LinkedIn boss hands out iPad Minis to all 3,500 employees

By Trevor Mogg February 14, 2013

The good times are evidently rolling for LinkedIn – chief executive Jeff Weiner has just handed out free iPad Minis to its 3,500 full-time workers.

The news came via a tweet from Darain Faraz, a communications manager at LinkedIn’s UK base. “That awesome moment when your CEO dishes out iPad minis to EVERY employee,” Faraz wrote.

A spokesperson for LinkedIn confirmed the boss’s generous gesture, stating that the social networking site for professionals wanted to “acknowledge the hard work and accomplishments of all of our employees in 2012.”

The spokesperson added, “During today’s biweekly All Hands meeting, we surprised our employees with iPad Minis as a small gesture of the company’s gratitude for their contributions.”

The workers reportedly received the 32GB model, sold by Apple for $429. Unless LinkedIn did some kind of deal with the Cupertino company, it will have forked out somewhere in the region of $1.5 million for the mass of Minis. And here they are:

Things have been going rather well for the company just lately. Last week it reported better than expected financial figures for the fourth quarter, which included revenue of nearly $304 million and net income of $11.5 million, while last month it announced it had picked up more than 100 million new users in the last 22 months, taking its user base over the 200 million mark.

The company said recently it’s been picking up an average of 172,800 new users every day, with professionals across more than 200 countries now using the platform to connect with one another. Most LinkedIn members are located in the US (74 million), while the fastest growing countries for the site include Turkey, Colombia and Indonesia.

[via Business Insider]

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Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…

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When the new iPad Mini 6 launched, users noticed a "jelly scrolling" effect on the tablet. Jelly scrolling occurs when one half of the display refreshes slower than the other half, creating a staggered scrolling effect. Here's a video demonstrating the jelly scrolling effect on the iPad Mini 6.
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If you're wondering whether your display shows a jelly effect, here's a free online test to check it.
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In response to the complaints of jelly scrolling, Apple said this is normal behavior for LCD screens. "Because these screens do refresh line by line, there is a tiny delay between when the lines at the top of the screen and lines at the bottom are refreshed. This can cause uneven scrolling issues like the ones observed on the iPad," a report on Ars Technica quotes Apple as saying.
Indeed, many devices show such staggered scrolling effects, but they're not always this noticeable.
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So, the question arises: Is Apple right?
Could it be a defect?
iPad Pro 2020 Andy Boxall/Digital Trends
We asked tech and display experts with experience using Apple devices to find out. Here's what they have to say:
"The iPad Mini has a 60Hz refresh rate, meaning the lines of code are refreshed 60 times per second, fast enough where the average person typically will see it as a solid image without lag or flickering," said David Lynch of Payette Forward, a website dedicated to diagnosing and solving issues with Apple products. "The lines are supposed to move together as they are being refreshed. The fact that they aren't, and that lots of people are noticing a "jelly scroll" effect, is indicative of an issue."
Some users speculated there might be an issue with the hardware or software of the iPad Mini. Lynch believes it can't be a processor-related problem, but may be an issue with coding. "A lot of processor power goes into scrolling, and the iPad Mini has more than enough processing power to support smooth scrolling," he said in an email interview. "If there's an issue with the code, Apple could correct it and theoretically fix the problem."
He also suggests a hardware problem as another possibility. "Apple will not admit they shipped a product with a defect unless they absolutely have to, but it is entirely possible the 'jelly scroll' effect is the result of a design flaw, and iFixIt's teardown suggests that is a very real possibility," he said.
Apple rarely acknowledges defects, often only fixing the problem later down the line with an adjustment to a future model or expanding warranty service options. One of the notable examples of this was with the iPhone 4, which notably suffered from the "Antennagate" defect that degraded signal quality. Apple's response to consumers was that they were "holding it wrong." The most Apple did for the issue was eventually provide free bumper cases to owners, though it also had to settle a class-action lawsuit for a princely $15 per customer.
Don't expect anything similar for jelly scrolling. It's far more subjective, and to some extent, it is a genuinely common occurrence, so it'll be much harder to prove if it does end up in court as some customers are planning.
Will you notice it?