Christian Handley

At over $400 billion, Apple is now worth more than Greece, CNN Tech says.

That chart.

What no one knew at the time, and I only heard months later, was Google’s original vision for the Nexus One. Google intended to sell it for $99 without a contract and unlocked. Yes, a $99 unlocked phone, subsidized by Google ads.

This really could have changed everything. Shame it didn’t pan out.

Anyway, the main attraction of Amazon’s Kindle Fire vs. iPad 2 page is the big comparison table. Other people’s feature-comparison checklists always leave out factors that are important to me, so I made my own additions that Amazon is welcome to include on their page:

Mike Elgan makes a compelling argument about why so many markets out there - from the PC industry to the electronic aviation industry - are facing incredible pressure from the iPad. However, I don’t agree with this bit of speculation at the end.

Now there’s a rumor that Apple plans to replace the iPod Touch with a 7.85-inch iPad. The rumor looks as solid as such rumors get. Plus it makes perfect sense for Apple to do this.

Given Apple’s economies of scale, it’s likely that Apple could sell the iPad at the same price as the current iPod Touch — $199 — which is also, of course, the same price as the Amazon Kindle Fire.

Apple has nothing to gain by creating a direct Kindle Fire competitor - the iPad, as has been said over and over again, has no competition. Also, the iPad is the perfect size as it is - anything smaller would be hard to use and type on (as an effective tablet). The dichotomy between the 3.5 inch iPod touch and 10 inch iPad is too perfect to disrupt with a 7.85 inch screen.

lonelysandwich:

There’s an unformed thought I’ve had bouncing around in my head since I first tried out Siri on my 4S. I’d have liked to develop it into something more robust, but it’s a pretty simple idea so I’ll just leave it here.

You can’t say to Siri, “I guess I’d like to do something later like maybe a…

The architects wanted the windows to open. Jobs said no. He “had never liked the idea of people being able to open things. ‘That would just allow people to screw things up.’ ”

Don’t get me wrong, the Android Gingerbread interface isn’t bad, it’s just not always smooth. In just a few days with the iPhone 4S and iOS 5 I had come to expect operation to be fluid and consistent system-wide. That’s just not the case with Android, and every little interruption in smooth operation now accumulates into a feeling of frustration as I use the phone.

A friend showed me his Droid 3 and said, “Look how smooth the scrolling is.” Shouldn’t that be a prerequisite? Why did it take 3 droids to get this right?