Linked List: November 13, 2013

Wednesday, 13 November 2013

Microsoft Axes Its Controversial Stack-Ranking HR System ★

Good move by Microsoft; this system was just poisonous. But it’s a curious decision to be made while the company’s senior leadership is in flux. And the sign-off on the company-wide memo from HR chief Lisa Brummel struck me as a little cultish:

There is nothing we cannot accomplish when we work together as One Microsoft.

Polygon’s PlayStation 4 Review ★

Well-written, well-considered, and splendidly designed review of Sony’s new console. Dig those animated vector illustrations.

Why Apple Released the Retina iPad Mini Softly ★

Ed Dale:

By soft releasing the iPad Mini Retina, Apple achieved three crucial things.

Apple’s biggest fans got theirs first. Who knew about this first? The people who follow the Apple blogs and digerati. Judging by Twitter, this worked perfectly.

The grey market queueing for the iPad Mini Retina was going to be immense. By going online the incredibly poor optics (the front of Apple lines, which attracts a lot of media, was full of people who were not fans but paid to be there) are mitigated.

The last thing Apple wants is hundreds of customers turning up everyday to be disappointed in a store which is meant to be a happy place — Apple does not want their stores to be associated with disappointment and frustration!

Bingo. It sucks that the new retina iPad Mini is severely supply-constrained, but given that it is constrained, the best way to put it on sale is quietly. They’re going to sell them as fast as they can make them for the foreseeable future, no use queueing people up to be disappointed.

WSJ Reports That Snapchat Rejected $3 Billion Buyout Offer From Facebook ★

Reuters:

Mobile messaging startup Snapchat rejected an acquisition offer from Facebook Inc that would have valued the company at $3 billion or more, according to a Wall Street Journal report on Wednesday.

Facebook representatives reached out to Snapchat in recent weeks to discuss the all-cash deal, which would have been Facebook’s largest acquisition ever, the report said, citing anonymous sources.

It wasn’t too long ago that Facebook was on the other side of such a decision.

Overheating Chargers Lead to HP Chromebook Being Pulled From Market ★

If a Chromebook gets pulled from the market, but no one was buying them anyway, does it make a sound?

Verizon Admits Network Faces Traffic Pressure in Big Cities ★

Roger Cheng, reporting for CNet:

The carrier said it is facing pressure to deliver increased amounts of bandwidth in big cities such as New York, San Francisco, and Chicago. In a rare admission on Tuesday, Verizon Chief Financial Officer Fran Shammo admitted the rapid growth in traffic was starting to hamper the quality of the service.

“There are certain pockets where we’re absolutely going to experience that down tick from the LTE network down to 3G because of capacity constraints,” Shammo said during an investor conference.

I was in New York yesterday, and saw this firsthand. Verizon LTE has gone to shit in Midtown Manhattan.

Update: On Twitter, reader Rory Berger reports, “I work in Midtown East and I turn off LTE all day. Verizon 3G is much more reliable (although still shit).”

And Carl Peluso asks an intriguing question: “Is Verizon finally feeling the pressure of iPhone on their network like AT&T in past, or is that [an] invalid issue nowadays?”

Put another way: How much of the pressure on Verizon’s LTE network in these big cities is from the iPhone in particular?