John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin ponder the upcoming Apple event, assess picayune physical details of the iPhone 5 and iPod touch, compare the newly announced pricing for the Microsoft Surface to its possible competitors, and discuss John's approach to getting value from Twitter.

Links for this episode:

• Pentagon Paradox: The Development of the F-18 Hornet, by James P. Stevenson
  
• Hypercritical #73: 22 Degrees
  
• Daniel Siders on sending a POST for each follower in Tent
  
• October 23 Apple event confirmed: “We’ve got a little more to show you” - Ars Technica
  
• McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle - Wikipedia
  
• iOS portfolio price distribution - asymco
  
• Thoughts on the Display, Price, and Name of the Impending Smaller iPad - Daring Fireball
  
• iPad (3rd generation) - Wikipedia
  
• Microsoft Surface will start at $499
  
• Just one example of a Totoro-themes iPad case on Etsy
  
• The Brief, by Richard Dunlop-Walters
  

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John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin relax on a Sunday afternoon and chat about Apple's taste for brute force solutions, the foibles of decentralized systems like Tent and email, and The Magazine, Marco Arment's new Newsstand publication.

Links for this episode:

• The Magazine
  
• The Magazine - Foreword
  
• Appnetizens Analytics: Posts Per Hour History - appnetizens.com
  
• Google Realtime Search Goes Offline - Time.com
  
• The Secret of Google's Book Scanning Machine Revealed - NPR.org
  
• The Feature
  
• The Brief
  
• The Brief Explained - Marco.org
  
• Marco's tweet about his "LOL" FAQ answer
  
• Marco's tweet about the The Magazine's App Store ranking on launch
  
• Newsstand - Wikipedia
  
• Lazy Sunday - NBC.com
  
• The Apple Strategy Tax - Ars Technica
  

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John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin discuss the latest events in the burgeoning App.net community, then explore the competing(?) Tent.io protocol for decentralized real-time social networking.

Links for this episode:

• Real-time computing - Wikipedia
  
• Paying Developers is A Bad Idea - Charlie Kindel
  
• Ball bearing - Wikipedia
  
• Announcing the App.net Developer Incentive Program - App.net
  
• Say Hello to Netbot - Tapbots Blog
  
• Netbot - Tapbots.com
  
• Protocols don't mean much - Dave Winer
  
• Tent - the decentralized social web
  
• Tent.is (alpha) - Simple Tent Hosting
  
• John's tent.io account - siracusa.tent.is
  
• As of 2011, what is the average number of followers for a Twitter user? - Quora
  
• Is a federated Twitter even possible? - Dan Wineman
  
• A response to Brennan Novak - Dalton Caldwell
  
• Hypercritical #37: A Story of Triumph
  
• Wedge - A Mac client for App.net
  

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John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin follow up on Apple's slippery little devices and Apple's mapping woes, then discuss the new iPod touch and iPod nano. John's hypothetical Ferrari is briefly mentioned.

Links for this episode:

• iPod touch - Apple.com
  
• iPod nano - Apple.com
  
• A letter from Tim Cook on Maps - Apple.com
  
• Lightning connector, disassembled - iFixit.com
  
• iPhone 5 Teardown, connector portion - iFixit.com
  
• Acer AZ3731-UR21P, with PS/2 ports - Amazon.com
  
• Close-up picture of those Acer PS/2 ports
  
• iPhone 5 wall charger vs. earlier model
  
• How Google Builds Its Maps—and What It Means for the Future of Everything - The Atlantic
  
• Merlin's Tweet: "You’re dead to me, Dan. DEAD."
  
• Merlin's Tweet: "He USED to have a web site…"
  
• Speaking for Yourself - Merlin Mann
  
• PC System Design Guide - Wikipedia
  

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John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin discuss the new iPhone 5: its physical design, the case for cases, the new lightning connector, and Apple's trouble with maps. Let the iPhone 6 speculation begin?

Links for this episode:

• iPhone 5 - Apple.com
  
• The Amazing iOS 6 Maps
  
• The Incomparable #108: Journey: Then We Touched, Then We Sang
  
• iPhone 5 deconstructed: packed with power efficient parts - Ars Technica
  
• Lightning connector: a follow-up - brockerhoff.net
  
• Lightning connector - brockerhoff.net
  
• The Impromptu
  
• Black iPhone 5 Anodized Aluminum Susceptible to Scratching? - Mac Rumors
  
• McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 Hornet - Wikipedia
  
• McDonnell Douglas F-15E Strike Eagle - Wikipedia
  
• On the rumor that Google has submitted an iOS 6 Maps app and Apple is sitting on it
  

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John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin discuss all the things that went wrong during John's Mountain Lion ebook publishing experience. There's more than enough blame to go around. Please note that this episode was recorded before the September 12th Apple event.

Links for this episode:

• OS X Battery Life Analysis from Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion - The Mac Observer
  
• Apple MagSafe Airline Adapter - Apple Store (U.S.)
  
• Apple's battery guide for laptops - Apple.com
  
• Apple's battery guide for iPad - Apple.com
  
• Apple's battery guide for iPhone - Apple.com
  
• Apple's battery guide for iPod - Apple.com
  
• About My Mountain Lion Review - John Siracusa
  
• Mobipocket - Wikipedia
  
• Amazon Kindle - Wikipedia
  
• EPUB - Wikipedia
  
• Kindle Format 8 - Wikipedia
  
• KindleGen
  
• Kindle Previewer
  
• EPUB on the Threepress Consulting blog
  
• Pricing for Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing
  
• It's a Unix system - YouTube
  

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John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin discuss Amazon's new Kindle and Kindle Fire products. Is Amazon Apple's most dangerous competitor, or are the two companies not really in competition at all? Who is Amazon's ideal customer? Finally, John and Dan make their predictions for next week's Apple press event.

Links for this episode:

• Amazon shows off Kindle Fire HD with 4G LTE for $499, WiFi for $299 - Ars Technica
  
• Kindle Fire’s 4G package offers 250MB of data a month for $50 a year - Ars Technica
  
• Amazon’s new $119 Kindle Paperwhite e-reader comes with front-lit screen - Ars Technica
  
• Kindle Fire HD 8.9" 4G - Amazon.com
  
• Kindle Fire HD 8.9" - Amazon.com
  
• Kindle Fire HD - Amazon.com
  
• Kindle Fire - Amazon.com
  
• Kindle Paperwhite - Amazon.com
  
• Kindle - Amazon.com
  
• How to Store Batteries - Battery University
  
• How to Prolong Lithium-based Batteries - Battery University
  
• Amazon FreeTime Gives Parents More Control Over What Kids Watch
  
• iOS Version History Chart
  
• Volume of the iPhone 4S vs. the (rumored) iPhone 5 - iamconcise.com
  
• Live Updates From Amazon's Press Event - NYTimes.com
  
• IMDb: Internet Movie Database - Wikipedia
  

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John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin discuss the Apple v. Samsung court case, the near-comprehensive rumors and leaks about the next iPhone, the possible internals of the rumored iPad mini, and which company we'd like to buy Twitter, if it were actually for sale.

Links for this episode:

• Predicting the “iPad Mini” internals - Marco.org
  
• More new iPhone parts, A6 processor, more new 9-pin cables - 9to5Mac
  
• Preparing for the iPhone Next: Rumors Analyzed - AnandTech
  
• Apple v. Samsung verdict is in: $1 billion loss for Samsung - Ars Technica
  
• Hypercritical #67: A Pill That Helps with Whatever
  
• Hypercritical #68: Patent Hands
  
• Hypercritical #69: Sport of Kings
  
• Thunderbolt Lite - Richard Stelling
  
• Against Intellectual Monopoly, by Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine
  
• OS X icons for generic PC hardware in John's Leopard review - Ars Technica
  
• Why Thunderbolt Won't Come to the iPhone Anytime Soon - AnandTech
  
• New Part Leaks Include Taller iPod Touch Front Panel, 'iPhone 5' Cameras - Mac Rumors
  
• Rat king (folklore) - Wikipedia
  
• What Is the Open Web and Why Is It Important? - Coding In Paradise
  
• MacBook Pro Mountain Lion Battery Life: 10.7 vs 10.8 vs 10.8.1 -The Mac Observer
  

Shopify (get 3 months free), Squarespace (10% off with code DANSENTME8), and Textastic.

John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin finally complete their discussion of John's Mountain Lion review. Topics include power management, UI simplification, automatic termination, Facebook integration, and plagiarizing from yourself.

Links for this episode:

• OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion: the Ars Technica review
  
• Secrets, the OS X hidden feature database and preference pane - secrets.blacktree.com
  
• Github OS X hidden feature project - mathiasbynens/dotfiles
  
• Google's reverse engineering of Mountain Lion's overlay progress bar API
  
• Mountain Lion OS X 10.8.1 Improves Battery Life Somewhat - Mac Rumors
  
• Google Chrome updater technology - dev.chromium.org
  

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John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin discuss the latest round of Twitter API changes that further marginalize third-party "traditional" Twitter client applications, with the inevitable follow up about App.Net, the nascent Twitter-like service that takes money directly from its users, rather than selling access to its users to advertisers.

Links for this episode:

• Changes coming in Version 1.1 of the Twitter API - dev.twitter.com
  
• Display Guidelines - dev.twitter.com
  
• Delivering a consistent Twitter experience - dev.twitter.com
  
• Twitter hands down new, strict rules for third-party developers - Macworld
  
• The Princess Bride (1987) - Memorable quotes
  
• siracusa on App.net
  
• dan on App.net
  
• jkottke's "Twitter is Vader" tweet
  

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