Linked List: March 6, 2014

Thursday, 6 March 2014

iTunes Festival App Updated; Runs on iOS 7.0.x 

You win some, you lose some. (I still think iOS 7.1 is imminent, but was wrong that the new Festival app would require it.)

Newsweek Reporter Identifies Bitcoin Creator Satoshi Nakamoto 

Leah McGrath Goodman, reporting for Newsweek:

He stands not with defiance, but with the slackness of a person who has waged battle for a long time and now faces a grave loss.

Two police officers from the Temple City, Calif., sheriff’s department flank him, looking puzzled. “So, what is it you want to ask this man about?” one of them asks me. “He thinks if he talks to you he’s going to get into trouble.”

“I don’t think he’s in any trouble,” I say. “I would like to ask him about Bitcoin. This man is Satoshi Nakamoto.”

“What?” The police officer balks. “This is the guy who created Bitcoin? It looks like he’s living a pretty humble life.”

Contrary to most speculation, “Satoshi Nakamoto” is not a pseudonym. That’s his real name.

Where Apple Design Is Headed in 2014 

Dave Wiskus, writing for Macworld:

As it stands now, iOS 7 is a series of solvable problems. The things you could label as deficiencies are mostly a result of that swinging pendulum — an overcorrection of skeuomorphism. So what comes next is most likely balance and refinement. Buttons might not need to look like they’re being physically pressed if you tap them, but some feedback is useful. Text-label buttons (such as Send in Messages) don’t need to be visually heavy, but it’s generally better to give users a sense of tap target size.

What this piece made clear for me is that (a) something similar is going to happen to Mac OS X, almost certainly this year; but (b) there’s no way to look at iOS 7 and predict what a corresponding refresh for Mac OS X will look like. Maybe the only things I’ll predict are lots of white backgrounds, and Helvetica Neue as the system font.

Two Economists File Pro-Apple Brief in E-Book Antitrust Case 

From the amicus brief filed by Caltech’s Bradford Cornell and NYU’s Janusz Ordover:

The provisions of the agreements at issue — agency, ‘most-favored-nation’ (MFN) clauses, and price caps—can be instrumental in facilitating new entry, particularly into markets with an entrenched, dominant firm. In this case, the District Court disregarded economic evidence and reasoning that these provisions served Apple’s independent business interest in entering the e-book market, where Amazon was a near-monopolist. The District Court also ignored economic evidence and reasoning suggesting that Apple’s entry into e-book retailing, and not the MFNs, allowed the Publisher Defendants to persuade Amazon to switch from a wholesale to an agency business model.

The District Court also erred in equating price increases for some e-books with harm to competition. Apple’s entry into the e-book retail market dramatically increased competition by diminishing Amazon’s power as a retail monopolist (and its ability to pursue a “loss-leader” strategy that inefficiently priced e-books below their acquisition cost). That increased competition gave publishers more bargaining power, thereby bringing ebook pricing closer to competitive levels. These errors threaten to chill competition by discouraging the use of common vertical contracting techniques that are often essential to facilitating the expensive and risky investments needed for entry into highly concentrated markets. Our antitrust laws should encourage, not penalize, vertical contracting arrangements that facilitate entry and enhance competition.