Apple’s Q1 financial results are in and they’re pretty staggering.
My favorite bit from the Q&A via Mac Rumors:
Read MoreQ: 4G and larger screens are growing in the market. Has popularity of larger screens on Android phones changed or impacted your view? And 4G, obviously some phones have battery life issues, but what do you think?
A: We just sold 37 million iPhones and could have sold more with the supply. There are a lot of people out there who like what we’re doing.
While the temporary effects of the Megaupload raid and shutdown may be good in the short-term for reigning in online file sharing of copyrighted material the long-term effects will be far reaching and on the whole a negative for everyone involved.
Ryan Paul reports on Ars Technica:
Read MoreSome filesharing sites are reigning in their services in the aftermath of the recent high-profile shutdown of Megaupload. FileSonic has disabled all file sharing functionality on its website, restricting access so that users may only download their own files.
I say assembled, because after reading the article it is clear that components for the iPhone are manufactured in quite a few countries, even the U.S. However, the Apple-focus aside, I think this is an interesting article on the strength of Chinese manufacturing. It gives us a peek into the modern global supply chain and why the U.S. is no longer the manufacturing power-house it once was.
How U.S. Lost Out on iPhone Work by Charles Duhigg and Keith Bradsher:
Read More“The entire supply chain is in China now,” said another former high-ranking Apple executive. “You need a thousand rubber gaskets? That’s the factory next door. You need a million screws? That factory is a block away. You need that screw made a little bit different? It will take three hours.”
Brett Kiefer has posted an awesome overview of the Trello stack on the Fog Creek Blog.
CoffeeScript, Backbone.js, HTML5 pushState, Mustache, HAProxy, Redis, MongoDB…
Brett does a great job of showing how to build a modern webapp with bleeding edge development tools as well as provides some thoughts as to why it might be a good idea to put development effort behind these relatively new tools.
Read MoreSince Apple’s announcement of iBooks Author the internet has been up in arms over the terms of the EULA. Put simply, the output generated by the iBooks Author application must be sold through the iTunes store or given away for free.
I think there is a bit of a misconception, in general, to those who are opposed to these terms. Essentially, what Apple has provided is a tool for authors to take their works and make them available to iBooks. The tool is free and easy to use. Apple isn’t claiming exclusive rights to anything except the actual iBook formatted ‘book’ that gets generated with their free tool.
Here’s some various takes on the fallout.
Daniel Steinberg at Dim Sum Thinking:
The folks complaining are looking at Author as standalone software. It’s not.
John Gruber On the Proprietary Nature of the iBooks Author File Format:
Apple’s concern is not what’s best for the publishing industry, and it certainly isn’t about what’s best for the makers of (and users of) rival e-book reading devices.
David Smith – Truly Unprecedented in iBooks 2:
The real story here today shouldn’t be that Apple has ‘audaciously’ claimed ownership of the books make with iBooks Author but that they have created an avenue for non-commercial distribution that would exclude them entirely. That is actually unprecedented.
Over the years, I have read hundreds of license agreements, looking for little gotchas and clear descriptions of rights. But I have never, ever seen a legal document like the one Apple has attached to its new iBooks Author program.
Dan Wineman on The Unprecedented Audacity of the iBooks Author EULA:
Read MoreIn other words: Apple is trying to establish a rule that whatever I create with this application, if I sell it, I have to give them a cut. And iBooks Author is free, so this arrangement sounds pretty reasonable.
Here’s the problem: I didn’t agree to it. Apple wants me to believe I did, of course, just by using the software:
It’s been a couple of years since I’ve actively tried to maintain this site in any fashion. I feel like this is the year I revisit what I want to accomplish with this site and finally find a workable solution.
More will be forthcoming soon, as I get into writing regular posts, linking to some of the projects I’m currently involved in and generally spruce the place up.
Read More