Linked List: November 4, 2013

Monday, 4 November 2013

Apple to Open Another U.S. Factory: Sapphire Plant in Mesa, Arizona ★

Jake Smith, Pocket-Lint:

“We are proud to expand our domestic manufacturing initiative with a new facility in Arizona, creating more than 2,000 jobs in engineering, manufacturing and construction,” Apple told Pocket-lint in a statement. “This new plant will make components for Apple products and it will run on 100% renewable energy from day one, as a result of the work we are doing with SRP to create green energy sources to power the facility.”

The purpose of the factory hasn’t been named specifically by Apple, though GT Advanced says it has entered “into a multi-year supply agreement with Apple Inc. to provide sapphire material.” Sapphire is used abundantly in Apple products, including the Touch ID fingerprint sensor and camera lens in the iPhone 5S. This gels nicely with the word about “components” Apple gave us.

Another possible use: sapphire displays. Sapphire is harder than Gorilla Glass, and thus more scratch resistant.

MacRumors had a piece over the summer regarding a Swiss news site’s interview with an executive from Vertu, who claimed Apple had investigated sapphire displays (and recruited Vertu employees with experience designing them):

According to Oosting, Apple ultimately shelved the sapphire project because the material is unsuitable for production in the numbers that Apple requires at the current point in time.

Could be what this factory is for.

Why Are So Many Social Media Managers Dipshits? ★

Mark Copyranter Duffy:

Today, many of the social media managers at large and important companies are, by contrast, not very smart ad men. To say that they regularly underestimate their customers’ intelligence would be a great understatement. They seem to believe their customers have the brain power of a baked potato.

I’ve collected eight recent social media posts by large companies. Most of these updates are from the last month. To try to pick the abjectly stupidest one would not be easy. You can go ahead and give it a try, though.

MacKenzie Bezos’s Amazon Review of Brad Stone’s Book About Jeff Bezos and Amazon ★

MacKenzie Bezos:

If this were an isolated example, it might not matter, but it’s not. Everywhere I can fact check from personal knowledge, I find way too many inaccuracies, and unfortunately that casts doubt over every episode in the book. Like two other reviewers here, Jonathan Leblang and Rick Dalzell, I have firsthand knowledge of many of the events. I worked for Jeff at D. E. Shaw, I was there when he wrote the business plan, and I worked with him and many others represented in the converted garage, the basement warehouse closet, the barbecue-scented offices, the Christmas-rush distribution centers, and the door-desk filled conference rooms in the early years of Amazon’s history. Jeff and I have been married for 20 years.

(Via Matthew Panzarino.)

Understanding iCloud Keychain ★

Jon Brodkin, writing for Ars Technica:

Unfortunately, it’s kind of a mess. iCloud Keychain does accomplish the most basic things you’d expect a password manager to do, but it often does so in an awkward manner. Important functionality is hard enough to find that it may be effectively hidden from the average user, particularly on iPhones and iPads.

Ultimately, iCloud Keychain can be put to good use if you’ve carefully examined what it does well and doesn’t do well. It works best as a complement to a complete service like 1Password or LastPass, but it just isn’t convenient and robust enough to act as a standalone password manager.

I think it’s a bit harsh to call it a “mess”, but Brodkin provides a good overview of what iCloud Keychain does. Complaining that it’s not as full-featured as 1Password is like complaining that iPhoto doesn’t do everything Lightroom or Aperture do.

‘I’d Prefer Not to Talk to Anybody About That’ ★

Brian Krebs:

A hacker break in at a U.S. company that brokers reservations for limousine and Town Car services nationwide has exposed the personal and financial information on more than 850,000 well-heeled customers, including Fortune 500 CEOs, lawmakers, and A-list celebrities.

Amateur Hour Still Over ★

Boyd Erman, reporting for The Globe and Mail:

BlackBerry Ltd. is abandoning a plan to find a buyer and will instead raise $1-billion of new funds and replace its chief executive and some directors, sources said.

Thorsten Heins, we hardly knew you.

T-Mobile CEO John Legere Trashes the Wireless Business Model ★

Brendan Greeley and Scott Moritz, writing for Businessweek:

In October, T-Mobile announced it would offer a small amount of wireless data, free for life, to every customer who bought a tablet. “These aren’t carrier moves,” Legere told reporters. “We try to design them to be things even we can’t believe we’re doing.” The company is also taking old tablets from customers as a trade-in for a new iPad. Any old tablet will do. “We may take a bushel of corn,” Legere said. He is a midway barker, promising something marvelous if we’ll just step through the curtain.

200 MB of data isn’t much, but for people who mostly use Wi-Fi and only occasionally want cellular networking, you can’t beat “free for life”.

Tim Cook: Workplace Equality Is Good for Business ★

Tim Cook, in an op-ed for the WSJ:

So long as the law remains silent on the workplace rights of gay and lesbian Americans, we as a nation are effectively consenting to discrimination against them.

Update: Here’s a link that should get around the WSJ’s paywall.