May 2012
24 posts
The sun never sets on Cupertino
A new article in the NYT is getting a lot of buzz: “How Apple Sidesteps Billions in Taxes.” Quoting from the piece seems superfluous; if you’ve read the headline, you have a pretty good idea what the article says, just without the details. (In short form, Apple saved about $2.4B last year by having their investment fund subsidiary incorporated in Nevada and having global...
April 2012
24 posts
The Das Keyboard
I’ve always liked keyboards with mechanical keyswitches, the way “old” computers had. This may go back to my days growing up with a TRS-80: for all the “Trash-80” jokes that used to be made, the TRS-80 Model 4D, the last one of its line, had a terrific keyboard in it.1
For the last few years, I’ve been using a Unicomp Spacesaver, the direct descendant of...
Trimble Navigation to buy SketchUp →
You’ve probably heard of SketchUp, the free but powerful 3D modeling program from Google. You probably haven’t heard of Trimble Navigation, which describes itself as “a leading provider of advanced positioning solutions that maximize productivity and enhance profitability.” Be still, my beating heart.
Google’s purchase of SketchUp a few years ago struck me as...
CNET: Why has Forrester's CEO become an Apple... →
Josh Lowensohn does a fairly sharp job of answering his own question, laying out what he calls “the classic formula of the provocateur”:
Find a hook
Find something contrarian to say
Add a touch of obviousness
Add some context
Four easy bullet points, and you’re all but assured to have people rant at you!
Forrester’s exec claims that Tim Cook lacks “the gift of...
Path Finder 6 →
Cocoatech’s Path Finder is a major upgrade to OS X Finder, at least if you’re the kind of user who finds things like Path Finder userul. Path Finder 6 is a major upgrade to Path Finder.
(Incidentally, the .sitx archives created by Path Finder—and, of course, Stuffit—are actually smaller than the comparable .zip, .tgz or even .tbz files. And not by a small amount. PF6...
Rethinking Programming Language Tutorials →
James Hague:
Programming language tutorials shouldn’t be about learning languages. They should be about learning something interesting, and you learn the language in the process. But what do we get in programming tutorials? Hello World. Fibonacci sequences. Much important manipulation of “foo.”
This is why Michael Hartl’s Ruby on Rails Tutorial is as great as it...
So...
…it’s a good thing I don’t ever actually plan to go to Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference. Tickets on sale for $1600 a pop, on sale at 5:30 Pacific this morning and sold out in less than two hours. Or, roughly when my alarm clock would have gone off if I’d remembered to set it.
If you’re one of the lucky people who (a) has that much money (or employer...
CNET: Andy Rubin said java.lang APIs are... →
Despite my copious misgivings about their company’s business model, philosophically I’m on Google’s side here. Google keeps putting effort into proving that no, they really did think they were consciously in violating of the Java license, which I’m finding rather bemusing.
Jason McIntosh: Let's use rot13 for game spoilers →
Decades ago, users of the primordial internet fora known as Usenet made frequent use of [Rot13] to politely mask text that some people might not wish to read by accident, and popular news-reading software often made Rot13 cycling a one-command operation.
I have missed it. I love discussing games and novels and such with my friends on Twitter and other media, but I dislike how painfully...
Nokia's Elop: Lumia 'actual sales have been mixed' →
A report from ZDNet’s Larry Dignan. Elop said that Nokia “exceeded expectations in markets including the United States,” but that they need to add new features “with a clear sense of urgency.”
Good luck with that. The window for a blockbuster competitor to Android and iOS has very likely closed, and the best Windows Phone may get is—ironically enough—a...
Microsoft developer evangelist retracts claim that... →
Speaking of Windows Phone and avenues for failure, wouldn’t it just be fantastic for Nokia if the Lumia 900 turns out to not be upgradable from 7.5 (“Mango”) to 8 (“Apollo”)? Yeah.
Windows 8: reinventing the list of confusing... →
The Verge’s Nilay Patel reports on Windows 8, Win 8 Pro, Win 8 Enterprise, and “Windows 8 RT,” the ARM version that they won’t sell to consumers but will only make available pre-installed on ARM machines.
It’s an interesting move for Microsoft — the company is insistent that “all editions of Windows 8 offer a no-compromise experience,” but by...
Android gives 'no permissions' apps access to... →
CNET’s Steven Musil:
Leviathan Security Group researcher Paul Brodeur explained in a blog post earlier this week that he created a proof-of-concept to demonstrate that “no permissions” apps still have access to the device’s SD card, handset identification data, and files stored by other apps.
This is not a “this could only happen on Android!” sort of...
Nest not only takes inspiration from Apple, they... →
Lauren Goode at AllThingsD:
Nest, maker of a “smart” thermostat and target of a patent-infringement lawsuit filed by industrial giant Honeywell, has submitted a formal response to Honeywell’s claims. The start-up has also brought Richard “Chip” Lutton, a 10-year Apple Inc. veteran who managed the company’s patent portfolio, on board as vice president and general counsel.
Nest describes...
CNET: DOJ is likely to lose e-book antitrust suit... →
An interesting article—not, as the title might imply, an editorial—from CNET, talking to several legal experts.
In the 1979 BMI vs. CBS case, the [Supreme] Court ruled that “not all arrangements among actual or potential competitors that have an impact on price are per se violations.” And in a 2007 case, the court said that manufacturers can enforce minimum retail...
Inside the DOJ's ebook price-fixing case against... →
As usual, The Verge’s Nilay Patel produces the best article about a legal morass. Essentially, the argument is that Apple and the major publishers conspired to force the entire ebook market into using the “agency model,” where the seller gets to set the selling price and the distributor gets a fixed percentage commission. This is in contrast to the conventional retail model where...
Facebook to Acquire Photo-Sharing Start-Up... →
This bit of news is exploding all over the web, so you’ve probably already seen it; I’ve just linked to Kara Swisher’s piece at AllThingsD.
I’m not quite sure what to make of this. On the one hand, this isn’t as nonsensical-seeming as FB’s purchase of Push Pop Press a few months back. On the other, they’ve paid one billion dollars for a company that, as...
One Hiring Filter that Works →
Chris Stucchio describes his good experience with a “hiring filter” for engineers:
Instructions on where to send your resume are contained in our application (you’ll need to decrypt them first).
I came across a few of those sorts of puzzles in my job hunt last year and loved them. I’m not particularly good with the kinds of programming puzzles that involve sitting in...
How many iPhone app developers can Microsoft buy? →
Philip Elmer-DeWitt:
When free phones and promises of prime real estate on the Windows Phone app store wasn’t enough to get reluctant developers to write software for the Nokia Lumia 900, Microsoft reportedly started writing checks to cover some of the cost of development. Among the developers that, according to the New York Times, have been paid to write for Windows Phone: FourSquare,...
"I'm sure it will only take you a few days to... →
Dan Shipper:
When a non-technical person attempts to estimate software development time they come armed with their two basic heuristics: complexity based on size and complexity based on speed. But what they don’t realize is that software is different. Software is by nature not physical. It exists in the ether. A tiny portion of it shows up on our computer screens from time to time....
Walt Mossberg: "It's big, It's blue, It's Windows,... →
There’s lots of other reviews and links to reviews of the Nokia Lumia 900, but I linked to this one just to invoke Betteridge’s Law.
I really like the Lumia’s industrial design, but they seriously need to step up the hardware to be competitive. And guys, you can’t simultaneously cut corners to hit that $99 price point and start an advertising campaign based on the notion...
CNET: Yahoo to lay off 2,000 workers to 'reshape'... →
As CNET’s Charles Cooper notes in an editorial, Yahoo describes this as focusing on the company’s “most urgent priorities,” but never once tells us what those priorities are, other than “increasing shareholder value.” And “radically simplifying how it builds, launches and maintains many of its properties,” which I can’t help but translate as...
Monday Cocktail: Tequila Old-Fashioned
“Old-fashioned” in cocktails is itself a very old term—originally, cocktail itself meant a drink of sugar, bitters and a base spirit. When new-fangled wild drinks like the martini started to appear, that original drink became known as an old-fashioned cocktail.
A lot of bars make pretty lamentable old-fashioneds. Some recipes call for a little bit of club soda added, mostly...
ZDNet: Dell buying Wyse →
You may not have heard of Wyse Technology if you haven’t been in the nerd industry for at least 20 years; I remember them back when they were making sleek, pretty terminals, back when making terminals was a viable business. (For those of you in your 20s, mainframes and minicomputers—and the very first microcomputers, back when they were called “microcomputers” rather than...
