Linked List: July 15, 2013

Monday, 15 July 2013

Dan Kois profiles Jack Handey for the NYT:

“Deep Thoughts” wound up being the perfect distillation of Handey’s comedic temperament. He was no longer constrained by the format of the sketch — he was free to create koans, tiny polished gems of comedy. Like: “If a kid asks where rain comes from, I think a cute thing to tell him is ‘God is crying.’ And if he asks why God is crying, another cute thing to tell him is ‘Probably because of something you did.’”

Handey’s new novel, The Stench of Honolulu, comes out tomorrow.

Jessica Lessin: ‘Apple Pitches Ad-Skipping for New TV Service’ ★

Former WSJ reporter Jessica Lessin, now writing for her own website:

In recent discussions, Apple told media executives it wants to offer a “premium” version of the service that would allow users to skip ads and would compensate television networks for the lost revenue, according to people briefed on the conversations. […]

It is a risky idea. Ad-skipping would disrupt the entrenched system of television ratings — the basis for buying TV ads. In fact, television broadcasters sued Dish Network when it introduced similar technology last year.

Jesus Diaz, One Year Ago: ‘Microsoft Surface Just Made the MacBook Air and the iPad Look Obsolete’ ★

Jesus Diaz, last June:

After yesterday’s Surface event — assuming they don’t fumble the execution — Gates’ children may have found the weapon to stop the heirs of Jobs and turn the tide.

Bloomberg, yesterday:

Microsoft Corp. is cutting the price of its Surface RT tablet by as much as 30 percent as the device struggles to lure customers amid competition from machines such as Apple Inc.’s iPad.

When to Start Work on iOS 7-Ready App Updates: A Month Ago ★

Dermot Daly, on clients who thought letterboxed apps would be OK on the iPhone 5:

I predict the iOS 7 effect will be worse. Within a week of running full time, those apps which haven’t been modernised to look like an iOS 7 app will look very old. They too will become insta-deletes.

If you have an app in the store, We’d highly recommend looking at modernising them pretty quick.

Tim Stevens Out at Engadget, Marc Perton to Take Over ★

AOL seems like a swell place to work.

Who’s the Bigger Fool: the Fool, or the Fool Who Follows Him? ★

Mike Cane argues that the evidence in the DOJ/Apple e-book case shows that the big six publishers are stupid:

The math pros of the Big Six crunched the numbers and revealed this agreement would cost all of them money. Yet they still went ahead with it! If that isn’t being a moron, I don’t know what the hell is!

Maybe they are stupid. But on the issue of pricing and near-future profits, I don’t think so. With the wholesale/retail model that was in place, pre-iBooks, they were making more money per book from Amazon, and selling more books at the $9.99 retail price. With the switch to the agency model, retail prices went up, so of course unit sales went down. And, the publishers made less money per book.

But long-term, the publishers were concerned about what would happen if Amazon continued to dominate the e-book market with retail prices at $9.99. Eventually, Amazon might have forced the publishers to lower their wholesale prices dramatically. The big six publishers were willing to sacrifice a slice of their revenue now (17 percent, by their own calculations) in order to regain long-term control over the retail pricing of e-books. You can disagree with that, but it’s not moronic.

Vesper 1.002 ★

Short and sweet: bug fixes and workarounds for users running Vesper on iOS 7 betas.