iPhone

Both of these services are dangerous for app developers because they offer simple, one-tap installs of pirated apps and do not require that devices have been jailbroken in order to do so. This is an enormous problem, as it opens up the arena for their use from the relatively small fraction of users with jailbroken devices — as was the case with Installous — to any unscrupulous users of iPhones and iPads.

Don’t steal from developers people. Bad karma shit will come back on you.

In order to appreciate the magnitude of new devices activated on Christmas Day, Flurry established a baseline using the average from the first 20 days of December. Over this period, daily activations averaged around 4.0 million per day, with variance of a few hundred thousand in either direction per day. On Christmas Day, activations soared to more than 17.4 million, a 332% increase over the December baseline. By comparison, Christmas Day 2011 held the previous single-day record, having reached 6.8 million device activations. Christmas 2012 is more than 2.5 times larger than Christmas 2011, which surpassed its own baseline by more than 300%.

There are lots of happy people out there.

I use the alarm on my iPhone a lot when I travel, but I have never seen any alarm look this cool. You just move your finger up and down to change the time and swipe right to turn it on. This is the epitome of doing one thing and doing one thing right.

According to Apple the update “fixes a bug that could impact Wi-Fi.”

Ian Betteridge:

The fact that Google is, on one hand, creating great applications for iOS and, on the other, fighting tooth and nail for market share against it makes me wonder if the company is divided into two factions, with a battle raging between them over its future direction. On one side, there’s the group who want to promote Android as a coherent product, and beat Apple into a pulp with it.

[…]

On the other side, there’s the “Pragmatists”. These are the ones who realise Google makes its money from advertising, not directly from selling products.

As Ian points out later, Google’s iOS apps have to be good. They’re a company that makes its money from advertising.

Digging specifically at Android, McNamee said that it is akin to “having a motor scooter at the Indianapolis 500.”

“I watch what they have done with Android and I’m flabbergasted because their market share in units is so high but look at the profit share,” McNamee said. “Apple’s profit share is 75 or 80% because Android has been managed essentially to make it a profitless prosperity. Right now, if Google is not careful, Android will be Samsung or Samsung will be Android.”

I laughed. Hard.

Richard Chirgwin at The Register:

To be blunt, there is a place called Mildura whose location is given as exactly where Apple put it – at least, there is in an authoritative source for such a location.

[…]

In this case, the Australian Gazetteer – the authoritative list of 300,000-plus placenames, complete with coordinates – includes two Milduras. One is the “real” town, the other is an entry for “Mildura Rural City”, coordinates -34.79724 141.76108.

This just keeps getting crazier.

Charles Arthur for The Guardian:

Apple has updated its new maps system after police in Mildura, Australia, said a number of people trying to find the town of 30,000 people became hopelessly lost in the bush in scorching temperatures.

Great that this problem was fixed because it was so serious. I hate to think how many others are still out there.

Well, there you go.