Linked List: May 23, 2013

Thursday, 23 May 2013

Love this campaign.

Now available for a limited time: a new round of DF t-shirts, including a new heather grey shirt. We’ll take orders through the start of next week, print them mid-week, and start shipping on Friday.

Last month marked the seventh year that I’ve been writing Daring Fireball as a full-time endeavor. T-shirt sales no longer constitute the majority of this site’s revenue, but they remain a significant part of it. My original (years ago) goal was to take this site full-time based on nothing but direct reader support; that didn’t work out, but t-shirt sales and donations remain, to me, the purest form of support. I’m pretty proud of what I’ve accomplished with Daring Fireball: a self-published, profitable web site for which I never borrowed a dollar. This has only been possible because of the direct support of readers like you, and I can’t thank you enough.

Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Joe Nocera on Tim Cook ★

Philip Elmer-DeWitt:

But what will be remembered about Nocera’s latest Apple column is that he called Tim Cook a liar — accusing him of telling, under oath, a “whopper” and a “flat-out lie.” Nocera implies, but doesn’t actually say, that he makes those charges after watching Cook’s testimony.

I watched Cook’s testimony — twice. I find it hard to believe that Nocera saw any of it. And having read the documents and news articles he cites, I believe that on the points with which he has factual disagreements with Cook, he’s provably wrong.

Shocker.

Update: More dissection of Nocera’s claims from Yoni Heisler at TUAW.

HP Envy Remains the Most Aptly-Named Product in PC Industry ★

Sean Hollister, The Verge:

This year, it’s not just thin-and-light laptops getting the treatment: according to company representatives, CEO Meg Whitman has now mandated a unified design language across HP’s entire portfolio of consumer machines. “She took a look at our portfolio and said, ‘I don’t know what’s HP.’”

Apparently she decided the MacBook Pro is HP. (Maybe she’s confused about that crazy HP iPod still being a thing?)

Innovative Use of the Word ‘Still’ ★

Larry Popelka, “founder and chief executive officer of GameChanger, an innovation consulting firm”, in a piece for Businessweek headlined “Google Is Winning the Innovation War Against Apple”:

Google appears to be on the verge of taking over the tech innovation throne once held by Apple. A sure sign of this was the success of Google’s annual I/O developers conference last week at San Francisco’s Moscone Center. Tickets to the 5,000-seat, three-day conference sold out in just 49 minutes at $600 [sic] a pop. […]

This is only Google’s sixth year holding the I/O conference, which is targeted to open-source developers. It has quickly grown into a major media event rivaling Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), which the company stages to wow the technology world with its innovations.

Apple’s event is still extremely popular: Tickets this year sold out in just two minutes at $1,699 each.

Let’s get this straight. Google sells out its developer conference in 49 minutes at $900 a seat. (Popelka didn’t even get the price right.) Apple sells out its developer conference — in the same venue — in 2 minutes at $1700 a seat. And this is a “sure sign” that Google is “taking over the tech innovation throne”?

His conclusion is even more bizarre:

Few companies have the self-confidence to take on Google’s launch and iterate model. Most prefer the safety of Apple’s “perfect it before you sell it” approach, because it shields senior managers from criticism. But Google has found a successful innovation process, and companies who follow suit will win the long-term innovation war.

Few companies release crappy products and hope to improve them later? Most companies perfect their products in secrecy before releasing them, like Apple? Apple’s strategy shields senior managers from criticism? What planet is he talking about?

John Kirk: ‘Android’s Market Share Is Literally a Joke’ ★

Outstanding, must-read piece by John Kirk for Techpinions:

Scoring by market share alone and ignoring profit is like saying that a baseball team won because it had more hits when the other team scored more runs. Scoring by market share alone and ignoring profit is like saying that a football team won because it gained more yards when the other team scored more points. Scoring by market share alone and ignoring profit is like saying that a hockey team won because it had more shots on goal when the other team had more goals.

Market share without context is not only useless, it is worse than useless because it is likely to be misinterpreted.

Tesla Repays Federal Loan Nearly 10 Years Early ★

Chris Isidore, reporting for CNN Money:

Tesla Motors announced Wednesday that it has repaid a $465 million loan from the government nearly a decade before it was scheduled to do so.

The electric-car maker received the loan from the Department of Energy in January 2010, and it made its first payment this past December. That began what was supposed to be a 10-year repayment program, but plans have changed.

‘From Here You Can See Everything’ ★

James A. Pearson, writing for The Morning News:

In Wallace’s book, a Canadian terrorist informant of foggy allegiance asks an American undercover agent a form of the question: “If Americans would choose to press play on the film Infinite Jest, knowing it will kill them, doesn’t that mean they are already dead inside, that they have chosen entertainment over life?” Of course vanishingly few Americans would press play on a film that was sure to end their lives. But there’s a truth in this absurdity. Almost every American I know does trade large portions of his life for entertainment, hour by weeknight hour, binge by Saturday binge, Facebook check by Facebook check. I’m one of them. In the course of writing this I’ve watched all 13 episodes of House of Cards and who knows how many more West Wing episodes, and I’ve spent any number of blurred hours falling down internet rabbit holes. All instead of reading, or writing, or working, or spending real time with people I love.

‘Operation Swill’ ★

ABC 6 Action News in Philadelphia:

State investigators say at least one bar in New Jersey was mixing food dye with rubbing alcohol and serving it as scotch.

That’s one of the details released Thursday about an investigation dubbed “Operation Swill.” Twenty-nine bars and restaurants in the state are accused of putting cheap booze in premium brand liquor bottles and selling it to patrons who thought they were buying the good stuff.

Thirteen of the restaurants were TGI Fridays franchises. I might need to re-think my opposition to the death penalty.

Screen Size Shenanigans in Microsoft’s iPad Comparisons ★

Elliot Temple:

The iPad screen is 7.76 by 5.82 inches. The ASUS screen is 8.8 by 4.95 inches. ASUS is larger in one direction but smaller in the other direction, and has 3.55% less area than the iPad, not 36% more as Microsoft depicts.

How can the screen with a larger diagonal measurement be smaller? Because it’s a different shape. Long and thin gets you a bigger diagonal but a smaller screen, for the same diagonal inches.

Weak sauce from Microsoft, especially the diagrams that are not to scale.

The Beltway Shakedown ★

Compelling argument by Tim Carney in the Washington Examiner:

Apple has held out, though. Every couple of years, Politico, the trade publication of the Beltway, has run a piece warning Apple of the dangers of ignoring Washington. “Its low-wattage approach in Washington is becoming more glaring to policymakers,” a 2010 article said, pointing out that the company doesn’t have a PAC and its lobbying spending was a paltry $1 million.

The 2012 Politico warning to Apple included an explicit threat from a Judiciary staffer-turned-lobbyist, Jeff Miller: “There have been other tech companies who chose not to engage in Washington, and for the most part that strategy did not benefit them.”