Raw Meat: Why Apple Doesn't Deserve Your Trust: Fantastic criticism of "Antennagate" from Aaron Swartz. His strongest point:
"Those advanced phone testing facilities must keep full track of actual dBm — it would be ridiculous to try to test a phone based on how many “bars” it had — yet, even after a talk supposedly about “hard data,” Apple still hasn’t once shown us a real dBm number on any phone!"
It seems like it would have been pretty easy for Apple to give some even better data, at least for its own products.
Microsoft should cut out the middlemen, build its own phones: Peter Bright builds a strong case that Microsoft needs to make it's own phones. Following the money really drove it home for me:
"But even though Microsoft's margin is effectively 100 percent (development costs for the OS being sunk, paid before even a single handset has shipped), and Apple's is much lower, in the ballpark of 50 percent, Apple is still making a lot more money out of this business than Microsoft. Cupertino will be netting $150-250 per phone sold, versus $30 or so for Redmond.
By persisting with its operating system vendor approach, Microsoft is, then, leaving an awful lot of money on the table. To achieve the same kind of growth that Apple has managed with the iPhone, the software giant would have to outsell the consumer electronics firm's products by a 10- or 20-to-1 margin. In other words, by the same kind of margin that it achieves in the desktop operating system market."
There will be blood: why Apple and Intel are destined to clash: Interesting theory that Apple might drop Intel on Macs. One interesting point: the latest iMac and Mac Pro refreshes have gone all AMD for graphics (usually there are at least some NVIDIA options on the Mac Pro). I'm not saying we're going to see Macs with AMD CPUs next year, but I am saying that we could be in the midst of some interesting foreshadowing here.
Apple's Battery Charger Sets New Standby Usage Benchmark: Seems like a good deal, for efficient, long-lasting rechargable batteries.
Thoughts on Designing for iPad: Interesting take on iPad development, from Derek Powazek:
Apple’s App Store was a constant source of stress in the development process. Every time another story of Apple randomly booting an app from the store came out, the whole team quaked. The idea that we could do all this work and then Apple could deny the app, or even keep it in limbo forever, made us second- or third-guess every design decision. “Will this pixel hurt our chances of getting accepted?”
What's amazing about the App Store is that Apple wouldn't stand for this, if it were the other way around. If Apple had to get AT&T to approve every app that Apple wanted to put on the iPhone, or every design change they wanted to make, they'd never stand for it. Seems bizarre, that Apple thinks the App Store is good for other people, but not for itself.
Should broadband data hogs pay more? ISP economics say "no": Damning look at consumption-based pricing by ISPs from Ars Technica:
"This is nothing more than greed," he says. "The industry may be maturing, and therefore margins aren't rapidly increasing the way they were." Consumption pricing could be a way to boost margins. As for ISP complaints that heavy users cost them more money, those are just "excuses that they give."
I spent some time last week dismantling an old PC for parts, and re-encountered one of my favorite Intel products ever, the PR440FX Motherboard:
The Intel PR440FX Motherboard, circa 1996
I don't know how it happened, but for some reason in the summer of 1998 there were a ton of these motherboards on the market, going for a song. I believe that mine came with dual Pentium Pro 180's and 64 megabytes of RAM. And while I don't remember how much I paid, I believe it was in the $3 - 500 dollar range. I'm not exactly sure where I purchased it, but my best guess is that it came from the Computer Geeks Outlet. But I remember being really excited by the acquisition, because beyond supporting dual CPUs, this board had it all: on-board SCSI, 100Mbit Ethernet, a quality sound chip, and USB (which didn't work in SMP mode due to a chipset bug!).
Nevertheless, from the summer that I purchased it, and installed my PR440FX into a PC Power and Cooling case that I "borrowed" from my dad, it saw daily use for at least 10 years. First as a server, then as a workstation, and then as a server again. As recently as 2006, this was the most reliable machine that I owned, easily besting the Dell Precision Workstation 420 that I bought in grad school (which didn't last nearly as long as the PR440FX). And in addition, this began my love affair with SMP-class computers, which aside from a few errant Macintosh purchases, I have always had since 1998.
This machine did stints in Cleveland, Champaign/Urbana, Wheaton, and California, and ran the following OSes along the way:
- Solaris 2.6/x86
- FreeBSD 3.3 - 6.x (pretty sure I skipped release 5 entirely, though)
- Windows NT 4
- Windows 2000
- Various flavors of Linux
- BeOS (I'm pretty sure!)
My PR440FX machine spent its first several years as a Solaris server, and then around the time that I went to grad school, it got an upgrade to dual Pentium II 333Mhz CPUs (that I also found for cheap somewhere), and became my primary workstation, running Windows. But it spent most of its live running FreeBSD (and powering redefine.dyndns.org), as that is the UNIX-like OS that I settled on for many years, after plenty of experimentation.
In it's final act before retirement, I spent several weeks in the late 2007/early 2008 timeframe attempting to make this machine serve as a MythTV frontend. And while the dual CPUs were fast enough to do the necessary MPEG2 decoding, I just couldn't get the graphics to render fast enough without dropping frames.
And now my PR440FX is officially retired, as part of my permanent collection. On it's way out, I have put up a gallery of pictures on Flickr. Insofar as I can tell, my photos are the only shots of the PR440FX on all of Flickr, which is a shame.
But thinking back, this is clearly the best PC motherboard that I've ever owned, and I think a strong case can be made that this is one of the best that Intel has ever made (it certainly has it's fans). And while there is still some information on the Internet about this board, it's amazing how much has been lost. I remember when Google searches used to return tons of relevant information about this board. Well, while the Internet might have forgotten about the PR440FX, I haven't.
-Andy.
64 Bit Explained: And people wonder why Microsoft is struggling. What a mess.
Cow Clicker: Great article about the current state of "games" on Facebook by Ian Bogost. Ian delves into the inner workings of these games via the creation of a simple, stripped down game. Especially interesting, in light of what my current employer is up to.
Mac Pro Unavailable for In-Store Reservations at Many Locations: I hope this means new Mac Pros on Tuesday, but I have been burned so many times.
I confess: I bought an iPad (and so far I love it): Mary Jo Foley, a long-time reporter on all things Microsoft, recently bought an iPad, and she loves it:
"So why did I succumb to the charms of the iPad? Quite simply, I have not been able to find a PC that offered what an iPad does. Windows laptops are powerful, versatile and relatively inexpensive compared to Apple’s counter-offerings. You can get portable netbooks (with so-so performance), great big-screen gaming rigs and thin-and-light models (like the Asus UL30A that is my current workhorse). But none of these has the amazing battery life, fast on/off, ultra-handy form factor, a made-for-touch interface (rather than touch bolted on to a keyboard/mouse-centric interface) or a built-in app store."
Amazing.
Exclusive: Marti Noxon on the Future of 'Buffy': Short, but interesting interview with the Buffy show runner from seasons 4 - 7.