Linked List: April 29, 2013

Monday, 29 April 2013

‘To a Boy of the 1970s, the Line Between Comic Books and Real Life People Was Hopelessly Blurred’ 

Joe Posnanski, writing about Mets phenom Matt Harvey, compares him to Mark “The Bird” Fidrych of the 1976 Detroit Tigers:

He was like a superhero in a Detroit Tigers’ uniform. I’m semi-serious about that. You have to understand that to a boy of the 1970s, the line between comic books and real life people was hopelessly blurred. Was Steve Austin, the Six Million Dollar Man, real or fake? Fake? Well, then, how about Evel Knievel jumping over busses on his motorcycle? Oh, he was real. The Superman ads said, “You will believe a man can fly,” and Fonzie started jukeboxes by simply hitting them, and Elvis Presley wore capes, and Nolan Ryan threw pitches 102 mph, and Roger Staubach (who they called Captain America) kept bringing the Cowboys back from certain defeat, and Muhammad Ali let George Foreman tire himself out by leaning against the ropes and taking every punch he could throw. What was real anyway?

Yes yes yes to all of the above. I’ll toss in Reggie Jackson hitting four home runs on four consecutive swings of the bat in the 1977 World Series.

‘Up to the Creepy Line’ 

This week’s episode of my podcast, The Talk Show, with special guest John Moltz. Topics include Apple’s quarterly results, the asinine idea that Tim Cook’s job is possibly in jeopardy (or as Moltz put it, “how many days Tim Cook has left”), Google Glass, and more.

Brought to you by two great sponsors:

Super Monster Bros by Adventure Time Pocket Free Games 

Why does Apple allow this sort of garbage in the App Store?

Update, 2 May 2013: Looks like the game has been removed from the App Store.

NBA Center Jason Collins: ‘I’m Gay’ 

Jason Collins, in a Sports Illustrated cover story:

I’m a 34-year-old NBA center. I’m black. And I’m gay.

I didn’t set out to be the first openly gay athlete playing in a major American team sport. But since I am, I’m happy to start the conversation. I wish I wasn’t the kid in the classroom raising his hand and saying, “I’m different.” If I had my way, someone else would have already done this. Nobody has, which is why I’m raising my hand.

The Latest Knock on Apple: Too Many People Buying iPhones Other Than the 5 

Chris O’Brien, writing for the LA Times, “Consumers’ Shift to Older iPhones Raises Concerns on Wall Street”:

How strange to think that Vicki Macchiavello’s decision to buy an iPhone after years of using a BlackBerry could be bad news for Apple. And yet, because the Oakland resident opted to buy a cheaper, older iPhone 4 rather than the latest, pricier iPhone 5, she represents a trend that has become a growing concern on Wall Street.

In recent months, such an unusually large proportion of consumers are opting to buy older iPhone models that some analysts have begun to wonder whether Apple has lost its ability to create new versions that have enough dazzle to justify their high prices.

Framed this way, Apple can’t win. If they only sold the iPhone 5, they’d get dinged for not addressing the middle and lower tiers of the market. In fact, even now, with the iPhone 4 and 4S on the market, Apple is frequently criticized for not having an even cheaper iPhone — something for the no-contract market.

But so now when people buy the iPhone 4 and 4S, it’s a sign that something is wrong with the iPhone 5? If selling the iPhone 4 and 4S to new customers were bad for Apple, they wouldn’t sell them. It’s not complicated. Read the article — it’s quite obvious that if the iPhone 4 were not available free-with-contract, this woman would have bought something other than an iPhone that was. She wasn’t going to spring for a $199 iPhone 5.

Wikipedia’s Sexism 

Amanda Filipacchi, in an op-ed for the NYT:

Early last week I noticed something strange on Wikipedia. It appeared that, gradually, over time, the volunteer editors who create the site had begun moving women, one by one, from the “American Novelists” category to the “American Women Novelists” subcategory. […] Many female novelists, like Harper Lee, Anne Rice, Amy Tan, Donna Tartt and some 300 others, had been relegated to the ranks of “American Women Novelists” only, and no longer appeared in the category “American Novelists.”

‘You Cannot Copy High Quality’ 

Interesting piece for Fast Company by Danielle Sacks, on Mickey Drexler and Jenna Lyons’s leadership at J. Crew:

After two days of reviewing the entire product line, Drexler told Lyons to get on a plane to Hong Kong and design new pieces to fill all the holes. He also asked her where she wanted to source the company’s cashmere. A more expensive mill, she said. He told her to call them. This move marked the beginning of Drexler’s turnaround strategy — a bet on quality. “You cannot copy high quality, and it takes a long time to get a reputation for quality,” he says. Lyons credits this first encounter as both formative and telling of their future together. “Honestly, I think it was because I didn’t bullshit him,” says Lyons. “His bullshit-dar is insane.”

No surprise that Drexler sits on Apple’s board of directors.