Month: April 2012

A Comparison of Instagram for Android and iPhone ⇥

Matthew Panzarino has a great comparison between the two versions of Instagram. He likes the UI overall, but:

Fragmentation rears its head once again with Instagram on Android, forcing the company to leave out features it could have otherwise shipped in order to support the wide array of OS versions and hardware out there. I know people like to pretend this isn’t a problem, but it is.

Via John Gruber, who posted his own comparison of image quality between a Galaxy Nexus and his iPhone 4S. It’s a huge difference, and one that cannot be fixed by Instagram.

Four and Half Years On ⇥

Stephen Fry, reflecting on the four and a half years since he bought an iPhone:

It’s interesting to reread that blog (interesting for me at any rate) because it reveals just how ahead of its time the iPhone was. Let’s have a look at their rivals and see how they’re doing. In fact let’s take a look at the whole idea of the future of this field as it might be understandable from a look at the past.

Nokia’s Lumia Ads Say Your Phone Is No Good ⇥

Brian X. Chen:

Nokia’s strategy to sell its new Lumia smartphone is to make you feel dumb about what you already have. New video ads from Nokia, the Finnish phone maker, suggest that iPhones and Android phones are flawed, unfinished “beta” devices, which makes you a sucker for having one.

This seems to be a recurring theme that screams “desperation”. “You’re stupid unless you buy our products” doesn’t seem like a good advertising strategy. While these companies are making you feel like an idiot, Apple’s own ads simply show the product in use.

Proposed Articles for Deletion ⇥

Nicholson Baker:

Anybody can “pull the trigger” on an article (as Broughton phrases it)—you just insert a double-bracketed software template. It’s harder to improve something that’s already written, or to write something altogether new, especially now that so many of the World Book-sanctioned encyclopedic fruits are long plucked.

Does the iPad Have One Button Too Many? ⇥

Nick Bilton:

For the last couple of weeks I’ve been using the iPad without touching that physical home button. I even put a piece of black tape over it to pretend it doesn’t exist. Not only is it entirely possible to navigate the device this way, it’s actually often more enjoyable.

The gesture for returning to the home screen is very natural: pinch inward with all fingers. The gesture for pulling up the multitasking tray is also quite natural. But I don’t think I have ever seen someone actively using the four finger swipe to navigate between apps. That leads to the bigger point as to why I disagree with Bilton: the home button is immediately discoverable, but multi-touch gestures are not. I would argue that double-clicking the home button to pull up the multitasking tray is equally undiscoverable.

I wouldn’t argue that Apple should add more buttons; that would be ludicrous. However, I think there are some compromises in user discovery Apple is willing to make, and I don’t think removing the home button is one.

Fools of the Year ⇥

The Macalope (I picked the Rob Enderle bit, who only ranked at number 5):

Rob predicted 2012 would be a tough year for Apple (not looking like that so far), keyed several pieces deriding the new iPad, and, ugh, wrote about his crotch.

What could we possibly have done in a prior life to deserve Rob? We couldn’t all have been Hitler.

Skewered.

Android Economics ⇥

Horace Dediu:

My take is that it’s not a bad business. But it’s also not a great one. As long as there is exponential growth in units, Android will improve its position inside Google relative to iOS. But from Google’s perspective, iOS is today a bigger business.

Great analysis by Dediu.

Dan Porter: Jackass of the Week ⇥

Matt Zanchelli:

Dan Porter, the very modest CEO of omgpop, attacks [the] former employee for leaving the company after their recent join with Zynga:

The one omgpop employee who turned down joining Zynga was the weakest one on the whole team. Selfish people make bad games. Good riddance!

Just another reason to uninstall this app.