From the monthly archives:

January 2010

Amazon caves in to Macmillan, pouts and sulks

January 31, 2010

Macmillan E-books – kindle Discussion Forum: We want you to know that ultimately, however, we will have to capitulate and accept Macmillan’s terms because Macmillan has a monopoly over their own titles, and we will want to offer them to you even at prices we believe are needlessly high for e-books. Someone should tell them [...]

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Danny’s “jet plane emotions” on the iPad

January 31, 2010

My deputy-nemesis Danny O’Brien on the iPad, openness, and hacking stuff: “It’s easy to see the iPad as the final tragedy in a long history of openness and tinkerability in general purpose computing. But the truth is, the cyclical fight against locked-in systems has been the recurring theme of computing since the mainframes. Our open [...]

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Andy Ihnatko sums up the difference between iPad and Android

January 31, 2010

Otherwise, the release of the iPad marks a classic battle between two philosophies: Is it better to have a device that is loaded with bullet-pointable features? Or is it better to have a device that has a shorter list of specs … but which does everything right? That’s not a loaded question. It’s the key [...]

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Never Dupe Your Readers

January 31, 2010

As someone who’s followed Apple closely for most of my life and also someone who doesn’t really give Jason Calacanis credit for much of anything besides incessantly promoting himself, I knew Apple would never give a guy like that a device in advance under any circumstances, for any reason. via mikeindustries.com I think this perfectly [...]

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Translating Google

January 30, 2010

Jeff Jarvis fires off a couple of questions in an apartment in Davos to the Googlers. Here are Eric Schmidt’s answers, with some handy translations from Google-speak. Schmidt: Phones: Will they have a tablet? “You might want to tell me what the difference is between a large phone and a tablet,” Schmidt said. Translation: You [...]

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The iPad and me

January 28, 2010

There’s a million posts around about the iPad today, and there will be a  million more tomorrow. My reaction is simply that I’ll be buying one, because I’m a geek, and that’s what I do. As for whether it’s good or bad, game-breaking or Apple-breaker, that I’ve yet to learn. I learned with the iPhone [...]

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Apple levitates: Financial quarter, by the numbers

January 26, 2010

Joe Wilcox goes through Apple’s numbers for the quarter thoroughly (and dispassionately – something that I appreciate when it comes to numbers). What sticks out for me is that Apple has managed a pretty astounding feat: preserving unit sales (or expanding them in many product lines) while pushing margins even higher, something that should barely [...]

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Why I’m willing to bet this rumoured iPad ad is fake

January 25, 2010

Nowhereelse has dug up what it claims is an ad for the forthcoming Apple tablet, dubbed “iPad”. Watch for yourself… So why do I think this is fake? Simple: Apple wouldn’t lead off an ad with a line like “After 10 years of development…” Apple ads are all about feeling, and what you can do [...]

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Moodagent – a great tool for playlists

January 24, 2010

Once you start to have thousands of songs on your iPod or iPhone, if you’re anything like me you tend to find that you listen to the same few songs over and over again. It’s almost like you’re paralysed by having too much choice. Apple’s Genius mixes are one way around this, but they tend [...]

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Five things Apple could do to make MobileMe great

January 24, 2010

One thing that hasn’t been talked about in connection with the (presumed) launch of Apple’s tablet on Wednesday is how MobileMe fits into the picture. There’s a good reason for this: MobileMe is one of Apple’s “forgotten products”. Used by many, but rarely talked about, mainly because it has been upgraded only slowly and has [...]

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