speaking of hobbits [permalink]

They just found fossilized remains of one of Smaug’s relatives in China.

tv is broken [permalink]

Patrick Rhone posts a story of his daughter’s introduction to “normal” tv, and her reaction couldn’t be more spot on.

This point of view paints the perfect picture of why we cancelled cable, and have no plans to turn back. The successes of TiVo, Netflix, and Roku are all evidence that people are pining for change on their big screen. The days where some network executive decides what you watch at 5pm are on the way out. TV is ripe for getting shaken up.

apple confirms oregon data center plans [permalink]

With $100,000,000,000 in cash and iCloud as the basis of their decade long strategy, my only question is, why are they building these one at a time?

po-tay-toe, po-tah-toe

Jim and Ben are talking about whether or not the “iOS-ification of OS X” is taking place. This is another semantical issue, and boy, do I love semantics.

Matthew Panzarino argues that it’s more about a unification of Apple’s two platforms:

Apple is going about unifying the iOS and OS X experience in a few ways, none of which have to do with ‘turning OS X into iOS’.

But many of which have to do with making OS X work more like iOS. So, that’s a pretty thinly veiled argument.

Apple has framed the marketing for both Lion and Mountain Lion as bringing ideas from iOS to the Mac. If anything, Lion had more big features unrelated to iOS than Mountain Lion does, e.g. AirDrop, Mission Control, Versions.

Unification is a great word, and I think it is pretty representative of how Apple is trying to forge ahead. However, the fact remains that today, the way that iOS and OS X are converging is by OS X taking lots of cues from iOS, and not so much the other way around. Call it iOS-ification, unification, or whatever else you want.

Do I hope the changing tides will eventually wash some things from OS X back into iOS, of course. But right now, that isn’t what’s happening.

Update, January 23, 2014: This MacWorld article sheds some light on how Apple’s executive team view this situation.

tweetbot two point oh [permalink]

Far and away my favorite iPhone app. I’d wager an estimate that it accounts for about 40% of my time spent using my iPhone. Some great new features in 2.0, including image thumbnails in the timeline, one-click tappable links, and better contrast. If you use twitter daily, I couldn’t recommend this app more highly viagra generika preise.

Update: Also, Tweetbot for iPad.

why do we care what a ‘pc’ is?

Is whether or not the iPad is a PC a simple issue of semantics? Yes.

Are semantics important? Yes.

We have more access to data than ever before. Companies have this general tendency to release charts and graphs that paint their position in the most positive light, and having clarity and context for any given data is important to understanding the truth. Just ask Horace Dediu.

For the past few decades when you’d see a chart labelled 4th Quarter PC Sales, there wasn’t much ambiguity. It was talking about desktops and laptops, the things with keyboards, mice, monitors, applications, browsers, files, drives, plugs, and ports. They were the de facto tool for getting online, email, productivity, etc., and looking at “PC Sales” usually painted a pretty clear, if not complete, picture of the industry. That isn’t the case anymore.