Linked List: November 14, 2011

Monday, 14 November 2011

Speaking of reviews, here’s Stanley Kubrick:

But of course, the lasting and ultimately most important reputation of a film is not based on reviews, but on what, if anything, people say about it over the years, and on how much affection for it they have.

The success of the iPad and iPhone is largely about consumer affection. “Affection” doesn’t get a line in the spec matrix from Consumer Reports.

Update: Kubrick, again, in a different interview:

The test of a work of art is, in the end, our affection for it, not our ability to explain why it is good.

The Death of the Spec ★

MG Siegler:

During the PC years, specs also mattered because there was one common dominant force in computing: Microsoft. Because Windows was everywhere, you could fairly reliably gauge the performance of one machine against another. But with the rise of the Mac and more importantly, smartphones and tablets, you can’t as easily stack machines up against one another performance-wise.

As our technology becomes more humanely designed, subjective factors outweigh objective ones. Subjective factors can’t be assigned neat little numbers ranging from 1-10.

Device Specs ★

Drew Breunig, “Device Specs Have Become Meaningless”:

How do you measure the Kindle Fire’s and iPhone’s processing speed and storage capacity if the CPUs and disks used to deliver an experience to the user exist both in and outside the device?

According to today’s technology press, you simply ignore these complexities.

The Verge’s feature chart covers price, availability, and hardware specs. Nowhere is there content selection (all devices listed lockdown their content, so this is rather important), cloud services, or perceived speed, which despite being objective is a better indicator of performance for all of these devices.

Spec-based reviews of computers and gadgets are inherently flawed, a relic of an era that’s already gone. Movie reviews are about what the movie is like to watch. Is it enjoyable, is it entertaining, does it look and sound good? Imagine a movie review based on specs, where you gave points for how long it was, whether the photography is in focus, deduct points for continuity errors in the story, and then out comes a number like “7.5/10”, with little to no mention about, you know, whether the movie was effective as a piece of art.

But I wouldn’t argue that specs are “meaningless”. It’s just that they’re an implementation detail. Specs are something the device makers worry about insofar as how they affect the experience of using the device. Just like how focal length and lens aperture are something the cinematographer worries about insofar as how they affect what the viewer will see on screen.

Steven Levy Interviews Jeff Bezos ★

Interesting take on software patents:

Levy: Some years ago, there was some controversy when Amazon got a patent for its 1-Click shopping. Now, technology patents are so widespread that they’re seen as a real hindrance to creativity and innovation. Has your thinking changed?

Bezos: For many years, I have thought that software patents should either be eliminated or dramatically shortened. It’s impossible to measure the toll they’ve had on the software industry, but on balance, it has been negative.

Levy: But without software patents, you wouldn’t have exclusive rights to 1-Click shopping.

Bezos: If that were the price of having a dramatic reduction in software patents, it would be great.

Josh Topolsky on the Kindle Fire ★

Josh Topolsky:

I am confused about a number of decisions here, however. Unlike the PlayBook, iPad, or pretty much any other tablet on the market, the Fire has no hardware volume controls, meaning that you have to go through a series of taps (especially if the device is sleeping) to just change the volume. The Fire also has no “home” button — simply a small, hard-to-find nub along the bottom used for sleeping and waking the device, and powering up and down. That means that Amazon had to create software navigation for getting around the tablet, which would be fine… if the home button wasn’t always disappearing into a hidden menu. Also, I found myself accidentally pressing the power button when I was typing or holding the tablet in certain positions, causing the Fire to think I wanted to shut it down. I’m not sure why it’s located where it’s located, but it seems like a poor choice to me.

Man, do I love The Verge’s video reviews. They look great and are very tightly edited. If you’re going to skim, just jump to the bottom and watch the video.

Anyway, sounds like the Kindle Fire is exactly what you’d expect from a $199 Amazon tablet — the best parts are what you’d expect, and so are the worst.

David Pogue on the New Kindles ★

The new e-ink models sound great. The Fire, though:

Most problematic, though, the Fire does not have anything like the polish or speed of an iPad. You feel that $200 price tag with every swipe of your finger. Animations are sluggish and jerky — even the page turns that you’d think would be the pride of the Kindle team. Taps sometimes don’t register. There are no progress or “wait” indicators, so you frequently don’t know if the machine has even registered your touch commands. The momentum of the animations hasn’t been calculated right, so the whole thing feels ornery.

Magazines are supposed to be among the best new features. Most offer two views. There is Page View, which shows the original magazine layout — but shrunken down too small to read, and zooming is limited. Then there is Text View: simple text on a white background. It’s great for reading, but of course now you’re missing the design and layout, which is half the joy of reading a magazine. And Text View sometimes loses words, cartoon captions and so on.

A 7-inch screen might be great for books, but how could anyone think it would work for what we think of as magazines? Try to find a 7-inch magazine on the (non-virtual) newsstand.

The Inquirer Leaving The Inquirer Building ★

Local note. Bob Fernandez, reporting for The Philadelphia Inquirer:

Saying it would be part of a renaissance on East Market Street, Philadelphia Media Network Inc. will vacate the iconic 86-year-old home of The Inquirer and Daily News for new space in the renovated former Strawbridge & Clothier store.

Sad, but a sign of the times. The Inquirer Building is everything a newspaper building should be.

Microsoft on the Google ‘Admosphere’ ★

The infographic is the best part. What’s interesting to me isn’t the exact message, but the degree to which Microsoft is setting its company-wide sights on Google as its primary opponent. Here’s another recent example — “Google Graveyard” — from the same Microsoft weblog. Google has put itself in a position where both Microsoft and Apple view Google as the company they want to beat. Facebook does too, really.

Siri Sends a Message ★

Guy English:

I wanted to ask Blodget a few questions about this piece that he’d written for Business Insider. It appeared to me like he was talking out of his ass.

Android Sells the Smartphones; Apple Makes the Money ★

Android really is winning, no sarcasm, for HTC and Samsung. But they’re fighting over the remaining scraps of profit left by Apple.

‘Robots Figure Prominently in Many of the Ideas’ ★

Front-page NYT story by Claire Cain Miller and Nick Bilton on Google’s secret “Google X” lab:

Fleets of robots could assist Google with collecting information, replacing the humans that photograph streets for Google Maps, say people with knowledge of Google X. Robots born in the lab could be destined for homes and offices, where they could assist with mundane tasks or allow people to work remotely, they say.

That’s what we need to allow for a remote workforce. Robots.

Among the items that could be connected: a garden planter (so it could be watered from afar); a coffee pot (so it could be set to brew remotely); or a light bulb (so it could be turned off remotely). Google said in May that by the end of this year another team planned to introduce a Web-connected light bulb that could communicate wirelessly with Android devices.

Why was this story on the front page of The Times?

‘I Think the Most Ardent Fans of His Films Do Let the Movie “Just Wash Over Them”.’ ★

Contentious — in a good way — interview by All Things Shining with Billy Weber, long-time editor and collaborator of Terrence Malick:

The million plus feet of film happens quite often now. Directors seem to shoot much more now than they used to shoot. An example would be on Days of Heaven, I think we shoot about 120,000 feet of film and The Thin Red Line over a million. In Terry’s case a lot of it comes from writing a lot of scenes and shooting them instead of censoring himself when writing the script. I think he would rather edit himself during the course of editing the movie rather than editing himself during the writing of the script.

(Via Jim Coudal, of course.)

Apple Releases iTunes Match ★

Finally. (It really is two weeks late, by Apple’s own deadline.)

6th Grade iPhone App Developer Speaks at TEDx ★

So awesome. Brings to mind my “The Kids Are All Right” piece from last year.

Adobe: Your Questions About Flex ★

Adobe Q&A:

Is Adobe still committed to Flex?

Yes. We know Flex provides a unique set of benefits for enterprise application developers. We also know that the technology landscape for application development is rapidly changing and our customers want more direct control over the underlying technologies they use. Given this, we are planning to contribute the Flex SDK to an open source foundation in the same way we contributed PhoneGap to the Apache Foundation when we acquired Nitobi.

Translation: “No.”