Links for Wednesday July 28th, 2010
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."