∞ Siri's dictation key surprise

Written by

Gary Ng:

After you’ve added the Emoji keyboard, or any other keyboard, you’ll notice Siri’s dictate key beside the spacebar changes from dark to light grey. What’s up with this change in colour?

I would never have found this.

∞ Good news for RIM; someone sucks more than they do at making tablets

Written by

Jon Fingas:

Motorola Mobility pained a dark picture for its tablet strategy with its results on Thursday. The company shipped just 100,000 Xoom tablets in the summer, or less than a quarter of the 440,000 from the spring and less still than the 250,000 from the winter launch. Motorola gave no explanation for the drop.

A possible explanation is that they suck balls.

∞ HP is keeping its PC business

Written by

HP today announced that it has completed its evaluation of strategic alternatives for its Personal Systems Group (PSG) and has decided the unit will remain part of the company. As John Gruber said, HP might want to buy Netflix or … Continued

∞ It's brutal being an Android user

Written by

Michael DeGusta:

I went back and found every Android phone shipped in the United States1 up through the middle of last year. I then tracked down every update that was released for each device – be it a major OS upgrade or a minor support patch – as well as prices and release & discontinuation dates. I compared these dates & versions to the currently shipping version of Android at the time. The resulting picture isn’t pretty – well, not for Android users:

Wow. That’s all I got for that one.

∞ Steve Jobs, Final Cut and iMovie

Written by

An excerpt from John Buck’s book “Timeline”:

Jobs approached Adobe Systems, and asked them to create a consumer version of Premiere that Apple could bundle with the unreleased Mac code-named Kihei. With Apple’s future still uncertain, and Premiere sales growing on the Wintel platform, Adobe said no.

Like so many other things, Jobs was driven by a belief that he was right. When Adobe said no, Jobs created the applications division at Apple that gave us so many great apps over the years.

∞ SoundCloud releases iPad app

Written by

While maximizing native iPad capabilities like multi-touch and page swiping, SoundCloud’s app takes full advantage of the iPad interface to allow users to touch the newly designed waveform of the sound captured, allowing for a more social experience, which also includes more space for scrolling comments. In addition, users can now record private messages and send them directly to other people on SoundCloud.

∞ Research tells enterprise market to embrace Macs

Written by

Philip Elmer-Dewitt:

“It’s time to repeal prohibition and take decisive action,” writes David Johnson in a new report made available to Fortune (and available for sale here). “Mac users are your HEROes and you should enable them not hinder them.”“HERO,” it turns out, is a Forrester acronym for Highly Empowered and Resourceful Operatives — “the 17% of information workers who use new technologies and find innovative ways to be more productive and serve customers more effectively.”

∞ Apple has $81.5 billion in cash

Written by

Matthew Panzarino for TNW:

Apple today filed its Form 10-K with the SEC that discloses information to stockholders and the commission. In an amongst the normal legal statements there were a few interesting facts. Among those were that Apple currently has $81,570,000,000 in cash, marketable securities and cash equivalents.

The filing also noted Apple now has 60 thousand employees.

∞ Record high BlackBerry trade-ins after outage and iPhone 4S launch

Written by

Josh Lowensohn for CNET:

The metric follows an extended outage of Research In Motion’s e-mail and BlackBerry messaging services, which left users unable to communicate with one another or send and receive e-mails globally. To placate angry users, RIM offered users $100 in free “premium” applications. The spike also coincided with the release of Apple’s new iPhone 4S.

And the bad news just keeps coming for RIM.

∞ 'Take Control of iCloud'

Written by

“Take Control of iCloud” covers every platform that iCloud supports, which includes Mac OS X 10.7.2 Lion, iOS 5, Windows Vista and Windows 7, and even the second-generation Apple TV. If your computers and devices aren’t running — or can’t run — those operating systems, they won’t be able to participate in iCloud, but the ebook offers some workarounds.

A book written by Joe Kissell and offered by TidBITS founders Adam and Tonya Engst. In other words, it’s really good.

∞ RIM sued over BlackBerry outages

Written by

BGR.com: It specifically focuses on “RIM’s failure to take action to either directly compensate BlackBerry users or to indirectly compensate BlackBerry users by arranging for wireless service providers to refunds their customers and to take full responsibility for these damages.” … Continued

∞ Cards

Written by

Neil Hughes: Cards is a free application available on the App Store, and it works as promised. I tried building a card with the software while on the go, over a 3G connection on an iPhone 4. The process is … Continued

∞ Apple begins in-store product pickup

Written by

When checking out from Apple’s online store, a new “Pick up” option is available, from which users can select a store in San Francisco, Calif. It also states that the in-store pickup option is “coming soon to a U.S. Apple Store near you.”

Just another example of Apple’s commitment to serving its customers in the best way possible.

∞ PlayBook OS 2.0 delayed until 2012

Written by

In an apparent effort to make sure I had something to write about today, RIM announced that it has delayed the release of its PlayBook OS 2.0 software until February 2012. CrackBerry.com reported the news last night. The full text … Continued

∞ White in design

Written by

Core77:

Linda O’Keeffe, the former Creative Director of Metropolitan Home magazine, has assembled a photo-heavy tome called BRILLIANT: White in Design that “explores the full spectrum of colors and characteristics inherent in white, exploring how it is used and viewed in art, design, architecture and nature.”

Some beautiful stuff.

∞ How Richard Branson started Virgin Atlantic

Written by

kottke.org:

In ’79, when Joan, my fiancee and I were on a holiday in the British Virgin Islands, we were trying to catch a flight to Puerto Rico; but the local Puerto Rican scheduled flight was cancelled. The airport terminal was full of stranded passengers. I made a few calls to charter companies and agreed to charter a plane for $2000 to Puerto Rico. Cheekily leaving out Joan’s and my name, I divided the price by the remaining number of passengers, borrowed a blackboard and wrote: VIRGIN AIRWAYS: $39 for a single flight to Puerto Rico.

Brilliant.

∞ The delicious design sandwich

Written by

Jason Gross:

With virtually every website, good UX design can be sectioned into three parts or events: introduction, consumption and reaction. Content is at the core, the meat of what the user is looking for, and on both sides of the content are events that are driven by a well-executed design.

This is what I tried to do with The Loop’s new design. Making a simple design that highlights the content is much more difficult than what I thought it would be.

∞ Netflix loses 800,000 subscribers

Written by

GigaOM: Netflix’s subscriber attrition in the wake of a price hike and separation of its streaming and DVD businesses is even greater than first thought. The company ended the quarter with 23.8 million subscribers in the third quarter, which is … Continued

∞ Trading in iCloud photo stream

Written by

Dave Caolo:

iCloud’s Photo Stream feature is handy, in that it pushes photos shot with a compatible iPhone, iPad or iPod touch to Apple’s servers and then back to other authorized devices. It’s a hindrance for the same reason, in that my iPhone, iPad and Mac are now cluttered with space-hogging one-offs I shot for the sake of a tweet or a Facebook update.

I haven’t noticed this myself, but perhaps I just don’t take enough pictures for it to be a problem.

∞ Glenn Fleishman reviews AirPort Utility for iOS

Written by

AirPort Utility for iOS is the perfect tool for configuring and troubleshooting Apple’s gear without having to lug a laptop around, but it needs to improve its handling of password storage. When it comes to networking, Glenn is the man.

∞ Siri co-founder leaves Apple

Written by

Kara Swisher:

There were several reasons for the departure, which was amicable and has been planned for a while, sources said. They included Kittlaus’s family being in Chicago, a desire to take time off and an interest in brainstorming new entrepreneurial ideas.

∞ Moron

Written by

Sascha Vongehr:

Now it is not exactly news that Apple products are overpriced and of relatively low quality…

To prove his point he shows an iPhone 4S being dropped from shoulder height. I think the writer must have been dropped on his head from shoulder height.

Talking about Siri, Vongehr again shows how moronic he can be.

∞ NYCTruckFood

Written by

Our state-of-the-art interactive map allows you to see which trucks are in your area RIGHT NOW. You can also search for your favorite trucks by cuisine, and hear about new trucks.

One of the best things about New York City is the food…

∞ Tumult Hype [Sponsor]

Written by

Tumult Hype lets you create animated HTML5 content that will wow your website’s visitors. Its output works on all modern browsers and mobile devices like iPhones and iPads. No coding necessary. Tumult Hype has a trial available, and can be … Continued