Linked List: January 31, 2013

Thursday, 31 January 2013

Brian Lam on the New BlackBerry Phones ★

Brian Lam:

You should not buy this phone unless you have emotional and cultural reasons to love Blackberry, or some arcane enterprise reason I will not pretend to understand. Tim Stevens agrees, saying, “I think the Z10 is a really nice device, and I think that BB10 is a really nice OS. The problem is it just isn’t a standout in any regard. But, and this is an important but, I think BB10 will make those stalwart BlackBerry fans very happy, and will keep them faithful.”

I don’t mean to be dismissive of Blackberry’s efforts as a company but I know where my loyalties are, and it’s not with android or apple or any company. It boils down to this–I would never ever tell anyone I care about to consider these phones. So, that’s what I think about Blackberry’s new stuff.

“Good enough” is not good enough when you’re way behind. You need to make a great leap ahead to make a big comeback.

Nintendo Cuts Wii U Sales Projections ★

Speaking of the console guys getting rolled:

But Nintendo doesn’t think it can keep that momentum up. Back in October, the company said it expected to sell 5.5 million Wii U units through the end of March. That number has now been cut down to 4 million, meaning Nintendo expects to sell fewer than a million systems worldwide in the first three months of 2013.

Gabe Newell: Steam Box’s Biggest Threat Isn’t Consoles, It’s Apple ★

Griffin McElroy, writing for Polygon:

“The threat right now is that Apple has gained a huge amount of market share, and has a relatively obvious pathway towards entering the living room with their platform,” Newell said. “I think that there’s a scenario where we see sort of a dumbed down living room platform emerging — I think Apple rolls the console guys really easily. The question is can we make enough progress in the PC space to establish ourselves there, and also figure out better ways of addressing mobile before Apple takes over the living room?”

Can you imagine making this argument — that Apple could “easily” beat the console systems — five years ago?

Chinese Hackers Infiltrate New York Times Computers ★

Nicole Perlroth, reporting for the NYT:

For the last four months, Chinese hackers have persistently attacked The New York Times, infiltrating its computer systems and getting passwords for its reporters and other employees.

After surreptitiously tracking the intruders to study their movements and help erect better defenses to block them, The Times and computer security experts have expelled the attackers and kept them from breaking back in.

The timing of the attacks coincided with the reporting for a Times investigation, published online on Oct. 25, that found that the relatives of Wen Jiabao, China’s prime minister, had accumulated a fortune worth several billion dollars through business dealings.

Crazy story, enough to turn anyone into a paranoid.