Linked List: February 27, 2013

Wednesday, 27 February 2013

Charlie Kindel: ‘Why Nobody Can Copy Apple’ ★

What I like about his simple theory is that it also explains why NeXT never caught on, yet the same technology led by the same team resulted in such tremendous success at Apple.

Update: Kindel has a good follow-up, too.

Passbook Mobile Ticketing Expanding to 13 MLB Ballparks This Season ★

Erica Ogg:

Right now, he said, iOS users account for 70 percent of the free version of At Bat. But that’s “shrinking every day” as Android has grown — he says thanks to Samsung’s good mobile hardware and its growing cool factor, as well as the Google Play store being better curated by Google.

However, when it comes to users that pay for At Bat — which is $20 per season — 85 percent are still iOS. But that’s changing too, he said. “Slowly.”

Gun Whisky Cologne Cigar Beard ★

Codename for the upcoming less-emasculating version of Android.

Vigil ★

Simple, stylish, useful website-monitoring app for the iPhone. I’ve been using it for a few weeks, and the service paid for itself when it pinged me at 1am because DF was down.

How to Enable Pinch-to-Zoom on the Chromebook Pixel ★

Why is this not on by default?

‘His Dick Falls Off, That’s How He Mates’ ★

Scientifically accurate Spider-Man.

iCloud and That Sinking Feeling ★

From the new Nice Mohawk company blog, a look at the state of iCloud data syncing. In short: syncing documents works well, but syncing Core Data doesn’t, and sharing is non-existent — neither between users nor between apps.

If Marissa Mayer Were a Man ★

Kathleen Schmidt:

Over the last several days, there has been an internet furor over Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer’s edict to employees that they can no longer work remotely (read: from home, from Starbucks…). Almost all of womankind took to tweeting, blogging, and writing opinion pieces about what a horrible policy Mayer was instituting and how she was setting women back instead of being a working mother/CEO to whom we could relate. I, too, am guilty of going on the defensive about Mayer’s decision. But then I thought: If Marissa Mayer were a man, would there be the same outrage?

No. Or at the very least, there’d be no one questioning or even mentioning the parenthood of a male CEO who made the same decision.

Sergey Brin, With a Computer Strapped to His Head, Covering One of His Eyes, Tells TED Audience Smartphones Are ‘Emasculating’ ★

Casey Newton, reporting for CNet:

Speaking at the TED Conference today in Long Beach, Calif., Brin told the audience that smartphones are “emasculating.” “You’re standing around and just rubbing this featureless piece of glass,” he said.

Look at the fucking picture of him up there. We’re taking advice on cool from this guy? Seriously?

I can see the argument that dicking around with our phones in public is not cool, that we should pay more attention to our companions and surroundings, and less to our computer displays. Strapping a computer display to your face is not the answer.

Yahoo and Remote Work ★

Richard Branson, on Marissa Mayer’s elimination of work-from-home at Yahoo:

Perplexed by Yahoo! stopping remote working. Give people the freedom of where to work and they will excel.

I’ve worked remotely. I know some very successful companies where most, sometimes all, employees work remotely. If I were going to start a new company today, it’d be a small team, all remote. But what works for small teams doesn’t necessarily work for large companies. It may well be that Mayer’s policy change will not help Yahoo, but Branson’s statement is clearly wrong: Yahoo employees have been allowed to work remotely, and they have not excelled.

Yahoo needs a kick in the ass. Mayer is not merely trying to keep Yahoo limping along; she’s trying to lead Yahoo to kick some ass. Same old, same old isn’t going to get them there.

Samsung Wallet ★

Dan Seifert, The Verge:

The company showed off a few features of the new app during its developer keynote, and it’s quite clear that Samsung took its design inspiration for Wallet from Apple’s Passbook (even down to the icon that Samsung used).

Looks like someone fixed their copy-and-paste function.

When we asked why Samsung did not include NFC tap-to-pay features in Wallet, the company said that retailers prefer barcodes over NFC because they don’t have to install any new infrastructure to support it.

Shocker.

Dozens of Big U.S. Companies to Back Gay Marriage ★

Roger Parloff, reporting for Fortune:

On Thursday, dozens of American corporations, including Apple, Alcoa, Facebook, eBay, Intel, and Morgan Stanley will submit an amicus brief in the landmark Hollingsworth v. Perry case broadly arguing to the U.S. Supreme Court that laws banning same-sex marriages, like California’s ballot initiative Proposition 8, are unconstitutional under the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses.

Good.

Marco Arment on MacBooks With Cellular Networking ★

Marco Arment:

To start, Apple could just put cellular-connection detection and responsible-usage logic into iTunes and Software Update. That would be sufficient to launch with new 4G MacBook models at WWDC, then they could have a session on the new API and start enforcing responsible practices in the Mac App Store. Along with maybe working something out with Netflix, they’ll have addressed the biggest accidental bandwidth hogs that most people will face.

Kickstarter Campaign to Open Source LiveCode ★

LiveCode has a long and varied history as an alternative/successor to HyperCard. The company behind it, RunRev, started this Kickstarter project to fund development to (a) improve it; and (b) open source it. There’s one day left in the campaign and they just hit their funding goal tonight, but they have a few stretch goals that are within reach that promise even more.

I’m always skeptical about cross-platform app toolkits, but LiveCode’s emphasis on education — learning to program — is an interesting twist. I’m in.