Linked List: March 19, 2013

Tuesday, 19 March 2013

Eric Jackson:

A bozo is someone who thinks they are much smarter and capable than they actually are. They constantly over-estimate their abilities and under-estimate the risks and threats around them. They typically don’t keep an open-mind. They look instead for data that confirms a previously held bias.

Exhibit B: Defending/Denying Flash Player’s Adverse Effect on Battery Life, a Mere Two Years Ago ★

I get that the guy worked for Adobe and had to play for the home team, but as CTO he backed a dying technology for years too long. In 2007 when the iPhone shipped Flash-free, that was one thing. But for Adobe to still be backing the Flash horse in 2010 when the iPad came out — they just looked silly. Flash Player had already lost. It was over. It was like the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail — Flash Player had had its arms cut off and Lynch was telling us it was “just a flesh wound”.

Lynch wasn’t just an employee pushing the company line. As CTO, he was the guy who defined the company line — and his line had Adobe still pushing for Flash on mobile devices over three years after the iPhone shipped.

Exhibit A in the Case That Newly-Hired Apple VP of Technology Kevin Lynch Is a Bozo, a Bad Hire ★

He wrote this, just three years ago:

Some have been surprised at the lack of inclusion of Flash Player on a recent magical device. […]

We are now on the verge of delivering Flash Player 10.1 for smartphones with all but one of the top manufacturers. This includes Google’s Android, RIM’s Blackberry, Nokia, Palm Pre and many others across form factors including not only smartphones but also tablets, netbooks, and internet-connected TVs. Flash in the browser provides a competitive advantage to these devices because it will enable their customers to browse the whole Web.

Well, how’d that work out? Those companies and platforms are now either (a) out of business, (b) on the verge of going out of business, or (c) have abandoned Flash Player entirely.

For example, the recent Nexus One from Google will rock with a great experience in the browser with Flash Player 10.1.

Yeah, it rocked so hard Google dropped Flash Player support from Android last year.

Even in the case of video, where Flash is enabling over 75% of video on the Web today, the coming HTML video implementations cannot agree on a common format across browsers, so users and content creators would be thrown back to the dark ages of video on the Web with incompatibility issues.

And now here we are today in the dark ages of video, where we can only see by the light of the millions of HTML5 videos playing on Android, Windows Phone, BlackBerry, and iOS mobile devices.

I have a bad feeling about this.

Dan Lyons Holds Job for Five Months ★

Feels like just yesterday. Good times.

Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch Leaves to Join Apple ★

Lynch’s leaving Adobe is a done deal. CNBC’s Jon Fortt reports his title at Apple is “VP of Technology”, reporting to senior VP Bob Mansfield. If true, he doesn’t even make this page.

Market Share and Share Price ★

Dare Obasanjo, on Twitter:

The point @gruber misses in [“Ceding the Crown”] is that Apple’s share price was based on the assumption of overwhelming market share.

That’s actually a point I wanted to make, but forgot. My misconception #1:

Apple’s lack of serious competition would, or at least might, result in an overwhelming market share advantage for the iPhone.

I think some significant amount of AAPL’s run-up was based on this notion, and when it became clear it wasn’t going to happen, all other signs of iOS’s growth and vibrancy be damned, those investors cashed out.

Thumbs and Ammo ★

“Real tough guys don’t need guns, they just need a positive, can-do attitude.” (Via Aza Raskin.)

HTC One Delayed Due to Supply Problems ★

Uh-oh:

The company has a problem managing its component suppliers as it has changed its order forecasts drastically and frequently following last year’s unexpected slump in shipments. HTC has had difficulty in securing adequate camera components as it is no longer a tier-one customer.

Free Works ★

Marco Arment:

And we lucked out with Reader — imagine how much worse it would be if website owners weren’t publishing open RSS feeds for anyone to fetch and process, but were instead posting each item to a proprietary Google API. We’d have almost no chance of building a successful alternative.

That’s Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. (Does the shutdown make more sense now?)

Checkboxes That Kill Your Product ★

Alex Limi:

Well, we have met the enemy, and he is us. In the currently shipping version, Firefox ships with many options that will render the browser unusable to most people, right in the main settings ui.

The Story of Christoph Niemann’s Petting Zoo App ★

Christoph Niemann, on creating his delightful iOS app, Petting Zoo:

How do you create an experience that neither frustrates users with its complex possibilities nor bores them with repetitive dullness? That goal was made even more complicated because I didn’t want the app to use any words to explain what users should do.

PaintCode ★

PaintCode is a rather amazing Mac app: it’s a vector drawing tool that generates Objective-C code. Like in the way that Illustrator is a front-end to PostScript, PaintCode is a front-end to Cocoa. And the developers, PixelCut, are eating their own dogfood — most of the PaintCode UI was created in PaintCode.

‘So Much of What Is Written About Apple These Days Is Just Horseshit Meant to Draw Flies’ ★

Don Melton on the stupid rumor that Apple assigns new employees to fake projects to test their loyalty.