» Sponsor: TextExpander touch
My thanks to Smile’s TextExpander touch for sponsoring the Very Nice Web Site RSS feed this week.
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» The Plague is back!
Bubonic plague has been found in a squirrel in Los Angeles county and two dogs in New Mexico. Yay! Don’t start burning any witches yet, though.
Despite the resilience of the bacillus, the vast improvements in public health have made it near impossible for the plague to spread the way it did in the Middle Ages.
No doubt Jenny McCarthy will soon be on The View speaking out against city sewer systems, septic tanks and washing your hands.
» The Trouble with iTunes
Writing for iMore, Peter Cohen covers the problems with iTunes. While the iPod, iPad and iPhone are all great ambassadors for Apple to Windows-using customers, iTunes is sadly not. Whenever I talk to Windows diehards about Apple, it’s always their case for why switching is out of the question.
» Google says one of every 2 tablets sold in 2013 runs Android
John Gruber:
Either the usage share numbers are wrong, or people just don’t use the Android tablets they buy.
I wonder if they include non-Google versions of “Android” in these numbers. But in answer to John’s query, if you were not entirely committed to tablet computing, wouldn’t you be likely to buy the cheapest tablet available? And when the user experience doesn’t wow you, you tend not to use it. It’s obviously not like that for everyone but I wonder if that doesn’t explain some of this.
» Ubuntu Edge campaign adds lower price points as pledges slow
$32 million is a big number. And it’s not like we’re talking about something most people are going to want, like a Veronica Mars movie.
» Apple Reports Third Quarter Results
Not great, but Apple narrowly beat the average estimate. Revenue was flat and profit was down. Lots of iPhones sold but at a significantly lower average selling price. iPad and Mac sales were down slightly from the previous year (the iPad due to changes in seasonality). Still, it wasn’t a very good quarter for any of Apple’s competitors, either.
Ubuntu phone
The words fall trippingly from the tongue.
Ubuntu phone.
You crave it, like a dog craves water on a hot day. Or, really, anyone craves water on a hot day. But you happen to be down on all fours barking, so…
Ubuntu phone.
The mere promise of it is like a dream. A whisper of unspoken openness. Openness… in your pants. Your fly falls down.
Ubuntu phone.
You can finally have it all. No walled gardens, no false promises of openness, no [whatever Windows Phone is].
Ubuntu phone.
Those two words alone are enough.
But what if there was more? What if Ubuntu phone was also… a desktop? Now your breath is stolen away. How many futures can one device fulfill? How many dreams can you catch in a falling star? Just how many monkeys are in this barrel? Is it literally full of monkeys? Because that would be a lot of monkeys.
Welcome to Ubuntu Edge.
(Presumably as in “edge case”.)
What does Ubuntu Edge let you do?
…connect to any monitor and this Ubuntu phone transforms into an Ubuntu PC, with a fully integrated desktop OS and shared access to all files.
Ask yourself how much you would pay for the promise of a full Ubuntu desktop computer… in a phone? Would you give your immortal soul? No? How about $830? Because that’s the lowest tier that actually gets you a phone that is currently available on this Indiegogo project.
But price is irrelevant to you. You need this. Because like Batman stores costumes and grappling guns and possibly softcore porn all over Gotham City, you store monitors, keyboards and mice everywhere you might go. You do. That’s your strange compulsion. The doctors can’t explain it, but there it is. No matter how many times we say “Lenny, why don’t you just store your data in the cloud and then access it from different devices like a normal person?” you keep leaving peripherals in our bathroom, at Aunt Lorraine’s and one time at the Subway.
Ubuntu phone.
Because one device can do it all. Just crappily.
Ubuntu phone.
Finally, all of your weird obsessions will be rewarded.
Ubuntu phone.
» Why I’m Not Switching from the iPhone
Ben Bajarin:
Let’s answer the question in my title. As I continually try to make clear,
See,
» Science-riffic analysis
CNet’s Lance Whitney:
Android holds the dominant market share in the U.S., but Apple’s iOS is tops at generating mobile Web traffic, according to Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster.
Tracking data across 70 different mobile Web site, Munster’s team found that iOS’s slice of traffic rose 2.6 percent over the past four weeks, giving it a 63 percent share. Over the same time, Android’s cut rose 0.2 percent to give it a 28 percent share.
These numbers are not too far off from Net Applications most recent numbers which have iOS at 58 percent and Android at 25 percent. But let’s note a couple of caveats I think are important here. First of all, Munster’s sample of 70 web sites is a little lower than I’d like to see, particularly considering Net Applications says their sample is 40,000. This is something of a pattern with him, like when he spent all of two hours outside a (meaning one) Microsoft Store to conduct a foot traffic comparison with an Apple Store. This is why I roll my eyes any time I see his statistics quoted anywhere.
Also, let’s remember that Apple is an investment banking customer of Piper Jaffray’s.
» Sponsor: HostGator
My thanks to HostGator for sponsoring the Very Nice Web Site RSS feed this week.
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