neonfunk's comments

http://buyersguide.macrumors.com is helpful, too.

I actually agree with metering; I think it's the only fair measure. Granted, the metering you describe sounds atrocious, and there'll probably be a long messy transition to the point where our internet bill is more like our electric bill.

But imagine this: on mobile networks, instead of voice minutes, text messages, data caps, fees for tethering, and every other scheme the Telcos are concocting right now (with regard to charging for individual services), we instead have a single measure of our usage — data — and our bill starts at something reasonable like $5 or $10 a month.

The problem with "unlimited" in my view is that it conditions us to think that said resource really is unlimited, versus, say, electricity where we are incentivized to be aware of our usage. Now, if they're going to charge $2 per GB above some arbitrary cap — that's clearly absurd. But to start the bill very low (for the basic connection), and then charge, say, 10¢ or 15¢ per GB? Sign me up.

For me, it's the NYT's habit of referencing noise that they helped to create (the "soap opera") as if they were a completely impartial 3rd party; it's like they're blind to their own influence. Reminds me of a Tom Tomorrow cartoon (which I'm too lazy to find).

Admittedly, I remember being surprised both when Apple opened up ratings/reviews for its own products on store.apple.com, and also when their apps on the App Store followed all of the same rules as 3rd party apps. Both instances seemed atypical for a company that loathes imperfection, or the appearance thereof.

I don't understand your first sentence.

It's not so much "love" as it is obsession; and obsessive people tend to be at least colorful, if not interesting, just given how much time they're willing to devote to a subject seemingly so minute. This article is the 1st I've read since the initial batch of reviews that I didn't stop reading after the 1st paragraph.

Immaculate UI/UX. Whether in landscape or portrait orientation, there are many clever flourishes: it uses Tweetie's "pull up to refresh" mechanism for moving between articles in a feed; or you can swipe an article left or right to return to the feed index; or you can pinch the article/feed to return to all of your feeds. In a feed index view, you can swipe a list item to the left or right to either toggle the read state or the starred state.

The feed index is designed very similarly to the iPad Photos app: you can either pinch open a folder to view the feeds within it separately, or you can tap it to view all of the articles in a combined view; similarly, you can pinch open a individual feed to preview of the articles within it.

Additionally, Reeder caches articles and images for offline reading; and the top-level feed organization is pretty sensible, too... it's separated into 3 sections: read, unread, and starred. It's also extremely fast, having been rewritten to use SQLite instead of CoreData.

Reeder for iPad is great, too; really fast UX.

I haven't tested it, but I'm intrigued by Shuan Inman's Fever reader (http://feedafever.com/). Basically the idea is that you separate your feeds into two distinct types: essential feeds that you read completely, and supplemental, high-volume feeds (aggregator-type blogs, like Engadget). Then the essentials are cross-referenced with the supplementals to see what you're likely to be interested in.

I have a similar strategy, but instead of trying to manage the "supplementals" in my RSS reader, I try to a) identify them, and b) banish them back to the browser where they belong. Identifying them can be tricky, at least for me, because I tend to think that feeds I've been reading for a long time are essential, when often they're not. Removing a lot of politics blogs from my reader I swear has made me less stressed, and I don't feel any less informed.

I think the higher volume of content means we have to become better at selection — not only in choosing what we read, but also in identifying and not reading what is noisy and lacking in substance, even when tempting (ahem, HuffPo). Edit: and I'm not sure algorithms are the solution; I think it's something our generation will have to learn — to be our own conscious curators.

Exactly why I'm skeptical about these reports, including my own!

(And if the old method to access the field test mode hadn't been disabled, I'd be the first to give you dBm measurements.)

It's a somewhat reasonable account (notably by an iPhone owner), though I remain skeptical (i.e., not trusting either side).

I've had an iPhone 4 for two days now, and I have yet to be able to reproduce the problem; I even tried licking my finger and wrapping it around the bottom left corner, making sure to connect both antennas. I couldn't get it to drop even one bar.

This is not at all to say that it's not a real issue, but the sensationalism belies how little we know about it so far. Of course, people are going to delight in exploiting any chink in Apple's armor, especially today.

Or when your entire browser crashed instead of just a single tab.

Is there an iAd daemon?

Anyway, I'd hope that explicitly disabling all location services would do just that. If headless apps were still powering on the GPS and triangulating cell towers and wifi... well, that'd certainly be misleading. But I doubt that's the case.

In fact, you can completely disable location services with one switch. (Settings --> General --> Location Services --> Off)

If you prefer a more granular approach, all apps (including Apple's own), allow you to disable location services for that app alone. In addition, all 3rd party apps, on first requesting location data, require the user to explicitly opt-in.

I think we're probably making too much of the word "fan", and that Gruber was just using it to indicate preference (as opposed to devotion).

That said, I'm a fan of Apple because I admire their work. I'm enamored with the substance of their products, and I could care less how ownership affects my image [Edit: more honestly, I try not to care]. (I actually think declaring myself a fan of Apple is a detriment to my image, especially in this forum. C'est la vie.)

I don't think being a fan of the iPhone doesn't mean you can't also be a fan of Android; they're not mutually exclusive (I have an Xbox and a Wii). That said, in 2010, there is a strong break between not only the fanbases, but in the guiding philosophy of either platform. I read this last paragraph, laughed, and thought, "This is why I read Gruber."

Edit: Also, don't forget this classic — Apple Needs a Nikon (http://daringfireball.net/2007/11/apple_needs_a_nikon)

Salient quote from Stephen Fry: "So you can guess that I certainly do think design is important. But it doesn’t have to come from Apple. In fact, I wish to goodness it came from everywhere."

And they publicly donated $100k to fight against Prop 8.

Yeah I guess you're right, looking back at this. I mean, why not just give the original drive back? There's no good reason. You're right.

When I've sent a laptop to AppleCare, they're very explicit about the possibility that they won't return the same drive, and that you should backup your data. That said, they've never actually taken a drive from me. So Winer's claim that "they take the old drive" isn't well researched.

Beyond that, Winer straight up doesn't know what they do with the drives; it's pure speculation. What he's really saying is that he doesn't trust Apple. If that's the case, he should take it to an independent Authorized Apple Service Provider that he does — it's just that simple. [Edit: not only can you still get AppleCare coverage at independent providers, but you can easily negotiate with a technician to keep your drive. At the place I worked, the drives that customers abandoned we took great pleasure in destroying!]

Further, when Winer says, "If Steve thinks it's confidential, maybe he should take some steps to protect the info?" — is that not exactly what he's doing?

No one's going to stop them from doing what's within the law; that's a given. I'm saying it strikes me as unethical, and it assumes a certain infancy in the public's tech acumen... which perhaps there is! But it still seems like a poor assumption to base a business on going forward.

Now I'm just hoping someone comes out with a iChat/AIM/Jabber/GTalk-like P2P standard for voice (does this already exist?).