Maybe they should keep playing with Android. Who’s going to buy this thing?

Adam Brault presents a stellar argument for cutting down Twitter usage in this essay. Here’s an excerpt:

I used to believe that time was the most important thing I have, but I’ve come to believe differently. The single most valuable resource I have is uninterrupted thought.

I certainly understand Adam’s feelings. I’ve whittled down my “following” number from nearly 600 to around 420 in a conscious effort to be less distracted. Perhaps I need an even more drastic approach.

How could I not link to this? (For those of you still keeping track, Horace has now bitten his fingernails completely off.)

Asymco’s estimate for iPhones sold: 55.5 million.

Actual iPhones sold: 47.8 million.

Close, but no cigar. I expect Horace to write a follow-up article soon, explaining his thoughts about the discrepancy.

Benedict Evans crunches some numbers:

In Q4, Apple sold 75m iOS devices and 4.1m Macs. Most estimates of total PC (including Mac) sales in the same period were around 90m.

In other words, Apple is now (in peak quarters) selling as many computing devices as Windows. This trend is not going to change.

John Schwarz, Theoretical Physicist and co-founder of Superstring Theory, speaks out in support of marijuana legalisation:

It reminds me of the great divide that developed between the then-ruling Catholic Church and the European public over the order of the cosmos in the 17th century. In 1633, the Church sentenced Galileo Galilei to lifetime house arrest for claiming that the earth revolves around the Sun rather than the other way around…

There are a few other people of note on that list supporting legalisation, too.

Speaking of app icons, here’s an app I discovered recently which sports a beautiful one: Color Thief.

The premise of this image manipulation app is simple: take the colours from one image and apply them to another. Simple, beautiful and elegant, I find myself playing with Color Thief regularly. Recommended.

Louie Mantia writes passionately about iOS icons in this delicious article. He sums up thoughts I’ve had for a while, but have been unable to put into words:

I believe good app icons are most valuable for your customers, your everyday users, not first-time shoppers.

Make an icon valuable to someone who is looking for the app on their iPhone every single day. They’re your ideal customer.

Unfortunately for Ben Brooks, whilst some scanners are gone:

In total, there are 174 Rapiscan backscatter X-ray machines that will be pulled from airports and relocated, on top of the 76 that were removed last year.

More are coming to replace them:

It's not the end of naked pictures at airports, though. Three other companies, including L-3 Communications, sell millimeter-wave radio-based scanners to the TSA. Bloomberg is reporting that the TSA is purchasing additional millimeter-wave scanners to help make up for the loss of Rapiscan's backscatter machines.

This whole TSA thing doesn’t feel right to me.

Here’s another Ars piece, this time written by Sean Gallagher, talking about a new report suggesting Dell might be making some bold changes to turn the company around. It certainly needs it:

Dell has been moving gradually away from its consumer PC roots for the past five years. The company's desktop and mobile computer business has suffered in the global PC-buying slump of the last year. Its consumer segment has been losing money, while the enterprise business outside of PC sales accounts for a majority of Dell’s revenue. But the stock market has been punishing Dell as it has tried to shift focus. The company has lost 43 percent of its market capitalization over that time[.]

So, how’s Dell planning to fix these problems?

[R]elaunching Dell's desktop and mobile business around a brand-new product: a computing device the size of a thumb-drive that will sell for about $50.

What could possibly go wrong?

I think what’s interesting to take away from this story is what I said about the Surface just last week:

The surface, with its Apple-esque 30%+ margins, is a way for Microsoft to keep revenue and profit high, without manufacturers like Asus and Dell paying $50 a pop for a Windows license… Manufacturers who could easily switch to making hardware for Android — which lacks this hefty fee.

Chris Foresman at Ars is hopeful for its future:

As the standard begins to mature, will the technology begin to break out of its niche?

It's hard to say with absolute certainty, but it appears that the groundwork laid in 2012 may slowly start to pay off in 2013.

It’d be a nice change for Apple to be a successful early adopter in the field of fast I/O: FireWire never really made it mainstream. Thunderbolt is already beginning to appear on some PCs — perhaps Apple’s 2011 bet is starting to reap rewards.

It’s sort of presumed without much evidence that serif typefaces are easier on the eyes and more readable than sans-serifs. Turns out, that’s not necessarily the case. Kas Thomas explains:

It turns out that, as with so many of the things we "know" are right, the idea that serif typefaces are more readable than non-serif typefaces simply isn't supported by the evidence.

Fascinating.

This shocked me: I didn’t realise Symbian devices were still being sold. I used to own a Nokia N95 before my first iPhone (the 3GS) and I thought it was one of the last Symbian devices. Obviously not.

Even though these fourth quarter numbers might pale in comparison to Apple’s predicted 65 million iPhone sales, they were enough to make Nokia’s stock jump 16%.

I think Nokia’s biggest problem is the 70 million extremely low-end Series 40 phones they sold. They should produce smartphones so enticing that their low-end phones become undesirable.