Nice little piece of work by Brad Dougherty. Works perfectly for me: just install it and Tynt’s clipboard jiggery-pokery stops working.
I guess it is a cash business.
The WSJ:
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has opened an investigation into a possible security breach of AT&T Inc.’s website that exposed the email addresses of some owners of Apple Inc. iPad devices. […]
A small group of computer experts that calls itself Goatse Security said it discovered the flaw, explaining that it was able to find the email addresses by guessing numbers that identify iPads connected to AT&T’s mobile network.
The Wall Street Journal said “Goatse”.
Dan Frommer, summarizing a report by analysts Rebecca Arbogast and George Askew:
The analysts’ preliminary view is that it is unlikely the DOJ/FTC will bring an antitrust suit against Apple. But, Apple is walking a fine line, and will be increasingly scrutinized by the government. Each time provides additional risk for regulation.
Matt Drance:
While explicit approval from Apple is still required, these new terms seem to acknowledge that there’s a difference between an app that happens to have non-compiled code, and a meta-platform. It’s a step that should allow for many new possibilities.
This hasn’t gotten nearly as much attention as Apple’s change to the advertising analytics guidelines, but it might be just as big a deal. In addition to allowing the use scripting engines in games — many of which are already in the store, in apparent contradiction of the previous blanket ban on interpreted code — I’m pretty sure this is going allow some apps that had previously been rejected to be published.
Really smart take from David Barnard:
When you use Google search and other Google products, they collect a tremendous amount of information and use that information to customize and better serve the ads that are the core of their business. Many users don’t even realize this is happening, others are comfortable with it and have some level of trust for Google’s intent in using that data.
Well, Apple doesn’t trust the benevolence of Google, developers, and other third parties involved in the iOS platform. Apple wants to control the flow of user information.
And:
The thing is, Apple is a hardware company, that’s where they have and will continue to make their money. Google, Facebook, and others trade in information. The more detailed and specific, the more valuable that information. For Apple, the better the overall experience of the device, the more valuable that device becomes. They can throttle ad targeting and the specificity of 3rd party analytics according to the taste of users. Trusting 3rd parties to do so would be incredibly foolish, and Apple seems to have just recently figured that out.
Reuters:
Adobe Systems Inc on Wednesday said it sees its popular Flash Player on more than 250 million smartphones by the end of 2012 despite Apple Inc’s ban on developers from using the popular multimedia software on its iPhone.
250 million by 2012 is a big, big number.
Great piece by Eliot Van Buskirk:
This leaves Google out in the cold, and seems to strike a big blow against competition in the mobile ad space. It also smacks of payback, because Google swooped in to buy AdMob when Apple was just about to purchase it.
But think about the alternative. If Apple allows Google to track user data within ads, Google can see how people interact with advertising elements within iOS apps. And it would be able to use that information to inform the process of building AdMob ads into its own Android platform.
There’s a growing consensus here at WWDC that this is a big part of the reasoning behind Apple’s stiff-arm to Google. The terms don’t block Google from serving mobile ads in iOS, they just block Google from collecting analytics, and but so Google is effectively blocked from selling mobile ads on iOS because their whole ad system is all about analytics. They don’t do brand advertising.
There’s also no reason to put it in the future tense, that Google “would be able to use that information to inform the process of building AdMob ads into its own Android platform.” Does anyone believe that Google isn’t doing this already?
Electronista:
Samsung joined in the attacks on the iPhone 4’s Retina Display with a retort in the Korean media. A spokesperson for Samsung argued that quadrupling the resolution actually had little impact on clarity, at most three to five percent, and that that it would allegedly hike the battery drain by as much as 30 percent. AMOLED is purportedly better as it doesn’t need a backlight and makes up for any resolution loss in other ways, such as higher contrast with true black, more accurate colors and no limits on viewing angles.
They can say this now, but they won’t be able to say such things and be taken seriously after the iPhone 4 is released and people have seen it in person. Until they figure out a way to make AMOLED visible in daylight, they’re not even in the game.
Man, I love me some Instapaper.
Michael D. Shear:
The folks who gather early every morning in the West Wing office of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel have something new in common these days. Practically everyone has an iPad — or will have one very soon.
Derek Powazek:
Flush-left text (aka ragged-right) is demonstrably more readable, especially when the rendering engine doesn’t know how to hyphenate.
There’s a reason why most page layout programs considered “Hyphenation and Justification” to be two aspects of the same feature. I strongly agree that you should never use justification without good hyphenation — let alone without any hyphenation at all.
Great picks.
Dieter Bohn:
The man who “Invented the non-intrusive banner notification system used in webOS” and also did all sorts of other work for the OS, Rich Dellinger, is leaving Palm to return to his earlier employer, Apple, as a Senior User Interface Designer.
I wouldn’t read into this with any assumption that he’ll be working on adding a similar notification system to iOS, but who knows?
Nik Fletcher:
Perhaps instead of flamebait posts of ‘Apple are out to get us’ media companies should be asking themselves ‘how did reading content online become so sucky’?
Louis Gray:
The introduction of multi-tasking and a front-facing camera both are catch up features to the latest Android models, including the aforementioned EVO.
The existence of a front-facing camera may fair be considered a “catch up” feature on iPhone 4. But the ability to use the front-facing camera to actually make video calls is first on the iPhone. That’s one difference between Apple and HTC. Apple isn’t going to include a hardware feature just for the sake of having it. They only include hardware for which they have compelling software to complete the experience.
MG Siegler:
The Mac vs. PC debate has often found people using a car analogy to explain things. I keep coming back to that when thinking about iPhone vs. Android. For a long time, iPhone felt like a Lexus while Android was more like a Kia. With recent upgrades, Android has transformed into more of a Honda. But with iPhone 4, the iPhone is now an Aston Martin […].
But the crazy thing is that the iPhone is an Aston Martin with a Honda-price. Meanwhile, Android remains a Honda at a Honda-price — it’s a good deal, but it’s not an iPhone-deal.
John Battelle:
I think this is shortsighted and wrong. I also think it’s classic Apple. It’s a rerun of the Us vs. The World mentality that forced the Mac into a corner back in the late 1980s. This time, Google plays the role of Microsoft, but it really doesn’t matter. Apple won’t let anyone play in their iWorld who might pose a competitive threat.
Bullshit. Google started this. It was Google that turned its sights on the iPhone. If AdMob had remained independent, they could still sell in-app ads on iOS. If AdMob had sold itself to Apple instead of Google, they could still sell in-app ads on iOS. If Google hadn’t declared war against the iPhone, AdMob could still see in-app ads on iOS. They made their bed, now they have to sleep in it.
There’s no question it’s a dick move on Apple’s part. But what’s the argument against it? That Google gets a pass for being dicks to Apple, and Apple ought to just sit there and take it?
AdMob founder Omar:
Let’s be clear. This change is not in the best interests of users or developers. In the history of technology and innovation, it’s clear that competition delivers the best outcome. Artificial barriers to competition hurt users and developers and, in the long run, stall technological progress.
Cry me a river. This is competition.
The gist of the updated policy: third-party in-app ad networks are OK, except for Google.
Grant Hutchinson:
This series of screenshots shows Apple’s questionably named HTML5 and web standards showcase pages displayed on a Newton MessagePad 2100.
I love it.
Seems like a really well-done system, but no one knows much about how Apple’s upcoming extension gallery is going to work.
Interesting piece from Jason Kincaid at TechCrunch:
I don’t mean to say I found the iPhone 4 to be disappointing — it will be incredibly successful, and many of my friends are champing at the bit to get one. But I expected to walk out of San Francisco’s Moscone Center yesterday longing for the next iPhone despite my current allegiance to Android. That didn’t happen.
One thing that I’ve been thinking about today is that yesterday’s announcements really showed how different Apple’s priorities are from Google’s. What Apple has focused on is making the iPhone feel and look better. It’s about how it feels in your hand, about how amazing the new Retina Display looks. It’s about even better battery life.
People who prefer Android over the iPhone value different things. I’ll bet Android users were more likely to expect that Apple would announce a new UI for notifications, for example. I think Apple probably will create a richer UI for notifications in iOS at some point — but their immediate priorities lie elsewhere.
Put another way, I think there are Android users like Kincaid who hoped to see Apple play catch-up to Android in certain areas, but I don’t think Apple sees any areas where they need to make iOS more Android-like at all.
Thomas Hawk:
Quite simply Lightroom 3 represents the single most significant advancement in photographic noise reduction I’ve ever seen. I’m blown away. Thousands of photos that were previously unworkable for me, now have suddenly become available to process. High iso low light shots with tons of noise can be salvaged, saved and turned into beautiful images. What’s more, pushed to it’s extremes, this new noise reduction technology gives photographs an almost painterly quality, allowing new potential for artistic representation of photographs.
His examples are truly amazing. I love Lightroom so much.
MG Siegler:
Pulse has already made a triumphant return to the store, their Twitter account confirms. So what happened? Did Jobs himself step into the fray and get the NYT to ease up? […] When asked how the app returned so quickly, co-creator Akshay Kothari wrote back: “We’re trying to figure that out ourselves. Keep you posted.”
Some very cool stuff already. Not bad for a day.
Khoi Vinh:
Creating a beautiful display and patting yourself on the back for having good typography is disingenuous, I think. It’s a little like saying a high-definition television set makes for better television shows; an absurd claim at best.
Kevin Paulsen and Kim Zitter:
Manning had access to two classified networks from two separate secured laptops: SIPRNET, the Secret-level network used by the Department of Defense and the State Department, and the Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System which serves both agencies at the Top Secret/SCI level.
The networks, he said, were both “air gapped” from unclassified networks, but the environment at the base made it easy to smuggle data out. “I would come in with music on a CD-RW labeled with something like ‘Lady Gaga,’ erase the music then write a compressed split file,” he wrote. “No one suspected a thing and, odds are, they never will.”
Very weird: the Times objected to a feed reader — which had just been mentioned by Jobs during the keynote as an example of a great iPad app — including the Times’s RSS feeds in its default subscriptions.
It must have been a mistake on the part of a Times lawyer, though, because the app is back in the store already.
Andy Croll:
I know that I’ll certainly be considering ‘tap to toggle’ as a user interface choice ahead of hover in the future. The iPhone-ification of interaction online continues.
Gina Trapani:
That’s the thing about Apple marketing. They don’t talk about how many gigabytes of memory or how many CPU cycles or how many apps (much). They aim for your heart, and show you how technology can make your life better during its most important moments.
Thomas Weisel’s Doug Reid: Overall iPhone 4 meets but does not exceed our expectations for the device going into the event.
Doug Reid is the same genius who, back on January 28, thought Apple would sell only 1.1 million iPads this year.
My favorite demo from the Safari State of the Union. Fun and clever.
Apple had a demo area for the media after the keynote, so I got to spend some time hands-on with the iPhone 4. The resolution of the “retina display” is as impressive as Apple boasts. Text renders like high quality print. One thing that Apple didn’t mention in the keynote, though, is that the LCD pixels are much closer to the surface of the touchscreen. On existing iPhones (and iPods, and iPads), there is not a lot of distance between the glass surface and the LCD, but there is some. There’s also a very narrow amount of air between the touchscreen glass and the underlying LCD. If you’ve ever got a bit dust under your display, that dust is in the air between the glass and LCD.
It’s mentioned briefly in Apple’s promotional video about the design of the iPhone 4, but they’re using a new production process that effectively fuses the LCD and touchscreen — there is no longer any air between the two. One result of this is that the iPhone 4 should be impervious to this dust-under-the-glass issue. More importantly, though, is that it looks better. The effect is that the pixels appear to be painted on the surface of the phone; instead of looking at pixels under glass, it’s like looking at pixels on glass. Combined with the incredibly high pixel density, the overall effect is like “live print”.
It also improves the field of view for the display — you can view the display from an oblique angle and it looks great. Again, like print. It’s like a glossy magazine come to life.
A few other tidbits I noticed during my hands-on time with the phone today:
In addition to being thinner than the 3GS, the iPhone 4 is narrower. The display spans almost the entire width of the device, and it feels smaller in your hand.
The build quality is incredible. It feels dense and extremely rigid.
iMovie for iPhone is impressive as hell.
The flat metal edge makes it feel much more like a camera when you’re using it as a camera.
Speaking of the camera, the 4 has a wider angle lens than the 3GS camera. This is a good thing, in my book. It’s not a lot wider, but it’s noticeable.
After using so much aluminum in recent hardware designs, it’s interesting that they’re using stainless steel for the iPhone 4. Update: Stainless steel can be used as an antenna; aluminum can’t. That’s the explanation.
iBooks for iPhone adds Georgia as a font choice. I presume that will come to the iPad version, too.
Renaming the OS from iPhone OS to iOS is welcome.
Google remains the default search engine in iOS 4, but on all the demo phones in the hands-on area for the media, the search engine was set to Bing. ★
The video is worth watching.
Huge hit in the hands-on press area. Really easy, very compelling. Interesting too, that they’re going to publish the protocol.
It’s a few short hours before the keynote, and what strikes me about this year’s WWDC isn’t any specific rumor or impending announcement. Not the iPhone HD. Not the never-before-seen features in OS 4. Not the new Apple TV. Not the update to Safari with an extension API and “Reader” mode.
What strikes me is this. One year ago I was in the same hotel waiting for the same keynote to the same conference. The iPad was a distant rumor, and Steve Jobs was on medical leave, two months out from a life-saving liver transplant. Now here we are, and the iPad is an amazing industry-changing smash hit (I’m writing these words using one), Apple’s market cap has surpassed Microsoft’s, and Steve Jobs is getting ready to take the stage, in his prime and at the top of his game.
It’s been one hell of a year. ★
Pretty good list.
Adam Lisagor:
It could even be that the Apple TV is the lynchpin of the whole operation, the way that iTunes started as a “hobby” that organized our music collection, and revealed itself to be a hub upon which more than one industry was redefined.
The Macalope on Rob “Corporate CIA” Enderle.
Brilliant and wise; arguably the most successful coach in sports history, by any measure of the word.
Good piece from Christopher Blizzard on why it’s a mistake for Apple to emphasize the “HTML5” brand for Safari-specific demos.
Jason Snell calls for Apple to allow sideloading native iPhone apps:
I don’t think the company needs to stop controlling what apps get in the App Store. All Apple needs to do is add a new feature, buried several menu items down in the Settings app, that mirrors the one found on Android devices: an option that lets you install Apps from “unknown sources.” If a user tried to turn this option on, they’d get a scary warning about how these sources couldn’t be trusted, and that they may lead to instability, crashes, loss of data, you name it. Scary stuff.
Most users will never find that setting. Many who do will be loath to turn it on. But by putting it there, Apple immediately shuts up every single claim that the iPhone isn’t open.
Personally, I’d welcome such a move, but I don’t think it would have the effect Snell envisions. Snell’s argument is that Apple should do this to nip the argument that the iPhone is too closed. But if Apple did exactly what Snell argues, critics would still harp on the closed App Store. iPhone critics have seldom let facts get in their way.
Earlier in the same article, Snell writes:
The other day I was talking to a colleague, a bright guy who obviously works in the technology and media industries, but isn’t on the technical side. He’s what I’d call a moderately informed tech consumer, and I was showing him my new iPad. His response to me was shocking: He said that he had been interested in buying an iPad, but needed to read PDF files, and since Apple only supported its own formats, he couldn’t buy one.
Of course the iPad reads PDFs, I told him. He was surprised. Can I load my own videos and music on it, or only stuff I buy from Apple? Sure, I told him, you can load your videos and music. I managed to bat down every single concern he had about the device.
If there are people who think the iPad can’t read PDFs or play music and videos that aren’t purchased from the iTunes Store, then surely there would be people who’d think you can only install apps from the App Store even if sideloading were a supported option, as per Snell’s suggestion.
The question of whether the App Store is too closed is not what Snell is talking about. He’s talking about the iPhone OS being perceived as “too closed” even in areas where it is in fact wide open. The App Store is great and popular, but the iPhone OS is more than the App Store.
A better strategy would be for Apple to do a better job promoting the ways the iPhone already is open. Make it clear that you can play MP3 music that comes from anywhere. Make it clear you can play H.264 video from anywhere.
And, most importantly, Apple needs to do a better job emphasizing what HTML5 mobile web apps are capable of, and that such apps are completely open for both developers and users. To use the walled garden metaphor, Apple needs to make more people aware that right across the street from the App Store’s beautiful but tightly controlled and regulated walled garden, there’s a very nice public park, open to everyone.
A web app store, as per Eric Meyer’s suggestion I linked to earlier today, should not and will not come from Apple. Apple should host a directory of great HTML5 apps that work well on iPhones and iPads — and do a better job bragging about HTML5, WebKit, and the iPhone OS’s status as the best platform for completely open mobile web content. ★
