Linked List: May 9, 2012

Wednesday, 9 May 2012

New Google Plus Mobile App Ships for iOS ★

Apparently Google hasn’t gotten the memo from Fred Wilson and Eric Schmidt that developers should write for Android first.

‘You Write Until You Come to a Place Where You Still Have Your Juice and Know What Will Happen Next’ ★

Ernest Hemingway, in a terrific 1958 interview with George Plimpton:

When I am working on a book or a story I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you and it is cool or cold and you come to your work and warm as you write. You read what you have written and, as you always stop when you know what is going to happen next, you go on from there. You write until you come to a place where you still have your juice and know what will happen next and you stop and try to live through until the next day when you hit it again.

I have a collection of creators-on-creating quotes, but this one might be my favorite. Strikes me as good advice for any sort of creative work.

And, regarding getting work done:

But I have worked well everywhere. I mean I have been able to work as well as I can under varied circumstances. The telephone and visitors are the work destroyers.

Two Universes ★

Michael Lopp:

[T]here are a lot of folks who think gamification means pulling the worst aspects out of games and shoving them into an application. It’s not. Don’t think of gamification as anything other than clever strategies to motivate someone to learn so they can have fun being productive.

DVDs and Blu-Rays Will Soon Carry Two Unskippable Government Warnings ★

Nate Anderson, writing for Ars Technica:

Will the two screens be shown back to back? Will each screen last for 10 seconds each? Will each screen be unskippable? Yes, yes, and yes.

An ICE spokesman tells me that the two screens will “come up after the previews, once you hit the main movie/play button on the DVD. At which point the movie rating comes up, followed by the IPR Center screen shot for 10 secs and then the FBI/HSI anti-piracy warning for 10 secs as well. Neither can be skipped/fast forwarded through.”

So to encourage people not to engage in piracy, they’re going to force everyone to watch yet another annoying, time-wasting, gratification-delaying warning screen that can only be avoided by engaging in piracy. They’re purposefully making the movie-playing experience worse for honest paying customers.

HP Expands Ultrabook Line, Unveils ‘Sleekbooks’ ★

Well, there we go. HP’s problems are all solved and the company’s PC business is back on track. All they needed was yet another gimmicky marketing name for a new batch of MacBook Air knockoffs.

President Obama Endorses Same-Sex Marriage ★

The trend is clear:

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York said, “No American president has ever supported a major expansion of civil rights that has not ultimately been adopted by the American people, and I have no doubt that this will be no exception.”

Andy Ihnatko Reviews iPhoto for iPad ★

Andy Ihnatko:

During this time, you will obsessively peck at iPhoto’s “Help” button. When you tap it, every button and interface element acquires a yellow coaching tag. It looks as though iOS is being pecked to death by a flock of canaries.

But here’s the point: Somewhere around Day One of Week Two, the clouds part. You’ll see a logic behind iPhoto that wasn’t immediately apparent and you’ll have forgiven those weird choices. From that day forward, until some company produces an even better photo editor or until the heat death of the universe, you’ll be working with a desktop-grade app with few limitations. Isn’t that better than an app that you completely figure out in five minutes and then completely outgrow in five weeks?

Detailed review of perhaps the most ambitious iOS app to date.

(I’ve heard that, in development, Apple was unsure whether to call it “iPhoto”, “Aperture”, or something entirely new. “iPhoto” won out, obviously, but Apple was aware from the start that this iOS app is in many ways more complex than iPhoto for Mac.)

Smoked by Windows Phone by the Numbers ★

Speaking of Windows Phone, Microsoft’s Ben Rudolph has an update on their “Smoked by Windows Phone” campaign. It occurs to me that Rudolph is to Windows Phone today what Guy Kawasaki was to the Mac back in the mid-’90s: a likable human face for a likable underdog platform.

Paul Thurrott: ‘Is Time Running Out for Windows Phone?’ ★

Paul Thurrott:

I’m as concerned, in a way, with what is very clearly yet another do-over. Yes, Windows Phone 8 will retain the Windows Phone name, and yes, it will run “legacy” Windows Phone 7.x apps, those apps that were written in Silverlight or the game-centric XNA APIs. But with Silverlight and XNA both silently cancelled deep within Microsoft’s ever-reimagined corporate hulk, the move to a variation of WinRT means that Windows Phone is starting over again. That means more work for developers who, let’s face it, haven’t really had much incentive to adopt this platform in the first place.

Interesting piece. I wasn’t aware just how big a change, under the hood, Windows Phone 8 will be.

As for time running out, I don’t think that’s quite Microsoft’s problem. I see no reason why, if they stick with it, Windows Phone couldn’t take off eventually, even after a few years of slow sales. One of the things that has made the mobile market so vibrant is that people buy new phones frequently — often every two years — and there’s relatively low friction to switch between platforms. Just because Windows Phone 7 hasn’t made a significant dent in the market doesn’t mean Windows Phone 8 is similarly doomed.

But can not is different than will not. The iPhone succeeded because consumers demanded it. Android succeeded because the carriers pushed it. Windows Phone has neither the iPhone’s consumer demand nor Android’s carrier support. Something has to change there.

My advice to Microsoft would be to go after Android, hard. Make Windows Phone the carriers’ best friend. Target your advertising on BlackBerry holdouts and dissatisfied Android users. Position Windows Phone as the alternative to the iPhone.

Apple’s Purported 9.8 Percent Tax Rate ★

The NYT’s “Apple pays less than 10 percent of its profit in taxes” controversy broke while I was traveling home from Ireland, and I missed this refutation by Tim Worstall at Forbes:

So, what the NYT/Greenlining calculation has done is compared the profits in 2011 not with the taxes paid on profits from 2011. It has compared profits in 2011 with the taxes calculated on the basis of 2010′s profits.

I.e., Apple makes estimated quarterly tax payments based on the previous year’s profit, and because Apple’s profits are growing at an absurd rate, their estimated payments for this year were low compared to their actual profit. This piece by Worstall from two weeks prior has more details, including this from Apple’s own 10K filing:

The Company’s effective tax rates were approximately 24.2%, 24.4% and 31.8% for 2011, 2010 and 2009, respectively. The Company’s effective rates for these periods differ from the statutory federal income tax rate of 35% due primarily to certain undistributed foreign earnings for which no U.S. taxes are provided because such earnings are intended to be indefinitely reinvested outside the U.S.

So far as I can find, the Times has not issued any sort of correction or defense of its reporting on Apple’s tax rate.