James Kendrick:
>Apple filed for the slide to unlock patent before the original iPhone was released, and just received confirmation of the patent. That puts every Android device ever made firmly in the infringing category, should Apple choose to get nasty.
Or should Apple choose defend itself against those that choose to steal from them, or sue them. At the end of the day, I don’t think this patent should have been granted.
Nick Wingfield:
>In July, Netflix’s market value was over $16 billion. On Tuesday, after a bruising response to the financial results the company released late Monday, the Internet movie company lost more than $2 billion in value, bringing its total market capitalization to just over $4 billion.
Clear, decisive, communication has a lot more value than people think.
[Speaking of crappy hotel WiFi](https://brooksreview.net/2011/10/3g-macbooks/), Joe Sharkey asks why it sucks:
>Largely because of the broad use of iPads and other mobile tablets, which are heavy users of video streaming, the guest room Wi-Fi networks that most hotels thought they had brought up to standard just a few years ago are now often groaning under user demands.
and:
>The iPad represents the “final nail in the coffin” for the idea that all Internet is free, Mr. Garrison said.
then, later:
>“It’s about managing that bandwidth,” Mr. Garrison added. “We’re not saying that free Internet as you know it today is dead. We’re saying that a hotel owner will have to decide what free should be. I could have a free option, for a limited level of service, but charge for higher levels of demand.”
Sounds a lot like blaming the iPad for hotels not being prepared to meet the demand. “Sir I am sorry your shower was cold, we just didn’t think everyone would be showering in the morning.”
Chase Jarvis, pro-photographer living in a great city, breaks down the difference between two types of ‘focus’ in photography — specifically in regards to the new Lytro camera.
Matt Taibbi wrote a great story about all the Occupy Wall Street complaints, what I find interesting is the confusion of the OWS message that he leads off the story with — [as I have said](https://brooksreview.net/2011/10/occupy-this/) this is the biggest problem of the movement, vague goals and messages. Beyond this, I love this passage by Taibbi:
>It is virtually impossible to not make money in banking when you have unlimited access to free money, especially when the government keeps buying its own cash back from you at market rates.
>Your average chimpanzee couldn’t fuck up that business plan, which makes it all the more incredible that most of the too-big-to-fail banks are nonetheless still functionally insolvent, and dependent upon bailouts and phony accounting to stay above water.
Nice summation of the recession we find ourselves in.
Ben Crompton:
>HTC has confirmed via its Twitter feed that users of all of its Android smartphones will be getting 5GB of extra memory through the Dropbox cloud storage service.
If true, that’s a great deal for Android users. ((I say ‘if true’ because there seems to be some doubt as to whether “all” users will get it, or just all new users.))
This falls under the: “Cool, scary, and really we didn’t have this already?” categories. Also: CSI is a bunch of liars. ((But we already knew this.))
J. Eddie Smith, IV:
>Just the other day, through experimentation, I discovered that I can exclude results by adding a dash in front of search terms (like a Google search).
I had no clue, great tip.
Johnny Strategy:
>Currently the only known way to quiet a zombie is to bash their brains in. This is a task that is difficult as it is gruesome, and only slightly easier if aided by a shotgun. However, kyonshi can be sedated by tactically placing a small scroll with buddhist inscriptions on the forehead (as pictured above). Also, (and this helps in assisting the first objective) kyonshi are legally blind. They detect human presence from the smell of our breath, making a cornered escape realistically possible by simply holding your breath.
All good information to know heading into Halloween.
Brent Simmons on the current, rather precarious, position that Google is putting RSS readers in with the possibility of killing of the syncing of feeds via unofficial APIs:
>I’m not an RSS reader developer any more. But if I were, I’d start looking for an alternative syncing system right now.
I’m not either, but I am worried about this. Simmons makes the excellent comparison that right now RSS readers are a lot like Twitter clients:
>It’s been an especially good thing for RSS reader users, who can mix-and-match clients on different platforms, who can move with relative ease between one client and another. (The situation is similar to Twitter clients: users are not stuck with one client from one particular developer.)
It’s what makes it so easy for me to stay up to date with news no matter the device I am on. If all of a sudden I have to be “locked-in” to one system you can bet it will be Reeder — and that really sucks for other developers as I will have no way to easily try their apps.
A while back — [when a non-unibody MacBook Pro prototype showed up on eBay](http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/08/14/purported_macbook_pro_prototype_built_in_3g_appears_on_ebay.html) with a complete 3G setup — I was going to write a little post about how Apple really needs a 3G MacBook. Things happened and the post was forgotten. Until now, when I was cleaning out my drafts folder and I saw the file name and thought: this is more true now than it ever has been.
Up and until a few months ago the following used to be true about 3G wireless internet:
1. It was slow.
2. It was expensive.
3. It wasn’t *really* needed.
Obviously one is no longer true, with the 4S capable of speeds that are much faster than many home broadband connections (my 4S gets me between 4-7Mbps download at my home). You may argue that ~$25 for 2GB of data is pricey, but in practice not many people (even heavy users) come close to this amount each month and the general ubiquity of WiFi and better software monitoring built into the OS would help mitigate the need for more data thus removing number two as a factor.
The third item though is what has really changed — more and more the average user could really benefit from easy 3G access on their MacBooks to keep on “working”.
### Multiple Devices
At this point I think it is pretty safe to say that most Mac users are also toting a secondary device — likely one of either an iPhone or iPad, perhaps both. It used to be that these secondary devices were strictly used for a particular type of task — likely communication or short-term entertainment — now though these devices are increasingly used to *create*.
So what happens when a savvy traveler gets off the plane after crafting a report on his iPad and arrives at his hotel. His hotel is one that someone shelled out big bucks for and because of this the hotel has a paid WiFi network that has a relatively poor speed — perhaps the network is even just Ethernet only (not uncommon in stupid expensive hotels) and he only has a MacBook Air. ((Argue all you want, but I have found that the more expensive the establishment the worse the WiFi and more expensive the connection cost. The Trump International in Miami set me back $17.99 a day for 756Kbps speed — a day.))
Now you can’t work on that report until you find an Internet connection, thus you have a crappy scenario for most users. With a 3G connection on your MacBook Air you would have solved this lacking all the pain associated with how things currently are. The experience would have been far better for the user.
### Cloud
More over, we are increasingly becoming dependent on internet connected services to “work”. Where it used to be that all you needed was a computer, fax, and a floppy disk, the web is more often becoming a floppy disk and the fax has been replaced by online communication systems.
So guess what? You are not alone when you feel like your computer is ham strung by the fact that you don’t have a working Internet connection. It’s increasingly more true that a person can’t compute without the Internet.
### iCloud
The above didn’t matter much to Apple because their cloud services were limited and it was always the feeling at Apple that email was just as good on your iDevice.
With iCloud 3G becomes a bit more important.
If Apple wants to sell iCloud as a Dropbox like service that just works to keep your documents updated on every device, well your device is going to need a reliable way to get on the Internet no matter where you are. That is: you can’t show a commercial with a traveler working on an iPad while flying, getting off the plane, sitting down with the MacBook, and opening that same document. Because right now that scenario actually looks like this:
– Get off plane.
– Connect iPad back to 3G
– Wait for sync
– Open MacBook Air
– Find a WiFi network
– Pay for WiFi and/or accept a ToS to use it
– Test if it is actually working
– Try again
– Sync with iCloud
Some steps can’t be eliminated, but 3G would eliminate most of the problems with “free” or “public” or “available” WiFi networks: mainly that you are often better off not using them. Every iPhone and 3G iPad owner knows what it is like to use a device without having to worry about an Internet connection — bliss.
### A Real Need
It’s true that I have mostly centered these examples around travelers and that this group has always had a need for these types of devices, but I think now the average consumer really has a need for these devices too.
When you really think about how the average person is using their computers, I don’t think it is much of a stretch to say that the overwhelming majority of what most people do on a computer is web-centric.
Taking a look at how my Wife uses her computer to it becomes clear to me that often the most powerful and convenient tool she has is her iPhone 4. She has a full Apple compliment of devices: iPhone 4, iPad, MacBook Pro. However only the iPhone has a cellular connection and my Wife can often be heard saying: “My iPad is useless without 3G.”
She feels the same way about her MacBook Pro, but truth be told she just means that for her any computing tool is useless if it doesn’t have an Internet connection — I agree.
So it’s quite obvious that with more and more cloud enabled users, creating a seamless and “just works” Internet connection is becoming even more important to crafting a great user experience. It’s just that this isn’t all there is, because if that was all, the easier solution is to get more WiFi hotspots or go to Starbucks which is minimally painful to use WiFi at (and free). So it’s not about easy spots to get Internet — it’s about constantly being *able* to be connected without searching it out.
### Security
You see the last bit that is going to become increasingly more problematic with more and more less paranoid and security conscious users on “cloud” services is the security of all these free WiFi hotspots (that are incredibly important to today’s computer users).
If you keep all your financial data in a Numbers spreadsheet that is seamlessly synced via iCloud along with your calendars and the schedule of your kids — it certainly wouldn’t take much for someone to swipe that data for you on a maliciously setup, free, WiFi network. Which means you need a VPN, and while services like [Cloak](https://www.getcloak.com/) make it dead simple, they also are services that the average user must seek out — something that I doubt many users will know that they *should* seek out.
Thus the more private data we keep in the “cloud” (and we are increasing the amount we keep there very quickly) the more we need to make sure that the networks we use to access this data is not only ubiquitous, but is relatively secure. Not only then would a 3G MacBook be more convenient, it would be more secure.
Security, convenience, and a better user experience all come from a 3G/Cell equipped MacBook — sounds pretty Apple-ish to me.
**UPDATED** (on Oct 24, 2011): Apparently iCloud is [securing with SSL](http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4865), so that shouldn’t be a security concern. Thanks to those that emailed this in.
Ryan Lawler on Netflix:
>The company ended the quarter with 23.8 million subscribers in the third quarter, which is down 810,000 from the previous quarter.
*Ouch*.
Shawn Blanc:
>After using my iPhone 4 every single day for nearly a year and a half, the glass on the front and the back was still in near-mint condition.
Ditto here, in fact the most scuffed up parts were the metal banding and the annoying plastic around the very edge of the glass. My iPad 2 on the other hand has an aluminum back that is dinged and scratched and worn. Glass is clearly better for wear, whereas aluminum is better for dropping.
Dan Frommer on how Apple would/should disrupt the TV industry:
>Launching an Apple television without TV service would have been like launching the iPhone without phone service: It might make sense to a few people, but Apple makes products for everyone. So Apple needs to be able to say: This is the best machine in the world for watching all the television you already love. And it does all this other cool stuff. That’s a winner. (That’s the approach Apple used for the iPhone.)
What’s the end product look like? Who knows, but you can be sure this is a large part of the goal.
Dave Caolo on one of the biggest annoyances of Photo Stream under iOS 5:
>What’s worse is that you can’t delete such throwaway photos from your Photo Stream with an iDevice. Instead, you’ve got to visit icloud.com and click “Reset Photo Stream,” which nukes the lot, good and bad. That’s why I’ve started using Camera+ again for tweeting pictures.
During the developer betas this bugged the crap out of me — I hate(d) not being able to delete photos that don’t “belong” in the Photo Stream. Because of that I completely get where Dave is coming from, but I must admit that having used it for so long I decided to not worry about it — that’s done wonders for me.
I bought an iPhone with tons of storage because I don’t want to have to think about such things as which photo app to use for each scenario I find myself in. To me, it’s worth the price of admission.
Sure, it’s a couple hundred bucks more for 64GB, but that’s a couple hundred bucks that means I don’t have to worry about such things as space for Photos and circumventing Photo Stream. It’s a couple hundred bucks that gives me all the convenience in the world and none of the hassle.
The ability to delete photos from the Photo Stream was a popular thing to file a bug report about during the betas and Apple still chose not to enable it — the problem is that if you delete a photo from the Photo Stream, should that photo also be deleted from all devices that downloaded it? And if so, then what do you do when a user *wanted* that photo to stay on a particular device?
So Apple went the Apple way: make it painful for edge cases and perfect for the average user.
Peter Svensson reporting on the iPhone 4S and the bluetooth tech Apple packed inside:
>The phone, which went on sale Oct. 14, is the first one to have a new type of Bluetooth chip that can connect using very little power. The chip uses so little power that it can go into devices that are powered only by a standard “button cell” or watch battery.
He notes that this allows communication with devices like watches, glucose and heart monitors — pretty neat.
Screens, the acclaimed VNC client on iOS is now available for Mac. Screens – It just works.
A nice video of Apple’s event to remember Steve — best viewed on your iPad.
Jon Gold on fine Corinthian leather:
>But I’m pretty sure there’s not a thing in my physical living room called a ‘Find My Friends’. The metaphor is empty. It’s not referring to anything. It’s just a leather texture.
It’s a great post about a trend that drives me nuts.