Linked List: November 11, 2013

Monday, 11 November 2013

One More Gem From the Bloomberg iPhone Claim Chowder File 

Argin Chang, writing for Bloomberg back on July 17 of this year:

Apple Inc. may delay the introduction of the iPhone 5S until the end of the year after the design was changed to feature a bigger 4.3-inch retina display screen, the Commercial Times reported.

It’s based on a Commercial Times report, but it was Bloomberg’s decision to pass it along, despite the fact that the 5S going to a 4.3-inch screen made no sense whatsoever, and that Apple making design changes like this in July for a product slated for October defies belief.

Apple can do things like removing a camera at the last minute; the size of a display, on the other hand, is decided over a year in advance.

‘People Who Have Been Briefed on the Plans’ 

Another gem from the Bloomberg iPhone claim chowder file, this one reported by Peter Burrows and Gregory Bensinger back in February 2011:

Apple has considered selling the new iPhone for about $200, without obligating users to sign a two-year service contract, said the person who has seen it. Android phones sell for a range of prices at AT&T Inc., Verizon Wireless and other carriers, and typically come with agreements that include a fee for broken contracts. The iPhone 4, sold in the U.S. by AT&T and Verizon Wireless, costs $200 to $300 when subsidized by a contract.

While Apple has aimed to unveil the device near mid-year, the introduction may be delayed or scrapped, the person said. Few Apple employees know the details of the project, the person said. Apple often works on products that don’t get released. The prototype was about one-third smaller than the iPhone 4, and it had no “home” button, said the person, who saw it last year.

None of this is actually wrong, technically, given the “introduction may be delayed or scrapped” dodge — but none of this came to pass. None of it.

From the Annals of Bloomberg iPhone Punditry 

Matthew Lynn, writing for Bloomberg back in January 2007:

Don’t let that fool you into thinking that it matters. The big competitors in the mobile-phone industry such as Nokia Oyj and Motorola Inc. won’t be whispering nervously into their clamshells over a new threat to their business.

The iPhone is nothing more than a luxury bauble that will appeal to a few gadget freaks. In terms of its impact on the industry, the iPhone is less relevant. […]

Likewise, who is it pitched at? The price and the e-mail features make it look like a business product. But Apple is a consumer company. Will your accounts department stump up for a fancy new handset just so you can listen to Eminem on your way to a business meeting?

Horace Dediu: The Innovator’s Curse 

I somehow missed this Horace Dediu piece from back in August (even though I linked to and commented upon his follow-up piece):

But just like Disruption Theory is beautifully illustrated through the ageless David vs. Goliath parable, The Innovator’s Curse is but a retelling of this fable:

A cottager and his wife had a Goose that laid a golden egg every day. They supposed that the Goose must contain a great lump of gold in its inside, and in order to get the gold they killed it. Having done so, they found to their surprise that the Goose differed in no respect from their other geese.

Even if the cottagers were naive enough to have faith in the replicating miracle of golden egg laying geese, wise men would quickly advise them to kill it and get the gold more quickly. The Goose is doomed no matter what.

The regularity of the goose in the parable makes its owners seem more obviously foolish. Imagine instead a goose that lays golden eggs not every day, but only every once in a while, with an unpredictable and irregular periodicity. That’s Apple.

What Google Lost When Apple Dropped It From iOS Maps 

Charles Arthur, in The Guardian:

But a year on, a total of 35m iPhone owners in the US used Apple’s maps during September 2013, according to ComScore, compared to a total of 58.7m Google Maps across the iPhone and Android.

Of those, about 6m used Google Maps on the iPhone, according to calculations by the Guardian based on figures from ComScore. That includes 2m iPhone users who have not or cannot upgrade to iOS 6, according to data from MixPanel.

Two factors:

  1. The inherent advantage of the built-in Maps app over any app that has to be downloaded from the App Store. The App Store makes downloading third-party apps easier than ever, but nothing can beat the convenience of an app pre-installed with the system.

  2. Apple Maps has gotten to the point where it’s pretty good, and it continues to get better.

WSJ: ‘Apple Finds Surprising Growth Market in Japan’ 

Why is the word “surprising” in this headline:

Sales got another boost in late September when NTT DoCoMo Inc., Japan’s largest wireless carrier, began offering the iPhone for the first time to its 61.8 million customers. Even before that, the iPhone was Japan’s best-selling smartphone, with a 37% market share in the six months ended Sept. 30, according to Tokyo’s MM Research Institute. That’s comparable to the iPhone’s 36% share in the U.S. in the third quarter, according to Kantar Worldpanel ComTech.

The iPhone was already the best-selling smartphone in Japan, before it was available on the country’s largest carrier, and somehow it’s “surprising” that Japan is a growth market?

Design Project Z 

How Nissan designed the Datsun 240-Z in the mid-’60s: full-size high-quality clay models.

Update: Hand-drawn styling analysis of the 240-Z from the April 1970 issue of Road and Track. (Thanks to Joe Clark for both of these links.)

One Advantage to Concave Displays for Smartphones: Reducing Reflections 

Display expert Raymond M. Soneira:

Introducing a slightly curved cylindrically concave screen is a very important and major innovation in Smartphone display technology — very far from being a marketing gimmick as has been widely reported. The Galaxy Round screen curvature is very subtle, just 0.10 inches away from flat, which is similar to the slight curvature in a handheld magnifying mirror. But that small curvature is the key to a series of optical effects that result in significantly reducing interference from reflected ambient light by a large factor. It substantially improves screen readability, image contrast, color accuracy, and overall picture quality, but can also increase the running time on battery because the screen brightness and display power can be lowered due to the reduced light interference from ambient light reflections.

But that’s for a concave display. Bloomberg’s report regarding Apple’s supposedly forthcoming displays describes “larger displays with glass that curves downward at the edges” — downward sounds like convex, not concave. It’s possible that Bloomberg’s source is describing a design where the display is flat but the glass surface above the display tapers at the edge of the device.

‘Anti-Elop Bias’ 

On the latest episode of my podcast, The Talk Show, I’m joined by special guest Paul X. Kafasis to discuss planned obsolescence and Apple, Stephen Elop and Nokia, the Twitter IPO, and more.

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About That Bloomberg Report on Next Year’s iPhones 

Tim Culpan and Adam Satariano, reporting for Bloomberg yesterday:

Apple Inc. is developing new iPhone designs including bigger screens with curved glass and enhanced sensors that can detect different levels of pressure, said a person familiar with the plans.

Two models planned for release in the second half of next year would feature larger displays with glass that curves downward at the edges, said the person, declining to be identified because the details aren’t public. Sensors that can distinguish heavy or light touches on the screen may be incorporated into subsequent models, the person said.

With screens of 4.7 inches and 5.5 inches, the two new models would be Apple’s largest iPhones, the person said, and would approach in size the 5.7-inch Galaxy Note 3 that Samsung Electronics Co. debuted in September.

I don’t understand the bit about “glass that curves downward at the edges”. Downward how? Sounds like they’re saying the display would be convex, and I can’t imagine why that would be desirable. (I don’t see the point of concave displays either.) And it also seems rather curious that Apple would introduce two new displays sizes at the same time. Apple has only introduced one new iPhone display size since 2007, but they’re going to introduce two at the same time next year? That smells fishy to me.

And whither the 4-inch display? I would like to see any report of next-generation iPhones with larger displays explain Apple’s plans for the existing 4-inch size. Would it be relegated only to the second-tier C-class model? Or would they continue to produce top-tier models at that size as well? A person familiar with Apple’s plans should be able to explain this.

Update: Another thing I’d like to know about future iOS device displays sporting new physical dimensions — the pixel counts. Will they be like the iPad Air and Mini (same pixel count, different pixels-per-inch resolution)? Or will they introduce new pixel dimensions? Again, any person familiar with Apple’s plans should be able to answer that.

On Gestures 

Tim Carmody, writing for the new publication STET:

Touchscreens typically register just points of contact: they don’t register the pressure with which the device has been touched, the angle and articulation of the hand, or velocity of movement. Interaction, Buxton says, is about both look and feel, but most multitouch systems overwhelmingly emphasize look over feel, sight over touch.

Related: Bloomberg reported over the weekend that Apple is working on pressure-sensitive touchscreens.