Ben Bajarin wrote a great piece on the iPhone and its market share in the U.S. There are so many takeaways, you should just read the whole thing.

I love seeing smart people doing smart things.

The Galaxy Round exists because the Galaxy Round exists. Samsung built and launched it so that it would be the first company in the world to build and launch a smartphone with a curved display. That’s it. The curved shape of the phone adds nothing of value to the user experience and once again, Samsung didn’t even attempt to add any useful new functionality to the device. It’s a gimmick.

That pretty much says it all.

An excerpt from Nick Bilton’s upcoming book on Twitter was posted in The New York Times today. Fascinating read.

Today seems to be live-in-the-past day. Heh.

For you young-‘uns, MacPaint was a bit-mapped drawing program that shipped with the original Macintosh. A lovely bit of code.

iPhone 5s and 5c will be available on Friday, October 25 in Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, French West Indies, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macau, Malta, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Reunion Island, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan and Thailand. iPhone 5s and 5c will also be available on Friday, November 1 in Albania, Armenia, Bahrain, Colombia, El Salvador, Guam, Guatemala, India, Macedonia, Malaysia, Mexico, Moldova, Montenegro, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and UAE. Both iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c are currently available in the US, Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Puerto Rico, Singapore and the UK.

When I was a kid, this was common science fiction fodder. To see this on the horizon is amazing.

In a speech to Virgin Galactic customers on September 27, the company’s founder, Sir Richard Branson, outlined these plans and more for the future of his commercial space fleet. “Using small, purpose-built, two-man spaceships based at space hotels our guests will be able to take breathtaking day trips programmed to fly a couple of hundred feet above of the moon’s surface,” Branson said. “They will be able to take in with their own eyes awe-inspiring views of mountains, craters and vast dry seas below.”

Sign me up!

Researchers at MIT wanted to create a robot that could reassemble itself into a variety of shapes. This is the proof of concept, a set of blocks, each of which contains a spinning motor with a break, along with all required electronics. The purpose of the motor is to generate inertia to allow the block to jump from one position to another.

Fascinating.

Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster just released data from their latest semiannual teen survey. Interesting read. Three things jumped out at me. In the three survey periods (Fall ’12, Spring ’13, Fall ’13):

1. iPhone ownership climbed steadily (40%, 48%, 55%). Shocking numbers for a device Samsung portrays as uncool.
2. Expected next phone purchase: iPhone as next phone increased (62%, 62%, 65%). Android also increased, but with a much smaller share (22%, 23%, 24%).
3. On the tablet side, Android marketshare is growing (plan to buy an Android table: 16%, 24%, 28%), while iPad plus iPad Mini drops (75%, 68%, 64%). Why add iPad and iPad Mini? Seems right, since Android does not break out their numbers by form factor.

My gut reaction to the tablet numbers is that the tablet share change is due to the ongoing maturation of the tablet market. The iPad mini was not around for the first survey and Android tablet use is still finding its level, at the cost of the existing iPad. Looking forward to the next survey.

From the most excellent Scott Knaster:

Last week I posted about MAC: The Macintosh Calendar 1985 and included a couple of images from the calendar. Lots of folks asked to see more, so today I photographed the entire calendar and posted it. I apologize in advance to anyone depicted in this calendar who would rather not see these images again. It’s all done in the name of history.

Click on the calendar picture to jump to the gallery. You can zoom in once with the magnifying glass, then again with the + sign in the mini picture in the upper left corner.

Such great memories.

MacUpdate’s bundle deal ends tomorrow night.

This is a great article by Christina Warren that looks at what’s happening with paid apps vs in-app purchases.

This is a great shared lists app. My wife and I tried it last night and it worked great. I’m a fan.

Chevron left the Pogues in the 90s but came back in the early oughts. He was an unofficial spokesman of sorts for the band and also oversaw the remastering of the Pogues’ back catalog on CD. Chevron, whose songwriting credits include the fan favorite “Thousands are Sailing,” had been battling esophageal cancer since 2007; it was thought to be in remission last year when doctors discovered an inoperable tumor.

Wow, nice.

The comparison, made during a question-and-answer session at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo, drew laughter from a packed-house audience.

Gartner analyst David Willis, who is chief of research for mobility and communications and who runs Gartner’s Senior Research Board, said to Schmidt: “If you polled many people in this audience they would say Google Android is not their principal platform […] When you say Android, people say, wait a minute, Android is not secure.”

Schmidt didn’t miss a beat, replying, “Not secure? It’s more secure than the iPhone.”

Eric Schmidt has lost his fucking mind.

Hear My Train A Comin’ unveils previously unseen performance footage and home movies taken by Hendrix and drummer Mitch Mitchell while sourcing an extensive archive of photographs, drawings, family letters and more to provide new insight into the musician’s personality and genius. Recently uncovered film footage of Hendrix at the 1968 Miami Pop Festival is among the previously unseen treasures featured in American Masters: Jimi Hendrix – Hear My Train A Comin’.

I can’t wait.

Neale Cousland / Shutterstock.com

Gutsy move, relying on a phone’s camera to take your pictures. Turned out to be a great choice. Fantastic pics.

Design tips worth reading before you start your next app project. These aren’t perfect, they aren’t exhaustive, but good food for thought.

The Microsoft campus is buzzing about the coming changes in leadership. Everyone knows Steve Ballmer’s plans, but what about Bill Gates?

Mr. Gates’s role at Microsoft has been a source of wide fascination since he left his day-to-day responsibilities in 2008. But interest in it has grown in the past few years as Microsoft has stumbled, and it intensified sharply in the weeks since Steven A. Ballmer announced he would be retiring as Microsoft’s chief executive in the next year.

Some Microsoft employees say they have noticed Mr. Gates around the company’s campus in Redmond, Wash., more often since Mr. Ballmer’s announcement, leading to speculation — perhaps mixed with a dash of hope — that he might want to assume a bigger role and return the company to its past heights.

Clearly, there are a number of people who see Bill Gates as a hero and hope for him to come to the rescue, to return as chief executive. But there is certainly a faction who would prefer Bill Gates to leave altogether, to avoid a battle over strategy once a new CEO takes over.

Last week, news reports surfaced that three unnamed shareholders had begun pressing the Microsoft board for Mr. Gates to leave as chairman because they believed he would be an impediment to strategy changes by the new chief executive.

Any such push is very unlikely to succeed in forcing Mr. Gates to distance himself from the company, according to several people who know Mr. Gates and the dynamics of the board. Last Thursday, the Microsoft board recommended Mr. Gates’ re-election as a director, according to a company filing with securities regulators.

Good article, nice coverage of some of the CEO candidates Microsoft is supposedly considering.

Britain’s Peter Higgs and Francois Englert of Belgium won the Nobel Prize for physics on Tuesday for predicting the existence of the Higgs boson particle that explains how elementary matter attained the mass to form stars and planets.

Half a century after their original work, the new building block of nature was finally detected in 2012 at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) centre’s giant, underground particle-smasher near Geneva.

The Higgs boson is the last piece of the Standard Model of physics that describes the fundamental make-up of the universe. Some commentators – though not scientists – have called it the “God particle”, for its role in turning the Big Bang into an ordered cosmos.

Higgs’ and Englert’s work shows how elementary particles inside atoms gain mass by interacting with an invisible field pervading all of space – and the more they interact, the heavier they become. The particle associated with the field is the Higgs boson.

Way to go, guys!

This is one of my favorite music apps. The new version now does chord detection among many other things.

Ed Zitron has taken his experience in public relations and published a book.

It turns out that the Galaxy Gear isn’t a very smart watch. Sure, it might do more than the watch you are wearing right now — at least on paper — but your everyday watch can tell time faster than the Gear, and is certainly more comfortable and attractive. And while the Gear does put some smartphone functionality on your wrist, it still requires you to grab your phone quite a bit, whether it is for installing apps or checking for more information about certain notifications. And that’s all assuming you can keep it on for long enough, given the comfort and battery life hurdles.

Joanna did a great review of the Galaxy Gear. Samsung’s entry into the smart watch market was more about being first than actually helping users. That is very clear.

AskingPoint provides Mobile App Analytics, In-App Messaging (great for cross promotion), and SaaS for Mobile Apps. Push messaging and Ap Monetization tools are coming later in October and November.

AskingPoint let’s you use your App Analytics to control anything in your Apps, in real-time. Check it out, and learn how to remote control your Mobile Apps!

There is just no shame—or original ideas—in this company at all.

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