Adobe Admits Defeat: Shuts Down App Stores

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Sarah Perez, writing for ReadWriteWeb:

Adobe is shutting down two of its app stores dedicated to mobile and desktop application distribution, Adobe InMarket and the Adobe AIR Marketplace. The decision, the company says, was based on developer feedback. Adobe says it will now focus its efforts on helping developers publish their apps on multiple platforms, including official app stores like Apple's iTunes, Google's Android Market, BlackBerry App World, Intel's AppUp, Samsung Apps and Toshiba App Place. I had never heard of these two App stores until today.

Editor of Windows Magazine Switches To A Mac

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Mike Elgan:

Then, about three weeks ago, something happened that altered my worldview a bit. My main PC, a Sony VAIO laptop, burned itself out. Literally. It overheated, despite a fan that sounded like a jet engine. It still works, but can’t connect to the Internet. Normally, I would have trouble-shooted the problem, fixed it or bought a new laptop. I also have older PCs around that I could use. But this time, my son was about to leave on a very long trip abroad and offered to let me use his 27-inch iMac. I was too busy to deal with the Sony, so I just used the Mac. I’ve found it so easy and enjoyable to use – beautiful screen, silent operation, incredibly elegant industrial design, etc., etc., — that I haven’t even bothered to troubleshoot the laptop. I don’t even want to look at it. I wanted to post this after I saw it, because I just ended a 40 minute phone conversation where I convinced my cousin to buy a Mac.

On The Question of Steve Jobs' Succession

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On Tuesday, twenty minutes before Apple's financial results conference call, the Wall Street Journal published a story concerning Steve Jobs' succession at Apple. John Gruber, writing for Daring Fireball, comments on this at length:

Everyone wants this to be an interesting story, but it’s not. There is no intrigue. If Jobs steps down in the foreseeable future his replacement will almost certainly be Tim Cook. Utter credibility on Wall Street, and much respect within Apple. He’s already run the company while Jobs has been on leave. The knock against him is that he’s an operations and finance guy, not a product design guy. Ideally Apple would find someone just like Steve Jobs, but there exists no such person. There will not be a next Steve Jobs. There will be a next CEO. Gruber lists in the piece several suggestions he solicited over Twitter yesterday. One of the people he named was Jack Dorsey, founder of Square and the brains behind Twitter, whom appears to be running the show at Twitter these days. I think Jack Dorsey has definite potential, and perhaps the only "outsider" from Apple that would be worthy. However, he's awfully young and inexperienced. And it would mean passing over a lot of very talented and respected SVPs at Apple to do so. In the end, I think John is right.

Lion's New Recovery Partition

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This morning, shortly after Lion hit the App Store for the general public, I posted a link to several notable reviews of Lion where you can read all about the nit-picky details that have changed or been added/removed. I won't attempt to write a comprehensive review of my own, simply because people like John Siracusa will do a much better job at it than I will. One notable new feature of the operating system that I would like to point out though, is the new recovery partition that Lion makes when it installs itself. Apple has posted an entire knowledge base article detailing how this process works:

OS X Lion includes a new feature called Lion Recovery that includes all of the tools you need to reinstall Lion, repair your disk, and even restore from a Time Machine backup without the need for optical discs. A lot of people noted that the new Mac Minis released this morning no longer contain optical drives built-in. Jim Dalrymple actually managed a brief interview with Brian Croll, Apple's vice president of OS X product marketing who told Jim: A new Mac mini was also released with faster processors, and surprisingly to some people, no optical drive. Apple said the popularity of the Mac App Store helped with that decision. “We found that the majority of customers don’t use the optical drive on a regular basis,” said Moody. “Things are changing. The primary use for the optical drive was to install software, but the Mac App Store provides a more efficient method for doing that.” Clearly Apple is not afraid to eliminate components that customers don't regularly use in order to take advantage of the extra space to add new hardware on the inside. They first did this with the MacBook Air, and now the Mini. As John Gruber says: Optical drives are the new floppy drives.

Stand Your Ground

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Stand Your Ground:

Six photographers are assigned different areas of the City to photograph. Some use tripods, some go hand held, one sets up a 5 x 4. All are instructed to keep to public land and photograph the area as they would on a normal day. The event aims to test the policing of public and private space by private security firms and their reaction to photographers. All six photographers were stopped on at least one occasion. Three encounters led to police action. This is how it happened.

How To Fix Soccer

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Paul Kafasis writing on One Foot Tsunami:

Following another crushing defeat for a US national soccer team, this time in the Women's World Cup, many fans are no doubt feeling burned. It seems like every time we start to care about soccer, it spits directly into our collective face, while handing us another devastating loss. So, in the spirit of sour grapes and being a true Ugly American, I present my four-point plan to fix soccer. I wholeheartedly agree with points 1, 2, and 4. Not sure about number 2. You may commence yelling at me now, soccer fans. Wake me up when its real football season, in the meantime I'll go back to watching baseball.