“Hi, this is Steve. I really want my phone back.”

He wasn’t demanding. He was asking. And he was charming and he was funny. I was half-naked, just getting back from surfing, but I managed to keep my shit together.

The single best remembrance piece I’ve read on Jobs.

But even in this early state, Windows 8 is unambiguously a first-class tablet operating system.

Update: you can read the press release from the Build Windows event on Microsoft’s website.

Their recruiting is equally enigmatic. Colleagues of mine far more talented than I mentioned how they had sent in resumes, but never heard back … Internal documents include long target lists, where Valve employees add names of the best and brightest innovators in the industry, and if/when they will be available.

He must have taken hundreds of pictures by the time I got my camera back, but not very many were in focus. He obviously hadn’t worked that out yet. I wish I could have stayed longer as he probably would have taken a full family album.

We all play games for different reasons. Maybe it’s escapism for one person, exploration of a new medium for another. For Jake, it’s something else. It realizes a need. Throughout our conversation, Jake dropped the term “in real life” many times, underscoring the personal disconnect he feels between his ability to interact socially in a virtual environment through games and “in real life.”

Only 8.8% of music playback comes from Spotify’s servers. The rest comes from the peer-to-peer network (35.8%) or your local cache (55.4%).

Redkovka, Ukraine, bears little resemblance to the place it was 25 years ago. Its stores, its school, its factory, and its homes — all are gone, or dramatically changed, as a result of the 1986 nuclear accident at Chernobyl, about 22 miles away.

(via kottke.org)

Does The Times really think the mass audience is going to decide their $455/year is better spent on The Times rather than getting 20+ free articles/month from The Times plus The Wall Street Journal ($207/year) plus The Economist ($110/year) plus say The Daily ($39/year) for good measure, and still having ~$100 left over each year?

Puts things into perspective.

The UX matters: it’s the first thing potential customers see when a friend passes them their new phone in the pub. A well-designed UX is consistent, forgiving and rewarding; Nokia’s user experience was inconsistent, unforgiving and hostile. Nokia’s designers honed in with meticulous attention to the wrong detail. Apple’s iPhoneOS UI had some unusual features – smooth graphics that played transitions at 60-frames-per-second, thanks to a dedicated graphics chip. Instead of redesigning the entire UX, Nokia acquired expensive professional-grade video cameras to determine the animation speed, and having confirmed that yes, it was 60fps, tried to recreate the transitions.

Nokia is not adopting Microsoft’s current Windows Phone 7 platform – which means that there is no chance of any handsets running Microsoft’s software before the end of October. It is likely to be a lot later.

If they haven’t announced a release date, how can this be called a “delay”?

But knowing what not to do is the reason Newell is on top. As EA Chief Riccitiello says about why Newell succeeds: “I don’t know what would be the right expression . . . maniacally focused?”

If you go over to Nokia’s announcement where they announced a sweeping deal with Microsoft and read all the comments you’ll see that most of the comments are in total despair mode.

It’s like a bunch of Google employees are astroturfing the comments there. “I’m gonna buy Android” they all say. Many others say “how can Elop (Nokia’s CEO) bet on a failed platform?” Other blogs are calling this note “a suicide note.”

You all are nuts.

But back to three operating systems – that means more costs and confusion. If you thought that Nokia’s ‘execution’ was a problem before – just watch it do delays like a pro this year – like someone… who should I think of, someone who really knows how to deliver software on time? hmmm.. MICROSOFT !

This isn’t an “analysis” but a piece that is opinionated in every sense of the word. I’d be willing to bet that the first Windows Phone from Nokia will be released on schedule.

I will not be the first to say this, nor the last, but Nokia needs to kill off its OS platforms more quickly than that. Its now a journey into futility. Nobody believes in Nokia OS platforms anymore, they are the walking dead. Why develop them? Why maintain them?

First off, I’d like to redirect the author to presentation slides presented by Stephen Elop, clearly stating that Windows Phone will replace Symbian completely. I’d also like to highlight another Engadget piece stating that “Stephen Elop says that he expects Nokia to ramp up the transition this year and be ready to ship Windows Phone 7 devices in significant volume in 2012″.

If Nokia foresees selling Windows Phone devices in 2012, why would they not maintain Symbian until then? Maybe they should shut down all Symbian operations today and stop selling phones for the rest of the year. Additionally, no-one has said that Symbian and MeeGo will continue to be developed, only supported.

Does Nokia gain a superior OS out of Microsoft? No. Phone 7 won’t even be able to run all the features that current Nokia premium phones have. So right from the start, this means moving Nokia abilities down a notch.

Less features? I agree. The iPhone also has fewer features, and it turned out okay.

A series of books explaining why books no longer matter is a paradox that Chesterton would have found implausible, yet there they are, and they come in the typical flavors: the eulogistic, the alarmed, the sober, and the gleeful.

[via ma.tt]

• Windows Phone is, for Nokia, a completely new and unfamiliar operating system
• No more return on significant software investments, namely Symbian, Qt and MeeGo
• Software and hardware solutions will no longer both be developed “in house”
• The restructuring needed may put employees at risk of losing their jobs

The reactions are understandable: Nokia is seen as a domestic product, as are its software platforms Symbian and MeeGo. Switching to Windows Phone is perceived as an intrusion by foreigners, and it seems that most Finns are ignoring the advantages of an alliance with Microsoft because of this perception. It’s a shame, because there are many reasons why the announcement today may lead to a strong future for Nokia.

Firstly, Nokia can quickly come to market with new hardware models because — as an operating system — Windows Phone is a mature implementation that has already been used in commercial products. Nokia can focus on engineering great hardware and integrating its software with the new OS, and spend less time focusing on maintaining and improving its own OS initiatives.

Secondly, the potential size of Nokia’s developer community will most likely enjoy significant growth. Though switching to Windows Phone will inevitably alienate a large portion of the current community, the sheer amount of .NET/C#/Visual Basic developers is a fact that can’t be discounted. For most developers, using the Windows Phone SDK and its choice of programming languages is arguably far more palatable than C++ and Qt . The percentage of PCs running Windows has led to a vast reserve of developers expert in the very technologies and architecture model that Windows Phone favours.

The alliance entails drastic changes for Nokia. It’s a very bold move, a fact that I don’t think anyone disputes. But I also see it as both an encouraging and necessary one: the current software solutions and services developed at Nokia are the primary reason why the company has experienced stagnancy whilst its two main competitors continue marching forward.

Nokia gains software solutions and support from Microsoft; Microsoft gains consumer reach from Nokia. I see this as the encouraging start of a brighter future for the mobile phone giant.

Now that Steam is running on the PlayStation 3, the service may be added to other games as well as Portal 2, but Lombardi refuses to give any specific news. “We are hoping other titles will benefit from the Steamworks tools and services we’ve created for Portal 2 PS3, but we don’t have anything to announce today.”

Miyamoto has said that his main job at Nintendo is ningen kougaku—human engineering. He has been at the company since 1977 and has worked for no other. (He prizes Nintendo’s financial and creative support for his work: “There’s a big difference between the money you receive personally from the company and the money you can use in your job.”) He has never been the company’s (or his own) boss, but it is not unreasonable to imagine that Nintendo might not exist without him.