Got some free time on your hands? Feel like reading the entire Avatar screenplay? Well, you’re in luck because 20th Century Fox has decided to make the entire piece available online for FREE! [From Read the Full Avatar Script Online Legally and for Free]
I finally got around to seeing this (in 3D) yesterday. I think Mr Cameron has another hit on his hands. I may go see it again.
Remember how with the iPod, year after year, we were inundated with punditry arguing that the iPod would suffer the same fate as the Mac — “superior technology beaten in the market by cheaper commodity products because Apple tried to maintain too much control”. Or some similar analogy. That didn’t work out well for those pundits.
I haven’t seen as much of that with the iPhone, but Henry Blodget is giving it the old college try, positioning Android as the Windows in the analogy. Now, it’s true that Android is open and the iPhone isn’t, and Android is definitely gaining attention and market share. But the analogy has no legs. The mobile OS market today bears almost no resemblance to the PC market of the ’80s. Blodget can’t even muster an argument as to what Apple should be doing differently. Really: What? License the iPhone OS to other handset makers? Give me a break.
Anyway, this argument is stupid if for no other reason than that iPhone sales are still growing fast.
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With hindsight it seems that argument didn’t even apply to the Mac/PC situation in the first place! Different forces were at work.
Apple this morning announced that more than 3 billion apps have been downloaded from its App Store by iPhone and iPod touch users worldwide. This comes nearly 9 months after it first hit 1 billion downloads served, and just over 3 months since it reached the 2 billion downloads mark. No doubt, the holiday season helped increase the number of downloads so rapidly. But still: 1 billion additional downloads in 3 months and one week is just incredible. When the 2 billion mark was reached, Apple also said 85,000 apps were available in the App Store at the time, but the company chose to stick to download numbers only for this announcement, although they said 100,000 apps were published to the store separately at the beginning of November 2009. Steve Jobs in a statement, said: “Three billion applications downloaded in less than 18 months–this is like nothing we’ve ever seen before. The revolutionary App Store offers iPhone and iPod touch users an experience unlike anything else available on other mobile devices, and we see no signs of the competition catching up anytime soon.” Nice jab there, Steve, and excellent timing with the official announcement of Google’s Nexus One phone just around the corner. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0[From Apple’s App Store: From 2 To 3 Billion Downloads In Just Over 3 Months]
All the new iPhones and iPod Touches sold this Christmas probably helped.
Nokia executive vice-president Rick Simonson, in an interview with The Economic Times:
By 2011, our efforts will start producing results, as we will be
at par with Apple and RIM in smartphones. Not only we draw level
with them, we will also win the war because, in addition to email,
we will be adding content, chat, music, entertainment and several
other features, which will soon become very critical for success
of any company in this space.Even with where Apple (and RIM) will be in 2011, or even with where they were in 2009? And in what way have “content, chat, music, and entertainment” not been key factors in the iPhone’s success since 2007?
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Nokia are thrashing.
Season 2 of Being Human starts on BBC3 and BBC HD at 10:30PM on Sunday January 10th. I’ve set my SKY HD box to record the series on HD.
And Heroes starts on BBC HD on Saturday 9th, so that’s on series record too.
Finns to match Apple ‘by 2011’ Nokia has beefed up its legal challenge to Apple, filing a second patent-infringement lawsuit against Cupertino in US District Court in Delaware. This time around, the Finnish outfit says that Apple stole patents that make Nokia unique, including patents for a camera phone and a touch-screen display.…Offloading malware protection to the cloud [From Nokia sues Apple (again)]
Smacks of desperation.
Sci-fi blockbuster Avatar becomes the fastest movie ever to achieve $1bn (£625.6m) in world ticket sales. [From Avatar smashes box office record]
I plan to go see this in the next few days.
“For the eleventh time, Inkwell rings in the New Year with a visit from Bruce Sterling, to address the State of the World and Things Various and Sundry…” Always good fun. [From Bruce Sterling’s State Of The World 2010]
As usual we had family over for food and drink.
The dogs managed to grab a few sausage rolls and such as well.
For the curious, what it looks like inside. Don’t do this at home.
Top cover off. The transparent plastic fork thing is the light guide to take the LED lights from the circuit board to the outside.
ARM license CPU.
See HomePlug Turbo
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