Today, Amazon announced that Kindle Fire is sold out, and that in just nine months, Kindle Fire has captured 22% of tablet sales in the U.S.
The mainstream press is jumping all over this pile of shit like it’s real news.
First, if a company announces that it sold out of one of its best selling products, it stopped production. Which means Amazon issued a press release saying it stopped production of the Kindle Fire. OF COURSE YOU’RE GOING TO SELL OUT!
Second, how can Amazon claim it has 22 percent market share when it has yet to share any sales numbers. Amazon will not say how many Kindle Fire tablets it actually sold.
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Activision is revisiting its roots with the release of Activision Anthology, an iOS collection of video games originally made for the Atari 2600. It’s a free download (unlockable using In-App Purchase).
Today’s gamers know Activision as one of the modern era’s most popular video game publishers: the Call of Duty series, Guitar Hero, and many others have come from Activision. But 30 years ago, Activision was the first third-party publisher of video games for consoles, making titles for the legendary Atari 2600.
Forty-five of those cartridge games made for the Atari 2600 are available in Activision Anthology, unlockable using in-app purchases either in “game packs” or complete for $6.99.
You can play the original Pitfall, for example (recently resurrected as a rather disappointing run-and-jump game in the vein of ‘Temple Run’); River Raid, Barnstorming, Demon Attack and many others.
Admittedly, this may only appeal to a segment of retro-gaming enthusiasts who remember the Atari 2600 with fondness, but for those of us who cut our first teeth in home console gaming on systems like this, it’s a lot of fun.
TiVo has finally given a release date for its incoming Steam [sic] transcoder, which was unveiled back in May. Pre-orders opened up for a select few yesterday, and the company says that the device will be arriving on September 6. When it launches, it will set you back $129.99, which doesn’t seem to bad for what it does.
The TiVo Stream is a hardware device that lets you stream or upload content from your TiVo DVR to an iPhone, iPod touch or iPad.
There are other ways to get content from TiVo to iOS if you’re so inclined. I’ve used Roxio Toast 11 Titanium with my TiVo, for example: it includes a TiVo transcoding app for the Mac which converts TiVo content to something you can watch on your Mac or sync to iOS using iTunes. But this seems like a pretty simple alternative for TiVo users who don’t want to futz around with intermediate steps.
On this episode Myke is joined by Jim Dalrymple. They discuss Jim’s process for finding stories and posting to The Loop, his Membership scheme, what it’s like to keep secrets and the Apple vs Samsung lawsuit.
If you’ve ever met a Swede, chances are you asked her the following question: “What do you think of [ABBA/Ikea/The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo/socialized medicine/the Swedish Chef]?” For Swedes, it’s the last of these questions—the one about the unintelligible, shotgun-wielding, and much beloved chaos Muppet—that is especially vexing.
Remember the Fawlty Towers episode where Basil says, “don’t mention the war!” Well, apparently Swedes can be a bit touchy about being asked about The Muppet’s Swedish Chef – who knew!? Turns out, he’s probably Norwegian.
Jim Dalrymple and Dan Benjamin discuss what we’ll see at the upcoming Apple events, Twitter’s change in demographic focus, a leaked HTC tablet with curious iMac styling, the outcome of the Apple v. Samsung lawsuit, guitars, and more!
The owner of an Indian clothing store said Wednesday that he would only change its name from “Hitler” if he was compensated for re-branding costs, amid a growing row over the new shop.The outlet, which sells Western men’s wear, opened 10 days ago in Ahmedabad city in the western state of Gujarat with “Hitler” written in big letters over the front and with a Nazi swastika as the dot on the “i”.
Samsung contributed greatly to this with a post-trial statement that said: ““It is unfortunate that patent law can be manipulated to give one company a monopoly over rectangles with rounded corners, or technology that is being improved every day by Samsung and other companies.” It’s more unfortunate that the claim was largely a fabrication that was swallowed whole by many writers.
But let us not argue the case that all this quite obviously impedes innovation and is part of a new unreal property land grab – not about technology at all, but about intellectual property: an effort to privatize much of what was once understood to be shared and public (indeed, not ownable, like the shape of the iPhone).
There is just so much wrong with Wolff’s story, it’s hard to know where to begin. Let’s just take this little gem of a paragraph.
How is it that stopping a company from blatantly ripping off your design “obviously impedes innovation”? It doesn’t. As I wrote earlier this week, all it does it stop copying. It encourages innovation because companies will have to think for themselves instead of stealing like Samsung did.
This is not about the shape of the iPhone. Nokia has a rectangle phone too, but Apple didn’t sue them. This is about Samsung stealing everything that Apple did, from hardware design to software and sold it as their own.
Samsung and writers like Wolff are using this innovation argument as a scare tactic. It won’t work.
Apple’s request for an injunction against at lease eight Samsung phones — as well as Samsung’s effort to have the jury’s verdict set aside — will be heard at a Dec. 6 hearing, [Judge Lucy] Koh announced in a written order released late Tuesday.
It’s probably not going to make a huge difference for Samsung at this point – some of the phones listed are older models anyway.
Customers of Samsung have been dumping their Android products on at least one major resale site. Gazelle.com reports a 50% increase in Samsung smartphones over the past three days, which has led to a 10% drop in prices for those devices. “Consumers seem to be jumping ship,” says Anthony Scarsella, chief gadget officer at Gazelle.com. “We expect this trend to continue, especially with this latest verdict.”
I opened up the new sponsorships for October and November today. If you want to get your iOS or Mac product in front of The Loop’s savvy, good looking and talented readers, then this is the only way to do it.
Sponsoring The Loop this week is Pixelmator, an app that has not only become one of my all-time favorites, but also an app that makes me more productive. There’s a lot to like about Pixelmator, but for me it’s just the fact that it’s the best at what it does without a lot of confusing menus and clutter.
You used to be. You helped build Twitter into the global platform it is today. You were the ones who saw something meaningful in what others considered stupid and superfluous. You gave Twitter “at” replies and short links and hashtags and everything else that made the 140 character limit just a little easier to deal with. You were the true innovators – not them. But your services are no longer required. Please pack your things and go.
