Okay, it's the last Monday of January and my drafts folder has like six half-finished posts in it that never turned into anything, because every time I sat down to write one, something bigger happened that week and buried it. So instead of letting all these little things rot in there forever, here's a grab bag. Nothing below deserves 800 words on its own but all of it's worth a paragraph.
Ultrabooks, ultrabooks, ultrabooks
CES was two and a half weeks ago now and I'm still getting press emails with "ultrabook" in the subject line. If you missed it: this is Intel's term for thin-and-light laptops that are obviously, unashamedly responding to the MacBook Air, and at CES it felt like every single PC maker had one on a pedestal. Acer, Asus, Lenovo, Toshiba, all of them. Intel's apparently throwing real marketing money behind pushing the category, which tells you they're worried about people just buying Airs instead.
I'll believe it when I've actually used one instead of just read a spec sheet. Thin and light and expensive is not a new idea, we called those "the ones nobody could afford" for about a decade. Ask me again in six months.
The bigger CES story to me, honestly, wasn't a product at all. Microsoft did their keynote and then announced they're done doing the big CES keynote going forward. After something like fifteen years of Gates or Ballmer or whoever opening the show, that's just over. Feels like the end of something, even if I couldn't tell you exactly what.
Apple's numbers are kind of absurd
Apple reported earnings last Tuesday and the iPhone number is the kind of thing you have to read twice. Something like 37 million iPhones sold in the quarter. That's not "a good quarter," that's a number that barely parses as a consumer electronics figure, that's more like a country's population. Record profit too, obviously. I keep thinking about the fact that Steve Jobs died less than four months ago and the company just posted the best quarter it's ever had, which is either a huge credit to how the place was built or just really unfortunate timing for the "does Apple fall apart without him" narrative. Probably both.
the Megaupload fallout keeps going
I wrote about the Megaupload shutdown right when it happened, so I won't rehash the whole Kim Dotcom raid thing again, but the aftermath has been its own little saga. Anonymous hit the DOJ, the FBI, MPAA, RIAA and Universal Music's sites with DDoS attacks basically within hours of the takedown, which, whatever you think of the group, is a genuinely fast turnaround for a coordinated internet mob. Most of those sites were back up quick. It's mostly symbolic at this point but it's a pretty clear signal of how much anger was sitting right under the surface after the SOPA fight the week before. Two huge internet-politics stories inside of five days is a lot even for a slow month.
Carrier IQ still just... sitting there
Remember Carrier IQ? The whole "there's software on your phone silently logging keystrokes" scandal from back in November? It hasn't gone away, it's just stopped being loud. No real resolution, no "here's exactly what data left your phone and where it went" answer that I've seen. It's the kind of story that's genuinely important and also exactly the kind of story the news cycle doesn't have patience for once there's no new outrage beat to hit each week. I still think about it every time my phone does something laggy for no reason.
one small complaint
Completely unrelated to any of the above: my Kindle Fire's battery indicator lied to me on Saturday. Said 30% at like 9pm, dead by 9:40. Not a huge deal in the scheme of things, I just find it funny that we can put 37 million iPhones in people's pockets in three months but a battery percentage on a $199 tablet still can't tell the truth.
That's the pile. Back to normal-length posts once something actually happens that deserves one.