Monthly Archives: June 2010

Le Monde’s escape velocity

June 27, 2010 – 4:17 pm

TweetIn rocket scientist parlance, escape velocity is the speed needed to break free from Earth’s gravitational field. Last Friday, by an overwhelming majority, Le Monde’s staff voted to escape the black hole of French politics — or, at least, to give their paper the  best chance to do so. Disassembling the utterly complex chain of [...]

Edited by Frédéric Filloux | Posted in newspapers | Tagged | Comments (7)

Intel’s bold bet against ARM: visionary or myopic?

June 27, 2010 – 3:50 pm

TweetToday, Intel’s x86 architecture reigns supreme on PCs (and millions of servers, such as Google’s, that use the PC organ bank). Anywhere else, the ARM processors have won; they’re in billions of devices, regular cell phones, smartphones, entertainment devices, navigation systems and legions of other embedded applications. Understandably, perhaps, Intel didn’t want to play in [...]

Edited by Jean-Louis Gassée | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (21)

Le Monde on The Brink

June 20, 2010 – 11:19 pm

TweetWithin two weeks, the French newspaper Le Monde will run out of cash. By this Monday at noon, candidates to the takeover of the most prestigious French daily will have disclosed their offers. By June 28, the staff will vote and make the final decision for the fate of the 66 years-old paper. More importantly, [...]

Edited by Frédéric Filloux | Posted in journalism, newspapers | Tagged | Comments (49)

Science Fiction: Nokia goes Android

June 20, 2010 – 11:17 pm

TweetOPK, that is Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, Nokia’s CEO calls his new head of mobile devices, Anssi Vanjoki in his office, hidden inside the company’s research center at 995 Page Mill Road, in Palo Alto, California. On his desk, three devices: a Nokia N900, a Motorola Droid and an iPhone. ‘Anssi, we’re hosed. I assumed the dumb [...]

Edited by Jean-Louis Gassée | Posted in hardware | Comments (121)

iPad Media Apps: can do better

June 13, 2010 – 9:01 pm

TweetIt’s time for a first assessment of a few iPad media applications. To sum up: a) most are disappointing;  b) no need to worry. Instead of subjectively pointing fingers at hits and misses, let’s rise to a bird’s eye view and see if we can understand why some apps work and why others don’t. Then [...]

Edited by Frédéric Filloux | Posted in mobile internet | Tagged | Comments (25)

Thus spake Steve Jobs: The PC isn’t dead yet

June 13, 2010 – 8:59 pm

TweetDaniel Lyons, the Newsweek tech writer notorious for his Fake Steve Jobs blog, penned an epistolary piece last week (R.I.P., Macintosh) in which he asks and answers the question: “Is Apple ignoring its signature line of computers and laptops? Yup.” The columnist claims that with the iPhone and the iPad as the Dear Leader’s new [...]

Edited by Jean-Louis Gassée | Posted in hardware | Tagged | Comments (22)

Mediocrity is king

June 6, 2010 – 9:37 pm

TweetLast week, the Huffington Post reached a new apex. Viewed from France, where ads are localized, its home page carried a remarkably tasteful ad: a farting application for the iPhone (see below). As prudery still rules in American media, you’ll notice that the farter’s exhaust aperture has been blurred. Fine. A quick précis: France is [...]

Edited by Frédéric Filloux | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (34)

Jobs, Ballmer, and Zuckerberg: Three Fixated Leaders at D8

June 6, 2010 – 9:36 pm

Tweetby Jean-Louis Gassée The eighth installment of the Wall Street Journal’s annual D: All Things Digital conference was held last week outside Los Angeles, your author in attendance. You’ll find full coverage of the proceedings here, and the speakers list here; it was an impressive roster, du beau linge, as we say in France. Staged [...]

Edited by Jean-Louis Gassée | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (14)