Om Malik:

The non iOS devices for me are purely for academic purposes and to keep up with the devices, trends and apps.

And there you have it in one neat sentence.

John Gruber took the same scene with both — the iPhone is so much better.

Doug Stephen:

My feed is served up via Feedburner. Feedburner is another Google property, but it seems that it’s been mostly abandoned. They were working on a new, more Google-like interface a while back but they have seemingly abandoned it what with the Beta for this interface being gone. It’s too bad that Google has seemingly lost interest in Feedburner, because it’s an awesome service for RSS feed analytics.

I’ve had nothing but trouble with Feedburner. Actually, everyone I’ve ever talked to has had nothing but bad things to say about Feedburner.

Ars Technica:

Ars recently attempted to delve into the inner workings of the security built into Apple’s iCloud service. Though we came away reasonably certain that iCloud uses industry best practices that Apple claims it uses to protect data and privacy, we warned that your information isn’t entirely protected from prying eyes. At the heart of the issue is the fact that Apple can, at any time, review the data synced with iCloud, and under certain circumstances might share that information with legal authorities.

It’s a a good article and should be read by anyone who uses iCloud but the bottom line is, if you didn’t encrypt it yourself, it can be vulnerable to others.

Clyde Prestowitz for CNN:

As a business, Apple has a right to fear that moving the assembly work from China to the United States will entail raising labor costs so high as to make the company less competitive and profitable. But for it to say that it has no obligation to help solve America’s problems is completely unacceptable.

The problems in the U.S. economy are not for Apple to resolve. They pay taxes — I’m sure they pay a lot of taxes — and they employ tens of thousands of Americans in high paying jobs.

Apple is not a charity, nor should it make business decisions based on a country’s needs or wants. Apple has one financial responsibility — to make money for its shareholders.

Instead of giving trillions in bailout money to companies that have been mismanaged, why not use that money to make doing business in America more attractive.

BlackBook is your new company-wide address book. All users in your company can access these contacts, allowing for an easier flow of information between employees. From the BlackBook Server, you can control who can read contact information, edit contacts, and export/share contacts. And each user can set categories for easy sorting by contact type.

The company says with its built-in cardDAV server, you can get the contacts on your iOS device too.

MSNBC:

None of us living today will ever get beyond our celestial backyard in real life, but there’s a fleet of apps out there that can blast you through hyperspace to explore — and understand — the far frontiers of the cosmos on your tablet computer. The latest app is “The Wonders of the Universe,” a multimedia spin-off of physicist Brian Cox’s coffee-table book and TV documentary series of the same name.The app, sold by Harper Collins for the iPad 2 and the new iPad, organizes more than 200 interactive articles, two and a half hours of video and hundreds of graphics to do a show-and-tell that ranges from subatomic quarks to the largest scales of the cosmic web.

The article also mentions and has video of four other space-themed apps for the iPad: The Night Sky, Solar System for iPad, Solar Walk and my personal favorite, Star Walk.

Huffington Post:

Interestingly enough, the study found that of women with minimal pop culture exposure, the majority surveyed find men to be less attractive when sporting a full face of hair. However, this same group of women also perceived bearded men as garnering higher respect and being more powerful than clean-shaven men.

Fear, and respect, the beard.

Apple says it will disclose its Q2 2012 financial results on Tuesday, April 24 at 2:00 pm PT (5:00 pm ET) and will provide a live audio webcast of the earnings conference call.

Dave Johnson for Macworld:

I get a lot of questions about ISO—many photographers don’t seem to understand exactly what it does. Your camera’s ISO control determines how sensitive the camera’s sensor is to light. On most cameras, ISO starts at 100 and goes up from there; the higher the number, the more sensitive the sensor will be.

When photographers talk to me about things like this I imagine it’s like when I talk to them about my amp settings. However, this is a good article to help you get your head around ISO and what it means for your photos.

This came out for April Fools, but I’m not much of an April Fools guy, so I didn’t post it. However, it’s so good, I had to let everyone see it.

Scroll down to the bottom of the page and play the video. It’s hilarious.

Joshua Rhett Miller, for Fox News:

After 576,000 miles — or more than a trip to the moon and back — in the same 1964 Mercury Comet Caliente, [Rachel Veitch] the 93-year-old Orlando grandmother is stepping on the brakes due to age-related macular degeneration in both eyes. She realized her vision had completely failed her in early March after running a “bald-faced red light,” Veitch told FoxNews.com.

She’s taken meticulous care of the car since she bought it new in 1964, but won’t give it to a family member, fearing they won’t take care of it as well as she has. She’s amenable to selling it to late night talk show host and car collector Jay Leno, however.

Mike Watkinson for MacProVideo:

In this article we shall look more closely at the management of takes you have captured on a single playlist, and also how to manage multiple playlists and use them for editing composite takes.

Loop recording is a powerful tool if you know how to properly manage all of the takes. This article gives you some practical tips.

These are just so incredibly beautiful.

I don’t know what happened here. But I can state the facts. As much as it hurts for Android loyals, they depend on iOS first apps. And that’s a shame.

Apple has been leading the way in hardware and software innovation for the past five years. It’s not too much of a surprise that developers try their apps on iOS first.

Shawn Blanc:

If you don’t own an AirPrint-enabled printer, yet you want to print from your iPhone or iPad, you will need to install a 3rd-party app. But, which one? I found that with certain 3rd-party apps you get additional functionality and benefits beyond just being able to print from your iPhone.

Matthew Handrahan for GamesIndustry International:

Throughout [Cousins’] talk, and during the course of our conversation immediately after, it becomes clear that, to some extent, Cousins regards free-to-play as an economic imperative. As soon as one competitor in a specific field drops the price to zero, he argues, it becomes very difficult for others to continue charging. It happened to mobile games in the space of a few years, and the touch-paper that will spark the same transition in PC and, ultimately, console gaming has already been lit.

Interesting analysis from the head of ngmoco’s Sweden studio, Ben Cousins. Cousins feels that the free-to-play model, which already dominates the mobile gaming market, is going to take over. Cousins expects a game like Skyrim to be available free-to-play in the coming years.

Of course, free-to-play doesn’t mean it’s entirely free – players are expected to make up for the lack of a purchase fee either by submitting to intrusive advertising or by making in-app purchases, which some gamers find irritating.

Research In Motion on Tuesday launched software that enables its large “enterprise” customers to manage Apple and other rival devices through the same servers as they use for the BlackBerry smartphone and Playbook tablet.

Translation: You win.

I used SpamSieve for years and loved it. The only reason I stopped is because I started doing spam filtering on the server.

Peter Pachal for Mashable:

Apple has taken firm root in America. Just over half of all households in the country own at least one Apple product, a new survey says, showing just how far the reach of the company has come in the last decade.

Households that own Apple products typically own an average of three, according to the report, and about one quarter of those plan to buy another one in the coming year.

Jeff Sneider for Variety:

The King of Twitter is now the King of Apple, as “Two and a Half Men” star Ashton Kutcher is attached to play Steve Jobs in the indie pic “Jobs,” which Joshua Michael Stern (“Swing Vote”) will direct from a script by Matt Whiteley.

I thought this was an April Fool’s joke when I first read it. Ashton Kutcher is no Noah Wyle.

This is unrelated to Walter Isaacson’s book, by the way. That book has been optioned and is currently in development at Sony Pictures, but no casting has been announced.

Josh Lowensohn for CNet:

According to market research firm ComScore, iPhone owners in both the U.S. and the U.K. consumed more of their data over Wi-Fi and their carrier’s wireless signal than smartphone users on Google’s Android platform during the month of February.

Apparently iPhone users, overall, are a more frugal lot when it comes to data usage. Either that, or we prefer the higher speeds afforded by Wi-Fi.

I really like the interface of this app.

Daily Mail:

Companies such as Apple have made their name by marketing their products not just as technological tools but as glamorous and fun toys.But this marketing technique is nothing new, as these vintage adverts from the early days of PCs show.They portray computers as fun, easy to use – and even sexy, with the help of a few eager-looking models.

Look how sexy that 4800 baud modem is!

CNN:

Ad Age reports that Craig’s tougher, darker Bond will star in an upcoming Heineken ad, which will do double duty as promotion for the upcoming James Bond flick “Skyfall.” “Skyfall” director Sam Mendes will direct the commercial as well.

Trying to be more like the beard are we Mr. Bond. Pfft.