November 2011
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Incoming: A Native Gmail iPhone App. Finally.
Ever since I bought the original iPhone in 2007, there’s been one app above all others that I’ve been sorely missing: Gmail. Of course, back then, there were no native third-party apps. But a year later, when those came, Gmail was still nowhere to be found.
At first, the talk was that Apple wasn’t going to allow another mail app on their device. Then it was that Google was...
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The New Google Reader Design →
I don’t hate it as much as everyone else seems to — that old design looked old in 2005. But wow, that +1 button. Maybe they should just put it fully over the star with the next iteration. Or maybe they can make it big and blinking.
It just screams: “PLEASEEEE CLICKKKKK MEEEEE”. Maybe that’s an okay thing — it does make sense — Google+ needs more content. But this...
October 2011
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This Startup Costs Me Thousands Of Dollars...
…simply because they didn’t exist yet.
Codecademy.
About 6 years ago, I decided I was going to go back to school to learn how to code. I had very casually dabbled with some simple stuff ranging from HTML to C++, but decided I needed a more formal setting to truly learn. I was wrong.
It’s not that I didn’t learn anything going back to school — I did. But I was wrong...
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“OH WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW.”
– The final words of Steve Jobs as told by his sister, Mona Simpson in her amazing eulogy which she decided to publish.
Since she gave this speech at the memorial service, there had been whispers about the words floating around. But they’re even better in full context. Read the entire piece.
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ATTENTION HENRY BLODGET: YOUR CAPS LOCK KEY IS... →
Fine, I’ll take the bait. A few things here.
First, Blodget sets up his argument by saying that Apple fans are more or less in denial. He cites the continued march of the Android platform both in terms of phone quality and market share which are huge blows to Apple.
The result of these huge blows? Apple becoming the most valuable company in the world while pulling in more profits than...
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"Too Old" →
Google isn’t upgrading their flagship Nexus One to the new Ice Cream Sandwich flavor of Android. Why? It’s “too old”.
The Nexus One was released on January 5, 2010 — not even two years ago.
Apple often gets dinged for cutting support to older hardware, forcing users to upgrade if they want the latest and greatest software. So I feel it’s necessary to point out that...
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The Key Difference Between Apple And Amazon Will... →
Amazon is predicting record Kindle sales next quarter, just as Apple is predicting record iPhone and iPad sales next quarter. But there’s one key difference.
As a result of those record sales, Apple could see a $40 billion quarter in terms of revenue — that will undoubtedly lead to record profit. Meanwhile, Amazon, even with record sales, is warning that their numbers could dip. They may...
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Nest's Learning Thermostat →
Holy crap this thing is beautiful. It makes me want to buy a home just so I use it.
I really hope this takes off to continue the trend of beautiful, thoughtful design winning over cheap shit. Imagine if every piece of technology in your home was designed like this?
Right now, of course, basically just Apple products are. Tony Fadell learned well.
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Apple TV Effort Said to Be Led By iTunes Creator →
Way too much smoke gathering for there not to be some kind of fire. The real question: just how far along is this project?
Steve Jobs telling Walter Isaacson, “I finally cracked it” sure sounds promising. But in the 60 Minutes episode about the biography, Isaacson notes that the one area Jobs would have liked to transform was television — indicating that it may not happen. Of course,...
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The iPod Turns 10 →
Even as sales continue to slip now (though market share remains around 70%), it has had one hell of a run. Macworld has the story of its birth on October 23, 2001.
Benj Edwards:
Apple chose to unveil its portable digital music player in a low-key special event held on Apple’s campus in Cupertino. The press and Apple fans alike met the iPod with severe skepticism. Pundits openly wondered what...
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The Search For Greed →
Danny Sullivan does an extremely deep dive into what on the surface seems to be a very good thing: Google moving over to encrypted search.
It is mainly a good thing, and Google knew that’s how it would be interpreted, so they used the opportunity to do something shady: break the rules for their advertising partners.
When you move to secure connections, the unfortunate side effect is that...
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Mike Arrington Goes iPhone... Again. →
I always knew he’d be back. There’s only so long you can use shit before your hands start to stink.
Update: Alright, alright calm down. I was mostly joking. The truth is that Mike was using a Nexus One, which is a decent device, but already old by today’s standards. In fact, all the Nexus devices seem decent enough — including, undoubtedly, the forthcoming Galaxy Nexus. But why...
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"I Finally Cracked It." →
That’s what Steve Jobs revealed to Walter Isaacson in an interview for his forthcoming biography.
What was he talking about? The often rumored (and just as often dismissed) Apple television. Not the Apple TV, the current product, a full fledged television.
Six months ago, I laid out why I thought an Apple television was actually coming despite (and perhaps because of) the current...
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That Which Smelled Like Shit Is Actually Shit →
For quite some time, I’ve enjoyed making fun of UltraViolet, the new form of DRM wrapped in an extremely lame name (which calls to mind the shitty movie of the same name). But it was hard to know just how shitty it would be because it wasn’t out yet. Well, now it’s out. And apparently it’s even worse than I imagined.
As NewTeeVee points out, the Amazon reviews for the...
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Don't Let The Door Hit You On The Way Out Of... →
Google is ripping out the underlying social stuff in Google Reader — stuff that never really worked anyway — and instead using their RSS reader as a way to spur Google+ usage.
Makes sense. I’m excited for the new design, which is comically old (and naturally will look nowhere near as good as Reeder).
Here’s the best part of this announcement though:
We recognize, however, that some...
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A New Look for Gmail →
Google pushing hard to get Gmail looking like Sparrow.
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Lytro's Camera Shoots First, Focuses Later →
I haven’t used one yet, but this thing is fascinating to me. I love that they’ve made a camera with a totally new form factor rather than trying to cram the technology into something that looks familiar.
Writes Sam Grobart for The New York Times:
Where a traditional image sensor (as in your point-and-shoot or DSLR) can only record where light strikes the sensor surface, Lytro’s...
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"Works Fine" →
When discussing whether or not there should be apps built specifically for tablets, Android chief Andy Rubin noted that “the Twitter phone app works fine on a tablet.”
In this case, I can’t determine if “works fine” is code for “looks like shit” or “‘meh’ is good enough”. Either is absolutely the wrong attitude and perhaps speaks a...
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Apple’s Newsstand Is Already Booming For Some... →
Newsstand is one of my favorite little upgrades of iOS 5. Before, I had a folder where I shoved all my magazine/newspaper apps and would always forget to look at them — or worse, would dread launching them and having to wait several minutes for the new issue to download. Now it all happens automatically in the background.
I just wish that all magazine/newspaper providers would get on board. The...
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Apple Activates iTunes Match Setting in iOS 5,... →
Yep, it just showed up. Go to Settings -> Music and you’ll see it magically appear at the top. The service isn’t live just yet, but it sure looks like it will be soon.
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Your True Social Network
For as long as you’ve been carrying around a cellphone, you’ve been carrying around a social network in your pocket. And it’s your most important social network. But you probably don’t realize it. Your address book.
For years, you didn’t realize it because the original cellphones pre-dated the online social movement and there was no way that carriers or OEMs were...
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SplatF Gets Rejected From Google News →
As Dan Frommer points out, this is bullshit. But then again, Google News itself is mostly bullshit.
I’ve ripped them again and again and again for various things that a service serious about severing up the best news to its readers should care about. And I’ve spoken with that team a number of times behind the scenes about other issues. Nothing ever gets fixed. In fact, it often gets...
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systematique asked: Do you think the closed-device philosophy of Apple is genuinely better than Android's open-device philosophy? (Personal opinion, device popularity stats aside)
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systematique asked: Why are Apple's 4S sales more important than the combined sales of all Android devices (which are much higher in total)?
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systematique asked: You don't seem to understand the concept of Apple's single-choice sales compared to Samsung or HTC's multiple-choice sales combined.
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Instapaper 4.0 →
Instapaper has been a staple of my daily routine for years now. Today brings version 4.0, which offers huge improvements both visually and in terms of functionality. I’ve been beta testing the app for a few weeks — it’s an excellent update. Creator Marco Arment talks about it in detail here.
The app is $4.99 (if you’re updating, it’s free) — well worth it — and comes with...
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Apple Sells 4 Million iPhone 4Ss In Three Days →
Huge failure, as predicted, obviously.
Writes Apple SVP Phil Schiller:
iPhone 4S is off to a great start with more than four million sold in its first weekend—the most ever for a phone and more than double the iPhone 4 launch during its first three days.
That’s any phone. Ever.
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Drive
The reaction to my post on the game of tech blogging the other day was fascinating. About half of you found it to be an honest, insightful account. The other half seemed to think I was an arrogant prick. Fair enough. Obviously, I was going for the former.
But the latter reaction honestly did surprise me. It’s not like I was saying anything crazy. If you’re close enough to anyone in...
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Apple's iPhone Luring People To Ditch Rival Phones →
Again, everyone is so disappointed with the iPhone 4S that they’re ditching their old phones to get it.
I have a number of Android-carrying friends who also made the switch already. With the Nexus Prime due next week, this is going to be really interesting to watch.
Either way, RIM sure seems fucked (just in case that wasn’t already abundantly clear).
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The Shadowy World of iPhone Cases →
Fascinating the gambles companies take on unverified information just to get a jump on Apple gear. With the iPhone 4S, it backfired.
This also points to why you should never trust those stories that pop up claiming new iPhone specs based on cases. They’re just guessing like everyone else.
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Google Voice Pulled Amid iOS 5 Massive Fail →
I have hundreds of apps. The only one that I’ve seen that’s affected by the move to iOS 5 is Google Voice. It crashes every - single - time.
I know I bitch about this a lot, but I really can’t understand for the life of me why Google doesn’t take more pride in their work on iOS. Yes, I know the focus is on Android. But it’s still their own name they’re...
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Google Seppukus Jaiku, Buzz →
With Jaiku, what a shame. Just imagine if Google would have realized what they had all those years ago. Instead they let the product rot as they tried to squeeze the founders into other failed social projects.
Even sadder, I just assumed they had killed it off years ago.
As for Buzz. Finally. It’s been dead for ages, Google just refused to admit it until they were sure Google+ would get...
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Just Win, Baby
The biggest challenge I faced as a tech blogger was a simple one: motivation. By that, I don’t mean that it was hard to write — it never was. But towards the end, it was getting hard to get excited to write on a daily basis. I needed to be driven. That’s when I’m at my best.
Tech blogging is a game. Most of those still doing it probably won’t admit it, but it is....
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"I'm first in line." →
You have to love Steve Wozniak.
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Too Damn Small
It sure seems like pretty much everyone agrees on one thing Apple got wrong with iOS 5: the close buttons in Notification Center are way, way, way too small. I too misclick nearly every time.
The weird thing is that they’ve been too small since the very first beta of iOS 5 several months ago. Apple had a lot of time to change them, and they didn’t. That’s not an oversight,...
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iTunes Movies In The Cloud →
Apple wants users to be able to stream films they buy through the cloud to any iOS device. No surprise there, this is exactly what they just unveiled for music and television shows. But it sounds like Hollywood wants something in return: Apple to play nicely with UltraViolet — their shitty name for a new form of DRM.
Put simply: UltraViolet will not work without Apple on board. As the LA Times...
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Foursquare Radar →
This is something I’ve wanted from Foursquare since about week two of using it: ambient alerts.
The biggest barrier of any app is simply the need for it to be open to be useful. This starts to move away from that.
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Universal Dumps $60 Home Video Rental Plan →
Following up on this, Universal has decided to pull a Netflix and not-do-what-they-just-said-they-were-going-to-do.
In this case though, what they were going to do was an supremely awful idea: trying to get people to pay $60 to watch a movie at home while it’s in theaters.
Apparently, the cost wasn’t the issue for Universal, it was the threatened boycotts from theater chains.
Ha....
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Microsoft and Quanta Computer Sign Patent... →
Keyword: Chrome. Quanta felt the need to license something from Microsoft to cover not just their Android devices, but their Chrome ones.
Is that because Chrome and Android are sharing more code? Or is Chrome the next target on its own?
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Speed, Camera Speed →
John Gruber in his iPhone 4S review:
I spoke to some friends familiar with the development of iOS 5 and the 4S, and word on the Cupertino street is that camera speed — time from launch to being able to snap a photo, as well as the time between subsequent photos — received an enormous amount of engineering attention during development. The stopwatches were out, and every single tenth of a second...
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Apple’s iOS 5 Update Now Available For iPhone,... →
It’s heeeeerrrrreee.
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Google's Own Burning Platform Memo →
This is all kinds of fascinating. It’s a Jerry Maguire-esque memo for Google. It’s The Burning Platform part 2.
First of all, it’s apparently a huge Google+ Circle fail. The engineer, Steve Yegge, meant to share it internally at Google and instead made it public. Whoops.
Second, while the meat of his post is about Amazon (where he previously worked), it’s all to set up...
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