Linked List: September 17, 2013

Tuesday, 17 September 2013

Intel and Apple: An Interesting Tidbit 

Russ Fischer at Seeking Alpha speculates that perhaps it’s Intel, not TSMC, that’s fabricating the new A7 chip. That’d be a hell of a score for Intel. (Hell of a score for TSMC, too, if it turns out it’s from them.) Looking forward to iFixit’s 5S teardown.

Google Wallet Dumps NFC Requirement 

Shocker.

DPI Love 

Simple web app to calculate the pixels-per-inch density of any display.

9to5Mac: ‘Apple Stores to Show Off iPhone 5S Touch ID Feature Using Demo App’ 

Mark Gurman:

We’ve learned that Apple has designed a demo application specific to the iPhone 5s demo units that will be found in Apple Stores and Carrier stores. To test Touch ID, a customer can launch the demo app. In this app, a customer can setup the device to recognize a single fingerprint. When the setup process is complete, the application will direct the user to place that fingerprint on the Touch ID sensor on the Home button. The application will then show that the Home button successfully read the fingerprint. Then, the app will tell the user to place a different finger on the Home button. The app will then show a red fingerprint outline to note that the authentication was not successful.

Cool idea for a tough-to-demo feature.

The Folly of Extrapolating Product Sales From Apple Supplier Data 

More on the very-wrong Peter Misek from Daniel Dilger at AppleInsider:

It’s interesting to note, however, that back in June, Jefferies analyst Peter Misek reported that Apple had cut production orders for iPhones, based on his “inventory checks.” Misek didn’t detail all of his research, but he did specifically note one reason for believing that Apple was cutting its iPhone orders.

“Our checks also indicate,” Misek wrote, as covered by CNET, “that Apple’s wafer starts at Samsung’s Austin fab have likely been cut.”

We don’t know that Misek’s understanding of Apple’s “wafer starts” in Austin were accurate, but if they were, there’s more than one reason for that to occur.

The problem for Misek: speculation is mounting that the A7 is produced by TSMC, not Samsung. Thus, he may be right that Apple cut orders from Samsung, but wrong about the reason. The time may have come where Apple has told Samsung to, well, take its flunkies and dangle.

Claim Chowder: Peter Misek, Jefferies Analyst 

Philip Elmer-DeWitt, on a client note from Peter Misek back in December 2012:

He expects the iPhone 5S (“new super HD camera/screen, a better battery and near field communications”) to ship in June or July, and says that several iPhone 6 prototypes are reported to be floating around.

Not sure about “super HD” but the camera and battery are improved — but neither of those were hard to predict. Everything else: wrong. The display is unchanged, Apple still hasn’t touched NFC, and it didn’t ship in June or July. And if by “super HD” he means something greater than 1080p video, like 4K, then he was wrong on the camera too.

Good job, Peter Misek. (He also predicted a “TV event” hosted by Apple for March.)

Mariano Rivera, Gum-Thrower Extraordinaire 

Yankees pitcher David Robertson, heir apparent to Mariano Rivera as Yankee closer, on Rivera’s proclivity for bullpen pranks:

I tell you what: people don’t realize Mo’s gum-throwing skills. He’s exceptional at it. He has great aim. I want to say maybe it was 2009 and we were sitting in the bullpen here in New York, just watching the game. I think it was in September. I was sitting on one side of the bullpen and he was sitting on the other side at this point. And he takes a piece of gum that he’d been chewing on for a while, and tosses it at me, and manages to stick it directly in my ear, like right in the side of my ear.

So like a 20-foot throw, just lands perfectly. [The gum] is all nasty and gooey and in my earhole and I couldn’t believe he did it. Of course he was laughing, and I was laughing because I couldn’t believe he actually made that shot, but it was hysterical. It’s funny, when I think of Mo, I think of him throwing gum at me all the time. And now I throw it back at him all the time, so it’s a constant war.

‘He’s Been CEO for Much Longer Than It Seems’ 

Excerpt from an interview of Horace Dediu by Eric Jackson:

Q: Is Tim Cook the right CEO for the company at this time?

A: I hold the belief that he’s been CEO for much longer than it seems. Jobs was not a CEO in any traditional sense. He was head of product and culture and all-around micromanager. He left the operational side of the company to Cook who actually built it into a colossus. Think along the lines of the pairing of Howard Hughes and Frank William Gay. What people look for in Cook is the qualities that Jobs had but those qualities and duties are now dispersed among a large team. The question isn’t whether Cook can be the “Chief Magical Officer” but rather whether the functional team that’s around Cook can do the things Jobs used to do.

Exactly. That’s not to say Steve Jobs was not in charge, nor that he is not sorely missed. But Tim Cook has been, effectively, running the company for a long time. There are certain decisions and moments requiring leadership where the burden falls on the CEO. But much of Jobs’s authority — product design, marketing, media negotiations — now falls on the shoulders of executives like Jony Ive, Phil Schiller, and Eddy Cue.

App Store Ghosts 

Apple just unveiled a seemingly neat new App Store feature — the ability to download an older version of an app if the latest version of that app requires a newer version of iOS than the one you have installed on your device. Sounds great, right? Kyle Richter raises some interesting questions about it, though:

No one ever told us [developers] about it. Let me rephrase that, because it sounds pretty entitled. No developer expects Apple to run this kind of stuff by them ahead of time. The problem is no one ever thought this was a possibility. The common misconception here is when an app is updated it is updated to add new features and maybe some bug fixes. These new features may require a newer version of iOS so old users are left in the cold. The truth is a lot happens under the covers during updates, API endpoints are updated, data models changed, multiplayer protocols changed, even legal issues are addressed.

The likelihood of any complex app, especially anything API driven, working after several years of neglect are slim.

Regarding Apple Not Yet Announcing iPhone 5C Pre-Order Numbers 

One never quite knows what drives the stock market, particularly when it comes to Apple, but the consensus is that Apple’s stock took a hit yesterday partly because the company didn’t release opening weekend sales numbers for the iPhone 5C.

Of course they didn’t. Apple is remarkably open financially compared to nearly all its competitors (e.g. Amazon has never once, not once, announced Kindle sales figures — and good luck getting Nexus sales figures out of Google, or a precise definition of an “Android activation”), but even Apple keeps much data to itself. Apple has never broken down by model number the sales of iPods or iPads. They’re not going to start now with the iPhone. They don’t want competitors to know the breakdown of 5C/5S sales. If we get a sales number announcement from Apple, it’ll come next week, after the 5S goes on sale for a weekend, and the figure announced will be that of all new iPhones sold. I bet.

Natural Born ‘Killers’ 

Peter Kafka, AllThingsD, headline “As Amazon Preps Its Apple TV Killer, It Plays Nicely With Apple TV”:

Amazon is planning on going head to head with Apple TV later this fall.

But before that happens, it will work nicely with Apple TV: Amazon’s Instant Video app now supports AirPlay, which means you can stream old episodes of “The Good Wife” on your iPad, and fling them to your big screen.

What purpose does the word killer serve in that headline, other than to serve as shameless click bait? They’re purportedly releasing an Apple TV competitor.

Remember when the Kindle tablets were billed as “iPad killers”? Writers and editors should triple-check before using that word to mean competitor, lest they embarrass themselves.

‘If They Had Asked Us’ 

My Q Branch colleagues Dave Wiskus and Brent Simmons join me on the latest episode of my podcast, The Talk Show. The topic: last week’s Apple announcements and news — the iPhones 5S and 5C and iOS 7.

Brought to you by three great sponsors:

  • Tonx: The best fresh roasted coffee right to your door.
  • An Event Apart: The design conference for people who make websites.
  • Squarespace: Everything you need to build exceptional websites.
Apple Market Share: Facts and Psychology 

Great piece by Jean-Louis Gassée on the “market share spells doom for Apple” naysayers:

Remember netbooks? When Apple was too greedy and stupid to make a truly low-cost Macintosh? Here we go again, Apple refuses to make a genuinely affordable iPhone. There will be consequences — similar to what happened when the Mac refused to join netbooks circling the drain.