November 15, 2012

Philip Messing and Josh Margolin for the NY Post:

A pair of brazen crooks punched another hole in the lax JFK security when they stole a trove of new Apple iPad minis — worth $1.5 million — from the same cargo building that was the site of the 1978 Lufthansa heist featured in “GoodFellas,” The Post has learned. The crooks struck shortly before midnight on Monday and used one of the airport’s own forklifts to load two pallets of the tablet computers into a truck, according to law-enforcement sources.

This never would have happened under Steve Jobs’ watch.

Todd Bradley, the head of HP’s PC business:

“I’d hardly call Surface competition,” Bradley said in an interview with IDG Enterprise. He listed several reasons, “One, very limited distribution. It tends to be slow and a little kludgey as you use it …. It’s expensive. Holistically, the press has made a bigger deal out of Surface than what the world has chosen to believe.”

This coming from one of Microsoft’s partners.

Chris Ciaccia for The Street:

After reports earlier in the week that the South Korean technology giant was raising application processor (AP) prices on Apple by as much as 20%, a Samsung Electronics official denied the reports to The Hankyoreh, a Seoul-based newspaper. The unnamed official noted that prices are set at the beginning of the year and aren’t changed easily.

Ballmer last night during an interview with Reid Hoffman:

Ballmer called the Android ecosystem “wild,” “uncontrolled” and susceptible to malware.

This coming from the man that’s in charge of the most virus- and malware-infected operating system in the world. Perhaps someone should have told Ballmer that the day before his comments, a teenager developed a prototype malware for Windows 8 that will be demonstrated later this month at the Malware Conference.

Drew Olanoff at TechCrunch did a great job of grabbing some other treasures from Ballmer too, like when Ballmer was asked about Windows and he said “Wow, it just works!”

The man is crazy.

November 14, 2012

I stared at this picture of an eye for quite a while before I finally saw what it was. Freaky.

Most Windows users in the U.S. know about Windows 8 but few have immediate plans to upgrade to Microsoft’s newest operating system. What’s more, about one-third of Windows 7, Windows Vista and Windows XP users who are ready to buy a new personal computer say they intend to switch to an Apple product.

Fascinating numbers for me, but they must be frightening for Microsoft. Imagine that one-third of the customers planning to purchase a new computer — 16% of the 350,000 people in this survey — decide that your product is so bad, they are switching to the competition. Microsoft has run out of goodwill from its users.

Update: I updated the wording to make the number of people considering a new purchase clear.

Stef Gonzaga put together a great roundup of Markdown apps on AppStorm. I’m really late to the Markdown party, but I really like using it. I started with Markdown last year and it’s incredibly versatile.

There seems to be nothing that can’t be done with CSS these days.

It won’t be new to anyone who owns a copy of Kurt Cobain’s Journals, but for the rest of us, the late Nirvana frontman’s hand-scrawled list of his all-time favorite albums is a sight to behold.

It’s always interesting to see what other musicians listen to on a regular basis.

News of the intrusion surfaced late Tuesday, when a hacker claiming to be from Egypt claimed the hack and proved it by releasing 644 records from the site, including emails, saying that the release was done to prove that Adobe is slow in fixing security issues with sites and products it releases.

I bet they got Adobe’s attention now.

Jim and Dan discuss Sinofsky’s departure and it’s affect on Microsoft, US iPhone sales by outlet and the success and importance of the Apple Store, the desperate future of RIM, allergic reactions to the Blackberry, the iPad mini and Apple’s decline, the Zoom Multistomp, and the new USB Strat. Sponsored by Hover (use code DANSENTME for 10% off), Squarespace (use code DANSENTME11 for 10% off), Lynda, and Mutual Mobile.

Steinberg announced Cubase 7 today and it looks pretty good. I especially like what they’ve done with the Mix Console and Control Room.

Jeff Hunter:

The abuse of push notifications is spreading across the App Store. As a result, users are starting to reflexively reject app requests to send push notifications.

I couldn’t agree more. Some of the uses of push notifications have gotten way out of hand. Some apps even pop up notifications when you open the app advertising some of their other products. I hate it.

[Via Ben Brooks]

Christina Warren locked her iPhone away and is only using the Nokia Lumia 920 for the next 10 days. Good luck.

Peter talks at BMac in Boston tonight, about Mac games

If you’re not doing anything in Boston or Cambridge tonight (Wednesday) and you’d like to get up to speed on the latest on the Mac game scene, feel free to stop by the monthly BMac user group, happening at 7PM at building E51 on the MIT campus. It’s a short jaunt from Kendall Square, easily accessibly from the T.

I’m going to be talking about Mac games – the latest ones to play, where to find them, and what’s going on with the Mac game scene these days. There may be free stuff, too.

Rene Ritchie on why Samsung won’t settle with Apple:

Being Apple without being Apple led to Samsung becoming far and away the leading Android phone vendor by market share, and there’s likely no amount of wrist-slapping that with level the playing field for vendors like HTC and Motorola which chose to go with more unique, more authentic products from the get-go.

Samsung blatantly copied Apple and made billions. They continue to make huge amounts of money, far more than any court settlement could give Apple. Hell, I wouldn’t settle either.

Thorsten Heins predicts success for the BlackBerry 10.

This looks like impressive guitar amp modeling software. I’ll definitely be trying this out today.

The beauty of Bean is its simplicity. You tap, it counts.

November 13, 2012

New iPad mini TV ads

The ads are called Photos and Books.

Thirty-two-year-old Shena Hardin was instructed to hold a sign that read ONLY AN IDIOT WOULD DRIVE ON THE SIDEWALK TO AVOID A SCHOOL BUS.

You can see her in action on the video at the bottom of the page.

But it appears that the newest Nexus hardware is selling out fast. Both versions of Nexus 4 are now listed as ‘coming soon’ on the Play Store in the U.K., and the 32GB version of the Nexus 10 tablet is also apparently no longer in stock.

That’s great. I can’t wait to hear from Google exactly how many they sold.

Staggering how much money Google makes from ads.

MG Siegler takes a look at what happened at Microsoft and the company’s “no compromise” approach to Windows 8.

This is an intriguing product. I don’t know anyone that doesn’t get frustrated with earphone cords.

Doesn’t everyone do this?

I want one of these to go with my Zakk Wylde Overdrive. For me, MXR is like Boss was back in the day — trusted and indestructible.

Shares of Microsoft Corp slid on Tuesday after the surprise departure of a key executive, who analysts said marks the loss of the driving force behind the company’s biggest product.The shares were down 2.8 percent in afternoon at $27.21.

Wall Street took Apple’s executive changes in stride when they learned that Jony Ive and Eddy Cue would assume some of Forstall’s duties. It had a calming effect on everyone. Microsoft, indeed most companies, don’t have that.

An incredibly detailed article from Federico Viticci.

John Gruber on Dell’s new ad.