apple juice

This is super bad news. I would hate to see Hipstamatic disappear. This is the danger of the race to free in the app economy.

Hipstamatic Lays Off All but Core Employees, Including Designers and Engineers

Matthew Panzarino:

Toy camera app company Hipstamatic has fired all but 5 of its
core staff, including engineers and designers, The Next Web
has learned. The company had been staffed up and working on a
new release, but has only released one update in the last
several months.

(Via Daring Fireball.)

After selling our first-generation AppleTV a while back, I purchased the new 3rd gen 1080p version a couple months ago. We love it, and it is working great with the whole ecosystem.

There are holes, however, in the content. Obviously Apple has a TV, Movie and Music store that they do not want to cannabalize, but there is plenty of content available on the web that you can’t easily access on AppleTV.

If I were a betting man, I would place good money on Apple bringing the App Store concept (subscriptions and all) to the AppleTV in the coming months. The new grid of icons on the homescreen is just screaming for awesome 3rd-party apps.

Interesting to me that I have not received the push notification that the update was even available, and I hadn’t taken the time invoke it manually…

→ iOS 5.1.1 upgrade stats

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David Smith’s iOS version stats from his apps:

The data for 4 days shows a clear and very consistent progression. Users are updating at a rate of roughly 7.5%/day, leading to a total adoption of around 30% so far.

30% of his userbase has upgraded to the four-day-old, no-new-features, not-marketed iOS 5.1.1 release. That’s incredible.

Also, if you’re a developer, listen to his podcast.

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(Via Marco.org.)

I used to loathe going to the apple store. I feel as though I know one or two things about technology, and I felt the apple store employees were unwilling to acknowledge that and treat me like an advanced user.

Recently I’ve noticed a change, the last few experiences were very pleasant. I’m not sure if new training occurred for the employees, but the employees I have worked with are quick to assess my skill level and respond appropriately.

Over the past month, my iPhone’s home button stopped responding consistently. This morning, I made a genius bar appointment (via the Apple Store app), came in, was promptly helped, she quickly verified the problem, and I walked out with a new / (refurbished?) iPhone within 10 minutes.

To make the whole process even smoother, after syncing my phone, it’s as if nothing ever changed. It’s set up exactly as it was before. (I did have to enter numerous passwords for all of the cloud-synced services)

This article on TechDirt gives the best overview I’ve found yet about the problems with the language in SOPA and PIPA.

Advertising giant GroupM recently asked its entertainment industry customers to compile a list of “sites dedicated to infringement,” not unlike what’s found under PROTECT IP. Universal Music, Warner Bros. and Paramount were three key providers to that list, which ended up covering a large number of perfectly legitimate sites including the famed Internet Archive (widely recognized as the library for the internet). It also included numerous innovative startups that are frequently used by content creators to get their works out, such as SoundCloud and Vimeo. Even more worrisome, it included a variety of publications and blogs, including Vibe Magazine, the quintessential hip hop and R&B magazine founded by Quincy Jones, as well as Complex, a popular lifestyle magazine recently recognized as one of the most valuable startups in New York.

This is my favorite example in the article:

Even worse, it appears that Universal Music also included the personal website of one of its own top artists, 50Cent. The hiphop star has a personal website as well as a website owned by Universal Music. The personal website is much more popular… and it appeared on the infringement list.

I really hope that there is a side effect of this bill: creative people will realize that they don’t need their publishers to get their work out there. (Or if they already realize it, they will act!) What Louis C.K. recently did on his own site serves as a model for any person looking to sell their work – you don’t need the middle man! I think you’ll increasingly see artists of all types reject the existing structure and go directly to the people via the internet. Radiohead, in 2007 did this as well with the album In Rainbows:

In Rainbows is the seventh studio album by the English rock band Radiohead. It was first released on 10 October 2007 as a digital download self-released, that customers could order for whatever price they saw fit, followed by a standard CD release in most countries during the last week of 2007

I just received my Blackbox laptop case for my 15″ MacBook Pro – full disclosure, the company was started by a good friend from college, but I wanted to share a few things about this case that make it pretty awesome.

1. It is lightweight and durable. It’s made out of bamboo, so it is pretty tough. I feel comfortable throwing it in my bag with other junk. I’m not worried about anything crushing the laptop.
2. You can use it as a lap desk. Take the laptop out, flip the case over and set your laptop on it. Voila, your lap is not burning up because a hot laptop computer is sitting there.
3. The aesthetic is clean, elegant, simple. Perfect for a Macintosh.

They have a full line of cases for the Apple products, and even though they are more expensive than your average case, I think the extra protection is worth it.

Thanks Greg and Blackbox!

good point from Dave Winer – Relying on Facebook, Google and Twitter – it’s like vegans who wear leather.