Linked List: November 27, 2012

Tuesday, 27 November 2012

Ericsson is still in business?

The Ten Best Larry Sanders Episodes ★

Fix yourself a Salty Dog and enjoy this list from Edward Copeland, of the best episodes of one of the best shows ever:

Malina especially appreciated one section of dialogue before Hank goes out to guest host the first time. “Arthur reassuring Hank pre-show with the tepid, ‘You do not suck!’ and Hank responding with ‘That’s one of the kindest things anyone has ever said to me.’ One of the all-time great couplets of dialogue,” Malina said.

David Chartier Is Sick of Making Excuses for Mac OS X ★

David Chartier:

Every time I have to explain one of OS X’s bizarre, (sometimes arguably) buggy behaviors or windowing idiosyncrasies to my father in law, I dearly wish the iPad had been out when he was in the market.

Exhibit A: Open Mail, find a message with a zip attachment, and double-click it. Nothing happens? Oh something happened. Archive Utility opened to work its magic on the zip file, but you missed its appearance in the Dock if you blinked. Don’t see anything else? Of course you don’t, because Finder opened a new window to reveal the spoils of Archive Utility’s victory behind Mail and didn’t bother to tell you. No Dock bounce, no Finder brought to the foreground to show you the folder.

Great example. iOS enforces a visual obviousness that makes computing better for nearly everyone. If you do something, the result will be shown to you, front and center.

Subcompact Publishing ★

Brilliant piece by Craig Mod on The Magazine and the imminent disruption of the publishing industry:

Navigation should be consistent and effortless. Subcompact Publishing applications don’t require complex how-to pages or tutorials. You shouldn’t have to hire a famous actor to show readers how to use the app with his nose. Much like a printed magazine or book, the interaction should be intuitive, effortless, and grounding. The user should never feel lost.

A Minimum Tax for the Wealthy ★

Warren Buffett, in an op-ed yesterday for the NYT:

Suppose that an investor you admire and trust comes to you with an investment idea. “This is a good one,” he says enthusiastically. “I’m in it, and I think you should be, too.”

Would your reply possibly be this? “Well, it all depends on what my tax rate will be on the gain you’re saying we’re going to make. If the taxes are too high, I would rather leave the money in my savings account, earning a quarter of 1 percent.” Only in Grover Norquist’s imagination does such a response exist.

I agree with every single word, including his idea to draw the “wealthy” line at $500,000, not $250,000.

Bloomberg: Apple Fired Maps Manager ★

Adam Sarariano, reporting for Bloomberg:

Richard Williamson, who oversaw the mapping team, was pushed out by Senior Vice President Eddy Cue, said the people, who asked not to be named because the information wasn’t yet public. Cue, who took over last month as part of a management shakeup, is seeking advice from outside mapping-technology experts and prodding digital maps provider TomTom NV to fix landmark and navigation data it shares with Apple.

Eddy Cue, not fucking around.

Macworld Reviews BusyCal 2.0 ★

Huge update to one of my favorite Mac apps.

An Inauspicious Start ★

Philip Elmer-DeWitt:

Munster’s crew spent eight hours on Black Friday, as it has every year for the past five years, counting heads at the Apple Store in the Mall of America in Minneapolis. This year he (or his staff) also spent two hours monitoring the Microsoft Store directly across the hall.

Shoppers at the Apple Store bought an average of 11 iPads per hour. Despite heavy TV, print and billboard advertising for the new Microsoft Surface tablet, not one was sold during the two hours Piper Jaffray spent monitoring that store. Doesn’t bode well for Microsoft’s answer to the iPad.

Ouch. (Not sure why they didn’t measure the same hours at both stores, though.)