Linked List: August 13, 2013

Tuesday, 13 August 2013

Don’t Say ‘Cheap’ 

Worst part is, you just know on day one, after it’s announced and it isn’t priced at $99, the usual clowns will say the iPhone 5C is doomed and Apple out of touch because “Hey, that’s not cheap!”

How the iPhone and Bad Decisions Killed BlackBerry 

Vauhini Vara, writing for The New Yorker:

Shares in the Canadian maker of BlackBerry smartphones peaked in August of 2007, at two hundred and thirty-six dollars. In retrospect, the company was facing an inflection point and was completely unaware. Seven months earlier, in January, Apple had introduced the iPhone at San Francisco’s Moscone Center. Executives at BlackBerry, then called Research in Motion, decided to let Apple focus on the general-use smartphone market, while it would continue selling BlackBerry products to business and government customers that bought the devices for employees. “In terms of a sort of a sea change for BlackBerry,” the company’s co-C.E.O Jim Balsillie said at the time, referring to the iPhone’s impact on the industry, “I would think that’s overstating it.”

I hate to toot my own horn, but I called it back in 2008, while BlackBerry’s (née RIM’s) share price was still over $150, and where by “hate” I mean “smugly enjoy”.

The Meanings of Apple-y-ness 

Horace Dediu nails it. I think I’d only add one item to his list: Build for our customers the devices and software that we ourselves would want to use; assume our users have the same high standards and discerning taste that we do.

Defending iOS With Cheaper iPhones 

Smart analysis from Ben Evans:

If total Android engagement moves decisively above iOS, the fact that iOS will remain big will be beside the point – it will move from first to first-equal and then perhaps second place on the roadmap. And given the sales trajectories, that could start to happen in 2014. If you have 5-6× the users and a quarter of the engagement, you’re still a more attractive market.

Panic + Imagineering at D23 

Cabel Sasser:

The Panic Art Department recently helped design the Walt Disney Imagineering pavilion for Disney’s huge D23 conference. As theme park nerds, we jumped at the chance help frame 20,000 square feet of the awesome creativity and engineering that inspires us.

WebKit: Improved Support for High-Resolution Displays With the ‘srcset’ Image Attribute 

Dean Jackson, WebKit:

WebKit now supports the srcset attribute on image (img) elements (official specification from the W3C). This allows you, the developer, to specify higher-quality images for your users who have high-resolution displays, without penalizing the users who don’t. Importantly, it also provides a graceful fallback for browsers that don’t yet support the feature.

Just what the doctor ordered. Nice work.

The Meanings of Googliness 

Jens O. Meiert, with an insider’s perspective on Google’s company culture. You’re either going to think, Wow, sounds like a great place to work, or, Wow, what a pile of horseshit.