From Today’s conference call:

“For us, it’s about doing great products. And when I look at what is being sold in the netbook space today, I see cramped keyboards, terrible software, junky hardware, very small screens, and just not a consumer experience… that we would put the Mac brand on, quite frankly. And so it’s not a space, as it exists today, that we’re interested in, nor do we believe that customers in the long term would be interested in.”

http://diveintomark.org/archives/2009/04/21/fuck-the-foundries

Mark Pilgrim discusses the coming standard that would allow browsers to download fonts directly for display, and how this is upsetting creators and licensors of those fonts:

Seriously. Fuck them. They still think they’re in the business of shuffling little bits of metal around. You want to use a super-cool ultra-awesome totally-not-one-of-the-11-web-safe-fonts? Pick an open source font and get on with your life.

I know what you’re going to say. I can hear it in my head already. It sounds like the voice of the comic book guy from The Simpsons. You’re going to say, “Typography is by professionals, for professionals. Free fonts are worth less than you pay for them. They don’t have good hinting. They don’t come in different weights. They don’t have anything near complete Unicode coverage. They don’t, they don’t, they don’t…”

And you’re right. You’re absolutely, completely, totally, 100% right. “Your Fonts” are professionally designed, traditionally licensed, aggressively marketed, and bought by professional designers who know a professional typeface when they see it. “Our Fonts” are nothing more than toys, and I’m the guy showing up at the Philadelphia Orchestra auditions with a tin drum and a kazoo. “Ha ha, look at the freetard with his little toy fonts, that he wants to put on his little toy web page, where they can be seen by 2 billion people ha h… wait, what?”

Let me put it another way. Your Fonts are superior to Our Fonts in every conceivable way, except one:

WE CAN’T FUCKING USE THEM

Gruber:

They might as well name it “Windows 7: We Hold You in Contempt and Dare You, Fucking Dare You, to Try Something Else Edition”.

And more,

UPDATE: DF reader Michael Tofias, via email: “Worse yet for Microsoft, doesn’t this encourage the browser to be the OS?” Exactly. How is it in Microsoft’s interest to discourage users from using Windows-specific apps and instead use web apps?

There is a similar restriction on Vista Starter Edition, except that it was intended for second-world developing markets, and you won’t ever find one in the first world. With this now, Microsoft is actually going to try pushing this shit on their primary markets.

I was pretty happy with my original iPhone, and since AT&T’s 3G network doesn’t even cover near my area, I’ve held out on upgrading so far. But since everyone is convinced there will be a new iPhone to go with the 3.0 OS release this June, I thought it wise to sell my original iPhone while there was still some value in it, and switch to the 3G. Also, I desperately wanted GPS.

Briefly,

It’s faster. Everything is faster. Launching apps, Mail, Safari browsing, the Phone app — everything. It’s still a 412MHz CPU, but something is different. Network transfer over EDGE is somehow faster than the original iPhone over EDGE. And I dare say even WiFi speeds are faster. I don’t know how exactly or what’s changed, but everything — even syncing — is faster.

The screen is definitely warmer (more yellow tint), but it doesn’t bother nor please me one way or another. I appreciate the metal buttons and improved speaker. In fact, it’s more than twice as loud as the previous iPhone without any distortion. It’s actually feasible to just set the iPhone 3G in front of you playing music while driving, if you don’t mind mono. This is great especially for speakerphone, which I use often to check bank accounts while driving.

The audio jack is standard 3.5mm with none of that recessed bullshit. The way it should have been all along.

The GPS is no small upgrade. It turns Maps into a completely new app. It goes from being a reference tool to becoming a real, live, interactivity tool about you.

And the biggie for me is the case design. I’m a huge fan of the original iPhone’s anodized aluminum case. Sure it bothered me that the antenna section took up the lower quarter and that meant a physical break in material design, and it was so darn smooth that sometimes it was hard to grip, but it looked stellar and right at home with a MacBook Pro.

The new plastic black (most people have black) is definitely better feeling in your hand. It’s not as slippery, and the more tapered edges mean that the part that actually contacts your fingers is thinner, providing for a subtle illusion of being thinner — even though overall, the iPhone 3G is slightly thicker than it’s predecessor. And one solid back piece does — in that regard — look better than 3/4 metal and 1/4 plastic. For a device that is held so often, this is a good tradeoff over the old design. But I sure wish it felt exactly like the new one while looking exactly like the old one (minus the physical break).

This story on AppleInsider has some choice quotes:

Using the web is a “chore” on a BlackBerry but intuitive on an iPhone.

Kraft, meanwhile, emphasizes that the iPhone was brought in to support a “culture change” at the company and that many of those using iPhones are happier than they were before they switched. It pushes the company at large to use newer technology and has been cutting costs by letting iPhone owners get their own support rather than depend on the company alone for help. “Overall they provide better support than we can,” one person from the company’s IT management says.

And…

“We find the BlackBerry better for email and calendaring and the iPhone better for everything else,” he notes.