Chris Morran, The Consumerist:

…there is no legal reason a U.S. citizen should be barred from buying an iPad just because she speaks Farsi. And yet customers at Apple stores in Georgia are being told they can’t shop there because the government won’t allow it.

What a load of crap. Genius Bar indeed.

David Pogue:

On the other hand, the opening scenes of this movie sure look familiar. Apple comes up with a hit product (iPod, iPhone). Microsoft comes up with a rival that’s nicely designed (Zune, Windows Phone). Unfortunately, it doesn’t add anything attractive enough to lure people away from the safe choice, and nobody buys it.

This again seems like Windows phone - Microsoft getting in the way of their own innovation. The difference between Apple’s tablet and Microsoft’s tablet (besides two years, three models, and actually existing) is that Apple wasn’t afraid to commit to the future and divorce the iPad from Mac OS X.

It really sounds like Windows RT will use an interesting and fluid user interface. Unfortunately, it is forced to live in the shadow of legacy Windows and must bear an awful name. In the end, as Pogue notes, Microsoft hasn’t really given a strong reason for consumers to choose its tablet over the incumbants.

Ruslan Kogan:

Without Google, Apple would be nothing. They may have great phones and tablets but the decent apps and the ones everyone uses on an iPhone and an iPad are made by Google, like Google Maps.

Sure, seems logical that Company A is dependent on Company B when Company B generates less revenue than Company A does profit.

In other news, it appears to become a successful entrepreneur, one needs to be bat-shit crazy.

Ray Colburn on Apple’s move toward laptops with little to no upgradability:

Apple seems to have gotten the impression that upgradeability is the factor that people care about the least, and I suspect that they’re right.

Bingo.

Greg Bensinger, WSJ:

Carriers say a move to unlimited-only calling plans would simplify what can be a confusing array of options. But it also would keep a cash cow healthy by depriving customers of the option to trade down to cheaper plans—even as their phone use drops as they spend more time texting and using Internet-based calling services such as Skype.

Basically with the advent of data-centric phones, customers use less cellular voice minutes. In order to maintain revenues, carriers will likely shift to offering an unlimited-only voice plan.

I am struck with two immediate thoughts. First, unlimited doesn’t mean what carriers think it means. Second, the diminishing role (and power) of carriers with customers is becoming increasingly evident. Eventually, carriers will be relegated to the role of a dumb data pipeline.

Frank Chimero explores the intersection of our natural tendency to archive with the digital revolution:

We like to reminise about the things we care about, and as more of those things live online, we must develop ways to save them from the crush of “What’s New.”

If you are unfamiliar, Readability started with the idea to collect user subscription fees. Of that money, 70% would be dispensed to the online authors being read by their users and Readability would collect a 30% service fee. They may have been motivated by pure intentions, but in reality the business boiled down to Readability acting as an agent for, and collecting money on behalf of, those authors. They did so without the author’s knowledge, and worse, required that the authors join Readability in order to collect any money. Imagine if Apple were to grab source code from around the web and sell it in their Mac App Store without the owner’s permission or awareness. It was questionable at best and should have been better considered.

Today, Readability ended that practice. Richard Ziade on the Readability Blog:

Today, we’re announcing the end of one of those: As of June 30, 2012, Readability will no longer accept reader fees.

Ziade goes on to detail what will be done with the collected money remaining in their bank account:

If you registered as a publisher with Readability, we’ll be sending you any remaining money your site has earned by July 31, 2012, regardless of amount.

[…]

If you haven’t already registered your domain with Readability, you have until July 15, 2012 to do so. We’d love to give that money to every domain in our logs automatically, but we need to verify site ownership to keep others from claiming your money. Readability’s publisher registration process includes some important steps that help us do that. Publishers can register here.

[…]

But what happens after that? What if we’re not able to get every dollar back into every deserving writer’s hands? We’re going to do the next best thing we can think of. All remaining money that was put aside to be claimed by domain owners will be given to non-profit organizations that speak to the spirit of supporting reading and writing.

They haven’t won over many people with this announcement, despite their capitulation of the service fee business model. To recap, Readability collected money on the behalf of authors without consent, are holding that money until said authors sign up and give personal information to prove ownership, and will give the money away if not claimed. What a scumbag move.

One word: Instapaper.

Erica Sadun, writing for TUAW, compares author take-home amounts across different book formats and vendors:

As an author, you pay $0.15 per megabyte in delivery charges, in addition to the 30% off-the-top costs Amazon charges. An image-heavy book will hit you hard in the pocketbook. That’s quite different from Apple, which is happy to host resource-packed ebooks for a straight 30%.

As Sadun notes, a $9.99 ebook will net an author $5.10 via Amazon, $6.50 via Nook, $7.00 via Apple iBooks, and $9.25 via self-hosting a PDF.

Amazon’s terms certainly aren’t very generous, but authors still prefer to sell on the platform because of audience. Until the other players gain on the marketshare that Amazon enjoys, authors will continue to make the trade-off.

MG Siegler on why HBO should start directly offering content - sooner rather than later:

The only thing that matters is that over the next five years, the number of kids now entering college that are willing to pay for cable television will continue to shrink.

I agree. The two main reasons I have cable are live sports and HBO. I’d gladly pay them so that I could dump Cox. One can dream.

Marco Arment’s reaction to Apple’s Mac Pro spec bump today:

The message is clear: Apple doesn’t give a shit about the Mac Pro.

All of my scientific work is completed on Mac Pros, one from 2008 and one from 2009. The machines are beasts, but in need of a refresh. Unfortunately, today’s update only saw modest CPU speed improvements of the same out-dated architecture, no USB3 or Thunderbolt support, and old graphics cards. I’ll admit, my first reaction was probably even more profane than Arment’s.

It has been rumored that the Mac Pro would be phased out in the near future. Today’s update seemed to confirm those rumors. I was left a little depressed. Alas, David Pogue came to the rescue with some hope:

Many Apple observers also wonder if Apple thinks that desktop computers are dead, since not a word was said about the iMac and Mac Pro. An executive did assure me, however, that new models and new designs are under way, probably for release in 2013.

MacRumors followed up with a reader’s purported email from Tim Cook:

Our pro customers are really important to us…don’t worry as we’re working on something really great for later next year.

I feel a little better now and look forward to 2013. The longer I can avoid a Linux machine, the better¹.