Yearly Archives: 2012

Thinking small

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Horace Dediu:

The irony is that by thinking small, Apple became the biggest company that ever was.

Samsung reveals design philosophy

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First it’s a bowl of water, now pebbles in the stream. The next product will be based on volcanic rocks and The Greatest Hits of Captain and Tennille.

Apple TV

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Analyst Andy Hargreaves said this morning that he believes an “Apple Television would be ‘extremely unlikely’ in the near term.” Not that I disagree with his assertion, but the way he arrived at it is a bit sketchy to me.

He came to the conclusion after a meeting with Apple’s Eddy Cue. Basically Cue said Apple will enter a market when its damn good and ready and there are problems with the current television setup. These are the same things Steve Jobs said publicly about television, so there is really nothing new there.

We also don’t know what “near term” is. Next week, next month, two years from now. Hargreaves note just seemed odd to me and not based on anything factual.

The All-New Squarespace 6

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Design a visually rich website with magazine-quality layouts that scales to any screen size – all without touching a line of code. Squarespace 6 is a revolutionary new website creation platform with over 50 new features. Squarespace’s breakthrough LayoutEngine technology allows anyone to create visually-rich pages with any configuration of text, images, or blocks by dragging items exactly where you want them.

The platform comes equipped with 20 new, fully customizable templates and offers sophisticated media management, a robust blogging engine, deep social network integration, real-time statistics, multiple author support, and more.

Try Squarespace 6 today – free 14-day trial.

Mac G4 table

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The twin-brother to the G3 line, Crunching Numbers G4 is also custom-made and individually hand-crafted from retired Macintosh G4s and up to 70% reclaimed materials. Because the reclaimed materials can vary in shape and size, the different combinations make every table we create truly one-of-a-kind.

Cool.

Windows 8: ‘It’s annoying, frustrating, irritating, and baffling to use’

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Tim Edwards:

I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that Windows 8 is the worst computing experience I’ve ever had. As a desktop operating system, it’s annoying, frustrating, irritating, and baffling to use. I’ve tried on many occasions to explain exactly why it’s so awful to use day-to-day, and most of the time, smoke starts pouring out of my ears. I thought it would be better to get down exactly what the issues are and why you should avoid it.

And that was the nice thing he had to say.

Fact-checker

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Rob Pegoraro wrote an interesting piece on how stories can, and have, gone wrong.

iPhone 5 and iPad mini events

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John Gruber:

I’m thinking it makes more sense for Apple to hold two events. First, an iPhone event, focused solely on the new iPhone and iOS 6. Then, the iPhone ships nine days later, and there’s another wave of iPhone-focused attention as the reviews come out. Then, in the first or second week of October, Apple holds its traditional “music event”, exactly along the lines of the events at which they’ve been debuting new iPods for the last decade.

Oh that Gruber is a smart fellow.

Vintage video games

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If you’re a retro gamer—or if you want to try out the games long-time gamers are always going on about, there’s never been a better time than now to indulge your passion for vintage video games. There are lots of good ways to do feed your jones, and even a few that don’t cost too much money.

Sega!

Botched restoration of Jesus Fresco

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Ms. Giménez said she had worked on the fresco using a 10-year-old picture of it, but she eventually left Jesus with a half-beard and, some say, a monkeylike appearance.

Wow. Just wow.

Apple releases Mountain Lion v10.8.1

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The update contains the following changes:

  • Resolve an issue that may cause Migration Assistant to unexpectedly quit
  • Improve compatibility when connecting to a Microsoft Exchange server in Mail
  • Address an issue playing audio through a Thunderbolt display
  • Resolve an issue that could prevent iMessages from being sent
  • Address an issue that could cause the system to become unresponsive when using Pinyin input
  • Resolve an issue when connecting to SMB servers with long names
  • Address a issue that may prevent Safari from launching when using a Proxy Automatic Configuration (PAC) file
  • Improve 802.1X authentication with Active Directory credentials

Prismatic: A personal news feed on iPhone

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As soon as you sign up with Facebook, Twitter or G+, we start learning about you and connecting you with the most interesting stories. Prismatic is a smart personal newsfeed with simple layouts that creates a delightful reading experience.

I downloaded this and it looks great. I like an app that learns with me and gives me news that I want to read.

VMware Fusion 5 with 70 new features

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VMware Fusion 5 has been designed to work on Mountain Lion and integrate to some of its key features. You can now get VMware Fusion updates directly in Mountain Lion’s notification center or search for your favorite Windows programs in Launchpad. And if you have an Apple TV, you can even use “AirPlay Mirroring” to view your Windows environment on your HDTV.

I talked to the folks at VMware earlier this week and it looks like a great update. Not only Mountain Lion and Retina support, but also lots of performance enhancements too. There’s also upgrade pricing.

Dell & HP are like reading a page from a horror novel

Written by

Om Malik:

Dell, in fact, is no different than HP which also has blown the shift to mobile and now is trying to do a comb-over by using cloud and enterprise as its areas of focus.

Om’s story on HP and Dell cuts deep, but he’s right on.

Twitter, the next America Online

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Dan Wineman talking about App.net:

Most of this criticism stems from a perception of the service as a Twitter clone that costs money. Which is totally fair because right now, that’s all it is. But it’s also a bit like calling the web in 1993 an AOL clone for rich white college students. Fair, but entirely missing the point.

Dan brings up some great points.

A massive Disqus bug

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The folks over at Webdesigner Depot wrote about this bug in their Disqus commenting system today. Incredible.

iPhone: The bet Steve Jobs didn’t decline

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Counternotions:

Suppose you were the CEO of Apple in 2005 when a couple of intergalactic visitors with time-warping technology offered you this bet:Design and manufacture a small mobile device that seamlessly combines the functionalities of a cellular phone, a web surfer, an audio/video player and a small PC, and your company will double its market cap and establish a third mass-market computing platform after Windows and Macintosh.Would you take it?Before you say, “Are you nuts, why wouldn’t I?” ponder just a few of the issues involved.

Reading his analysis of the issues Apple faced back in 2005 makes it even more remarkable that Apple “bet the company” on the iPhone.

OnLive was days away from shutdown

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OnLive was days away from shutting down when it sold its assets to another company last week, reveals a financial services firm involved in the transaction.

The Beatles’ final photo shoot

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On this day in 1969, two days after their final recording session, the Beatles gathered at Tittenhurst Park, where John Lennon and Yoko Ono resided, for a photo shoot they didn’t realize would be their last — an instance of those bittersweet “unknown lasts” that wedge themselves between our lived experience and our memory, sometimes violently and other times with the tender wistfulness of nostalgia.

National Hobo Convention

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The hobo is a migratory worker, some with a special skill or trade, others ready to work at any task, but always willing to work to make his way.The tramp, they’ll tell you, is a traveling non-worker, moving from town to town, but never willing to work for the handouts that he begs for. A bum is the lowest class, too lazy to roam around and never works.

[Via Kottke]

Bait and switch: What’s behind AT&T’s stance on FaceTime

Written by

GigaOM:

AT&T’s decision to block Apple’s video-calling program on its cellular network for certain customers has raised the ire of consumers and public-interest groups, and it may even draw the attention of the Federal Communications Commission. And after the wireless carrier posted its rationale on Wednesday on its decision to limit video over FaceTime to customers who have signed up for its Mobile Shared Data plan, I see two reasons the carrier has picked this fight.The first is to push more consumers over to the Mobile Shared Data plan, and the second is to establish a precedent that will put its Wi-Fi network on the same legal footing as its cellular one, especially when it comes to network neutrality.

Toontrack Session Drums

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This pack is perfect for the songwriter looking for a wide variety of basic drums for a broad spectrum of playing styles. It covers anything from mellow ballads to funky midtempo swing and straight uptempo rock, all categorized in different songs and full 4-8 bar song part blocks.

I love Toontrack’s products. I have almost everything they make.