Boot up: BlackBerry Passport!, Facebook mood maker, Fire Phone sales

The Incredible Hulk: don’t use the Facebook Mood Manipulator on him.

A burst of 9 links for you to chew over, as picked by the Technology team

Jan Dawson:

Perhaps the most cheering element of the support both platforms have received from major manufacturers is that so many of them seem to be planning to support both, even in the relatively short term. Given that the biggest objection from many users to the whole concept of a Google- or Apple-powered in-car system is that they don't want to have to choose their car purchasing options limited by their choice of smartphone, this is a welcome trend. The best outcome for consumers would be in-car systems that either come with both platforms pre-loaded, or with the ability to activate either at any time. It seems that Volvo, Honda and Hyundai may be moving in this direction already, which again should be a cause for celebration.

Not sure there's much celebration at Microsoft's offices.

This is not your traditional BlackBerry. It's unlike anything you've ever held and an entirely new form factor. With this device, BlackBerry has created its own niche market. You won't find any university students using this. Don't expect the passport to be your go-to for selfies, or your music player at the gym. The much-loved Q10 was and still is a phenomenal device. It has now grown up and you are in for a treat.

The Passport is a completely different feel when you pick it up. It's not the classic design, not at this size. For a second it felt like I was picking up a sexy new twist to the original Gameboy and that's a compliment. The keyboard has a different feeling too. It's too wide for one hand. The keys are smoother than anything before. They're almost a tad slippery. I've been told that they have been improved upon since this generation of prototype. The backside had a felt-like feeling to it. Not like the Q10, but more like the Z10 and was easy to grip. With a phone this size and weight, the grippiness goes a long way.

…I can say now that it's a strong device that makes you feel important, powerful, productive and ready to take on the world.

A remarkable-looking phone. Though it probably won't persuade people to switch to BlackBerry, it could well persuade current owners to stay. (Thanks @ClarkeViper for the link.)

Erik Frieberg is VP of marketing, end-user computing, at VMWare (which makes virtualisation products):

Perhaps the biggest takeaway from the results is that Windows is no longer the platform of choice in the enterprise with users overwhelmingly preferring Macs. User preference is the top reason given by IT administrators as to why their organization supports Macs with 73% of IT administrators identifying it as the main driver.

As a result, it should come as no surprise that the study found that 66% of businesses are already using Macs in the workplace today. But as we all know, end-users will work around corporate IT if they don't get their way but the study found that a large majority of companies – more than 70% – officially support Macs as a corporate endpoint.

Sample of 376 IT professionals, so potential for plenty of margin for error. The contrasting view of the IT administrators probably isn't a surprise.

Russell Ivanovic (of app developer Shifty Jelly) liked Google I/O. But he's not so keen on Android's permissions model - such as this set for the Brightest Flashlight app:

Wait what? This app wants to write permission to my SD Card, it wants to install shortcuts, access my location, get the ID of my phone and access the network? I mean I know it's the brightest but all that seems a bit excessive.

Android fans will no doubt tell me that this is great, I've been saved from this horrible app that is trying to take advantage of me! That's all well and good, but what happens when a must have app (like Facebook or Twitter) comes along that you really want to use but there are one or two permissions you don't want to give it? On iOS, annoying popups aside, I can use Facebook but completely turn off its ability to access my location. On Android? Nope.

Does anyone testing it know if this is any different in Android L? Judging by the "important API changes", it isn't, but it would be useful to clarify.

Surprised? Amazon's 3D-ish smartphone, the Amazon Fire Phone isn't doing so hot in the sales department.

While we don't have cold hard numbers to go on here, we can see that the Fire Phone is number 68 on Amazon's Best Sellers in Electronics list, and that's just the 32GB version. The 64GB doesn't even make it on the list. Yikes.

Not that surprising for a product launched in mid-year, no. The test will come at Christmas - and also if (when?) Amazon launches cheaper models.

Swrve provides mobile app marketing:

Our latest analysis (details of the methodology are below) found that almost one in five in-app purchases on Android smart devices are in fact fraudulent transactions delivering no revenue to the app developer. A full 19% of all purchases are fraudulent, which both impacts total revenue, but perhaps more importantly can lead to poor decision-making in data-driven organizations unable to filter out the counterfeit "noise." When running in-app marketing campaigns or A/B testing user experience, revenue numbers reported may be wildly inaccurate and thus suggest ROI is delivered when it may not be the case. Which as you can imagine is something of a problem.

More anecdotally, we've seen instances in which for limited time periods, up to 90% of all revenue events by value are fraudulent – a situation in which it becomes almost impossible to gather clean revenue data in most analytics and marketing platforms.

19% seems like a lot. It doesn't give a figure for iOS.

Tero Kuittinen:

The latest Kantar Worldpanel numbers for smartphone market share may not be surprising, but they are grim indeed for Microsoft. In the heart of the Windows empire in the United States, Windows Phone's market share dropped from 4.7% to 3.6% between May 2013 and May 2014. In Germany, the decline was from 6.2% to 5.9%. In Brazil, the share remained flat at 5.5%. In China, Windows Phone saw a collapse from 3% to o.6%.

This may seem like just another spring, a season among others. But look closer — we are in fact witnessing the final hope for any meaningful future for Windows Phone being snuffed out.

Windows Phone didn't lead the iPhone in any of the markets that Kantar reported in the three months to the end of May - even including Italy, where it has briefly in the past. While it might be gaining new users with every sale, it's hard to see it ever becoming part of a triumvirate - as Kuittinen goes on to point out, it's being slaughtered by cheap Android phones in developing countries too.

Facebook Mood Manipulator is a browser extension that lets you choose how you want to feel and filters your Facebook Feed accordingly.

Options: positive, emotional, aggressive, open.

Des Traynor's simple-yet-excellent guide to why actually, you don't want to put all those features in. All are good, though this one might have the most resonance for most users:

"But we can just make it optional."

This leads to death by preferences. Making features optional hides the complexity from the default screens in the interface, but it still surfaces everywhere else. The visible cost of this is a messy interface with lots of conditional design and heaps of configuration. The hidden cost is that every optional feature weakens your product definition. You become "a time tracker that can also send invoices and, sorta, do payment reconciliation, but not reporting, yet, I think, I don't know."

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