Apple Analyst ⇥
Apple’s past two quarters have been its most profitable ever. Tim Cook must step down, or Apple is DOOMED!!
This is probably my new favourite novelty Twitter account.
Day: 26 April 2012
New Yorker Covers You Were Never Meant To See ⇥
Next week marks the publication of Françoise Mouly’s “Blown Covers,” a book whose subtitle says it all: “New Yorker covers you were never meant to see.” Mouly, who is the art editor at the magazine, describes how iconic New Yorker covers came to be, and also, how some covers never came to be.
These covers are razor sharp. It’s a pity they were a little too risqué to be completed—I’d love to have posters of a few of these.
When Apple introduced the retina display on the iPhone 4, they explained that it wasn’t just about the pixel density. They noted that the panel was laminated to the glass, transforming it into the effect of pixels on glass, rather than under it.
During the months preceding the new iPad’s launch I, like many others, assumed this process was an integral part of what Apple considered a “retina” display:
The second improvement comes from the lamination process they will presumably use to place this panel under the glass. It’s going to look like a live magazine.
Therefore, you can imagine my surprise when I found out that the new iPad’s display is not laminated to the glass. It was one of the only things I complained about after using it for two weeks. Why isn’t the new iPad’s display laminated?
I emailed a few people at Apple in the hope that one would reply. Of course, none did. Idle speculation probably isn’t productive, but I can think of two reasons why the new iPad doesn’t have a laminated display.
The first regards replacement iPads. Since Apple replaces damaged iPads with refurbished ones at low cost to the customer (sometimes even for free), Apple likely takes a small hit per unit. After consulting with a few Geniuses, one of the most common replacements is due to screen breakage. To create refurbished units, Apple usually only has to replace the glass. But if the glass and a very pricey display panel are laminated, the cost of creating a replacement unit is dramatically higher.
The second possible reason concerns the manufacturing process. From what I know about optical lamination, the process is made riskier with a larger surface area. The iPad’s display is significantly larger than the iPhone’s, and with that size increase, the lamination process has a higher potential for failure. Since the new iPad’s display is one of the most expensive components of the device, this is a point where Apple does not want the process to fail, since an unsuccessful lamination would render a panel useless.
Why Has Forrester’s CEO Become an Apple Doomsayer? ⇥
Good question. Josh Lowensohn thinks he’s probably just drumming up controversy:
“Without knowing them personally, I would look to Apple executives Jon Ive or Scott Forstall to be CEO,” [Forrester CEO George] Colony wrote. “From on far they appear to have some of the charisma and outspoken design sense to legitimately lead the company.”
Colony, of course, is not the first person to suggest that either of those two execs as potential successors would be a good fit at Apple’s top spot. The big question of course is where this idea that Cook is seemingly not fit for duty came from, and why that’s the question to ask now?
Google Needs to Be Clearer ⇥
Matt Peckham weighs in on Google Drive for Time:
If any Google service warrants privacy firewalling, it’s Google Drive. This isn’t YouTube or Calendar or even Gmail — the potential for someone’s most sensitive data to be snooped, whether to glean info for marketing or otherwise, is too high. Mark Zuckerberg may not be entirely wrong when he suggests the age of privacy is over or that privacy is no longer a “social norm,” but we have to draw a line somewhere.
Absolutely. It’s odd, but I trust a small startup like Dropbox not to poke through my data more than I trust Google, because they have so much more to lose.
Steve Jobs’ Plan for the Millionth iMac ⇥
Ken Segall:
Steve had already instructed his internal creative group to design a prototype golden certificate, which he shared with us. But the killer was that Steve wanted to go all out on this. He wanted to meet the lucky winner in full Willy Wonka garb. Yes, complete with top hat and tails.
Be sure to check the comments for a mockup of what Steve Jobs in a Willy Wonka suit would look like.
Does Your Dock Reflect Your Priorities? ⇥
Proud member of the two-first-names club, Brett Kelly:
For me, the Dock represents a balance between two things:
- What I do most
- What I want to do more
Left-to-right in my iPhone’s Dock is Safari, Messages, Mail, and Music. That seems to be a pretty good summary of my priorities.1 Via Patrick Rhone.
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Tweetbot 2 lives in the top row on the first page, second-from-left. I’m left handed, and it’s where my thumb rests. ↥︎
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Yes, I’m back to Tweetbot now, after a brief fling with Twittelator Neue, and a long relationship with Twitterrific. Something about the user interface of the iPhone version of the latter doesn’t sit right with me. ↥︎