November 21, 2011
Apple leading vendor ∞
Here’s a link to The Loop. Infinity symbol should show up after the headline, but not before.
Test Post
Where does the infinity symbol show up?
∞ Apple takes in up to 90% of money spent on mobile apps
Apple controls about 85-90 percent of the money spent on mobile applications, according to a research note from an analyst on Monday.
In the note to clients, Piper Jaffray Senior Research Analyst, Gene Munster said he believes Google’s Android Market has generated about 7 percent of the gross revenue that Apple’s App Store has since it started.
Of course, the Android Market will grow, but Munster believes that even with that growth Apple will control more than 70 percent of the App Store dollars over the next 3-4 years.
According to Munster’s calculations, he says that about 1.3 percent of the apps downloaded for Android are paid apps. In comparison, he believes that 14 percent of apps downloaded from Apple’s App Store are paid apps.
∞ Nearly all mobile malware targeted at Android phones ∞
TechCrunch:
“The amount of malware targeted at Android devices jumped nearly 37 percent since last quarter, and puts 2011 on track to be the busiest in mobile and general malware history. Nearly all new mobile malware in Q3 was targeted at Android. This follows a 76 percent rise in Android malware in Q2 of 2011.”
What with Android being so popular and all, must be security through obscurity that’s keeping iPhone safe. Right. Right?
∞ My Living Desktop [Sponsor] ∞
Time to bring your desktop to life. Since 2005 My Living Desktop has been bringing a unique cross between a Video Desktop (moving wallpaper) and a traditional screensaver to your Macintosh. My Living Desktop adds a whole new dimension to your computing experience by turning your Mac’s desktop into a beautiful, moving environment… complete with soothing sounds.
My Living Desktop provides a wide array of stunning, relaxing high definition video scenes shot from all over the world that you can use on your desktop and as a screensaver. You can even import your own movie segments to create a truly personal and unique desktop environment.
∞ Apple could become leading global PC vendor in 2012
Market research firm Canalys on Monday said it expects Apple to overtake HP and become the world’s leading PC vendor before the second half of 2012.
Canalys counts iPad as PCs and says that tablets the category has “radically changed the dynamics of the PC industry over the last year.” In fact, iPad sales have put Apple in second place in 2011 PC shipments for the third-quarter.
“Apple has seen its PC market share expand from 9% to 15% in just four quarters, though iPad shipments in its core market – the United States – are likely to come under pressure in Q4 due to the launch of the Fire and Nook at extremely competitive price points,” said Canalys Analyst Tim Coulling. “HP and Apple will fight for top position in Q4, but Apple may have to wait for the release of iPad 3 before it passes HP.”
Research from Canalys indicates PC sales should reach 415 million, up 15 percent over last year.
∞ The 75 best LIFE covers of all time ∞
Starting at 1936.
[Via Jim Coudal]
∞ My favorite Dean guitar ∞
Those that have read my music posts, seen pictures or looked at my reviews, know that I use Gibson and Jackson guitars a lot. However, if I was going to get a Dean guitar, this would be it. Rust In Peace.
∞ 5 tips for getting better mixes ∞
My favorite:
It’s very easy to overuse stuff; try to use things like Eq, Compression and Reverb sparingly. Plug-ins are like make-up, a beautiful woman needs little and if you use too much she looks like crap. Great songs are the same.
∞ Scott Kelby's open letter to Adobe ∞
As president of the National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP) I represent more than 70,000 Photoshop users around the world. However as I’m writing this open letter to you today, I would say that most of our 70,000 members have no idea about the upgrade policy changes you just announced, or about how these changes will affect them.
When someone with Scott’s stature in the creative industry can’t get answers, you know Adobe has some problems.
∞ Matt Alexander reviews the Kindle Touch ∞
Matt Alexander:
Reading on an iPad is fine, but for long-form writing, the e-ink experience is the best option available. While I would like to support the underdog, the Nook, I am simply too involved in Amazon’s ecosystem to look back now. Prime is a truly great service, and with its continually growing benefits, I can’t see myself diluting my shopping habits purely for e-books. I wish B&N the best, and I admire their leg work, but for now, I’m definitely on board with Amazon’s offering.
I still don’t get the Kindle.
∞ Custom Web fonts ∞
Line25:
Over the past few years the number of fonts available for use in web design has dramatically increased. It wasn’t long ago that we all knew not to stray further than the basic Arial, Helvetica, Times, Georgia mix, but now there’s a range of services that allow the use of almost any font imaginable in your website design. This post rounds up the various custom web font solutions and looks at the pros and cons of each.
∞ McLaren production facility ∞
I don’t think of car manufacturing facilities being this good, but this is just spectacular.
November 19, 2011
∞ Steve Jobs to be inducted into the Creative Hall of Fame
The One Club for Art and Copy said it will induct Apple co-founder Steve Jobs into the Creative Hall of Fame on January 17, 2012 at an event in New York City.
According to the hall of fame, Jobs will “honored for a lifetime of contributions to design, branding and communications. As a visionary leader, his passion for design not only created products that changed the way we interact with technology and media, but changed the way we create content in media.”
The organization also said that “since 1984 the One Show has awarded over 100 pieces of advertising and design created and produced for Apple by Apple’s design team and by the long and storied partnership with Chiat/Day, which continues today with TBWA\Media Arts Lab.”
You can purchase tickets to the event $500 per person.
∞ Woman behind the voice at 200 airports
I wasn’t even sure she was real until now.
November 18, 2011
∞ Apprenticeships or College Degrees? ∞
Chris Martucci:
We tell college freshman, “You have plenty of time to figure out what you want to do,” and they major in psychology, religion, or philosophy. Now, it’d be ironic for me to downplay these fields, but the sad truth is that there aren’t many jobs out there for the average B-student with a liberal arts education.
Chris is right in that we don’t respect technical schooling enough. Ultimately, you have to do what you love — that’s what I told my kids.
∞ Apple and market subversion
This week, John Stanton revealed Steve Jobs’ unfulfilled desire to leverage the unlicensed wireless spectrum to build an Apple wireless network, presumably for use primarily with iOS devices. Of course, if this had happened, it would’ve meant that Apple would forego the normal, carrier-centric model in the wireless industry, and would have had its own network to control and govern. Quite the concept, really.
The giants holding onto the wireless industry would have been instantly and emphatically subverted in a truly profound manner. If you listen to certain naysayers, such revolutionary change is unfeasible due to legal barriers, but I’m inclined to disagree.
In fact, I would go as far as to say this revolution is already well underway.
With the launch of iOS 5, Apple introduced iMessage. With iMessage, users are able to text message for free, sans-carrier control — even internationally. If Apple had attempted to introduce such a feature with the first iPhone, it’s likely AT&T would’ve laughed Apple out of its offices. But now Apple is one of the largest wireless manufacturers in the world, and carriers are scrambling to prove that their network provides the best iPhone coverage.
Carriers that are used to placing their own apps and branding on phones quietly accept that Apple will not allow this, and offer little (if any) complaint. In essence, no carrier with any sense would risk refusing Apple, its principles, its software, and most importantly, its popular hardware for fear of significant damage in market share.
As such, iMessage appears to be a trojan horse. It has been supplanted into the carrier environment, along with Facetime, and users are just steadily beginning to grasp the gravity of such features.
Yesterday, hints of iChat code were uncovered in iOS. Many have reacted saying “it was only a matter of time,” and they’re right to say so, but what implications would an iChat feature hold for the iOS ecosystem? I doubt it would be a simple text interface, but rather an amalgamation of voice, video, and text chat, cross-platform, and without boundary.
If so, Steve Jobs’ desire to subvert carriers may not occur in such an explosive manner from the outside, but may occur as more of a revolution from within. The Apple trojan horse is firmly parked in the industry, and it is set to open, and to burn what lays before it. Whether or not an iChat client would provide this vessel for change, I’d argue it’s an inevitability that Apple will build some sort of VoIP implementation into iOS – it’s a matter of logical progression.
Many argue this is what is set to happen with the television, but indications point to hesitance in the industry. As a result, there are defeatist opinions opining about the impossibility of Apple’s rumored goal. And yet, Apple’s ability for rapid industry change is evident before all of us, whether most are aware of it or not. Carriers are allowing Apple to introduce features that wholly subvert their own pricing models, and the trend is only set to continue.
While some of these features are available on other platforms (e.g., BlackBerry Messenger, and so on), it is unquestionable that Apple’s propensity for unique, simplistic solutions has the unparalleled potential for industry-altering change. Forget exchanging pins and usernames, Apple’s system is automatic and firmly in the background.
Record labels balked at iTunes, and Apple conceded with DRM. DRM was later removed. Apple got its way and now controls the majority of the digital media business.
To that end, I’d argue that history is self-evident, and anyone who chooses to question the potential for the paradigm shifting power of Apple is shortsighted. Steve’s vision seems set to come to life, albeit via a different route, and I believe that is a marker for other shifts to come.
∞ DJ at Microsoft store opening using a MacBook ∞
They even tried to cover up the Apple logo with a plastic Microsoft cover.
∞ Demand for iPhone 4S remains strong ∞
WSJ:
Verizon Wireless customers may have to wait more than three weeks for the device, according to the carrier’s website. That compares with as much as 21 days at AT&T and up to 14 days at Sprint Nextel. While some tech blogs have suggested Apple’s manufacturing isn’t keeping pace, the carriers point to unexpectedly strong demand for the handset.
And the new BlackBerry sales are slowing. People would rather wait weeks to get an iPhone than take their pick of a BlackBerry now.
∞ Occupy Flash ∞
Flash Player is dead. Its time has passed. It’s buggy. It crashes a lot. It requires constant security updates. It doesn’t work on most mobile devices. It’s a fossil, left over from the era of closed standards and unilateral corporate control of web technology. Websites that rely on Flash present a completely inconsistent (and often unusable) experience for fast-growing percentage of the users who don’t use a desktop browser. It introduces some scary security and privacy issues by way of Flash cookies.Flash makes the web less accessible. At this point, it’s holding back the web.
∞ BlackBerry 7 sales already slowing ∞
BGR:
Sales of Research In Motion’s new BlackBerry 7 smartphones have slowed in recent weeks as competition from Apple’s iPhone 4S and Android phones heats up. In a note to investors on Friday, Canaccord Genuity analyst Mike Walkley noted that RIM’s new smartphones are not faring well ahead of the holidays. “Our recent checks indicate slowing sell-through trends for the new BlackBerry 7 smartphones the past couple weeks,” the analyst wrote. “Further, with the launch of the iPhone 4S, increasingly price competitive Android smartphones, improving Windows smartphones, and the launch of the Amazon Kindle Fire tablet, we anticipate increasing competition across all tiers of RIM’s products in C2012.”
Maybe if they gave away BlackBerrys at McDonald’s drive-thru.
∞ Web Symbols typeface ∞
There are those points in every interactive designer’s career when he becomes fed up with producing the same set of graphics all over again for every website he designs. It could be the social network icons, gallery arrows or any number of his «signature» butterflies for the footer of each of his projects. Similar for interactive developers that have to slice the same GIFs and PNGs each time art-director asks them to.
∞ VMware Fusion 4.1 ∞
Lots of goodies in the latest release of Fusion including Smart Full Screen, automatic virtual machine power on, improved animations, fast screen resizing and improved startup time, improved Mac OS X Lion guest operating system support, and improved graphics performance.
∞ Pixelmator ∞
I’d like to thank Pixelmator for sponsoring this week’s RSS feed on The Loop. Pixelmator is a beautifully designed, easy-to-use, fast and powerful image editing app for Mac OS X.
∞ JBL offers portable iOS speaker system with Bluetooth
JBL has taken the wraps off their OnBeat Extreme, a new portable dock for the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch with support for Bluetooth wireless connectivity. It’s priced at $599.
The OnBeat Extreme has dual bass drivers and tweeters, and features Digital Signal Processing hardware that can be tweaked using a free downloadable app which lets you control equalization settings so you can customize and shape the sound.
A remote control lets you adjust volume and change tracks; it uses Radio Frequency (RF) so a “line of sight” to the device is not needed.
∞ Time Command Mini alarm clock works with iOS devices
Stem Innovation has announced the Time Command Mini, a small alarm clock designed to work with iOS devices including the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad. It charges and plays audio from those devices on a pivoting dock connector, and features enhanced connectivity using a special app. It costs $79.95.
The Time Command Mini is the second alarm clock device in Stem Innovation’s catalog. The first, the Time Command, is larger, with bigger speakers and more buttons.
November 17, 2011
∞ 100 abandoned houses ∞
The abandoned houses project began innocently enough roughly ten years ago. I actually began photographing abandonment in Detroit in the mid 90’s as a creative outlet, and as a way of satisfying my curiosity with the state of my home town. I had always found it to be amazing, depressing, and perplexing that a once great city could find itself in such great distress, all the while surrounded by such affluence.
There are some beautiful houses here. Sad.
∞ RIM slashes PlayBook price ∞
AppleInsider:
Big-box retailer Staples will begin a sale on Friday for RIM’s PlayBook tablet in the BlackBerry maker’s home country of Canada. The 16GB, 32GB and 64GB models of the device will sell for $199, $299 and $399, respectively. According to a photo of an advertisement sent by an AppleInsider reader, the sale will run until Dec. 1.
Apparently the sale is going to happen in the US too. Still, it seems the PlayBook is about $199, $299 and $399 overpriced.
∞ Shawn Blanc reviews the Kindle Touch ∞
Shawn does one of his typical in-depth reviews. He does a number of comparisons to the iPad, as well. Personally, I don’t get the Kindle — never have.