Jason Snell has written an interesting piece for Macworld about his belief that creation on the iPad is improved by the on screen keyboard. I've done a fair bit of long form typing on the iPad, but had never given this concept much thought. I will be now.
James Allworth has written a very interesting post at Asymco about Apple's choice to use Samsung so extensively as a supplier. He makes an argument that Samsung's emergence as the only profitable Android handset manufacturer may most closely be linked to their relationship with Apple. It's an interesting thought experiment at the very least.
While there’s no doubt that Google has played a key role in Samsung’s success by handing out a free mobile operating system to pretty much anyone who wants to build one — it is actually Apple, more than any other company, that is responsible for Samsung’s present success.
How? By outsourcing as much work to Samsung as they have. And it’s impossible not to wonder whether Tim Cook’s announcement yesterday on bringing back Apple’s manufacturing to the USA is the beginnings of an attempt to rectify the problem.
MacStories has a very interesting analysis of Apple's retail expansion. The charts do a great job of illustrating some basic facts. I'm unsurprised by the distribution of domestic v. international store openings and surprised by the even rate of store openings thru the years.
Bloomberg Businessweek has a long interview of Apple's CEO Tim Cook available today. There are a lot of things we've heard before, but also some great new nuggets of information. Read the whole story. A couple things popped out at me.
So each of those product lines has a great future by themselves, but obviously we also talk about what else we can do. We always have. And we’ll argue, debate, and collaborate. And I mean argue and debate in the greatest sense of the words because they—you know, I never wanted to remove that. It’s a great culture. And it’s clear that we can do more. At the right time, we’ll keep disrupting and keep discovering new things that people didn’t know they wanted.
That's music to any fan of Apple.
All of the people around the table have been there for a while, and they’ve lived through different cycles. So they have a maturity, but they still have their boldness. They’re still ready to burn the bridge. And this is great. Because there is no other company like that anymore. I mean, no company would have done what we did this year. Think about it. We changed the vast majority.... Who else is doing this? Eighty percent of our revenues are from products that didn’t exist 60 days ago. Is there any other company that would do that?
That's really crazy. And this isn't a start up company we're talking about. This is the largest company in the world by market cap.
It's always fun when someone takes a fresh look at changing a familiar UI element. Brent Caswell has done just that today in a post about the iOS lockscreen at The Tech Block. I don't necessarily agree with all his design choices, but it's a fresh approach to solving a problem that really does exist. It also has the added benefit of feeling very much like something Apple would do.
Hat tip to The Loop
GigaOm has an interview with developer Lauren Brichter, the inventor of Tweetie, Pull to refresh and Letterpress. This is a guy who knows iOS. Take the chance to read what he has to say on a whole range of topics.
I'm sure he has no interest in working for Apple, but I'd love to see the product of a collaboration between Lauren and Jony Ive.
The availability of LTE data on new iOS devices is a great thing. In many ways, it's revolutionized whats possible on the devices. I'd never go back to anything that doesn't have LTE.
That said, I'd like a little more control over the availability of LTE data. Apple has seen fit to provide the user with an On/Off switch for LTE Data in Settings > General > Cellular > Enable LTE. What I'd like is to decide availability on an app basis. Instead of a simple switch, the 'Enable LTE' should behave just like the 'Roaming' setting below it. Pressing the arrow on the 'Enable LTE' button would lead to a submenu with additional refinement options.
There should be a simple On/Off switch at the top. When 'Off' is selected, the other options would be greyed out. When 'On' is selected, an option to select by app would be enabled. Switching this option 'On' would provide a list all apps that use data. By default, they would all be switched 'On'. The user could then go through and turn off LTE for any apps they choose.
This option would be helpful in many instances. Many apps take into account the data connection when deciding how to serve up data to the user. Video is a prime example. If a user has an LTE connection, they will be served up HD video content. If LTE is turned off, low definition content will be served. In many cases, I'd be happy to have the reduced quality to conserve data.
More and more people are effectively operating without unlimited data plans. This setting would give more control to the user to decide how they burn through the data available to them.
Philip Elmer-DeWitt has an interesting post at his Apple 2.0 blog about the opportunities for growth in the mobile industry. The data comes from Qualcomm.
Ben Brooks has a pretty interesting post taking a look at the readability of many sites on the web. It's interesting to look at all the things that can disrupt a person trying to read something on the internet. It's also amazing to see how badly sites fail the readability test.
I'm advantaged in that I don't have advertising on my site, but I've also made readability important. I think my site acquits itself rather well.
I agree with almost everything Dana Levine has written in a post about the popularity of the new iPad mini. I used one for two weeks and loved it. I believe it will be the best selling iPad, starting possibly this quarter if Apple can make enough. I returned to my iPad 3rd generation because I'm one of those minority users for whom Retina is the most important feature.
I'm not normal.