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Everybody knows that Amazon’s AWS is the major player in the cloud computing game, but did we stop to consider how big it actually is?
Amazon Is Crushing IBM, Microsoft, And Google In Cloud Computing, Says Report
For the last quarter of this year, Synergy estimates that Amazon grew cloud revenues by over $700 million and that makes Amazon bigger than all the other major players combined including Microsoft, IBM, Google and Salesforce.com … by 15%, Synergy finds.
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Even with a billion-dollar valuation, without a strong leader, a company is going to suffer. Will Fab.com be able to get back on track?
Demolition Man: why does Fab’s CEO keep building big companies that suddenly implode?
Traffic to Fab’s website and mobile apps peaked in November of 2012, according to ComScore, just before Goldberg announced the pivot away from flash sales. In the 10 months that followed unique visitors fell from 5,275,000 to around 1 million in total this September, a drop of roughly 75 percent. The decline in visitors has been mirrored by a slowdown in sales growth. When asked to comment on the sharp dip in traffic, Fab says that it doesn’t share internal numbers, but that the company is more profitable than ever. “That’s a little confusing,” jokes a source familiar with the company’s finances. “Maybe they mean less not profitable?”
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To me, search has always been one of Apple’s weak points. Even after taking that into account, it’s always been frustrating that mistyping one letter could mean that you would not find the app that you’re looking for. This is a small step in the right direction, and hopefully search improvements come to Apple Maps too.
Improved App Store Search Engine Now Corrects For Users’ “Fat Finger” Mistakes & Other Misspellings
Though misspellings may represent the long tail of App Store searches, correcting for these queries is an important feature for any search engine to offer, whether app search or otherwise. However, it’s clear that in search, as expected, Google has had the advantage here – it’s nearly 2014, and only now has Apple made this sort of basic feature live.
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Ars Technica reviews OS X Maverick after a month of use.
Responsive scrolling only works on apps that implemented it.
When Mavericks’ new responsive scrolling feature is working as designed, it draws sections of your window that aren’t yet on-screen so that they show up more quickly when you scroll down (or up). In apps that have implemented the feature (Tweetbot for Mac is one), scrolling is, in fact, pretty smooth. Unfortunately, the feature seems to have broken scrolling for other programs.
Multi-monitor is buggy.
Power button makes the computer sleep. This is rather disruptive especially when the Mac locks when it sleeps. Before Mavericks, the power button shut down the Mac and throws a shutdown dialog before it does so. Dismissing the dialog is a lot easier than having to log into the system.
In Mavericks, pushing that power button automatically puts the computer to sleep, no questions asked. You don’t need to push down on the button for any particular length of time, and there’s no dialog box to ask you what you wanted to do when you pushed the button (or if you meant to push it at all). And unlike some of our multi-monitor gripes, there’s no way to revert the button behavior back to its pre-Mavericks state.
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The Loop reports on Microsoft’s ad attacking the Google Chromebook.
This ad makes the case that the Chromebook is not a real laptop, that when it is not connected to the internet, it is “pretty much a brick.” I don’t own a Chromebook, and I’m not necessarily a Chromebook fan, but fair is fair. A “brick”? It took me all of 2 minutes reading reviews to dispel this myth.
Microsoft seems to think that attacking other brands’ products is the best way to promote its own products.
Apple Insider also looked at the Microsoft ad bashing the iPad Air.
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9to5Mac reports that Apple outsold other phones 3:1..
Kantar World Panel Comtech Japan is reporting that the iPhone 5s and 5c sales gave Apple a 76% share of Japan smartphone sales in October. This is good news for Apple given that the Japanese market is traditionally biased towards local brands.
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The Guardian reports that Google is bringing its Street View indoors.
Google has added 16 international airports and 59 train and subway stations to Street View, including a number of British locations.
They include Gatwick Airport and train stations in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester and Leeds, as well as a (nearly) full set of London mainline stations: Paddington, Victoria, King’s Cross, St. Pancras, Charing Cross, Waterloo, London Bridge, Cannon Street, Fenchurch Street and Liverpool Street.
It was never a matter of whether Google would do this, but simply when it would.
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Angela Ahrendts writes on her LinkedIn blog about the importance of a successful transition.
Because for me Burberry’s true success is measured not by financial growth or brand momentum, but by something much more human: one of the most connected, creative and compassionate cultures in the world today, steeped in common values and beliefs, and united around a shared vision.
This resonates strongly with the culture that Steve Jobs has cultivated in Apple.
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Business Insider with a chart to show the difference in monetisation between Android and iOS.
For every $1 of developer revenue per download generated on iOS, Android gets $0.19. No wonder developers tend to prefer launching on iOS first.