Links for Thursday June 19^th, 2014

• Amazon’s phone pricing actually is not disruptive at all: Dan Frommer on the new Amazon Fire Phone:

  "Better yet, Amazon might have negotiated disruptive pricing for wireless service, such as data-only packages, free international roaming, cheap prepaid service, or just simply more aggressive overall pricing. That might convince a lot of people to buy a Fire Phone instead of an iPhone or Samsung."

  This is also what i thought Amazon was going to do. My guess: Amazon tried to do something like this, and got shutdown by all of the carriers. (via Daring Fireball)

• Memory in New $1099 iMac is Soldered and Not Upgradable: This is a somewhat surprising development. I can understand soldered-in RAM in a MacBook Air, where space is at a premium. But in a desktop machine? It's a lot less understandable.

• T-Mobile broadens “Uncarrier”-ness with unlimited music, iPhone test drives: I've been starting to ponder the possibility of buying a new phone in the fall, and I think the tough decision is going to be which carrier to go with. I would certainly like to give T-Mobile a shot, but I'm not sure if I'll be happy with their network performance. I was pondering buying a SIM card to try it out for a month, but this iPhone test drive is exactly what I need to convince myself to switch. Amazing!

• Tim Cook, Making Apple His Own: This article is largely garbage, but the quotes from Jony I've are great. in particular, this one:

  “It is hard for all of us to be patient,” Mr. Ive said. “It was hard for Steve. It is hard for Tim.”

  Building incredible products takes time. We are so spoiled with how many great things we have to choose from, that we sometimes forget this.