Linked List: February 4, 2013

Monday, 4 February 2013

Henry Blodget:

Specifically, Kedrosky thinks that, in the power-vacuum following Steve Jobs’ death, the design team, led by Jony Ive, have been given too much latitude — such that Apple is now designing products that it is not capable of manufacturing as smoothly and quickly as it needs to to meet demand.

Yeah, it’s not like Apple ever had problems meeting demand with new products when Steve Jobs was in charge. The white iPhone 4 came out right on schedule.

Update: Let’s get serious for a second. Here’s the final paragraph from Blodget:

In any case, something has clearly gone wrong at Apple. And this is an interesting theory about what that is.

That pretty much summarizes what’s driving the current wave of Apple jackassery: start with the “fact” that something has gone wrong with Apple, then speculate about just what that is. Apple has real problems, isn’t perfect, and faces numerous serious competitors — but it, like every company, has always had problems, has never been perfect, and has faced serious competitors. The error in this line of thinking is that something has “gone wrong” for Apple in the last year or two. The truth is, most things have gone exactly right for Apple for the last 10 years.

Something has clearly gone wrong, but it’s with the perception of Apple, not with Apple itself.

Twitter Mentioned in 50 Percent of Super Bowl Commercials ★

Matt McGee, writing for Marketing Land:

According to my count, Twitter was mentioned in 26 of 52 national TV commercials — that’s 50 percent of the spots that aired during CBS’ game coverage. Facebook was mentioned in only four of those commercials — about eight percent. Google+, which is reportedly the No. 2 social network in the world, wasn’t mentioned at all.

This is a huge change from last year’s Super Bowl, when Twitter and Facebook both tied with only eight mentions out of a total of 59 counted national commercials.

Twitter’s rise as a mainstream mass market platform is rather staggering. It doesn’t get any more mass market than being mentioned in 50 percent of Super Bowl commercials. But why the drop for Facebook? My guess: marketers are no longer hedging their bets, and have decided that Twitter is the network they should put their weight behind. Also: Twitter has hashtags, Facebook doesn’t, and “#SomeMessageHere” is how a lot of these pointers to Twitter are being made.

Technical Analysis of the First Untethered Jailbreak Exploit for iOS 6 ★

Putting the politics of jailbreaking aside, I don’t see how anyone can deny the cleverness of what the jailbreak developers accomplish.

Galaxy Versus Android at the Super Bowl ★

Benedict Evans:

Third, and most interesting to me, though, is the fact that Samsung really doesn’t talk about Android at all in its marketing — which now has a $14bn run-rate budget (around 13-14× Apple). A lot of Samsung marketing for Android devices doesn’t even mention Android.

Just me, or do we not see as much Droid advertising from Verizon any more, either?

More on a 5-Inch iPhone and Scaling the Interface ★

Rene Ritchie:

If you think of the iPad mini as a tablet that’s using phone density, then the big iPhone is just a phone using tablet density. You have phone interface at high density, phone interface at less-high density, tablet interface at high density, tablet interface at less-high density.

Then, just like there’s an 11- and 13-inch MacBook Air, and a 13- and 15-inch MacBook Pro, there’s a 4- and 5-inch iPhone, and a 7.9 and 9.7-inch iPad.

Exactly what I’m thinking.

Apple TV and iPhone Displays ★

This piece by Jason Paul Richmond for The Tech Block, speculating on how Apple might do a bigger iPhone, is pretty good overall, but this bit stuck out to me (emphasis added):

Boosting the pixel density at a given size means boosting the resolution, which poses problems. Some believe that Apple should just adopt the industry standard 1080p. I don’t think that would be a bad idea per se, especially if the Apple TV could run apps, but it can make things even more complicated for developers — complications that have the potential of devaluing iOS’s greatest asset, the quality of third-party software.

I’ve seen similar sentiments before, that a 1920 × 1080 iPhone could be a boon to turning Apple TV into an app platform, because that’s the resolution of most modern HD TV sets. This makes no sense.

No app designed for a handheld touchscreen could work well on a non-touch TV screen. It’s absurd. I’d love to see Apple TV gain an App Store and third-party apps. I think it’s something Apple would do, and might be working on. But such apps would be their own new thing. They would not be iPad or iPhone apps. That TV displays are 1920 × 1080 has no bearing whatsoever on whether Apple would ever make a 1920 × 1080 iPhone. None.

‘Velocity Hotels’ ★

This week’s episode of The Talk Show, featuring special guest stars Paul Kafasis and Scott Simpson. We talk about last week’s Macworld/iWorld conference and expo, and some big ideas that are going to reinvent the hotel industry.

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Bill Barnwell Analyzes the Super Bowl ★

You want to nerd out on the intricacies of yesterday’s game? Here you go.

Monoprice Expands Beyond Cables ★

John Herrman, writing for BuzzFeed:

Monoprice had dabbled in headphones and speakers before, but this was something different. At CES, the company announced a high-end LCD monitor, specced to compete with $1,000 models from the likes of Dell and Apple but priced at below $400. It would carry the Monoprice brand, like everything else the company sells. And it would be targeted at the same savvy, know-it-all nerds who had been recommending cheap Monoprice cables on forums and blogs for years. The company also launched a GoPro-style action cam for about $90. Almost overnight, Monoprice willed a consumer electronics brand into existence.

Via Peter Cohen.

Harold Ramis Gets the Last Laugh ★

Harold Ramis, in an interview with Brett Martin for GQ:

When we were writing Animal House, we assumed it would be the most successful comedy ever. Our generation had broken into television with SNL, and this was going to be the first “new” Hollywood comedy. It was our attempt to capture those years, right up to November 1963, when there was a feeling that the kids were taking over the country for the first time. In our minds, the end of that movie — the parade, all that euphoria — takes place the day before Kennedy was shot. Because the day after, none of that mattered anymore.