icecrums

Interesting numbers from Motorola handset business. Another example of what happens when you stop innovation. Apple has had 10 years of steady innovation. That is not easy to maintain, and why Apple is so great.

(Via GigaOM.)

One of my favorite Mac apps(a video converter) has gone from dead to Open Source in the blink of an eye. Taking a new name and a much needed interface lift VisulHub(TechSpansion closed two weeks ago) will now be called FilmRedux. I’ve downloaded, compiled and tested the new app and couldn’t get it to add a video, but the interface is really good. It is far from being ready to the public, but I assure you that it will, thanks to the apps fanatic community.

(Via ArsTechnica .)

As a guest writer in the ZDNet blogs:

Don’t quit[your dream]. You may have to delay things for a while, but keep reminding yourself why you started your company in the first place.

Startups must go back to basic old school business. Build a product, get money from you customers, start process again. No more getting huge wads of cash, while “growing a user base” type startups. Leaner and more revenue efficient companies will come as a result of the depression. No more partying likes it’s 1999.

(Via ZDNet Blogs.)

Rumors have been flying around for the past two weeks surrounding the new MacBooks and MacBook Pros. John Gruber spills it all, a couple of hours before the keynote. Hopefully there is still “One more thing…” he doesn’t know about.

BTW, prepare to see Apple stock stumble during/after the keynote to last week’s low nineties as a result of the missing $800 laptop. Better put in his words:

Also notable is that the 2.1 GHz white MacBook remains in the new lineup, at a new price of $999 — technically breaking the $1000 barrier, but nowhere near the $800 price point some financial analysts have been whacking off to.

What analysts need to understand, is that Apple is no Dell or HP. The don’t sell the cheap, low margin stuff, only higher end PCs.

(Via Daring Fireball.)

Surprising Apple insists on secrecy when real open competition shows up:

Aparently, Apple has now started labeling their rejection letters with Non-Disclosure (NDA) warnings:

THE INFORMATION CONTAINED IN THIS MESSAGE IS UNDER NON-DISCLOSURE

Two words for Apple: NOT COOL!

(Via MacRumors.)

With so much work being put into JavaScript Engines and competition building up between the big three(TraceMonkey, V8, and SquirrelFish) running a full blown Cappuccino, SproutCore, or any AJAX intensive app will be very light on memory usage and efficient on your resources. This JS engine competition will mostly affect the closed source Adobe’s Flex, AIR and Microsoft’s Silverlight since they can’t seem to get enough of your memory and keep crashing your browser. Closed and proprietary web frameworks have only one place in the world, and that is in the cemetery.

I am a defender of the iPhone keyboard. It would great, but this one looks mouth-watering:

(Via TUAW.)

Apple needs to open up and streamline their approval process. What has happened to this developer should scare everyone that has invested time or money in developing an iPhone app. This practice is unspeakable and very Microsftian. This is one of those moments where I don’t feel proud of being part of the Mac community.

As a believer in the free markets, Apple should change some of it’s practices and allow for a more competitive space. For instance:

-Make approvals faster and subsequent version even faster.
-Allow Shareware apps. Free limited time trials, or as the developer wishes.
-Allow for coupon creation, which could be used to provide trials, reviewers or friends and family.
-Specify the what is and not allowed in the App store to avoid problems like the Fart app or the Podcaster.
-Allow the user to change default applications, for say browser, email etc.

For more about the incident read the link below.

(Via Daring Fireball.)

A startup working on a true paper killer. This is substantially different from the Kindle. Can’t wait to get my hands on it. Here’s a video demo from DEMO:

Today’s announcement of Google’s Chrome and it’s use of tabs, is a clear indication of the next evolution of web apps and browsers. In order to better explain I am going to define two commonly confused terms: Web Page and Web Application.

Web Page:

A web page or webpage is a resource of information that is suitable for the World Wide Web and can be accessed through a web browser.

Web Application:

A web application or webapp is an application that is accessed via web browser over a network such as the Internet or an intranet.

With this in mind it is important to note that Google may NOT be targeting Firefox or IE’s traditional users directly, but rather the next generation of Web App users. This is all inferred from Chromes distinct UI usage. For those you not familiar with the screenshots released by several publications here you can see a full window picture of Chrome:

Tab Usage and the Future of Extensions

In this browser, unlike any other browser out there the tabs are over the navigation. At plain sight this might seem unreasonable since you would be “redrawing” the Address bar buttons(Back, Forward, Stop, Refresh) on every single tab, unless you were planning something completely different.

Enter Mailplane, a Single Application Browser(SBA) that harnesses the power of a web app with the comfort of a desktop app. Mailplane is an app that is used to access Gmail and adds a dedicated Tool bar and several extensions(drag and drop, iPhoto plugin and more) making Gmail more Mac friendly.

What Google may be preparing for might simply be a new type of extensions or a set of web standards, that may allow a web app developer to extend Chrome to resemble what Mailplane has done for Gmail. Customized Tool bar buttons and offline use through Google Gears could replace the standard Address bar buttons to make the app more usable.

By doing all these Google might be targeting the application users rather than traditional web page viewers. Google needs this app to solidify itself in the desktop with all it’s plethora of web app.

Separated at birth

As noted from the Google post on Chrome:

By keeping each tab in an isolated “sandbox”, we were able to prevent one tab from crashing another and provide improved protection from rogue sites. We improved speed and responsiveness across the board. We also built a more powerful JavaScript engine, V8, to power the next generation of web applications that aren’t even possible in today’s browsers.

So if the visual distinction indicating that a Tab = an App wasn’t enough, the underlying treatment of a tab by the system will be like that of an individual app. Multithreading usage(according to the comic) will allow the apps to be completely separate, thus improving performances.

The current state of web browsers is not app friendly, hopefully Chrome will change that through tabs.

Note: It sucks that Chrome is Windows only for now!