There’s a lot to pore over with Facebook’s new iPad app and the new HTML5 mobile app platform. But I think Matt Rosoff of Business Insider has keyed in on the most important thing that’s currently being drowned in spin:
Facebook won’t let developers use Facebook Credits on the iPhone or iPad.
Obviously, in the native app, Facebook would have to give a 30% cut to Apple for any purchases made. But what’s important is how much of the app is actually HTML5-based. Facebook is crippling their own HTML5 work here. Fascinating.
Why?
Well, either Facebook doesn’t want to pay Apple the 30% cut of all in-app sales. Or Apple doesn’t want Facebook circumventing their own in-app system. Or both.
As BI notes, this has likely been a big reason for the hold up of the Facebook iPad app — which such looks to be the exact same one I found and leaked leaked months ago. The one that was feature-complete in May.
You won’t hear a peep on this stuff on the record from either side, but there’s a ton going on behind the scenes here.
The guy who went Jobs on Jobs.
(via pegobry)Presenting the cover of our special commemorative Steve Jobs issue. Dirk Barnett, Newsweek’s Creative Director, describes the choice:
We found this amazing photo in the Newsweek archives—famed fashion photographer Hiro photographed Steve Jobs for Newsweek in 1983. We felt this was a timeless ode to a business and cultural icon.
What do you think?
That is a dramatic photo — and one that hasn’t been seen everywhere already.
Bowties up in this piece.
You know something’s important when even thepursuitaesthetic adds a post source.
Beautiful simplicity is no accident.
(Source: thepursuitaesthetic)
iPhone 4S case // i+Case // KickStarter ~ http://bit.ly/p8yVXa
love it! looks much smoother…
Still not cool enough to fork out another $400 4 months after I just got the 4. Apple really should stop doing things like this. Cosumers are getting smarter everyday.
iPhone 4s
I already have voice recognition with dragon dictate, and I already have a sick camera app with Camera+. Outside of the processor, your boy isn’t impressed. At least offer different colors.
Shout out to:oliphillips
Today at noon (CST), Apple will make a long-awaited announcement from their campus in Cupertino, rumors swirling that it’s the iPhone 5 hardware and maybe a few other surprises.
rumored hardware pictured above
Rumor mill:
http://www.fastcompany.com/1781564/the-apple-pie-the-tastiest-rumors-about-the-iphone-5-and-more
07:00AM - Hawaii
10:00AM - Pacific
11:00AM - Mountain
12:00PM - Central
01:00PM - Eastern
06:00PM - London
07:00PM - Paris
09:00PM - Moscow
02:00AM - Tokyo (October 5th)
Shout out to:seanberger
Funny GUI design I made as a part of an iPhone5 concept
I did with my friend Gianluca Antonini
I enjoy this.
White Walls, Consumerism: When my friend Joanne McNeil asked me about my thoughts on the origins of whiteness as signifier of high-tech. I ignored any associations to traditional cultural meanings (death, life, good, bad, purity, what-have-you) and biology (teeth, rice, ivory) and instead challenged myself to look at technology as an historical artifact of modern science. It did not occur to me until after the English riots were disparaged as “shopping riots,” and just as I experienced the heady consumer-high from my first new cell phone purchase in over five years - a white iPhone 4 - to look at it Whiteness an artifact of consumerism.
What Joanne was asking me about was the exterior whiteness of consumer electronics - this is very different from the interior whiteness of control rooms and linen undershirts - it is more akin to the exterior whiteness of the earliest experiments in Modernist architecture and the white dresses worn by nurses. The whiteness of my new iPhone is not an expression of my personal aspirations - there are millions of other people with the exact same phone. The whiteness is an expression of a public aspiration. To borrow a term from Jean-François Lyotard the “narrative knowledge” that girds consumerism is not too different from the metanarratives that gird “scientific knowledge.”
While Republican candidates are more than happy to pander to a crowd that cheers the death of someone who can’t afford health insurance, but most Americans to not want to believe that their gain comes at someone else’s expense. The American dream which is the “master narrative” of consumerism was never a simple promise of personal progress; of “I get MINE, and to hell with you.” What fun would a jetpack be if you had the only one? It would be almost as worthless as owning the world’s only fax machine. If you are king it might be cool to own the only one of something, but in a consumer society you would look like a bigger jerk than a Segway owner. I didn’t buy an iPhone because no one has one. I bought one because everyone I know has one. That means I have lots of people to tell me what the best apps are and to share the features of the phone.
Americans might dream of having a good job that enables them to own a nice car and a charming house in a pleasant place, but an element of that dream is that they are not alone in that pleasure. That along with millions of others, they are enjoying luxuries that once only a few kings might have hoped for. The dream was never to exclude that wealth from the rest of the world, it was explicit that billions more people would someday soon enjoy the justice, stability, mobility, and material pleasures of modern life. Millions of Americans fought and died for that dream in the twentieth century. In the 21st they were convinced to fight an enemy that “hated their freedom.” It is not clear to me that they would have fought to keep their big cars and cheap fuel prices if that had been the justification that had been given.
It was clear this summer that the super-rich consumer elite have abandoned the “we” aspect of the American Dream. It is not at all clear that consumer culture can survive without it. No matter what wonder scientific progress is able to deliver, it is meaningless if it is attached to a dream that no one buys. Whatever else high-tech whiteness is, it would be a truly tragic thing to be nostalgic for.
Interesting concept. Anyone who is a fan of this blog knows my thoughts on the “American Scheme”
Shout out to:youmightfindyourself

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