The Ballad of Poisonberry Pete Trailer by 7ate9 // This is a trailer for our thesis film, "The Ballad of Poisonberry Pete", coming soon to a computer near you. Like us it facebook! http://www.facebook.com/PoisonberryPete

from Daring Fireball

Oliver Reichenstein, on those insipid per-post social media buttons:

The previous wave of buttons for Delicious and Digg and Co. vanished, Facebook and Twitter and G+ might vanish or they might survive, but the buttons will vanish for sure. Or do you seriously think that in ten years we will still have those buttons on every page? No, right? Why, because you already know as a user that they’re not that great. So why not get rid of them now? Because “they’re not doing any harm”? Are you sure?

 ★ 

[Tim Cook kicked off this year’s D: All Things Digital conference on Tuesday. The Apple CEO was interviewed by conference hosts Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher, in a lively, engaging conversation. Here’s an edited roundup of the highlights.]

App In Seconds by Edge Case UK //

from Tools and Toys http://toolsandtoys.net

While I’ve seen my fair share of multi-tools, I’ve yet to see one with a hammer and a monkey wrench. In addition to these two great tools, this blue-handled beauty also comes with a screwdriver wit 12 various drill bits, a knife, a saw, a file, pliers, and a wire cutter.

Get it from MoMA Store

from MacStories http://www.macstories.net

Every time I think that there are enough stock and weather apps for iOS, I find a new one. And every time, I think something like “Please, let this one be cool”. Of all the apps that I regularly check out as a possible new topics, just 1% of them is usually worth a try. The rest is rubbish. When it comes to weather and stock apps, though, that rubbish part is also somehow twice as large. It’s as rare as an edelweiss in the Sahara that a new app with such purposes can offer a unique concept. Change by Jon Wheatley, however, is a perfect example of uniqueness and simplicity applied to stock UIs on the iPhone.

Wheatley reduced his app’s feature set to the question any stock owner always asks himself: have I gained or lost money with the stocks I own? Nothing more, because let’s be honest — more data is typically for the intellectual academics who call themselves stock analysts when reviewing iOS apps. Change is divided in two parts: a main information window, and a detailed list view to add or delete stocks you own. No preferences, no graphs, no predictions — just the current situation of your investments.

After the first launch, you have to enter the information about the stocks you own. Adding new ones afterwards is just a tap on the top right + button away. In the second panel, you have to type in the amount of stocks you own, the price you paid for them, and the stock symbol (like AAPL) of the respective company. Although the developer kindly implemented number fields for the first two panels, he did not manage to implement a search feature for the symbols, something which is totally common and useful, and definitely needs to be added in future updates.

What follows is an easy calculation in the background. The overall difference (all entered stocks are included in the main window) between your stocks’ value today and the time you bought them is then displayed in a large circle in the center of the screen. If it’s red, you lost money; if it’s green, you gained some. Additionally, you get your total gain (or loss) over time and the total value of your stocks via smaller numbers below the circle.

Tap on the diagram button in the top left corner, and you get to the mentioned list view where you can also add new stocks you recently purchased. Here, a more detailed look at single stocks is provided: you can see which part of your portfolio was more profitable today and over time.

Besides the fact I had to restart Change the first time I tested it (it crashed when I refreshed the calculation by tapping the circle), Change ran flawlessly on my iPod touch 3rd Gen. The simplicity in functionality can also be seen in the app’s UI. There are no distracting tones except for the aforementioned red and blue colorization of the circle. This way, nothing is distracting the user from the app’s purpose: easily displaying changes in stock value. The rest of the app is monochrome and easy to overview — this is mainly the case due to the very tastefully chosen sans-serif typefaces in which the headlines and information are set, and the subtle, but unique background texture.

Change takes the area of stock surveillance into a whole new direction: simplicity. And another great decision Wheatley made with Change is the app’s price: you can get Change for free on the App Store.

from kottke.org http://kottke.org/

I missed this last July when the news came out, but since I've been following the Pioneer Anomaly for the past eight years, I wanted to mention it here for closure purposes. First, what the hell is the Pioneer Anomaly?

The Pioneer anomaly or Pioneer effect is the observed deviation from predicted accelerations of the Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 spacecraft after they passed about 20 astronomical units (3×10^9 km; 2×10^9 mi) on their trajectories out of the Solar System. Both Pioneer spacecraft are escaping the Solar System, but are slowing under the influence of the Sun's gravity. Upon very close examination of navigational data, the spacecraft were found to be slowing slightly more than expected. The effect is an extremely small but unexplained acceleration towards the Sun, of 8.74±1.33x10^-10 m/s^2.

A team at JPL has tracked the problem to uneven heat emissions from the probes' fuel source.

For their new analysis, Turyshev et. al. compiled a lot more data than had ever been analyzed before, spanning a much longer period of the Pioneers' flight times. They studied 23 years of data from Pioneer 10 instead of just 11, and 11 years of data from Pioneer 11 instead of 3. As explained in their new paper, the more complete data sets reveal that the spacecraft's anomalous acceleration did indeed seem to decrease with time. In short, the undying force had been dying after all, just like the decaying plutonium.

A more recent paper by the same researchers offers even more support for their theory. Case closed, I say.

Tags: NASA   physics   Pioneer Anomaly   science   space

from Daring Fireball

Live coverage from The Verge and MacRumors, too.

 ★ 

from Daring Fireball

I still think the same thing about Chrome OS as I did a year ago: “Chrome feels so much more Google-y than Android. Chrome feels like Google’s natural platform — all web, only the web. Android feels like an independent Google subsidiary.”

 ★ 

Good read on what steps Twitter has taken to increase site performance:

RT @GBKS: I wrote a post about the misguided hate of social media buttons (includes design for highly effective buttons) ...

Isaac's Live Lip-Dub Proposal by Isaac Lamb // On Wednesday, May 23rd, 2012, I told my girlfriend to meet me at my parent's house for dinner. When she arrived I had stationed my brother to sit her in the back of an open Honda CRV and give her some headphones. He "wanted to play her a song"... What she got instead was the world's first Live Lip-Dub Proposal. Enjoy!

from Ars Technica http://arstechnica.com

NASA’s proposed radius around the Apollo 17 landing site, which would prevent damage to any historical artifacts from future missions.

NASA

The moon is about to become crowded.

In the next few years a slew of countries, including China, India, and Japan, are looking to put unmanned probes on the lunar surface. But more unprecedented are the 26 teams currently racing to win the Google Lunar X Prize—a contest that will award $20 million to the first private company to land a robot on the lunar surface, travel a third of a mile, and send back a high-definition image before 2015.

With all this activity, NASA is somewhat nervous about its own lunar history. The agency recently released a set of guidelines that aim to preserve important heritage locations such as the Apollo landing and Ranger impact sites. The report, available since 2011 to members of the private spaceflight community, was publicly posted at NASA’s website and officially accepted by the X Prize foundation on May 24.

"NASA has recognized that these sites are important to mankind and have to be protected to make sure there’s no undue damage done to them," said John Thornton, president of Astrobotic Technology Inc., a company competing for the prize.

Though NASA has no way of enforcing the requirements, they are designed to protect materials and scientific equipment at historical lunar sites as well as future landing sites. The guidelines have been made available internationally, and the agency welcomes other nations to participate in and improve upon them, said NASA spokesperson Joshua Buck in an e-mail.

NASA is asking anyone that makes it to the lunar surface to keep their landing at least 1.2 miles away from any Apollo site and about 1,600 feet from the five Ranger impact sites. The distance should keep the old equipment safe from a terrible accident or collision. It will also would put the new equipment "over the lunar horizon" relative to the relics, and prevent any moon dust—known to be a highly abrasive material—from sandblasting NASA’s old machines.

The Apollo 11 and 17 sites—the first and last places visited by man—are singled out in particular for extra care and respect. Robots are prohibited from visiting both sites and are requested to remain outside a large radius (250 feet for Apollo 11 and 740 feet for Apollo 17) to prevent a stray rover from accidentally harming hardware or erasing any footprints.

"Only one misstep could forever damage this priceless human treasure," reads the report.

Looking toward a possible high-traffic lunar future, the report also warns that frequent and repeated visits would have a cumulative and irreversible degrading effect on the historical sites. Other guidelines ask that rovers avoid kicking dust onto existing scientific experiments, like the laser-ranging lunar reflectors that are used to measure the distance between the Earth and moon.

Scientists and engineers would like to obtain updated photos of the Apollo 15 rover to see how it has weathered after nearly 40 years on the lunar surface.

NASA

Once a team has successfully landed, both the guidelines and the Google Lunar X Prize actually encourage them to go near some of the historic landing sites. The X Prize will award an extra $4 million to any company that can snap photos of a man-made object on the moon, including the Soviet Lunokhod rovers. And NASA has placed less restrictive protective radii around their other Apollo-era sites and artifacts, asking that robots merely remain three to nine feet from flags, tools, storage bags, and other pieces.

There is currently little data on what sitting for 40 plus years on the lunar surface does to man-made objects. The moon is an extreme environment, with wild temperature swings and full-on exposure to solar radiation, dust, and micrometeorites, all of which could severely weather materials.

Scientists and engineers are eager to obtain some before and after shots of artifacts that have been exposed to the elements for so long. It could give them insight into building future long-term structures on the moon, such as manned bases or mining operations.

Though the guidelines come from NASA, the agency worked with members of the private spaceflight community before releasing them, said Robert Richards, founder of two companies competing for the Lunar X Prize, Moon Express, Inc. and Odyssey Moon Limited.

"It’s not a decree, we were able to participate and comment," he said. Richards added that the instructions simply reflect common sense, decency, and respect for other people’s property on the moon.

Images: 1) NASA’s proposed radius around the Apollo 17 landing site, which would prevent damage to any historical artifacts from future missions. 2) Scientists and engineers would like to obtain updated photos of the Apollo 15 rover to see how it has weathered after nearly 40 years on the lunar surface. NASA

Read Comments

Deciding that you have to build a phone seems like what an entrenched company that feels it can no longer innovate does in order to protect its position as platforms shift.

from Daring Fireball

Jean-Louis Gassée analyzes the stock prices of Apple and Amazon (and Facebook):

Why do they think Apple has so much less room to grow than Amazon?

First, a big difference: Apple’s founder is no longer with us while Bezos is very much in command. This is no criticism of Tim Cook, Apple’s new CEO. A long-time Jobs lieutenant, the architect of Apple’s supremely effective Supply Chain, a soberly determined man, well liked, respected and healthily feared inside the company, Tim Cook is eminently credible. But traders are cautious; they want to see if the Cook regime will be as innovative, as uncompromisingly focused on style and substance as before.

I agree that investors are taking a wait-and-see approach to Tim Cook as CEO, but, I think overall, the Jobs-to-Cook succession has been a good thing for Apple’s share price. Investors dislike uncertainty and Steve Jobs’s health had been a source of uncertainty for years. Steve Jobs’s value had been drained from Apple’s share price years ago. Apple has reported great numbers so far under Cook, but they’re not that different than the numbers Apple has been reporting quarter-after-quarter for years now. I think one of the biggest reasons Apple’s share price has gone up under Cook is that were so many investors who truly worried that Apple would fall apart without Steve Jobs.

 ★ 

from Fortune Tech: Technology blogs, news and analysis from Fortune Magazine » Apple 2.0 http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/

The Justice Department may regret trying to make its e-book antitrust suit stick to Apple

Click to enlarge.

FORTUNE -- I haven't had so much fun reading legal documents since the Watergate trials.

I loved U.S. v. Apple et al. for the juicy details: the 56 phone calls, the clandestine meetings in swank Manhattan eateries, the secret e-mails "double erased" to ensure they couldn't be traced.

But what makes Apple's (AAPL) response, filed Tuesday, such a great read is the clarity and precision with which it cuts the government's case to shreds.

At least as it applies to Apple.

In the space of six paragraphs the document characterizes the Justice Department's assertions as "absurd" and "fundamentally flawed," accuses the government of "ignoring inconvenient facts" and of siding with monopoly rather than competition.

The key paragraph:

The Government starts from the false premise that an eBooks "market" was characterized by "robust price competition" prior to Apple's entry. This ignores a simple and incontrovertible fact: before 2010, there was no real competition, there was only Amazon. At the time Apple entered the market, Amazon sold nearly nine out of every ten eBooks, and its power over price and product selection was nearly absolute. Apple's entry spurred tremendous growth in eBook titles, range and variety of offerings, sales, and improved quality of the eBook reading experience. This is evidence of a dynamic, competitive market. These inconvenient facts are ignored in the Complaint. Instead, the Government focuses on increased prices for a handful of titles. The Complaint does not allege that all eBook prices, or even most eBook prices, increased after Apple entered the market.

Apple's filing doesn't try to defend the five publishers the DOJ has accused of colluding to fix prices. In fact, it basically throws them under the bus, pointing out that if there was a price-fixing conspiracy among its co-defendants -- as alleged -- they kept it secret from Apple.

Meanwhile, the government's lawyers are going to have a hard time proving that Apple violated antitrust laws because the company's market share in the e-book business before the launch of the iPad was essentially zero.

They can't make a case against Apple for collusion because whatever the publishers may have said to one another, there's no evidence that Apple conspired with its competitors.

They can't even use as evidence the blunt quotes taken from the Steve Jobs biography because they are hearsay.

The one element of the government's case that seemed to give Apple's lawyers a hard time was the charge that the most-favored-nation provision Steve Jobs added at the last minute was "designed to protect Apple from having to compete on price at all, while still maintaining Apple's 30% margin."

In its response, Apple's legal team can't even bring itself to name the provision, referring to it repeatedly as MFN. But they manage to shoot some holes in the government's argument, pointing out, among other things, that the 30% cut Apple takes is hardly pure profit margin. It costs money to run the iBookstore, and while Apple doesn't claim to lose money on e-book sales, that's not where it gets the big bucks.

You can get the gist of Apple's filing in those first six introductory paragraphs. The rest is an item-by-item refutation of the government's case and a summary of Apple defenses, should it come to that.

The full document is available as a pdf here.

Filed under: Apple 2.0

from The Brooks Review http://brooksreview.net

Marcelo Somers:

Facebook advertising doesn’t work because they focus on showing you ads based on who you are, not what problem you are trying to solve.

Great post about advertising in general. What people are learning is that “targeting” and “click-throughs” aren’t nearly as important as “buying”. That’s why Google rakes in the dough: they present ads when you are ready and willing to buy. Facebook presents ads when you are stalking.

As of this writing, Facebook is trading at $29.32 — down again for the day.

∞

from Daring Fireball

RadarScope is a premium weather radar display system for Mac and iOS. It’s the first choice among meteorologists, public safety officials, and weather enthusiasts. RadarScope is a professional-grade app at a consumer price, so you can rely on the same tool the experts use to track severe storms.

The latest version features super-resolution data, additional radar products, and more.

This week enjoy 33% off the Mac version of RadarScope.

I wrote a post about the misguided hate of social media buttons (includes design for highly effective buttons)

from Daring Fireball

Hugo Miller reports for Bloomberg that RIM faces another huge writedown for unsold inventory:

The value of RIM’s in-house supplies grew 18 percent last quarter alone, a faster rate than at any other company in the industry, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. And that doesn’t include the BlackBerrys gathering dust at RIM’s carriers and retail partners. Apple Inc., meanwhile, saw its inventory decline 11 percent in the period from the previous three months.

 ★ 

from Daring Fireball

A few administrative points regarding the new The Talk Show (a.k.a. The Talk Show 3):

You should follow The Talk Show on Twitter.

A new network means a new RSS feed URL. If you were subscribed to the old 5by5 feed, you’ll need to update your subscription in iTunes or whatever app you use for listening to the show. Here’s the new URL for the RSS feed, and here’s the new URL for the show in iTunes.

Speaking of iTunes, please write (and rate) reviews of the show. Be honest, that’s all I ask. As I did during this week’s show, I’ll read the reviews ranked “most helpful” live on the show this week, no matter what they say.

Speaking of the new network, I want to say thanks to everyone at Mule Radio Syndicate. They’re a pleasure to work with and I’m delighted to have them hosting the show. And don’t forget to download the excellent (and free) Mule Radio iPhone app, built by our friends at Black Pixel. You should write and rate reviews of the app, too.

I’m selling sponsorships for the show directly. Two spots per episode, $2500 per spot. The next two shows are already half-booked, but after that the schedule is clear. If you have a product or service you’d like to promote to the most-discerning podcast audience in the world, send me an email.

I can’t thanks the show’s debut sponsors enough — Rogue Amoeba and 37signals the first week, Bare Bones Software and Red Sweater Software this past week. It means a lot to me that all four got on board before hearing an episode. I also want to thank my first two guests, John Moltz and Adam Lisagor.

Along with those things, I want to thank Dan Benjamin for doing both of the previous incarnations of The Talk Show with me. Dan’s a natural born co-host, and we did an awful lot of good (and occasionally, dare I say, great) shows together. Two years ago, Dan had the idea to launch and grow a podcast network targeted not necessarily at the biggest tech/nerd audience, but rather the best tech/nerd audience. He was right, it worked, and I’m proud The Talk Show was a part of that. Lastly, to long-time listeners of the show, I want to express my sincere appreciation for your support, feedback, and attention.

from parislemon http://parislemon.com/
confectionaryrenegade:

let’s BBQ.

I’ll take two. 

Update: Read this first.

Golden Gate Bridge 75th Anniversary Fireworks Celebration by KFOG Radio 104.5/97.7 // The Golden Gate Bridge's 75th anniversary was a spectacular waterfront festival! Thank you to everyone who joined us on Sunday, May 27, and to all our partners who helped make the day a memorable one! Event Production by Foghorn Creative - www.foghorncreative.com Video Produced by Michael Coleman - www.colemanfilm.com Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy - www.parksconservancy.org

from parislemon http://parislemon.com/
The “Sinatra Burgers” letter is even better when you see what it was in response to… 

(via @gentry)

On the evening of Sunday, May 27, 2012, a massive fireworks display and light show was presented as part of the Golden Gate Bridge 75th Anniversary celebration in San Francisco, California. According to SFGate, thousands of people watched the event live from San Francisco’s Crissy Field and “was the culmination of a daylong party including live music, art shows, boat parades, tearful renditions of “San Francisco (Open Your Golden Gate)” and happy, enthusiastic crowds bedecked in fleece and sweatshirts.”

from Dustin Curtis http://dcurt.is

By 2008, SpaceX had launched three rockets. They all failed to make it into orbit. Shortly after the third failure, Elon Musk was interviewed by Wired Magazine's Carl Hoffman:

Wired.com: At the end of the day you're still zero for three; you have so far failed to put a rocket into orbit.

Musk: We haven't gotten into orbit, true, but we've made considerable progress. If it's an all-or-nothing proposition then we've failed. But it's not all or nothing. We must get to orbit eventually, and we will. It might take us one, two or three more tries, but we will. We will make it work.

Wired.com: How do you maintain your optimism?

Musk: Do I sound optimistic?

Wired.com: Yeah, you always do.

Musk: Optimism, pessimism, fuck that; we're going to make it happen. As God is my bloody witness, I'm hell-bent on making it work.

Yesterday, SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft docked with the International Space Station.

How far human radio broadcasts have reached in the Milky Way. /via @reddit

from Daring Fireball

I’m still taking orders for this round of DF T-shirts through the end of the weekend, including the popular new “black helmet” model:

They won’t be available again until the end of the year. Thanks to everyone who’s ordered already.

 ★ 

from Daring Fireball

Poornima Gupta, reporting for Reuters:

Apple Inc. Chief Executive Tim Cook will not be earning dividend income on the more than 1 million shares to which he is entitled, which will cost him about $75 million. Apple said in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday that Cook had asked to be excluded from a recently instituted company program through which employees can accumulate dividends on their restricted stock units that are still vesting.

Asked why Cook was doing this, Apple declined to comment beyond the filing.

One can only presume he did this to avoid any suggestion that he instituted the dividend to enrich himself personally.

 ★ 

from Daring Fireball

Speaking of the Tim Cook story by Adam Lashinsky — Fortune’s cover “photo” is just embarrassingly bad. I put “photo” in quotes because it’s so Photoshopped it’s more illustration than photograph. Neither Apple nor Cook himself participated in Lashinsky’s article, and if Cook didn’t even talk to him, then he certainly wasn’t going to pose for a cover shoot. I sympathize with the dilemma this posed for Fortune’s editors. But they should have commissioned an actual illustration or used a photo of Cook on stage at a recent product announcement.

What they came up with — cropping Cook’s head from the photo on his bio page at Apple.com, and putting it on someone else’s body in a contrived pose — isn’t just goofy-looking, but I’d say downright disingenuous. To the casual observer, it looks like a cover photo that Cook posed for, when in fact he didn’t participate in any aspect of the story.

 ★ 

from Daring Fireball

Cover story for the new issue of Fortune magazine. Good piece in many ways, backed by what was obviously a lot of reporting on Lashinsky’s part. But he’s straining to emphasize differences that just aren’t there. The more different he paints Apple under Cook, the more sensational the story. I’m certainly not arguing that nothing has changed at Apple, but the big picture is very little has changed. This is the closest Lashinsky gets to actual evidence that things have changed significantly:

If anything, Apple under Tim Cook will embrace efficiency to an even greater degree, especially as the company grows bigger and more complex — to the dismay of those who think techies should rule the roost. “It looks like it has become a more conservative execution engine rather than a pushing-the-envelope engineering engine,” says Max Paley, a former engineering vice president who worked at Apple for 14 years until late 2011. “I’ve been told that any meeting of significance is now always populated by project management and global-supply management,” he says. “When I was there, engineering decided what we wanted, and it was the job of product management and supply management to go get it. It shows a shift in priority.”

It might also simply be the result of the shift in scale at which Apple is operating today. They sold 35 million iPhones and 12 million iPads last quarter. Is it not inevitable that global-supply management would grow in importance and influence with numbers like that? The question to ask is whether these changes are because of the differences between Tim Cook and Steve, or the differences in the size and scope of Apple’s business a decade ago versus today.

I don’t think any of the changes Lashinsky describes would be any different if Steve Jobs were still alive and at the helm (with the possible exception of the stock dividend and buy-back, which don’t pertain to the company’s culture and processes).

 ★ 

from Daring Fireball

Apple:

The Government sides with monopoly, rather than competition, in bringing this case. The Government starts from the false premise that an eBooks “market” was characterized by “robust price competition” prior to Apple’s entry. This ignores a simple and incontrovertible fact: before 2010, there was no real competition, there was only Amazon. At the time Apple entered the market, Amazon sold nearly nine out of every ten eBooks, and its power over price and product selection was nearly absolute. Apple’s entry spurred tremendous growth in eBook titles, range and variety of offerings, sales, and improved quality of the eBook reading experience. This is evidence of a dynamic, competitive market. These inconvenient facts are ignored in the Complaint. Instead, the Government focuses on increased prices for a handful of titles. The Complaint does not allege that all eBook prices, or even most eBook prices, increased after Apple entered the market.

As usual from Apple, plain straightforward language, and few minced words. (Via Jacqui Cheng at Ars Technica.)

 ★ 

from Daring Fireball

John Lilly:

I picked up a phrase some time ago that I think applies: “The next big thing is always beneath contempt.” Implication being that it is, of course, until it isn’t. Until it’s too big to ignore. This has happened over and over again in our society. In the middle ages, people assumed that no serious discussion could happen in anything but Latin — the so-called “vulgar” languages had no merit. And writers assumed that nothing interesting or lasting would come from this new medium of television. And, I think, people assume right now that nothing important will be created from a 10-inch touch screen without a keyboard (let alone a tiny 3.5-inch screen).

(Via MG Siegler.)

 ★ 

from Daring Fireball

What I think happened: It was clear soon after Instagram launched that it was a hit, and Facebook was savvy enough to realize that an integral part of Instagram’s appeal was that it came in the form of a well-designed, well-engineered native iPhone app. Not just Instagram, either — I think Zuckerberg saw that for mobile, the HTML/CSS/JavaScript web is not enough. Native apps are essential, thus the talent acquisitions of superstar outfits like Sofa and Push Pop Press. I bet Facebook has more native mobile apps on the way.

So the Sofa team got to Facebook a little under a year ago, and I’m guessing, soon started work on Facebook Camera. A year ago, building a Facebook version of Instagram sounded like a good plan. “We should have an app like Instagram for taking and sharing photos on our social network”, more or less. But after another year of growth, I think Mark Zuckerberg saw that an app was not enough. Instagram’s own fast-growing social network was a threat. That their own well-made, well-designed Instagram-like app was on the cusp of release made no difference.

Yahoo had a chance to buy Google in 2001 but then-CEO Terry Semel didn’t pull the trigger. I don’t think Instagram is the next Google, but Zuckerberg sure as shit doesn’t want Facebook to be the next Yahoo.

 ★ 

RT @Forbes: Reddit activists are making a Bat-Signal for the Internet, says @a_greenberg.

Engadget goes hands on with that LEAP thing that looked to good to be true: it turns out it is true:

from Daring Fireball

This week’s episode of the new The Talk Show (a.k.a. The Talk Show 3):

Special guest Adam Lisagor joins John Gruber to discuss the whole thing with the show leaving 5by5, spitball ideas Apple might add to iOS 6 and iCloud, and gush over the trailer for Paul Thomas Anderson’s upcoming film, The Master.

Brought to you by Bare Bones Software’s BBEdit 10, the professional HTML and text editor for the Mac; and Red Sweater Software’s MarsEdit, the premier desktop blog editor for the Mac.

 ★ 

from Daring Fireball

Jim Dalrymple:

Analysts and media types insist that Apple needs to bring a smaller tablet to market to ward off the threat from Amazon.

There are a couple of things to consider with this argument. First, people that use that as the basis for the release of a 7-inch iPad are full of shit. Second, using that argument shows they don’t understand Apple and how the company works.

 ★ 

Best Wikipedia article and Jimmy Wales juxtaposition ever?

Look, Ma! I'm programming with my iPad!

@viticci Took a look at Diet Coda myself by trying to fix a bug on @vimeo with my iPad

from Daring Fireball

ABI Research:

​> More than 208 million phablets, a hybrid device that is larger

than a smartphone but smaller than a tablet, like the Samsung Galaxy Note, will be shipped globally in 2015.

I prefer the term “big-ass phones”. Anyway, noted for future claim chowder.

 ★ 

from Daring Fireball

Another iOS app that acted as an AirPlay receiver, and, like Airfoil Speakers Touch, it was removed from the App Store recently.

 ★ 

Sir @rem gives us comprehensive research and docs on iOS's position:fixed behavior. I ♥ posts like this.

from Daring Fireball

Al Jigong Billings, regarding my short piece earlier on Woz’s 1977 description of the Apple II:

I think @gruber misunderstands “inexpensive” since MacBooks cost double [those of its] competition.

Let’s put aside arguments about whether Macs are, today, price competitive against similarly-equipped PCs. I’ll just point out that it’s no coincidence that Apple’s Mac business has thrived financially as the prices have gone lower. You can get a MacBook Air for $999 — that’s pretty amazing in the context of historical MacBook/PowerBook pricing.

Woz wrote, “To me, a personal computer should be small, reliable, convenient to use and inexpensive.” He wrote that in 1977 about a very different machine, but that’s a perfect description of the iPad.

 ★ 

from Daring Fireball

Nice scoop by Chris Ziegler at The Verge:

The HP team responsible for Enyo — webOS’s HTML5-based application framework that debuted on the TouchPad — will be leaving the company and starting at Google shortly, The Verge has learned. What this means for the future of Open webOS is unclear; Enyo and the developers supporting it are central to HP’s open source strategy for the operating system going forward, and it’s hard to say whether this move will have any effect on the planned late 2012 release for version 1.0.

 ★ 

from MacRumors: Mac News and Rumors - All Stories http://www.macrumors.com Back in November, The Wall Street Journal took a look at how Tim Cook was putting his stamp on Apple just two months after officially being elevated to the position on Chief Executive Officer. But with Cook now having been on the job for nine months, Fortune examines in a lengthy profile how the company and its culture have continued to evolve under his leadership.

A 14-year veteran of the company, Cook is maintaining, by words and actions, most of Apple's unique corporate culture. But shifts of behavior and tone are absolutely apparent; some of them affect the core of Apple's critical product-development process. In general, Apple has become slightly more open and considerably more corporate. In some cases Cook is taking action that Apple sorely needed and employees badly wanted. It's almost as if he is working his way through a to-do list of long-overdue repairs the previous occupant (Jobs) refused to address for no reason other than obstinacy.

Calling Tim Cook "the master of operational efficiency", the report notes that Cook continues to spur Apple to both streamline and innovate with its manufacturing processes, bankrolling purchases of equipment and other infrastructure with its own money to allow its supply chain and assembly partners to improve efficiency and output.
But that operational efficiency has led to the belief that Apple is becoming more traditional and conservative, becoming an "execution engine" driven by business-oriented managers with MBAs and less dependent on its design and technical expertise to lead the way.

It looks like it has become a more conservative execution engine rather than a pushing-the-envelope engineering engine," says Max Paley, a former engineering vice president who worked at Apple for 14 years until late 2011. "I've been told that any meeting of significance is now always populated by project management and global-supply management," he says. "When I was there, engineering decided what we wanted, and it was the job of product management and supply management to go get it. It shows a shift in priority."

The entire profile is an interesting look at how Apple is changing under Tim Cook, also highlighting his own evolution in becoming the face of Apple and how he differs from Steve Jobs, from his quiet nature to his willingness to listen to investors to sitting down to eat with random employees in the Apple cafeteria.

from Ars Technica http://arstechnica.com

Enlarge / Apple CEO Tim Cook

Chris Foresman

Since taking over for former Apple CEO Steve Jobs last August, newly minted CEO Tim Cook has slowly made a number of changes to how things are done at the company. Whereas Jobs was mercurial, Cook is apparently genteel. Whereas Jobs downplayed labor issues in China, Cook has personally visited factory floors and met with Chinese officials.

Fortune editor Adam Lashinsky, who recently detailed Apple's inner workings in his book Inside Apple, is well suited to note such "subtle but significant changes." In a recently published report for Fortune, Lashinsky makes the case that Cook is leaving an indelible mark on Apple and its corporate culture.

Though Cook is maintaining "most" of Apple's corporate culture, largely implemented by Jobs since he took the helm in 1997, he is reportedly "taking action that Apple sorely needed and employees badly wanted." And while many of the changes seem positive, not everyone is so sure that those changes are necessarily for the better.

Here are a few examples from the report that caught our attention:

Since taking over at Apple, the company's stock performance has been remarkably similar to its performance at the time Jobs took over in 1997. After three quarters, however, AAPL is up 42 percent, while after Jobs's first three quarters, it had only risen 21 percent. "By any quantitative measure, so far his performance is phenomenal," Bill Shope, a Goldman Sachs research analyst, told Fortune.

A former vice president at Apple believes the company is becoming more "corporate" and "conservative," noting that the company resembles more of a "conservative execution engine" than an engineering-run organization. "I've been told that any meeting of significance is now always populated by project management and global-supply management," Max Paley, a 14-year Apple veteran who left in 2011, told Fortune. "When I was there, engineering decided what we wanted, and it was the job of product management and supply management to go get it."

Apple employees are known for their dedication, passion, and long work hours. But the "90 hours a week and loving it" attitude seems to be relaxing under Cook. One former Apple employee described meeting a current engineer for lunch and expecting his former co-worker to rush back to work after eating. Instead, he offered to take time to have a coffee."The outsider's conclusion: 'I think people are breathing now.' It's not necessarily a compliment," Lashinsky wrote.

Unlike Jobs, who preferred to eat with design chief Jony Ive, Cook reportedly tends to sit down at the Apple corporate cafeteria and eat with various workers. "It is a small difference that speaks volumes about how employees can expect to interact with their CEO," Lashinsky wrote. "Cook clearly is a demanding boss, but he's not scary. He's well-respected, but not worshiped."

The whole report is worth a read, so check it out when you have a chance.

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from Ars Technica http://arstechnica.com

These happy Samoyeds look ancient (genetically), but probably aren't.

Flickr user jurvetson

Dogs were the very first creatures that humans domesticated, and their remains have been found along with those of humans from before we even had basic things like agriculture. And, with the advent of molecular tools, researchers were able to identify the animal that was domesticated (the gray wolf), as well as a handful of breeds that appear to be "ancient," and split off close to the source of domestication.

It was a nice picture, but apparently it was probably wrong. That's the conclusion of a study that appeared in this week's PNAS, which uses a combination of genetic, archeological, and historic evidence to argue that the history of domestic dogs is such a mess that we're not going to be able to unravel it without resorting to large-scale genome sequencing efforts.

The challenges of sorting out what happened from archeological remains are significant. The source of domesticated dogs, the gray wolf, historically ranged across all of North America, Europe, and Asia. The earliest domesticated dogs, which appeared about 15,000 years ago, looked a whole lot like the wolves they were descended from, making unambiguous identification of domestic vs. wild animals a challenge. And once things that were clearly dogs started appearing, they appeared over a huge geographic range. The earliest remains appear in Europe, the Middle East, and Kamchatka (on Russia's Pacific coast) all within 1,500 years of each other. Within another thousand years after that, domestic dogs were present in North America, as well.

It's impossible to tell whether these distant sites represent separate domestication events, or whether (and, if so, how often) the earliest domesticated dogs ended up breeding with wolf populations.

All of that would seem to make DNA testing the best way to bring some clarity. And, indeed, the authors have a prodigious amount of data at their disposal, having looked at nearly 50,000 individual variations in DNA sequences, using a population of 1,375 dogs and 19 wolves. As with past studies, these identified a handful of breeds as "ancient," meaning they appear to have branched off the family tree much closer to the domestication event. These breeds are the Akita, Basenji, Eurasier, Finnish Spitz, Saluki, and Shar-Pei (more on the Eurasier later).

But the authors themselves point out that there's a problem with their own data: none of these breeds are from the regions where the first remains of domesticated dogs are found, and a few come from outside the normal range of the grey wolf. In fact, the archeological evidence suggests that some of the genetic data can't be trusted at all. As far as we can tell, dogs spread across the Pacific only 3,500 years ago, but two breeds (Dingoes and New Guinea Singing Dogs) from there appear near the base of the tree. The same thing goes for Southern Africa, where dogs arrived less than 1,500 years ago, but a specific breed (Basenjis) looks ancient.

What in the world is going on here? The authors argue that it's a product of the odd history of the domestic dog. For one, we can largely throw out any genetic data from the Americas. Everything we have from there indicates that dogs were brought over in such large numbers by European colonists that they swamped out any breeds native to these regions. (In fact, a hairless mutation found in a breed "native" to Mexico is identical to that found in breeds in China.)

In Europe, most breeds aren't original. For example, the Irish Wolfhound has been proposed as being an old one, but wolves were already hunted to local extinction before 1800, and the original version of the breed probably died out shortly afterwards. (The current incarnation is probably the product of a recent attempt to revive the characteristics through selective breeding.) Similar things apply almost everywhere else; most breeds have probably only been around 300 years or less. And then both World Wars created large bottlenecks; many breeds were reduced to a handful of individuals, and some probably vanished entirely (only to be rebred since).

This process of rederiving breeds has made matters worse. In some cases, we know exactly how a breed came about. As the authors note, Eurasiers looked ancient, but were recently derived from a mix of Chows, Keeshonds, and Samoyeds. But all of these breeds come from near the base of the dog family tree. As a result, Eurasiers look like an ancient breed themselves, even though we know they're not.

The authors conclude that the breeds that appear ancient haven't actually split off from the dog family tree early. Instead, they've simply remained isolated during the massive shuffling and rederivation of breeds that has been taking place over the last few hundred years. That shuffling has made everything else look older, so that a breed that has only been isolated for a few thousand years suddenly looks ancient.

Will we ever sort this all out? The authors argue that the advent of cheap DNA sequencing could give us enough data to start pushing the resolving power back. But that would require that we decide knowing more about the dog's history is worth the resources required to do this sequencing.

PNAS, 2012. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1203005109  (About DOIs).

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from Daring Fireball

After some interesting back-and-forth with a few informed sources, I think Apple’s removal of Airfoil Speakers Touch from the iOS App Store is not as mysterious or capricious as I first thought. The key is to focus on what’s new in version 3 of the app:

The other major feature in Airfoil Speakers is the new Enhanced Audio Receiving option. With an inexpensive in-app purchase, your iOS device becomes a full-fledged mobile AirPlay receiver! That means you can stream audio from one iOS device to another, or even send from iTunes directly to iOS. Why spend hundreds on a costly third-party AirPlay device, when you can use the iOS device you already have?

As I understand it, it’s not that Apple yanked Airfoil Speakers Touch after it had been in the store for three years. It’s that they yanked version 3 after it had been in the store for a month, and the issue is the above-quoted new feature.

Apple doesn’t provide APIs for apps to serve as AirPlay receivers. Rogue Amoeba backwards-engineered the protocol, and coded their own iOS AirPlay receiver implementation using (they claim, and I have no reason to doubt them) only public APIs. I think the bottom line is that Apple is saying that apps are not allowed to act as AirPlay receivers on iOS, but there’s no App Store guideline that explicitly forbids that. So they’re citing App Store Review Guideline 2.5:

Apps that use non-public APIs will be rejected.

And rule 3.3.1 from the iOS Developer Program License Agreement:

Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs.

“Non-public APIs” and “private APIs” are the same thing. Rogue Amoeba claims — and I don’t’ doubt them — that they’re not using private APIs in this app. So perhaps it’s better to focus on this clause in rule 3.3.1: “in the manner prescribed by Apple”. That’s pretty broad stick to swing. Effectively, rule 3.3.1 means “You may not use private APIs, and you may not use public APIs to do things we don’t want you to do.” It’s not enough to comply with the letter of the rules; developers must comply with the spirit of them as well. A loophole in the letter of the rules doesn’t grant you a Get Out of Jail Free card in the App Store.

That’s simultaneously unsurprising, and, a little crazy. Unsurprising because the implicit rule 0 of the App Store has always been that Apple isn’t going to publish an app they don’t want in the store, and that’s that. Crazy, though, because if Apple has a problem with the potential uses of a documented public API, is that not an indication that there’s something wrong with the API?

None of this is new, though. My favorite — no sarcasm intended — App Store rules are the plain-English “broader themes to keep in mind” at the top of the App Store Review Guidelines, and the last one of those seems apt:

This is a living document, and new apps presenting new questions may result in new rules at any time. Perhaps your app will trigger this.

Considering that the only Apple-sanctioned way to play an audio stream from iTunes or an iOS device is with the use of a “Made For iPhone” authentication hardware chip that requires an approval process and licensing agreement with Apple, it doesn’t take a deep thinker to suspect that a reverse-engineered software AirPlay receiver might be something Apple doesn’t want. But it’s also easy to see how this slipped through the App Store review process — the app (correctly) passed the automated tests that check for private API calls, and to anyone who isn’t particularly familiar with the encrypted and undocumented nature of AirPlay audio streams, Airfoil Speakers Touch’s new “Enhanced Audio Receiving” option simply looked like a cool new feature to an app that had been in the store since 2009. After hitting the store, though, eventually it was bound to be noticed by someone at Apple who is particularly familiar with AirPlay. The app may not be using a “non-public API”, but it is decrypting a non-public streaming audio format, and Apple perhaps considers “non-public API” to cover all “non-public Apple technologies”, not merely literal application programming interfaces.

Lastly, I’ve seen a few people speculate that perhaps Apple removed Airfoil Speakers Touch from the App Store because it’s about to be obviated by a built-in “use your device as an AirPlay receiver” feature in iOS 6. That, so I hear, is not the case.1 It certainly doesn’t sound like how Apple works. Apple does add features to iOS (and Mac OS X) that obviate third-party software. But when they do so, they let the chips fall where they will. E.g., if Apple adds offline support to Safari’s Reading List feature in iOS 6, they’re not going to remove Instapaper from the App Store.

To be clear, what I’ve “heard”, is that the reasons for Airfoil Speakers Touch’s removal from the store have nothing to do with any features that may or may not be in iOS 6. I did not hear whether such a feature actually is in iOS 6. ↩

RIAA claims that limewire owes 72 trillion $ in damages. Except the global wealth pool is only ~60 trillion.

@bdougherty nope. apparently you can share keychain data between apps tho

Downloading … RT @mattgemmell: CheatSheet (Mac, free) pops up all keyboard shortcuts in current app when you hold Cmd.

RT @jeresig: Get 1/2 off Secrets of the JavaScript Ninja: Promo code 'dotd0523au'. It just went into final review!

Hey Facebook… how in god's name do you know who I am the first time I launch Camera?

You guys scare me more every day.

Scarlett Johansson deals with the sexism of film journalists' questions in one rhetorical reply and a side-glance:

from Daring Fireball

Woz:

To me, a personal computer should be small, reliable, convenient to use and inexpensive.

Talk about a company that has stayed true to its roots.

 ★ 

from Daring Fireball

Speaking of those celebrities-using-Siri ads, Apple just posted two new ones, both starring John Malkovich. (Via TUAW.)

 ★ 

from Daring Fireball

Speaking of Paul Kafasis, he decided to try to duplicate Sam Jackson’s “remind me to put the gazpacho on ice in an hour” Siri directive:

If you’ve used Siri yourself, however, you know the disclaimer of “Sequences shortened” is more than an understatement. They’ve edited out the inevitable “No.…NO.…NO!” as well as significant quantities of exasperated sighs. After hearing Jackson say the word “hotspacho” for the umpteenth time, I decided to run a little test.

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Check out the new Facebook Camera app I help design. I'v been using it recently to filter and upload my iPhone photos.

What Jony Ive said compared to what @Gizmodo thought he said:

What Jony Ive said compared to what @Gizmodo thought he said:

from Daring Fireball

Rogue Amoeba’s Paul Kafasis:

Last month, we introduced Airfoil Speakers Touch 3, which added the ability to receive audio directly from other iOS devices, as well as iTunes. Users and reviewers alike have loved Airfoil Speakers Touch, particularly the new version. For our part, we’ve been thrilled to be able to provide this much-desired functionality.

Today, we’ve been informed that Apple has removed Airfoil Speakers Touch from the iOS App Store. We first heard from Apple about this decision two days ago, and we’ve been discussing the pending removal with them since then. However, we still do not yet have a clear answer on why Apple has chosen to remove Airfoil Speakers Touch. Needless to say, we’re quite disappointed with their decision, and we’re working hard to once again make the application available for you, our users.

As far as we can tell, Airfoil Speakers Touch is in full compliance with Apple’s posted rules and developer agreements.

However cruddy it is to have an app rejected during the review process, it’s way worse to have it yanked from the store after it had been approved. I can’t imagine what Apple would object to with this app.

 ★ 

from Daring Fireball

Guy English:

I believe that many Apple observers have been too invested in picking off the low hanging fruit of obviously out-of-touch commentators, columnists, and analysts. Apple is winning. It’s fun to pick on the idiots, and we do tune in for the affirmation that engenders, but that’s not insight. It’s a tag team wedgie patrol. It takes a clever intellect to dismantle bullshit but, ultimately, it often just ends up with pantsing the dumb guy. Rather than doing that let’s aim to pants the A-grade quarterback.

Here are the top three problems I believe Apple faces in the near term.

Great piece, with much to ponder. I wish I’d written this first. Perhaps I would have if I weren’t guilty as charged regarding time spent dismantling bullshit.

 ★ 

RT @blakewhitman: Who's coming to the @Vimeo Festival + Awards? And if you are not, WHY NOT?
#vimeofest

Pretty awesome resource: Free Keynote mockup templates for prototyping /via @keynotopia

from Ars Technica http://arstechnica.com

Apple's prized product designer Jonathan ("Jony") Ive is a constant source of fascination among the press—doubly so after the death of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. Though Ive appears with relative frequency in news articles and documentaries, interest in his design philosophy has never let up. Perhaps that is because Ive has always spoken in an abstract, philosophical sense about the way he approaches design, which only seems to perpetuate the mystery surrounding one of Apple's core talents. In an extensive two-part interview published in UK newspaper The Telegraph on Wednesday, Ive discussed some of his product approaches as well as his attitudes toward design failures, Apple's performance under newly minted CEO Tim Cook, and more. The interview itself is worth reading, but we took interest in a few highlights from throughout his discussion with The Telegraph. Among them:

Contrary to popular belief, Ive says the iPad 2's design was not inspired by the making of a samurai sword. Rumor after the iPad 2's launch in 2011 was that Ive had traveled to Japan to watch the process of creating such a sword, which then translated to the "razor edge" of the iPad 2, but Ive insists this is just lore.

Don't like the stitched leather UI on a number of Apple's iOS and Lion applications, like Find My Friends, Maps, and iCal? It seems that Ive doesn't either—The Telegraph claims Ive "winced" when asked about the stitched leather, but gave a diplomatic response: "My focus is very much working with the other teams on the product ideas and then developing the hardware and so that's our focus and that's our responsibility. In terms of those elements you're talking about, I'm not really connected to that."

Ive says he thinks the products he's currently working on are the "most important and the best work we've done." This seems to fall along the company line of always hinting at the next big thing, but Ive heavily implies that some of Apple's unreleased products are truly his best work. "[W]hich of course I can't tell you about."

Ive acknowledges that not all of his designs are successful, but most of them remain behind closed doors. Still, it's hard for him to part with a product design once the team decides the product just isn't going to work. "[T]here have been times when we've been working on a program and when we are at a very mature stage and we do have solutions and you have that sinking feeling because you're trying to articulate the values to yourself and to others just a little bit too loudly," he said. "And you have that sinking feeling that the fact that you are having to articulate the value and persuade other people is probably indicative of the fact that actually it's not good enough. On a number of occasions we've actually all been honest with ourselves and said 'you know, this isn't good enough, we need to stop'. And that's very difficult."

On Tim Cook's potential "failures" as a CEO compared to Steve Jobs, Ive strongly believes that won't happen. "We're developing products in exactly the same way that we were two years ago, five years ago, ten years ago. It's not that there are a few of us working in the same way: there is a large group of us working in the same way," he said.

Ive, who has been knighted before the UK for his various achievements, was knighted once again on Wednesday for his services in design and enterprise.

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from Ars Technica http://arstechnica.com

elPadawan

Did you hear the one about New York state lawmakers who forgot about the First Amendment in the name of combating cyberbullying and “baseless political attacks?"

Proposed legislation in both chambers would require New York-based websites, such as blogs and newspapers, to “remove any comments posted on his or her website by an anonymous poster unless such anonymous poster agrees to attach his or her name to the post.”

No votes on the measures have been taken. But unless the First Amendment is repealed, they stand no chance of surviving any constitutional scrutiny even if they were approved.

Republican Assemblyman Jim Conte said the legislation would cut down on “mean-spirited and baseless political attacks” and “turns the spotlight on cyberbullies by forcing them to reveal their identity.”

Had the Internet been around in the late 1700s, perhaps the anonymously written Federalist Papers would have had to be taken down unless Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay revealed themselves.

“This statute would essentially destroy the ability to speak anonymously online on sites in New York,” said Kevin Bankston, a staff attorney with the Center for Democracy and Technology. He added that the legislation provides a “heckler’s veto to anybody who disagrees with or doesn’t like what an anonymous poster said.”

Sen. Thomas O’Mara, a Republican who is also sponsoring the measure, said it would “help lend some accountability to the Internet age.”

A cynic, however, might see an attempt by lawmakers to prop up Facebook’s falling stock price via an implicit endorsement of the Facebook model of identity on the Internet.

The Senate and Assembly measures, which are identical, cover messages on social networks, blogs, message boards, or “any other discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages.”

The bills also demands those sites to have a contact number or e-mail address posted for “such removal requests, clearly visible in any sections where comments are posted.”

Oddly, the bill has no identification requirement for those who request the takedown of anonymous content.

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Wow, is the US government starting to think future-friendly? #ffly

from TightWind http://tightwind.net

Peter Valdes-Dapena went for a ride-along in Google’s self-driving car. Here’s what he thought:

My first ride in Google’s self-driving car was, all at the same time, thrilling, fascinating and a little disappointing.

Still a long ways away from being anywhere near production. But very, very exciting nonetheless.

Say wha?! CSS4 media queries to tackle touch

from Daring Fireball

Windows 8 Secrets:

Two years ago, Microsoft declared that the future of video on the web would be powered by HTML 5. Today, however, a lot of web video content is still delivered via Adobe Flash technology. So, in a somewhat surprising move, Microsoft is integrating Flash directly into Internet Explorer 10 on Windows 8 and doing so in a way that does not undermine the safety and reliability of the Metro environment.

Skating to where the puck is now, rather than where it’s going to be.

 ★ 

Terrific, terrific, terrific, absolutely must-read piece on Responsive Web Design:

Seriously, don't miss this.

“@SeamusBellamy: After close to 15 hours of research, I can tell you this is the right BBQ... cc @wirecutter”

from Daring Fireball

Seems like a good pairing — I’ve purchased an awful lot of LaCie enclosures with Seagate hard drives over the years. But it occurs to me that I don’t think or worry about storage devices anywhere near as much as I used to. (Via Jim Dalrymple.)

 ★ 

My god in heaven, where has this been my entire life?

@hayekd @markinhifi just spent 20 minutes trying to fix this

from The Loop http://www.loopinsight.com

Sam Gustin for Time:

Facebook’s Wall Street investment banks warned top clients of new doubts about the social network’s financial prospects just days before the company’s IPO, according to a series of reports that emerged Tuesday. After receiving briefings from Facebook executives, analysts at the banks lowered their financial forecasts for big institutional clients, some of whom scaled back plans to buy Facebook stock, even as the banks raised the IPO price and number of shares amid a frenzy of hype.

∞ Read this on The Loop

from 512 Pixels http://512pixels.net

John Gruber:

First, at 1136 × 640, you get a diagonal of 1,303.877 pixels after applying the Pythagorean theorem. There are no such thing as fractional pixels, but what I’m talking about here are pixels as a unit of length, equal to 1/326 inch. Divide 1,303.877 by 326 and you get 3.9996 inches. Boom, a “4-inch” display. I’m sure if Apple instead went to 1152 pixels in height — which works out to 4.042 inches — they’d still just call it a “4-inch” display, for the sake of neatness, but it’s at least somewhat interesting that 1136 is the closest they could get to precisely 4.0 inches.

Seth Weintraub at 9to5Mac:

We did some math last night on the iPhone screen based on the 326ppi that Apple currently uses for Retina handheld devices. We did some rounding and got just over 3.95 inches diagonal. Rounding on numbers this important is a bad idea, so today we decided to let the calculator keep all of those decimals.

It really seems like this bigger iPhone story is picking up steam, and that’s fine, I suppose. I’m just at the point where I don’t give a shit about this kind of thing. Apple will release a new iPhone this summer or fall, it will be awesome, and I’ll purchase one. Even after it’s announced, I don’t think I’ll care about it being 3.99 or 4 inches across. Seriously, the numbers — and this story — aren’t important.