Tag Archives: Daring Fireball

The perks of licensing. HTC’s new flagship “One” smartphone. @daringfireball

John Gruber of Daring Fireball asks a very good question

Aluminum casing with antennas integrated in the exterior? Long press the home button to get a voice-driven interface, double-tap the home button to bring up the multitasking switcher? Can’t quite put my finger on where I’ve seen these things before.

regarding HTC’s new smartphone, the HTC One, but surprisingly doesn’t follow up with an answer.

Here is one:
On Dec. 6th, 2012 HTC made a global licensing deal with Apple. We don’t know what’s included in the deal, but I’m sure HTC is in the clear with this.

Who’s gonna leave Twitter for app.net…seriously… @drdrang

Dr. Drang makes a perfect argument:

No one is forcing you to follow Justin Bieber or any of his fans. And there’s no requirement for you to wade through the morass of dumbth that is Trends…

and delivers a very accurate truth:

John Gruber, for example, makes his living by getting people to read Daring Fireball, and he’s said that most of his referral traffic comes by way of links on Twitter. Can he afford to disengage from it?

Gruber may well be a special case; I can imagine him being able to leave Twitter with no ill effects. But it’s hard to believe that less popular bloggers — and pretty much everyone is less popular — will be able to do so.

Those two are, to me, at the core of this over-hyped new app.

On the iPad “Mini”… @daringfireball

I’m going to say it: I really, no REALLY, do not believe that Apple will make a smaller iPad.

I don’t care what The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, and Daring Fireball say. It won’t happen.

Really, I don’t mean any disrespect by mentioning the three sources above – there are many others, but I chose to use the most prominent one’s. It’s simply not logical for Apple to make a smaller iPad, and here’s why:

- The Jobs doctrine. No matter what you say, Steve made it perfectly clear.
- Apple has already produced various sizes of the iPad for years, and has decided that it’s not worth it.
- The margins would be too low. Apple is not in the market share game.
- No leaks so far. At least no legitimately sourced one’s.

Anyhow, I may be wrong, but I’m willing to bet that I’m not.

Edit: ZDNet’s Adrian Kingsley-Hughes agrees with me.

4″…

9to5mac posted yesterday, that Apple is in fact testing 4″ iPhones right now:

Right now we know of a few next-generation iPhone candidates in testing. These prototype phones are floating around Apple HQ in thick, locked shells in order to disguise the exterior design to “undisclosed” employees. We know of two next-generation iPhones in testing with a larger display: the iPhone 5,1 and iPhone 5,2. These phones are in the PreEVT stage of development and are codenamed N41AP (5,1) and N42AP (5,2).

and

Both of these phones sport a new, larger display that is 3.999 inches diagonally. Apple will not just increase the size of the display and leave the current resolution, but will actually be adding pixels to the display. The new iPhone display resolution will be 640 x 1136. That’s an extra 176 pixels longer of a display. The screen will be the same 1.9632 inches wide, but will grow to 3.484 inches tall. This new resolution is very close to a 16:9 screen ratio, so this means that 16:9 videos can play full screen at their native aspect ratio.

Daring Fireball’s John Gruber seems to agree, that this is going to happen – which makes it an almost certainty.

What I’ve heard from a couple of little birdies is only that Apple has been noodling with increasing the height of the display, keeping the width and pixel density exactly the same as on the iPhone 4 and 4S. I had not heard an exact pixel number for the new height. 1152 made some sense, but doing some math after reading Weintraub’s report, 1136 makes a lot of sense.

Mathematically this makes sense, but how about UX?

I really hope this isn’t true. 3:2 works really well for iOS devices right now. 16:9, which is the ratio Apple would go to if this turns out to be true, isn’t good for anything but HD video.
How many times do you watch full HD video on your phone? Seriously.
Also keep in mind that lots of content is being shown in 4:3 or other ratios that would still give you those nasty black bars.

I get why you would want more screen real estate on a smartphone. I recently tried a friend’s Galaxy Nexus with it’s 4,3″ screen and it was very nice having a larger screen, but the Nexus also has a wider screen and that makes all the difference. Just stretching the screen, the way it is mentioned in these articles, just doesn’t make sense to me.

I guess most apps wouldn’t be affected too much, but apps that can’t be “stretched” by default, like games, would look horrible. The same goes for books and magazines. I really can’t see Apple doing this to their developers. Maybe the iOS 6 beta, most likely to be introduced during WWDC on June, 11th, will give us some clues as to what Apple is planning.

In the meantime I suggest you read Jesus Diaz’ article at Gizmodo. I fully agree with him, and even though I know that Gruber is well-connected, I call bullshit on a 1136×640 iPhone.

But it’s open! Part XVIII.

Does anyone else think that this is – at best – questionable?

Also, get this:

“Your Content in our Services: When you upload or otherwise submit content to our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide licence to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes that we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content.
The rights that you grant in this licence are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting and improving our Services, and to develop new ones. This licence continues even if you stop using our Services (for example, for a business listing that you have added to Google Maps).”

Source.

Just like Gruber said.