Bob Mansfield, Apple SVP of Hardware Engineering:
We’ve recently heard from many loyal Apple customers who were disappointed to learn that we had removed our products from the EPEAT rating system. I recognize that this was a mistake. Starting today, all eligible Apple products are back on EPEAT.
Didn’t really expect this. I’d love to hear the backstory on this.
Betaworks to Pay $500,000 for Fallen Social Media Star Digg:
Under the deal, which Digg confirmed closed Thursday, Betaworks is buying the Digg brand, website and technology. The price was just $500,000, three people familiar with the matter said—a pittance for a company that raised $45 million from prominent investors including LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman and Marc Andreessen.
Anyone remember Digg and thinking a mere $500k US was a steal? Someone, namely the investors, lost a lot of money, total venture funding: $45M US.
Update:
According to AllThingsD the number was significantly higher than $500k:
Digg CEO Matt Williams disputed that figure, saying “the overall consideration is significantly larger,†and that it was a combination of cash and equity in Betaworks.
Kat Stoeffel writing for the New York Observer:
In addition, there are internal rumors that The Daily has been put “on watch.†According to a source the status of the groundbreaking iPad tabloid—which loses $30 million a year—will be reassessed after the November 6 election.
Alan Zeino comparing recent OS X Golden Masters:
With OS X, Apple has set precedent to make the case that the Golden Master is almost always, the shipping ‘retail’ build. Here’s proof.
For the past three releases, the GM builds were the same as the retail versions. Doesn’t mean that it will be same for Mountain Lion, but it sure looks good.
TechPP.com about the possibility of Apple’s new maps coming to the Mac:
Our developer friend, Cody Cooper has now stumbled upon an interesting code dump in iOS 6 maps application which hints at the possibility of Apple Maps coming to Macs in the near future.
During his routine investigation of Maps app, Cody found some interesting bits in the file altitude_manifest.xml
One thing that should be mentioned about this, that wasn’t made clear enough in the article, is that the mentioned XML file is part of the iPhone Simulator, which is part of Xcode. To be precise: it’s part of Maps.app which is part of iPhone Simulator which in turn is part of Xcode 4.5 DP2 (which requires a developer account). A whole lot of dependencies that should have been clarified.
The mentioned file can be found at:
/Applications/Xcode45-DP2.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/iPhoneSimulator.platform/
Developer/SDKs/iPhoneSimulator6.0.sdk/Applications/Maps.app
Aside from that, Apple has already been using their new maps in parts of their apps on OS X for a while.
Shawn Blanc about the MagSafe Power Adapter:
Though it never stopped me, I always thought using a higher-wattage power adapter for my laptop was a bad idea. Turns out, according to this Apple knowledge base article, it’s no big deal at all.
Sometimes you might even want to use a lower wattage power adapter than the one that ships with your MacBook (Pro). For example when traveling on an airplane that has power plugs that only support a limited wattage.
This way your MacBook might take ages to charge completely, but it will at the very least keep it running.
Apple today announced it has sold three million of its incredible new iPad, since its launch on Friday, March 16.
As a comparison:
Looks like they’re doing okay.
It makes no sense at all to name the next phone “iPhone 5” →lmnt.me/u/iphones.jpg
— Louie Mantia (@mantia) July 23, 2012
Indeed “iPhone 5” doesn’t make sense at all, that’s not news. Also, it’s not about schooling some tech journalists as much as it is about schooling readers. The problem we see over and over again are people on the internet searching for the next iPhone model and they tend to use “iPhone 5” over “new iPhone” (or even “next iPhone”).
Oh and that’s actually one problem that Samsung’s and Apple’s product share. Try “Galaxy S3” and “Galaxy SIII”. Yes, the latter is the official name.
Seth Godin – Who decides what gets sold in the bookstore?:
I just found out that Apple is rejecting my new manifesto Stop Stealing Dreams and won’t carry it in their store because inside the manifesto are links to buy the books I mention in the bibliography.
Quoting here from their note to me, rejecting the book: “Multiple links to Amazon store. IE page 35, David Weinberger link.â€
I agree with Marco Arment and don’t think Apple should stop eBooks from being published just because of their content, like having links to another store, in this case Amazon. Would it be okay if Google would ban videos from YouTube that have a link to Vimeo in their description or inside the video itself?
Of course Seth Godin could have put the ISBN and title of the book into his eBook, but since we can have “interactive” things like links in digital books, why not use them? But maybe we need a white list/black list of URLs that Apple likes or doesn’t like. If it was just the pure number of links, we need to know how many links would be okay for Apple.
In case you were wondering, after checking the links in his free eBook: none of the linked titles were available for Amazon’s Kindle. They were only hardcovers, paperbacks, etc. and audiobooks by Audible.
I think that Amazon and Apple and B&N need to take a deep breath and make a decision on principle: what’s inside the book shouldn’t be of concern to a bookstore with a substantial choke on the marketplace. If it’s legal, they ought to let people read it if they choose to.
Sounds good to me.
Amir Efrati about The Mounting Minuses at Google+ for the Wall Street Journal:
Visitors using personal computers spent an average of about three minutes a month on Google+ between last September and January, versus six to seven hours on Facebook each month over the same period, according to comScore, which didn’t have data on mobile usage.
I wonder how they managed to sign up 90 million users while only a fraction of them are actually using it after all?
Google+ ghost town story a good reminder that many/most ofdownload/signup/user #s tech press likes to report are easy to manipulate.
— Peter Kafka (@pkafka) February 28, 2012