John Gruber on the iPhone SE

Daring Fireball
Jason Tate

John Gruber, writing for Daring Fireball, reviews Appleʼs upcoming 4-inch iPhone SE.

For anyone with an iPhone 5S (or older) who has been holding out on an upgrade in the hopes of a new top-tier “small” iPhone, the iPhone SE is cause for celebration. If you are such a person, run, don’t walk, to buy one. You will be delighted.

If you’ve already upgraded to an iPhone 6 or 6S and have made peace with the trade-offs of a larger, heavier, less-grippy-because-of-the-round-edges form factor, the appeal is less clear. Me, I talk the talk about preferring the smaller form factor, but ultimately I’m a sucker for top-of-the-line CPU/GPU performance and camera quality.

If I knew that there would be top of the line updates to this sized phone each year, I think I’d go back to the smaller size, but without knowing for sure, it’s too hard to make that call.

Tom DeLonge Interviewed at GQ

Tom DeLonge
Jason Tate

Tom DeLonge of Angels and Airwaves was recently interviewed over at GQ about his upcoming book, Sekret Machines:

Oh my god, yeah. Oh my god. Oh yeah. There are a handful of moments when I remember pulling my truck over to the side of a very busy road when my phone pinged because I knew what was coming. As I was reading it, my hand would be shaking and my heart would be beating like a just ran a mile. Then I’d race over to somebody else’s house and bang on their door at 10 at night and say “You’ve got to come out here. I can’t tell you this over the phone.” It’s just incredible, incredible material. I’ve always been interested in this subject, but once people know that the UFO phenomenon is real and what it’s actually doing and what we’re doing, I think people are going to become as obsessed over it as I’ve been.

TIDAL Turns One, Jay Z Says Old Owner Inflated Subscriber Numbers

Jason Tate

Adam Ewing, writing for Bloomberg, reports on TIDAL’s claim that the previous owners of the service inflated the subscriber numbers.

“It became clear after taking control of Tidal and conducting our own audit that the total number of subscribers was actually well below the 540,000 reported to us by the prior owners,” Tidal said in an e-mailed statement. “As a result, we have now served legal notice to parties involved in the sale.”