Linked List: November 21, 2013

Thursday, 21 November 2013

iWork for iOS and Mac Updated, Keynote Gains New Transitions ★

I kind of hope that the small, fast application updates that we’re now seeing from Apple is the start of a new trend.

Interesting postscript regarding The Schedule Makers, the lovely short film I linked to last week about the Stephensons, the husband-and-wife team who’d made the Major League Baseball schedule for 25 years — a blog post from Michael Trick, whose computer-driven team replaced them:

I began working on baseball scheduling in 1994, and it took ten years of hard work (first Doug and me, then the four of us) before MLB selected our schedule for play.

Why were we successful in 2004 and not in 1994? At the core, technology changed. The computers we used in 2004 were 1000 times faster than the 1994 computers. And the underlying optimization software was at least 1000 times faster. So technology made us at least one million times faster. And that made all the difference. Since then, computers and algorithms have made us 1000 times faster still. And, in addition, we learned quite a bit about how to best do complicated sports scheduling problems.

Clumsy Ninja Finally Hits App Store ★

Phil Dzikiy, writing for iLounge:

Clumsy Ninja, which was featured in last year’s Apple media event for the fifth-generation iPod touch and iPhone 5, has finally made its way to the App Store as a free download. One of two high-profile game demos from Apple last year — the other being Infinity Blade Dungeons, which was shown at the third-generation iPad event in March 2012 and later canceled — Clumsy Ninja’s release was delayed for more than a year without explanation.

If you scored an onstage demo at the September 2012 introduction of the iPhone 5 and don’t ship the app for another 14 months, I think you deserve a non-sarcastic finally.

I think one of the few truly weird things about Apple today is how they occasionally pick obscure third-party products to demo in their high-profile events. Clumsy Ninja looks like a cool game, but why would Apple choose them to demo if it wasn’t soon going to ship. And remember Anki, the toy race cars at the WWDC keynote this year? How’d they get picked?

Update: Whoa, check this out — Clumsy Ninja’s entry in the App Store has a video preview instead of static screenshots. So not only did they get an onstage demo a year ago, this year, they get to launch a major new App Store feature. (Thanks to Neven Mrgan.)

Update 2: In a recent TV interview with Bloomberg, Anki co-founder and CEO Boris Sofman, when asked how they got picked to be on stage during the WWDC keynote, said “One of our investors introduced us to Apple, and originally we started talking about being in their stores, but they got excited about the product and how we were using their product ecosystem.”

18 Months ★

Denise Calnan, reporting for Independent.ie:

The ‘book to e-book’ move was deemed a disaster following major technical issues with the majority of the HP Elite Pad tablet devices. […]

“The HP Elite Pad has proved to be an unmitigated disaster. We have met with HP representatives on a number of occasions to address the issues. To ensure stability and continuity of education I have ordered a full set of books for all the students.”

Students experienced problems such as tablets failing to switch on, tablets spontaneously going into sleep mode, devices looping while performing automatic repairs, system board failures and issues with wi-fi.

Principal Gleeson said it was “an informed decision” to choose the HP Elite tablet. “A year and a half’s worth of research was put into choosing the right device for us.”

If you spend a year and a half researching tablets and wind up choosing the HP Elite, you might want to reexamine your research skills. (I’m reminded of CBS News’s claim that they spent a year researching their discredited Benghazi report that was in fact a hoax.)

Jury Orders Samsung to Pay Apple $290 Million for Patent Infringement ★

Not sure if this litigation is ever going to end.

Samsung Executive Defends Galaxy Gear as a ‘Small Green Tomato’ ★

Samsung executive David Eun, on stage at Business Insider’s Ignition conference:

“What we’re dealing with is small green tomatoes,” he said of the Gear’s first-generation growing pains. “And what we want to do is take care of them and work with them so they become big, red ripe tomatoes. And what you want to be sure of is that you don’t pluck the green tomato too early and you want to make sure that you don’t criticize a small green tomato for not being a big, red ripe tomato.”

That’s a tough spot, speaking on stage in front of an audience. What’s he going to say? That the Gear is a huge turd? He has to defend it.

But, calling it a 1.0 doesn’t hold water. If you’re taking real money from consumers for the product — and the Gear costs $300 — you owe them a product of that value or greater. There are no points for being first to market with a bad product.

Galaxy Gear Rumored Sales Figures: El Stinko ★

Business Korea:

According to the related industry sources on November 14, Samsung Electronics released the curved smartphone Galaxy Round on November 10, but the product currently shows daily sales of under 100 units. Its cumulative monthly sales fall under 10,000 units.

Also, on September 25, Samsung Electronics released the Galaxy Gear in time for the wearable computing generation. Yet this product has cumulative sales under 50,000, with daily sales of only 800-900 units. These low sales values for the Galaxy Gear are far below the initial expectations of the industry.

Sounds about right, given the almost universally terrible reviews the Gear garnered.

A day after the Business Korea report — which admittedly has no named sources — Samsung executives fired back, telling Reuters they’ve “sold” 800,000 Gear units, calling it “the most sold wearable watch available in the market place”. (As opposed to unwearable watches?) Anyway, turns out this is from the Department of Shipped Not Sold — the 800K figure is the number of Gear units Samsung has manufactured and shipped to resellers. That doesn’t put the lie to Business Korea’s claim that they may have only actually sold 50K of them so far.

VoodooPad Changes Hands ★

Gus Mueller:

The great folks over at Plausible Labs have taken over development of VoodooPad.

Both VoodooPad and Acorn have grown over the years into much more than I can handle as a single developer. And because of this one of my two apps was going to be neglected, and obviously VoodooPad has gotten the short end of the stick lately.

This isn’t fair to my customers, it isn’t fair to VoodooPad, and it was driving me insane. I use VoodooPad every single day, and I love it to death. I want it to grow, and that wasn’t happening so something needed to be done.

Good news for a great app.

Trent Reznor FaceTimes With Ill Friend Live on Stage ★

I would not have pegged Trent Reznor as a white iPhone man.

Update: Great piece from Consequence of Sound on the poignant story behind this friendship.