iPod Touch
Wrong on the capacity, it tops out at 64gb. Right about FaceTime cameras and everything else. This one was a gimme. If you look at the Apple Store you will see that, despite it’s absence from the Keynote, they still sell iPod Classics with 160gb hard drives. It’s just a matter of time, though. I don’t think Apple is THAT sentimental. Apparently the Classic does serves a market big enough to keep it around for now. My guess? They won’t bury it on stage like they did Mac OS9.
iPod Shuffle & Nano
Wrong and extra wrong. Not only is the shuffle still around, but they added the buttons back. It’s a fine gateway drug into the world of Apple/iTunes at the $49 price point. The Nano sticks at $149, loses it’s hardware buttons, loses the camera, and gains a multitouch display. It looks like it lost the ability to play video, too. The Nano replacing the shuffle was by far the wackiest of my predictions. No surprises.
AppleTV
Wrong about switching the name of iTV, and glad to be wrong. Wrong about announcing a developer program. It does run iOS, though. Right about $0.99 TV show rentals (streaming, no less!).
Other
Right about streaming content to iOS devices to AppleTV.
Predictions are a lot less fun once you know the truth.
Thing The First: For those of you who read Extra Future primarily via the feed, it has undergone a rather serious redesign. Maybe hop out of your feed reader and have a looksee.
Thing The B: I’ve gone ahead and re-activated Disqus-powered comments on posts here. I think we’re good enough friends that I can trust you not to pee in my pool, right? Good.
There is an economy of scale that comes along with comments. Extra Future is small enough (less than 500 hits a day, on average) that we should be able to have a conversation. Here’s to hoping.
The actual article title is “Flash on Android Is Shockingly Bad,” but I’m not exactly shocked by it. Anyone who has tried to use Flash on a machine with a < 2ghz processor knows exactly how well it performs.
Schadenfreude aside, look at what it does to the browser itself. One could argue that the web browser is the most important app on a mobile device and as Gruber notes, before the page even loads the Flash content is making it hard to scroll, hard to tap. If there is one cardinal rule of touch-based devices it is this: If at any point your app becomes unresponsive to taps or scrolls, your app is broken.
The smoothest forum package you’ll find right now hits version 2.0 (finally). I missed this when it happened on July 21st, but better late than never.
Serling interviewed by University of Kansas professor James Gunn. Part 1 and Part 2.
This video was to be part of the professor’s film series “Science Fiction in Literature,” but was not included due to rights issues with Serling’s work. Blame CBS. Via SF Signal.
Straight from Jackson’s blogmouth, with a bonus list of the upcoming episode titles and a nice collage of screen-grabs.
I agree with almost everything Jesper of Waffle Software has said on his blog in the past. This is no different.
- Huge capacity iPod Touch (128gb?) with FaceTime-enabled cameras, iPhone 4 guts, and Retina.
- Goodbye iPod Classic.
- The Shuffle goes away, and in it’s place there is now an iPod Nano at the $99 price point, right in between the old Shuffle ($49) and the current Nano ($149). I doubt Steve will actually kill the Shuffle on stage, but it will quietly be taken off the store, lead to a remote field and abandoned to rot with its ancestors.
- Newly-christened iTV Developer Program
- TV Show Rentals for $0.99
- Wifi Syncing for iOS devices
- Streaming content from the iTunes Store (like, say, the aforementioned TV rentals.)
I’m not super sure about the Shuffle. The $49 price point is part of why the Shuffle exists in the first place, but I don’t know a single person who owns one. The primary market seems to be children whose parents wish to reward for less than $100, or people who work out and are afraid of breaking their iPod Touch or Nano. The price point is hard to argue with , though, as a gateway to the larger (more expensive) Apple ecosystem.
Wouldn’t it be something if the Nano got Facetime?
Being an optimized version of the original Box2d-JS port, which is based on Box2d 1.4. Does your head hurt yet?
This version depends on jQuery instead of Prototype, and uses SVG instead of the Canvas tag. Check out the demo.
This one uses the even newer Box2d 2.1. It, like the previously mentioned port, is extremely short on documentation aside from the standard Box2d docs.
An (automated) port of Box2dflash 2.0, which is a bit slower than the older (and dead) Box2D 1.4 JS port, but is less complicated to use and has fewer dependencies.
It has a Github, too.
Possibly the worst patent trolls ever. Their business model is to threaten companies into paying them for use of their (often dubious) patents, using shell companies so the action can’t be traced back to them.
Just so we’re clear on Extra Future’s position: Intellectual Ventures is a jackass company run by jackasses. The fact that it exists is an indictment of the problems with the US patent system.
Costing $55 for the unpainted head of Mr. Serling, I wish I had the kitbashing skills an the cash to buy this little guy and have him sit on my desk, silently judging me. This guy used the body of a Cigarette Smoking Man figure, which looks great, but a blue shirt and red tie? Rod wouldn’t have been caught dead on TV in anything but a black tie and a white shirt.
A useful overview of Ranges in an HTML Document, with examples for (of import to myself) getting the text a user has selected so you can do stuff with it.
Of note: None of the examples here seem to work on iOS WebKit.
The fourth in a series of “Scriptcasts” by the screenwriter John August. I find that John’s advice in screenwriting applies to writing for the web, as well.
This is good news. I can’t help but think WebM had something to do with it.
via Lukas Mathis
A great pickup for the NYT, and makes a lot of sense for Silver, too. If you’re not familiar with FiveThirtyEight, it is the work of statistician Nate Silver doing his mathamagic on US Politics. He modeled the 2008 US election nearly perfectly. Do yourself a favor and read his introduction post.
Mayor of New York City Michael Bloomberg has given a second incredibly-well-written speech in support of the so-called “Ground-Zero Moqsue,” which manages to have some lovely pull-quotes such as:
But if we say that a mosque and community center should not be built near the perimeter of the World Trade Center site, we would compromise our commitment to fighting terror with freedom.
and:
This is a test of our commitment to American values. We must have the courage of our convictions. We must do what is right, not what is easy. And we must put our faith in the freedoms that have sustained our great country for more than 200 years.
It is incredibly rare that I agree with anything a modern politician has to say, but I agree with the hell out of this.
Proving that because you hand them a decent smartphone OS doesn’t mean they’ll know what to do with it:
After a leaked Android 2.2 ROM became available through unofficial sources, Motorola sent cease and desist letters to websites hosting the update, according to IntoMobile. The reasoning may be sound — after all, folks who jumped the gun on Froyo for Sprint’s HTC Evo 4G ran into bugs that had to be patched later — but it doesn’t look good when lawyers try to stop people from making their phones better.
Sometimes “open” means never being quite sure what the hell is going on.
