The Daring Fireball Linked List

Sunday, 19 May 2013

All Things D: Yahoo Board Approves $1.1 Billion Acquisition of Tumblr ★

Kara Swisher:

As part of the deal, Tumblr CEO David Karp — who got a windfall of cash from the deal — will stay at Yahoo for four years at least and retain much control over the service, much in the same way Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom does at Facebook. But, as there, Yahoo will undergird Tumblr’s nascent advertising business with its large and established infrastructure.

If they treat Tumblr the way Facebook has (so far) treated Instagram, I think this will work out well.

Saturday, 18 May 2013

EA Sports Developer Calls Wii U ‘Crap’ and Nintendo ‘Walking Dead’ ★: Owen Good, Kotaku:

At the end of a week in which Electronic Arts confirmed it wasn’t developing a thing for the Wii U, one of the software engineers in EA Sports’ Canada studio, in a series of since-deleted tweets, disparaged the console as “crap” and suggested Nintendo should give up on hardware altogether.
Bloomberg’s Lazy Apple Bias ★: Starting to get silly at this point.

Friday, 17 May 2013

‘Blinking or Winking, as They Relieved Themselves’ ★: Nick Bilton on the pervasiveness of Google Glass at I/O.
Everything Apple Needs to Introduce at WWDC to Appease the Internet ★: Justin Williams:

With WWDC just a few weeks away, I thought it’d be beneficial to the Internet at large to compile a working list of everything that is expected of Apple during their Keynote and subsequent “State of the Union” addresses in order to appease the Internet. Failure to introduce each and every one of these features and updates will result in another stock price plummet, calls for Tim Cook’s ouster and an infinite amount of comments on tech blogs decrying that Android is superior to Apple’s iOS.
Google Hangouts Drops Support for XMPP ★: Open always wins.

Thursday, 16 May 2013

Jeffrey Zablotny on Apple’s ‘Photos Every Day’ TV Spot ★

Jeffrey Zablotny:

This is a spot by TBWA/Chiat/Day for Apple, called ‘Photos Every Day’. The craft is fantastic, and there’s some subtle, unusual attention to detail in it.

The more I see it, the more I like this commercial.

Google Plus Still Looks Like Facebook ★

James Russell:

As I posted a couple of days ago: Everything Is a Remix — so I have absolutely no problem with these two platforms sharing ideas and inspiration… but let’s not pretend one has struck off in a bold new direction.

(Via Om Malik, who sees non-cosmetic differences.)

Tim Cook Doing Interviews in Advance of Congressional Hearing ★

Tim Cook, in an interview with Politico:

He also defended his company’s conduct. “I can tell you unequivocally Apple does not funnel its domestic profits overseas. We don’t do that. We pay taxes on all the products we sell in the U.S., and we pay every dollar that we owe. And so I’d like to be really clear on that,” Cook said.

And to The Washington Post:

“If you look at it today, to repatriate cash to the U.S., you need to pay 35 percent of that cash. And that is a very high number,” Cook said in an interview Thursday. “We are not proposing that it be zero. I know many of our peers believe that. But I don’t view that. But I think it has to be reasonable.”

Google Sends Microsoft Cease-and-Desist for Windows Phone YouTube App ★

Peter Bright, writing for Ars Technica:

Though the app included account support, playlists, commenting, and most other aspects of YouTube, there’s one thing it was missing — advertising. It also had two features it shouldn’t have had — the ability to download videos and the ability to play videos that the creators have blocked from mobile devices.

As a result, Google sent Microsoft a cease-and-desist demand ordering the company to stop distributing the application by May 22nd.

Microsoft’s response:

We’d be more than happy to include advertising but need Google to provide us access to the necessary APIs. In light of Larry Page’s comments today calling for more interoperability and less negativity, we look forward to solving this matter together for our mutual customers.

Peter Kafka posits that Google played right into Microsoft’s hands on this.

The Three Types of Specialist Necessary for Any Revolution ★

Kottke, quoting Vonnegut.

‘My Gut Told Me to Say Yes’ ★

Outgoing Intel CEO Paul Otellini tells The Atlantic’s Alexis Madrigal that Intel passed on a chance to produce CPUs for the iPhone:

“The thing you have to remember is that this was before the iPhone was introduced and no one knew what the iPhone would do… At the end of the day, there was a chip that they were interested in that they wanted to pay a certain price for and not a nickel more and that price was below our forecasted cost. I couldn’t see it. It wasn’t one of these things you can make up on volume. And in hindsight, the forecasted cost was wrong and the volume was 100x what anyone thought.”

It was the only moment I heard regret slip into Otellini’s voice during the several hours of conversations I had with him. “The lesson I took away from that was, while we like to speak with data around here, so many times in my career I’ve ended up making decisions with my gut, and I should have followed my gut,” he said. “My gut told me to say yes.”

Curious whether that was an ARM chip — and if not, what was it?

Update: Ben Thompson says it must have been XScale, which was ARM-based.

‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ Howard Johnsons Children’s Menu ★

Great find by John Sisson. Chock full of spoilers, though.

Mariano Rivera Breaking Bats ★

Drew Sheppard, writing for FanGraphs:

Enjoy him while you can.

‘Nothing But Lando’ ★

J.J. Abrams takes suggestions for the upcoming new Star Wars movie from The Jimmy Kimmel Show audience. (See also: Harrison Ford a few weeks ago.)

DeadDrop ★

Kevin Poulsen on the story behind DeadDrop, the new open source anonymous inbox for journalists he created with Aaron Swartz. Now in use at The New Yorker.

Google to Sell Its Own Nexus Version of Samsung’s Galaxy S4 ★

Brian Chen, reporting for the NYT Bits blog:

Google on Wednesday said it would sell a version of Samsung’s Galaxy S4 running its own “stock” version of Android, not Samsung’s modified version. The device will go on sale in Google’s online store, called Play, on June 26, according to Hugo Barra, vice president of product management for Android. The phone will cost $650 and will come unlocked.

DF reader Jim Lipsey asks:

Why doesn’t Google buy up a mobile device company and offer their own phone rather than resell a Samsung handset?

Great question. Why doesn’t Google do that?

Wednesday, 15 May 2013

Passages From Isaacson Book Part of DOJ Case Against Apple in Ebook Price-Fixing Case ★

Reuters:

Apple disputes this in a second filing, also made on April 26 and released on Tuesday. It says that e-book demand “exploded” with Apple’s iPad launch, and the average retail price of an e-book dropped to $7.34 from $7.97.

In a filing released on Tuesday, the Justice Department said that Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO at the time, “conceded the price-fixing conspiracy” when he told his biographer that Apple had “told the publishers, ‘We’ll go to the agency model, where you set the price, and we get our 30 percent, and yes, the customer pays a little more, but that’s what you want anyway.’”

If anyone else at Apple had revealed this to a writer, they’d have been fired (by Jobs) immediately. I question Jobs’s judgment in picking Isaacson to write the book in the first place, but no matter who he’d chosen to write the book, he should have held himself to the same standards he held his employees to when it came to keeping the company’s internal workings private.

NYT: ‘U.S. Now Paints Apple as “Ringmaster” in Its Lawsuit on Ebook Price-Fixing’ ★

Edward Wyatt and Nick Wingfield, reporting for the NYT:

In July 2010, Mr. Jobs, Apple’s former chief executive, told the chief executive of Random House, Markus Dohle, that the publisher would suffer a loss of support from Apple if it held out much longer, according to an account of the conversation provided by Mr. Dohle in the filing. Two months later, Apple threatened to block an e-book application by Random House from appearing in Apple’s App Store because it had not agreed to a deal with Apple, the filing said.

After Random House finally agreed to a contract on Jan. 18, 2011, Eddy Cue, the Apple executive in charge of its e-books deals, sent an e-mail to Mr. Jobs attributing the publisher’s capitulation, in part, to “the fact that I prevented an app from Random House from going live in the app store,” the filing reads.

Eddy Cue, hardball player.

David Trainer: The Man Who Figures Apple Is Worth $240 a Share ★

Philip Elmer-DeWitt:

I watched Trainer’s CNBC appearance (best line: “Steve Jobs was the Bo Jackson of CEOs”). I read his blog post. I looked up ROIC in Investopedia. I studied his Apple model.

I couldn’t make any sense of it. Maybe you can.

Nope, me neither. (Keep in mind, at the end of last quarter, Apple held $153 worth of cash and investments per share. Just cash. Trainer is saying Apple’s entire future is worth about $90 per share, about $85 billion total.)

Update: Ethan Jewett on Trainer’s weird math and wrong numbers.

Tuesday, 14 May 2013

Square Stand ★

Turns an iPad into a point of sale register. Given how many small businesses I already see using Square, I think this is going to sell well.

Update: Square says, “Square Stand works with iPad 2 and 3 (30-pin connector) and costs $299. iPad not included.” Only working with 30-pin connector iPads seems pretty short-sighted, no? Those things are probably going the way of the Dodo bird. And why does it cost $299 if it’s just a stand, a power adapter, and an integrated Square reader? (They send you the dongle readers for free when you sign up.)

As of Today, Every Major Mobile Competitor Also Makes Apps for iOS ★

Rene Ritchie, on BlackBerry’s announcement that they’re bringing BBM to iOS:

Apple, by contrast, makes precisely nothing for Android, Windows Phone, or BlackBerry. Not even iTunes.

There’s a reason Apple made iTunes for Windows a decade ago and iTunes for nothing but iOS today.

Larry Page on His Vocal Cord Problems ★

Larry Page:

About 14 years ago, I got a bad cold, and my voice became hoarse. At the time I didn’t think much about it. But my voice never fully recovered. So I went to a doctor and was diagnosed with left vocal cord paralysis. This is a nerve problem that causes your left vocal cord to not move properly. Despite extensive examination, the doctors never identified a cause — though there was speculation of virus-based damage from my cold. It is quite common in cases like these that a definitive cause is not found. […]

Fast forward to last summer, when the same pattern repeated itself — a cold followed by a hoarse voice. Once again things didn’t fully improve, so I went in for a check-up and was told that my second vocal cord now had limited movement as well. Again, after a thorough examination, the doctors weren’t able to identify a cause.

‘A Look at Mail in Cyberdog’ ★

This week’s episode of my podcast, The Talk Show, with special guest Dan Frommer. Topics including Windows 8’s “have it all” design leading to it failing both as a tablet and PC OS; the loyalty (or perhaps lack thereof) of new Apple customers; Netflix’s commanding and growing lead as a provider of streaming video; and some utterly un-researched speculation about overseas roaming leading to poor iPhone battery life.

Brought to you by two excellent sponsors:

Transporter: Peer-to-peer storage solution like Dropbox, except you remain in complete control.
Mailroute: Innovative cloud email protection. We match Postini and Forefront pricing.

Aluminum-Framed Lumia 925 ★

Mikael Ricknäs, IDG News Service:

Nokia’s new Lumia 925 phone has an aluminium frame that functions as an antenna, and is lighter and thinner than the Lumia 920, but otherwise offers similar performance to its predecessor.

A metal frame that functions as an antenna. This, from the company that bragged during Antennagate that they were the “pioneer in internal antennas”.

Declan McCullagh: ‘Apple Deluged by Police Demands to Decrypt iPhones’ ★

Declan McCullagh, reporting for CNet:

The ATF’s Maynard said in an affidavit for the Kentucky case that Apple “has the capabilities to bypass the security software” and “download the contents of the phone to an external memory device.” Chang, the Apple legal specialist, told him that “once the Apple analyst bypasses the passcode, the data will be downloaded onto a USB external drive” and delivered to the ATF.

It’s not clear whether that means Apple has created a backdoor for police — which has been the topic of speculation in the past — whether the company has custom hardware that’s faster at decryption, or whether it simply is more skilled at using the same procedures available to the government. Apple declined to discuss its law enforcement policies when contacted this week by CNET.

I saw this report the other day and it confused me. My understanding is that the entire contents of an iPhone with a passcode (or pass phrase) are encrypted. If Apple can somehow decrypt the contents, then there’s a backdoor, and the possibility exists that someone else will discover the backdoor. (Let alone the problem of Apple being able to do it.)

Charlie Miller, who knows way more about this stuff than I do (and probably as much as anyone outside Apple), is also confused. His theory:

Apple probably uses a signed ramdisk and then brute forces from there.

In which case it’s not really a backdoor, it’s that Apple can more efficiently run through all possible passcodes than law enforcement agencies can. But I take it this means Apple can circumvent the setting that deletes the encryption keys after 10 failed passcode attempts, because they’re not doing the passcode attempts on the device itself.

Update: Quinn Mahoney tweets:

No, a signed ramdisk means the brute force is done on-device. The 10 attempt limit is enforced by iOS, ramdisk bypasses that.

Monday, 13 May 2013

Phishing With Forged Links ★

Brad Choate is thinking the same thing I’m thinking:

Sophisticated phishing attacks can be hard to detect for most. As software developers, we need to build better detection, prevention, and countermeasures into apps and services that relay and present these messages so users will be less likely to fall victim to them.

How the Syrian Electronic Army Hacked The Onion ★

Phishing. (Wonder if it would have helped identify scammy URLs if the emails were in plain text, so that the phishers couldn’t put a URL in the message that was actually linked to an entirely different URL?)

‘We Already Have Money, It’s Called “Money”’ ★

Garrett Murray on Amazon’s new “Amazon Coins” virtual currency thing. Sure hope Apple never goes this route; it’s slimy.

Lego Casino Royale ★

“Yes. Considerably.”

Visualizing the Internet ★

Adam Clark Estes, writing for Motherboard:

An anonymous researcher with a lot of time on his hands apparently shares the sentiment. In a newly published research paper, this unnamed data junkie explains how he used some stupid simple hacking techniques to build a 420,000-node botnet that helped him draw the most detailed map of the Internet known to man. Not only does it show where people are logging in, it also shows changes in traffic patterns over time with an impressive amount of precision. This is all possible, of course, because the researcher hacked into nearly half a million computers so that he could ping each one, charting the resulting paths in order to make such a complex and detailed map. Along those lines, the project has as much to do with hacking as it does with mapping.

More on Facebook Home Looking Like a Flop ★

Steve Kovach, reporting for Business Insider:

After we reported the news about the First’s price drop, one source familiar with Facebook employees’ thinking on Home said our headline, “HTC’s Facebook Phone Is Clearly a Flop,” was “sadly, very right.” Another source with knowledge of the HTC First sales wouldn’t provide numbers, but did hint they weren’t exactly flying off the shelves at AT&T stores.

Is this Facebook’s Rokr?

Update: Myriam Joire argues that Facebook already had its Rokr — the HTC Status back in 2011.

Friday, 10 May 2013

NYT on Bloomberg Data Terminal Privacy Breach ★

Amy Chozick and Ben Protess, reporting for the NYT:

The news gathering technique appears more widespread than the Goldman incident, which was first reported by The New York Post. A preliminary analysis at Bloomberg revealed that “several hundred” reporters had used the technique, a person briefed on the analysis said. (Bloomberg employs more than 2,400 journalists worldwide. A spokesman declined to comment on the analysis and said no reporters had been fired.)

There are also fears that the monitoring may have gone beyond Wall Street. Banking regulators at the Federal Reserve are examining whether their own employees were subject to tracking by Bloomberg reporters, according to people briefed on the matter. A spokeswoman for the Fed declined to comment.

This is a serious scandal.

Not All Wine Experts Are Full of Shit ★

Pretty amazing. (Thanks to Tom Lane.)

Facebook Home Is Looking Like a Flop ★

The HTC First (with Facebook Home pre-installed) has already been dropped from $99 to $0.99, and the app is sinking in popularity in the Google Play store rankings.

It’s a well-designed implementation of an idea no one wants.

Squarespace ★

My thanks to Squarespace for sponsoring this week’s DF RSS feed. Squarespace provides everything you need to create a great website for you or your business, all within a single platform. Beautiful templates, an easy-to-use interface, and a free domain name — all backed up with award-winning 24/7 customer support.

It’s almost ridiculous how easy Squarespace has made it to have a fully-customizable website that looks great across all devices. Try Squarespace for free at squarespace.com.

Not Sure Why Anyone Would Spend So Much Time and Effort on an iOS 7 ‘Concept’ Redesign, But Here You Go ★

There are a lot of clever ideas and nice designs in this iOS 7 “concept” by Philip Joyce of design firm Simply Zesty. But they’re only clever and nice in the abstract, as possible designs for a touchscreen phone interface. Nice and clever though they are, this would be a disaster as a new design for the actual iPhone. A new look is one thing (and we’re going to get it), but when you’re well established and have a large user base, as iOS does, you need to maintain familiarity. If users are asking “What is this? Where am I? Where’s all the stuff I’m used to?” it’s going to be a disaster. (Mac OS X 10.0 was just such a radical do-over, and it was successful in the long term. But the first few years were a slow and painful transition for existing Mac users. iOS doesn’t need that sort of jolt.)

And certain of Joyce’s details are oddly tone-deaf branding-wise. The shape of app icons is not going to change from round-cornered squares to sharp-cornered ones (or any other shape for that matter). Apple owns this shape; this shape says “iOS app” in everyone’s mind. It’s even printed right on the hardware home button of every iOS device. In fact it’s the only thing printed on the front face of every iOS device. And just look at the WWDC 2013 logo. (I’ve long thought we won’t see apps and an App Store for Apple TV until some future hardware revision of the product with a much-better remote control; it occurs to me now that that remote will surely have a home button with the universal empty app icon on it.) And his font choices — yikes. Frutiger (or whatever Frutiger-like typeface he’s using) makes the whole thing look more like a Windows Phone 9 concept than an iOS one. It’s like iOS re-imagined by someone who doesn’t like iOS. Hard for me to see how this is getting praised like this.

His animations and transitions do show how going “flatter” doesn’t necessarily mean eliminating playfulness, though.

Bloomberg Reporters Snooping on Wall Street Via Bloomberg Financial Terminals ★

Mark DeCambre, reporting for the NY Post:

In one instance, a Bloomberg reporter asked a Goldman executive if a partner at the bank had recently left the firm — noting casually that he hadn’t logged into his Bloomberg terminal in some time, sources added.

Goldman later learned that Bloomberg staffers could determine not only which of its employees had logged into Bloomberg’s proprietary terminals but how many times they had used particular functions, insiders said.

(Via The Verge.)

The Loop Magazine ★

New iOS subscription-based magazine, from Jim Dalrymple and The Loop:

All of the articles published in The Loop magazine are exclusive to the publication and written by some great writers. For instance, the first issue includes articles from Matt Gemmell, Dream Theater’s Jordan Rudess, Michael Simmons, Holly Winewell, Peter Cohen and long time Apple analyst Ben Bajarin.

Good first issue. It’s fascinating to me to see magazine publishing emerge as a medium for small independents.

Peter Shankman: ‘If Google Glass Fails, It’s Robert Scoble’s Fault’ ★

Bizarre, but telling argument by Peter Shankman:

See, it’s people like Scoble who ruin it for regular people, the masses who will determine whether Glass succeeds or winds up in the land of the Apple Newton. His review was so over the top, so up Google’s ass, so “I’m taking a freaking shower while wearing them” (complete with photos,) that no normal, non-over-the-edge Geek will want to come within a hundred miles of them.

So much for mass adoption. It’s the Segway effect. I was the first person in NYC to own a Segway back in 2003. It. Was. Awesome. But I was also on the damn thing every minute of every single day. I’m not proud of that. I did back then to the Segway, what Scoble is doing to Glass, today, and he should have learned from my mistakes.

This is almost comically misguided. Glass will succeed or fail on its own merits, just as most mass market products do. The problem with Segway wasn’t that Peter Shankman drew attention to himself by riding it all over New York. The problem with Segway is that almost no one wanted a $4000 scooter, and the only people that Segway did appeal to were socially-maladjusted, self-centered, self-important, “Hey everybody, look at me! I’m using this ostentatious expensive new gadget!” blowhards like Peter Shankman.

But so, yes, I do think Glass is headed for the same fate as Segway.

Beware of Quotes That Aren’t Inside Quotation Marks ★

Yesterday, Bloomberg reporter Tim Culpan wrote this paragraph:

A decline in revenue from the iPad Mini “is more on demand, while price has been stable,” Pegatron Chief Executive Officer Jason Cheng said. “Not just tablets, also e-books and games consoles, almost every item is moving in a negative direction.”

Philip Elmer-DeWitt was curious about the placement of those quotation marks, and asked Cheng if he actually said that demand for the iPad Mini is down. He did not.

‘This Is Water’ ★

The Glossary:

In 2005, author David Foster Wallace was asked to give the commencement address to the 2005 graduating class of Kenyon College. However, the resulting speech didn’t become widely known until 3 years later, after his tragic death. It is, without a doubt, some of the best life advice we’ve ever come across, and perhaps the most simple and elegant explanation of the real value of education.

We made this video, built around an abridged version of the original audio recording, with the hopes that the core message of the speech could reach a wider audience who might not have otherwise been interested.

Really well done. I miss Wallace so very much.

Thursday, 9 May 2013

Netflix, Reed Hastings Survive Missteps to Join Silicon Valley’s Elite ★: Ashlee Vance profiles Netflix and Reed Hastings for Businessweek:

On a normal weeknight, Netflix accounts for almost a third of all Internet traffic entering North American homes. That’s more than YouTube, Hulu, Amazon.com, HBO Go, iTunes, and BitTorrent combined.
Peter Nixey on iCloud and Photo Management ★: Good piece by Peter Nixey on the convoluted state of photo management with iCloud. I’d like to see something like this:

Get rid of photo streams. Make the camera roll a single photo stream that shows up in iPhoto (on all devices). I want a single camera roll that all devices feed into. I want to take photos, queue them in my camera roll then pull them out as I organise and sort them into my library. Let me explain: photos and videos have two phases: (1) on the camera roll; (2) in my photo library. Nowhere else.
Amy Worrall’s Proposal for App Store Trial Periods ★: I’m surprised Apple hasn’t yet implemented something along these lines. Hope we get it in iOS 7. (Via Dave Addey.)
An Awful Lot of Purported Wine Experts Are Full of Shit ★: Robert T. Gonzalez:

In 2001, researcher Frédéric Brochet invited 54 wine experts to give their opinions on what were ostensibly two glasses of different wine: one red, and one white. In actuality, the two wines were identical, with one exception: the “red” wine had been dyed with food coloring.

The experts described the “red” wine in language typically reserved for characterizing reds. They called it “jammy,” for example, and noted the flavors imparted by its “crushed red fruit.” Not one of the 54 experts surveyed noticed that it was, in fact a white wine.

Wednesday, 8 May 2013

AOL vs. Netflix: The Broadband Era Illustrated ★

Interesting chart from Dan Frommer: AOL’s dialup demise is nearly the mirror image of Netflix’s rise.

John McAfee Answers Questions From Slashdot Readers ★

Almost certainly the most entertaining thing you’ll read today. A taste:

I haven’t been involved with McAfee anti-virus for 21 years. When I ran the company the software was the best and least intrusive on the market, and in 1991 we had 87% of the world market. What happened after I left was none of my doing. As to name association, I am a master at sullying my own name and, all things considered, being associated with the worst software on the planet ranks way down the pole. It’s barely a blip in the ocean of associations — madman, paranoid, child molester, murderer, drug addict, unstable, liar, to name but a few. Thank god I’m 67 and will probably be too hard of hearing soon enough to have to listen to them rattling around wherever I go. Amy, thankfully, did half the job already by bursting my left eardrum when she tried to shoot me in the head while I slept back in 2011.

Photographer Peter Belanger on Shooting for Apple ★

Michael Shane for The Verge:

You’ve almost certainly never heard of Peter Belanger, but you’ve definitely seen his photographs. In fact, you may even see his work every day, and it’s likely that you own some of his most famous subjects. Belanger is the man behind some of Apple’s most iconic product images, a San Francisco-based product photographer at the top of his field.

Beauty, Truth, and Jony Ive ★

In a similar vein, John Siracusa asks:

It’s interesting that Jobs and Ive saw eye to eye on hardware design and yet seemed far apart, at least in Jobs’s final years, when it comes to software design. While Jobs was reportedly a champion of rich Corinthian leather, Ive could only wince when asked about it in an interview.

I’m confident that we’ll see less leather, wood, felt, and animated reel-to-reel tapes in Apple’s future software products, but the question remains: what does it mean for an application or an OS to be true to itself?

Put another way, if the hardware should be true to its materials — glass, aluminum (hard not to spell it aluminium when discussing Ive), plastic — what is it that software should be true to? RGB pixels? I think not. I think the on-screen UI elements should (and under Ive, will be) simply true to themselves. Let a button be a button, and make it look good, with an emotional feel appropriate to its context and purpose. No need to overthink it.