Techmeme: Our Love Affair With the Tablet Is Over (Zal Bilimoria/Re/code)

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February 10, 2014, 9:35 AM

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Zal Bilimoria / Re/code:

Our Love Affair With the Tablet Is Over — Back in 2011, I was having an all-consuming love affair with tablets. At the time, I was the first-ever head of mobile at Netflix. I saw tablets in my sleep, running apps that would control homes, entertain billions and dutifully chug away at work.

More: Gotta Be Mobile and Forbes. Tweets: @om, @om, @benbajarin, @benbajarin, @benbajarin, @cdixon, @benbajarin, @davemcclure, @howardlindzon, @lukew, @thatmatsmith, @bubbam, @codinghorror, @carnage4life, @benbajarin and @pmarca

Arnold Kim / MacRumors:

‘Flappy Bird’ Removed from App Store by Developer — As promised, Dong Nguyen, the developer of Flappy Bird, has removed the popular game from the App Store. Flappy Bird has been the number one downloaded free app on Apple's App Store for almost a month. The game was generating $50,000/day in revenue from in-app ads.

Paul Thurrott / SuperSite for Windows:

Windows 8.1 Update 1 accommodates too many needs, proves design by committee never works — What the Heck is Happening to Windows? — Is it better to burn out than fade away? — When critics described Windows 8.1 as a step backwards, I disagreed: Responding to customer complaints is never wrong …

Tweets: @carnage4life

Peter Bright / Ars Technica:

Neither Microsoft, Nokia, nor anyone else should fork Android. It's unforkable. — As happens from time to time, the suggestion has been made that Microsoft cancel Windows Phone, and instead fork Android. It's not the first time this suggestion has been made. It's probably not the last, either.

More: Guardian, Tim Anderson, Guardian, IntoMobile, WinBeta, All New Musings and WMPoweruser

Tweets: @monkbent, @charlesarthur, @monkbent, @seyitaylor and @benedictevans

Vlad Savov / The Verge:

HTC breaks even in final months of 2013, but forecasts a losing start to new year — HTC's Q4 2013 financial numbers are out today and the company has suffered yet another decline in sales. Whereas the last quarter of 2012 returned NT$60 billion, the past year reached only NT$42.9 billion.

More: Reuters, VentureBeat, BGR, CNET, Digital Trends, Inquirer, TechCrunch, Tech in Asia, Bloomberg, Engadget, Android Beat, Lastest ITProPortal news, ZDNet, The Verge, Mashable, IntoMobile, Pocketnow and T3 News

Violet Blue / ZDNet:

Change your passwords: Comcast hushes, minimizes serious hack — Summary: Opinion: Comcast took a page from Snapchat's playbook to hush and downplay NullCrew FTS' successful hack on dozens of Comcast's servers — from an unpatched, easy-to-fix vulnerability dated December 2013 — which most likely exposed customer data.

More: DSLreports and Multichannel.com. Tweets: @virusbtn

Julia La Roche / Business Insider:

Carl Icahn Gives Up On Apple Buyback Plan — Billioniare investor Carl Icahn says that there's no reason to persist with Apple buyback proposal, according to new letter. — Icahn has amassed a huge stake in Apple. — He's also been suppotive of a stock buyback.

More: Shareholders Square Table and 9to5Mac

Tom Warren / The Verge:

Windows Phone 8.1 Notification Center revealed in leaked screenshots — Microsoft is currently preparing its first major update to Windows Phone 8. A highly requested Notification Center feature will be included with Windows Phone 8.1, allowing users to customize and control their app notifications.

More: Windows Phone Central, Lastest ITProPortal news, VentureBeat, LiveSino, SlashGear, Gearburn, Softpedia News, PhoneNews.com, T3 News, WMPoweruser, Pocket-lint, Shoutpedia, Digital Trends, WinBeta, BGR India and Pocketnow

Ellis Hamburger / The Verge:

Nicholas Felton, designer of Facebook's Timeline, releases Reporter app to privately track your life through simple surveys — Reporter for iPhone tracks your whole life, one quiz at a time — Chart wizard Nicholas Felton's new app lets anyone live the quantified life

More: Mokriya - Quora, Refinery29, Engadget and Re/code

Vernon Silver / Businessweek:

Unlocked iPhones Are Hard Currency in Brazil, Italy, Other Countries — I've been paying my bills with iPhones. Not with apps or on bank sites—I've been using the Apple (AAPL) hardware as currency. — It started by accident in December, during a business trip to New York.

More: iPhone, BGR and iMore

Tweets: @benbajarin and @monkbent

Nick Bilton / NYT Bits:

Entering the Era of Private and Semi-Anonymous Apps — Today's Web-enabled gadgets should come with a digital Miranda warning. “Anything you say or do online, from a status update to a selfie, can and will be used as evidence against you on the Internet.”

More: TechCrunch. Tweets: @om

Ellis Hamburger / The Verge:

Pacemaker and Spotify cue up the iPad's simplest DJ app — A slick interface and 20 million tracks turn the tables on Traktor and Djay — Jonas Norberg built two great products that nobody used. The first was the award-winning Pacemaker, a wonderfully nerdy beatmaking gadget that cost $850.

More: App Advice, iDownloadBlog.com, Wired.co.uk, Pocket-lint, Cult of Mac, MusicRadar, Engadget, Spotify Blog, MacRumors, Digital Spy and SocialTimes

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