Linked List: February 6, 2013

Wednesday, 6 February 2013

British House of Commons Approves Gay Marriage 

There’s no reason for the U.S. to fall behind in this race.

‘Real’ Software 

David Pogue, in his (quite positive) review of the Surface Pro:

Everybody knows what a tablet is, right? It’s a black touch-screen slab, like an iPad or an Android tablet. It doesn’t run real Windows or Mac software — it runs much simpler apps. It’s not a real computer.

That’s the same shortsighted opinion that command-line DOS advocates had of the Mac in the ’80s. Anyone who thinks OS X and Windows PCs are “real” computers and that the iPad (and Android tablets) are anything less just isn’t getting it. There are many valid ways to fill in the blank in “The iPad doesn’t run ____ software”, but “real” isn’t one.

Will Ferrell’s Super Bowl Ad for Old Milwaukee 

Hard to believe this only ran in three cities. Easily the best commercial I’ve seen this year.

Vine Now Rated 17+ 

I don’t understand this piece by Mike Isaac and John Paczkowski, “Nudged by Apple, Twitter’s Porn Saga Ends in a Raw Deal for Vine”:

That gnarly porno found on Vine was all too easily surfaced in the app, due in part to the nature of the service itself. Search a hashtag keyword for sex, penis or what have you, and you’ll be taken straight to the hardcore stuff. That’s not as easy to find in, say, YouTube, which has a more mature engine for filtering out objectionable content. Or even Tumblr (though Tumblr is also rated 17+ in the App Store).

The prudish Apple can deal with the fact that yes, we are human, and yes, we watch porn (lots of it). And to some degree, it will always exist across the Internet. It’s a fact of life. But what Apple can’t deal with is said porn front and center, easily discoverable for any and all to see. It’s why SnapChat has a 12+ rating, and why Vine doesn’t.

In other words, think of yourself as a teenager to Apple’s repressed mother — you hide your porn under your mattress. You don’t leave it out on the coffee table.

I don’t understand how Apple is being prudish or giving Vine a “raw deal” here. If pornographic content is easy to find on Vine — and Isaac and Paczkowski agree that it is — how is 17+ not the appropriate rating? If Apple removed Vine from the App Store, pending some sort of de-porn-ification on Vine’s back end (no pun intended), I could see that being called a “raw deal”, or prudishness/censorship on Apple’s part.

An adult rating for adult content. How is that not exactly how it should be?

Margin Call 

Horace Dediu, on Apple’s drop in margin last quarter:

Relative to adjusted 4th quarter 2011 Sales increased by 27% while Cost of Sales increased by 30.5%. Margins shrank in late 2012 because the products were more expensive to make.

It’s simple arithmetic.

We can at a glance see that the cost of sales increased as a proportion of sales. Therefore the margin decreased as a percent of sales. The cause is higher costs, not lower pricing.

Or lower demand, which many people apparently still think is Apple’s problem.

Canada Drops the Penny 

There’s no reason for the U.S. to fall behind in this race.