Gene Steinberg worries that the Mac App Store isn’t serving the customer:

Are customers really missing out on good things by relying on the Mac App Store?

Who is the customer of the Mac App Store? Most likely, not you. Not entirely, anyway.

Mac App Store restrictions help to create a robust and safe market for curated platform software. They’re features, just as they are on the iOS App Store.

If you instead find these restrictions limiting, you’re a power user and can find software elsewhere. You know how to install this software and you’re capable of dealing with issues that might arise from doing so.

Few people handle technical complexity well. The lucky ones who can are a small minority sharing the platform with many more who cannot. You’d naturally like your utility software to also be available in the Mac App Store, but most people wouldn’t know what to do when things went awry. Utility developers naturally want to offer their software in the Mac App Store, but if that software would lead most people into the weeds it should be rightly stopped at the gate.

Imagine people who don’t change default settings, who rely on the Mac App Store for software. When you propose weakening the restrictions imposed by the Mac App Store, are you thinking of them, or yourself? If removing or weakening a restriction would cause these people grief, what are they supposed to do when they encounter a problem?

Apple introduced the Mac App Store for these people. If it turns out that power users can use the Mac App Store for some of their needs, then great. But those power users shouldn’t expect to use it for all of their needs.

Bloomberg reported today that Scoot Pte, a low-cost long-haul Singapore Airlines subsidiary, replaced their aircraft entertainment system with iPads to save fuel. According to the report, the old system weighed more than 2 tons and replacing it cut 7 percent off the weight of the plane.

Scoot’s Boeing Co. 777-200s have 400 seats, so the old system averaged more than 10 pounds per seat. The new iPads weigh a little less than 1.5 pounds, saving more than 8.5 pounds per seat.

Carrying one iPad per seat would save a combined total of more than 3400 pounds, but the savings is probably even higher because they’ll probably carry fewer iPads. Oh, I’m sorry, we’re all out.

A pretty good deal for the airline. They save fuel costs and charge passengers to use the iPads.

A few thoughts:

1. The old system must have been a clunker. More than 10 pounds per seat.

2. By striving to build the best tablet possible Apple ended up saving airline fuel costs. How beautiful is that?

3. Can you imagine ultrabooks being used for this?

Joel Schectman and Jessica E. Vascellaro explain in the Wall Street Journal how ad networks continue to claim they’re entitled to bypass your iPhone privacy:

No, it wouldn’t wreck the industry, but those of us willing to pay for apps would be happy to chip in for the wake, too.

O Reader Safari, delightfully clear
Your generous details so helpful and dear
The background, the margins, preserving my place
All subtle, all quiet, all rendered with grace

Those beautiful shadows at bottom and top
To highlight the start and to show where to stop
That stylish entrance, that elegant bow
Those motions so deft, indispensible now

Those tools deferential, how they fade from your view
Then return in a blink when beckoned anew
So tranquil, overlooked, underseen
Lend a rhythm and flair to your dignified mien

Those words, shown with serifs at legible size
So delightful and calming to rushed, tired eyes
So too are the banished, the clutter and noise
Pushed aside and away, leaving focus and joys

O Reader Safari, modest blade in the grass
Our thanks for your grace in this sprawling morass

From brian s hall, quoting a reader’s explanation of Apple’s sometimes mysterious ways:

The Germans use gemütlichkeit to describe that relaxed and cozy feeling you get in a wonderful room like a warm and convivial pub. Is there a word like that, but for recognizing quiet generosity?

There should be. It would be applied to Apple a lot.

Jason Aron, NewScientist:

John Gruber, Daring Fireball:

In a Mobile World Live interview with Sprint’s Chief Executive Officer Dan Hess [emphasis mine]:

Now, a 4G Android is likely to use more data on average because of the higher throughput, but perhaps part of the difference is that iOS users do buy more of their apps?

This chart from theunderstatement.com on Android and iPhone update histories is wonderful, but hard-to-read for many color-blind users because:

1. The colors are too similar. To me, On current major version and 3+ major versions behind are indistinguishable from each other, and both are confusingly similar to 2 major features behind.
2. The colors aren’t arranged logically. The range from newest to oldest isn’t supported by a corresponding range of brightness.

Better: use colors with different values (brightness) and, where appropriate, order the colors from lightest value to darkest as an additional aid to color-blind users. The latter will actually improve the chart for all users, not just the color-blind ones.

To make color legends easier to read

• make the color swatches large
• position the swatches close together and close to the referenced image
• eliminate any other non-swatch colors from the legend.

In this image taken from an cellular network 4G availability checker, my color-blind eyes see a map filled with a nearly uniform orange. The legend on the right doesn’t help much; the yellow box makes things worse.

Simply increasing the size and proximity of the color swatches helps a lot. In this revised version the difference between all three colors is much clearer:

Although it’s better to use more strongly contrasting colors as well as other visual cues to help color-blind users, just following this simple tip really helps.

As a nice bonus, minor changes like these made to help color-blind users often improve the design for everyone.

Good article in The Los Angeles Times about taking iPads into battle:

The Wall Street Journal used to be decent. Sometimes great, but usually decent. Now it publishes trumped-up sensationalism like this:

The original article at AppleInsider?

Snipes. Overpay. philosophical difference. took a shot. The WSJ article adds nothing to the original source, which it misreports as Apple Insider rather than AppleInsider, and omits the name of AppleInsider reporter Neil Hughes while printing the name of WSJ Senior Editor (!) Michael Hickins in large type.

More importantly, notice that where AppleInsider reported that Oppenheimer said that companies must invent their own technology “rather than take the ideas of others”, WSJ distorts this as “rather than buy it from the outside”, changing a statement about defending intellectual property into one about Not-Invented-Here.

Read both articles and consider which presents the news more professionally. The Journal’s decline has been clear for a while, but breathless sensationalism like this can still surprise.