us

★ A Thought Regarding the Old Apple-v.-Microsoft ‘Look and Feel’ Lawsuit

A bunch of readers have emailed regarding <a href="http://daringfireball.net/2010/03/this_apple_htc_patent_thing">yesterday&#8217;s piece</a> on the Apple-HTC patent suit to ask why I didn&#8217;t compare it to Apple&#8217;s ill-fated <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Computer,_Inc._v._Microsoft_Corporation">&#8220;Look and Feel&#8221; lawsuit against Microsoft</a>. I don&#8217;t think the comparison is all that interesting or apt, basically. For one thing, that suit was a copyright case, not a patent case. I think it&#8217;s fair to say that&#8217;s an entirely different ballgame legally. For another, the personnel are completely different. The entirety of that dispute with Microsoft took place during Steve Jobs&#8217;s exile from Apple. But that actually led me to an interesting thought this morning. Leave aside the legal differences between copyright violations and patent disputes, and the two cases more or less boil down to the same fundamental situation: Apple brings to market a revolutionary next step in personal computers; competitors then use those same ideas in competing products. Microsoft and Windows then; Google and Android now. I can see that what some people &#8212; people who are far more sympathetic to the idea of Apple attacking Android via the courts than I am &#8212; are thinking is more or less that Apple got screwed the last time when a competitor was able to shamelessly use the ideas that Apple first created, and so Apple should do whatever it can to keep that from happening again. Apple&#8217;s argument in the Microsoft case was that Windows was a copy of the Mac&#8217;s copyrighted &#8220;look and feel&#8221;: mouse pointer, menu bar with pull-down menus, overlapping rectangular windows with a title bar at the top containing buttons for zooming and closing, scrollbars, icons representing applications and documents, click-and-drag text selection, drag-and-drop, a trash can, undo, a &#8220;desktop&#8221;, cross-application copy-and-paste &#8212; all these aspects from the Mac were also in Windows. But what if Apple had patented these things in 1984, and had successfully protected these patents from being used by other U.S. companies? (Or at least the features and designs which weren&#8217;t derived from <a href="http://toastytech.com/guis/star.html">earlier work at Xerox</a>.) It&#8217;s not just Microsoft that would&#8217;ve been blocked from creating Windows as we know it. A company called NeXT would have been blocked from creating NeXTStep. Every single Mac feature I described above was part of the NeXT UI as well. Good ideas are meant to spread. </content>

by John Gruber at March 07, 2010 11:03 PM | Bookmark with del.icio.us

CSS Border Radius

Clever little web tool by Jacob Bijani for generating cross-browser border radius CSS code. (<a href="http://beautifulpixels.com/web/border-radius/">Via Beautiful Pixels</a>.) <div> <a title="Permanent link to ‘CSS Border Radius’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/03/04/css-border-radius">&nbsp;★&nbsp;</a> </div> </content>

by John Gruber at March 07, 2010 11:03 PM | Bookmark with del.icio.us

‘An Explosion of Mobile Patent Lawsuits’

Interesting graphic from Nick Bilton of The New York Times, suggesting that Apple&#8217;s patent suit against HTC is but one more skirmish in an industry-wide patent war. <div> <a title="Permanent link to ‘&#8216;An Explosion of Mobile Patent Lawsuits&#8217;’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/03/04/explosion">&nbsp;★&nbsp;</a> </div> </content>

by John Gruber at March 07, 2010 11:03 PM | Bookmark with del.icio.us

★ This Apple-HTC Patent Thing

There are two aspects surrounding Apple&#8217;s patent litigation against HTC that demand further consideration. First, the severe problems with the U.S. patent system as a whole, particularly with regard to software patents. Second, the strategic implications of Apple&#8217;s decision to file suit. Smart writers with first-hand experience with software patents have written much over the past few years on the system itself. Tim Bray, in particular, <a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=patents+site%3Atbray.org">has written extensively</a> on them, including his own experience obtaining them. I&#8217;ll quote here from <a href="http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/09/15/SWPatents">one of his early pieces on the subject</a>: <blockquote> Are Software Patents a Broken Idea? &#8212; I really don’t know. One of my brothers, an Industrial Designer, has his name on a patent for a device for mixing gases that’s used in chromatographs. When he showed me the filing, with the drawings and schematics and so on, I was impressed; these guys had cooked up a new arrangement of valves and geometries that did a practical task in an elegant and new way. It felt much more rigorous than the way we go about inventing new technology in the software space; but maybe that’s just because I’m way too close to the software world and can see all the warts on its underbelly. I’m inclined to think there’s a spectrum of reasonability in software patents. “One-click ordering” seems like a grievous error, simply because if you said those three words to any web-savvy ecommerce-savvy programmer, they’d say “OK” and build it for you and it would work; which doesn’t seem to meet a high enough bar to qualify as an invention. But consider the basic PGP setup by Phil Zimmerman, it’s just immensely clever and elegant. I have the feeling that that really does qualify as an invention in totally the same sense as my brother’s gas-mixing apparatus. Obviously I think the things I filed are closer to PGP than one-click ordering. </blockquote> In a later follow-up, <a href="http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2004/10/12/PatentTheory">Bray wrote</a>: <blockquote> Does this mean that I’ve concluded that software patents are just fine, thank you, and the current rat’s-nest of litigation is good business practice? No; while I generally agree with <a href="http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/jonathan/20040930#i_believe_in_ip">Jonathan</a> that the software-patent idea is not inherently broken (and thus disagree with <a href="http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/stallman-patents.html">Richard Stallman</a>), the fact is that it’s almost impossible for rational people to have a rational discussion about software patents. The reason is the insanely-dysfunctional behavior of the US Patent and Trademark Office, whose idiotic willingness to <a href="http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2004/08/05/LinuxPatents">grant patents on anything without regard for prior art or the obviousness test</a> has totally poisoned the waters of this discussion. The result, as I’ve argued before, is that the net effect of the software-patent system is to serve as a parasitic tax by lawyers on businesspeople. Where I disagree with Jonathan is on what’s known as “business-method” patents: one-click ordering, per-employee pricing. I’m having trouble seeing the benefit to society in granting patents on something that could never possibly be done secretly. I also think that to get a patent, an invention should include innovation both in conception and implementation. </blockquote> The emphasis in the last sentence quoted above is mine. I&#8217;ve quoted extensively here from Bray because, having re-read his patent-related essays, I find myself in nearly complete agreement with him. I&#8217;m not opposed to the idea of the patent system on general principle (as Stallman and many others are). And I think in many fields, the system has worked and continues to work well. But for software the system, in practice, is undeniably broken. There&#8217;s an argument to be made that software is inherently different than other fields of invention, different in such a way that patents should not apply &#8212; or, should apply for a significantly shorter period of time before expiring. You can&#8217;t (or at least shouldn&#8217;t) be able to patent mathematics, and there are good arguments that programming is a branch of mathematics. But because software patents are granted, concede at least for the moment that certain kinds of software innovations ought to be patentable. Even with that in mind, clearly the U.S. Patent Office is and has granted patents for things which ought not be patentable. Not just silly frivolous things, but patents that have been granted for concepts alone, rather than specific innovative implementations of said concepts. Ideas in the abstract, rather than implementations of ideas. Just a few weeks ago, Bray published &#8220;<a href="http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2010/02/22/Patent-Fail">Giving Up on Patents</a>&#8221;: <blockquote> Not so many years ago, even as I was filled with <a href="http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2004/08/05/LinuxPatents">fear and loathing</a> of the hideous misconduct of the US Patent &amp; Trademark Office, I retained some respect for the notion of patents. I even wrote what I think is an unusually easy-to-read introduction to <a href="http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2004/10/12/PatentTheory">Patent Theory</a>. But no more. The whole thing is too broken to be fixed. Maybe it worked once, but it doesn’t any more. The patent system needs to be torn down and thrown out. </blockquote> Paul Graham, who has also been awarded software patents, <a href="http://www.paulgraham.com/softwarepatents.html">has written well on the subject</a>, too: <blockquote> We, as hackers, know the USPTO is letting people patent the knives and forks of our world. The problem is, the USPTO are not hackers. They&#8217;re probably good at judging new inventions for casting steel or grinding lenses, but they don&#8217;t understand software yet. </blockquote> And: <blockquote> There’s nothing special about physical embodiments of control systems that should make them patentable, and the software equivalent not. Unfortunately, patent law is inconsistent on this point. Patent law in most countries says that algorithms aren’t patentable. This rule is left over from a time when “algorithm” meant something like the Sieve of Eratosthenes. In 1800, people could not see as readily as we can that a great many patents on mechanical objects were really patents on the algorithms they embodied. Patent lawyers still have to pretend that’s what they’re doing when they patent algorithms. You must not use the word “algorithm” in the title of a patent application, just as you must not use the word “essays” in the title of a book. If you want to patent an algorithm, you have to frame it as a computer system executing that algorithm. Then it’s mechanical; phew. The default euphemism for algorithm is “system and method.” Try a patent search for that phrase and see how many results you get. </blockquote> These arcane rules lead to patents being described in an obfuscated manner. That they are patenting algorithms but must pretend they&#8217;re patenting something else is the definition of a broken system. To me, &#8220;user interface&#8221; patents are hand-in-hand with &#8220;<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_method_patent">business method patents</a>&#8221; as examples of things which, no matter how innovative or original, ought not be patentable. They&#8217;re idea patents. Adobe, to take one example, has a patent on <a href="http://eupat.ffii.org/patents/samples/ep689133/index.en.html">tabbed palettes</a>. If you&#8217;ve used Adobe apps like Photoshop, InDesign, or Illustrator in the past decade, you know what they are. Design applications have been using floating on-screen palettes all the way back to the original MacPaint in 1984. Unlike dialog boxes, they weren&#8217;t modal and &#8220;floated&#8221; over the document window. Unlike menus, they remained visible. They&#8217;re ubiquitous in design apps. One shortcoming, however, was that if you opened too many of them, you cluttered your screen &#8212; the more palettes you have open, the less room you have for displaying the document itself. Adobe came up with a great feature: they allowed you to dock multiple palettes together as tabs within a single palette window, and you could drag individual tabs between windows or drag them out into their own window. (Similar, at the palette level, to tabbed web browser windows.) Adobe patented the idea, and when Macromedia implemented a version of it, <a href="http://news.cnet.com/2100-1040-898061.html">Adobe sued</a> (and won &#8212; a measly $2.8 million). To me, that&#8217;s exactly the sort of patent litigation that is aimed at stifling innovation rather than rewarding it. Building on the ideas of others is fundamental to competition. No one company can or should be expected to change the entire U.S. patent system. Like any entrenched system with powerful entities who seek to maintain the status quo, we&#8217;re likely stuck with it. And so the way the computer industry has dealt with it is detente. Companies obtain as many patents as they can, written as broadly as they can get away with. And since everyone (where by &#8220;everyone&#8221; I mean all large tech corporations) has a large patent portfolio, and nearly every idea under the sun has been patented by someone to some degree, most of them are inert. Company A doesn&#8217;t sue Company B for infringing upon patents held by A because A&#8217;s own products almost certainly infringe upon some patents held by B. This is why pure patent troll companies such as <a href="http://techdirt.com/articles/20100217/1853298215.shtml">Nathan Myhrvold&#8217;s Intellectual Ventures</a> are so despised. They&#8217;re immune from the threat of counter-suit because they have no products or services. Their only business is extorting patent licensing fees. The analogy to nuclear weapons is overwrought when considered literally, but in terms of strategy it&#8217;s quite apt. <a href="http://www.paulgraham.com/softwarepatents.html">Paul Graham, on Amazon&#8217;s notorious &#8220;one-click&#8221; patent</a>: <blockquote> Where Amazon went over to the dark side was not in applying for the patent, but in enforcing it. A lot of companies (Microsoft, for example) have been granted large numbers of preposterously over-broad patents, but they keep them mainly for defensive purposes. Like nuclear weapons, the main role of big companies&#8217; patent portfolios is to threaten anyone who attacks them with a counter-suit. Amazon&#8217;s suit against Barnes &amp; Noble was thus the equivalent of a nuclear first strike. That suit probably hurt Amazon more than it helped them. Barnes &amp; Noble was a lame site; Amazon would have crushed them anyway. To attack a rival they could have ignored, Amazon put a lasting black mark on their own reputation. Even now I think if you asked hackers to free-associate about Amazon, the one-click patent would turn up in the first ten topics. </blockquote> Which brings us to Apple and HTC. Regardless of the merits of all 20 of the patents Apple accuses HTC of violating, strategy-wise the comparison to Amazon and Barnes and Noble seems apt: Apple has the clearly superior product and is winning handily in the marketplace. Whatever benefit in the market Apple hopes to achieve by this suit to me seems likely to be worth far less than the loss of good will and prestige Apple will suffer if they vigorously pursue this case (let alone if they initiate more such suits). <a href="http://wilshipley.com/blog/2010/03/open-letter-to-steve-jobs-concerning.html">Wil Shipley, in an open letter to Steve Jobs regarding the HTC litigation</a>: <blockquote> You’ve famously taken and built on ideas from your competitors, as have I, as we should, as great artists do. Why is what HTC has done worse? Whether an idea was patented doesn’t change the morality of copying it, it only changes the ability to sue. [&#8230;] If Apple becomes a company that uses its might to quash competition instead of using its brains, it&#8217;s going to find the brainiest people will slowly stop working there. You know this, you watched it happen at Microsoft. </blockquote> Copying ideas is how progress is made. It&#8217;s copying implementations that is wrong (and illegal). Admittedly there are gray areas, and reasonable people can disagree about whether some specific instances cross that line. But HTC&#8217;s phones are not copies of the iPhone. The Nexus One is without question highly influenced by the iPhone, both in terms of physical form factor and the Android software from Google. But it is also without question not a clone. My favorite theory thus far regarding why Apple is suing HTC is expressed entirely in <a href="http://twitter.com/siracusa/status/9884001169">this tweet from John Siracusa</a>: <blockquote> To me, the Apple patent suit smells like nothing more than a manifestation of Jobs&#8217;s own sense of injustice. </blockquote> I.e., Jobs is offended by HTC&#8217;s products, not worried about them. I can understand the indignation, or at least imagine that I can. Apple&#8217;s press releases tend to be remarkably terse and plainspoken, at least by the standards of modern corporate communication. And when Jobs is quoted in them, the words are carefully chosen and meaningful, worthy of being carefully parsed<a href="#fn1-2010-03-03">1</a> &#8212; not at all like the bromides attributed to CEOs from most companies in most PRs. <a href="http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2010/03/02patents.html">The PR announcing these suits against HTC is no exception</a>: <blockquote> “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.” </blockquote> That&#8217;s not the language of a licensing dispute or the beginning of a polite negotiation. That&#8217;s the language of a man aggrieved. During Jobs&#8217;s iPhone introduction keynote address in January 2007, before showing what the iPhone looked like, Jobs put up this slide showing four of the then-leading smartphones on the market: the Motorola Q, a BlackBerry, a Palm Treo, and the Nokia E62. <a href="/misc/2010/03/smartphones.jpg"><img src = "/misc/2010/03/smartphones-415.jpg" alt = "Steve Jobs at Macworld Expo 2007, showing the leading smartphones prior to the iPhone." /></a> Those pre-iPhone smartphones Jobs displayed all shared the same fundamental design: half-screen, half keyboard, and an up/down/left/right navigation controller. Now <a href="http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/android-hardware-in-the-wild/google-android-prototype-in-the-wild-334909.php">look at this prototype Android phone</a> Gizmodo spotted in December 2007 &#8212; 11 months after the iPhone introduction. Android was conceived of that same old model &#8212; the prototype Gizmodo found in December 2007 would have fit perfectly alongside the other four phones in Jobs&#8217;s keynote slide. The gaping chasm between that Treo-ish/BlackBerry-ish prototype Android device and the <a href="http://www.htc.com/www/product/g1/overview.html">HTC G1</a> that went on sale a year later (let alone the Nexus One today) was bridged by ideas from the iPhone. The iPhone introduced a new model. A true great leap forward in the state of the art. Not a small screen that shows you things which you manipulate indirectly using buttons and trackballs occupying half the device&#8217;s surface area, but instead a touchscreen that occupies almost the entirety of the surface area, showing things you manipulate directly. Android is a far better platform today than it would have been if Apple had never created the iPhone. That, in some sense, is not fair. I think Siracusa is exactly right that Jobs has a particularly acute sensitivity to this sort of unfairness. This litigation, perhaps then, isn&#8217;t about particular specific patented components, but rather is about the big idea, the general gist and grand ambition of the iPhone as the basic model for how modern mobile devices should be designed and work. No doubt some of you are nodding your heads and see this as justification for Apple&#8217;s suit. But life isn&#8217;t fair. Great ideas make the world better. Apple can rightly expect to benefit greatly from the ideas embodied by the iPhone, but they can&#8217;t expect to reap all of the benefits from those ideas. That&#8217;s the nature of implementing insanely great ideas. The bar has been raised, and, yes, Apple did most of the lifting. That&#8217;s how it goes. <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1161807">Paul Graham, yesterday</a>: <blockquote> If this had happened a day earlier I don&#8217;t think I would have posted that RFS. Apple is inching ever closer to evil, and I worry that there&#8217;s no one within the company who can stand up to Jobs and tell him so. </blockquote> &#8220;That RFS&#8221; is the <a href="http://ycombinator.com/rfs6.html">request for iPad software startups</a> from Graham&#8217;s Y Combinator, and lest you think &#8220;evil&#8221; is too overwrought a word, Graham clarified <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1161946">later in the same thread</a>: <blockquote> Historically the word &#8220;evil&#8221; has had a pretty broad meaning. Among tech companies the word has a new and fairly specific sense that follows from Paul Buchheit&#8217;s slogan &#8220;Don&#8217;t be evil.&#8221; That&#8217;s the sense I was using. It has a pretty low bar. It means, roughly, winning by taking advantage of people instead of by doing good work. </blockquote> I wouldn&#8217;t use the word evil this way, but I&#8217;m right there with Graham on this sentiment. And I say this not in any sort of hippy-dippy sense of expecting or even hoping for Apple to behave selflessly, holding them to a separate idealistic standard, or expecting them to fight with one arm tied behind their corporate back. And only a fool would argue that a company should never seek redress through litigation. But I believe that it&#8217;s good business, in the long run, for a company&#8217;s acts of aggression to take place in the market, not in the courts. My concern regarding this litigation against HTC is that it looks like an act of competitive aggression, not defense. I can think of only a few optimistic angles for this suit. One is that perhaps it&#8217;s a by-product of the suit Apple is engaged in against (and initiated by) Nokia. Apple&#8217;s counter-suit against Nokia involves some of the same patents at play here, and perhaps Apple&#8217;s lawyers have concluded that they need to enforce them against someone like HTC in order to use them in their counter-suit against Nokia. Or, perhaps one or more of the truly technical patents Apple has cited against HTC are genuine instances of intellectual property theft, the specific nature of which is unclear from the opaque language of the patent filings, and the rest of the cited patent violations were tacked on as part of a legal strategy along the lines of &#8220;If you&#8217;re going to punch them, punch them as hard as you can&#8221;. I.e. that they&#8217;ve filed suit as widely as they can, but have specific narrow violations in mind. What worries me is the idea that Apple, or even just Steve Jobs, believes that phones like the Nexus One have no right to exist, period, and that patent litigation to keep them off the market is in the company&#8217;s interests. I say it&#8217;s worrisome not because I think it&#8217;s evil, or foolish, or unreasonable, but because it is unwise, shortsighted, and unnecessary. <div class="footnotes"> <hr /> <ol> <li id="fn1-2010-03-03"> For example, consider the timing of <a href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/01/05/app-store-3b">this PR Apple released early in the morning on January 5</a>, announcing the three-billionth download from the App Store. Jobs is quoted thus: “The revolutionary App Store offers iPhone and iPod touch users an experience unlike anything else available on other mobile devices, and we see no signs of the competition catching up anytime soon.” January 5 was the day Google held its event to unveil the Nexus One.&nbsp;<a href="#fnr1-2010-03-03" class="footnoteBackLink" title="Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.">&#8617;</a> </li> </ol> </div> </content>

by John Gruber at March 07, 2010 11:03 PM | Bookmark with del.icio.us

Republican Representative Introduces a Bill to Put Reagan on $50 Bill

Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC): <blockquote> &#8220;Every generation needs its own heroes. One decade into the 21st century, it&#8217;s time to honor the last great president of the 20th and give President Reagan a place beside Presidents Roosevelt and Kennedy.&#8221; </blockquote> Bill Clinton, of course, left office with <a href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/116677/presidential-approval-ratings-gallup-historical-statistics-trends.aspx#2">higher approval ratings</a> (particularly the <a href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/116677/presidential-approval-ratings-gallup-historical-statistics-trends.aspx#1">average for his second term</a>) and a balanced budget. <div> <a title="Permanent link to ‘Republican Representative Introduces a Bill to Put Reagan on $50 Bill’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/03/03/reagan">&nbsp;★&nbsp;</a> </div> </content>

by John Gruber at March 07, 2010 11:03 PM | Bookmark with del.icio.us

Cloud-Based Video Storage From Apple?

Greg Sandoval, reporting for CNet: <blockquote> The company&#8217;s representatives have recently spoken with some of the major film studios about enabling iTunes users to store their content on the company&#8217;s servers, two people familiar with the discussions told CNET. That&#8217;s in addition to streaming television shows and music. [&#8230;] Apple&#8217;s vision is to build proverbial digital shelves where iTunes users store their media, one of the sources said. &#8220;Basically, they want to eliminate the hard drive,&#8221; the source said. </blockquote> There are two ways to interpret this. One would be that Apple will provide online storage for your iTunes purchases as backup, so that if your hard drive fails or your computer is lost or if you simply buy more movies than you have space to store yourself, you still have access to everything you&#8217;ve bought. Think of this model as like IMAP for iTunes content &#8212; it would also allow multiple devices (computer, iPhone, iPad) to remain in sync over the air, rather than the current model where devices need to be tethered via USB to your computer in order to sync. I think this would be fantastic. As it stands now, iTunes customers are responsible for the data integrity of their purchases. Update: Think of it this way: if Apple doesn&#8217;t do something like this, then what&#8217;s the model for owning an iPad as your primary computing device? The other way to interpret it &#8212; <a href="http://scripting.com/stories/2010/03/03/whatIsAppleUpTo.html">the dystopic take</a> &#8212; is that Apple wants to remove local storage entirely, except perhaps as a cache that we can&#8217;t control. In this model, if you disconnect from Apple&#8217;s servers, you lose access to your library. (Given that we&#8217;re lucky to complete phone calls on weekday afternoons in certain U.S. metro areas, we&#8217;re a ways off from this being feasible, even if it is what Apple has in mind.) <div> <a title="Permanent link to ‘Cloud-Based Video Storage From Apple?’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/03/03/apple-cloud">&nbsp;★&nbsp;</a> </div> </content>

by John Gruber at March 07, 2010 11:03 PM | Bookmark with del.icio.us

‘Already Dead’, Eh?

Worth a <a href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2007/11/05/dumbest">re-link</a>, just to point out this remark from &#8220;<a href="http://techdirt.com/articles/20100217/1853298215.shtml">genius</a>&#8221; patent troll Nathan Myhrvold regarding Steve Jobs&#8217;s return to Apple in 1997: <blockquote> &#8220;Apple is already dead.&#8221; </blockquote> (Myhrvold at the time was Microsoft&#8217;s CTO.) <div> <a title="Permanent link to ‘&#8216;Already Dead&#8217;, Eh?’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/03/03/myhrvold-genius">&nbsp;★&nbsp;</a> </div> </content>

by John Gruber at March 07, 2010 11:03 PM | Bookmark with del.icio.us

Why Larry Ellison Hates ‘Cloud Computing’

Funny. <div> <a title="Permanent link to ‘Why Larry Ellison Hates &#8216;Cloud Computing&#8217;’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/03/04/ellison">&nbsp;★&nbsp;</a> </div> </content>

by John Gruber at March 07, 2010 11:03 PM | Bookmark with del.icio.us

All Six HTML WG Working Drafts Have Been Published

HTML5 moves ever forward. <div> <a title="Permanent link to ‘All Six HTML WG Working Drafts Have Been Published’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/03/04/html5-drafts">&nbsp;★&nbsp;</a> </div> </content>

by John Gruber at March 07, 2010 11:03 PM | Bookmark with del.icio.us

Books in the Age of the iPad

Thoughtful, beautifully illustrated essay by Craig Mod on the future of books. I think he&#8217;s got it exactly right. (And I agree with him that iBooks&#8217;s &#8220;paper page turning&#8221; metaphor is the wrong one for long form iPad reading and design.) <div> <a title="Permanent link to ‘Books in the Age of the iPad’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/03/04/mod-books">&nbsp;★&nbsp;</a> </div> </content>

by John Gruber at March 07, 2010 11:03 PM | Bookmark with del.icio.us

Berkshire Hathaway’s 2009 Annual Report (PDF)

Cogent, as always. <div> <a title="Permanent link to ‘Berkshire Hathaway&#8217;s 2009 Annual Report (PDF)’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/03/04/brk">&nbsp;★&nbsp;</a> </div> </content>

by John Gruber at March 07, 2010 11:03 PM | Bookmark with del.icio.us

‘Made, Is Making, or Will Make?’

David Barnard on the difficulties of projecting long-term revenue from volatile short-term fluctuations in sales from the App Store and Android Market. <div> <a title="Permanent link to ‘&#8216;Made, Is Making, or Will Make?&#8217;’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/03/04/barnard">&nbsp;★&nbsp;</a> </div> </content>

by John Gruber at March 07, 2010 11:03 PM | Bookmark with del.icio.us

Engadget’s Newly ‘Leaked’ Concept Video of Microsoft’s Courier

Very interesting, but note that this is not a demo of a device, or even of actual software. It&#8217;s a demo of a concept. I&#8217;d wager money that we&#8217;ll never see an actual product from Microsoft that works like this. <div> <a title="Permanent link to ‘Engadget&#8217;s Newly &#8216;Leaked&#8217; Concept Video of Microsoft&#8217;s Courier’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/03/05/engadget-courier">&nbsp;★&nbsp;</a> </div> </content>

by John Gruber at March 07, 2010 11:03 PM | Bookmark with del.icio.us

Why the iPad Won’t Quite Ship Within ‘60 Days’ of the Announcement Event

John Paczkowski: <blockquote> If the ship date was to be April 3, why didn’t Jobs say so at the January event? Obviously, it’s impossible to say. Though it’s certainly interesting that Jobs couldn’t offer a hard ship date for a major product that was just two months out. Does this mean Apple may have run into a bit of an iPad manufacturing hiccup after all? I suppose it’s possible. Cannaccord Adams analyst Peter Misek, who first reported alleged production issues with the iPad, certainly thinks so. </blockquote> My sources suggest that Misek is wrong. It was the software, not the hardware, that took a week or two longer to finish than they&#8217;d hoped. Nothing extraordinary or unusual, just the usual hard-to-predict timing of turning software that&#8217;s almost ready to ship into software that&#8217;s ready to ship. In the grand history of major OS release date slips, one week is pretty tame. Update: Some readers <a href="http://twitter.com/wapdgn/status/10039488022">are arguing</a> that it must be a hardware delay, because sales outside the U.S. don&#8217;t start for another month. Could be that there are manufacturing delays, too, I suppose. But I was never under the impression that Apple ever intended for the iPad to go on sale worldwide on day one. Is the delay before sales in Europe a change? <div> <a title="Permanent link to ‘Why the iPad Won&#8217;t Quite Ship Within &#8216;60 Days&#8217; of the Announcement Event’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/03/05/ipad-ship-date">&nbsp;★&nbsp;</a> </div> </content>

by John Gruber at March 07, 2010 11:03 PM | Bookmark with del.icio.us

iPad to Ship on April 3; Pre-Orders Start Next Week

Get your credit cards warmed up. <div> <a title="Permanent link to ‘iPad to Ship on April 3; Pre-Orders Start Next Week’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/03/05/ipad">&nbsp;★&nbsp;</a> </div> </content>

by John Gruber at March 07, 2010 11:03 PM | Bookmark with del.icio.us

Matt Gemmell on iPad Application Design

Keen analysis and good advice. <div> <a title="Permanent link to ‘Matt Gemmell on iPad Application Design’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/03/05/gemmell-ipad-design">&nbsp;★&nbsp;</a> </div> </content>

by John Gruber at March 07, 2010 11:03 PM | Bookmark with del.icio.us

Photoshop.com Mobile Android App for Developers

This is interesting: when the Photoshop.com Mobile 1.1 app for Android is installed, Android developers can, in their own apps, use Photoshop for Android&#8217;s image editor as an embedded view. Android calls this an &#8220;activity&#8221;; it&#8217;s sort of analogous to a service on Mac OS X. (There&#8217;s nothing like it in iPhone OS 3.x.) <div> <a title="Permanent link to ‘Photoshop.com Mobile Android App for Developers’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/03/05/android-photoshop">&nbsp;★&nbsp;</a> </div> </content>

by John Gruber at March 07, 2010 11:03 PM | Bookmark with del.icio.us

This Is Not Hard to Understand

Bill Ray for The Register, on the Wi-Fi scanning apps removed from the App Store last week: <blockquote> Wi-Fi detection is something of a niche: there were never more than a handful of such applications in iTunes. But now even those have vanished as Apple decided they were using a &#8220;private framework&#8221;, and has pulled them off the shelves without explanation or apology. [&#8230;] &#8220;We received a very unfortunate email today from Apple stating that WiFi Where has been removed from sale on the App Store for using private frameworks to access wireless information,&#8221; explains one developer, though Apple has apparently declined to explain exactly what rule the scanning applications are breaking. </blockquote> Uh, the rule <a href="http://wifinetnews.com/archives/2010/03/apple_drops_wi-fi_sniffers_from_iphone_app_store.html">against using private frameworks</a>? <div> <a title="Permanent link to ‘This Is Not Hard to Understand’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/03/07/register-private-apis">&nbsp;★&nbsp;</a> </div> </content>

by John Gruber at March 07, 2010 11:03 PM | Bookmark with del.icio.us

Palm Introduces WebOS Plugin Development Kit

They call it a &#8220;plugin development kit&#8221;, but what it really means is that developers can write compiled C/C++ apps for WebOS now. And <a href="http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20100305/gdc-10-palms-mobile-gaming-push/">according to John Paczkowski</a>: <blockquote> Perhaps more important, the PDK will allow developers to rewrite mobile apps created for other platforms to run on webOS with minimal modification. Apps that currently run on Apple’s iPhone, for example, can be ported over in a matter of days, sources close to the company tell me, and they don’t really suffer any degradation in performance. </blockquote> I can only assume that this is in reference to games with cross-platform cores, not utility-type apps that are Cocoa Touch through-and-through. <div> <a title="Permanent link to ‘Palm Introduces WebOS Plugin Development Kit’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/03/06/webos-plugin">&nbsp;★&nbsp;</a> </div> </content>

by John Gruber at March 07, 2010 11:03 PM | Bookmark with del.icio.us

‘60 Days’

I <a href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/03/05/ipad-ship-date">stand corrected</a> regarding the original expectations for iPad availability worldwide. During the iPad introduction event last month, the slide stating that the Wi-Fi models would be available in &#8220;60 days&#8221; also included this underneath: &#8220;Worldwide availability of WiFi models&#8221;. <div> <a title="Permanent link to ‘&#8216;60 Days&#8217;’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/03/05/60-days">&nbsp;★&nbsp;</a> </div> </content>

by John Gruber at March 07, 2010 11:03 PM | Bookmark with del.icio.us

The Mac Sale Bundle

Speaking of DF RSS feed sponsorships, I&#8217;d like to thank this week&#8217;s sponsor, The Mac Sale. They&#8217;ve got a terrific bundle of Mac apps for sale through March 15 for just $49.99. The bundle includes: MacGourmet Deluxe, VideoConverter Pro, Supercard, Shovebox, MiniOne Racing, PathFinder, StoryMill, Inkbook, Slideshow, and Finance 6. All 10 apps, just $49.99. (The Mac Sale is a collaboration between <a href="http://maczot.com/">MacZot</a> and The Escapers, makers of the <a href="http://www.theescapers.com/">Flux web design app</a>.) <div> <a title="Permanent link to ‘The Mac Sale Bundle’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/03/05/mac-sale-bundle">&nbsp;★&nbsp;</a> </div> </content>

by John Gruber at March 07, 2010 11:03 PM | Bookmark with del.icio.us

Jason Snell on Google’s Nexus One

Speaking of Jason Snell, he&#8217;s got a thoughtful look at the Nexus One and Android, particularly in comparison to the iPhone. <div> <a title="Permanent link to ‘Jason Snell on Google&#8217;s Nexus One’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/03/05/snell-nexus">&nbsp;★&nbsp;</a> </div> </content>

by John Gruber at March 07, 2010 11:03 PM | Bookmark with del.icio.us

★ Attention Is the Real Resource

Jason Snell &#8212; editorial director at Macworld &#8212; wrote <a href="http://jsnell.intertext.com/post/419218293/merlin-wants-free-full-text-rss-feeds">an interesting piece on his personal site</a> regarding full-text RSS feeds, prompted by <a href="http://www.kungfugrippe.com/post/416273227/feed-me-atlantic">Merlin Mann&#8217;s piece</a> last week regarding The Atlantic. Snell writes: <blockquote> RSS doesn’t generate revenue directly. There are ads in RSS, sure, but they’re cheap and lousy and don’t have remotely the return as ads on web pages. The question is, if you publish all your content in RSS, does the resulting drop in traffic get offset by the fringe benefits? In the mind of some — presumably including Merlin Mann and John Gruber — you may lose a small percentage of tech-savvy people, but those people tend to be the ones who pass links around to friends and on their blogs and on Twitter, and a lot of those people will come to your web site from there, so in the end it’s a net benefit. Plus, more people will care about you and your brand and that’s a good thing. I agree, that’s good. I wish someone could cite some studies that prove that giving away your full-text RSS doesn’t hurt traffic, but helps it. </blockquote> It should go without saying that what works for me here at Daring Fireball, as a one-man show, may well not work (or work nearly as well) for a large operation with a full editorial staff such as Macworld. But: <a href="http://daringfireball.net/feeds/">DF&#8217;s RSS feed</a>, which contains the full content of the site, not only generates money directly, but has grown to become the single largest source of revenue on the site. The ads in most sponsored RSS feeds are indeed cheap and lousy. The ads in DF&#8217;s RSS feed are neither. They&#8217;re priced at a premium, and have attracted (if I do say so myself) premium sponsors. What is &#8220;traffic&#8221;? I suspect Snell is talking about page views. When someone loads a web page in their browser, that&#8217;s a page view. Most advertising on the web (but <a href="http://decknetwork.net/">not all</a>) is sold using page views as the metric &#8212; advertisers pay an agreed-upon amount for every thousand page views on which their ad appears. When I switched DF&#8217;s free public RSS feed <a href="http://daringfireball.net/2007/07/regarding_df_feed">to full-content in August 2007</a>, DF&#8217;s web page views had been growing steadily month-to-month. After the switch, web page views were stagnant, with no growth, for about a year. (If anything, <a href="http://daringfireball.net/2007/10/feedery">they went down</a> in the first few months.) But readership clearly continued to grow: subscribers to the feed skyrocketed. And, about a year ago, even web page views started growing significantly once again &#8212; going from a little over one million per month to a little over two million per month. If you&#8217;ve got a model where revenue is tied only to web page views, switching to full-content RSS feeds will hurt, at least in the short term. The problem, I say, isn&#8217;t with full-content RSS feeds, but rather with a business model that hinges solely on web page views. The precious commodity that we, as publishers, have to offer advertisers is the attention of our readers. Web page views are a terribly inaccurate, if not outright misleading, metric for attention. Subscribers to a full-content RSS feed are among the readers paying the most attention, but generate among the least web page views. A reader asking for a full-content RSS feed is a reader who wants to pay more attention to what you publish. There have to be ways to thrive financially from that. (I could go on, which is good, because <a href="http://my.sxsw.com/events/event/617">my friend Jim Coudal and I are speaking together on this very topic &#8212; online advertising &#8212; at SXSW next week</a>. Our session is at 3:30pm Sunday afternoon.) Update: <a href="http://jsnell.intertext.com/post/428974147/attention-and-audiences">Jason Snell&#8217;s thoughtful response</a>. </content>

by John Gruber at March 07, 2010 11:03 PM | Bookmark with del.icio.us

Dan Moren on the Problem iPad Developers Face: They Don’t Have Actual iPads

The SDK includes a simulator, but it doesn&#8217;t really help with gauging the feel. <div> <a title="Permanent link to ‘Dan Moren on the Problem iPad Developers Face: They Don&#8217;t Have Actual iPads’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/03/05/moren-ipad-devs">&nbsp;★&nbsp;</a> </div> </content>

by John Gruber at March 07, 2010 11:03 PM | Bookmark with del.icio.us

Unofficial Apple Blog

Macworld UK estimates iPad pricing, late April availability in the Blighty

Filed under: iPad

Our English-speaking friends across the pond have been anxiously awaiting pricing and availability dates for the iPad. Macworld UK's Nick Spence notes that both the Wi-Fi and 3G models will be available in late April, meaning that developers in the UK who want to get their hands on an iPad earlier may have to consider flying to the US on April 3rd.

Spence reported that Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, and Switzerland will also see the iPad shipping in late April.

Based on the exchange rate for both the US Dollar and UK Pound Sterling, Macworld UK estimated the following prices for the iPad models:

iPad Wi-Fi: £417 (16GB); £500 (32GB); £584 (64GB)
Wi-Fi + 3G: £526 (16GB); £610 (32GB); £693 (64GB)

The estimated prices also add the 17.5% Value Added Tax, which is included in cost of goods in the UK.

TUAW Macworld UK estimates iPad pricing, late April availability in the Blighty originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sun, 07 Mar 2010 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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by Steven Sande at March 07, 2010 10:30 PM | Bookmark with del.icio.us

Gameinformer: Portal 2 confirmed for Mac, Steam on the way for May

Filed under: Gaming, Multimedia, Rumors

Scans from the April 2010 issue of Gameinformer have confirmed that Portal 2, the sequel to Valve's wildly popular and critically acclaimed game Portal, will be released in fall of 2010 for the Xbox 360, PC, and Mac (as reported on MacRumors). No, your eyes do not deceive you: Portal 2 is coming to the Mac this fall.

More on the Valve front: TUAW reader Jason let us know that Gameinformer's April 2010 issue also confirms a May launch of Steam for the Mac. This was rumored several weeks ago based on some WebKit & Mac-specific content in the Steam beta, and pretty well locked in by Valve's viral leaks of Mac-themed 'reimagined' advertisements last week. (The final one is a bit of a give-away... read the copy.)

"There is an article on page 22, News, 'Mac Gets Its Steam On' - Valve preps May launch on Apple platform," Jason tells us. He also says the article itself states, "Valve will start a beta program this spring, with a full launch targeted for May [...] If you already have a Steam account but want to use it on your brand-new Macbook, for instance, your Steam keys will still work."

That last part is pretty huge; from the sounds of it, if you already bought PC versions of games on Steam, you won't have to pay again to download Mac versions of the same games. That should be a huge relief to Mac gamers who've been booting into Windows to get some gaming done.

We haven't been able to confirm this reader tip, so if any of you have access to the same issue of Gameinformer and can confirm what Jason's told us, let us know in the comments.

TUAW Gameinformer: Portal 2 confirmed for Mac, Steam on the way for May originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sun, 07 Mar 2010 16:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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by Chris Rawson at March 07, 2010 09:30 PM | Bookmark with del.icio.us

MacNN

Apple, Siemens, Sisvel force booth shutdown at CeBIT

<img align='left' src='http://photos.macnn.com/news/1003/applecebitshutdown.jpg' border='0' width='176' height='120' />Apple, Siemens and technology licensor Sisvel together were reported as having forced an exhibitor to shut down an exhibitor's booth at CeBIT. The three had the unnamed e-reader and netbook maker's floor space cleared out on Friday after they alleged that the company violated patents. Lawyers for Apple, Siemens and Sisvel are said to have visited the company's booth on Thursday and levied a 10,000 euro ($13,626) fine in advance of a raid the following day by German police....

March 07, 2010 08:00 PM | Bookmark with del.icio.us

Unofficial Apple Blog

The Reader's View: Best of your feedback, comments and opinions

Filed under: Odds and ends, TUAW Business

The Reader's View is our weekly roundup of some of the most upbeat, thoughtful, or just plain nice comments that have been published by TUAW readers. This week, we have discussions of Apple keyboards, Wi-Fi extenders, the iPad (no big surprise there...), Apple's stock price, and iPhone programming languages.

To begin with, reader efinkGr had a comment for Sang Tang's post "Mac 101: Going Commando with Command-key shortcuts in Mac OS X," saying "You know i wish they never got rid of the apple icon on the command key. I miss it :'( "

That prompted some research on my part, which pointed out that the Apple icon was on most Apple keyboards for the better part of 20 years simply because those keyboards could be used either with Macs or the Apple II family of computers.

David Winograd's interview with Roland Saekow of BearExtender is still grabbing attention from TUAW readers like Scott, who noted that "due to the Art Deco designs of the buildings here in South Beach we find it's difficult to get wireless range because of the thick cement walls that much of the area was built with... In my testing (with the BearExtender n3) I found that I was able to see 20 more wireless networks than my Airport card in a 2009 MBP just from where the MBP sits everyday...and going out into the world makes it even better."
According to Michael Grothaus's recent post, analysts at the Gartner Group believe that the iPad will "change the entire PC ecosystem." Reader Talobab provided some great insights in this response -- "The reason this will be a "Game changer" (and you have no idea how I hate that term) is because they are NOT trying to make a full computer out of the tablet. Tablets have never and will never be a good size AND have the same power as a desktop or notebook. The computer manufacturers don't make the notebooks as large as they are just for fun, they need to be that big to have the computational power that's required to be a truly multifunction device.

The issue for the tablet is making a machine that operates quickly and effectively AND does enough to make the majority of users happy. Apple understands that and is taking a shot at it. They have made an extremely responsive device that covers a lot of ground. The question is does it cover enough ground. That question won't be answered for at least a year, but considering all the applications under development (including Office BTW), it certainly looks like it has quite a chance."

TUAW Reader John K. also joined the chorus, noting that "Instead of focusing on the iPad's form factor we should be focusing on its User Interface. Apple now has a consistent "touch" user interface on their iPod Touch, iPhone and iPad products. No one else has anything close to that level of OS integration between form factors.

More importantly, Apple is gambling that users will find their touch interface to be the NATURAL way to compute. If you've ever seen a small child or a senior citizen pick up an iPhone and just use it, you'll know what I'm talking about. While hardcore activities would continue to be done on the more traditional notebook/desktop interface, the "touch" interface would become the DEFAULT way people do what they do now (and where they do some things that they cannot do as well now)."

When AAPL hit an all-time high stock price last week, Mike Rose noted that headline writers had to scrounge their thesauri for 'stratospheric' synonyms. Reader Izzy reflected the thoughts of many of us when he said "I wish I had bought it when it was $4 in the dark [chairman John] Sculley days." We feel your pain, Izzy...

Finally, reader Chris I. took our post about the revMobile development environment for iPhone being fast and simple to heart, and he wrote his first iPhone app in about an hour. Chris says, "Using the pre-alpha, I wrote my first iPhone app last night in a leisurely hour, and it's on my iPhone's home page right now. Without compile-at-build, this app can't be submitted to the app store just yet, but the speed with which it came together is astounding. It's a stack (Hypercard/SuperCard/Revolution project) on the iPhone.

(Disclosure: I've used this programming environment continuously, in one incarnation or another, from 1988 to today. It began after reading Dan Goodman's Hypercard book cover-to-cover before we even brought the Mac II home from the store. Your results may vary... But it's not a hard language to learn.)

RunRev also has a web plugin to run stacks on web pages, and a web host offering that allows the websites themselves to incorporate the language server-side. Their goal of "deploy everywhere" is shaping up nicely..."

That's it for the week. Many thanks to all of you who have spent the time to leave your constructive comments.

TUAW The Reader's View: Best of your feedback, comments and opinions originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sun, 07 Mar 2010 13:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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by Steven Sande at March 07, 2010 06:45 PM | Bookmark with del.icio.us

Take your cute pills: Apple kitteh is a furry little Mac fan

Filed under: Humor, Odds and ends, MacBook

It's Sunday, a time for reflection, reading the Sunday comics, and looking at pictures of cute kittehs!

TUAW Reader Brian sent us a link to one of his favorite sites, The Daily Kitten. On March 6th, the kitten of the day was a little sweetheart named Lyra, who has learned at a young age that Apple is the brand to reach out to. Lyra's not quite as famous as my 15 year-old Tortoiseshell cat Ruby, who has joined me on TUAW TV Live, but she's certainly a lot cuter (sorry, Ruby!).

Enjoy these photos of Lyra! One, two, three... awwwwwwwwwwww!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/davemorris/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

TUAW Take your cute pills: Apple kitteh is a furry little Mac fan originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sun, 07 Mar 2010 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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by Steven Sande at March 07, 2010 04:00 PM | Bookmark with del.icio.us

MacNN

Panasonic's touchscreen G2, light G10 cameras official

<img align='left' src='http://photos.macnn.com/news/1003/panasoniclumixg2-2.jpg' border='0' width='176' height='120' />Panasonic followed up on its self-leak today by officially rolling out two new Micro Four Thirds cameras. Of the pair, the Lumix G2 is the first swappable-lens camera to use a swiveling touchscreen; photographers can now not only preview shots off-angle with the 3-inch LCD but control the camera at the same time, including tap-to-focus AF. It simultaneously represents the first in-between video-capable Lumix G as it can record at 720p30 in H.264, which trails the GH1's 1080p24 but saves space....

March 07, 2010 03:20 PM | Bookmark with del.icio.us

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March 07, 2010 03:20 PM | Bookmark with del.icio.us

Unofficial Apple Blog

reMail may be reIncarnated as it goes open source

Filed under: iPhone, App Store

Several weeks back, we noted that Google had acquired reMail, and had placed founder Gabor Cselle and others from the reMail team on other Google projects. The reMail app distinguished itself from the iPhone's built-in Mail.app in several ways:

It could download all of your emails in a way that takes up a much smaller footprint than in Mail.app on the iPhone.
Its search feature is much faster than Mail.app, and is accompanied with niceties such as autocompleting the names of your contacts, remembering your past searches, and text mark up matches in your search results.
And lastly, reMail's search is full text, unlike the header search like in the Mail.app.

Though reMail is no longer being offered in the App Store, we may see its likeness spring up in other ways in future apps. As had been rumored shortly after the acquisition, reMail is now open source. Its source code now lives at the Google Code and is available for your viewing here. By making reMail open source, Gabor Cselle hopes that those interested in "making email-related apps can use reMail code as a starting point."

TUAW reMail may be reIncarnated as it goes open source originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sun, 07 Mar 2010 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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by Sang Tang at March 07, 2010 03:00 PM | Bookmark with del.icio.us

Another iPhone video conferencing rumor surfaces

Filed under: Rumors, Video, iPhone

There's been many rumors pointing to the possible inclusion of video conferencing in the next-gen iPhone -- everything from faceplate photos to code embedded in the iPhone SDK itself has set off our rumor radar. This latest rumor from site Redmond Pie tends toward the weaker end of the spectrum as far as evidence goes: UK mobile provider O2 has listed "Video Calls" as a "Key Feature" of the forthcoming iPhone, with pricing for video calling listed as identical to standard phone calls.

Note that third-party sellers regularly advertise features for Apple's products well in advance of their actual release based on a "best guess" approach without any verifiable foreknowledge of the devices -- Best Buy's recent page update listing i7 processors for the upcoming MacBook Pro update is a perfect example -- so this latest update from O2 by no means confirms the presence of video conferencing capabilities in the next iteration of the iPhone. It's merely one more rumor to add to the stack we've built up so far. One thing is certain: given all the rumors that have been swirling around already, which will surely accelerate over the next few months, if the next iPhone doesn't have video conferencing capabilities in it, the internet rage is going to be pretty profound.

TUAW Another iPhone video conferencing rumor surfaces originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sun, 07 Mar 2010 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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by Chris Rawson at March 07, 2010 02:00 PM | Bookmark with del.icio.us

MacNN

O2 UK's iPhone plan adds "video calls"

<img align='left' src='http://photos.macnn.com/news/1003/iphone3gs-3sm.jpg' border='0' width='176' height='120' />O2's British division has raised eyebrows today after its tariff list was discovered to include a mention of video calls. The rate has been quietly added to the "key features" list and would cost as much as much as a voice-only call. No other immediate references have been found....

March 07, 2010 03:35 AM | Bookmark with del.icio.us

Unofficial Apple Blog

Analyst: Apple will sell 35m iPhones next year, with or without Verizon

Filed under: Apple, iPhone

One of the questions that always seems to come up during our TUAW Talkcast and TUAW TV Live sessions is "When do you think Verizon Wireless is going to get the iPhone?" According to recent comments from Merrill Lynch analyst Scott Craig, the answer to that question is irrelevant to Apple.

Craig anticipates that Apple could sell 33 million iPhones in 2010, and that number would rise to 35 million in 2011 even without a second U.S. carrier. However, the upside to Apple in selecting a second U.S. carrier -- possibly Verizon Wireless -- is that the number of 2011 sales could rise to as high as 55 million.

Other Wall Street analysts believe that Apple's decision to stick by AT&T for the iPad indicates a vote of confidence for the carrier, with analysts at Credit Suisse even going so far as to say that there's a 75% chance that AT&T will keep iPhone exclusivity for another year.

While the analysts don't seem to see a real downside risk for Apple, Credit Suisse recently downgraded Verizon from Outperform to Neutral based on the absence of the iPhone from their product line. It would definitely be in Verizon's best interest to make an agreement with Apple to carry the iPhone; however, Apple is unlikely to make agreements with non-GSM carriers such as Verizon Wireless until they are well into a transition to the 4G LTE technology.

[via Cult of Mac]

TUAW Analyst: Apple will sell 35m iPhones next year, with or without Verizon originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sat, 06 Mar 2010 19:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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by Steven Sande at March 07, 2010 12:30 AM | Bookmark with del.icio.us

March 06, 2010

Unofficial Apple Blog

Mac 101: Going Commando with Command-key shortcuts in Mac OS X

Filed under: Switchers, Productivity, Mac 101

One of the adjustments those new to the Mac need to make is to familiarize themselves with the Command key. Although I switch hit and use Windows at work and a Mac when I'm not working, I've always preferred it over Control. Its proximity next to the space bar allows me to use my thumb, as opposed to my pinky finger with the Control key, for keyboard shortcuts. I find it particularly faster for copying and pasting.

The clover-looking key (it's actually an infinite loop), which had always been accompanied by an Apple logo until recently, sometimes behaves in ways similar to the Control key in the Windows world. At other times, however, it doesn't. Whether you're a recent Mac switcher or a seasoned Mac user, here are some shortcuts using the Command key to help you speed your way through tasks.

Safari
In Safari and Firefox, right-clicking on any word or set of words will allow you to do a Google search on it. In Firefox, this search will open up in another tab. Safari's default behavior, however, returns search results in the same tab or window that you're working on. No fear, however, for the Command key is here: holding down the command key while right clicking on the Google search option will open the search in a new tab.

Similarly, attaching the Command key to normal clicking (not right-clicking) in Safari will open up sites in another tab. This includes Command clicking on links on a site, your browsing history as well as sites within a bookmark folder, which will open up all sites within the folder in a different tab.

Finder
Like Command clicking on a link in Safari, Command-clicking on any Finder folder will open it in a new Finder window. If you do this with a stack in the dock, you'll be taken to the root folder of the stack. Command clicking on Finder folders also works with Folders displayed on the Path Bar of a Finder window (if you don't already have this enabled, you can do so by clicking on "View" and select "Show Path Bar").

One other useful Finder shortcut that I commonly use is Command-Delete. This will move selected files or folders to the trash, similar to clicking on the delete key on a Windows-based computer.

iTunes
I have the "Automatically sync when this iPod/iPhone is connected" option enabled on most of my iPods and my iPhone. Most of the time, I use my Mac to charge my iPhone (instead of a wall plug), so charging also helps keep me up to date on my music and Podcasts. However, there are situations where I don't want my iPhone to automatically sync. For instance, I may have a particular Podcast that I want to listen to again, and my Podcast settings call for only the latest episode to be kept. To prevent your iPod/iPhone from automatically syncing, use the Command-Option key combination as you connect it to your computer.

Another iTunes shortcut I've found handy is Command-Option-1. This key combination will bring up the main iTunes window, which is handy if you happen to close it or if you're browsing a playlist in another window (which you can do by double-clicking on a playlist).

iChat
Similar to how Command-Option-1 will display the iTunes window, Command-1 in iChat will display your buddy list. Say you close your iChat buddy list, but you leave your chat window open (or windows, if you don't collect all of them in a single window). In this situation, clicking on the iChat icon in the dock will show your chat window(s), not your buddy list. When clicked on in the dock, iChat's UI behavior is to display your buddy list if a chat window is minimized to the dock.

Although you have buddies on your list, you may opt to chat with them at your willing. In addition to mousing your way to make yourself invisible, you can also use Control-Command-I key combination.

iWork
One feature from the iWork suite that runs circles around its Microsoft "format painter" counterpart is its style-based copying and pasting. It works not only on text sizes and colors, but on charts and other objects as well.

The "Copy Style," via the Command-Option-C key combination, allows you to copy the style of "these words."
And through "Paste Style," via Command-Option-V, paste the style of "these words" to "this set of words" to make it look like "this set of words."
However if you want to paste "these words" somewhere and them look like "this set of words," you can do this with the "Paste and Match Style." Its shortcut is Command-Option-Shift-V

Other handy shortcuts that work across the iWork suite of apps are Command-T, which brings up the font selection panel, as well as Command-Option-I, which shows Inspector palette for the app.

Parallels
Most of the time, I run Parallels Desktop in a window mode, dragging and dropping files, as well as copying and pasting text, between Mac OS X and Windows XP. However, there are times that I need to fully immerse myself and zone-in on Windows XP (I know, frightening, ain't it?), which is when I'll put it in full screen. To pull yourself into and out of the Windows XP full screen warp zone in Parallels Desktop 5.0, hit Option-Command-Enter; for Parallels 4.0, it's just Option-Enter.

One more thing...
Actually, make that two more things. One of my favorite things about Mac OS X is the consistency with how you could tinker and adjust an app to your liking. In the Windows world, doing this may require you to navigate to the edit menu and select preferences, or clicking on tools and then selecting options. With very few exceptions, in Mac OS X, you just need to select "Preferences" from the app's menu (i.e., Keynote -- Preferences and iMovie -- Preferences). The shortcut to each of your app's preferences is Command-, (not a typo -- it's Command-Comma).

And if a particular app happens to be acting up on you, you can force quit it with Command-Option-Escape. This is the rough Mac OS X equivalent to Windows' Control-Alt-Delete.

TUAW Mac 101: Going Commando with Command-key shortcuts in Mac OS X originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sat, 06 Mar 2010 18:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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by Sang Tang at March 06, 2010 11:30 PM | Bookmark with del.icio.us

Apple patent filings detail methods of keeping your devices cool

Filed under: Apple

Apple is a pretty innovative company, and here at TUAW we receive a lot of tips about new patents that have been filed by the company. While not all of the patents make it into products, Apple is assiduous about filing for patent protection on their intellectual property.

This week featured 4 patent applications from Apple that are all about keeping your devices cool. The first, titled "Methods and Apparatus for Cooling Electronic Devices Using Flow Sensors," talks about using tiny sensors to determine the air velocity in a device and then adjusting fan speeds and/or computing power to keep the device cool.

The second application seems so obvious it's surprising nobody has filed it before. Titled "Methods and Apparatus for Cooling Electronic Devices Through User Interfaces," the patent filing describes how to use input/output ports (FireWire, USB, and Ethernet) to increase airflow through a device. In particular, the application details how ports can be positioned to provide the best possible cooling of components.

The third patent filing, "Methods and Apparatus for Cooling Electronic Devices Using Conductive Hinge Assemblies," is specifically focused on notebook type devices. Here, the hinges on a notebook's screen are effectively used as heat exchangers to cool certain heat-producing components.

The last filing, "Methods and Apparatus for Cooling Electronic Devices using Thermoelectric Cooling Components," describes using the Peltier Effect to actively cool components. This can be also described as "solid-state cooling."

While it's uncertain when or if we'll see any of these patents come to life in a future Apple product, it is great to see that they're trying to figure out a way to keep MacBooks from being used as frying pans.

[via AppleInsider]

TUAW Apple patent filings detail methods of keeping your devices cool originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sat, 06 Mar 2010 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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by Steven Sande at March 06, 2010 10:30 PM | Bookmark with del.icio.us