Stephen Hackett interviews… me

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Stephen Hackett posted an interview that he did with me this week. If you want to know the who, what, where and why, go have a read.

RIM faithful

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Alex Knight:

I have spoken friends of mine who have been long-time Blackberry fans, and they aren’t holding their breath for any miraculous event where the company will suddenly bounce back.

This is a key point. Not even RIM’s loyal followers believe there is a chance in hell the company can recover from its embarrassing missteps over the last few years. Even at its worst times, Apple’s core customers believed in the company.

Apple stores in Target

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Mac Rumors:

Target has confirmed its plans to launch “store-within-a-store” concepts for Apple products in 25 of its stores around the United States. The announcement comes alongside a broader effort called “the Shops at Target” that will offer special focuses on certain products.

Shut the fuck up Schmidt

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John Gruber discussing Google’s search and Google Plus integration and the company’s doublespeak on the issue:

The best case scenario for Google is that Eric Schmidt, in his new role as chairman, has turned into a loose cannon who should just shut the fuck up.

Not much else to be said.

‘Inside Apple’ book coming this month

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Inside Apple reveals the secret systems, tactics and leadership strategies that allowed Steve Jobs and his company to churn out hit after hit and inspire a cult-like following for its products.Based on numerous interviews, the book offers exclusive new information about how Apple innovates, deals with its suppliers and is handling the transition into the Post Jobs Era.

The book is available for pre-order from Amazon.

Shakie motion controlled percussion app for iOS

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Shakie is an expressive motion controlled percussion instrument for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Pellets create sounds and rhythms as you move and shake them. Shakie’s built in pellets include maraca, shakers, tambourine, castanet, bells and spoon.

Looks cool.

Google’s Schmidt not convinced Android is fragmented

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“Differentiation is positive, fragmentation is negative,” Schmidt said during an appearance here at the Consumer Electronics Show. “Differentiation means that you have a choice and the people who are making the phones, they’re going to compete on their view of innovation, and they’re going to try and convince you that theirs is better than somebody else.”

I’m a total loss for words.

Shameless copying

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Federico Viticci:

No one is defending the argument that folks like Samsung copy everything that Apple does. Or that Apple doesn’t copy certain trends sometimes. But the amount of shameless copying and blatant efforts of coming up with unoriginal marketing jargon going on at CES are just too much for me.

I think Federico summed up many people’s CES experience.

You can ignore CES

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The Atlantic:

We broke down the trajectories of 17 tablets from CES 2011. In the final tally, I think you could say one is a qualified success (the Asus Eee Pad Transformer), one did OK (the Motorola XOOM), and several flopped (Dell Streak, RIM Playbook) or made no impact (Coby Kyrus, Cydle M7 Multipad, Naxa NID-7001). Nine never were heard from again.This is why it’s OK to ignore CES. Most of the product announcements (the majority in this case) lead nowhere, and if some product is really important, you’ll hear about it via some other avenue.

Ouch.

Dell to release a tablet in late 2012

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Reuters:

The once-dominant corporation founded by Michael Dell has seen a growing crop of tablets and smartphones entice consumers away from PCs. But Dell learned from the hastiness of some of its peers and understands better now how consumers value the “ecosystem” of a tablet as much as the hardware, chief commercial officer Steve Felice said.

Good that Dell finally realized what Apple knew for years — ecosystem counts.

The Joy of Books

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The YouTube description says:

After organizing our bookshelf almost a year ago, my wife and I decided to take it to the next level. We spent many sleepless nights moving, stacking, and animating books at Type bookstore in Toronto

[…]

Gruber vs. Lyons

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Really? This is where Dan Lyons wants to go? That Samsung doesn’t copy Apple? That “Apple fanboys” simply claim that they do as a knee-jerk response to Samsung’s undeniable success in the smartphone market?

It’s not even a fair fight.

Kodak sues Apple, HTC

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Kodak claims Apple’s iPhones, iPads, and iPods, and some of HTC’s smartphones and tablets use Kodak patents for transmitting images. Kodak is seeking to prevent further patent infringement from Apple and HTC as well as compensation.

Kodak is on its last leg.

Ferraris and Fords

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The consumer electronics market in 2012 can be easily summed up as Ferraris and Fords. Apple, of course, is the Ferrari of the tech market, while the competition is the Ford.

I’m not talking about speed, but rather the outlook on similar markets. […]

Charvel introduces the Desolation Series

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Charvel is proud to announce the return of two classic body shapes, both in sleekly modern Desolation series form. New Desolation DST and DX guitars offer a variety of features and finishes prized by discerning players everywhere, and both deadly models deliver the devastating tone, killer looks and high-performance playability that separate the Desolation series from all others.

I have 16 guitars, but sadly not one of them are a Charvel. I’ve always wanted one of these.

Market share and developers

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There’s no question in my mind that the most appealing thing about Android as a platform is its overall market share. The more Android devices that are out there, in use, the more appealing the platform is for developers. But to think that market share alone is a primary motivation for all or even most of the developers who’ve turned the iOS App Store into a phenomenon is to miss the forest for the trees.

Bingo!

BBEdit 10.1.1

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The BBEdit 10.1.1 update includes improvements to the recently introduced Open File By Name feature, enhancements to projects, and contains fixes for reported issues in this award-winning HTML and text editor.

I’ve been using BBEdit since about 1996. Love it.

Google’s nuclear bullshit

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MG Siegler on what he hates about Android:

But I cannot respect their decision to continue to work on this platform that perpetuates our imprisonment. I have to believe most simply chose not to think about these things. But they should. They really should.

MG goes through some of the history of Android and why he really dislikes some of the things that Google does.

CES is a parade of Apple ripoffs

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Daniel Ionescu:

Apple is not taking part in the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas but is present at the trade show through rip-offs of its products. From MacBook Air-inspired ultrabooks, to iPad-like tablets, smart TVs, and cloud computing technology, you will find clones of Apple’s product lineup at CES 2012—and this is just a taste of what’s coming up at the show this week.

If there is any doubt about how much influence Apple has in the industry, this should put it to rest.

Definition of a tech migraine

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That pain execs at HTC, Samsung, Google and RIM get when Apple announces a new product or initiative.

These are things they don’t want to blatantly copy, but because they want to keep up with Apple, they blatantly copy them anyway.

52Tiger.net membership

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Dave Caolo over at 52Tiger.net opened up memberships on his site today. I really like Dave’s writing and already signed up for my membership.