Linked List: March 4, 2013

Monday, 4 March 2013

If Only Google Set Its Sights on TV, Look Out 

Warren Ellis starts with a spot-on complaint about iOS — Apple’s Podcasts app doesn’t do the obvious things that it should: download podcasts automatically and sync the state of what you’ve listened to across devices — and then wonders whether Android wouldn’t work better:

In fact, in many respects, I’m getting the sense for the first time that I may have backed the wrong mobile-OS horse. I am looking particularly at Google’s hires of late, and the appearance that they seem prepared to spend their money. I wonder what happens when Google decide to look at TV interfaces, long expected to be an Apple focus going forward.

I bet if Google tried that, half the TVs on the market would have Google TV built in by, uh, last summer.

Apple’s Reality Distortion Field Relocates to Wall Street 

Ben Bajarin, writing for Time:

So to recap: Apple is the most profitable company, can’t make enough products to meet demand and is the most admired by its peers. Yet Wall Street and media fanatics are claiming Apple is doomed. The reality distortion field is in full effect.

Apple has a lower P/E ratio than Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and now Dell, to name a few. I find this baffling and I would challenge any analyst to articulate to me how Apple is not healthier and stronger, competitively, in the long-term than many of those companies.

The Rise and Fall of Andy Zaky 

Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Andy Zaky, whose work I’ve long appreciated:

As Apple’s share price climbed and Zaky’s fame spread, investors clamored to get in. In June 2012 he opened his newsletter up to a flood of new subscribers, charging the members of this group $200 a month. At its peak, Bullish Cross Pro had 700 subscribers and a lively bulletin board where Zaky would often field more than 500 comments and questions a day.

Meanwhile, he was onto something even bigger. In late 2011 he’d launched Bullish Cross Capital L.P. — basically an Apple-only hedge fund — with a handful of subscribers. By the spring of 2012, the fund’s investor rolls had grown six fold.

In a Form D filed in November 2012, Zaky reported to the Securities Exchange Commission that Bullish Cross Asset Management (BCRAM) had attracted 28 limited partners with an average investment of $378,000. The minimum investment, which started at $250,000, had grown to $500,000 by March 2012.

Elmer-DeWitt cites my linking to Zaky’s “buy” recommendation on 17 May last year. I wrote then:

This is only the fifth time Zaky has issued a buy on Apple. He’s four-for-four.

Now he’s five-for-five. Apple’s share price went way up in the months after May. But Zaky wasn’t able to profit from the rise he foresaw, and got caught short when it began to fall.

Apple as Bumblebee 

James Surowiecki had a piece on Apple in last week’s New Yorker; far better than Tim Wu’s ham-fisted “open beats closed” piece, but similarly flawed in terms of baseline assumptions:

Over time, Apple has succeeded despite (or because of) its disregard for the conventional wisdom about what works in technology markets: it has built hardware and software, kept its platform closed, had long product cycles, and emphasized quality over price. It’s always been the proverbial bumblebee: it shouldn’t be able to fly but it does. A wobble in flight is all it takes for people to proclaim its inevitable crash.

Like The Macalope (who had a great column this week, go read it), I found this passage very telling. I have long argued that Apple’s business model is simple and seemingly obvious: make high-quality products that people want to buy and sell them for a profit. Yet many people continue to look at this and say, “That shouldn’t work”.

As The Macalope wrote:

The bumblebee analogy is more apt than Surowiecki details. The reason this myth started was because people tried to apply formulas to bees that weren’t apt. Just like a bee is not a fixed-wing aircraft, Apple is not a steady growth company like Johnson & Johnson, or a market-share chaser like Amazon.

Fortune: ‘Apple Most Admired Company’ 

Brad Chase, writing at Forbes regarding Fortune’s annual list of most admired companies:

Apple has been the “world’s most admired company” for five years running, and there’s a chance Fortune will defy logic and give Apple the crown once more for posterity. If Amazon somehow fails to leapfrog the bumbling Apple and the pugnacious Google this year, it’s clear the algorithm is flawed. One way or another, the drop has begun.

Fortune, a few days later, named Apple the most-admired company in the world once again. So Chase was right — the algorithm must be flawed.

How Will the New Office for iPad Work? 

Ed Bott:

Microsoft is morphing into a devices and services company. They are aggressively getting out of the perpetual license business with Office and moving to a subscription model with Office 365. So why would they deliberately build up that old-fashion license business on another platform, where they would have to pay Apple a 30 percent cut of the proceeds on every sale?

They won’t.

I’m assuming that Microsoft is going to give away its iOS app for free. Just like it’s currently giving away its OneNote apps on iOS (free for up to 500 notes, then a paid upgrade) and Android (a similar freemium model) and Windows 8. Just like it’s made its Office Web Apps/SkyDrive combo free.

Sounds right to me, but Apple doesn’t only collect 30 percent on the sale of apps — they want 30 percent of subscription revenue purchased through the app as well. So if you already have a subscription to Office 365, you could just download the Excel or Word or PowerPoint app for iOS, sign in, and start using it. But if you don’t already have an Office 365 account, what happens then?

This has been a source of conflict between Apple and Microsoft ever since Microsoft committed to developing serious apps for iOS. Unless I missed something, it hasn’t yet been resolved.

WebKit for Developers 

Great piece by Paul Irish on the similarities and differences between the ever-growing list of WebKit browsers. (Thanks to Patrick Gibson.)

White House Supports Legalizing Unlocking Cell Phones 

Responding to a petition:

The White House agrees with the 114,000+ of you who believe that consumers should be able to unlock their cell phones without risking criminal or other penalties. In fact, we believe the same principle should also apply to tablets, which are increasingly similar to smart phones. And if you have paid for your mobile device, and aren’t bound by a service agreement or other obligation, you should be able to use it on another network. It’s common sense, crucial for protecting consumer choice, and important for ensuring we continue to have the vibrant, competitive wireless market that delivers innovative products and solid service to meet consumers’ needs.

Fear of a WebKit Planet 

John Siracusa, responding to anxiety about the rise of a “WebKit monoculture”:

As much as I despised Internet Explorer for Windows, and what its simultaneous stagnation and dominance did to the web, I don’t think it’s the correct historical analog in this case. WebKit is not a web browser. It’s not even a product. It’s much more analogous to Linux, an open-source project that any company or individual is free to build on and enhance.

The Lightning Digital AV Adapter Surprise 

Interesting investigation from the guys at Panic; be sure to read the comments, or at least this one.