Marco Arment:

Gizmodo and the like probably don’t care that the Kindle is the perfect device for so many uses like this that people encounter on a regular basis in Real Life. But Kindle owners, and Amazon, don’t need them to.

He explains why the Kindle is his favored reading device.

This just points, though, to the reality that the Kindle is a niche device.

Most current digital publications are simple text (ebooks, online articles), so the Kindle’s e-ink screen functions well for this. The lack of color and inability to quickly refresh the screen aren’t an issue. But as we move more types of publications onto digital devices, this will change. Magazines don’t work on current e-ink screens and interactive elements certainly don’t work.

This may change as color e-ink-like screens with quick refresh ability develop more, but allowing publishers to publish their content in this manner would require a very serious platform. Amazon would have to invest an incredible amount of time and money into developing a publishing platform that can compete with others who are already know how to develop good software. It would be a tremendous risk for Amazon.¹

I don’t think Amazon’s intent is to develop the Kindle into a general publishing platform. Rather, they are trying to make a book software platform, so you can read your Kindle Store books on any device you have. In this view, the Kindle is just one device among many for reading your Kindle books. The focus is the Kindle Store, not the Kindle.

In this view, Amazon did not cut the Kindle’s price to $189 and add a WiFi-only $139 model just in response to the Barnes and Noble Nook price change, but also to serve as an affordable way to use the Kindle Store. The Kindle is the cheap gateway to the store. The more Kindle users there are, the more Kindle Store users there are, too. Amazon wants to dominate the store part.

Seth Godin thinks the Kindle should get even cheaper—closer to $50 than $140. So cheap that if your Kindle breaks, gets soaked in water, or you leave it on the subway, you’ll just go out and buy another one. Godin calls it a “paperback Kindle.”

That’s brilliant and is exactly what Amazon should be shooting for: a no-frills Kindle that everyone can afford. I would buy one immediately to complement my iPad.

1. Somewhat contradictory to this is Amazon’s Kindle developer program. They certainly could build a color, quick-refresh Kindle and use third-party developers to build richer publishing applications, but I don’t think this is the case. This would still require them to build a very powerful SDK and these applications would not function on other Kindle devices, like iPhone and iPad. ↩

37 Signals is hiring an iOS developer.

Hell of an opportunity.

Tim Bray wonders how app stores can be better organized:

Even though Amazon is selling way more titles than any app retailer, the problem they’re solving is more tractable because there’s a whole ecosystem, which includes a big chunk of the world’s academic community, devoted to discovery and criticism of books and music and movies. It operates against a fixed background context, rich with powerful brands; examples include J.K. Rowling and Madonna and Johnny Depp. As we gaze across Amazon’s nearly-infinite virtual retail space, we’re all standing on a platform of largely-shared perceptions of what it is we’re looking at, and for. 

The app ecosystem just doesn’t have that. It’s being made up as we go along.

True, but don’t we have something similar with, for example, reviews provided by Macworld writers and users? iTunes reviews tend to be basically useless, but Macworld provides excellent reviews and their readers are likely much more informed than a typical iTunes reviewer. Why not factor Macworld’s ratings in, or at least display them, just like Rotten Tomatoes is shown for movies?

On July 16th, Apple held a press conference to discuss the iPhone 4′s antenna. On the whole, Apple’s approach was good—they explained what the problem was and how they would resolve it for customers. Providing a free case for anyone experiencing signal attenuation is a sufficient gesture.

Nonetheless, Apple made two errors—one serious, and one slightly less so.

The slightly smaller mistake was made at the press conference itself. Apple not only explained what was causing signal attenuation on the iPhone 4, but did two things: they tried to argue the media was looking for a good story rather than reporting things factually (effectively positioning Apple as the victim) and that this problem isn’t unique to the iPhone 4, but is an industry-wide problem.

While it may be accurate that the media dramatized the story, and it is somewhat unfair that Apple garnered so much criticism over it when most phones exhibit similar issues, they did so because Apple is different than RIM, HTC and Motorola. Consumers expect those companies to put out products with issues, because that’s how most companies work. They put out products with problems, but consumers either don’t notice them or ignore them. But because Apple is so good at what they do, and we buy Apple products not just because they are functional but because Apple puts so much effort into their design. Apple has become a symbol of exceptionality, of making something whose quality and detail is beyond what we expect. Any issues become a lot more glaring in that case.

Apple made a mistake in arguing “hey, everyone else has this problem, too” because they aren’t everyone else, and they shouldn’t want to be. They should accept their unique position, acknowledge there is a real issue (whether it was a conscious trade-off they made or not) and move on. “They did it, too” is never a valid excuse when your entire advantage is your uniqueness.

The second, and more damaging, mistake Apple made was early on. When the iPhone 4 was released and the signal attenuation story was just breaking, Apple put out a response basically saying most phones experience this problem and that users should just avoid holding the bottom-left corner.

Well, first, no, not all phones experience this problem. While all phones do suffer signal degradation if your hand covers the antenna, the iPhone 4′s signal degradation is much worse than comparable phones. Anandtech compared the iPhone 4′s signal degradation to the iPhone 3GS and HTC Nexus One, and the iPhone 4′s signal was reduced much more significantly than the other two. This doesn’t result from some forced, awkward way of holding the phone, either—it results from holding the iPhone 4 so the bottom-left seam touches your hand, and in use it results in more dropped calls. When held like this (the natural way I hold my iPhone), my iPhone 4 will garble or drop calls where my iPhone 3G had no problem holding a connection.

Worse, though, Apple didn’t get out ahead of the problem. By refusing to acknowledge there was a problem at all, Apple allowed this to develop into a full-blown controversy. We’ve all experienced it—over the past few weeks, people who see me using my iPhone 4 don’t ask me how great the screen is but whether I have the antenna issue. Apple chose to allow this to develop by not acknowledging the issue immediately.

That’s the worst mistake a company can make when they have a potential disaster and the impact has been clear. The iPhone 4 has still been a terrific success, but the antenna issue is a black mark on what is Apple’s most successful product launch ever. Sometimes, even Apple needs to show a little humility.

Senator Charles Schumer wrote an open letter to Apple regarding the iPhone 4 antenna issue:

“I ask that Apple provide iPhone 4 customers with a clearly written explanation of the cause of the reception problem and make a public commitment to remedy it free-of-charge,” Schumer writes in the letter, obtained by CNN. “The solutions offered to date by Apple for dealing with the so-called ‘death grip’ malfunction – such as holding the device differently, or buying a cover for it – seem to be insufficient.”

What a wonderful use of our government’s time. This issue certainly ranks up there with the recession, the deficit and the Afghan war. I’m just glad someone finally recognized this is something deserving of response from a senator.

Tapbots just announced their new application, Calcbot. It’s absolutely beautiful. Instant buy for me.

I don’t think these guys are capable of making anything less than fantastic applications.

Labor is getting more expensive in China, so manufacturing companies are racing to find ways to reduce costs:

But what it does not reveal is that manufacturing in China is about to get far more expensive. Soaring labor costs caused by worker shortages and unrest, a strengthening Chinese currency that makes exports more expensive, and inflation and rising housing costs are all threatening to sharply increase the cost of making devices like notebook computers, digital cameras and smartphones.

Desperate factory owners are already shifting production away from this country’s dominant electronics manufacturing center in Shenzhen toward lower-cost regions far west of here, even deep in China’s mountainous interior.

That’s precisely what I’ve hoped would happen. China is a nation of contrast—while the east is rich from manufacturing and exports, the landlocked western interior of China is still incredibly poor. China is almost two nations, one developed and one developing.

But development based on unskilled, cheap labor inevitably leads to higher standards of living and increasing wages. Over time, the “cheap” part of it disappears, so manufacturers move elsewhere in search of low costs. As this happens, areas that were dependent on unskilled labor for economic growth must transition toward skilled labor. This is China’s largest challenge—their incredible economic growth is a result of labor that’s laid dormant for decades suddenly coming online all at once, but they must now move from unskilled to skilled labor. In other words, they must move up the supply chain from merely putting things together to manufacturing intricate parts and to even designing them.

As manufacturers move toward other regions and countries with lower wages, the same process plays out. I’m hoping this will have the same effect on China’s interior, but there are natural barriers for it. Using unskilled labor in China’s east is easy: it’s close to the coast, so moving goods to port is cheap. The west doesn’t have this same advantage. Anything manufactured there will have to be moved by truck or rail to the coast.

What’s cooler than a race at Pikes Peak? One filmed entirely on an iPhone 4.

Incredible quality, especially considering there was no color correction done.

Marco Arment just updated Instapaper, and it has partially-read article position syncing across devices.

I use Instapaper more than any other application on my iPad (more than Safari, even). I don’t know what I’d do without it. Crumble under a pile of Safari tabs, probably.

The Boy Genius Report compared the iPhone 4′s 5-megapixel camera to the Droid X’s 8-megapixel camera. The iPhone’s shots are much nicer.

How brent Simmons manages memory in his OS X applications.

Farhad Manjoo:

This all depends on what your definition of revolutionary is. Apple’s talent is far more cunning and more profitable than mere infringement. To use a musical analogy, Apple’s specialty is the remix. It curates the best ideas bubbling up around the tech world and makes them its own. It’s also a great fixer, improving on everything that’s wrong with other similar products on the shelves.

Apple certainly does borrow ideas from others, as does everyone. But Apple’s basic strategy has always been to identify markets with great potential that are either in their infancy or are being done completely wrong, so they can do it right and completely re-do it. The Macintosh, iMac, iPod, iTunes, iPhone and iPad all follow this.

Apple didn’t invent the MP3 player. Instead, they did it how it should have been done from the beginning. This isn’t simply “remixing,” as Manjoo describes it. This is recognizing new markets that fit Apple’s core skills, taking good ideas from others, and extending them far beyond what others envisioned into a complete whole. That’s Apple’s talent.

Kevin C. Tofel:

Look at the iPad, 3 million units of which the company has sold in just 80 days. Instead of floundering around by trying to define the device as a keyboard-less smartbook or a tablet PC without native handwriting capabilities, Apple gave it a definitive name with specific, usable functions and in the process — as I noted when the name was first unveiled in January – cornered the nascent smartbook market before that market even got started.

An even better example is the original iPhone announcement in 2007. Apple didn’t just describe the iPhone as the best smartphone on the market, but instead defined it by how it is to be used. They defined it by three uses: a revolutionary mobile phone, a widescreen iPod with touch controls, and a breakthrough Internet communication device.

This gave people trying to grasp what the device is something solid to hold on to. A “smartphone” is a nebulous, abstract concept—it doesn’t denote (or emote) anything specific. A smartphone could be anything, but the iPhone is simple: it’s an incredible iPod, a really good phone, and an Internet communicator. Done.

Because people could easily grok what an iPhone is, the iPhone transcended the smartphone category. It stood alone in people’s minds. There’s an important lesson here: when you’re launching something completely new (whatever it is—it doesn’t need to be a product), you should define it by something concrete and physical, in terms people can understand, rather than in abstract terms.

In 2007, no regular person could tell you what a smartphone was. But they sure as hell could tell you what an iPhone did.

Jorge Quinteros shows what the iPhone 4′s camera can do. Incredible.

Brian Ford on iPhone 4′s reception problem:

Apple’s biggest and most immediate problem is going to be bad PR: For whatever reason, there are a lot of people who want to see Apple fail, and fail spectacularly. Consumers, for their part, don’t know anything about failure rates; a defective product is a defective product. Someone whose first experience with an iPhone is a splotchy yellow screen or an alarming reception issue won’t care (or won’t know) that the HTC EVO 4G and the Droid Incredible are suffering from embarrassing screen issues as well.

I’m seeing this issue as well. When I set my iPhone 4 down, it has full bars. After a few seconds of holding it in my left hand, it drops to between zero and two bars. While testing this at home yesterday, it didn’t seem to have an effect on my 3G connection speed. This morning, though, I tested it in a different area with less consistent service, and it did seem to cut off my connection altogether.

Brian is right—this is Apple’s most important iPhone release to date, because it is competing directly with quite successful Android competitors, and it has received a tremendous amount of interest. Apple needs to address it immediately.